Constitutional limits and the public sphere: A critical study of Bentham's legal and constitutional theory

This thesis is a reconstruction of Jeremy Bentham's legal and constitutional theory. It is based on a close reading of Bentham's unpublished and newly published texts, as well as on a re-reading of his better known works. It is argued that an analysis of constitutionally limited government formed a central theme of Bentham's theoretical arguments, whilst the establishment of a constitutionally limited government, based on representative democracy, was a major practical concern for him. The theme of constitutional limits brings together many of Bentham's specific preoccupations during his lifetime. Scholarship in legal, constitutional, and political theory, has hitherto failed to establish a unified conception of Bentham's thought. The main argument of this thesis is that, for Bentham, constitutional limits were socially dynamic in nature. These limits were determined and effectuated by a popular collective judgement with regard to the imposition of obligations within a given community. The people themselves demarcated the extent to which centralised coercion might be exercised. A popular collective judgement also signified a change in the locus of obligations from centralised institutions to the community. It is argued that the connection between constitutional limits and the public sphere constituted the common, unifying rationale of Bentham's legal and political enterprise. Constitutional limits were established as a result of an interaction between, on the one hand, officials, who were responsible for enacting a system of legislation and rules, and, on the other hand, the people, who passed judgement on the activities of these officials. This interaction determined the social justification, and hence the limits, of authority in any social group. The limits of authority, in turn, determined the sphere of individual inviolability. The relationship between constitutional limits and the public sphere is discussed in relation to Bentham's ideas about sovereignty, the duty to obey the law, and the dichotomy between legislation and private ethics. The connections which are established and defended between constitutional limits and private ethics, as well as between private ethics and communal consensus formation, are novel for legal and political theory in general, and for Bentham scholarship in particular. The idea of constitutional limits is, moreover, discussed in the context of the potential evolution of communities. In this context, constitutional limits are conceived as a medium through which a community might evolve from being a community of law into what Bentham called a "community of sympathy", the latter being largely based on self-government

Rewiring Host Lipid Metabolism by Large Viruses Determines the Fate of Emiliania huxleyi

Marine viruses are major ecological and evolutionary drivers of microbial food webs regulating the fate of carbon in the ocean. We combined transcriptomic and metabolomic analyses to explore the cellular pathways mediating the interaction between the bloom-forming coccolithophore Emiliania huxleyi and its specific coccolithoviruses (E. huxleyi virus [EhV]). We show that EhV induces profound transcriptome remodeling targeted toward fatty acid synthesis to support viral assembly. A metabolic shift toward production of viral-derived sphingolipids was detected during infection and coincided with downregulation of host de novo sphingolipid genes and induction of the viral-encoded homologous pathway. The depletion of host-specific sterols during lytic infection and their detection in purified virions revealed their novel role in viral life cycle. We identify an essential function of the mevalonate-isoprenoid branch of sterol biosynthesis during infection and propose its downregulation as an antiviral mechanism. We demonstrate how viral replication depends on the hijacking of host lipid metabolism during the chemical “arms race” in the ocean

The One-State as a Demand of International Law: Jus Cogens

This article provides the initial contours of an argument that uses International Law to challenge the validity of Israeli apartheid. It challenges the conventional discourse of legal debates on Israel’s actions and bordersand seeks to link the illegalities of these actions to the validity of an inbuilt Israeli apartheid. The argument also connects the deontological doctrine of peremptory norms of International Law (jus cogens), the right of self-determination and the International Crime of Apartheid to the doctrine of state recognition. It applies these to the State of Israel and the vision of a single democratic state in historic Palestine

Enhanced production yields of rVSV-SARS-CoV-2 vaccine using Fibra-Cel® macrocarriers

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to high global demand for vaccines to safeguard public health. To that end, our institute has developed a recombinant viral vector vaccine utilizing a modified vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) construct, wherein the G protein of VSV is replaced with the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 (rVSV-ΔG-spike). Previous studies have demonstrated the production of a VSV-based vaccine in Vero cells adsorbed on Cytodex 1 microcarriers or in suspension. However, the titers were limited by both the carrier surface area and shear forces. Here, we describe the development of a bioprocess for rVSV-ΔG-spike production in serum-free Vero cells using porous Fibra-Cel® macrocarriers in fixed-bed BioBLU®320 5p bioreactors, leading to high-end titers. We identified core factors that significantly improved virus production, such as the kinetics of virus production, the use of macrospargers for oxygen supply, and medium replenishment. Implementing these parameters, among others, in a series of GMP production processes improved the titer yields by at least two orders of magnitude (2e9 PFU/mL) over previously reported values. The developed process was highly effective, repeatable, and robust, creating potent and genetically stable vaccine viruses and introducing new opportunities for application in other viral vaccine platforms

