Cynical Realism and Judicial Fantasy

Recent scholarship on the workings of the court system has cast doubt on the ability of judges to make neutral, unbiased decisions. Statistical analyses of judicial decisions have identified a sizable minority of decisions that appear to be influenced by a judge’s ideology. These findings have fueled a “neutrality crisis” regarding the courts system’s ability to live up to its role as a neutral arbiter. Naïve realism accounts for this ideological bias by suggesting that judges, as humans, are subject to the same sort of perception biases as anyone else and that these unconscious biases can affect their decisions. By locating the source of the “neutrality crisis” in the unconscious, these scholars seek to account for the findings of the political scientists, while maintaining the legitimacy of the current institutional structure. However, this response is cynical. Cynicism anticipates the revelation of some real truth that undermines the ideology supporting the social fabric of society. By framing politically derived decisions as a product of naïve realism and offering advice on how to obscure unconscious judicial bias, legal scholars are employing cynical reasoning to maintain an illusion of neutrality while justifying non-neutral decision-making. This cynical reasoning sacrifices long-term “Rule of Law” interests for the sake of short-term political stability—an unnecessary and detrimental tradeoff. This Note seeks to isolate this issue and offer an alternative solution to the neutrality crisis informed by the latest findings from cognitive psychology and behavior economics. Judges must cultivate an independent ideology that is self-conscious of any personal biases and seeks to overcome those biases so that they may engage legal questions with a more detached, reasoned, and just decision-making process. This method will lead to more neutral, unbiased decisions from the bench and strengthen the rule of law in the United States

The imagination of class: masculinity and the Victorian urban poor

(print) xvi, 208 p. 24 cmSensational journalism, male detachment, and the feminized victim -- Culturalism, the feminized poor, and the land of deadened affect -- Morrison, Gissing, and the stark reality -- Hell hath its flâneurs : the discourse of the abyss -- Conclusion : representing the poor and forestalling abjectionItem embargoed for five year

Sustainable by design: an investigation into ecologically friendly typography

This research investigates the effects that font choice, typographic design, and page layout have on the conservation of ink and paper. This is one part of a broader concern with the environmental sustainability of digital printing. The particular focus of this report is on thesis guidelines for graduate students in the School of Print Media at RIT. The preparation and printing of theses is a salient area of paper and ink consumption at an institution of higher education and research. Established, well-defined thesis guidelines permit precise comparisons of the effects of different typographic factors on materials consumption. Three different aspects were investigated in the preparation and publication of graduate theses in order to determine the amount of reduction possible in paper and ink consumption. A high measurable potential for waste reduction was found. The first aspect is the modification of typographic parameters—within current established guidelines—to reduce paper use. Following this, changes to the typographic components of the thesis guidelines were recommended to increase paper savings further. The second aspect is the selection of alternative, ink-economical typefaces and fonts to reduce ink consumption. The third aspect is modification of the letter forms of fonts to reduce ink consumption even further while maintaining apparent readability. It was found that measurable, material savings can be derived from changes to all these aspects of thesis guidelines, and it is expected that similar savings may be derived from the applications of similar methods to more general institutional printing

The Effects of 11 Yr of CO2 Enrichment on Roots in a Florida Scrub-Oak Ecosystem

Uncertainty surrounds belowground plant responses to rising atmospheric CO2 because roots are difficult to measure, requiring frequent monitoring as a result of fine root dynamics and long-term monitoring as a result of sensitivity to resource availability. We report belowground plant responses of a scrub-oak ecosystem in Florida exposed to 11yr of elevated atmospheric CO2 using open-top chambers. We measured fine root production, turnover and biomass using minirhizotrons, coarse root biomass using ground-penetrating radar and total root biomass using soil cores. Total root biomass was greater in elevated than in ambient plots, and the absolute difference was larger than the difference aboveground. Fine root biomass fluctuated by more than a factor of two, with no unidirectional temporal trend, whereas leaf biomass accumulated monotonically. Strong increases in fine root biomass with elevated CO2 occurred after fire and hurricane disturbance. Leaf biomass also exhibited stronger responses following hurricanes. Responses after fire and hurricanes suggest that disturbance promotes the growth responses of plants to elevated CO2. Increased resource availability associated with disturbance (nutrients, water, space) may facilitate greater responses of roots to elevated CO2. The disappearance of responses in fine roots suggests limits on the capacity of root systems to respond to CO2 enrichment

The Restyled Federal Rules of Evidence

A lightly edited transcript of the Symposium held at the William & Mary School of Law on October 28, 2011

The Restyled Federal Rules of Evidence

A lightly edited transcript of the Symposium held at the William & Mary School of Law on October 28, 2011

A search for giant planet companions to t tauri stars

We present results from an ongoing multiwavelength radial velocity (RV) survey of the Taurus–Auriga star-forming region as part of our effort to identify pre-main-sequence giant planet hosts. These 1–3 Myr old T Tauri stars present significant challenges to traditional RV surveys. The presence of strong magnetic fields gives rise to large, cool star spots. These spots introduce significant RV jitter which can mimic the velocity modulation from a planet-mass companion. To distinguish between spot-induced and planet-induced RV modulation, we conduct observations at ∼6700Åand∼2.3μmand measure thewavelength dependence (if any) in theRVamplitude. CSHELL observations of the known exoplanet host Gl 86 demonstrate our ability to detect not only hot Jupiters in the near-infrared but also secular trends from more distant companions. Observations of nine very young stars reveal a typical reduction in RV amplitude at the longer wavelengths by a factor of ∼2–3. While we cannot confirm the presence of planets in this sample, three targets show different periodicities in the two wavelength regions. This suggests different physical mechanisms underlying the optical and the K-band variability

Complexity on Small Scales III: Iron and alpha Element Abundances in the Carina Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy

We have obtained high-resolution spectroscopy of ten red giants in the Carina dwarf spheroidal (dSph) with UVES at the ESO/VLT. Here we present the abundances of O,Na,Mg,Si,Ca,Ti and Fe. By comparing the iron abundances [Fe/H] with calcium triplet (CaT) metallicities we show that the empirical CaT technique yields good agreement with the high-resolution data for [Fe/H]>-2 dex, but tends to deviate at lower metallicities. We identify two metal poor stars with iron abundances of -2.72 and -2.50 dex. These stars are found to have enhanced [alpha/Fe] ratios similar to those of stars in the Milky Way halo. However, the bulk of the Carina red giants are depleted in the [alpha/Fe] abundance ratios with respect to the Galactic halo at a given metallicity. One of our targets, with a [Fe/H] of -1.5 dex, is considerably depleted in almost all of the alpha-elements by ~0.5 dex compared to the solar values. Such a low [alpha/Fe] can be produced by stochastical fluctuations in terms of an incomplete mixing of single Type Ia and II SNe events into the ISM. Our derived element ratios are consistent with the episodic and extended SF in Carina known from its color-magnitude diagram. We find a considerable star-to-star scatter in the abundance ratios. This suggests that Carina's SF history varies with position within the galaxy, with incomplete mixing. Alternatively, the SF rate is so low that the high-mass stellar IMF is sparsely populated, as statistically expected in low-mass star clusters, leading to real scatter in the resultant mass-integrated yields. Both ideas are consistent with slow stochastic SF in dissolving associations, so that one may not speak of a single SF history at a detailed level (Abridged).Comment: 23 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in the A