In Ethnic Identity and Minority Protection: Designation, Discrimination, and Brutalization, Thomas W. Simon examines a new framework for considering ethnic conflicts. In contrast to the more traditional theories of justice, Simon's theory of injustice shifts focus away from group identity toward group harms, effectively making many problems, such as how to define minorities in international law, dramatically more manageable. Simon argues that instead of promoting legislative devices like proportional representation for minorities, it is more fruitful to seek adjudicative solutions to racial and ethnic-related conflicts. For example, resources could be shifted to quasi-judicial human-rights treaty bodies that have adopted an injustice approach. This injustice approach provides the foundation for Kosovo's case for remedial secession, and helps to sort out the competing entitlement claims of Malays in different countries. Indeed, the priority of Thomas W. Simon's Ethnic Identity and Minority Protection is to ensure the tales of designation and discrimination told at the beginning of the work do not become the stories of brutalization told at the end. In short, the challenge tackled in this text is to assure that reason reigns over hate.

While much international attention has been focused on China's developing economy, dramatic changes are also taking place in its legal system. This book is a groundbreaking, comprehensive introduction to China's legal system, covering the major areas of both civil and criminal law. The authors present fascinating cases and balanced accounts of controversial issues, from copyright law to punishment. By letting Chinese lawyers and judges speak for themselves, the authors also allow readers a surprisingly candid insider's view of real life legal practice.

In Ethnic Identity and Minority Protection: Designation, Discrimination, and Brutalization, Thomas W. Simon examines a new framework for considering ethnic conflicts. In contrast to the more traditional theories of justice, Simon's theory of injustice shifts focus away from group identity toward group harms, effectively making many problems, such as how to define minorities in international law, dramatically more manageable. Simon argues that instead of promoting legislative devices like proportional representation for minorities, it is more fruitful to seek adjudicative solutions to racial and ethnic-related conflicts. For example, resources could be shifted to quasi-judicial human-rights treaty bodies that have adopted an injustice approach. This injustice approach provides the foundation for Kosovo's case for remedial secession, and helps to sort out the competing entitlement claims of Malays in different countries. Indeed, the priority of Thomas W. Simon's Ethnic Identity and Minority Protection is to ensure the tales of designation and discrimination told at the beginning of the work do not become the stories of brutalization told at the end. In short, the challenge tackled in this text is to assure that reason reigns over hate.

The tools of reason offer the best hope for the international community to confront the increasing incidents of hate throughout the world. A historically informed, normative examination of the elements of the crime of genocide provides an excellent case study of how the law, reason's handmaiden, enhances understanding and improves practical ways of dealing with global injustices. How should we confront hate? As political activists, we could resort to fighting hate with hate. As concerned citizens, we could consciously ignore or actively protest hate. As committed educators, we could put the implements and survivors of hate on display. As committed scholars, we could resuscitate the idea of evil. As humanitarian jurists, we could put individual hate-mongers on trial. Part I of this book makes a case for making the maximum use of reason to deal with hate. This means that we should actively debate those who promote hate. Further, as a close look at the history of applying law to incidents of hate and violence illustrates, the courtroom proves to be an excellent place to demonstrate the virtues of applying the tools of reason, not to global evils, but to the grave injustices of the world. In Part II, Simon demonstrates the power of legal analysis in enhancing our understanding of genocide, probably the worst injustice imaginable. A close examination of each purported element of the crime of genocide redirects misguided turns taken by international jurists. Contrary to a more realistic perspective adopted at the Nuremberg trials, jurists have mistakenly modeled international criminal law on national criminal law, which focuses on individual responsibility. However, the cases of grave injustices throughout the 20th century amply demonstrate the primary collective responsibility underlying incidences of genocide. The failure to prosecute criminal organizations for genocide has and will continue to have disastrous results. While the Nuremberg tribunal at least disbanded the responsible Nazi organizations, current war crimes tribunals have allowed organizations responsible for the Rwandan genocide to continue to wreak havoc throughout Central Africa. If the international community cannot forge a common understanding of genocide, then it has little hope of establishing an international legal order or a global ethics.

We are understandably reluctant to "rank" moral atrocities. What is worse, genocide or terrorism? In this book, Thomas W. Simon argues that politicians use this to manipulate our sense of injustice by exaggerating terrorism and minimizing torture. He advocates for an international criminal code that encourages humanitarian intervention.

