Law & Institutions

The case against him may be phony, but Alexei Navalny, the Russian blogger and opposition activist, faces long odds in his trial, which begins Wednesday. When Putin cannot co-opt his enemies, it seems, he has other means of crushing them.

Margaret Thatcher re-established the United Kingdom as a major force on the international scene. But she failed to see that the best hope for Europe's future was integration.

Kirby Dick's documentary The Invisible War has brought long-overdue attention to the problem of sexual assault in the armed forces. Unfortunately, however, the film gives short shrift to two of the major groups of victims -- men and women of color -- which reinforces common myths about rape and makes addressing the problem all the more difficult.

Since their inception in 2000, The Millennium Development Goals have revolutionized the global aid business, using specific targets to help mobilize and guide development efforts. They have encouraged world leaders to tackle multiple dimensions of poverty simultaneously and provided a standard for judging performance. As their 2015 expiration looms, the time has come to bank those successes and focus on what comes next.