Aurora: A Painting of the Coming Dawn

While collectors and scientists sought out the rarest and best preserved naturalia for their collections, others sought out and commissioned paintings and other forms of artifice to go beside them. One artist held in high regard during the era of curiosity cabinets was Guido Reni, artist of the famed ‘Aurora,’ a copy of which remains in the gallery today. Paintings like this one would have hung regally on the walls of curiosity cabinets, the beauty showing the potential of man, and the themes of nature and classics fitting right in with other pieces surrounding them. [excerpt

Faith-Based Emergency Powers

This Article explores an expanding phenomenon that it calls Faith-Based Emergency Powers. In the twenty-first century, conservatives have come to rely heavily on Faith-Based Emergency Powers as a legal strategy in the culture wars. This typically involves carving faith-based exceptions to rights of women and LGBT people. The novel concept of Faith-Based Emergency Powers is developed in this Article through an analogy to “traditional” emergency powers. In the war-on-terror, conservatives have argued that judges, legislators and the public must defer to the President and the executive branch in matters involving national security. As scholars have shown, this position has three key components: (1) a rhetoric of war, emergency or catastrophe; (2) a legal argument for suspension of existing human rights; and (3) a designation of decision-makers in real or perceived emergencies who are allegedly more qualified than courts or legislatures to address the national-security emergency. The consequence is temporary suspension of human rights in real or perceived national-security emergencies. The principal claim of this Article is that in contemporary culture wars, conservative politicians, lawmakers, and litigants have imported these emergency powers rationales to a range of legal contexts including marriage-equality, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and general antidiscrimination laws. For example, the Supreme Court has recently granted certiorari in the case of a Denver baker who refused to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple. In its 2017-2018 session the Court will decide whether an individual’s religious or moral objection to same-sex marriage trumps state public accommodations laws. In this case and in many others, the conservative position typically follows the rationales of traditional emergency powers in (1) applying rhetoric of war and emergency; (2) arguing for suspension of legal rights of women and sexual minorities and; (3) claiming deference to religious or moral dissenters. The end goal, as in the war-on-terror, is to suspend or diminish legally recognized individual rights. The Article concludes that lawmakers ought to defend the rule-of-law and individual rights by rejecting Faith-Based Emergency Powers

In the Shadow of a Myth: Bargaining for Same-Sex Divorce

This Article explores a relatively new phenomenon in family law: same-sex divorce. The Article\u27s central claim is that parties to the first wave of same-sex divorces are not effectively bargaining against the backdrop of legal dissolution rules that would govern in the absence of an agreement. In other words, to use Robert Mnookin and Lewis Kornhauser\u27s terminology, they are not bargaining in the shadow of the law. Instead, the Article argues, many same-sex couples today bargain in the shadow of a myth that same-sex couples are egalitarian—that there are no vulnerable parties or power differentials in same-sex divorce. The Article shows how a myth of egalitarianism undermines current bargaining for same-sex divorce. First, the myth leads to what the Article calls “divorce exceptionalism,” that is, when a party claims that existing marriage dissolution rules do not apply in same-sex divorce because they were designed to remedy the nonegalitarian conditions of different-sex marriages. Divorce exceptionalism disables effective bargaining because without default legal rules there is nothing to guide the bargaining process. Second, the myth of egalitarianism eliminates key bargaining chips: under a presumption of formal equality neither party really has anything to “give” or “get” in the bargain for divorce. Finally, the myth, combined with the general fog of uncertainty regarding how courts will treat same-sex divorces, may lead to increased strategic behavior. The Article proposes a realistic solution, arguing that the legal actors who participate in same-sex divorce, including lawyers, mediators, courts, and the parties themselves, should reject divorce exceptionalism and apply ordinary divorce rules. It also proposes to protect vulnerable parties by extending to same-sex divorce the current trend toward joint-custody presumptions. The myth of egalitarianism in same-sex couples, which was quite helpful in achieving marriage equality, is now haunting the first wave of same-sex divorces and harming vulnerable parties. It is time to let it go and address the reality of same-sex relationships

Thermodynamic aspects of rock friction

Rate- and state-dependent friction law for velocity-step tests is analyzed from a thermodynamic point of view. A simple macroscopic non-equilibrium thermodynamic model with a single internal variable reproduces instantaneous jump and relaxation. Velocity weakening appears as a consequence of a plasticity related nonlinear coefficient. Permanent part of displacement corresponds to plastic strain, and relaxation effects are analogous to creep in thermodynamic rheology.Comment: 13 pages 3 figures. Revision: thermodynamic compatibility of velocity weakenin

Bundling Equilibrium in Combinatorial auctions

This paper analyzes individually-rational ex post equilibrium in the VC (Vickrey-Clarke) combinatorial auctions. If $\Sigma$ is a family of bundles of goods, the organizer may restrict the participants by requiring them to submit their bids only for bundles in $\Sigma$. The $\Sigma$-VC combinatorial auctions (multi-good auctions) obtained in this way are known to be individually-rational truth-telling mechanisms. In contrast, this paper deals with non-restricted VC auctions, in which the buyers restrict themselves to bids on bundles in $\Sigma$, because it is rational for them to do so. That is, it may be that when the buyers report their valuation of the bundles in $\Sigma$, they are in an equilibrium. We fully characterize those $\Sigma$ that induce individually rational equilibrium in every VC auction, and we refer to the associated equilibrium as a bundling equilibrium. The number of bundles in $\Sigma$ represents the communication complexity of the equilibrium. A special case of bundling equilibrium is partition-based equilibrium, in which $\Sigma$ is a field, that is, it is generated by a partition. We analyze the tradeoff between communication complexity and economic efficiency of bundling equilibrium, focusing in particular on partition-based equilibrium