A Technical Review of Penning Trap based Investigations in Neutron Decay

This review is concerned with a detailed analysis of some of the technical problems which arise in the application of the Penning trap method to the experimental study of neutron $\beta$ -decay,a technique which was first successfully tested on the low-flux swimming-pool reactor LIDO (capture flux =3$\cdot 10^6$cm$^(-2)$s$^(-1)$) at AERE Harwell in the 1970's. It does not discuss the scientific merits or demerits of these studies. Of particular importance are the trapping and release of neutron decay protons, and the influence of magnetic mirror effects and radial drifting on the trapped particles. Since these have energies < 1 keV they must be accelerated to energies of order 20-30 keV following release, at which point they are recorded in a silicon surface barrier detector. However serious difficulties were encountered in the post-release acceleration process with vacuum breakdown in the presence of crossed electric and magnetic fields.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figur

Regulatory Takings and Judicial Supremacy

The thesis of this Article is that the Court of Federal Claims and the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit have become exposed to this classic critique of constitutional decision-making through the recent expansions of the regulatory takings doctrine. Though the chief agent for this expansion has been the Supreme Court, these lower courts have made their own prominent contributions to broadening regulatory takings, and they are far more vulnerable to political reprisals. Like the Due Process Clause in the gilded age, the Takings Clause today can easily be and has been seen as an avenue for inappropriate judicial protection of established wealth and commercial practices frustrating legitimate efforts at reform. Courts addressing claims of regulatory takings should proceed with caution, practice available passive virtues, and ground decisions firmly in precedent and established constitutional values. This Article will first examine the elements of substantive due process that led to decisions invalidating social welfare legislation and becoming notorious for judicial overreaching. This Article will then show how decisions expanding the regulatory takings doctrine share very similar characteristics. Finally, it will offer some suggestions about how judges concerned about real or apparent overreaching should approach regulatory takings issues

Rising Seas and Common Law Baselines: A Comment on Regulatory Takings Discourse Concerning Climate Change

In several recent cases considering claims that regulatory measures addressing rising sea levels violate the Takings Clause, courts have given significant normative weight to traditional common law rules, even when such rules have long been superseded by statutory provisions. This essay argues that giving analytic precedence to such common law baselines lacks justification and can pose serious obstacles to reasonable measures to adapt to climate change

Due Process Land Use Claims After Lingle

The Supreme Court held in Lingle v. Chevron U.S.A. Inc. that challenges to the validity of land use regulations for failing to advance governmental interests must be brought under the Due Process Clause, rather than the Takings Clause, and must be evaluated under a deferential standard. This Article analyzes and evaluates the probable course of such judicial review, and concludes that federal courts will resist due process review of land use decisions for good reasons but not always with an adequate doctrinal explanation. However, state courts can use due process review to provide state level supervision of local land use decisions in the absence of other legislative or administrative checks on local discretion. Such judicial review should focus on decisions reflecting distortions in the local political process

Historic Preservation and its Cultured Despisers: Reflections on the Contemporary Role of Preservation Law in Urban Development

The past years have seen widely noticed critiques of historic preservation by “one of our leading urban economists,” Edward Glaeser, and by star architect Rem Koolhaas. Glaeser, an academic economist specializing in urban development, admits that preservation has value. But he argues in his invigorating book, Triumph of the City, and in a contemporaneous article, Preservation Follies, that historic preservation restricts too much development, raises prices, and undermines the vitality of the cities. Koolhaas is a Pritzker Prize-winning architect and oracular theorist of the relation between architecture and culture. In his New York exhibit, Cronocaos, he argued that preservation lacks an organizing theory, imposes inauthentic consumer-friendly glosses on older structures, and inhibits architectural creativity. Although these critiques are as different as the cultural spaces inhabited by their authors (although both are professors at Harvard), both seemed to strike nerves, suggesting an underlying unease about how large a role preservation has come to play in urban development. This article assesses these critiques as part of an ongoing effort to make sense of historic preservation law. This article proceeds as follows: First, it presents Glaeser’s critique in detail, placing it within the context of his larger argument about what makes cities attractive and dynamic. Grappling with the strengths and weaknesses of Glaeser’s critique leads to a discussion of how preservation regulation actually works and clarification of some of the benefits it confers. Second, this Article will attempt to specify Koolhaas’s critique, connecting it to similar complaints about preservation by more linear thinkers. Weighing objections to the coherence or authenticity of preservation leads to further discussion of the role that preservation plays in the larger culture. This article concludes with a call for future research

