Civil Disobedience and the Necessity Defense

[Excerpt] “This article will first examine the nature of civil disobedience, and distinguish between direct and indirect civil disobedience. Part II highlights some historical examples of civil disobedience. Part IV then examines the principles of the necessity defense, analyzing each of the elements that make up the defense, illustrated with cases on point. Next, Part V will turn to an analysis of several abortion-protest cases that raise issues different from other types of civil disobedience cases. Part VI then will examine Viet Nam era civil disobedience cases. Following that, Part VIII will explore a unique defense known as the Nuremberg Principles defense.

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Evaluating Student Opinion of Constructivist Learning Activities on Computing Undergraduate Degrees

This paper discusses the student-focused learning activities employed by a number of computing lecturers at the University of Worcester to encourage learning amongst 2nd and 3rd year undergraduates. These activities include on-line discussions, variations on group discussion and presentational activities, students undertaking and analysing computer simulations, and the completion of a structured series of programming activities. The paper introduces the background to these learning activities, documents them and then analyses the approach adopted by members of staff. This is followed by a review of the feedback from both students and academic staff. Finally, the paper comments on the awareness of the academics of the term ‘Constructive Alignment’

Automatism is never a defence

The central aim of this article is to set out and justify the contention that automatism is never a defence, not even exceptionally. Where D is not at fault for her lack of voluntariness, the term ‘automatism’ is simply a shorthand explanation that D does not satisfy an essential element of every offence: voluntary conduct. Where D is at fault for her lack of voluntariness, the automatism rules (within the current law) become an inculpatory tool through which to substitute the missing offence elements and construct liability. Having recognised that automatism plays an inculpatory role within the law, we analyse this role and conclude that it is defective: prior fault automatism lacks the equivalent blameworthiness necessary to fairly substitute for even missing basic intent offence elements. It is from here that we discuss the possibility of a new automatism offence, to recognise the criminal blameworthiness of D’s conduct in certain cases, but to do so in a coherent manner that appropriately criminalises and labels the defendant. Looking at the outline of the potential new offence we are in a much better position to evaluate the future role of automatism in the criminal law. If we do not believe that such an offence is deserving of criminalisation, then the current law must be changed to prevent prior fault automatism constructing liability under any circumstances. If we do believe that such an offence has a place within the criminal law, then the current law should be changed to reflect this more clearly, and we must focus on exactly how it should be defined

Aggregating labour supply and feedback effects in microsimulation

This paper extends behavioural microsimulation modelling so that third round effects of a policy change can be simulated. The first round effects relate to fixed hours of work, while second round effects allow for changes in desired hours of work at unchanged wages. These allow for endogenous changes to the distribution of wage rates resulting from the labour supply responses to tax changes. This is achieved using the concept of an aggregate ѳupply response scheduleҬ which identifies the extent to which average labour supply responds to a proportional change in wage rates. The third round effect is obtained after re-running a microsimulation model with a suitable modification to individuals' wage rates. The method is illustrated using the MITTS behavioural microsimulation model.

Eulerian bias and the galaxy density field

We investigate the effects on cosmological clustering statistics of empirical biasing, where the galaxy distribution is a local transformation of the present-day Eulerian density field. The effects of the suppression of galaxy numbers in voids, and their enhancement in regions of high density, are considered, independently and in combination. We compare results from numerical simulations with the predictions of simple analytic models. We find that the bias is generally scale-dependent, so that the shape of the galaxy power spectrum differs from that of the underlying mass distribution. The degree of bias is always a monotonic function of scale, tending to an asymptotic value on scales where the density fluctuations are linear. The scale dependence is often rather weak, with many reasonable prescriptions giving a bias which is nearly independent of scale. We have investigated whether such an Eulerian bias can reconcile a range of theoretical power spectra with the twin requirements of fitting the galaxy power spectrum and reproducing the observed mass-to-light ratios in clusters. It is not possible to satisfy these constraints for any member of the family of CDM-like power spectra in an Einstein - de Sitter universe when normalised to match COBE on large scales and galaxy cluster abundances on intermediate scales. We discuss what modifications of the mass power spectrum might produce agreement with the observational data.Comment: 14 pages, LaTeX (using mn.sty, epsfig), 17 Postscript figures included. Accepted for publication in MNRA