Fear and Loathing of E-Vegas

There’s no such thing as problem gambling. I should know – during the Winter Olympics alone I won over $7,000 by gambling, and that’s not even including my wagers on Olympic sports. Of course I spent $22,000, but you have to understand that winning comes in cycles, and I think I’m heading back into a hot streak now. It’s complicated – the point is people who enjoy gambling have things under control.

Why, therefore, do we need laws regulating or banning gambling? The fact that problem gambling is a myth takes care of a Hartian positivist/utilitarian justification. This leaves only Fuller and his “natural law”, which in this case amounts to antiquated Victorian morality. With such a foundation, I’d bet that today’s gambling laws are little different in substance from those of a hundred years ago.[1]

Such questions are all the more relevant today because of the rise of online gambling. Anyone who has watched movies on Megavideo knows that there are two rules: 1) there’s a 72-minute limit, and 2) popup ads for a certain gambling website – let’s call it “MartyMoker.com” – are ubiquitous. But are these kinds of betting sites legal? The truth is that in Canada today the answer is not entirely clear.

The situation is complex because online gambling by its nature involves cross-border transactions. It is clear that running an unregulated online casino from within Canadian territory…

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How I Learned to Stop Worrying About International Law and Love Toothless Inquiries

Increasingly in recent history, it has been the case that when egregious violations of international law occur resulting in thousands of deaths, the Western world will (afterwards) act to see justice done. Prominent examples include the activities of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and, to an extent, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. But what is the proper response when it is Westerners who egregiously violate international law, resulting in thousands of deaths? If you answered “something similar”, then you are wrong. Shame on you.

No, an example of the proper response can be seen in Britain today, where an inquiry into the decisions leading up to the Iraq war, headed by Sir John Chilcot, has been underway since July. As the inquiry’s website makes clear, this is not a criminal tribunal, and it is not placing anyone on trial. Rather its purpose is to accurately establish what happened, and to identify lessons that can be learned (though have no fear: if the inquiry finds that mistakes were made, “it will say so”).

Britain’s Iraq inquiry is a nice, typical piece of theatre, with a colourful cast of characters. Those gaining the most attention include Jack Straw, Foreign Minister in 2003; Lord Goldsmith, the former Attorney General; Sir Michael Wood, the Foreign Office’s most senior legal advisor; Wood’s deputy Elizabeth Wilmshurst; as well as good…

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