Occupied minds: philosophical reflections on Zionism, anti-Zionism and the Jewish prison

This article employs philosophical existentialism to argue that anti-Zionism as currently configured avoid's existential pathologies of political Zionism?–?pathologies that pertain to Jewish being and thinking. Such anti-Zionism, whether advocated by secular or orthodox Jews, is complicit with the preservation of the same existential denial that imprisons the minds of Zionists?–?denial that has the collective stake of preserving these pathologies. The truncated discourses of anti-Semitism and ‘Jewish self-hatred’ are examined and critiqued. The article also calls for a bold assessment and reconfiguration of anti-Zionism and its transformation into a genuine and effective ethical discourse that can challenge and liberate current Jewish mental imprisonment

The one-state as a demand of international law: Jus Cogens, challenging apartheid and the legal validity of Israel

This article provides the initial contours of an argument that uses International Law to challenge the validity of Israeli apartheid. It challenges the conventional discourse of legal debates on Israel’s actions and bordersand seeks to link the illegalities of these actions to the validity of an inbuilt Israeli apartheid. The argument also connects the deontological doctrine of peremptory norms of International Law (jus cogens), the right of self-determination and the International Crime of Apartheid to the doctrine of state recognition. It applies these to the State of Israel and the vision of a single democratic state in historic Palestine

Challenging core immorality in Palestine: philosophical reflections on the anti-apartheid struggle and the current "boycott of Israel" debate.

This article explores the complexities involved in calling for a boycott to be imposed on Israel. It distinguishes core immorality that justifies boycotting a state and indirect reasons for a boycott. The core Apartheid immorality in Palestine -encapsulated in the notion of a Jewish state - is argued to be inequality of stake in the political community. This core immorality is the past, present and future operative cause of multi-layered, and temporally related, manifestations of immorality, namely occupation, dispossession and discrimination. Not only a boycott that is phrased too narrowly, but also a sincere but socially premature boycott can entrench core immorality. Inspired by John Rawls's political philosophy, but also seeking to extend his vision, the argument here defends an analogy between civil disobedience and a boycott. Both rely on the likelihood of success in bringing about social and moral transformation. This transformative potential is canvassed in relation to Israel. If there were no Jewish majority there would be no Jewish state. Inequality should be proportional - not more than necessary. Proportionality changes with greater danger to the public ... In every state there are minorities. The constitution protects minority rights. If [Israeli Arabs] finds this..

The gravity of steering, the grace of gliding and the primordiality of presencing place: reflections on truthfulness, worlding, seeing, saying and showing in practical reasoning and law

This article reflects on the received view of the rupture which constitutes the beginning of a critical, ethical, political and legal opening, the understanding of which inhabits the cry of, and response to, injustice. It takes the very critique that feeds into, and is distorted by, practical reasoning, as its point of departure. Grasping this rupture as the complementary relation between deconstruction and radical alterity, would entail unreflectively accepting a certain kind of truthfulness—truthfulness as [in]correctness, manifesting in a relationship that involves rootless and controlling movement of making and unmaking of world. In closely reading Wittgenstein and Heidegger on the level of seeing, showing and saying, truthfulness is shown to contain an essential tension between, on the one hand, the Socratic, metaphysically-bound notion of beingness, correctness and meaning-steering and, on the other hand, the pre-Socratic notion of unconcealment (a-lethia), which, pointing even earlier than pre-Socratics into aboriginality, involves attentive letting of gliding in the inexpressible saying of language. While steering is about generating new possibilities of expressibility, gliding is about poetic dwelling, or enduring inexpressibility as a constitutive part of saying. Although aletheia is taken to be the key influence on rootless post-foundational thinking, it is argued that unconcealment involves letting and enduring the presencing inexpressibility of place and home-coming, that is, worlding-rootedness; thus showing Heidegger’s originary politics as the district of the uncanny to be about worlding that attentively lets the presencing inexpressibility of earth be as place. In reading Heidegger’s views on humanism, beginning and language, the argument links inexpressibility—essentially and historically—to the grasping of the belongingness together of world, earth and place, viewing this belongingness as key to both the saying of art and of mortals dwelling together temporally, spatially, materially in a manner always strange to, and nearer than, the steering/controlling of beingness, time, space and place that the very gesture and emergence of critique is captive of and is not capable of attuning to and capturing. Art always estranges the metaphysical cycle of correctness which preserves pain and suffering—a cycle that inhabits a double bind of responding to violence and injustice generated by the violence of metaphysics with metaphysical violence and justice. In showing essential strife within truthfulness itself, Heidegger points to even greater and earlier problematic than the pre-Socratics—to the painful core of inexpressibility between the ontology of steering time, spaces and material—steering places—and the gliding temporality, spatiality and materiality of ontology of plac