Opportunities and Threats of Green Building Design for ABC Engineers, Kansas City

“If your next project is not a green building, one that is certified by a national third-party rating system, it will be functionally outdated the day it’s completed and very likely to underperform the market as time passes.” according to real estate expert, Charles Lockwood. (Yudelson 2008, 27). The ‘Green’ building revolution has presented a unique opportunity for Consulting Engineering firms specializing in mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) design, such as ABC Engineers, to capture premium revenue for a limited timeframe. Capitalizing on this opportunity brings challenges that should be strategically planned for to optimize profitability. ‘Green’ building design is a buzz word and is being promoted as an ecologically beneficial concept in the architectural, engineering, and construction industry, but will become the standard expectation in the future. Projected revenues associated with ‘Green’ building design in this project illustrates the potential quick rise and fall of this market segment, therefore a plan of action should be implemented in a timely fashion. The plan must take into account the risks and Legal concerns directly drawn from case studies and professional experiences that can be applied to ‘Green’ building design. Establishing the competitive advantage of being experts at ‘Green’ building designs could assure capturing additional revenue that would otherwise be lost to other engineering firms. The main risks to having this competitive advantage are related to new legal responsibilities for the professional engineer when working to implement cutting edge green systems, identifying new products, and meeting energy performance criteria. Information included in this field project provides the Principals of ABC Engineers in Kansas City background information to create an applied marketing and business plan for the Green Building opportunities that present themselves in the target market

Central Asia and the globalisation of the contemporary legal consciousness

What is the logic which governs the processes of legal globalization? How does the transnational proliferation of legal forms operate in the contemporary geo-juridical space? What are the main defining characteristics of the currently dominant mode of transnational legal consciousness and how can the concept of legal consciousness help us understand better the historical ebb and flow of the Western-led projects of good governance promotion in regions like Central Asia after the fall of the Soviet Union? Using Duncan Kennedy’s seminal essay Three Globalizations of Law and Legal Thought as its starting platform, this essay seeks to explore these and a series of other related questions, while also drawing on the work of the Greek Marxist lawyer-philosopher Nicos Poulantzas to help elucidate some latent analytical stress-points in Kennedy’s broader theoretical framework. Reacting against the neo-Orientalist tone adopted across much of the contemporary field of Central Asian studies, it develops an alternative account of the internal history of the legal-globalizational encounter between the Western-based reform entrepreneurs and the national legal-political elites in Central Asia in the post-1991 period, complementing it with a detailed description of the general institutional and discursive structures within which this encounter took place

Holding Domestic Judges Accountable under International Criminal Law – A Useful Step to Foster the International Rule of Law?

This article explores, whether domestic judges might be held accountable under international criminal law (ICL). To date, international criminal justice has almost entirely focused on prosecuting political or military leaders. The Justice Case tried before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal in 1946 marks the most prominent exception. Prior to it, the judiciary – otherwise considered the epitome of justice – had mutated into a murderous machinery under Nazi rule. Judicial decisions do have far-reaching implications possibly constituting or contributing to international crimes. This holds true in a wide range of cases, for instance on practices of warfare and torture, on the use of certain weapon technologies, or on policies relating to minorities or racial segregation. I argue that domestic judges are accountable when engaging in international crimes. The article delves into technical aspects of criminal law; as well as the notions of judicial independence and immunity. While guaranteeing the rule of law, these two notions challenge the core idea of ICL: its equal application vis-à-vis all perpetrators of international crimes irrespective of official capacity. In order to differentiate due judicial conduct and its abuse in violation of ICL, I suggest a threshold a judicial act needs to exceed for entailing accountability for an international crime

The Emergence of Law Consultants

In this paper we study a slightly subcritical Choquard problem on a bounded domain A. We prove that the number of positive solutions depends on the topology of the domain. In particular when the exponent of the nonlinearity approaches the critical one, we show the existence of cat (A) + 1 solutions. Here cat (A) denotes the Lusternik–Schnirelmann category

Rehabilitating Statistical Evidence

Recently, the practice of deciding legal cases on purely statistical evidence has been widely criticised. Many feel uncomfortable with finding someone guilty on the basis of bare probabilities, even though the chance of error might be stupendously small. This is an important issue: with the rise of DNA profiling, courts are increasingly faced with purely statistical evidence. A prominent line of argument—endorsed by Blome-Tillmann 2017; Smith 2018; and Littlejohn 2018—rejects the use of such evidence by appealing to epistemic norms that apply to individual inquirers. My aim in this paper is to rehabilitate purely statistical evidence by arguing that, given the broader aims of legal systems, there are scenarios in which relying on such evidence is appropriate. Along the way I explain why popular arguments appealing to individual epistemic norms to reject legal reliance on bare statistics are unconvincing, by showing that courts and individuals face different epistemic predicaments (in short, individuals can hedge when confronted with statistical evidence, whilst legal tribunals cannot). I also correct some misconceptions about legal practice that have found their way into the recent literature