The Rebirth of the Neighborhood

This essay argues that new urban residents primarily seek a type of community properly called a neighborhood. “Neighborhood” refers to a legible, pedestrian-scale area that has an identity apart from the corporate and bureaucratic structures that dominate the larger society. Such a neighborhood fosters repeated, casual contacts with neighbors and merchants, such as while one pursues Saturday errands or takes children to activities. Dealing with independent local merchants and artisans face-to-face provides a sense of liberation from large power structures, where most such residents work. Having easy access to places of sociability like coffee shops and bars permits spontaneous “meet-ups,” contrasting with the discipline of professional life. Such a neighborhood conveys an indigenous identity created by the efforts of diverse people over time, rather than marketing an image deliberatively contrived to control the perceptions of customers. At its best, a neighborhood provides a refuge from the ennui of the workplace and the idiocy of consumer culture, substituting for churches (or synagogues), labor unions, and ethnic clubs that structured earlier urban social life. What changes in land use law have contributed to or supported this transformation to neighborhood-based living? Several legal developments outside land use seem very important. Perhaps the most central legal development has been local government legal protections for gays, who often have been in the vanguard of the revival of urban neighborhoods. Crime reduction has significantly enhanced urban living since the 1970s, but which laws have contributed what to that reduction is a matter of intense debate. Civil rights laws and immigration reform have arguably nurtured a comfort with multi-ethnic urban neighborhoods that has turned discrimination and resentment to a comfort with and even celebration of diversity. But changes in land use law, broadly understood, also helped provide the context for the revival of neighborhoods. This brief essay highlights those aspects of land use law that have supported this new urbanization since the founding of the Fordham Urban Law Journal. The claim is not that legal reforms caused the revival, but that they contributed to a broader social trend. These reforms have supported neighborhood revival primarily by securing the physical environments people want to live in. The three chief legal tools for neighborhoods have been zoning for urban form, historic district preservation, and environmental protection

Rhetoric and Realities of Gentrification: Reply to Powell and Spencer

Gentrification represents one of the most encouraging trends in city life since the 1960s. That may be a sad commentary on the fate of American cities or on our urban policies, but it is nevertheless true. The return of affluent people to urban living offers the possibility of reversing declining populations and municipal revenues, permitting enhanced spending on basic services, and increasing employment and educational opportunities. It also brings greater ethnic and economic diversity, which can contribute to a more humane social and cultural life. The great drawback to gentrification is that increased demand for housing increases rents, at least in certain locales, making it harder for the poor to remain within those locales. This article argues that policymakers should recognize the need to generally provide more subsidized housing in cities, dispersed throughout the entire city, and can use the increased value of housing resulting from gentrification as one source of tax revenue to provide this housing. At the same time, cities should not discourage gentrification by erecting regulatory barriers, as this might destroy the catalyst for positive change

Academic Freedom of Part-Time Faculty

Everyone assumes that part-time faculty should enjoy a full measure of academic freedom. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has consistently argued for it. Martin Michaelson\u27s draft Academic Freedom Policy and Procedures, a touchstone for this symposium, accords academic freedom through contract to full-time and part-time faculty without distinction. A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education raised the alarm that To Many Adjunct Professors, Academic Freedom Is a Myth; nowhere did it question the normative claim that an adjunct should enjoy complete academic freedom

Constitutional Academic Freedom After Grutter: Getting Real about the Four Freedoms of a University

The Supreme Court\u27s decision in Grutter v. Bollinger represents a high-water mark for the recognition and influence of constitutional academic freedom. The Court there relied, gingerly perhaps, on constitutional academic freedom, understood as some autonomy for university decision making on matters of core academic concern, to provide a compelling interest adequate to uphold flexible racial preferences in university admissions. Now that the dust has settled from direct import of the decision for affirmative action in admissions, it is important to consider what role constitutional academic freedom, as a working constitutional doctrine, should or may play within current disputes about higher education. In this essay, I hope to clarify the scope and strength of the right affirmed in Grutter and to suggest how it might apply to a few current and notorious disputes. Preliminarily, I provide some context for Grutter by reviewing the long development of constitutional academic freedom and the role it played in the Court\u27s decision. The core of the paper examines three aspects of constitutional academic freedom by looking both at what Grutter tells us about each and how each addresses current controversies about the nature and scope of academic freedom. First, I argue that Grutter clarifies that constitutional academic freedom is a right and apply it to state referenda prohibiting universities from considering race in admissions. Second, I consider the centrality to constitutional academic freedom of faculty control over the evaluation of scholarship and curriculum, arguing that statutes enacting the so-called Academic Bill of Rights would be invalid. Third, I claim that the sphere of autonomy protected by the right must be limited to core academic areas and that broader claims to autonomy based on academic freedom, such as those advanced in Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights, Inc. for employer recruitment policies, both lack merit and may imperil the basic right

Property in the Anthropocene

Human-induced climate change threatens perilous risks for our physical homes and also poses a serious challenge to our legal institutions. Several scholars already have remarked on the disruption climate change has brought to specific legal areas, such as tort, standing, and national security. This essay argues that climate change will also disrupt fundamental ideas about real property. It maintains that the growing need for human management of dynamic natural forces, distorted by greenhouse gas emissions, will erode the foundations of physical stability and owner autonomy that shape basic doctrines of property law