Transitional justice in times of 'exponential change': constructing normative frameworks fit for purpose - the importance of general international law

In the attempt to reformulate transitional justice to include broader rule of law approaches, there are substantial challenges in ensuring institutional, normative, and policy coherence. Though the rhetoric of the UN policy ‘pillars’ of human rights, development, and peace and security is uncontroversial and commendable, achieving it through tangential legal regimes is problematic. With at least three forms of incoherence at work: within a regime, between legal regimes, and between regimes and the UN’s policy goals, ensuring effective responses requires resort to tools of general international law. The chapter comes to three conclusions: first, that as achieving transitional justice requires reliance upon divergent areas of international law, general issues of normative ordering and fragmentation must be confronted. Secondly, normative incoherence can be mitigated through a range of general techniques, including the development of unified substantive (‘primary’) rules across regimes – using the principle of prevention here as the example – and recourse to treaty interpretation as a secondary tool to maximise rule-linkage. Thirdly, there are a number of meta-, or overriding, principles which might assist with developing an overarching coherence, including the concept of sustainable development and various principles of human rights. Thus, transitional justice as both a policy and legal objective should not eschew, and indeed benefits from, precepts and techniques of the general legal order

On Fragments and Geometry: The International Legal Order as Metaphor and How it Matters

This article engages the narrative of fragmentation in international law by asserting that legal academics and professionals have failed to probe more deeply into ‘fragmentation’ as a concept and, more specifically, as a spatial metaphor. The contention here is that however central fragmentation has been to analyses of contemporary international law, this notion has been conceptually assumed, ahistorically accepted and philosophically under-examined. The ‘fragment’ metaphor is tied historically to a cartographic rationality – and thus ‘reality’ – of all social space being reducible to a geometric object and, correspondingly, a planimetric map. The purpose of this article is to generate an appreciation among international lawyers that the problem of ‘fragmentation’ is more deeply rooted in epistemology and conceptual history. This requires an explanation of how the conflation of social space with planimetric reduction came to be constructed historically and used politically, and how that model informs representations of legal practices and perceptions of ‘international legal order’ as an inherently absolute and geometric. This implies the need to dig up and expose background assumptions that have been working to precondition a ‘fragmented’ characterization of worldly space. With the metaphor of ‘digging’ in mind, I draw upon Michel Foucault’s ‘archaeology of knowledge’ and, specifically, his assertion that epochal ideas are grounded by layers of ‘obscure knowledge’ that initially seem unrelated to a discourse. In the case of the fragmentation narrative, I argue obscure but key layers can be found in the Cartesian paradigm of space as a geometric object and the modern States’ imperative to assert (geographic) jurisdiction. To support this claim, I attempt to excavate the fragment metaphor by discussing key developments that led to the production and projection of geometric and planimetric reality since the 16th century

In search of the hollow crown

The first volume in a series of comparative studies within the ESRC's Whitehall Programme focuses on core executives in five parliamentary democracies comparing the Westminster model as in Australia, Canada and Britain with the continental democracies of Germany and the Netherlands showing how political leadership is shackled by a vast array of constraints, from globalisation to internal fragmentation and rationalisation, making a heroic model of decisive political leadership hard to sustain

Conflict of Norms or Conflict of Laws?: Different Techniques in the Fragmentation of Public International Law

One of the most pressing topics in current international law is fragmentation. Traditionally, most constructive attempts to deal with fragmentation have been based on analogies what one of us, in an earlier book, called conflicts of norms - those rules in domestic law that deal with conflicts of norms within one legal system. In this article, we assess under what circumstances a different approach, based on an analogy to conflict of laws - those rules in domestic law that deal with conflicts of norms between different legal systems - yields a more adequate structure. The result is that public international law conflicts are likely sui generis, with aspects of both conflict of norms and conflict of laws, and that to resolve this type of conflicts one can learn and borrow from both approaches. All through this article, we do not offer a systematic analysis, but rather a number of examples to demonstrate the existence, and usefulness, of two very different sets of conflict rules. Authors\u27 manuscript available here

