Tempering Power. How to think, and not to think, about the Rule of Law

The rule of law has been the beneficiary of many more stale words than fresh thoughts. And today its aura has dimmed. Yet it is hugely important to think well about, and I believe there are better ways. The critical jumping-off point of the argument is a critique of conventional legalistic approaches which, notwithstanding many differences that seem important to their authors, all have in common that they start with the wrong question; go on in the wrong way; and end in the wrong place, with a narrow, parochial lawyers’ answer to a universal social and political (as well as legal) problem. No wonder, as has been said of a good man, the rule of law is hard to find. I argue that if we start and go on differently, we will end closer to a destination worth visiting. That still won’t make the search for the rule of law a walk in the park. However, it might help us avoid being, time and again, mugged by reality. Rather than begin by trying to stipulate what the rule of law is, we should ask what it is for: what’s the point, why that point matters, and what would need to be achieved to make it. Only then can one ask what might be needed to do so. Answers will differ with contexts, times and circumstances. Typically, they will have to go beyond the usual suspects. So, start with the problem and move from there. The specific problem for the rule of law to solve, I contend with no pretence of originality, is arbitrary power. The character of any solution must be to temper (not just limit) power’s exercise to keep arbitrariness to a minimum. Then the question (the third question, not the first) is how to do that. That, almost certainly and everywhere, will depend on a lot more than conventional rule of law talk suggests. For the ideal of the rule of law is never a purely legal one, but always social and political as well. Solutions will differ, many will not involve, or will go beyond or underlie or stand beside law, and the stakes are high

The Rule of Law and Technocratisation

Contribution to a festschrfit for Martin Krygier; argues that the technocratisation of the rule of law has been a problem for the establishment of the global rule of law, but that taking a pluralist view of the norm & settng it in its proper historical context allows for a more postive view of the potenital for suport to local social actors to work in the domestic politics of of 'recipient' states to slowly build a thicker rule of la

Efecto de diferentes condiciones de tostado sobre el valor nutritivo y la estabilidad oxidativa de aceites de semillas de Brassica napus alto oleico y semillas amarillas

This study was conducted to evaluate the possibility of enhancing the nutritional value and oxidative stability of rapeseed oil obtained from seeds subjected to thermal treatment prior to pressing. The yellowseeded and high-oleic B. napus lines, harvested in Poland, were roasted prior to pressing for 1 h at 100 and 150 °C. This study highlighted how rapeseed breeding lines affect the quality profile of the oils obtained both before and after the roasting process. In principle, the high-oleic B. napus was accompanied by a nearly 2-fold increase in oxidative stability compared to the yellow-seeded B. napus, most likely due to a higher content of oxidation-resistant oleic fatty acids (~74.24% vs. ~60.76%) and a decreased concentration of oxidizable PUFAs (~16.32% vs. ~31.09%). Similar to the case of roasting black-seeded rapeseed, the thermal pre-treatment of yellow-seeded and high-oleic B. napus prior to pressing did not alter the composition of their fatty acids. Based on the results obtained in this study, it can be concluded that roasting seeds prior to pressing does not reduce the amount of tocopherols in the oil; moreover, a slight increase in γ-tocopherol content was observed.Este estudio se realizó para evaluar la posibilidad de aumentar el valor nutritivo y la estabilidad oxidativa del aceite de colza obtenido a partir de semillas sometidas a tratamiento térmico antes del prensado. Las líneas de B. napus sembrados amarillos y alto oleico, cosechadas en Polonia, fueron tostadas antes de ser prensadas durante 1 hora a 100 y 150 °C. Este estudio pone de relieve cómo las líneas de colza mejoradas ven afectado el perfil de calidad de los aceites obtenidos antes y después del proceso de tostado. En principio, el alto oleico B. napus aumenta casi 2 veces la estabilidad a la oxidación en comparación con semilla amarilla B. napus, muy probablemente debido a un mayor contenido de ácido graso oleico resistente a la oxidación (~74,24% vs. ~60,76%) y una concentración menor de PUFAs oxidables (~16,32% frente a ~31,09%). Similar al caso de tostar semillas de colza-negro, las semillas amarillas y las alto oleico de B. napus antes tratadas térmicamente antes del prensado no alteran su composición de ácidos grasos. También Basándonos en los resultados obtenidos en este estudio, se puede concluir que el tostado semillas antes del prensado no reduce la cantidad de tocoferol en aceite; Además, se observó ligero aumento en el contenido de γ-tocoferol

