London in space and time: Peter Ackroyd and Will Self

Copyright @ 2013 the author. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.This paper explores the treatment of London by two authors who are profoundly influenced by the concept of the power of place and the nature of urban space. The works of Peter Ackroyd, whose writings embody, according to Onega (1997, p. 208) “[a] yearning for mythical closure” where London is “a mystic centre of power” – spiritual, transhistorical and cultural – are considered alongside those of Will Self, who explores the city’s psychogeography as primarily a political, economic and cultural artefact. The paper draws on original interviews undertaken by the author with Ackroyd and Self. Both authors’ works are available for literary study during the 16-19 phase in the UK, and this paper explores how personal delineations of the urban environment are shaped by space and language. It goes on to consider how authors’ and students’ personal understandings of space and place can be used as pedagogical and theoretical lenses to “read” the city in the 16-19 literature classroom

Independent studies in higher education: Great expectations or hard times?

This chapter presents a case of quality enhancement (QE) focusing on the issue of the independent work students are expected to undertake during their studies in Higher Education. It draws on quantitative and qualitative data gathered as part of a large-scale research exercise involving 113 undergraduate and 128 sixth form students of English. It goes on to explore the changing nature and role of students‘ subjective expectations by presenting data gathered through individual student interviews in which students reflect upon the factors shaping their independent learning experiences. Following the trajectory of expectations illustrated in Figure 1, it sets out a range of pedagogic interventions in this process, assessing outcomes via individual student interviews

The Price of Judicial Economy in the US

In the US, courts widely perceive that judicial scarcity is a common problem threatening the fair and timely resolution of disputes. Courts cite the attendant interest in judicial economy to justify interpreting the procedural and substantive law to reduce the judicial workload or accelerate the resolution of cases. But courts’ assumption that there are too few judges to handle the current caseload is hard to substantiate. First, it may not be possible to infer from excessive judicial backlogs or other perceived judicial deficiencies that a shortfall of judges is to blame. Second, even when one confidently perceives that a judicial backlog or other deficiency in a particular US court is attributable to a dearth of judges, one cannot fairly generalize from that example to other US courts and jurisdictions. And third, judgments about judicial deficiencies popularly attributed to the inadequacy of judicial resources may turn on contestable assumptions about judges and adjudication. Given these challenges to measuring the adequacy of judicial resources, one might be skeptical whether judicial economies are worth the costs they impose

Lawyers as Nonlawyers in Child-Custody and Visitation Cases: Questions from the Legal Ethics Perspective Response

The Child Advocacy Clinic at Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington ( Indiana Clinic ) takes as a premise that, in custody and visitation disputes, children may be best served by lawyers as guardians ad litem, rather than by lawyers qua lawyers, on one hand, or by nonlawyer guardians ad litem, on the other. In contrast, participants in a national conference at Fordham Law School\u27 concluded two years ago that [a] lawyer appointed or retained to serve a child in a legal proceeding should serve as the child\u27s lawyer. That is, the lawyer should regard the child as a client, not a ward. Implicit in this recommendation was that, if the court appoints a guardian ad litem ( GAL ) to serve the child, it should assign a nonlawyer to that role. This disagreement raises intertwined questions about how best to serve children in the context of the existing adversary process for making custody and visitation decisions and the prevailing best interest standard by which these decisions are made First, if someone is appointed to represent the child what role should that person play? And, second, to whom should courts assign this role

Comments on the radio spectrum of HB 3

It has recently been suggested that the radio spectrum of the Galactic supernova remnant HB 3 shows flattening at higher frequencies (above about 1 GHz). Here I review the radio spectrum of HB 3, noting the difficulties in deriving accurate flux densities for this remnant, particularly at high frequencies, due to the proximity of bright, thermal emission from W3 and its surroundings. A flux density for HB 3 at 2695 MHz is derived from Effelsberg survey data. The spectrum of HB 3 is well represented by a simple power-law spectrum from 22 to 2695 MHz, with a spectral index of 0.56 +/- 0.03. It is concluded that contamination with thermal emission from adjacent regions is the cause for the reported spectral flattening of HB 3.Comment: Accepted for publication by the Bulletin of the Astronomical Society of Indi

Foreword

The Urban Environmental Justice symposium took place at Fordham University School of Law, and explored how low-income communities and communities of color in our nation’s cities may have been disproportionately burdened by various environmental harms. It considered what should be done about this problem, from the perspectives of civic and citizens’ groups, the government at the federal, state, and city levels, public interest lawyers, corporations, and others. The participants in the March 3rd program represented a variety of backgrounds and experiences. The keynote speaker, Gerald Torres, Counsel to the United States Attorney General, had only weeks earlier been designated to lead the efforts of the Department of Justice in the area of environmental justice. Speakers who took part in the four discussions that followed included leading legal and non-legal academics, government and public interest lawyers, and civic group leaders. The panel discussions afforded these experts an opportunity to exchange viewpoints with each other and with members of the audience. This book affords those speakers an opportunity to elaborate on the views presented at the symposium