Randall S. Kroszner has left the President's Council of Economic Advisers and joined AEI as a visiting scholar researching media ownership, international trade, intellectual property rights, and monetary reform. During his time at the council, he was on leave from his positions as a professor of economics at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, as editor of the Journal of Law and Economics, and as associate director of the George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State. His articles have been published in over fifty journals, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Finance, and Journal of Financial Economics.

Senior Fellow Lynne V. Cheney

The James Madison Book Award, established by Lynne V. Cheney, has been presented to Peter Busby and David Craig, author and illustrator of First to Fly: How Wilbur & Orville Wright Invented the Airplane. This annual award, first given on July 1, 2003, recognizes books that excel at bringing knowledge and understanding of American history to the younger generation. Each year the James Madison Book Award Advisory Council, chaired by Mrs. Cheney, will chose a winner. Mrs. Cheney has donated a portion of the profits from her latest book, America: A Patriotic Primer, to the James Madison Book Award Fund.

James K. Glassman has been named to the State Department's new Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim World. The thirteen-member group, headed by Ambassador Edward Djerejian, was assembled at the request of Congress to study the efficacy of the department's public diplomacy efforts in the region and to recommend new ideas and policy initiatives. The advisory group, through the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, will report its findings to the administration and Congress by early fall.

In the Wall Street Journal (June 17), Robert H. Bork argues that the growing number of international cases tried by U.S. courts is a misdirection of legal legitimacy: "There is certain to be resentment when a foreign nation is told by an American court that actions its courts allow are nonetheless illegal. In many of these cases, there is no possibility that damages will be paid, though there may be when American corporations are held liable under a vague and constantly evolving customary international law. But a judgment that international law has been violated constitutes a propaganda victory for one view of appropriate worldwide social policy. That is a misuse of our courts to award professors and advocacy groups a moral and legal legitimacy that is not rightly theirs." Bork discusses these themes in Coercing Virtue: The Worldwide Rule of Judges, which the AEI Press will publish in September.

Kevin A. Hassett, writing in National Review (July 14), cautions against the Bush administration's spending habits: "Republicans seem content to allow Bush to purchase popularity with taxpayer dollars. Politically, the strategy is ingenious. By enacting popular Democratic programs such as prescription-drug coverage, the president neutralizes his opponents in 2004, and (he hopes) increases substantially the odds of a Republican sweep. But such calculations are nonetheless troubling. Conservatives might shudder at the thought of 'President Howard Dean,' but it is hard to see exactly what has been gained if the strategy employed to keep him out of the White House is to adopt all of his policies in advance. More importantly, such actions may come back to haunt the president."

F. K. Weyerhaeuser Fellow Steven F. Hayward

In testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Government Reform (June 6), Steven F. Hayward advocated the Department of Environmental Protection Act (H.R. 2138): "Although the EPA and other federal departments that share responsibility for environmental matters . . . publish reams of statistics about the environment, there has never been a consistent, systematic national effort to report on environmental trends-an astonishing lacuna in a nation where hundreds of billions of dollars are spent annually for environmental protection. Without such an effort, it is difficult or impossible to evaluate the performance of the EPA, the effectiveness of its individual policies, or to choose intelligent priorities among the various environmental problems it is charged with addressing."