Human Rights and Non-Intervention in the Inter-American System

The long silence of the inter-American system is remarkable when contrasted with the continuing efforts of the United Nations to elaborate an International Bill of Rights and the significant accomplishments of the Council of Europe in implementing on a regional basis the principal values enunciated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The OAS\u27 lack of interest, until quite recently, in undertaking a similar international program to protect human rights in the American republics is a function of several very special factors, the most important of which is the traditional Latin American repudiation of intervention, in whatever form and for whatever reason, in the internal affairs of American states. This article will examine the recent efforts to protect such rights in the American continent within the context of the evolution of the inter-American system and the development within that system of the law of non-intervention

Using several monitoring techniques to measure the rock mass deformation in the Montserrat Massif

Montserrat Mountain is located near Barcelona in Catalonia, at the north-east corner of Spain, and its massif is formed by conglomerate interleaved by siltstone/sandstone with steep slopes very prone to rock falls. The increasing visitor's number in the monastery area, reaching 2.4 million per year, has pointed out the risk derived from rock falls for this building area and also for the terrestrial accesses, both roads and rack railway. A risk mitigation plan is currently been applied for 2014-2016 that contains monitoring testing and implementation as a key point. The preliminary results of the pilot tests carried out during 2014 are presented, also profiting from previous sparse experiences and data, and combining 4 monitoring techniques under different conditions of continuity in space and time domains, which are: displacement monitoring with Ground-based Synthetic Aperture Radar and characterization at slope scale, with an extremely non uniform atmospheric phase screen because of the stepped topography and atmosphere stratification; Terrestrial Laser Scanner surveys quantifying frequency for unnoticed activity of small rock falls, and monitoring rock block displacements over 1cm; monitoring of rock joints with a wireless net of sensors; and tentative surveying for singular rocky needles with Total Station

University governance in the Enron era

Sumner Canary lecture given April 8, 2003 at the Law School of Case Western Reserve Universit