Recovering Classical Legal Constitutionalism: A Critique of Professor Vermeule\u27s New Theory

This Review proceeds in three Parts. Part I briefly summarizes Common Good Constitutionalism and provides a more detailed description of four of the book’s distinctive features. Part II critiques Vermeule’s argument in light of the classical tradition’s four essential aspects of law, namely that it is an ordinance of reason, for the common good, made by one who has care of the community, and promulgated. Part III draws on those reflections to respond to Vermeule’s criticisms of work like ours that argues that original-law-based understandings of the Constitution are at home in the classical legal tradition. A Conclusion briefly reflects on the choices facing the classical natural lawyer in the American constitutional order going forward

Enduring Originalism

If our law requires originalism in constitutional interpretation, then that would be a good reason to be an originalist. This insight animates what many have begun to call the positive turn in originalism. Defenses of originalism in this vein are positive in that they are based on the status of the Constitution, and constitutional law, as positive law. This approach shifts focus away from abstract conceptual or normative arguments about interpretation and focuses instead on how we actually understand and apply the Constitution as law. On these grounds, originalism rests on a factual claim about the content of our law: that we regard the framers\u27 law, and any other further lawful changes, as our law today. If we do not, originalism is not the law and perhaps should be abandoned in favor of what is. The Article proceeds as follows. Part I outlines the positive turn in originalism, one of the most important and promising developments in originalist theory in recent years. After noting the approach\u27s benefits, we offer jurisprudential objections to its foundations. Part II explains how the positive turn\u27s appealing form of originalism is better grounded in a broader understanding of the moral point of constitutions. Far from being a musty, sectarian artifact, the classical natural law tradition of reasoning about positive law\u27s moral purpose animated the framers\u27 understanding of our Constitution and provides the most persuasive reason for continued adherence to that original law today. Part III addresses the difficulties that today\u27s nonoriginalist practices present to one normatively committed to original law, while also explaining why the appeal of originalism endures in the face of those challenges

Voluntary Intoxication as a Mitigating Circumstance during the Death Penalty Sentencing Phase: A Proposal for Reform Comment.

When the State of Texas seeks the death penalty against a defendant, the trial court conducts a sentencing proceeding under Article 37.071 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure. This proceeding determines whether the defendant will receive the death penalty. During deliberation, the jury must consider all mitigating evidence. The defendant may claim his voluntary intoxication as a mitigating factor. Under Tex. Pen. Code § 8.04(b), the court instructs the jury to consider evidence of voluntary intoxication only if it rendered the defendant temporarily insane. Although Article 37.071 calls upon juries to consider “all” mitigating evidence, a Section 8.04 instruction actually impairs the jury’s prerogative to consider non-insane intoxication. By restricting a jury’s ability to hear relevant evidence of non-insane intoxication, Section 8.04 undermines the fairness of the current sentencing scheme, produces inconsistent results, and is not consistently available. The unpredictable applications of Section 8.04(b) in these two cases illustrate the uncertainty capital defendants face in determining whether and how courts will instruct the jury during the sentencing phase regarding the mitigating factor of voluntary intoxication. Critics of Section 8.04(b) assert Texas has virtually removed the role of voluntary intoxication as mitigation for sentencing purposes. The Eighth Amendment requires the court to allow the defendant to present relevant mitigating evidence. Texas appears to comply with this mandate; yet, Section 8.04(b) requires jury instructions stating they cannot consider this evidence unless it rises to the level of temporary insanity. Article 37.071 is not curative of the limiting effects of Section 8.04(b); thus, the Texas intoxication statute unconstitutionally restricts the sentencer in a capital trial from considering relevant mitigating evidence. This restriction has the potential of resulting in erroneous verdicts and a deprivation of justice. The long-term fairness of the Texas death penalty scheme depends upon reform

2002 John Marshall National Moot Court Competition in Information Technology and Privacy Law: Bench Memorandum, 21 J. Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 37 (2002)

