Unitariness and Myopia: The Executive Branch, Legal Process and Torture

What promotes legality on the part of government under strain? This Article looks to the role of intra-executive processes in facilitating well-reasoned, legitimate conclusions on questions like the one addressed in this symposium: What are the legal authorities and limits governing coercive interrogation tactics? Admittedly, even the best legal processes are no guarantee of good substantive outcomes. Many critics would disagree with the substance of the executive\u27s August 1, 2002, legal position on coercive interrogation no matter how it was derived. And even were all the best processes faithfully adhered to in developing the government\u27s legal position on torture, it is conceivable that the executive would have come to the same bottom line. The value we place on fair process in the judicial system, however, is emblematic of how, more generally, effective processes remain important to both the content of legal outcomes and the public\u27s willingness to accept them. As Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote, [t]he history of liberty has largely been the history of the observance of procedural safeguards

Taking Fiction Seriously: The Strange Results of Public Officials\u27 Individual Liability Under Bivens

This article argues that the Supreme Court\u27s decision to place liability on federal officials in their personal capacity--what Professors Fallon and Meltzer call Bivens\u27s genius --is in fact its Achilles\u27 heel. Individual liability under Bivens has become fictional because it is the government, and not the individual personally, that is in fact liable in Bivens cases. The individual liability fiction has ended up helping the federal government more than the Bivens plaintiff in various ways, and has contributed to the low rate of recovery under Bivens. It may seem odd to attribute the low rate of Bivens recoveries to the individual liability fiction, given that fictional reliance on suits against government officials as a method of enforcing constitutional rights has an established and successful pedigree in Ex Parte Young. The Bivens fiction, however, differs significantly from the fiction on which Young relies, and it is that important distinction that has created the opportunity for Bivens to benefit the government at the expense of constitutional tort victims and, ultimately, the credibility of the legal system

Skeptical Scrutiny Of Plenary Power: Judicial and Executive Branch Decision Making in Miller v Albright

In 1996, just a few months after the United States successfully urged the Supreme Court in United States v. Virginia to invalidate as sex-discriminatory the male-only admissions policy at the Virginia Military Institute, the District of Columbia Circuit in Miller v. Albright upheld a federal law that used an express, sex-based distinction. Section 309(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) makes it harder for male U.S. citizens than for female citizens to convey their citizenship to their children if those children were born abroad out of wedlock and the other parent was not a U.S. citizen. Notwithstanding the United States\u27 position in Virginia that sex-based classifications are virtually always unconstitutional, the government defended Section 309(a) in the Supreme Court. As the government saw it, Miller involved a claim by an alien abroad, so the Constitution did not apply or, at most, the Court should review the claim with extraordinary deference to the political branches. If deferential review applied, rather than Virginia\u27s skeptical scrutiny, the government believed that the Court should uphold the statute. When review was granted, the case seemed to present an opportunity for the Court to revisit the larger issue it had addressed two decades earlier in Fiallo v Bell: how to reconcile heightened, “skeptical” scrutiny of sex-based classifications with diminished scrutiny of immigration and naturalization measures in a case that seemed to call for both. The Court in Fiallo had sustained a sex-based classification in an INA provision closely analogous to Section 309(a), but dealing with eligibility for permanent resident status rather than citizenship. Fiallo treated Congress\u27s plenary power over immigration as categorically trumping the otherwise heightened level of scrutiny applicable to sex-based classifications. But virtually the entire body of modern constitutional law on sex discrimination developed after Fiallo. The Court decided Fiallo in 1977, close on the heels of its 1976 decision in Craig v Boren, the first case in which it applied intermediate constitutional scrutiny to a sex-based classification. The two ensuing decades of sex discrimination decisions strengthened and clarified the equal protection standard. The court of appeals in Miller had upheld the statute under Fiallo over a dissent arguing that the Supreme Court should reconsider Fiallo in light of the intervening sex discrimination jurisprudence. The government\u27s brief in opposition to certiorari characterized Miller as squarely governed by Fiallo, so the Supreme Court\u27s decision to grant review so soon after Virginia suggested that Fiallo might be headed for the dustbin. Instead, the Court issued a decision on nonjusticiability grounds that was so fractured and narrow as to seem almost meaningless. But there is, on closer examination, much that is surprising and significant about Miller. The case provides an opportunity for re-examining the nature and justifications for the plenary power doctrine. The authors begin by analyzing Section 309(a) and explaining why they believe those Justices who concluded that the statute unconstitutionally discriminates based on sex are clearly right. They argue that judicial deference under the plenary power doctrine is an institutionally rather than substantively based doctrine. The authors then look at Miller\u27s implications for the future of the plenary power doctrine. Finally, they discuss the implications for government lawyers of our sex discrimination and plenary power analyses. That discussion has two parts: First, the authors argue that the underenforced-norms reading of the plenary power cases suggests that the political branches should not use deferential, rational-basis review in conducting their own constitutional review of immigration, nationality, or citizenship measures, but should apply full-fledged constitutional norms. Second, they argue that, after Miller, the courts lack adequate justifications for the plenary power doctrine—at least in the absence of a new, substantive rationale for diminished protection of individual rights—in jus sanguinis citizenship cases like Miller, and, indeed, lack grounds for relying on it in immigration and nationality cases generally

