NAFTA Does Not Matter as Much as You Think (But Renegotiation Matters a Lot)

Most analysis of NAFTA begins by citing the huge increase in bilateral trade between the U.S., Canada and Mexico since 1993. U.S.-Mexico trade—exports plus imports—has grown three and a half times faster than U.S. GDP since NAFTA began in 1994. If NAFTA were solely responsible for that trade, renegotiating it on more favorable terms might have big payoffs. However, there are seven problems with thinking NAFTA has mattered or can matter very much

Was NAFTA Good for the United States?

NAFTA has neither been the enormous success that its supporters believe, nor the disaster that its detractors claim. Renegotiating NAFTA — or even threatening to repeal it — is not a high-stakes proposition. The treaty simply does not possess the leverage to deliver a major boost or setback to the U.S. manufacturing sector

Comparison of Energies Required to Densify Liquefiable Soil

The objective of the study presented herein is to compare the energy required to densify loose, liquefiable sand by various techniques and the energy required to liquefy the soil by earthquake shaking. The states-of-practice for performing remedial ground densification and evaluating earthquake liquefaction potential of loose saturated sands have evolved relatively independently of each other. This is in spite of the fact that the inducement of liquefaction is typically requisite for remedial ground densification of sands. Using the energy required to induce liquefaction as a common metric, simple calculations are presented for estimating the mechanical energy required to densify a unit volume of clean, loose, saturated sand using deep dynamic compaction, vibrocompaction, and explosive compaction. These computed energies are compared with that required to induce liquefaction during an earthquake per the Green- Mitchell energy based liquefaction evaluation procedure. The comparison highlights the importance of the efficiency of the process by which the energy is imparted to the soil and the importance of the mode of dissipation of the imparted energy (e.g., breaking down of initial soil structure, ramming soil particles into denser packing, and/or radiating away from the treatment zone). Additionally, the comparison lays the groundwork for incorporating the vast knowledge from fundamental studies on earthquake induced liquefaction into design procedures for remedial ground densification

Public Service Must Begin at Home : The Lawyer as Civics Teacher in Everyday Practice

Fifty years ago, the leading national representatives of the American legal profession, the American Bar Association (ABA), and the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), issued a joint report (the Report) on the nature of lawyers\u27 professional responsibility in the context of the adversary system. Principally authored by legal philosopher Lon Fuller, who co-chaired the joint conference that issued it, the Report\u27s premise was that the legal profession\u27s inherited traditions provided only indirect guidance to lawyers in light of their changing roles, and that a true sense of professional responsibility must derive from an understanding of the special services that the legal profession renders to society and the services it might render if its full capacities were realized. A decade later, the Report was quoted throughout the footnotes to the Preamble and Ethical Considerations of the ABA Code of Professional Responsibility, suggesting that the Report captured or influenced understandings that continued at least through the early 1970s. The Report\u27s account of Greenhill v. Greenhill, the 1836 case that Thomas Talfourd argued, is too abbreviated to capture the extent of the injustice he helped achieve. In 1835, six years after her marriage, and while caring for three infant daughters, Mrs. Greenhill learned that her husband, whom she believed to be off yachting, had in fact been living for more than a year with another woman whom he passed off as his wife. When Mrs. Greenhill brought divorce proceedings, Mr. Greenhill retaliated by demanding that she relinquish the children. Custody proceedings followed. Despite Mr. Greenhill\u27s refusal to end his adulterous relationship and despite Mrs. Greenhill\u27s undeniable fitness as a parent, Mr. Greenhill had the superior legal right under precedents that regarded children as the husband\u27s chattel. Mr. Greenhill demanded that the children be delivered to his mother, with whom he had formerly been estranged and who had until then refused to see her grandchildren. Further, he sought to prevent his wife from seeing the children, as was his legal right. When Mrs. Greenhill refused to comply with a court order to deliver up the children, her husband sought her imprisonment for contempt of court. Mrs. Greenhill offered to live anywhere and to make any arrangement for Mr. Greenhill to visit the children, but Mr. Greenhill, spurred on by his mother, refused even at the judge\u27s urging to reach an accommodation. This was the matter in which Talfourd successfully advocated the husband\u27s custody claim. As a contemporary put it: Talfourd had been compelled to support that as an advocate, which as a man, possessed of the same generous sympathies as his fellow men, he must have felt to be iniquitous and absurd. Talfourd\u27s work to reform the child custody law exemplifies a conception of the citizen-lawyer that has prevailed since our country\u27s founding. The conception of the lawyer as civics teacher directly addresses the lawyer\u27s role as client counselor in the daily private practice of law, regardless of whether the matter relates to a transaction or to litigation. This Essay begins in Part I by sketching the concept of the lawyer as civics teacher. Part II offers two reasons why lawyers should make a self-conscious effort to teach civics well and shows how this conception is rooted in Fuller\u27s Report as well as in writings that both predate and postdate it. Finally, Part III places the conception in the context of contemporary professional and academic discussion of four subjects: the lawyer\u27s duty to serve the public, the lawyer\u27s role in a democracy, the lawyer\u27s counseling function, and the lawyer\u27s dealings with professional colleagues

Metadatos transformados. Archivos digitales, la web semántica y el nuevo paradigma de la catalogación

Actas de las Quintas Jornadas Imagen, Cultura y Tecnología celebradas del 3 al 5 de julio de 2006 en la Universidad Carlos III de Madri

An Empirical Predictive Relationship for Assessing the Seismic Stability of Slopes

The objective of the study presented herein is to develop an empirical predictive relationship for permanent relative displacements for use in assessing the seismic stability of slopes, dams, and/or embankments subjected to active shallow crustal earthquake motions. A total of 330 horizontal motions, recorded at rock sites during 29 earthquakes in active shallow crustal regions (e.g., western North America: WNA), were used in this study. For each motion, the permanent relative displacements were computed using the Newmark sliding block procedure for a suite of yield-accelerations: 0.01, 0.05, 0.10, and 0.20 g. The predictive relationship proposed herein was derived by performing separate regression analyses for each yield-acceleration. This allows the relationship to be simply formulated in terms of ground motion characteristic parameters, independent of yield-acceleration (ky), and results in lower standard deviations than those for relations developed by regressing all the data in a single analysis. The non-linear mixed-effects technique was used to regress the relative displacement data as functions of maximum ground accelerations and velocities (Amax and Vmax, respectively). The median permanent relative displacements predicted for WNA rock motions decreases with increasing ky/Amax but increases with increasing Vmax. Also, the rate of decrease in displacement with respect to ky/Amax varies as a function of ky