The ambivalent shadow of the pre-Wilsonian rise of international law

The generation of American international lawyers who founded the American Society of International Law in 1906 and nurtured the soil for what has been retrospectively called a “moralistic legalistic approach to international relations” remains little studied. A survey of the rise of international legal literature in the U.S. from the mid-19th century to the eve of the Great War serves as a backdrop to the examination of the boosting effect on international law of the Spanish American War in 1898. An examination of the Insular Cases before the US Supreme Court is then accompanied by the analysis of a number of influential factors behind the pre-war rise of international law in the U.S. The work concludes with an examination of the rise of natural law doctrines in international law during the interwar period and the critiques addressed.by the realist founders of the field of “international relations” to the “moralistic legalistic approach to international relation

Application of Market Models to Network Equilibrium Problems

We present a general two-side market model with divisible commodities and price functions of participants. A general existence result on unbounded sets is obtained from its variational inequality re-formulation. We describe an extension of the network flow equilibrium problem with elastic demands and a new equilibrium type model for resource allocation problems in wireless communication networks, which appear to be particular cases of the general market model. This enables us to obtain new existence results for these models as some adjustments of that for the market model. Under certain additional conditions the general market model can be reduced to a decomposable optimization problem where the goal function is the sum of two functions and one of them is convex separable, whereas the feasible set is the corresponding Cartesian product. We discuss some versions of the partial linearization method, which can be applied to these network equilibrium problems.Comment: 18 pages, 3 table

Auctor in Fabula: Umberto Eco and the Intentio of Foucault\u27s Pendulum

Umberto Eco’s 1988 novel Foucault’s Pendulum weaves together a wide range of philosophical and literary threads. Many of these threads find their other ends in Eco’s nonfiction works, which focus primarily on the question of interpretation and the source of meaning. The novel, which follows three distinctly overinterpretive characters as they descend into ruin, has been read by some as a retraction or parody of Eco’s own position. However, if Foucault’s Pendulum is indeed polemical, it must be taken as an argument against the mindset which Eco has termed the “hermetic”. Through an examination of his larger theoretical body, including its themes and intellectual heritage, it will be seen that Eco preserves his philosophical consistency across his fictive and non-fictive work

Between Physicality and Symbolism: Kyiv as a Contested Territory in Russian and Ukrainian Émigré Letters, 1920–1939

The paper deals with visions of Kyiv in the writings of Russian and Ukrainian émigré writers during the interwar period. The city became a focal point of intensive intellectual debate whose participants regarded Kyiv not only as a place of a recent battleground but also as a sacral place and a highly symbolic image. Within the methodological framework of ethnic symbolism, this study attempts to explain how this physical/symbolic dichotomy was used to reinforce continuing claims for historical origin and cultural heritage, thus serving the contemporary purpose of national identity and political legitimacy. It also deploys the concept of displacement as a complex process of negotiation between homeland and hostland within an émigré community — whose sense of loss and identity crisis creates additional impetus, though in different forms, for exploiting historical narratives

Transit-Oriented Brownfield Redevelopment

Best Poster Award, Department of Economics, Fall 2019Brownfield properties are properties wherein future use is inhibited either by the presence or perceived presence of harmful pollutants. As a consequence, these properties are difficult to develop and prospective developers require sufficient positive incentives in order to be attracted to these projects. To investigate the extent to which public transit can act as an amenity for these properties, this study examines the relationship between commuter rail transit stations and brownfield property redevelopment rates in Mecklenburg County, NC using both a linear probability model and a propensity score matching approach. The analysis results indicate that there is indeed a relationship between light rail and brownfield redevelopment, but the direction of the relationship depends on the analysis technique used.No embargoAcademic Major: Economic