Reconstructing a Pedagogy of Responsibility

Professor Bezdek\u27s approach stems from her observation that student learning about responsibility suffers badly from the phenomenon of law school socialization and that counter-socialization is required. She encourages students to ask: What is my own responsibility as a lawyer to people who are poor? She shows how Maryland\u27s Legal Theory and Practice program equips students to recognize and break down the rhetoric that makes both students and lawyers feel helpless in the face of daunting poverty

Citizen Engagement in the Shrinking City: Toward Development Justice in an Era of Growing Inequality

What are the aims of the revitalization conducted by local officials: for which social goods? Good for whom? By what means can the city’s people understand and influence the tradeoffs made by their government in the redevelopment of city blocks already occupied by residents. This is more than a matter of development finance or physical redevelopment. It is a question of social justice, of whose reality counts in the legal process utilized to reach development decisions and approve significant public subsidy for the projects that are remaking American cities. Sherry Arnstein, writing in 1969 about citizen involvement in planning processes in the United States, at the height of American racial and economic tensions, described a typology of citizen participation arranged as a ladder with increasing degrees of decision-making clout ranging from low to high. The Arnstein rungs ascend from forms of “window-dressing participation,” through cursory information exchange, to the highest levels of partnership in or control of decision-making. Arnstein’s Ladder has remained the touchstone in assessing the meaning, or lack thereof, in public participation in local government decision-making that allocates scarce development dollars, because it succinctly juxtaposes powerless citizens with power-holders. It resonates with swaths of “the public”: residents of city neighborhoods who find their needs discounted in the development calculus. This paper argues that enhanced public participation rules are necessary and feasible in local government-level decisions to provide public support for urban economic redevelopment projects. Typically the city and developer justify public supports on grounds of increased prosperity in the form of jobs, wages and rising tax base. Present minimalist participation procedures are insufficient to redirect a discernible share of promised benefits and public goods to under-served residents. The paper examines the burgeoning field of community engagement practices and process models; and considers their utility to enhance the critically important but often missing public participation of traditionally under-included poor and minority people in redevelopment decisions. Part IV then preliminarily restates and revises the Arnstein ladder, proposing additional functional and legal dimensions. Part V proposes principles for the design of citizen engagement practices in municipal development decision-making, and identifies steps for citizens and city officials to take toward development justice

Gene networks and transcription factor motifs defining the differentiation of stem cells into hepatocyte-like cells

Background & AimsThe differentiation of stem cells to hepatocyte-like cells (HLC) offers the perspective of unlimited supply of human hepatocytes. However, the degree of differentiation of HLC remains controversial. To obtain an unbiased characterization, we performed a transcriptomic study with HLC derived from human embryonic and induced stem cells (ESC, hiPSC) from three different laboratories.MethodsGenome-wide gene expression profiles of ESC and HLC were compared to freshly isolated and up to 14days cultivated primary human hepatocytes. Gene networks representing successful and failed hepatocyte differentiation, and the transcription factors involved in their regulation were identified.ResultsGene regulatory network analysis demonstrated that HLC represent a mixed cell type with features of liver, intestine, fibroblast and stem cells. The “unwanted” intestinal features were associated with KLF5 and CDX2 transcriptional networks. Cluster analysis identified highly correlated groups of genes associated with mature liver functions (n=1057) and downregulated proliferation associated genes (n=1562) that approach levels of primary hepatocytes. However, three further clusters containing 447, 101, and 505 genes failed to reach levels of hepatocytes. Key TF of two of these clusters include SOX11, FOXQ1, and YBX3. The third unsuccessful cluster, controlled by HNF1, CAR, FXR, and PXR, strongly overlaps with genes repressed in cultivated hepatocytes compared to freshly isolated hepatocytes, suggesting that current in vitro conditions lack stimuli required to maintain gene expression in hepatocytes, which consequently also explains a corresponding deficiency of HLC.ConclusionsThe present gene regulatory network approach identifies key transcription factors which require modulation to improve HLC differentiation