Improving the Performance of Multi-engined Airplanes by Means of Idling Propellers : the "free-wheel" Propeller

In order to demonstrate the importance of free-wheeling propellers, this report considers the braking effect of a propeller on a stopped engine when the propeller is rigidly connected with the engine shaft and also when mounted on a free-wheel hub. The cases of propellers of asymmetric and symmetric section are discussed. The author describes the mechanism of the free-wheel propeller as constructed for this test. The results obtained with the device mounted on a 1,000 horsepower two-engine airplane are given

Prevalencia de lesiones en triatletas de una liga francesa

Objetivo Evaluar la prevalencia de traumatismos en triatletas y buscar los factores contribuyentes implicados. Método Se envió por correo un cuestionario anónimo sobre los casos de traumatismos durante la temporada pasada a 788 triatletas de una liga francesa. Resultados El 52,4% de los triatletas que respondieron notificaron que habían sufrido como mínimo una lesión durante la temporada pasada y el 17% varias lesiones. El 83,5% de las lesiones se produjeron durante el entrenamiento, sobre todo corriendo (72,5%). Los casos notificados con más frecuencia fueron tendinopatías (44,5%) y lesiones musculares (35%). Las zonas anatómicas notificadas con más frecuencia fueron el tobillo (20,6%), la rodilla (18,3%), el muslo (15%), la región lumbar (12,6%) y el hombro (8,3%). El 77% de los triatletas lesionados pudieron seguir entrenando, sobre todo haciendo natación (71%) y ciclismo (61,5%), mientras que en el 85,5% de los casos tuvieron que dejar de correr. Los triatletas que habían sufrido lesiones notificaron que dedican un tiempo significativamente menor al calentamiento que los triatletas ilesos (respectivamente, 13,7min frente a 18min) (p<0,01). El tiempo dedicado a los estiramientos también era inferior en los lesionados en comparación con los ilesos (respectivamente, 8,3min frente a 10,6min) (p<0,01). Se observó la misma asociación entre el tiempo empleado en el calentamiento y el estiramiento y la prevalencia de tendinopatías. La prevalencia de lesiones musculares se asoció de manera significativa con el número de horas de entrenamiento semanales (p<0,05) y con la distancia de entrenamiento semanal nadando, haciendo ciclismo y corriendo (p<0,05). Conclusión Las lesiones observadas en triatletas amateurs son lesiones musculoesqueléticas por «abuso», producidas sobre todo durante el entrenamiento, principalmente al correr