Of Queens, Kings, and Inherited Destiny

Koningin_Beatrix_in_Vries Kings, queens, princes and especially princesses are subjects of eternal fascination.  From fairy tales to the Sissi movies to glossy royalty magazines, we can’t seem to get enough of royalty. And as Amsterdam is getting ready for Queen Beatrix’s abdication and the investiture of King Willem-Alexander, I feel some pangs of regret about not being around other Dutch people during this last Queen’s Day. This sentiment took me by surprise: Not only have I never attended a Queen’s Day party since I moved to the United States, but I am also not a monarchist.

My objections to the Dutch monarchy stem in no small part from the undemocratic nature of an unelected head of state. The notion that my fellow Dutch citizens and I are “subjects” of our queen or king seems not only outdated, but also fundamentally at odds with self-government. Even those who defend the monarchy tend to emphasize its ceremonial character–which, ironically, makes it harder to justify the significant expenses associated with the institution.

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The Decentralization of American Diplomacy

The Atlantic has a good article out right now on mayoral participation in global diplomacy. According to the authors, the practice is increasingly common and ambitious. Mayors of large cities have taken on issues ranging from global warming to nuclear disarmament, to economic growth and terrorism. These efforts are also becoming more institutionalized. The mayor of New York, for example, has a “Mayor’s Office for International Affairs,” and Europe has an “EU-China Mayors’ Forum” that promotes relations between European and Chinese municipal authorities. The authors use the term “diplomacity” to refer to the “expanding propensity of cities to develop the necessary mechanisms to autonomously navigate foreign relations on their own.”

These developments strike me as interesting for a couple of reasons. First, they form half of a two-dimensional assault on a classical model of international relations, which identifies heads of state and their agents as the critical channels for official communication. Diplomacity amounts to a vertical assault on that model because it reflects a dispersion of diplomatic activity among national and local authorities. Communication by national officials other than heads of state—such as legislators—forms the other half: a horizontal assault in the form of a dispersion of diplomatic acts among component parts of national governments. Neither of these is new, but both have intensified under globalization. The result is an entirely different picture of international relations. If diplomacy under the classical model was centralized and tidy, the contemporary counterpart is decentralized and cluttered with a broad range of actors. This has both benefits and disadvantages. States and localities, for example, will often possess unique perspectives on international problems and unique capacity to develop solutions, but the proliferation of voices may also complicate the management of inter-state relations.

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ADHD and Keeping Time in Practice

alarm-clockEach spring semester, when my first-year writing students have moved from objective writing from pre-selected authorities to persuasive writing and doing their own research, I have them keep track of their time. In law practice, time is money.  Even if a lawyer does not bill her hours to a client, she is likely still required to keep track of their time, if only for that organization’s internal purposes. For better or for worse, practicing attorneys must know well each .1 of an hour they work, on what, and for whom.

The time-keeping exercise is designed to provide students practice with billing their time, learning, for example, how to convert, say, twenty minutes of reading cases to .3 of research.  It’s also an exercise designed to give them practice on what kinds of activities to bill. The time spent online looking for case law? Yes.  The writing of the brief?  Of course.  But what about that one-hour meeting with the professor?  Sure.  I’d call that an office conference and lawyers have those all the time. 

After students have finished their first briefs and have turned in their time sheets, I have them reflect on keeping time and ask them what they learned from the exercise. Most students aren’t fond of the exercise, but do recognize its value. One student once asked why I couldn’t ask them to keep track of their time in “normal” increments, like .25, .50, .75, and 1.00. This year, one student responded that keeping time was, for him, incredibly painful.  You see, he said, he has Attention-Deficit, Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

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