\u3ci\u3eBostock\u3c/i\u3e was Bogus: Textualism, Pluralism, and Title VII

In Bostock v. Clayton County, one of the blockbuster cases from its 2019 Term, the Supreme Court held that federal antidiscrimination law prohibits employment discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. Unsurprisingly, the result won wide acclaim in the mainstream legal and popular media. Results aside, however, the reaction to Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion, which purported to ground the outcome in a textualist approach to statutory interpretation, was more mixed. The great majority of commentators, both liberal and conservative, praised Gorsuch for what they deemed a careful and sophisticated—even “magnificent” and “exemplary”—application of textualist principles, while a handful of critics, all conservative, agreed with the dissenters that textualism could not deliver the outcome that the decision reached. This Essay shows that conservative critics of the majority’s reasoning were correct—up to a point. Specifically, it argues that Title VII’s ban on discrimination “because of” an employee’s “sex” does not cover discrimination because of their sexual orientation as a matter of “plain” or “ordinary” meaning. Further, it demonstrates that Gorsuch’s effort to establish that result as a matter of “legal” meaning wholly fails because it depends upon a fatally flawed application of the “but-for” test for causation, one that flouts bedrock principles of counterfactual reasoning. It follows that if a textualist approach to statutory interpretation is correct or warranted, then Bostock was wrongly decided. However, if Bostock was rightly decided, then it must follow that textualism is wrong or misguided. This Essay endorses the latter possibility, explaining that the dominant American approach to statutory interpretation is neither textualist nor purposivist but pluralist. It concludes by drawing powerful but previously unnoticed support for pluralism from Justice Samuel Alito’s principal dissent

Bostock Was Bogus: Textualism, Pluralism, and Title VII

In Bostock v. Clayton County, one of the blockbuster cases from its 2019 Term, the Supreme Court held that federal antidiscrimination law prohibits employment discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. Unsurprisingly, the result won wide acclaim in the mainstream legal and popular media. Results aside, however, the reaction to Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion, which purported to ground the outcome in a textualist approach to statutory interpretation, was more mixed. The great majority of commentators, both liberal and conservative, praised Justice Gorsuch for what they deemed a careful and sophisticated—even “magnificent” and “exemplary”—application of textualist principles, while a handful of critics, all conservative, agreed with the dissenters that textualism could not deliver the outcome that the decision reached. This Article shows that conservative critics of the majority’s reasoning were correct—up to a point. Specifically, it argues that Title VII’s ban on discrimination “because of” an employee’s “sex” does not cover discrimination because of their sexual orientation as a matter of “plain” or “ordinary” meaning. Further, it demonstrates that Justice Gorsuch’s effort to establish that result as a matter of “legal” meaning wholly fails because it depends upon a fatally flawed application of the “but-for” test for causation, one that flouts bedrock principles of counterfactual reasoning. It follows that if a textualist approach to statutory interpretation is correct or warranted, then Bostock was wrongly decided. However, if Bostock was rightly decided, then it must follow that textualism is wrong or misguided. This Article endorses the latter possibility, explaining that the dominant American approach to statutory interpretation is neither textualist nor purposivist but pluralist. It concludes by drawing powerful but previously unnoticed support for pluralism from Justice Samuel Alito’s principal dissent

Information methods for predicting risk and outcome of stroke

Stroke is a major cause of disability and mortality in most economically developed countries. It is the second leading cause of death worldwide (after cancer and heart disease) [55.1, 2] and a major cause of disability in adults in developed countries [55.3]. Personalized modeling is an emerging effective computational approach, which has been applied to various disciplines, such as in personalized drug design, ecology, business, and crime prevention; it has recently become more prominent in biomedical applications. Biomedical data on stroke risk factors and prognostic data are available in a large volume, but the data are complex and often difficult to apply to a specific person. Individualizing stroke risk prediction and prognosis will allow patients to focus on risk factors specific to them, thereby reducing their stroke risk and managing stroke outcomes more effectively. This chapter reviews various methods–conventional statistical methods and computational intelligent modeling methods for predicting risk and outcome of stroke

