Rights and opinion: or, the progress of sentiments

What is the relationship between minorities and majorities within the liberal constitutional order, and what role ought courts play in defining that relationship? This paper approaches the question first by establishing a framework of analysis which, drawing on work of David Hume, isolates three often undervalued features of constitutional order: the idea of the constitution as a going concern; the idea of the constitution as a complex whole; and the idea of the constitution as a framework of moral sentiment. These themes are explored in a study of contemporary British constitutional politics, an example of a stable constitution in flux. Britain continues to struggle with the Human Rights Act and the new prominence it accords to rights in constitutional debate. Reflecting on this case study, the paper argues that, when it comes to thinking about constitutional change, we should pay more attention to the imaginations of our fellow citizens, and their limits, aiming to enlarge our moral horizons in a way that aligns them with what is best within existing practices

Locke on the federative

This paper focuses on Locke’s analysis of the federative power, presented as a distinct juridical category separate from both the ordinary and special (prerogative) powers of the executive in that it relates to the ‘external’ capacities of the state. The operation of the federative is marked by the interplay between strategy (prudence) and law (norm). While Locke acknowledges the strategic element, he downplays the juridical dimension. This move is unconvincing. It does not fit well with Locke’s designation of treaty-making as the power’s central feature, nor with the comparatively thick account of natural law that otherwise characterises his political thought. The federative should be seen as the part of the domestic constitution through which the state’s external agency is exercised and the location of the state’s duties in respect of the jurisgenerative activities in the international sphere. As such, the way Locke buries the legal aspect of federative – through the pairing of federative and executive – is less obvious than he thought. Locke’s analysis fails to integrate the federative within a broader constitutional framework, leaving it almost entirely to the discretion of the Prince. I turn to Henry Neville for a contemporary attempt to reconcile the prudential and rule of law elements of the federative suitable for English conditions

The strange death of prerogative in England

This paper questions the continued existence of prerogative as a meaningful juridical category within UK constitutional law. It constructs a concept of prerogative out of canonical definitions, themselves instructive but incomplete, at the core of which is the idea of prerogative as a special category of executive power that evokes a special authority to which other political agents ought to defer. In light of recent prerogative cases, the paper advances two possibilities. A moderate reading suggests that prerogative has now become a special category of executive power that may evoke a special authority to which the court may in appropriate cases defer. A stronger reading advances the idea that prerogative is no longer a special category, but rather an inchoate set of executive capacities to which deference in general terms ought not to be given. It concludes by suggesting that we need to update our conceptual vocabulary. Just as we now speak about the executive’s general administrative powers of contract and agency, we should prefer the terminology of the general executive powers of government to the vocabulary of royal prerogative

Alien Registration- Poole, Thomas (Pittston, Kennebec County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/16774/thumbnail.jp

Time and timelessness in constitutional thought

This paper considers the character of moral peoplehood, our life as a people, and the rules and principles through which that life is expressed. In so far as those rules and principles take legal form, as determining the ground rules of association and denoting political rights and duties, this moral community is also a jural community. The paper engages with Bernard Williams’s thought with a view to resolving the tension between two conceptions of the constitution that differ in their account of the relationship between norms and time. Williams offers the prospect of a non-Kantian liberalism that grows out of the habits and minds of persons but which does not collapse into relativism. I argue that Williams’s account of moral personhood devotes insufficient attention to the dynamics of moral deliberation, essential to the growth of personhood. I argue that Williams’s account of moral peoplehood is similarly deficient in that it overlooks the role constitutional deliberation plays in constructing the jural community. Plural politics requires accepted ground rules and the sense that we are a unity of plural associates, and this is what constitutional deliberation aims to provide

Independent fiscal institutions in comparative constitutional perspective

Independent Fiscal Institutions (IFIs), also known as independent budget offices, fiscal policy councils or independent fiscal watchdogs, have become a feature of the regulatory landscape since the global financial crisis. This paper analyses their proliferation and seeks to situate them in their constitutional and institutional environment. The paper begins with an assessment of the two competing rationales for their existence: first, the rationale of overcoming deficit bias in advanced western democracies (through institutions of de-politicisation), and second, the rationale of overcoming information asymmetry on two planes – elector/government fiscal information asymmetry and legislature/executive information asymmetry (strategies of re-politicisation). The paper then analyses the legal and technical design features of two IFIs: the UK Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) and the Australian Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO). We hypothesise that whatever their origin, IFIs will seek to add functions, that these will include both inward-facing functions (e.g. official economic forecasting) and outward-facing functions (e.g. election policy costings), and that this expansion is likely to be facilitated by inter-party competition. We conclude that the IFI is best understood as a distinctive attempt to devise a fiscal self-binding mechanism in the interests of securing intergenerational constitutional justice

Results of aircraft open-loop tests of an experimental magnetic leader cable system for guidance during roll-out and turnoff

An experimental magnetic leader cable (MLC) system designed to measure aircraft lateral displacement from centerline and heading relative to centerline during rollout, turnoff, and taxi was tested at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility using NASA's Transport System Research Vehicle (TSRV), a modified B-737. The MLC system consisted of ground equipment that produced a magnetic field about a wire along runway centerline and airborne equipment that detected the strength and direction of this field and computed displacement and heading. Results of these tests indicate that estimates of aircraft displacement from centerline produced by the magnetic leader cable system using either of the two algorithms appear to be adequate for use by an automatic control system during rollout, turnoff, and taxi. Estimates of heading, however, are not sufficiently accurate for use, probably because of distortion of the magnetic field by the metal aircraft

Studies on the degranulation test for carcinogens

AbstractThe radiometric assay of degranulation of the hepatic endoplasmic reticulum by chemical carcinogens has been re-examined. Both 1,2,3,4,- and 1,25,6-dibenzanthracenes caused degranulation of rough membranes in vitro; with acetamidofluorenes and naphthylamines the carcinogenic analogues caused moderately greater degranulation. Degranulation by 1,2,3,4-dibenzantracene was rapid and was maximal after 5 min incubation. Pretreatment of animals with phenobarbital or methylcholanthrene increased the fraction of rough membranes, but these were not fully granulated. The assay is limited in specificity and sensitivity because the 1.35 M sucrose gradient does not effectively separate rough and smooth membranes, and sedimented membranes are contaminated with aggregates of free ribosomes