Tahoe’s Requiem: The Death of the Scalian View of Property and Justice

In this article, I argue that from 1992 (when the Lucas case was decided) and for almost ten years thereafter, what I call the Scalian view of property and justice dominated Supreme Court jurisprudence. Under this vision, property provides a concrete, objectively knowable, and immutable legal barrier which marks the line between protected individual interests and the exercise of collective power. If government transgresses this line, the individual is almost always deemed to have been wronged. And compensation is required, as a matter of justice, under the Takings Clause. I argue that with the Court\u27s decisions in Palazzolo and Tahoe in 2001 and 2002, the Scalian view collapsed. No longer would the fact of individual loss - even significant individual loss - necessarily compel the conclusion that a wrong has occurred, or drive an award of compensation home. And no longer would justice, in takings, be seen in only compensatory terms. Although the collapse of the Scalian view might be seen as an abrupt or startling turn, I argue that it is, in fact, a very predictable product of the Court\u27s prior taking jurisprudence. Neither the Scalian view\u27s idea of property, nor its conception of justice, could be sustained as the Court\u27s understanding of the range of potential takings expanded and the complexity of property conflicts grew. Indeed, the very ideas that form the core of the Scalian view served to doom it, from the outset, as a viable juridical principle. Thus, I argue that the collapse of the Scalian view is an entirely inevitable outcome. I also argue that it is an entirely welcome outcome, in our effort to reassert sensible notions of takings and justice

Property as Constitutional Myth: Utilities and Dangers

The ability to perform everyday life occupations is a critical component in both evaluation and intervention for persons with mental retardation (MR). While the ability to perform personal and instrumental activities of daily living (ADL) has always been important for occupational therapy (OT) practice, there is an absence in OT literature and research with a focus on ADL and persons with MR. The overall aim of this thesis was to evaluate the validity of the Assessment of Motor and Process Skills (AMPS) for evaluation and intervention of ADL ability for persons with MR. In order to evaluate the evidence of validity of the AMPS ability measures based on relation to level of MR, two groups of participants with MR were evaluated with the AMPS (,#=22; #= 39). The results indicated expected moderate relationships between ADL motor and ADL process ability measures and level of MR, despite different methods used for evaluating level of MR. The results also indicated that the results of the AMPS evaluation could be used to directly describe and measure the consequences in performance of ADL tasks for persons with different levels of MR. The evidence of validity of the AMPS was further examined in a study including participants with different types of developmental disabilities (e.g., MR, cerebral palsy, spina bifida) (#=1724). An application of many-faceted Rasch analysis was used to examine goodness-of-fit of the responses for the tasks, skill items, and participants included in the study. All tasks and all items except one demonstrated acceptable goodness-of-fit to the model on the ADL motor and ADL process scales. An expected proportion of participants demonstrated acceptable goodness-of-fit on the ADL motor scale. On the ADL process scale, a slightly lower proportion of participants than expected demonstrated acceptable goodness-of-fit. The results indicated further that persons with more severe levels of MR and persons with more limited ADL process abilities demonstrated different response patterns across tasks and possibly items. The evidence of validity of the internal structure of the AMPS scales was also evaluated between persons with mild and moderate MR (#=178; #=170). Group specific ADL motor and ADL process skill item hierarchies were generated using many-faceted Rasch analyses and compared. The hierarchies of ADL motor and ADL process skill items remained stable across groups, indicating evidence of validity of the AMPS scales when used to evaluate persons with MR. The results also indicated that although participants with moderate MR demonstrated overall lower mean ADL motor and ADL process ability, they did perform some specific ADL motor and ADL process skills at a similar level as persons with mild MR. Finally, the utility of the AMPS ability measures for detecting change were examined in an intervention study including three female participants with moderate MR. The study was based on a single case design and evaluated the effectiveness of a structured occupational therapy intervention program. Improvements were found for the participants in relation to the implementation of the program, but the pattern of changes were different between the participants and across the dependent variables. ADL process ability was the only variable that improved across all participants. The results supported the ADL process abilities as sensitive measures for detecting changes in ADL ability of persons with MR. In conclusion, the results of these studies contribute to the evidence of validity of the AMPS ability measures and scales, specifically in relation to the evaluation of persons with MR. The finding that an OT program resulted in improved ADL process ability also suggest that the results of the AMPS can be used to plan as well as evaluate outcomes of OT practice. Further research is also suggested in order to improve validity evidence and utility of the AMPS when used with persons with MR.Diss. (sammanfattning) Umeå : Umeå universitet, 2003</p

