Customer Reviews

Can Might Make Rights?: Building the Rule of Law after Military Interventions

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This book comes at a particularily appropriate time. It has become very clear that the administrations of the major powers are operating at the limits of their capabilities in the area of peacemaking after conflict.

It seems that there was a string of what have to be considered real successes: Japan and Germany were out bitter enemies during World War II, yet after the war, what has to be considered enlightened supervision totally changed their governments to democracies reflecting the will of the people and making them good neighbors. South Korea is another example.

Then a series of bloodbaths occurred. Perhaps a hundred wars since then, with perhaps a hundred million people killed. Are we to allow more 'holocausts' in Haiti, Rwanda, and on and on.

This book is the report of law professors in U.S. law schools, but professors with experience on the ground in Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Iraq. ==These are not subjects that were unknown in our Government before the Iraq/Afthanistan invasions, but the level of the difficulty in establishing working governments certainly seems to have been minimized.

This book is an important contribution to thinking about the problems now being faced in Iraq.

This book is an important contribution to the rule of law promotion field. The book particularly distinguishes itself in that it combines an understanding of the academic debate with the on-ground reality of establishing or rebuilding a system of justice in a war-torn area. Very few books, articles, or other publications manage to explore rule of law promotion with both perspectives in hand. The authors are to be applauded for performing this balancing act and providing the public with such a useful blend of information and analysis.

In fact, I have found this book to be so useful that I now use it as a core text in a class on rule of law promotion, which I teach in law school. While the text addresses a number of legal issues, I believe it to be accessible to non-lawyers who are interested in understanding, and perhaps working, in the rule of law promotion field. On the topics covered, this book captures accurately the challenges, opportunities, and limitations of the field as it is today.