Creature of the state? : homeschooling, the law, human rights, and parental autonomy

The demarcation of authority between parents and the State regarding education of children has become an increasingly complex issue over the past three decades. During the same period the number of parents around the world choosing educational alternatives such as homeschooling has grown exponentially, causing significant legislative and jurisprudential shifts in the United States as well as other Western nations. If the State is responsible for education or has a significant interest therein, then it must have broad authority by which to prescribe the method, mechanism, and acceptable outcomes of education; it must also be able to review and enforce these desired outcomes. If parents, on the other hand, are responsible, then it is the State’s duty to defer to parents absent a compelling reason to interfere. A survey of the philosophical foundations from ancient to modern times demonstrates the tension between the State and parents in the realm of education; however, modern human rights norms contained in post-1945 international human rights documents provide explicit grounds on which the State must defer to parental choice in education

The Dark Plea: One of the Most Coercive Abuses of Power Permitted in the Criminal Justice System

Most prosecutions in our criminal justice system are resolved by defendants entering ostensibly knowing and intelligent guilty pleas—often following negotiations with the state—before trial. But during my time as a trial judge, I encountered a different type of guilty plea, procured by the state when an already convicted offender sought to clear his or her name through an application for a new trial based on newly discovered evidence. I believe the “Dark Pleas” secured in these circumstances are one of the greatest abuses of power permitted in the criminal justice process. This article sets down in writing a speech I give to law students, legal practitioners, and citizens throughout the state of Ohio, seeking to lift the veil on a practice that few realize even exists. I begin by explaining how these guilty pleas arise in the post-conviction phase of the criminal process. Then, using examples I have encountered through my service as trial judge and supreme court justice, I show how these pleas are coercive, an abuse of the state’s prosecutorial power, and antithetical to the fundamental principles that undergird the criminal justice system. And it is because of these issues surrounding these pleas that I conclude by calling for their abolition. It is my hope that this article will help trial judges and practitioners identify Dark Pleas and understand their nefarious nature, so that they can stop this abuse of power when they encounter it

Sentencing by Ambush: An Insider\u27s Perspective on Plea Bargaining Reform

The vast majority of cases in our state criminal justice system are resolved not by proceeding to trial but through negotiated plea agreements. These are contracts between the government and the accused in which both sides are negotiating for some form of benefit in the ultimate resolution. In this article, Justice Donnelly exposes what he sees as a flaw in the system in the manner in which trial court judges oversee this process of negotiation. In a significant number of cases, the state induces defendants to enter into a guilty plea with no certain sentence, amounting to an illusory agreement that confers little if any benefit on the accused. Because the sentencing court is not bound by the parties’ agreement, this flawed process exposes the accused to sentencing by ambush

Strength distribution of repeatedly broken chains

We determine the probability distribution of the breaking strength for chains of N links, which have been produced by repeatedly breaking a very long chain.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

Reconstructing 7000 years of North Atlantic hurricane variability using deep-sea sediment cores from the western Great Bahama Bank

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2013. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Paleoceanography 28 (2013): 31–41, doi:10.1002/palo.20012.Available overwash records from coastal barrier systems document significant variability in North Atlantic hurricane activity during the late Holocene. The same climate forcings that may have controlled cyclone activity over this interval (e.g., the West African Monsoon, El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO)) show abrupt changes around 6000 yrs B.P., but most coastal sedimentary records do not span this time period. Establishing longer records is essential for understanding mid-Holocene patterns of storminess and their climatic drivers, which will lead to better forecasting of how climate change over the next century may affect tropical cyclone frequency and intensity. Storms are thought to be an important mechanism for transporting coarse sediment from shallow carbonate platforms to the deep-sea, and bank-edge sediments may offer an unexplored archive of long-term hurricane activity. Here, we develop this new approach, reconstructing more than 7000 years of North Atlantic hurricane variability using coarse-grained deposits in sediment cores from the leeward margin of the Great Bahama Bank. High energy event layers within the resulting archive are (1) broadly correlated throughout an offbank transect of multi-cores, (2) closely matched with historic hurricane events, and (3) synchronous with previous intervals of heightened North Atlantic hurricane activity in overwash reconstructions from Puerto Rico and elsewhere in the Bahamas. Lower storm frequency prior to 4400 yrs B.P. in our records suggests that precession and increased NH summer insolation may have greatly limited hurricane potential intensity, outweighing weakened ENSO and a stronger West African Monsoon—factors thought to be favorable for hurricane development.This research was supported by awards from the Division of Ocean Sciences and the Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences of the National Science Foundation to William B. Curry and an NSERC Post-Doctoral Fellowship to Peter van Hengstum.2013-09-1

Increased hurricane frequency near Florida during Younger Dryas Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation slowdown

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2017. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here under a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license granted to WHOI. It is made available for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geology 45 (2017): 1047-1050, doi:10.1130/G39270.1.The risk posed by intensification of North Atlantic hurricane activity remains controversial, in part due to a lack of available storm proxy records that extend beyond the relatively stable climates of the late Holocene. Here we present a record of storm-triggered turbidite deposition offshore the Dry Tortugas, south Florida, USA, that spans abrupt transitions in North Atlantic sea-surface temperature and Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) during the Younger Dryas (12.9–11.7 k.y. B.P.). Despite potentially hostile conditions for cyclogenesis in the tropical North Atlantic at this time, our record and numerical experiments suggest that strong hurricanes may have regularly impacted Florida. Less severe surface cooling at mid-latitudes (~20–40°N) than across much of the tropical North Atlantic (~10–20°N) in response to AMOC reduction may best explain strong hurricane activity during the Younger Dryas near the Dry Tortugas and, potentially, along the entire southeastern coast of the United States.This work was supported by the U. S. Geological Survey Climate and Land Use Change Research and Development Program (Toomey), the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Ocean and Climate Change Institute (Toomey) and National Science Foundation grants (OCE-1356708 to Donnelly; 1356509 to van Hengstum)