MHD Disc Winds and Linewidth Distributions

We study AGN emission line profiles combining an improved version of the accretion disc-wind model of Murray & Chiang with the magneto-hydrodynamic model of Emmering et al. We show how the shape, broadening and shift of the C IV line depend not only on the viewing angle to the object but also on the wind launching angle, especially for small launching angles. We have compared the dispersions in our model C IV linewidth distributions to observational upper limit on that dispersion, considering both smooth and clumpy torus models. As the torus half-opening angle (measured from the polar axis) increases above about 18? degrees, increasingly larger wind launching angles are required to match the observational constraints. Above a half-opening angle of about 47? degrees, no wind launch angle (within the maximum allowed by the MHD solutions) can match the observations. Considering a model that replaces the torus by a warped disc yields the same constraints obtained with the two other models

Programmes at the turning point. Challenges, activities and developments for partner regions : September 2003-March 2004

This paper looks at structural funds programmes and a range of issues relating to the mid-term of the programmes, with the completion of the mid-term evaluations, the development of proposals for allocating the performance reserve and the mid term review

Opportunistic infection as a cause of transient viremia in chronically infected HIV patients under treatment with HAART

When highly active antiretroviral therapy is administered for long periods of time to HIV-1 infected patients, most patients achieve viral loads that are ``undetectable'' by standard assay (i.e., HIV-1 RNA $< 50$ copies/ml). Yet despite exhibiting sustained viral loads below the level of detection, a number of these patients experience unexplained episodes of transient viremia or viral "blips". We propose here that transient activation of the immune system by opportunistic infection may explain these episodes of viremia. Indeed, immune activation by opportunistic infection may spur HIV replication, replenish viral reservoirs and contribute to accelerated disease progression. In order to investigate the effects of concurrent infection on chronically infected HIV patients under treatment with highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), we extend a simple dynamic model of the effects of vaccination on HIV infection [Jones and Perelson, JAIDS 31:369-377, 2002] to include growing pathogens. We then propose a more realistic model for immune cell expansion in the presence of pathogen, and include this in a set of competing models that allow low baseline viral loads in the presence of drug treatment. Programmed expansion of immune cells upon exposure to antigen is a feature not previously included in HIV models, and one that is especially important to consider when simulating an immune response to opportunistic infection. Using these models we show that viral blips with realistic duration and amplitude can be generated by concurrent infections in HAART treated patients.Comment: 30 pages, 9 figures, 1 table. Submitted to Bulletin of Mathematical Biolog

How Is Convergent Mobility Consistent with Rising Inequality? A Reconciliation in the Case of Argentina

[Excerpt] This is a paper on earnings mobility in Argentina during the macroeconomic growth and contractions that have characterized that nation’s economy from 1996 to the present. Since 1996, real GDP growth has fluctuated widely. For most of the 1990s, Argentina was seen as a model of successful policymaking. Having pegged its exchange rate to the dollar under a currency board type arrangement in 1991, Argentina had succeeded in ending hyperinflation, reducing inflation rates to single-digit levels. Greater economic stability attracted foreign investment inflows, contributing to an acceleration in economic growth; indeed, even as lenders withdrew their financing in East Asia in 1997, capital inflows continued to Argentina. Then, Argentina entered into a prolonged recession. The combination of the hard peg of the local currency to the U.S. dollar and excessive borrowing led to an unsustainable fiscal situation and, ultimately, to the collapse of the economy at the end of 2001 (See Figure 1). Gross Domestic Product fell by 13.5 percent from the second quarter of 2001 to the second quarter of 2002, and the share of the population in poverty reached 58 percent in October 2002, versus 38 percent in October 2001, according to the official moderate poverty line. This paper addresses the distributional consequences of these macroeconomic events. (Note: Here and throughout the paper, “distribution of income” means the entire density or cumulative distribution function; it does not mean “inequality.”) Who benefited the most from Argentine economic growth? Who lost the most in economic decline? Are those who started rich getting richer in growth periods and losing more in recessionary periods, or is it the other way around? Are the answers to these questions the same for all measures of initial advantage