Conflict of Norms or Conflict of Laws?: Different Techniques in the Fragmentation of Public International Law

Information-Centric Networking (ICN) is a new research area concerning creating a new network architecture that would be more suitable for both current and the future's network. The MOSES (Mobile Opportunistic Services for Experience Sharing) project is part of this development. The project works with the development and demonstration of the Network of Information (NetInf) protocol, which is an implementation of the ICN concept. This Master’s thesis project is part of the MOSES project and aims to assist the MOSES project with the demonstration of a mobile opportunistic sharing concept based on the NetInf protocol. Demonstrating the MOSES concept in practice requires deep understanding of networking, localization, transport, and dissemination of digital content in an ad hoc network. This implementation requires an analysis of the previous work, development of new functionalities, and finally an analysis of a series of controlled experiments. This Master’s thesis project has designed, implemented, and evaluated an Android application within the MOSES framework by using the previously developed NetInf Android library. This prototype is used to demonstrate how mobile Android users can opportunistically share and disseminate content based on their location using the MOSES/ICN concept. The functionality and efficiency of the prototype Android application built during this thesis project has been analyzed and evaluated by conducting a series of controlled experiments under the supervision of MOSES researchers. The results of these controlled experiments has provided insight for MOSES researchers as well as explored the concept of using ICN (NetInf) for opportunistic content distribution. The experiment results aim at assisting MOSES researchers to extend and further develop the prototype application and the involved algorithms to create a fully functional mobile application for experience sharing services tailored to large-scale events.Information-Centric Networking (ICN) är ett nytt forskningsområde för att bygga en ny nätverksarkitektur mer passande för dagens och framtida nätverk. MOSES projektet är en del av denna utveckling och arbetar med utveckling och demonstration av Network of Information (NetInf) protokollet, som är en implementering av ICN konceptet. Detta examensarbete är en del av MOSES (Mobile Opportunistic Services for Experience Sharing) projektet som syftar till att bistå MOSES projektet med demonstrationen av "mobile opportunistic sharing" konceptet som bygger på NetInf protokollet. Att demonstrera MOSES konceptet i praktiken krävs djupt förståelse om nätverk, lokalisering, transport och spridning av digitalt data i en "ad hoc" och infrastruktur miljö. Genomförandet av denna implementering kräver en analys av tidigare arbete, utveckling av nya funktioner och slutligen analys av genomförda experiment och resultaten. Detta examensarbete har utformat, genomfört och utvärderat en Android applikation inom ramen för MOSES med hjälp av tidigare utvecklat NetInf Android bibliotek. Denna prototyp används för att visa hur mobila Android användare opportunistiskt kan dela och sprida innehåll baserat på deras plats med hjälp av MOSES/ICN konceptet. Funktionaliteten och effektiviteten av prototypen byggd under detta examensarbete har analyserats och utvärderats genom att utföra en serie kontrollerade experiment under ledning av MOSES forskare. Resultaten av dessa kontrollerade experiment har gett insikt åt MOSES forskare samt utforskat konceptet att använda ICN (NetInf) för opportunistisk distribution av innehåll. Experimentens resultat syftar till att hjälpa MOSES forskare att utöka och vidareutveckla prototypen och de involverade algoritmer för att skapa en fullt fungerande mobil applikation för "experience sharing services" anpassad för stora evenemang

Nuclear Hadronization: Within or Without?

