Defining Breach of the Peace in Self-Help Repossessions

Since Roman times, creditors have invoked the limited extrajudicial remedy of self-help repossession. Pre-colonial English laws also allowed for a limited repossession remedy outside of the courts, provided the creditor accomplished the repossession without a “breach of the peace.” The Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) has allowed for the self-help remedy since the 1950s, making it available for any secured party in the event of contractual default so long as there was no breach of the peace. The drafters of the UCC, however, failed to define what constituted a “breach of the peace,” choosing to allow the courts to flesh out the definition in a fact specific, ex post fashion. This has resulted in a lack of clarity and consistency across jurisdictions as each court attempts to craft a breach of the peace requirement without guidance from the UCC. This Comment argues that courts across the country should adopt a two-part test for determining whether a breach of the peace occurred during self-help repossession. The two-part test involves three per se rules of exclusion followed by consideration of two factors to reach a final decision

Kant on Negative Quantities, Real Opposition and Inertia

Kant's obscure essay entitled An Attempt to Introduce the Concept of Negative Quantities into Philosophy has received virtually no attention in the Kant literature. The essay has been in English translation for over twenty years, though not widely available. In his original 1983 translation, Gordon Treash argues that the Negative Quantities essay should be understood as part of an ongoing response to the philosophy of Christian Wolff. Like Hoffmann and Crusius before him, the Kant of 1763 is at odds with the Leibnizian-Wolffian tradition of deductive metaphysics. He joins his predecessors in rejecting the assumption that the law of contradiction alone can provide proof of the principle of sufficient reason: In his rejection of the possibility of deducing all philosophic truth from the law of contradiction, however, and in the clear recognition that this impossibility has immediate consequences for defense of the law of sufficient reason, Kant's work most definitely and positively constitutes a line of succession from Hoffmann and Crusius (Treash, 1983, p. 25). The recognition that Kant's Negative Quantities essay is part of a response to the tradition of deductive metaphysics is, without a doubt, an important contribution to the Kant literature. However, there is still more to be said about this neglected essay. The full significance of the paper becomes known through its ties to a second, empiricist line of succession. Clues to this second line of succession can be found in Kant's prefatory remarks concerning Euler's 1748 Reflections on Space and Time and Crusius' 1749 Guidance in the Orderly and Careful Consideration of Natural Events. As I will show, these prefatory remarks suggest a reading of Kant's Negative Quantities paper that reaches beyond German deductive metaphysics to engage a debate regarding the application of mathematics in philosophy initiated by George Berkeley

Components of retail change in central London

Central London contains one of the most important shopping centres in the world. The principal shopping streets of the west End and Knightsbridge are the core of this centre. The purpose of the study is to investigate patterns of retail change in these streets in the period from 1976 to 1985. A range of quantitative and qualitative data are gathered and analysed in order to describe and explain the patterns of locational change. The three main components of retail change examined are political, economic and social influences. Each of these are discussed in terms of how their principal elements play a part in helping to shape trading patterns in the study area. Specific consideration is given to Oxford Street since this acts as the focus of retail activity in central London. Finally, an attempt is made to model some of the most important aspects of retail change that emerge from the study. The study indicates a retail environment that is characterised by considerable and rapid change. These changes exhibit few elements of regularity or consistency through both space and time. This is a function of the complex range of factors that are responsible for producing this dynamic and unique retail system. Thus, the research identifies changes that have taken place in trading patterns in the principal shopping streets of the West End and Knightsbridge in the period form 1976 to 1985, identifies the factors responsible for producing these changes, and develops an understanding of the ways in which these factors bring their influence to bear

Practice Resurrection: Urban Planning, the Right to the City, and Transformative Social Justice

Social justice movements organize against contemporary conditions of oppression and domination. Today’s movements often target neoliberalism as an agent of both economic and cultural marginalization, citing environmental degradation, increasing wealth disparities in the information/service economy, and destruction of community-based institutions in the name of capital accumulation. One such example is the right to the city, both an intellectual idea and organizing framework for social action. The right to the city utilizes a Marxist framework to argue that cities are part of capitalist processes of production and, thus, space can and must be a site of intervention in the service of social justice. This thesis argues that the right to the city literature and organizing practices effectively implement critiques of both capitalism and neoliberalism, enabling material gains for the urban dispossessed, as well as structural critiques. However, the right to the city literature largely fails to make explicit the connection between colonialism and capitalism in producing both urban space and social narratives. Both organizers and academics within the right to the city largely neglect the relationship between the contemporary city and Indigenous resistance and sovereignty movements, though they often operationalize a decolonial analysis by critiquing the discourse of subjugation of the Other. This thesis argues that the lack of an explicit connection between colonialism and capitalism limits the radical potential of the right to the city movement. Think tanks have proven to be an effective means for generating and disseminating narrative and influencing the contemporary political landscape through individual and social consciousness. Therefore, this thesis argues that social justice funders should behave more like think tanks than foundations in part by facilitating a convergence on the question of the relationship between decolonization and consciousness in order to further advance the radical vision of contemporary social justice movements, of which the right to the city is one example. â€

Impact of established clubs on probability of survival in top leagues

Football leagues across the world apply the European promotion-relegation model, where the best teams in the highest-ranking minor league are promoted to the major league from which the worst teams are relegated to the former. This paper proposes a simple statistical model that calculates the probability of non-established clubs avoiding relegation, by assuming the existence of a cohort of established clubs, which rarely if ever are relegated. It uses three data items (i.e. total number of clubs, number of established clubs and number of clubs relegated). It is the number of established clubs which is critical, rather than which clubs should be so categorised. For illustrative purposes the model was applied to the English Football Premier League (EFPL) for its first twenty-one seasons. It was found that the means of the model and the observed distributions for the key EFPL cohorts of seven and eleven established clubs were not significantly different statistically, suggesting that the model reasonably reflects the observed distribution for each size of established group. Also, the probability of a (non-established) club surviving eight seasons, assuming no established clubs, was 600% greater than if there were a cohort of eleven established EFPL clubs. This demonstrates that the projected probability of survival will be greatly overestimated unless a cohort of established clubs is assumed. Any football club in such a major league, particularly one that is newly promoted, can use this statistical model to calculate the probability of avoiding relegation and thereby generate a more sensitive assessment of risk

CHARACTER EDUCATION AS THE PRIMARY PURPOSE OF SCHOOLING FOR THE FUTURE

This analysis seeks to examine the history and development of moral/character education in America during the 20th century providing structure for the character education movement in today’s educational context. The common denominator and key to character education for the future is community. The concept of community connects the three aforementioned themes and provides a roadmap for better implementation of character education. Careful consideration is given to the interaction and contributions of the school and society in terms of promoting and developing character education. Though there is generous support from politicians, educators, and parents, character education is still somewhat mired by its lack of scope. This examination proposes that current character education proponents can find new frameworks for implementation by observing the history of character education