Reforming Chinese Courts: A Fool’s Errand?

With Chinese courts revising more than 1,300 criminal decisions in 2014, the chief justice of the Supreme People’s Court, Zhou Qiang, told the national legislature in March 2015, “With regard to wrongful convictions, we feel a deep sense of self-blame and demand that courts at all levels draw a profound lesson.”[1] Six months earlier, President Xi Jinping had initiated legal reforms on the premise that the Communist Party needed a “better-functioning” legal system in order to be able to govern.[2] The question is whether this push will come to anything substantial.

The full essay is at "Reforming Chinese Courts."

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1. Josh Chin, “Top Judge Apologizes for Wrongful Convictions,” The Wall Street Journal, March 13, 2015.

2. Ibid.

Right to Work or Destroying Unions: A False Dichotomy

On March 9, 2015, Wisconsin became a “right to work” State. That is to say, labor unions cannot force every worker of a unionized company to pay union dues and fees. At the time, 24 other States had the law on their books. I submit that both the “right to work” slogan and the unions’ charge that the law unfairly goes after unions are misleading. 

The full essay is at "Right to Work or Destroying Unions."

Disney Re-Making Stories: The End of Creativity in Film?

Politicians running for re-election may “remake themselves.” Companies “reinvent themselves.” If the company happens to make films, are the stories necessarily reinvented—essentially being retold—too? If this becomes the norm, is the implication that storytellers have exhausted the story plotlines that the human mind can conceive? Perhaps retelling old stories is simply laziness and corporate expediency at the expense of substance.

The full essay is at “Disney”