Constitutional Conflicts between Politics and Law in Transition Societies: A Systems-Theoretical Approach

"Post-autocratic transitions are often followed by constitutional conflicts between state powers. With respect to the question of rule of law in young democracies, clashes between the executive and legislative branches, on the one hand, and the judiciary and constitutional courts, on the other, as well as those between ordinary and constitutional courts are particularly virulent. All these conflicts have massively affected the key distinction between politics and law that had been mainly violated in the previous autocratic regimes. Based on Niklas Luhmann’s theory, this article presents a systems-theoretical approach in order to explain the occurrence of these constitutional conflicts. The central argument reads as follows: constitutional conflicts between politics and law will occur under two circumstances - if a constitutional order allows the decision of legal questions based on political criteria or vice versa, and if a constitutional order allows the judiciary or the constitutional court to decide political questions based on political criteria. This argument is further substantiated by means of two exploratory case studies with a special emphasis on post-socialist transitions in Central and Eastern Europe. The main results are eight detailed hypotheses on the question of when, in constitutional orders, and under what circumstances are constitutional conflicts to be expected." (author's abstract

Next Steps to Reform the Regulations Governing Offshore Oil and Gas Planning and Leasing

The Department of the Interior manages offshore oil and gas activities in federal waters. While the agency has proposed and/or enacted important improvements to the rules that govern some of those activities, it has not modernized the regulations that govern offshore oil and gas planning, lease sales, or the review and permitting of exploratory drilling. These phases of the process are overseen by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), and, as was shown in our earlier publication on this topic, are ineffective and in need of modernization. In this Article, we argue that fundamental reform is necessary and highlight a series of key themes and topics that must be addressed to improve the regulatory process and promote better, more consistent management outcomes. While the Article draws on examples from frontier areas—in particular the U.S. Arctic Ocean—the recommended changes would apply to and benefit all areas of the OCS

Evolutionary Inference via the Poisson Indel Process

We address the problem of the joint statistical inference of phylogenetic trees and multiple sequence alignments from unaligned molecular sequences. This problem is generally formulated in terms of string-valued evolutionary processes along the branches of a phylogenetic tree. The classical evolutionary process, the TKF91 model, is a continuous-time Markov chain model comprised of insertion, deletion and substitution events. Unfortunately this model gives rise to an intractable computational problem---the computation of the marginal likelihood under the TKF91 model is exponential in the number of taxa. In this work, we present a new stochastic process, the Poisson Indel Process (PIP), in which the complexity of this computation is reduced to linear. The new model is closely related to the TKF91 model, differing only in its treatment of insertions, but the new model has a global characterization as a Poisson process on the phylogeny. Standard results for Poisson processes allow key computations to be decoupled, which yields the favorable computational profile of inference under the PIP model. We present illustrative experiments in which Bayesian inference under the PIP model is compared to separate inference of phylogenies and alignments.Comment: 33 pages, 6 figure

Variability in the Diatom Fragilaria floridana Hanna

Periphyton diatom collections from the South Branch Forked River, Ocean County, New Jersey, included a species which resembled Fragilaria floridana Hanna. Comparison of these specimens in the New Jersey samples with the original material of Hanna (1933) indicates that these specimens are indeed F. floridana. These are the first living specimens reported since Hanna\u27s original description from fossil diatomaceous material. Some ecological data are included

How do types of procedure affect the degree of politicization of European Constitutional Courts? : a comparative study of Germany, Bulgaria, and Portugal

Do different types of procedure affect the degree of politicization of constitutional courts in European democracies? We argue that they do and we find evidence that supports this assumption in our analysis of the German, Bulgarian and Portuguese courts. We show that two features of the types of procedure lead to a higher politicization of court decisions: lower legal requirements on the part of the applicants and broader opportunities for them to weaken political opponents. This kind of moderating effect appears equally for all groups of applicants