Optical characterisation of germanium optical fibres

Semiconductor core optical fibres are currently generating great interest as they promise to be a platform for the seamless incorporation of optoelectronic functionality into a new generation of all-fibre networks [1,2]. Although recent attentions have primarily focused on silicon as the material of choice for semiconductor photonics applications, germanium has some advantages over its counterpart. For example, it has higher nonlinearity, extended infrared transparency and has recently been demonstrated as a direct band gap laser medium [3]. Here we present the first optical characterisation of a germanium core optical fibre. The fibre was fabricated using a chemical micro fluidic deposition process [1] that uses GeH4 (germane) as a precursor to deposit amorphous germanium into the hole of a silica capillary. Figure 1 (a) shows an optical microscope image of the polished end face of a germanium fibre, with a 5.6 µm core diameter, which has been completely filled with the semiconductor material. Optical transmission measurements have been conducted over the wavelength range 2 µm to 11 µm, to confirm the broad mid-infrared operational window, and the guided output at 2.4 µm, imaged using a Spiricon Pyrocam III pyroelectric array camera, is shown in Figure 1 (b). At this wavelength the optical loss has been measured to be 20 dB/cm, which is comparable to losses measured for amorphous silicon fibres in the infrared. The potential for these germanium optical fibres to be used as optical modulators and infrared detectors will be discussed

Jury Nullification in Abortion Prosecutions: An Equilibrium Theory

The Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade. Doing so, it has rescinded recognition of a fundamental constitutional right for the first time in nearly a century. Even before Roe\u27s demise, multiple states enacted laws to criminalize abortion once the abortion right was gone. More states will surely follow soon. Calls to action have gone out to those who can protect women\u27s rights: the President, Congress, left­leaning state governments, and more. We add another call - to jurors. Jurors - and sometimes judges - have the power to refuse to convict factually guilty defendants in criminal prosecutions when they believe that conviction would be unjust. This power is called nullification We argue here that nullification may have an important role to play in blunting the force of the most extreme anti-abortion laws. Historically, nullification has been a weak tool for counteracting overzealous criminalization. But abortion might be different. Unlike almost all other criminal prohibitions, broad criminal bans on abortion are extremely unpopular. 90% of\u27 Americans believe that abortion should be legal in at least some cases. Thus, we argue, nullification may be a much more significant force here than elsewhere. We analyze the upstream equilibrium effects of nullification, arguing that it will deter prosecutors from bringing the most extreme charges. There is precedent for this: as criminal marijuana prohibitions grew steadily more unpopular, .federal marijuana prosecutions fell dramatically. We suggest that the threat of nullification was responsible and that the same effect may be obtained in the abortion context

A Search for Photometric Rotation Periods in Low-Mass Stars and Brown Dwarfs in the Pleiades

We have photometrically monitored (Cousins Ic) eight low mass stars and brown dwarfs which are probable members of the Pleiades. We derived rotation periods for two of the stars - HHJ409 and CFHT-PL8 - to be 0.258 d and 0.401 d, respectively. The masses of these stars are near 0.4 and 0.08 Msun, respectively; the latter is the second such object near the hydrogen-burning boundary for which a rotation period has been measured. We also observed HHJ409 in V; the relative amplitude in the two bands shows that the spots in that star are about 200 K cooler than the stellar effective temperature of 3560 K and have a filling factor on the order of 13%. With one possible exception, the remaining stars in the sample do not show photometric variations larger than the mean error of measurement. We also examined the M9.5V disk star 2MASSJ0149, which had previously exhibited a strong flare event, but did not detect any photometric variation.Comment: 13 pages, four figures. Accepted for publication in A

Potential of wastewater grown algae for biodiesel production and CO2 sequestration

Algae have been proposed as a potential renewable fuel source. Photosynthetic CO2 fixation to substrates that can be converted to biodiesel by microalgae is thought to be a feasible technology with energy-saving and environment-friendly approach. In the present study, potential of microalgae, from wastewater stabilization pond, as a feedstock for biodiesel production and CO2 sequestration was evaluated. Mixed algae sample showed the highest CO2 fixation rate, followed by Chlorella sp., Scenedesmus incrassatulus, Scenedesmus dimorphus and Chroococcus cohaerens (2.807, 1.627, 1.501, 1.270 and 0.786 g L-1 d-1, respectively). Nile red stain was used for detection of lipid in microalgal sample which was further extracted and analysed by gas chromatography (GC). The main fatty acids present in the mixed algae sample were fatty acids with C14–C18 (>98%) that are generated after natural CO2 sequestration. At ambient CO2 concentration, total fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) mainly comprised of myristic acid (C14:0), 0.0718%; palmitic acid (C16:0), 2.558%; octadecenoic acid (C18:1), 28.98% and linoleic acid (C18:2), 12.54% which makes the microalgal biomass a suitable feedstock for biodiesel production and CO2 mitigation.Keywords: Biodiesel, carbon dioxide fixation, fatty acid profile, microalgae, wastewater stabilization pondAfrican Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 12(20), pp. 2939-294

Kepler Cycle 1 Observations of Low Mass Stars: New Eclipsing Binaries, Single Star Rotation Rates, and the Nature and Frequency of Starspots

