Rethinking Presidential Eligibility

Many aspiring American Presidents have had their candidacies challenged for failing to meet the Constitution’s eligibility requirements. Although none of these challenges have ever been successful, they have sapped campaigns of valuable resources and posed a threat to several ambitious men. This Article examines several notable presidential eligibility challenges and explains why they have often been unsuccessful. The literature on presidential eligibility traditionally has focused on the Eligibility Clause, which enumerates the age, residency, and citizenship requirements that a President must satisfy before taking office. By contrast, very little of it examines how a challenge to one’s candidacy impacts a presidential campaign. This Article seeks to fill this gap. It also offers a modest proposal: Congress should pass legislation defining exactly who is eligible to be President and also implement procedural rules that would expedite presidential eligibility cases for review to the Supreme Court

Our Campaign Finance Nationalism

Campaign finance is the one area of election law that is most difficult to square with federalism. While voting has a strong federalism component—elections are run by the states and our elected officials represent concrete geographical districts—our campaign finance system, which is rooted in the First Amendment, almost entirely sidesteps the boundaries of American federalism. In so doing, our campaign finance system creates a tenuous connection between a lawmaker’s constituents, or the people who elect him, and the contributors who provide the majority of his campaign cash. The recent explosion of outside spending in American elections by wealthy individuals and Super PACs has further eroded the relationship between campaign finance and election law federalism. Indeed, today the restrictions placed on campaign finance are not federal at all, but rather national: only foreign nationals cannot make contributions or expenditures to influence federal, state, or local elections in the United States. However, these restrictions barring foreign nationals from participating in our elections suffer from several doctrinal inconsistencies, and, as the 2016 election showed, they are also hard to police in practice. This Article explores the relationship between our election law federalism and our campaign finance nationalism. It explains the difficulties that the states and the federal government have encountered when they have tried to regulate campaign finance at the border by restricting how outside money is spent to influence our elections

Mechanical Unfolding of a Simple Model Protein Goes Beyond the Reach of One-Dimensional Descriptions

We study the mechanical unfolding of a simple model protein. The Langevin dynamics results are analyzed using Markov-model methods which allow to describe completely the configurational space of the system. Using transition path theory we also provide a quantitative description of the unfolding pathways followed by the system. Our study shows a complex dynamical scenario. In particular, we see that the usual one-dimensional picture: free-energy vs end-to-end distance representation, gives a misleading description of the process. Unfolding can occur following different pathways and configurations which seem to play a central role in one-dimensional pictures are not the intermediate states of the unfolding dynamics.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure

Campaign Finance and the Ecology of Democratic Speech

Biologists have contributed to our understanding of the world\u27s ecosystems, explaining how the natural world is populated by different species, which are able to thrive and blossom because of the existence of other species in the rightproportion. In similar fashion, the authors of this article believe that the political world has an ecosystem. It is an ecosystem where free speech may thrive or wither, and its fate rests on the delicate balance of political influence between citizens and corporations. This balance is disturbed when concentrations of wealth funnel into the democratic process through campaign spending. The Supreme Court, through its decisions in several recent campaign finance cases, has impermissiblyaltered ourpoliticalecosystem in favor of corporatespeech in ways that now threaten free speech. This state of affairs, the authors argue, is antithetical to the history of the First and Fourteenth Amendments and holds grave consequences for our democracy\u27s future

Biased random walks on complex networks: the role of local navigation rules

We study the biased random walk process in random uncorrelated networks with arbitrary degree distributions. In our model, the bias is defined by the preferential transition probability, which, in recent years, has been commonly used to study efficiency of different routing protocols in communication networks. We derive exact expressions for the stationary occupation probability, and for the mean transit time between two nodes. The effect of the cyclic search on transit times is also explored. Results presented in this paper give the basis for theoretical treatment of the transport-related problems on complex networks, including quantitative estimation of the critical value of the packet generation rate.Comment: 5 pages (Phys. Rev style), 3 Figure

Equilibrium properties of a Josephson junction ladder with screening effects

In this paper we calculate the ground state phase diagram of a Josephson Junction ladder when screening field effects are taken into account. We study the ground state configuration as a function of the external field, the penetration depth and the anisotropy of the ladder, using different approximations to the calculation of the induced fields. A series of tongues, characterized by the vortex density $\omega$, is obtained. The vortex density of the ground state, as a function of the external field, is a Devil's staircase, with a plateau for every rational value of $\omega$. The width of each of these steps depends strongly on the approximation made when calculating the inductance effect: if the self-inductance matrix is considered, the $\omega=0$ phase tends to occupy all the diagram as the penetration depth decreases. If, instead, the whole inductance matrix is considered, the width of any step tends to a non-zero value in the limit of very low penetration depth. We have also analyzed the stability of some simple metastable phases: screening fields are shown to enlarge their stability range.Comment: 16 pp, RevTex. Figures available upon request at [email protected] To be published in Physical Review B (01-Dec-96

Quantum chaos in an ultrastrongly coupled bosonic junction

The semiclassical and quantum dynamics of two ultrastrongly coupled nonlinear resonators cannot be explained using the discrete nonlinear Schrödinger equation or the Bose-Hubbard model, respectively. Instead, a model beyond the rotating wave approximation must be studied. In the semiclassical limit this model is not integrable and becomes chaotic for a finite window of parameters. For the quantum dimer we find corresponding regions of stability and chaos. The more striking consequence for both semiclassical and quantum chaos is that the tunneling time between the sites becomes unpredictable. These results, including the transition to chaos, can be tested in experiments with superconducting microwave resonators

Vivienda y estructura del hogar en la provincia de Sevilla. Un análisis desde la perspectiva de género

Las necesidades de vivienda derivadas de los factores demográficos se forman esencialmente en torno a los procesos de creación y disolución de hogares. Los nuevos hogares se constituyen fundamentalmente como resultado de la creación de nuevos núcleos familiares, por emancipación de individuos aislados o por la reforma de los existentes. En este sentido, la ruptura del concepto de familia tradicional y el desarrollo de hogares monoparentales con la mujer como cabeza de familia o mediante la conformación de hogares unipersonales, juega un papel fundamental en la nueva estructura de hogares, cuya importancia cobra diferente protagonismo en función del grado de metropolización de las ciudades y su mayor o menor arraigo a una cultura urbana o rural. En la presente comunicación se pretende llevar a cabo un análisis estadístico-territorial de la dinámica de hogares en los municipios de la provincia de Sevilla, haciendo especial énfasis en el protagonismo de la mujer en el proceso de independencia y desarrollo de esos nuevos hogares. Se analizarán las dinámicas comunes de comportamiento según las comarcas de la provincia de Sevilla y se revisarán las medidas públicas actuales que favorecen el acceso a la vivienda a las mujeres en función a su rango de edad