Examining the Learning-by-Teaching Process Through Concept Maps

While learning-by-teaching has been shown to be effective, research in the area lacks a standardization of measurement and manipulations. Meta-analytic evidence has shown that peer tutoring is an effective learning tool for tutors (Cohen, Kulik, & Kulik, 1982); however, these studies do not provide a way of differentiating the effects of explaining versus interacting with the tutees and answering their questions, thus forcing the tutors to identify their own knowledge gaps. Studies that have experimented with the learning-by-teaching method have found that simply preparing to teach can be more effective than other learning techniques, such as only reading or preparing to take a test. However, research has shown that teachers\u27 learning can be inhibited by failing to engage in metacognitive techniques, such as regulating their learning. Teachers also often fail to engage in deep processing of the material, such as analyzing connections and causal relationships and instead tend to summarize or memorize. Consequently, research has noted a need to examine the cognitive mechanisms that are occurring while teaching. Concept mapping can be a useful tool to encourage students to process material in deeper, more meaningful ways. This proposed research is an extension of a study by Fiorella and Mayer (2014) in which participants read an expository text on the Doppler effect and taught the material on video, which allows for an examination of learning-by-teaching without the social interaction that is present in tutoring. The results of this study provided evidence that the effects of learning-by-teaching are strongest when the teacher is also expecting to teach. Therefore, participants in the present study will be informed that they will be teaching. Incorporating concept maps after learning will allow for an examination of the cognitive processing that is taking place while preparing to teach. The present study will examine the main effects of both teaching and concept mapping, as well as the interaction between the two. Additionally, past research has shown that concept mapping tends to better benefit those with lower verbal ability, so the present research will control for this. Determining the mechanisms of the learning-by-teaching paradigm can have great implications for educational settings, as well as for workplace and professional training

Thermal conductance and noise of Majorana modes along interfaced ν=5/2\nu=5/2 fractional quantum Hall states

We study transport along interfaced edge segments of fractional quantum Hall states hosting non-Abelian Majorana modes. With an incoherent model approach, we compute, for edge segments based on Pfaffian, anti-Pfaffian, and particle-hole-Pfaffian topological orders, thermal conductances, voltage biased noise, and delta-$T$ noise. We determine how the thermal equilibration of edge modes impacts these observables and identify the temperature scalings of transitions between regimes of differently quantized thermal conductances. In combination with recent experimental data, we use our results to estimate thermal and charge equilibration lengths in real devices. We also propose an experimental setup which permits measuring several transport observables for interfaced fractional quantum Hall edges in a single device. It can, e.g., be used to rule out edge reconstruction effects. In this context, we further point out some subtleties in two-terminal thermal conductance measurements and how to remedy them. Our findings are consistent with recent experimental results pointing towards a particle-hole-Pfaffian topological order at filling $\nu=5/2$ in GaAs/AlGaAs, and provide further means to pin-point the edge structure at this filling and possibly also other exotic fractional quantum Hall states.Comment: 17+10 pages; 12+2 figures; Updated Sec. VII and Fig. 12. References adde

Institutional interests and the politics of constitutional amendment

Institutional interests are often the main determinant of day-to-day politics. However, do they also matter in the more consensus-oriented field of constitutional politics? To answer this question, this article examines the success and failure of constitutional amendment drafts. We reassess a hypothesis proposed by Donald S. Lutz more than 20 years ago, according to which the initiator of an amendment is a significant determinant of its success, that is, of its passing or not passing. This study is based on a unique dataset of successful and failed constitutional amendments, covering 18 post-socialist countries in Central and Eastern Europe (1990–2014). We demonstrate that the chances of success for a given constitutional amendment are clearly driven by institutional interests: cabinet and presidential proposals have significantly higher chances of success than parliamentary and public initiatives. Additionally, success or failure also depend on the level of democracy and the rigidity of the amendment process.Peer Reviewe

Interview with Michael Reardon

Dr. Michael Reardon discusses his career at Portland State from his start as an Assistant Professor in the Department of History in 1964 through his many administrative roles to his eventual service as Interim President of the University from 2007 to 2008. A transcript of this interview is available for download.https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/rememberpsu_oralhist/1001/thumbnail.jp