Geant4 Maintainability Assessed with Respect to Software Engineering References

We report a methodology developed to quantitatively assess the maintainability of Geant4 with respect to software engineering references. The level of maintainability is determined by combining a set of metrics values whose references are documented in literature.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, 4 tables, IEEE NSS/MIC 201

The Fallacy of Systemic Racism in the American Criminal Justice System

Critics of the criminal justice system have repeatedly charged it with systemic racism. It is a tenet of the “war” on the “War on Drugs,” it is a justification used by the so-called “progressive prosecutors” to reject the “Broken Windows” theory of law enforcement, and it is an article of faith of the “Defund the Police!” movement. Even President Joe Biden and his chief lieutenants leveled the same allegation early in this administration. Although the President has eschewed the belief that Americans are a racist people, others have not, proclaiming that virtually anyone who is white is a racist. Yet, few people have defined what they mean by that term. This Article examines what it could mean and tests the truth of the systemic racism claim under each possible definition. None stands up to scrutiny. One argument is that the American citizens who run our many institutions are motivated by racial animus. But the evidence is that racial animus is no longer tolerated in society, and what is more, the criminal justice system strives to identify it when it does occur and to remedy it. Another argument says that the overtly racist beliefs and practices of the past have created lingering racist effects, but this argument cherry-picks historical facts (when it does not ignore them altogether) and fails to grapple with the country’s historic and ongoing efforts to eliminate racial discrimination. It also assumes a causal relationship between past discrimination and present disparities that is unsupported and often contradicted by the evidence. Yet another argument relies psychological research to claim that white Americans are animated by a subconscious racial animus. That research, however, has been debunked. Still another argument says that the criminal justice system is systemically racist because it has disparate effects across racial groups, but this argument looks only at the offenders’ side of the criminal justice system and fails to consider the effect of the criminal justice system on victims. Proponents of the systemic racism theory often proffer “solutions” to it. This Article examines those too and finds that many would, in fact, harm the very people they aim to help. In the context of the “War on Drugs,” where so much of the rhetoric is focused, the authors examine these arguments and solutions. The bottom line is this: the claim of systemic racism in the criminal justice system is unjustified

One Ring to Rule Them All: Individual Judgments, Nationwide Injunctions, and Universal Handcuffs

A large and growing body of literature criticizes nationwide injunctions, although a handful of scholars have come to their qualified defense. The literature has focused on whether universal injunctions comport with the historic scope of federal courts’ equitable powers and are good policy to boot. Largely missing from the debate is a fulsome analysis of whether the Constitution or the Judicial Code authorizes federal courts to issue such injunctions and whether they are permissible under existing Supreme Court precedent. We argue that the answer to each question is “no.” Parts I and II explain that no positive law authorizes universal injunctions and that the architecture of the federal judicial system strongly implies that they are overbroad. Part I discusses the Constitution; Part II, the Judicial Code. Part III explains why the Supreme Court’s decisions in United States v. Mendoza and Williams v. Zbaraz disallow that practice. That Part also addresses the policy arguments for nationwide injunctions and shows that, as long as Mendoza and Zbaraz are good law, courts cannot bind the federal government always and everywhere by an adverse judgment in one lawsuit. Our conclusion is this: the lower federal courts are obliged to provide complete relief to the party who prevailed in court—but no further. Congress is the forum for deciding what relief should be afforded to the public at large

Historia especulativa del presente

En este artículo se examina de qué modo ha afectado a la idea de historia del presente la desaparición del historicismo decimonónico o concepción en la que filosofía y de lo histórico giraban exclusivamente en torno a la categoría de temporalidad. A este respecto se insiste en tres consecuencias: primera, una ampliación del debate sobre qué es lo histórico hacia el tema de cuáles son los procedimientos por los que decidimos lo que es historiable; segunda, una concepción del presente en la cual este deja de ser una mera colección de eventos relevantes y se convierte en una construcción intelectual; y tercero, cómo el presente deja de identificarse simplemente con lo inmediato