Constitutionalizing Mandatory Retraction in Defamation Law

This article discusses mandatory retraction, which court rulings and legal literature rarely have addressed. The article proposes a solution designed to provide adequate protection for the reputation of public figures, which may be defined as constructive mandatory retraction. Under the proposed solution, courts handling public figures\u27 libel actions against the media would be empowered to grant a new remedy, namely, a declaratory judgment stating that the falsity of the defaming publication has been established by clear and convincing proof, accompanied by an injunctive relief ordering the defendant to report on that decision in a prominent manner. Courts may grant this new remedy irrespectively of the defendant\u27s state of mind prior to the publication. The proposal aims to resolve two First Amendment concerns raised by compelled publications. First, compelled publications arguably contradict the Supreme Court\u27s consistent position that one may not be forced to make any expression against his will. Yet, a careful study of the Court\u27s decisions in this context reveals that, under its approach, obliging a person to state uncontroversial facts or communicate information without affirming a belief is much less offensive than compelled speech that concerns an opinion or an idea, and can be constitutionally justified by sufficiently important interests. Hence, compelling a defendant to inform his audience of the indisputable fact that a declaratory judgment was issued against him, without requiring him to actually admit the falsity of the defaming publication, would not infringe upon his First Amendment right not to speak. Second, compelled publications allegedly burden the freedom of the press by interfering with the editorial autonomy of the press. However, given the restrictions on the application of the remedy posed by this article, a significantly vast portion of editorial autonomy would remain intact. While editorial autonomy would be subject to technical interferences, the substantive element of this concept, concerning the press\u27s ability to be an independent player in the political sphere, would not be harmed. Moreover, this article\u27s proposal removes any chilling effect that led the Supreme Court to adopt the actual malice requirement in New York Times v. Sullivan, because that ruling\u27s purpose was protecting free debate from the stifling threat of outsized money awards. As the proposed remedy does not involve money liability, and its non-damages financial implications are expected to be negligible, it will not deter publishers from reporting on controversial issues

Connectivity in fragmented landscape: Generalist and specialist gerbils show unexpected gene flow patterns

Landscape structure can affect connectivity among populations. In a patchy landscape, specialist species that are limited to particular elements are expected to show low gene diversity, low connectivity and high differentiation among patches. Conversely, for generalist species, genetic variability and gene flow among sites are expected to be high, and differentiation is expected to be low. Here we tested this hypothesis for two rodent species: Gerbillus gerbillus, the psammophile specialist species abundant in sandy habitats, and Gerbillus nanus, the parapatric habitat generalist species, found in the more stable sands in Israel and West Africa. We found that among the psammophile specialist G. gerbillus populations, differentiation was low and connectivity was high. In contrast, the parapatric generalist species G. nanus demonstrates markedly high genetic differentiation between localities within short distances in Israel. Furthermore, our results support a division between the African and the Israeli G. nanus populations, suggesting two distinct species

Super-resolution methods in MRI: Can they improve the trade-off between resolution, signal-to-noise ratio, and acquisition time?

Radiolog