Honesty Without Truth: Lies, Accuracy, and the Criminal Justice Process

Focusing on “lying” is a natural response to uncertainty but too narrow of a concern. Honesty and truth are not the same thing and conflating them can actually inhibit accuracy. In several settings across investigations and trials, the criminal justice system elevates compliant statements, misguided beliefs, and confident opinions while excluding more complex evidence. Error often results. Some interrogation techniques, for example, privilege cooperation over information. Those interactions can yield incomplete or false statements, confessions, and even guilty pleas. Because of the impeachment rules that purportedly prevent perjury, the most knowledgeable witnesses may be precluded from taking the stand. The current construction of the Confrontation Clause right also excludes some reliable evidence—especially from victim witnesses—because it favors face-to-face conflict even though overrated demeanor cues can mislead. And courts permit testimony from forensic experts about pattern matches, such as bite-marks and ballistics, if those witnesses find their own methodologies persuasive despite recent studies discrediting their techniques. Exploring the points of disconnect between honesty and truth exposes some flaws in the criminal justice process and some opportunities to advance fact-finding, truth-seeking, and accuracy instead. At a time when “post-truth” challenges to shared baselines beyond the courtroom grow more pressing, scaffolding legal institutions, so they can provide needed structure and helpful models, seems particularly important. Assessing the legitimacy of legal outcomes and fostering the engagement necessary to reach just conclusions despite adversarial positions could also have an impact on declining facts and decaying trust in broader public life

Willard Hurst and the Administrative State: From Williams to Wisconsin

This article follows Willard Hurst from his undergraduate days at Williams College through the start of his teaching career at Wisconsin in the fall of 1937. During these years Hurst acquired an abiding interest in the rise of the administrative state as well as some of the insights he would use to account for it in his mature work. For the most part, the article proceeds chronologically through four episodes in Hurst\u27s training: (1) his year-long study of Charles and Mary Beard\u27s Rise of American Civilization undertaken as an undergraduate at Williams College; (2) his three years as a student at the Harvard Law School; (3) his research fellowship with Felix Frankfurter during the 1935-36 academic year; and (4) his service as legal secretary to Louis D. Brandeis during the October 1936 Term of the U.S. Supreme Court. The first and third episodes inclined Hurst to see history less as an aid to the judicial interpretation of precedents, statutes, and constitutions than as a way to divine where the state should strike the balance of power in regulating the American economy and society. The second and fourth episodes show that Hurst embraced the Legal Realists\u27 skepticism toward judge-made law, but also went beyond them to address that large field of present human activity ... governed not alone by court decisions and statutes, but by administrative regulations and decisions. More enthusiastically than his mentors Frankfurter and Brandeis, Hurst accepted the growth of unreviewable discretion by administrators, and he was quicker to accord the regulations, rulings and decisions of administrative agencies the same status as judge-made law. Each of the four episodes contributed something to Hurst\u27s mature understanding of the Rule of Law in the new American state, but their lessons did not add up to a complete answer. His experiences of the late 1930s and 1940s taught him new lessons and gave him cause to discard or rework what he had already learned. A complete account of the origins of Hurst\u27s mature work would have to address his activities as a law professor before Pearl Harbor, his service in Washington\u27s wartime bureaucracies, and his period of study under a Demobilization Grant of the Social Science Research Council. Even so, a study of Hurst\u27s education and apprenticeships is enough to suggest how much his social history of American law owed to the political history of his young adulthood

Regulating khat - Dilemmas and opportunities for the international drug control system

Background: The regulation of khat, one of the most recent psychoactive drugs to become a globally traded commodity, remains hotly contested within different producer and consumer countries. As regimes vary, it has been possible to compare khat policies in Africa, Europe and North America from different disciplinary perspectives. Methods: Field research was conducted in East Africa and Europe, using a combination of semistructured interviews, participant observation and the analysis of trade statistics. Results: The research established the significance of khat for rural producers, regional economies, as a tax base and source of foreign exchange. At the same time, khat as a psychoactive substance is associated with health and public safety problems that in turn are met with often ill-informed legislative responses. Bans have in turn lead to the criminalisation of users and sellers and illegal drug markets. Conclusion: The empirical work from Africa provides a strong argument for promoting evidence-based approaches to khat regulation, harnessing the positive aspects of the khat economy to develop a control model that incorporates the voices and respects the needs of rural producers. Ultimately, the framework for khat may provide both a model and an opportunity for revising the international treaties governing the control of other plant psychoactive-based substances