In this moot court competition bench memo, the Supreme Court the state of Marshall has three issues to decide: (1) whether the Court of Appeals erred in holding that the Plaintiff failed to established the requisite elements to evidence a theory of intrusion upon seclusion as defined by the Restatement of Torts; (2) whether the Court of Appeals erred in holding that the Defendant’s statements to third parties were not defamatory but rather opinions or fair comment; and (3) whether the Court of Appeals erred in applying a strict breach of contract analysis to Plaintiff’s claim for deceptive business practices, pursuant to the State of Marshall’s Deceptive Business Practices statute, Marshall Revised Code, 505 MRC 815/2, and holding that the Defendant had no contractual obligation to inform Plaintiff that it employed GPS technology to track its vehicles. Plaintiff was a 21-year-old college sophomore in Capitol City who contacted the defendant in order to rent a rental truck for three days as a local move. He was a student who is receiving an academic scholarship in this college. He was asked to provide information such as name and address when he rented the truck. The rental agreement stated that he would depart with the truck on August 20 and return August 23. The move took longer than anticipated and, as a result, plaintiff parked the rental truck on the night of August 23 in a parking lot in a mall which has a convenience store, a cleaner and an adult bookstore. He attempted to return the truck on August 24 after the closing, so he left the key in the after-hour box before returning to school. In the meantime, defendant received a notice from its corporate office that there is a possible terrorist threat where its rental trucks might be used to carry explosive to Capitol City. Defendant immediately turned on the GPS system tracking the trucks and found plaintiff\u27s rented one parked in front of an adult bookstore. Defendant then contacted plaintiff\u27s reference, who happened to evaluate plaintiff\u27s scholarship eligibility, informing the connection of possible terrorist threat and the location of the truck. Consequently, upon plaintiff\u27s arrival on campus, plaintiff was informed that his scholarship was revoked and he needed to pay more for his rental truck. As a result, plaintiff filed this three count complaint against defendant

The very large G-protein coupled receptor VLGR1: a component of the ankle link complex required for the normal development of auditory hair bundles

Sensory hair bundles in the inner ear are composed of stereocilia that can be interconnected by a variety of different link types, including tip links, horizontal top connectors, shaft connectors, and ankle links. The ankle link antigen is an epitope specifically associated with ankle links and the calycal processes of photoreceptors in chicks. Mass spectrometry and immunoblotting were used to identify this antigen as the avian ortholog of the very large G-protein-coupled receptor VLGR1, the product of the Usher syndrome USH2C (Mass1) locus. Like ankle links, Vlgr1 is expressed transiently around the base of developing hair bundles in mice. Ankle links fail to form in the cochleae of mice carrying a targeted mutation in Vlgr1 (Vlgr1/del7TM), and the bundles become disorganized just after birth. FM1-43 [N-(3-triethylammonium)propyl)-4-(4-(dibutylamino)styryl) pyridinium dibromide] dye loading and whole-cell recordings indicate mechanotransduction is impaired in cochlear, but not vestibular, hair cells of early postnatal Vlgr1/del7TM mutant mice. Auditory brainstem recordings and distortion product measurements indicate that these mice are severely deaf by the third week of life. Hair cells from the basal half of the cochlea are lost in 2-month-old Vlgr1/del7TM mice, and retinal function is mildly abnormal in aged mutants. Our results indicate that Vlgr1 is required for formation of the ankle link complex and the normal development of cochlear hair bundles

Species, sources, seasonality, and sustainability of fuelwood commercialization in Masaya, Nicaragua

Abstract The structure of the fuelwood supply chain and the impacts of urban residential fuelwood consumption on forests in Nicaragua are little known. To characterize the nature of fuelwood movements toward residential centers, we examined the fuelwood inventories and movements in the largest fuelwood market, in Masaya, during the peak of the rainy season, in October 1999, and again at the peak of the dry season, in May 2000. We found a stressed fuelwood supply that depended greatly upon natural forests. There was a diverse (64 tree taxa from 28 families) and strongly seasonally variable taxonomic composition of the supply of fuelwood. Greater volumes concentrated in fewer taxa (63,648 kg per 5-day period, with 58.9% in three species) were sold to vendors in the dry season than in the rainy season (12,921 kg per 5-day period with 24.6% among the same three species). The proportion of fuelwood derived from natural forests increased from one-third of the market sales during the rainy season to one-half in the dry season; virtually none of the fuelwood was derived from plantation forestry. We recommend a fuelwood supply management strategy based on incentives to farm owners for supplying managed fuelwood and increased vigilance to limit forest destruction for fuelwood production.