Selective Deuterium Ion Acceleration Using the Vulcan PW Laser

We report on the successful demonstration of selective acceleration of deuterium ions by target-normal sheath acceleration (TNSA) with a high-energy petawatt laser. TNSA typically produces a multi-species ion beam that originates from the intrinsic hydrocarbon and water vapor contaminants on the target surface. Using the method first developed by Morrison, et al.,$^{1}$ an ion beam with $>$99$\%$ deuterium ions and peak energy 14 MeV/nucleon is produced with a 200 J, 700 fs, $>10^{20} W/cm^{2}$ laser pulse by cryogenically freezing heavy water (D$_{2}$O) vapor onto the rear surface of the target prior to the shot. Within the range of our detectors (0-8.5$^{\circ}$), we find laser-to-deuterium-ion energy conversion efficiency of 4.3$\%$ above 0.7 MeV/nucleon while a conservative estimate of the total beam gives a conversion efficiency of 9.4$\%$.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

The Butcher-Oemler Effect at Moderate Redshift

We present the results of Butcher-Oemler-style analysis of three moderate- redshift (0.1<z<0.2) clusters which have bimodal X-ray surface brightness profiles. We find that at least two of these clusters exhibit unusually high fractions of blue galaxies as compared to clusters at comparable redshifts studied by Butcher and Oemler (1984). This implies that star formation is occurring in a high fraction of the galaxies in the two clusters. Our results are consistent with hierarchical clustering models in which subcluster- subcluster mergers create shocks in the intracluster medium. The shocks, in turn, induce simultaneous starbursts in a large fraction of cluster galaxies. Our study therefore lends weight to the hypothesis that the Butcher-Oemler effect is an environmental, as well as evolutionary, phenomenon.Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures; accepted for publication in A

Escaping the pushpin paradigm in geographic information science: (re)presenting national crime data

In 2011 the Home Office released the police.uk website, which provided a high-resolution map of recent crime data for the national extents of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Through this free service, crimes were represented as points plotted on top of a Google map, visible down to a street level of resolution. However, in order to maintain confidentiality and to comply with data disclosure legislation, individual-level crimes were aggregated into points that represented clusters of events that were located over a series of streets. However, with aggregation the representation of crimes as points becomes problematic, engendering spurious precision over where crimes occurred. Given obvious public sensitivity to such information, there are social imperatives for appropriate representation of crime data, and as such, in this paper we present a method of translating the ‘point’ crime events into a new representational form that is tied to street network geography; presenting these results in an alternate national crime mapping portal http://www.policestreets.co.u

Separated cross sections in \pi^0 electroproduction at threshold at Q^2 = 0.05 GeV^2/c^2

The differential cross sections \sigma_0=\sigma_T+\epsilon \sigma_L, \sigma_{LT}, and \sigma_{TT} of \pi^0 electroproduction from the proton were measured from threshold up to an additional center of mass energy of 40 MeV, at a value of the photon four-momentum transfer of Q^2= 0.05 GeV^2/c^2 and a center of mass angle of \theta=90^\circ. By an additional out-of-plane measurement with polarized electrons \sigma_{LT'} was determined. This showed for the first time the cusp effect above the \pi^+ threshold in the imaginary part of the s-wave. The predictions of Heavy Baryon Chiral Perturbation Theory are in disagreement with these data. On the other hand, the data are somewhat better predicted by the MAID phenomenological model and are in good agreement with the dynamical model DMT.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Characterisation of deuterium spectra from laser driven multi-species sources by employing differentially filtered image plate detectors in Thomson spectrometers

A novel method for characterising the full spectrum of deuteron ions emitted by laser driven multi-species ion sources is discussed. The procedure is based on using differential filtering over the detector of a Thompson parabola ion spectrometer, which enables discrimination of deuterium ions from heavier ion species with the same charge-to-mass ratio (such as C6+, O8+, etc.). Commonly used Fuji Image plates were used as detectors in the spectrometer, whose absolute response to deuterium ions over a wide range of energies was calibrated by using slotted CR-39 nuclear track detectors. A typical deuterium ion spectrum diagnosed in a recent experimental campaign is presented.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure