Apocalyptic visions and the law: the legacy of September 11

Introduction: For most of the world, the horrific events of September 11 could bring forth only one judgment in human, moral or social terms. Even for those of us far removed from the United States who saw the events on television - live and replayed time and time again – the truth was simple: the perpetrators and planners of these atrocities had committed a profound wrong, an act of evil and malevolence that surpassed in quality and impact any other terrorist attack in recent memory. While those who had hijacked the four planes and sent thousands of innocent victims to their deaths could not longer be brought to justice before any terrestrial court, there understandably arose out of the anger and grief a grim determination that those who had instigated and supported the commission of these acts would pay the price. Yet this unanimity of moral outrage and condemnation in the immediate aftermath of September 11 has given way to controversy and uncertainty in relation to many aspects of the legal and political responses to those events. The ordinary citizen might be forgiven for thinking that our international and national law and legal institutions should have no difficulty in bringing to justice those responsible for these outrages against human life and dignity – and that this would be done expeditiously in a manner consistent not only with the goals of justice but also in accordance with the protections of the rule of law, including essential principles of fairness and fundamental rights. Why does the international and national legal response seem so much in disarray and so contested and confused? In this lecture tonight I wish to address a number of aspects of the aftermath of September 11, in particular the adequacy of the international legal system to respond to the challenges those events have posed and the difficulties that have arisen in our efforts to address the consequences of those events at the international and national levels. My remarks will be structured around three issues: War and crime, or war or crime: what is the appropriate model of law that should be applied to events such as September 11 and to terrorism more generally? International efforts to address terrorism, including the problem of definition: in this section I will discuss the challenges that face us in formulating a workable international definition of terrorism, an endeavour that is fundamental to a global campaign against it. Terrorism and human rights: Finally, I will touch on some aspects of the relationship between terrorism and human rights at the international and national levels, and argue that we should not be seduced by the sirenic call of security that lures us in the current calls to root out terrorism in all its forms

Comprehensive analysis of the simplest curvaton model

We carry out a comprehensive analysis of the simplest curvaton model, which is based on two non-interacting massive fields. Our analysis encompasses cases where the inflaton and curvaton both contribute to observable perturbations, and where the curvaton itself drives a second period of in inflation. We consider both power spectrum and non-Gaussianity observables, and focus on presenting constraints in model parameter space. The fully curvaton-dominated regime is in some tension with observational data, while an admixture of inflaton-generated perturbations improves the fit. The inflating curvaton regime mimics the predictions of Nflation. Some parts of parameter space permitted by power spectrum data are excluded by non-Gaussianity constraints. The recent BICEP2 results [1] require that the in inflaton perturbations provide a significant fraction of the total perturbation, ruling out the usual curvaton scenario in which the inflaton perturbations are negligible, though not the admixture regime where both inflaton and curvaton contribute to the spectrum

Background paper : 20th Informal ASEM Seminar on Human Rights (ASEMHRS20) Human Rights of Older Persons 22-24 February 2021 Virtual/Seoul, Republic of Korea

This background paper provides an overview of the fundamental concepts and some of the important current issues relating to the human rights of older persons at the international, regional and national levels. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into high relief social attitudes and institutional practices that existed before the pandemic that embody ageist assumptions and result in the denial of equality in the enjoyment of human rights by older persons

"Article 1" [Discrimination]

This new edition of the Commentary on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW or the Convention) and its Optional Protocol appears a decade after the first edition

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and violence against women: implications for Hong Kong

Includes bibliographical references (p. 12-14).Cover title.May 1999.published_or_final_versio

Curvaton scenarios with inflaton decays into curvatons

We consider the possible decay of the inflaton into curvaton particles during reheating and analyze its effect on curvaton scenarios. Typical decay curvatons are initially relativistic then become nonrelativistic, changing the background history of the Universe. We show that this change to the background is the only way in which observational predictions of the scenario are modified. Moreover, once the required amplitude of perturbations is fixed by observation there are no signatures of such decays in other cosmological observables. The decay curvatons can prevent the Universe from becoming dominated by the curvaton condensate, making it impossible to match observations in parts of parameter space. This constrains the branching ratio of the inflaton to curvaton to be less than of order 0.1 typically. If the branching ratio is below about 10−4 it has negligible impact on the model parameter space and can be ignored