Law Commons^™

Checkpoint Watch: Bureaucracy And Resistance At The Israel/Palestinean Border, Irus Braverman

Journal Articles

This essay sketches my personal impressions of the changes that have occurred over the last decade in Israeli checkpoints in and around Jerusalem. These changes are both in the physical design of the checkpoints as well as in their human management. My particular focus is on the women’s human rights organization MachsomWatch. The role of MachsomWatch has changed in a way that parallels the solidification and the bureaucratization of the border. Nowadays, MachsomWatch women - originally avid protestors of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank - have, despite themselves, become a routine feature in the occupational apparatus. This essay’s …

Is This Appropriate?, Thomas L. Shaffer, Julia B. Meister

Journal Articles

The word "appropriate" is so wildly overused in American culture that, as with other vacuous words and phrases, a person learns to read right through it. "Appropriate" is verbal tofu. This Essay pauses instead of reading through, particularly to notice the instances in which "appropriate" and its negative counterpart are used to give the appearance of a moral or legal judgment.

"Appropriate," chosen to express a legal judgment, is not only vacuous; it is also irresponsible. It catches the legislator, judge, or administrator in the act of passing the buck, as the President did when he ordered the Justice Department …