Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
While human history is not without crime and slaughter, it is only in the twentieth century, especially following the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials, that people sought justice in the name of all humanity. To mark the World Day for International Justice we invited our authors and editors to answer the question: What do you consider to be the most important issue in international criminal justice today?
By Anatoly Liberman
A few weeks ago, I talked about euphemisms on Minnesota Public Radio. The comments were many and varied. Not unexpectedly, some callers also mentioned clichés, and I realized once again that in my resentment of unbridled political correctness, the overuse of buzzwords, and the ineradicable habit to suppress the truth by putting on it a coating of sugary euphemisms I am not alone.
By Margarita Lugo Hubp
From a librarian’s perspective, there has been a huge change in the types of electronic publications that academics, students, and researchers use. In Mexico, as in other developing countries, journals, e-books, and other electronic works make it possible to offer greater access to scholarship in increasingly large university populations.
By John G. Stackhouse, Jr.
We might have reason to doubt some or even much of our day-to-day apprehension of things. We’re all in a hurry, all having to learn and discern and decide on the fly. Surely in the realm of medical research, however, the most important research we conduct, expert knowledge is sure and sound?
Morten Jerven
In most studies of economic growth the downloaded data from international databases is treated as primary evidence, although in fact it is not. The data available from the international series has been obtained from governments and statistical bureaus and has then been modified to fit the purpose of the data retailer and its customers
By Claire Niedzwiedz
How satisfied are you with your life? The answer is undoubtedly shaped by many factors and one key influence is the country in which you live. Governments across the world are increasingly interested in measuring happiness and wellbeing to understand how societies are changing, as indicators such as GDP (gross domestic product) do not seem to measure what makes life meaningful.
To analyze the personal, political, and intellectual trajectory of Akbar Jehan—the woman, the wife, the mother, and the Kashmiri nationalist, not simply an iconic and often misunderstood political figure—has been an emotionally tempestuous journey for me. The Kashmiri political and social activist is my maternal grandmother.
By Rachel Hope Cleves
Same-sex marriage is having a moment. The accelerating legalization of same-sex marriage at the state level since the Supreme Court’s June 2013 United States v. Windsor decision, striking down the Defense of Marriage Act, has truly been astonishing. Who is not dumbstruck by the spectacle of legal same-sex marriages performed in a state such as Utah, which criminalized same-sex sexual behavior until 2003?
By John G. Stackhouse, Jr.
Right now I’m bored. And I can’t be wrong about that. I truly am yawningly, dazedly bored. And epistemologists assure me that about my mental states, such as this present one of stupefaction, I can claim certainty.
The Bastille once stood in the heart of Paris — a hulking, heavily-fortified medieval fortress, which was used as a state prison. During the 18th century, it played a key role in enforcing the government censorship, and had become increasingly unpopular, symbolizing the oppressiveness and the costly inefficiency of the reigning monarchy and the ruling classes.
Whether your version of the perfect summer read gives your cerebrum a much needed breather or demands contemplation you don’t have time for in everyday life, here is a mix of both to consider for your summer reading this year.
What does international law truly mean in the world today? For the publication of Malcom Evans’s International Law, Fourth edition, we asked several leading figures that question. Ralph Zacklin, the former UN Assistant Secretary General for Legal Affairs, provides his personal perspective on international in the edited essay below.
By Mary Blair
Slow lorises are enigmatic nocturnal primates that are notoriously difficult to find in the wild. The five species of slow loris that have been evaluated by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species are classified as threatened or critically endangered with extinction. So, how did one end up recently on the set of Lady Gaga’s music video?
As 16 teams reached the knockout stage of the World Cup, the blasts of canons sounded to signal the beginning of Ramadan, the holy month in the Islamic lunar calendar in which Muslims are to abstain from food, drink, smoking, sex, and gossiping from sunrise to sunset.
By Anne Hammerstad
After a short lull in the late 2000s, global refugee numbers have risen dramatically. In 2013, a daily average of 32,200 people (up from 14,200 in 2011) fled conflict and persecution to seek protection elsewhere, within or outside the borders of their own country. On the current trajectory, 2014 will be even worse.
By Gordon Martel
Two weeks after the assassination, by Monday, 13 July, Austria’s hopes of pinning the guilt directly on the Serbian government had evaporated. The judge sent to investigate reported that he had been unable to discover any evidence proving its complicity in the plot.