Nuclei are unique analyzers for the early stage of the space-time development of hadronization. DIS at medium energies is especially suitable for this task being sensitive to hadronization dynamics, since the production length is comparable with the nuclear size. This was the driving motivation to propose measurements at HERMES using nuclear targets, and to provide predictions based on a pQCD model of hadronization [1]. Now when the first results of the experiment are released [2,3], one can compare the predictions with the data. The model successfully describes with no adjustment the nuclear effects for various energies, zh, pT, and Q2, for different flavors and different nuclei. It turns out that the main source of nuclear suppression of the hadron production rate is attenuation of colorless pre-hadrons in the medium. An alternative model [4] is based upon an ad hoc assumption that the colorless pre-hadron is produced outside the nucleus. This model has apparent problems attempting to explain certain features of the results from HERMES. A good understanding of the hadronization dynamics is important for proper interpretation of the strong suppression of high-pT hadrons observed in heavy ion collisions at RHIC. We demonstrate that the production length is even shorter in this case and keeps contracting with rising pT.Comment: Latex 34 p. Based on talks given by B.Z.K. at the Fourth International Conference on Perspectives in Hadronic Physics, Trieste, Italy, May 12-16, 2003; and at the EuroConference on Hadron Structure Viewed with Electromagnetic Probes, Santorini, Greece, October 7-12, 200

The right to ignore: An epistemic defense of the nature/culture divide

This paper addresses whether the often-bemoaned loss of unity of knowledge about humans, which results from the disciplinary fragmentation of science, is something to be overcome. The fragmentation of being human rests on a couple of distinctions, such as the nature-culture divide. Since antiquity the distinction between nature (roughly, what we inherit biologically) and culture (roughly, what is acquired by social interaction) has been a commonplace in science and society. Recently, the nature/culture divide has come under attack in various ways, in philosophy as well as in cultural anthropology. Regarding the latter, for instance, the divide was quintessential in its beginnings as an academic dis-cipline, when Alfred L. Kroeber, one of the first professional anthropologists in the US, rallied for (what I call) the right to ignore—in his case, human nature—by adopting a separationist epistemic stance. A separationist stance will be understood as an epistemic research heuristic that defends the right to ignore a specif-ic phenomenon (e.g., human nature) or a specific causal factor in an explanation typical for a disciplinary field. I will use Kroeber’s case as an example for making a general point against a bias towards integration (synthesis bias, as I call it) that is exemplified, for instance, by defenders of evolutionary psychology. I will claim that, in principle, a separationist stance is as good as an integrationist stance since both can be equally fruitful. With this argument from fruitful sepa-ration in place, not just the separationist stance but also the nature/culture di-vide can be defended against its critics

A model-based approach to hypermedia design.

This paper introduces the MESH approach to hypermedia design, which combines established entity-relationship and object-oriented abstractions with proprietary concepts into a formal hypermedia data model. Uniform layout and link typing specifications can be attributed and inherited in a static node typing hierarchy, whereas both nodes and links can be submitted dynamically to multiple complementary classifications. In addition, the data model's support for a context-based navigation paradigm, as well as a platform-independent implementation framework, are briefly discussed.Data; Model; Specifications; Classification;

Towards an evolutionary environmental regulation of capitalism : sustainable development 20 years after

The paper argues that by combining ecological economics, IPE and regulation approaches more closely, one may provide an account of the apparent contradiction between the utopian aspect of sustainable development and the ability of capitalism to pragmatically deal with ecological crises. It explores how ensuing institutional forms inevitably take sustainability claims into account. It assumes that such forms revolve around the emergence of a new type of evolutionary environmental regulation whose coherence is paradoxically at once open-ended, fragmented and hybrid. This feature clearly reinforces the extreme difficulty in thinking about ecological regularities. The paper analyses core elements of such institutional forms and how far they can be identified as a new type of fragmented evolutionary environmental regulation. Section 1 provides background on the notion of sustainable development. Sections 2 examines the prospects and limits of regulation theory on global ecological issues and presents lessons could be drawn from ecological economics and international political economy approaches for opening new routes to appraise current and future environmental concerns of capitalism. Section 3 explores the emerging form of evolutionary environmental regulation reflecting the apparently paradoxical situation we have reached, in which disillusion regarding sustainable development goes hand in hand with increasing awareness of the inescapability of a policy shift in its favour.SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT