An Exercise in Legal Honesty: Re-writing the Court of Justice and the Bundesverfassungsgericht. IHS Political Science Series No. 136, February 2014

At a time of crisis – a true state of emergency – both the Court of Justice of the European Union and the German Federal Constitutional Court have failed the rule of law in Europe. Worse still, in their evaluation of the ersatz crisis law, which has been developed in response to financial and sovereign debt crises, both courts have undermined constitutionality throughout Europe. Each jurisdiction has been implicated within the techocratisation of democratic process. Each Court has contributed to an incremental process of the undermining of the political subjectivity of European Citizens. The results are depressing for lawyers who are still attached to notions of constitutionality. Yet, we must also ask whether the Courts could have acted otherwise. Given the original flaws in the construction of Economic and Monetary Union, as well as the politically pre-emptive constraints imposed by global financial markets, each Court might thus be argued to have been forced to suspend immediate legality in a longer term effort to secure the character of the legal jurisdiction as a whole. Crisis can and does defeat the law. Nevertheless, what continues to disturb is the failure of law in Europe to open up any perspective for a return to normal constitutionality post crisis, as well as its apparent inability to give proper and honest consideration to the hardship now being experienced by millions of Europeans within crisis. This contribution accordingly seeks to reimagine each Judgment in a language of legal honesty. Above all, this contribution seeks to suggest a new form of post-national constitutional language; a language which takes as its primary function, proper protection of democratic process against the ever encroaching powers of a post-national executive power. This contribution forms a part of an on-going effort to identify a new basis for the legitimacy of European Law, conducted jointly and severally with Christian Joerges, University of Bremen and Hertie School of Government, Berlin. Differences do remain in our theoretical positions; hence this individual essay. Nevertheless, the congruence between pluralist and conflict of law approaches to the topic are also readily apparent. See, for example, Everson & Joerges (2013)

European courts have allowed EU law to become subject to the demands of free market economics.

The Eurozone crisis has encouraged the reform of European institutions and the spread of austerity policies across struggling Eurozone economies. Michelle Everson assesses the role of European courts in this process, noting that they have shown an unwillingness to put legal obstacles in front of agreements generated as part of the EU’s crisis management. While this may be justified in the short-term, she argues that the fact these changes appear to be permanent raises serious questions about the legitimacy of European law. Moreover, it implies that the law itself has become subject to the pressures of financial markets

A technology of expertise: EU financial services agencies

The collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 ushered in a financial crisis whose ramifications are still being felt. Within the EU, collapse not only led to a change in regulatory rhetoric, emphasising the need to secure the stability of EU money markets, but also to a significant widening and deepening of technocratic supervisory structures for European financial services. This paper accordingly investigates the newly established European System for Financial Supervision and, in particular, semi-autonomous EU agencies for banking, insurance and securities, for its ability to provide robust regulation and supervision within Europe. However, it analyses this increase in technocratic governance at supranational level in light of the worrying question of whether it has undermined capacity for political action within Europe. At a time when readily-apparent failings in established technocratic governance in Europe (monetary union) have led only to more technocratisation (proposed fiscal union), perhaps to the point of systemic collapse, the general European trend to expertled and evidence-based supervision must be doubted; not simply because it has failed on its own terms, but also because it has established a technology of expertise, or dominant rationality, which further encourages abdication of political responsibility for economic crisis

What went right in Northern Ireland?: an analysis of mediation effectiveness and the role of the mediator in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998

George Mitchell, largely considered the key architect of the Northern Ireland peace process, has been lauded for his ability to find areas of compromise in a conflict that many deemed intractable and few expected to find lasting resolution until the Good Friday Agreement was signed in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1998. His success, where others had failed, therefore leads us to question “Why?” What conditions were created that convinced paramilitaries to engage politically? What factors influenced entrenched politicians to compromise, after years of flat refusal to do so? Was it Mitchell’s skill as a mediator? Was it the final realization that thousands of civilians had died at the paramilitaries’ hands? My research seeks to answer the question of what went right in Northern Ireland, focusing in particular on the period of the 1990s and the interface between the politicians and the paramilitary organizations. Mitchell’s greatest skills as a mediator were his patience and his ability to build trust and relationships on both sides of the divide; however, beyond his personal characteristics, Mitchell represented the sincere interest of the United States, which brought international attention and a sense of pressure to the talks. Additionally, regional factors, such as the changes in government at the national level following elections in both the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, created a more open environment for the negotiations since each government was more amenable to compromise on key issues than its predecessor had been. Therefore George Mitchell found himself in the unique position of addressing a conflict that had reached its stage of ripeness for negotiation and compromise: on the external political level, actors were in place who had both leeway and desire to make lasting changes; internally, paramilitary groups and their associated parties were finally being included in the process; and the simple fact of US involvement had increased momentum moving towards an agreement. Mitchell was able to take advantage of these favorable circumstances and the parties’ faith in him and guide the negotiations to a resolution by imposing a deadline when the moment was right

The evolutionary history of Madagascar's tenrecs (mammalia: Tenrecidae): systematics, phylogeography, and species delimitation

Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2018Madagascar is renowned for its exceptionally diverse, unique, and threatened biota, yet much of the island's flora and fauna remains undescribed, and the underlying drivers of diversification and endemism are poorly understood. The family Tenrecidae is one of four extant terrestrial mammal lineages to have colonized and diversified on Madagascar from continental Africa. The goal of this dissertation is to elucidate the evolutionary history of tenrecs at both deep and shallow time scales, and to use tenrecs as a proxy to understand the drivers of diversification on Madagascar. In Chapter 1 I generate the first rigorously inferred phylogeny of tenrecs to include every currently recognized species, revealing that they colonized Madagascar 30-56 million years ago. I also demonstrate that speciation rates have been higher in humid habitats compared to arid habitats - a finding that sets the groundwork for my next three chapters. To better understand the patterns and processes of diversification in the humid forest, I next explore the phylogeography of a species endemic to that region, Oryzorictes hova, in Chapter 2. Using genetic and morphometric data, I identify three populations (later identified as cryptic species) within O. hova that correspond to northern, central, and southern regions of the island. The same phylogeographic pattern has been observed in some of Madagascar's other humid-forest taxa, and it had been hypothesized that population structure is driven by low-elevation breaks between Madagascar's northern, central, and southern highlands. In Chapter 3, using genetic data from 20 small mammals and five reptiles codistributed along the island's humid-forest belt, I find this structure is directly related to the distribution of high-elevation areas and is congruent (spatially and temporally) across many species. This result demonstrates that the highlands have played an important role in recent diversification on Madagascar, most likely by functioning as refugia during Quaternary climate cycles. Finally, in Chapter 4 I continue to explore diversification in Madagascar's humid forests by studying species limits and patterns of gene flow in a clade of shrew tenrecs endemic to that region (M. fotsifotsy, M. soricoides, and M. nasoloi). Using a massively multi-locus genetic dataset, I demonstrate that M. soricoides and M. fotsifotsy (which are broadly sympatric) have hybridized in the past, and that this has caused conflicting phylogenetic results between different genetic datasets. I also recover two distinct clades of M. fotsifotsy: one that occurs only in the far north of Madagascar, and one that is widespread and broadly sympatric with M. soricoides. Evidence of reproductive isolation, plus subtle but significant morphometric differences between these clades, lead me to recognize them as distinct species. While I accomplished my primary aim of clarifying the phylogeny and taxonomy of Madagascar's tenrecs, my findings will also be important to scientists outside that initial scope. This research illuminates one of the mechanisms by which Madagascar's flora and fauna became so diverse -namely, that diversification has been driven by latitudinally segregated high-elevation refugia along the humid forests that historically spanned the island's eastern escarpment - and it reaffirms the need for continued collection and preservation of specimens in one of the world's hottest biodiversity hotspots as these forests face unprecedented rates of anthropogenic alteration.National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, Society of Systematic Biologists Graduate Student Research Award and Publisher's Award for Excellence in Systematic Research, American Society of Mammalogists Grant-in-Aid of Research and A. Brazier Howell Award, University of Alaska Fairbanks Graduate School Dissertation Completion Fellowship, National Science Foundation grant DEB-112090

Europäische Wende zu "Neuen Formen des Regierens" (new modes of governance) : Rechtsprobleme eines politischen Konzepts

