Israel Reflections 2013–It’s Still Complicated

As we wrote about the last Israel trip, noting the complications and contradictions of the country are crucial to also understanding it.  On the 65th anniversary of Israeli independence, this blog post from student Kristina Minor discusses the importance and implications of Zionism:

Israel is by far the most complicated place I have ever been.  There is no way to fully understand what is going on in the area without walking the streets and speaking to the people.  What hit me most about the trip was seeing the beauty and passion for life and harmony that has emerged as a result of hundreds of years of conflict and pain.

The very foundations of the Israeli are based on a painful Jewish history and promises waiting to be fulfilled. 

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Israel Reflections 2013–Is Trust Necessary?

At the ABA Section on Dispute Resolution Annual Meeting last week, Senator George Mitchell spoke about Northern Ireland and how important hope and patience is for a peace process. On the other hand, and contrary to much that we read about in negotiation, he did not argue that trust is needed. Several of our speakers in Israel spoke about this as well.  The following blog from Nick Grode picks up on this theme:

Having returned from Israel, I find myself reflecting on what I have learned.  One of the most interesting lessons centers on the role of trust in conflict resolution.  While in Israel I had the pleasure of listening to Gershon Baskin [Baskin negotiated the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli solider held by Hamas for five years] and Moty Cristal [Cristal was last year’s ABA keynote speaker, a well-known negotiation expert involved in numerous Israeli-Palestinian issues] speak about the Middle East conflict.  Both commented on the lack of trust between the Israeli and Palestinian governments.

Interestingly, neither saw this lack of trust as a bar to peace. 

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Does Federal Law Actually Preempt Relaxed State Marijuana Laws?

Federalism & MarijuanaThe Cato Institute’s Ilya Shapiro recently spoke at the Law School concerning the status of relaxed state marijuana laws in light of the federal Controlled Substances Act’s continued prohibition of activities that these state laws now allow. This is a timely question with, it turns out, a less-than-certain answer. More precisely, it demands an answer that is more nuanced, and less categorical, than one might initially be inclined to give.

One’s initial answer is likely that these state laws are preempted—that is, rendered void and unenforceable—because of the federal statute. It is conventional constitutional doctrine, after all, that the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause makes valid federal law supreme over conflicting state law. Moreover, because the U.S. Supreme Court in Gonzales v. Raich (2005) deemed the federal marijuana prohibition to be a valid exercise of Congress’ commerce power, the specific question of whether state marijuana laws are vulnerable to preemption seems already to have been answered.

Mr. Shapiro makes an important observation, however.

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