Introducing Jus ante Bellum as a cosmopolitan approach to humanitarian intervention

Cosmopolitans often argue that the international community has a humanitarian responsibility to intervene militarily in order to protect vulnerable individuals from violent threats and to pursue the establishment of a condition of cosmopolitan justice based on the notion of a ‘global rule of law’. The purpose of this article is to argue that many of these cosmopolitan claims are incomplete and untenable on cosmopolitan grounds because they ignore the systemic and chronic structural factors that underwrite the root causes of these humanitarian threats. By way of examining cosmopolitan arguments for humanitarian military intervention and how systemic problems are further ignored in iterations of the Responsibility to Protect, this article suggests that many contemporary cosmopolitan arguments are guilty of focusing too narrowly on justifying a responsibility to respond to the symptoms of crisis versus demanding a similarly robust justification for a responsibility to alleviate persistent structural causes. Although this article recognizes that immediate principles of humanitarian intervention will, at times, be necessary, the article seeks to draw attention to what we are calling principles of Jus ante Bellum (right before war) and to stress that current cosmopolitan arguments about humanitarian intervention will remain insufficient without the incorporation of robust principles of distributive global justice that can provide secure foundations for a more thoroughgoing cosmopolitan condition of public right

Between history and values: A study on the nature of interpretation in international law

My thesis discusses the place of evaluative judgements in the interpretation of general international law. It concentrates on two questions. First, whether it is possible to interpret international legal practices without making an evaluative judgement about the point or value that provides the best justification of these practices. Second, whether the use of evaluative judgements in international legal interpretation threatens to undermine the objectivity of international law, the neutrality of international lawyers or the consensual and voluntary basis of the international legal system. I answer both questions in the negative. As regards the first, I argue that international legal practice has an interpretive structure, which combines appeals to the history of international practice with appeals to the principles and values that these practices are best understood as promoting. This interpretive structure is apparent not only in the claims of international lawyers about particular rules of international law (here I use the rule of estoppel as an example) but also in the most basic intuitions of international theorists about the theory and sources of general international law. I then argue that some popular concerns to the effect that the exercise of evaluation in the interpretation of international law will undermine the coherence or the usefulness of the discipline are generally unwarranted. The fact that international legal practice has an interpretive structure does not entail that propositions of international law are only subjectively true, that the interpreter enjoys license to manipulate their meaning for self-serving purposes, or that international law will collapse under the weight of irresolvable disagreements, divisions and conflicts about its proper interpretation

Animal Product Labeling and Animal Welfare

The farmer and consumer benefits of animal product labeling and their association with animal welfareFall 201

Overexpression of YAP1 induces immortalization of normal human keratinocytes by blocking clonal evolution.

YAP1 is a transcriptional co-activator able to bind several transcription factors. YAP1 was termed a candidate oncogene after it was shown to be in human chromosome 11q22 amplicon; besides the genomic amplification, several experiments indicated that it has oncogenic function. However, YAP1 was also reported to be a tumor suppressor as its gene locus is deleted in some breast cancers. To clarify the role of this protein in the physiology of rapidly renewal cells, we investigated YAP1 in human keratinocytes. Here, we show that YAP1 overexpression in primary human keratinocytes blocks clonal evolution and induces cell immortalization, but not malignant transformation. YAP1 overexpression led to an increase in cell proliferation, colony forming efficiency and holoclone percentage. Cells escaped from senescence, immortalized but still remained unable to grow in soft agar or express mesenchymal markers, suggesting that YAP1 overexpression is not sufficient to promote a complete epithelial-mesenchymal transition and tumorigenic transformation. Protein analysis showed an increase in epithelial proliferation markers and a decrease in epithelial differentiation markers. The expression of LEKTI, a late differentiation marker, dramatically dropped to undetectable levels. Taken together, these data suggest that YAP1-overexpressing keratinocytes are maintained in the proliferative compartment

Expression and function of thyroid specific genes in human skin.

Patients affected by autoimmune thyroid diseases (AITD) are characterized by several alterations of skin function. Although skin is considered a target tissue for thyroid hormones (TH), very little is known on the molecular mechanisms involved in cutaneous manifestations during AITD. Recent data show the presence of the transcripts for the thyroid specific genes TSH receptor (TSH-R) and thyroglobulin (Tg) in immortalized keratinocytes and melanoma cells. This finding suggests that during AITD the skin could be a target of autoantibodies directed against thyroid specific antigens. To get insight into the expression and function of thyroid specific genes in skin cells, in the present study we analyzed the expression of TSH-R, Tg, sodium iodide symporter (NIS) and thyroperoxidase (TPO) genes in primary cultures of normal human keratinocytes and dermal fibroblasts by quantitative RT-PCR, in comparison with that of normal human thyrocytes (NHT). The results revealed the presence of TSH-R, Tg and NIS transcripts in both human keratinocytes and fibroblasts, while TPO mRNA was found only in keratinocytes. Immunohistochemical analysis of human healthy skin specimens confirmed the presence of TSH-R and Tg protein in keratinocytes and dermal fibroblasts. Cultured normal human keratinocytes and dermal fibroblasts were then treated with TSH (10 UI/ml) for 72 h and the effect on cell proliferation evaluated by BrdU incorporation. The results indicated the ability of TSH to significantly increase proliferation in both cell types. Moreover, TSH treatment for 2 h induced a significant increase in intracellular cAMP levels. However, differently from its action on thyrocytes, TSH did not stimulate the expression or the secretion of Tg in cultured keratinocytes and dermal fibroblasts. In conclusion, our data demonstrate that keratinocytes and fibroblasts express thyroid specific genes which may be involved in the pathogenesis of skin alterations during AITD