Ages ago, at my first-year law school orientation, my classmates were told "If you only know the law, then you do not know the law at all." I took the words to heart as I made my way through law school, through law practice and, now, into law teaching. The Cosmopolitan Lawyer lists readings, many non-law, which are influencing my thinking about law. It is my effort to be, and to encourage others to be, more cosmopolitan--and, thus, less parochial--in thinking about law.
January 22, 2012
BURMA
Thant Myint-U, Were China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011) (" 'We know that India can't balance China for us', one former Burmese officer told me. . . The relative decline of the West is often exaggerated. The West is still far richer, its universities second-to-none and the armed forces of the United States have no parallel. But here, in this small but strategic slice of Asia, the post-Western world is perhaps more evident than anywhere else. Walking around in Maymyo, the West seems more a memory and something very far away, sanctions and boycotts having kept out business and aid programmes that would otherwise exist, leaving the landscape to be crafted by others. The money to be made, the fears to be addressed, the relations that need to be fostered, have become Asian, and close at hand." Id. at 74-75. Also, see James Fallows, "Political Frontier," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 10/23/2011.).