We have analyzed Kepler light curves for 849 stars with T_eff < 5200 K from our Cycle 1 Guest Observer program. We identify six new eclipsing binaries, one of which has an orbital period of 29.91 d, and two of which are probably W UMa variables. In addition, we identify a candidate "warm Jupiter" exoplanet. We further examine a subset of 670 sources for variability. Of these objects, 265 stars clearly show periodic variability that we assign to rotation of the low-mass star. At the photometric precision level provided by Kepler, 251 of our objects showed no evidence for variability. We were unable to determine periods for 154 variable objects. We find that 79% of stars with T_eff < 5200 K are variable. The rotation periods we derive for the periodic variables span the range 0.31 < P_rot < 126.5 d. A considerable number of stars with rotation periods similar to the solar value show activity levels that are 100 times higher than the Sun. This is consistent with results for solar-like field stars. As has been found in previous studies, stars with shorter rotation periods generally exhibit larger modulations. This trend flattens beyond P_rot = 25 d, demonstrating that even long period binaries may still have components with high levels of activity and investigating whether the masses and radii of the stellar components in these systems are consistent with stellar models could remain problematic. Surprisingly, our modeling of the light curves suggests that the active regions on these cool stars are either preferentially located near the rotational poles, or that there are two spot groups located at lower latitudes, but in opposing hemispheres.Comment: 48 pages, 11 figure

Rotational velocities of low-mass stars in the Pleiades and Hyades

We have obtained high-resolution spectra of 89 M dwarf members of the Pleiades and Hyades and have derived radial velocities, H-alpha equivalent widths, and spectroscopic rotational velocities for these stars. Typical masses of the newly-observed Pleiades and Hyades stars are ~ 0.4 M_{\sun} and ~ 0.2 M_{\sun}, respectively. We combine our new observations with previously published data to explore the rotational evolution of young stars with M < 0.4 M_\sun. The average rotation rate in the Hyades (age 600 Myr) is about 0.4 that of the Pleiades (110 Myr), and the mean equivalent widths of H-alpha are also lower. As found in previous studies, the correlation between rotation and chromospheric activity is identical in both clusters, implying that the lower activity in the Hyades is a result of the lower rotation rates. We show that a simple scaling of the Pleiades rotational distribution for M \leq 0.4 M_{\sun}, corrected for the effects of structural evolution, matches that of the Hyades if the average angular momentum loss from the Pleiades to the Hyades age is factor of \approx 6. This suggests that the distribution of initial angular momenta and disk-locking lifetimes for the lowest mass stars was similar in both clusters. We argue that this result provides further evidence for a saturation of the angular momentum loss rate at high rotational velocities.Comment: 22 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal, tentatively scheduled for March 200

Simultaneous Multi-Wavelength Observations of Magnetic Activity in Ultracool Dwarfs. III. X-ray, Radio, and H-alpha Activity Trends in M and L Dwarfs

[Abridged] As part of our on-going investigation into the magnetic field properties of ultracool dwarfs, we present simultaneous radio, X-ray, and H-alpha observations of three M9.5-L2.5 dwarfs (BRI0021-0214, LSR060230.4+391059, and 2MASSJ052338.2-140302). We do not detect X-ray or radio emission from any of the three sources, despite previous detections of radio emission from BRI0021 and 2M0523-14. Steady and variable H-alpha emission are detected from 2M0523-14 and BRI0021, respectively, while no H-alpha emission is detected from LSR0602+39. Overall, our survey of nine M8-L5 dwarfs doubles the number of ultracool dwarfs observed in X-rays, and triples the number of L dwarfs, providing in addition the deepest limits to date, log(L_X/L_bol)<-5. With this larger sample we find the first clear evidence for a substantial reduction in X-ray activity, by about two orders of magnitude, from mid-M to mid-L dwarfs. We find that the decline in both X-rays and H-alpha roughly follows L_{X,Halpha}/L_bol ~ 10^[-0.4x(SP-M6)] for SP>M6. In the radio band, however, the luminosity remains relatively unchanged from M0 to L4, leading to a substantial increase in L_rad/L_bol. Our survey also provides the first comprehensive set of simultaneous radio/X-ray/H-alpha observations of ultracool dwarfs, and reveals a clear breakdown of the radio/X-ray correlation beyond spectral type M7, evolving smoothly from L_{\nu,rad}/L_X ~ 10^-15.5 to ~10^-11.5 Hz^-1 over the narrow spectral type range M7-M9. This breakdown reflects the substantial reduction in X-ray activity beyond M7, but its physical origin remains unclear since, as evidenced by the uniform radio emission, there is no drop in the field dissipation and particle acceleration efficiency.Comment: Submitted to ApJ; 19 pages, 10 figures, 5 table