When is it okay to associate?

One of the serious pleasures of blogging is that you occasionally hear from serious people you have never met or even heard of who enlighten, entertain and even delight. That was the case yesterday, when I heard from John Cipperly, currently at the International Institute for Sociology of Law in the Basque Country of Spain doing an MA/PhD program while on sabbatical leave from the International Programs Division of the National Center for State Courts (NCSC), where he normally works with US government funding.

He sent a paper on “Transitional Constitutionalism and Minority Rights in Kosovo: Making Sense of the Association of Serbian Municipalities” that contains his own views (not necessarily those of the US government) and elucidates the issues before the Kosovo Constitutional Court as it considers the proposed Association, which has been much in the news lately in Serbia and Kosovo. John, whom I have never met, has clearly given these issues a lot of thought, so I hope others will find his paper (published here with his permission) enlightening, as I did.