NIEMEYER ON LAW WITHOUT FORCE

Whereas Lauterpacht tried to determine the function of law in the international community, Niemeyer investigates the function of politics in international law. His book is on politics, but it is theoretical in its treatment and not political. The book not only represents an ambitious work, but is certainly interesting and stimulating. As to his ideas, Niemeyer derives from Herman Heller, to whom the book is dedicated. Heller\u27s theory of the States is not a legal, but a sociological, a functional theory of the modern, occidental State as it developed since the Renaissance, a theory which stands halfway between Kelsen\u27s pure theory of law and Carl Schmitt\u27s pure theory of power. Heller\u27s starting-point is the nonexistence of isolated individuals, independent of social relationships. The social-political world is dialectically formed, a living thing and, therefore, a contradictory reality of human behavior. The task of his theory is to analyze the particular reality of the modern State, to understand it in its present structure and function. His theory, opposed to aprioristic norms of natural law, is not a theory for theory\u27s sake. It is motivated by practical ends. His method is that of a cultural science of reality, his object of investigation the State as Gestalt, as a real structure, active in the social-historical world. All social reality is individual and collective effect in indissoluble dialectic unity. Heller conceives the State neither in an atomistic sense as a mechanism, composed of individuals, nor as an organism, but as organization. The State does not consist of men, but of human performances. The genus proximum of the State is organization, the differentia specifica, as compared with all other organizations, is its independent and supreme organization and activization of territorial social cooperation, and its justification lies in the fact that it represents the organization necessary for securing the law at a certain stage of evolution. While force is not an essential quality of law, the modern State has a State monopoly of legal physical force. That is why the summit of the organization represents the limit for securing the law by organizational coercion

NEUTRALITY AND THE EUROPEAN WAR 1939-1940

Obviously it is still impossible and will be impossible for some time to make a definitive legal research into the problem of neutrality during the present European war. Most important facts and documents are still unpublished, inaccessible or shrouded in the fog of contradictions and propaganda. The duration and the outcome of the war are still uncertain and nobody can foresee what type of world will emerge from this war and what the future of neutrality in this type of world will be

Bat Eyes Have Ultraviolet-Sensitive Cone Photoreceptors

Mammalian retinae have rod photoreceptors for night vision and cone photoreceptors for daylight and colour vision. For colour discrimination, most mammals possess two cone populations with two visual pigments (opsins) that have absorption maxima at short wavelengths (blue or ultraviolet light) and long wavelengths (green or red light). Microchiropteran bats, which use echolocation to navigate and forage in complete darkness, have long been considered to have pure rod retinae. Here we use opsin immunohistochemistry to show that two phyllostomid microbats, Glossophaga soricina and Carollia perspicillata, possess a significant population of cones and express two cone opsins, a shortwave-sensitive (S) opsin and a longwave-sensitive (L) opsin. A substantial population of cones expresses S opsin exclusively, whereas the other cones mostly coexpress L and S opsin. S opsin gene analysis suggests ultraviolet (UV, wavelengths <400 nm) sensitivity, and corneal electroretinogram recordings reveal an elevated sensitivity to UV light which is mediated by an S cone visual pigment. Therefore bats have retained the ancestral UV tuning of the S cone pigment. We conclude that bats have the prerequisite for daylight vision, dichromatic colour vision, and UV vision. For bats, the UV-sensitive cones may be advantageous for visual orientation at twilight, predator avoidance, and detection of UV-reflecting flowers for those that feed on nectar