„ Sag, wo die Soldaten sind, Wo sind sie geblieben? So begann die dritte Strophe von Pete Seeger’s legendärem Blumen-Lied. Wie sollte die bittere Melancholie seiner Lyrik zu dem „turn zu governance“ passen, den die Europapolitik offiziös unter dem Kommissionspräsidenten Romano Prodi i.J. 2001 nach raschen Vorarbeiten vollzogen hat? Immerhin galt einstmals das Recht als Rückgrat des Integrationsprojekts; Juristen, Verwaltungsbeamte und Richter, schienen berufen, seinen Fortgang rechtlich zu disziplinieren. „GOVLIT“, die Literatursammlung des von der Europäischen Kommission geförderten Exzellenz-Netzwerks CONNEX ("Connecting Excellence on European Governance“) verzeichnet inzwischen (im Mai 2007) 3345 Einträge. Vom Recht ist noch die Rede und Juristen finden sich unter den Autoren. Aber der Umschwung ist doch frappierend: “Where have all the lawyers gone“? Wir stellen diese Frage, weil wir wissen möchten, aus welchen Gründen das Recht ins Hintertreffen zu geraten scheint, weil uns die verfassungspolitischen Dimensionen dieses Rückzugs interessieren und, last, but not least, weil wir die Einheit von Rechtsstaatlichkeit und Demokratie als eine Errungenschaft verstehen, die nicht ohne Not aufs Spiel gesetzt werden sollte –auch nicht im Namen der Integration Europas. Dies ist das Leitmotiv des gesamten Beitrags. Es geht uns nicht etwa darum, zwischen Rechts- und Politikwissenschaft einen Keil zu treiben, um so die alte Rechtsherrlichkeit wieder herzustellen. Wir gehen vielmehr davon aus, dass die Wende zum Regieren unaufhaltsam ist – auf allen Ebenen. Es erscheint uns allerdings angebracht, der nationalen Ebene hierbei besondere Aufmerksamkeit zu widmen, vor allem aus methodologischen Gründen. In den Debatten der 80er Jahre sind nämlich noch immer aktuelle Konzeptionen entwickelt worden, die eine Orientierung des Rechts an sachlichen Problemlösungen mit seinen rechtsstaatlichen Qualitäten zu versöhnen suchten. Die vielen -- oft nur dem Namen nach -- neuen “modes of governance“, die in Europa praktiziert werden, bedeuten gewiss eine Herausforderung des Rechts. Aber in der Praxis der Integrationspolitik sind nicht bloß Erosions-, sondern auch Regenerationsprozesse zu beobachten. Die rechtliche Bindung des Regierens ist schwieriger geworden, aber die Idee, dass Regieren sich legitimieren müsse und seine Legitimität rechtlich zu vermitteln habe, bleibt aktuell

Updated guidelines, updated curriculum: The GAISE College Report and introductory statistics for the modern student

Since the 2005 American Statistical Association's (ASA) endorsement of the Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE) College Report, changes in the statistics field and statistics education have had a major impact on the teaching and learning of statistics. We now live in a world where "Statistics - the science of learning from data - is the fastest-growing science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) undergraduate degree in the United States," according to the ASA, and where many jobs demand an understanding of how to explore and make sense of data. In light of these new reports and other changes and demands on the discipline, a group of volunteers revised the 2005 GAISE College Report. The updated report was endorsed by the Board of Directors of the American Statistical Association in July 2016. To help shed additional light on the revision process and subsequent changes in the report, we review the report and share insights into the committee's thoughts and assumptions.Comment: in press, CHANC

GAISE Into the Future: Updating a Landmark Report for an Increasingly Data-Centric World

Ever since its official endorsement by the American Statistical Association in 2005, the Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE) College Report has had a profound impact on the teaching of statistics. Now, a decade later, it is important to recognize the changing nature in what and how we teach our introductory statistics students. Changes in technology and assessment practices, just over the past 10 years, have made it possible to do new and exciting things in our courses, in very different ways than were envisioned by the authors of the original GAISE College Report. Further, our world is becoming increasingly data-centric, and it is important to recognize and promote statistics as a way to use data to make decisions. This panel will report on efforts to revise the GAISE College Report in the light of the changes that have occurred within the field of Statistics Education (and other areas) within the past several years. Panelists will also elicit feedback from the audience about specific (and perhaps controversial) issues related to the teaching of introductory statistics at the college level