WHOI Hawaii Ocean Timeseries Station (WHOTS) : WHOTS-2 mooring turnaround cruise report

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Hawaii Ocean Timeseries (HOT) Site (WHOTS), 100 km north of Oahu, Hawaii, is intended to provide long-term, high-quality air-sea fluxes as a coordinated part of the HOT program and contribute to the goals of observing heat, fresh water and chemical fluxes at a site representative of the oligotrophic North Pacific Ocean. This report documents recovery of the WHOTS-1 mooring, deployed in August 2004 near 22.75°N, 158°W, and deployment of the WHOTS-2 mooring at the same site. Both moorings were outfitted with Air-Sea Interaction Meteorology (ASIMET) systems to measure, record, and transmit the surface meteorological variables necessary to compute air-sea fluxes of heat, moisture and momentum. In cooperation with R. Lukas of the University of Hawaii, the upper 155 m of the moorings were outfitted with oceanographic sensors for the measurement of temperature, conductivity and velocity. The WHOTS mooring turnaround was done on the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Ship Melville, Cruise TUIM-10MV. The cruise took place between 23 and 30 July 2005.Funding was provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under Grant No. NA17RJ1223 and the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Ocean Research (CICOR)

Chiropteran types I and II interferon genes inferred from genome sequencing traces by a statistical gene-family assembler

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The rate of emergence of human pathogens is steadily increasing; most of these novel agents originate in wildlife. Bats, remarkably, are the natural reservoirs of many of the most pathogenic viruses in humans. There are two bat genome projects currently underway, a circumstance that promises to speed the discovery host factors important in the coevolution of bats with their viruses. These genomes, however, are not yet assembled and one of them will provide only low coverage, making the inference of most genes of immunological interest error-prone. Many more wildlife genome projects are underway and intend to provide only shallow coverage.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We have developed a statistical method for the assembly of gene families from partial genomes. The method takes full advantage of the quality scores generated by base-calling software, incorporating them into a complete probabilistic error model, to overcome the limitation inherent in the inference of gene family members from partial sequence information. We validated the method by inferring the human IFNA genes from the genome trace archives, and used it to infer 61 type-I interferon genes, and single type-II interferon genes in the bats <it>Pteropus vampyrus </it>and <it>Myotis lucifugus</it>. We confirmed our inferences by direct cloning and sequencing of IFNA, IFNB, IFND, and IFNK in <it>P. vampyrus</it>, and by demonstrating transcription of some of the inferred genes by known interferon-inducing stimuli.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The statistical trace assembler described here provides a reliable method for extracting information from the many available and forthcoming partial or shallow genome sequencing projects, thereby facilitating the study of a wider variety of organisms with ecological and biomedical significance to humans than would otherwise be possible.</p

Developmental interneuron subtype deficits after targeted loss of Arx

Abstract Background Aristaless-related homeobox (ARX) is a paired-like homeodomain transcription factor that functions primarily as a transcriptional repressor and has been implicated in neocortical interneuron specification and migration. Given the role interneurons appear to play in numerous human conditions including those associated with ARX mutations, it is essential to understand the consequences of mutations in this gene on neocortical interneurons. Previous studies have examined the effect of germline loss of Arx, or targeted mutations in Arx, on interneuron development. We now present the effect of conditional loss of Arx on interneuron development. Results To further elucidate the role of Arx in forebrain development we performed a series of anatomical and developmental studies to determine the effect of conditional loss of Arx specifically from developing interneurons in the neocortex and hippocampus. Analysis and cell counts were performed from mouse brains using immunohistochemical and in situ hybridization assays at 4 times points across development. Our data indicate that early in development, instead of a loss of ventral precursors, there is a shift of these precursors to more ventral locations, a deficit that persists in the adult nervous system. The result of this developmental shift is a reduced number of interneurons (all subtypes) at early postnatal and later time periods. In addition, we find that X inactivation is stochastic, and occurs at the level of the neural progenitors. Conclusion These data provide further support that the role of Arx in interneuron development is to direct appropriate migration of ventral neuronal precursors into the dorsal cortex and that the loss of Arx results in a failure of interneurons to reach the cortex and thus a deficiency in interneurons.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/134595/1/12868_2016_Article_265.pd