Access to Justice: Reflections on the Concept, the Theory and its Application to Latin America's Judicial Reforms

Access to justice has become a central theme in Latin American judicial reforms. Access to justice has become a central theme in Latin American judicial reforms. Its apparent simplicity belies considerable ambiguity as to its precise meaning, the benefits it confers, and thus the methods whereby it is best advanced. While often interpreted as just a question of getting more people to court, for at least the last three decades observers have noted the inadequacy of this definition. Once it is discarded, the implications for programmes to enhance access are far less clear. This short essay reviews some of these issues and suggests an alternative, if not exactly easier, way of defining and operationalizing the concept. While based on the Latin American experience, the arguments are intended for more general application

The Return of Activity in Main-Belt Comet 133P/Elst-Pizarro

Comet 133P/Elst-Pizarro is the first-known and currently best-characterised member of the main-belt comets, a recently-identified class of objects that exhibit cometary activity but which are dynamically indistinguishable from main-belt asteroids. We report here on the results of a multi-year monitoring campaign from 2003 to 2008, and present observations of the return of activity in 2007. We find a pattern of activity consistent with the seasonal activity modulation hypothesis proposed by Hsieh et al. (2004, AJ, 127, 2997). Additionally, recomputation of phase function parameters using data in which 133P was inactive yields new IAU parameters of H_R=15.49+/-0.05 mag and G_R=0.04+/-0.05, and linear parameters of m_R(1,1,0)=15.80+/-0.05 mag and Beta=0.041+/-0.005 mag/deg. Comparison between predicted magnitudes using these new parameters and the comet's actual brightnesses during its 2002 and 2007 active periods reveals the presence of unresolved coma during both episodes, on the order of ~0.20 of the nucleus cross-section in 2002 and ~0.25 in 2007. Multifilter observations during 133P's 2007 active outburst yield mean nucleus colours of B-V=0.65+/-0.03 mag, V-R=0.36+/-0.01 mag, and R-I=0.32+/-0.01 mag, with no indication of significant rotational variation, and similar colours for the trail. Finally, while 133P's trail appears shorter and weaker in 2007 than in 2002, other measures of activity strength such as dust velocity and coma contamination of nucleus photometry are found to remain approximately constant. We attribute changes in trail strength to the timing of observations and projection effects, thus finding no evidence of any substantial decrease in activity strength between 2002 and 2007.Comment: 31 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

The Distance to the Coma Cluster from Surface Brightness Fluctuations

We report on the first determination of the distance to the Coma Cluster based on surface brightness fluctuation (SBF) measurements obtained from Hubble Space Telescope WFPC2 observations of the bright E0 galaxy NGC 4881 in the Coma Cluster and ground-based observations of the standard E1 galaxy NGC 3379 in the Leo-I group. Relative distances based on the I-band fluctuation magnitude, I(SBF), are strongly dependent on metallicity and age of the stellar population. However, the radial changes in the stellar populations of the two giant ellipticals, NGC 3379 and NGC 4881, are well described by published Mg_2 gradients, and the ground-based measurements of I(SBF) at several radial points in NGC 3379 are used to calibrate I(SBF) in terms of the Mg_2 index. The distance to NGC 3379, assumed to be identical to the average SBF distance of the Leo-I group, is combined with the new SBF measurements of NGC 4881 to obtain a Coma Cluster distance of 102+-14 Mpc. Combining this distance with the cosmic recession velocity of Coma (7186+-428 km/s), we find the Hubble constant to be H_0 = 71+-11 km/s/Mpc.Comment: 12 pages, LaTex, includes aaspp4.sty and 3 eps figures. To appear in ApJ Letter