The normative turn in European Union studies: legitimacy, identity and democracy

By raising fundamental questions about the methods and ultimate goals of European integration, Maastricht forced supporters and opponents alike to confront the legitimacy both of the Union and - as has become apparent with the crisis of the Santer Commission - of the institutional architecture put in place to steer it. The strategic-oriented action and normative argument avoided for so long by the main political actors, are inescapable when tackling this issue. Thus, national politicians and European authorities have self-consciously, though perhaps confusedly, been obliged to start discussing the future shape of what Jacques Delors once called ‘un object politique non-identifié.’ Academics, for their part, have discovered that the integration process depends not simply on functional efficiency and certain given economic and national interests, but also on people’s ideals and perceptions. Consequently, explanation and justification have proved less easily distinguishable than earlier positivistic and behaviouralist models assumed. Hence, the ‘normative turn’ in European studies. In this essay we wish to clarify certain aspects of the normative turn (section 1) and to explore some of the substantive issues that emerge from subjecting the European integration process to normative scrutiny (sections 2, 3 and 4). In the conclusion, we shall sketch the kind of normative politics we feel best suits the emerging European polity

Beyond “basic liberal proceduralism”

This is the author accepted manuscript.No abstractThe author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article

Hudson and Samson: The Roberts Court Confronts Privacy, Dignity, and the Fourth Amendment

This article critically analyzes Samson v. California and Hudson v. Michigan, which were the Roberts Court\u27s first major Fourth Amendment decisions. In Samson, the Court upheld a California law allowing government officials to search parolees without any suspicion of wrongdoing. In Hudson, to the surprise of almost every observer, the Court held that knock-and-announce violations do not carry with them a remedy of exclusion. What was most notable about Hudson was not only that it rejected what every state and every federal court, save one, believed to be the proper remedy for knock-and-announce violations, but that it called into question the Court\u27s continued support of a general Fourth Amendment exclusionary principle. In Part One, I examine the Court\u27s decision in Samson, tying it to a long line of cases dating back to the Burger Court that have segregated entire classes of individuals (and individuals in particular physical locations) from meaningful Fourth Amendment protection. While few would argue that Samson is a particularly groundbreaking decision, it is nonetheless notable as being the Roberts Court\u27s first major rights-limiting decision under the Fourth Amendment. I argue the majority\u27s reasoning is unconvincing, in that it depends on a misconceived notion of the criminal “propensity” of parolees that skews the Fourth Amendment “reasonableness” analysis. I argue that the Court\u27s abandonment of “special needs” doctrine in its decision provides evidence that the majority recognized the tenuous relationship between suspicionless searches and the penological and rehabilitative goals of parole. In Part Two, I examine the Court\u27s opening salvo against the exclusionary rule in Hudson. I critique Justice Scalia\u27s endorsement of alternative remedies to knock-and-announce violations (specifically his reliance on 42 U.S.C. §1983), arguing that these proposed remedies are inadequate to deter future misconduct and make whole the victims of the illegal behavior. Next, I assert that Hudson was the first shot across the bow in what promises to be a long campaign by the “conservative” block of the Court to undermine, and ultimately overrule, the exclusionary rule as a remedy for Fourth Amendment violations. In Part Three, I argue that the newly-composed Court\u27s decisions in these cases show a clear preference for the government\u27s interests in law enforcement, to the determinant of individuals\u27 legitimate expectations of privacy, dignity, and autonomy. Both Samson and Hudson offer tantalizing clues as to the new Roberts Court\u27s general theory of the balance of power between the state and the individual in the Fourth Amendment context; a theory which promises to carry over into the “new generation” of Fourth Amendment cases soon to come before the Court

L-Convex Polyominoes are Recognizable in Real Time by 2D Cellular Automata

A polyomino is said to be L-convex if any two of its cells are connected by a 4-connected inner path that changes direction at most once. The 2-dimensional language representing such polyominoes has been recently proved to be recognizable by tiling systems by S. Brocchi, A. Frosini, R. Pinzani and S. Rinaldi. In an attempt to compare recognition power of tiling systems and cellular automata, we have proved that this language can be recognized by 2-dimensional cellular automata working on the von Neumann neighborhood in real time. Although the construction uses a characterization of L-convex polyominoes that is similar to the one used for tiling systems, the real time constraint which has no equivalent in terms of tilings requires the use of techniques that are specific to cellular automata

Cation composition effects on oxide conductivity in the Zr_2Y_2O_7-Y_3NbO_7 system

Realistic, first-principles-based interatomic potentials have been used in molecular dynamics simulations to study the effect of cation composition on the ionic conductivity in the Zr2Y2O7-Y3NbO7 system and to link the dynamical properties to the degree of lattice disorder. Across the composition range, this system retains a disordered fluorite crystal structure and the vacancy concentration is constant. The observed trends of decreasing conductivity and increasing disorder with increasing Nb5+ content were reproduced in simulations with the cations randomly assigned to positions on the cation sublattice. The trends were traced to the influences of the cation charges and relative sizes and their effect on vacancy ordering by carrying out additional calculations in which, for example, the charges of the cations were equalised. The simulations did not, however, reproduce all the observed properties, particularly for Y3NbO7. Its conductivity was significantly overestimated and prominent diffuse scattering features observed in small area electron diffraction studies were not always reproduced. Consideration of these deficiencies led to a preliminary attempt to characterise the consequence of partially ordering the cations on their lattice, which significantly affects the propensity for vacancy ordering. The extent and consequences of cation ordering seem to be much less pronounced on the Zr2Y2O7 side of the composition range.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures, submitted to Journal of Physics: Condensed Matte

Spectral properties of quantum NN-body systems versus chaotic properties of their mean field approximations

We present numerical evidence that in a system of interacting bosons there exists a correspondence between the spectral properties of the exact quantum Hamiltonian and the dynamical chaos of the associated mean field evolution. This correspondence, analogous to the usual quantum-classical correspondence, is related to the formal parallel between the second quantization of the mean field, which generates the exact dynamics of the quantum $N$-body system, and the first quantization of classical canonical coordinates. The limit of infinite density and the thermodynamic limit are then briefly discussed.Comment: 15 pages RevTeX, 11 postscript figures included with psfig, uuencoded gz-compressed .tar fil

Hyaline fibromatosis syndrome (juvenile hyaline fibromatosis): whole-body MR findings in two siblings with different subcutaneous nodules distribution

Abstract: Hyaline fibromatosis syndrome (juvenile hyaline fibromatosis) is a rare, progressive, autosomal recessive disorder whose main hallmark is the deposition of amorphous hyaline material in soft tissues, with an evolutionary course and health impairment. It may present involvement of subcutaneous or periskeletal soft tissue, or may develop as a visceral infiltration entity with poor prognosis. Very few radiological data about this inherited condition have been reported, due to the extreme rarity of disease. We herein present a case of two siblings, affected by different severity of the disease, with different clinical features. They were examined by whole-body MR (WBMR) in order to assess different lesions localization, to rule out any visceral involvement and any other associated anomalies and to define patients\ue2\u80\u99 management