Automated fully-stressed design with NASTRAN

An automated strength sizing capability is described. The technique determines the distribution of material among the elements of a structural model. The sizing is based on either a fully stressed design or a scaled feasible fully stressed design. Results obtained from the application of the strength sizing to the structural sizing of a composite material wing box using material strength allowables are presented. These results demonstrate the rapid convergence of the structural sizes to a usable design

Inaugurating a Dutch Napoleon? Conservative criticism of the 1815 constitution of the United Kingdom of The Netherlands

International audienc

The Shifting Origins of International Law

Both state-centrism and Euro-centrism are under challenge in international law today and this double challenge, this work argues, is being fruitfully mirrored back into the study of the history of international law. It examines, in the first section, the effects of the rise of positivism as a method of norm-identification and the role of methodological nationalism over the study of the history of international law in the modern foundational period of international law. This is extended by an examination of how this bequeathed a double exclusionary bias regarding time and space to the study of the history of international law as well as a reiterative focus on a series of canonical events and authors to the exclusion of others such as those related to the Islamic history of international law. In the second section, the analysis turns to address why this state of historiographical affairs is changing, specifically highlighting intra-disciplinary developments within the field of the history of international law and the effects that the “international turn in the writing of history” is having on the writing of a new history of international law for a global age. The conclusion reflects on some of the tasks ahead by providing a series of historiographical signposts for the history of international law as a field of new research

Fatal attraction: a critique of Carl Schmitt's international political and legal theory

The ongoing Schmitt revival has extended Carl Schmitt's reach over the fields of international legal and political theory. Neo-Schmittians suggest that his international thought provides a new reading of the history of international law and order, which validates the explanatory power of his theoretical premises – the concept of the political, political decisionism, and concrete-order-thinking. Against this background, this article mounts a systematic reappraisal of Schmitt's international thought in a historical perspective. The argument is that his work requires re-contextualization as the intellectual product of an ultra-intense moment in Schmitt's friend/enemy distinction. It inscribed Hitler's ‘spatial revolution’ into a full-scale reinterpretation of Europe's geopolitical history, grounded in land appropriations, which legitimized Nazi Germany's wars of conquest. Consequently, Schmitt's elevation of the early modern nomos as the model for civilized warfare – the ‘golden age’ of international law – against which American legal universalism can be portrayed as degenerated, is conceptually and empirically flawed. Schmitt devised a politically motivated set of theoretical premises to provide a historical counter-narrative against liberal normativism, which generated defective history. The reconstruction of this history reveals the explanatory limits of his theoretical vocabulary – friend/enemy binary, sovereignty-as-exception, nomos/universalism – for past and present analytical purposes. Schmitt's defective analytics and problematic history compromise the standing of his work for purposes of international theory

Between history and values: A study on the nature of interpretation in international law

My thesis discusses the place of evaluative judgements in the interpretation of general international law. It concentrates on two questions. First, whether it is possible to interpret international legal practices without making an evaluative judgement about the point or value that provides the best justification of these practices. Second, whether the use of evaluative judgements in international legal interpretation threatens to undermine the objectivity of international law, the neutrality of international lawyers or the consensual and voluntary basis of the international legal system. I answer both questions in the negative. As regards the first, I argue that international legal practice has an interpretive structure, which combines appeals to the history of international practice with appeals to the principles and values that these practices are best understood as promoting. This interpretive structure is apparent not only in the claims of international lawyers about particular rules of international law (here I use the rule of estoppel as an example) but also in the most basic intuitions of international theorists about the theory and sources of general international law. I then argue that some popular concerns to the effect that the exercise of evaluation in the interpretation of international law will undermine the coherence or the usefulness of the discipline are generally unwarranted. The fact that international legal practice has an interpretive structure does not entail that propositions of international law are only subjectively true, that the interpreter enjoys license to manipulate their meaning for self-serving purposes, or that international law will collapse under the weight of irresolvable disagreements, divisions and conflicts about its proper interpretation

III. La guerre, les belligérants et la compétence de guerre

C’est avec la causa efficiens que Grotius ouvre son inventaire des éléments constitutifs de la iustitia belli. La guerre se réduisant à une « action », il est naturel d’en rechercher l’agent ou plutôt, en termes de procédure, la personne ou l’entité « légitimée activement » à l’entreprendre ; nous dirions : le titulaire de la compétence de guerre ou, plus simplement, le belligérant légitime. Grotius distingue deux catégories de belligérants, les individus et les Etats, auxquels correspondent ..

II. Contours généraux et méthode du mémoire

Au but spécifique du Mémoire répondent sa construction et sa méthode. Voici son plan. Après le chapitre introductif où Grotius définit son propos et sa démarche générale, on y distingue trois principales divisions, d’importance très inégale du reste : d’abord une discussion du problème sous l’angle du Juste, composée des chapitres ii à xiii ; puis une discussion sur l’Honnête et une autre sur l’Utile, formant respectivement, presque en manière d’appendice, les chapitres xiv et xv. La discussi..

VI. Les limites formelles du droit de guerre : le problème des effets de la guerre publique solennelle et le “ius in bello” classique

01/12/1983 Le troisième livre du De iure belli ac pacis répond à la question quid quantumque in bello liceat, & quibus modis. Un coup d’œil global suffit pour nous renseigner qu’il traite en gros les problèmes compris dans la forma belli du Mémoire, avec un appendice sur la cause finale. Ainsi, l’ensemble du livre continue donc à s’opposer à celui qui précède comme la forme s’oppose à la matière, la procédure au fond : principe de construction décisif, devenu moins apparent, mais n’ayant rien..