"In Islam in a Globalizing World, Ambassador Simons has drawn on his unique experiences in the Muslim world and Eastern Europe to create a brilliant study of Islam's centuries-old efforts to adapt to modernization. Today, in an era in which the world of Islam is suddenly in the forefront of public concern, this impressive application of history should help readers to an intelligent understanding of the dynamic and, at times, conflicting forces at work in that world."
--David D. Newsom, University of Virginia, and former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. He was also Ambassador to Libya, Indonesia and the Philippines
"In four fascinating essays, Mr. Simons gives us a provocative and accessible account of the challenges which the Islamic world has faced and those it has presented to western societies. In an elegantly woven narrative following Islam from its first century to the impact of today's IT-led globalization, the author persuasively builds his explanation of why radical Islam remains a marginal phenomenon in the faith now guiding one-sixth of the world's population. He also provides an excellent bibliography for the reader seeking a better understanding of today's most hotly debated issues concerning
Islam."
--Richard W. Murphy, Senior Fellow in Middle East Studies, Council on Foreign Relations; former U.S. Ambassador to Mauritania, Syria, the Philippines and Saudi Arabia; former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs

"In Islam in a Globalizing World, Ambassador Simons has drawn on his unique experiences in the Muslim world and Eastern Europe to create a brilliant study of Islam's centuries-old efforts to adapt to modernization. Today, in an era in which the world of Islam is suddenly in the forefront of public concern, this impressive application of history should help readers to an intelligent understanding of the dynamic and, at times, conflicting forces at work in that world."
--David D. Newsom, University of Virginia, and former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. He was also Ambassador to Libya, Indonesia and the Philippines
"In four fascinating essays, Mr. Simons gives us a provocative and accessible account of the challenges which the Islamic world has faced and those it has presented to western societies. In an elegantly woven narrative following Islam from its first century to the impact of today's IT-led globalization, the author persuasively builds his explanation of why radical Islam remains a marginal phenomenon in the faith now guiding one-sixth of the world's population. He also provides an excellent bibliography for the reader seeking a better understanding of today's most hotly debated issues concerning
Islam."
--Richard W. Murphy, Senior Fellow in Middle East Studies, Council on Foreign Relations; former U.S. Ambassador to Mauritania, Syria, the Philippines and Saudi Arabia; former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs

"As a global power, the United States will always be interested in Eurasia and engaged with its peoples and nations. Eurasia is too large and important a part of the world to be ignored. It casts a shadow of the old Soviet threat forward in time, and its axis-the Russian Federation-is nuclear-armed. So are its neighbors, China to the east, India and Pakistan to the south; and there are others in the queue. Eurasia's new nations are players on today's most urgent global issues: terrorism; counterproliferation of weapons of mass destruction; economic stability and growth (including its energy centerpiece); stable political development (including democratization, its long-term key). . . . So the context for why Eurasia matters is very large." from Eurasia's New Frontiers

In Eurasia's New Frontiers, Thomas W. Simons, Jr., a distinguished veteran of the U.S. Foreign Service with extensive experience in the Communist and post-Communist worlds, assays the political, economic, and social developments in the fifteen successor states to the Soviet Union that comprise Eurasia from Estonia to Azerbaijan and from Tajikistan to Ukraine, centered on Russia. He makes a compelling case that the United States can play a large role in shaping the future of this vast and strategic region, and at less cost than during Soviet times. This can only be accomplished, however, if U.S. policy toward Eurasia shifts from alternating hand-wringing and indifference to steady and flexible engagement that focuses on its fledgling individual nation-states.

Throughout Eurasia, Simons shows, civil society is anemic, market reforms have been discredited, and political development has been stunted. Authoritarian and semiauthoritarian regimes are firmly in place from Belarus to Central Asia; in Ukraine, Moldova, and even Russia, some democratic forms have taken hold; but everywhere, politics features struggle among elites over access to economic resources, albeit often defined in terms of "sovereignty." Almost everywhere, states are consolidating: as resurgent Russia presses on its neighbors, they can now press back, alone or with help from the outside world. Simons believes that the post-Soviet space needs stable development of state institutions within which new civil societies can take root and grow. Potentially strong state institutions are, in his view, Soviet Communism's "secret gift" to Eurasia, and they may well enable the region to become in time an arc of promise, an anchor of relative stability in a troubled part of the world.

For that to happen, Simons argues, the nationalism that gives content to these new state structures must be the right kind: civic and inclusionary rather than ethno-religious and exclusionary. Because Russia is so diverse and its nationalism so state-oriented, Simons also sees it as more likely to develop that kind of civic nationalism than some of its new neighbors. The United States has a limited but real role to play in helping or hindering its emergence everywhere in Eurasia. If it wishes to help, though, the U.S. must realize that in this part of the world the path to democracy leads through state development. The U.S. will continue to advocate for its core values, but it can best act as a City on the Hill for Eurasia if its policy centers on the emerging new states of today, for they must be the incubators of tomorrow's civil societies."