While it is a truism to observe that if humans were angels, law would be unnecessary, we could equally turn the truism around, and note that if humans were devils, law would be pointless. In this sense, the law-making project always presupposes the improvability, if not the perfectibility, of humankind. Whether our view of human nature tends toward Hobbesian grimness or Rousseauian equanimity, we tend to think of law as critical to reducing brutality and violence.

...And unpredictability can spread: one powerful outlier can pave the way for others, and as more states joint the outlier, the foundations of the rule of law begin to crumble.

US counterterrorism practices--and the legal theories that under-pin them--are undermining the international rule of law in precisely this way...

My point here is not that the Iraq War was a bad idea in the first place (though it certainly was). My point is that this cynical, foolish, arguably illegal war might still have come right in the end—if only we had tried a little less hard to fix everything that struck us as broken.

It has often been our best instincts, not our worst, that have led us to do harm in the world

В 1941 году мы эвакуировались. А потом вернулись [в Запорожье] в ноябре 1945 года. Когда приехали, это был сплошь разрушенный город, одни только руины. И мальчишки моего возраста (к чему я был совершенно не готов) играли в этих руинах в войну. Кидали друг в друга кирпичами, если кто попадал — очень радовался. Это дети войны. Когда война идет, все звереют. И взрослые, и дети. И дети играли в такие зверские игры.

Police routinely shooting mentally challenged people is a very disturbing trend.