Most Popular Books by Michael DIAMOND

After two years of intense negotiations President John F. Brander has succeeded in bringing together Israel and the Palestinians to sign a peace accord-the mission that has eluded even the most determined statesmen for more than 60 years. Resolving this bitter conflict-at the epicenter of Islamic hostility towards the West-will mark the beginning of the end of the world''s clash of civilizations. As the parties iron out final details in preparation for a ceremony on the White House lawns, David Dekel, a handsome young researcher in geological remote sensing at Israel''s Ben-Gurion University makes a remarkable discovery that throws the entire process into a spin. Fifty meters below the surface of the soon-to-be-surrendered West Bank town of Jenin, Dekel discovers an oil trap large enough to meet Israel''s energy needs for the next 100 years.

A delve into the crazes, scandals and passions that gripped the popular imagination in Victorian England. Michael Diamond examines what it was that caught the public interest, and how that interest grew and died.

Lawyering for poor and subordinated clients has been the subject of significant re-examination over the past decade. Many commentators have provided a critique of traditional lawyering models and some of them have developed new patterns of "community lawyering." Too often, however, these new models incorporate many of the shortcomings of the traditional model. In particular, they often see the law as a significant part of the answer to the problems of poverty and subordination. While they speak in terms of client empowerment, they focus primarily on the relationship between a lawyer and a client (who is typically an individual). Even when they focus on the products of the lawyer-client relationship, the product tends to be the creation or enforcement of legal rights. This paper argues that a relational or rights based analysis of the lawyer''s role is insufficient to address the real problems of poverty. It begins by reiterating a position that is widely held among progressive lawyers; that the struggle against subordination requires community organizing and collective action. It goes on to discuss the definition and nature of community and the role of a lawyer who seeks to represent "community" interests. Communities are not monolithic and incorporate many different, often competing, views. How should a lawyer distinguish between these views and choose clients so as to maintain a coherence in his or her practice? How should a lawyer relate to a group once a client is chosen? And most importantly, what role should a lawyer play in assisting a client to plan and implement strategies? The paper argues that these strategies often need to be political, not merely legal, and that community lawyers or, as the author has dubbed them, activist lawyers, must participate in building an integrated strategic plan and in its implementation.

This article starts from the premise that poverty is a growing problem in the United States. Intergenerational poverty, the entrenchment of a class of very poor people, is a major sub set of that problem and is tied very closely to the issue of race. The author claims that missing in the fight by the poor and their allies against stratified poverty is the creation and utilization of power. This paper examines the disparate ways in which commentators have defined power. It suggests that those seeking to obtain power must understand the concept''s varying meanings and direct their activities to meet their own understanding of the concept. Community Economic Development (CED) may be nothing more than a re-affirmation of existing power relationships or it may be the cause and the result of a change in those relationships. This paper attempts to make sense of this apparent paradox.

Hydrogen is expected to play a significant role in the nation''s energy transition, but the development of the hydrogen market may be hindered by uncertainty over how pipelines that transport hydrogen will be regulated. No statute expressly provides for federal regulation of the construction or siting of interstate hydrogen pipelines, or their rates or services. However, three existing statutes could be construed to confer such jurisdiction. These include the Natural Gas Act, the Interstate Commerce Act, and the Interstate Commerce Commission Termination Act.The article concludes that hydrogen is most logically classified as “artificial gas” under the Natural Gas Act, over which the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC or Commission) has jurisdiction only if it is blended with “natural gas” on interstate pipelines. Alternatively, FERC could assert more expansive jurisdiction over hydrogen as “natural gas” in its own right, but this would be susceptible to judicial challenges.Finally, this article offers parameters for an effective regulatory regime that would encourage growth of the hydrogen market while providing rate protection to consumers and discusses regulatory and legislative pathways for implementing it.

This paper argues that waste-to-energy''s stagnation in the U.S. illustrates the failure of state-based renewable energy portfolio standards to efficiently incentivize the growth of renewable energy. The absence of a federal renewable energy standard and resultant patchwork of state-based regimes has left the country with no consistent definition of “renewable energy.” Consequently, developers of certain energy technologies are uncertain as to whether their product will qualify as “renewable,” and thus are unable to confidently invest the millions of dollars needed to deploy these technologies. Using waste-to-energy as a case study, this paper argues that a national renewable portfolio standard, defining “renewable energy” consistently and inclusively, would help to create a maximally efficient renewable energy market.

This paper was first delivered at a conference on Affordable Housing and Pubic Private Partnerships at the University of Colorado Law School. It addresses the creation of community institutions able to acquire and wield power in the affordable housing realm. While this ability has generally been associated with buildings purchased and operated by tenant groups, the paper suggests other affordable housing situations, particularly those developed under the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program, in which the accretion of power can occur. It proposes a model of tenant involvement in development and operation of affordable rental housing that can, in certain circumstances, create the type of durable institution normally associated with ownership.

Kirinyaga, c''est le nom que portait le mont Kenya lorsque c''était encore la montagne sacrée où siégeait Ngai, le dieu des Kikuyus. C''est aussi, en ce début du XXIIe siècle, une des colonies utopiques qui se sont créées sur des planétoïdes terraformés dépendant de l''Administration. Pour Koriba, son fondateur - un intellectuel d''origine kikuyu, qui ne se reconnaît plus dans un Kenya profondément occidentalisé -, il s''agit d''y faire revivre les traditions ancestrales de son peuple. Tâche difficile. Que fera Koriba, devenu mundumugu, c''est-à-dire sorcier de Kirinyaga, quand une petite fille surdouée voudra apprendre à lire et à écrire alors que la tradition l''interdit ? Ou lorsque la tribu découvrira la médecine occidentale et cessera de croire en son dieu, et donc en son sorcier ? L''utopie d''une existence selon les valeurs du passé est-elle viable dans un monde en constante évolution ?