6,591 research outputs found
Telling Millerâs Tale: A Reply to David Yassky
A recent article by Professor David Yassky suggests that there is a segment of legal academia that dissents from the Standard model and has started to generate alternatives to the Standard Model. Denning and Reynolds critique that part of Yassky\u27s theory dismissing United States v. Miller as providing the basis for an individual rights interpretation of the Second Amendment
Dynamics of Polymers: a Mean-Field Theory
We derive a general mean-field theory of inhomogeneous polymer dynamics; a
theory whose form has been speculated and widely applied, but not heretofore
derived. Our approach involves a functional integral representation of a
Martin-Siggia-Rose type description of the exact many-chain dynamics. A saddle
point approximation to the generating functional, involving conditions where
the MSR action is stationary with respect to a collective density field
and a conjugate MSR response field , produces the desired dynamical
mean-field theory. Besides clarifying the proper structure of mean-field theory
out of equilibrium, our results have implications for numerical studies of
polymer dynamics involving hybrid particle-field simulation techniques such as
the single-chain in mean-field method (SCMF)
National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius: Five Takes
In National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, the Supreme Court found that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act-popularly known as Obamacare -was an unconstitutional assertion of Congress\u27 power to regulate commerce among the several states, but was nonetheless sustainable under Congress\u27 power to tax. This piece looks at some possible meanings and implications of the Supreme Court\u27s decision. Takes One and Two analogize Sebelius and two other famous cases-Marbury v. Madison and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke-whose opinions are held out as deftly straddling the line between principle and prudence. Takes Three and Four examine the opinion though the lens of constitutional theory, considering in particular whether the decision-Chief Justice John Roberts\u27 opinion especiallyserved what Charles Black called the Court\u27s legitimating function: quelling doubts about the Act\u27s constitutionality and, thus, its legitimacy. Finally, in Take Five, this piece considers whether the opinion\u27s peculiar construction handed the Administration a somewhat Pyrrhic victory while laying the foundation for robust judicially enforced limits on congressional power
Retconning Heller: Five Takes on New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen
New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen was the first significant Second Amendment case that the Supreme Court had heard in nearly fifteen years since its decision in District of Columbia v. Heller. This Article offers some preliminary observations about the opinion itself, as well as its likely effects, some of which are starting to manifest.
Our first take concerns the question of opinion assignment. Why did Chief Justice Robertsâwhose support for the Second Amendment has been suspectâassign the opinion to Justice Thomas?
Takes Two and Three concern Justice Thomasâs substitution of text, history, and tradition for tiered security, and his call for courts to adopt analogical reasoning should the former fail to provide answers to resolve particular cases. In rejecting tiered scrutiny, Thomas argued that the lower courts had misread the Heller decision itself; that Heller rejected tiered security in favor of a textual, historical, and traditional inquiry. To make Bruen seem less like an abrupt departure, we argue, Justice Thomas had to âretconâ Hellerâreading back into the latter decision the analytical framework adopted in Bruen. We also question how helpful his explanation of the method for analogizing to other extant gun regulations when history and tradition have run out is likely to be to lower courts who must rehear cases involving dozens of these laws in light of Bruenâs new standard.
Take Four wonders about the status of what we earlier termed âthe Heller safe harborââthe list of âpresumptively lawfulâ regulations that the Court said were not called into question by the decision. Critics at the time questioned whether these could be squared with the self-conscious originalism of the rest of the opinion. This tension is only heightened by Bruenâs text-history-tradition only approach.
Finally, we look at the reaction of the lower courts post-Bruen. While approaches differ, a surprising number of these opinions seem to recognize Bruen for the sea change it portends and are attempting to implement it in good faith. Although, as was true with cases like United States v. Lopez and Heller itself, some courts are also trying to avoid the wider implications of Bruen using any available argument, however specious, and we detect in some an âuncivil obedienceâ intended to raise the Supreme Courtâs costs of holding the line laid down in Bruen
The Metallicity and Reddening of Stars in the Inner Galactic Bulge
We present a preliminary analysis of K, J-K color magnitude diagrams (CMDs)
for 7 different positions on or close to the minor axis of the Milky Way at
Galactic latitudes between +0.1^\circ and -2.8^\circ. From the slopes of the
(linear) giant branches in these CMDs we derive a dependence of on
latitude for b between -0.8^\circ and -2.8^\circ of -0.085 \pm 0.033
dex/degree. When combined with the data from Tiede et al. we find for
-0.8^\circ \leq b \leq -10.3^\circ the slope in is -0.064 \pm 0.012
dex/degree. An extrapolation to the Galactic Center predicts [Fe/H] = +0.034
\pm 0.053 dex. We also derive average values for the extinction in the K band
(A_K) of between 2.15 and 0.27 for the inner bulge fields corresponding to
average values of E(J-K) of between 3.46 and 0.44. There is a well defined
linear relation between the average extinction for a field and the star-to-star
scatter in the extinction for the stars within each field. This result suggests
that the typical apparent angular scale size for an absorbing cloud is small
compared with the field size (90\arcsec on a side). Finally, from an
examination of the luminosity function of bright giants in each field we
conclude that the young component of the stellar population observed near the
Galactic center declines in density much more quickly than the overall bulge
population and is undetectable beyond 1^\circ from the Galactic center.Comment: accepted for publication in Astron. Jour. Compressed file contains
the text, 9 figures, and 6 tables prepared with AAS Latex macros v. 4.
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