Wednesday, July 18, 2007

What I'm teaching

I just learned more details about what I'll be teaching at the University of Malta. In the international law faculty, I'll have a course called State Responsibility. Loosely speaking that topic covers what it is that sovereign countries must do relative to each other, international organizations, corporations, and individual people. Ideally, everyone could look at a manual and, as one scholar of Law of the Sea put it, say "who am I, who is that over there, where are we, and what may we do here?" But, that's not always the case. As with any kind of law, ambiguities and unusual circumstances arise and questions of interpretation can arise. And, as in everyday domestic life of individuals, sometimes you have laws on the books but people routinely ignore them ( like traffic laws) or outright flaunt them (like robbery). Just because there are violations doesn't mean there is no law.

As plans begin to take shape, I've also figured out that I'm going to go to a conference at the University of Malta on Life Long Learning and then, at the end of Sept., to one in Brussels on Life Cycle Analysis and Policy.

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