• In this article we focus on the true nature of a disparity asserted in Leo Strauss's discussion of Machiavelli to amount to a virtue battle of sorts between Athens and Jerusalem. To convey this conflict Strauss is drawing both on his once Talmudic scholarship and his expertise in the history of political philosophy. We explore the stunning distortions, both theological and philosophical, in Strauss's discussion that appears aimed to support a conservative position on leadership, which calls for …Read more
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    The Economics of Exceptionalism: The US and the International Criminal Court
    Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism 24 (2): 135-148. 2016.
    This article is a response to a call for a study of international criminal law as an economic phenomenon, going beyond addressing administrability, commensurability, and interpersonal comparison of utility, band instead focusing on problems of institutional choice. This approach differs from the typical methods of normative and descriptive scholarship of international criminal law. An institution like the International Criminal Court can be usefully examined as an international public good, and …Read more
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    Shklar's Legalism and the Liberal Paradox
    Constellations 22 (2): 188-198. 2015.
    This paper examines Judith Shklar’s Legalism in light of the paradox that emerges clearly from a law-based approach to international crises that ought to be evaluated on the basis of whether the judicial initiative—the cases examined are primarily drawn from ad hoc UN Security Council tribunals—promote, in Shklar’s words, “decent politics.” The question of whether this notion is exclusively related to liberalism, and whether it may run contrary to the role of defense counsel in such trials—deepl…Read more