Introducing Jus ante Bellum as a cosmopolitan approach to humanitarian intervention

Cosmopolitans often argue that the international community has a humanitarian responsibility to intervene militarily in order to protect vulnerable individuals from violent threats and to pursue the establishment of a condition of cosmopolitan justice based on the notion of a ‘global rule of law’. The purpose of this article is to argue that many of these cosmopolitan claims are incomplete and untenable on cosmopolitan grounds because they ignore the systemic and chronic structural factors that underwrite the root causes of these humanitarian threats. By way of examining cosmopolitan arguments for humanitarian military intervention and how systemic problems are further ignored in iterations of the Responsibility to Protect, this article suggests that many contemporary cosmopolitan arguments are guilty of focusing too narrowly on justifying a responsibility to respond to the symptoms of crisis versus demanding a similarly robust justification for a responsibility to alleviate persistent structural causes. Although this article recognizes that immediate principles of humanitarian intervention will, at times, be necessary, the article seeks to draw attention to what we are calling principles of Jus ante Bellum (right before war) and to stress that current cosmopolitan arguments about humanitarian intervention will remain insufficient without the incorporation of robust principles of distributive global justice that can provide secure foundations for a more thoroughgoing cosmopolitan condition of public right

Between history and values: A study on the nature of interpretation in international law

My thesis discusses the place of evaluative judgements in the interpretation of general international law. It concentrates on two questions. First, whether it is possible to interpret international legal practices without making an evaluative judgement about the point or value that provides the best justification of these practices. Second, whether the use of evaluative judgements in international legal interpretation threatens to undermine the objectivity of international law, the neutrality of international lawyers or the consensual and voluntary basis of the international legal system. I answer both questions in the negative. As regards the first, I argue that international legal practice has an interpretive structure, which combines appeals to the history of international practice with appeals to the principles and values that these practices are best understood as promoting. This interpretive structure is apparent not only in the claims of international lawyers about particular rules of international law (here I use the rule of estoppel as an example) but also in the most basic intuitions of international theorists about the theory and sources of general international law. I then argue that some popular concerns to the effect that the exercise of evaluation in the interpretation of international law will undermine the coherence or the usefulness of the discipline are generally unwarranted. The fact that international legal practice has an interpretive structure does not entail that propositions of international law are only subjectively true, that the interpreter enjoys license to manipulate their meaning for self-serving purposes, or that international law will collapse under the weight of irresolvable disagreements, divisions and conflicts about its proper interpretation

Quaternary drainage network reorganization in the Colombian Eastern Cordillera plateau

Dramatic drainage reorganization from initial longitudinal to transversal domains has occurred in the Eastern Cordillera of Colombia. We perform a regional analysis of drainage basin geometry and transformed river profiles based on the integral form of the slope-area scaling, to investigate the dynamic state of drainage networks and to predict the degree of drainage reorganization in this region. We propose a new model of drainage rearrangement for the Eastern Cordillera, based on the analyses of knickpoint distribution, normalized river profiles, landforms characteristic of river capture, erosion rates and palaeodrainage data. We establish that the oldest longitudinal basin captured by the Magdalena River network was the Suarez Basin at approximate to 409 ka, inferring the timing of abandonment of a river terrace using in situ produced cosmogenic beryllium-10 (Be-10) depth profiles and providing a first estimation of incision rate of 0.07 mm/yr. We integrate published geochronologic data and interpret the last capture of the Sabana de Bogota, providing a minimum age of the basin opening to the Magdalena drainage at approximate to 38 ka. Our results suggest that the Magdalena basin Increased its drainage area by integrating the closed basins from the western flank of the Eastern Cordillera. Our study also suggests that the Magdalena basin is an aggressor compared to the basins located in the eastern flank of the orogen and provides a framework for examining drainage reorganization within the Eastern Cordillera and in similar orogenic settings. The results improve our understanding of headward integration of closed basins across orogenic plateaux. (c) 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.This work was financed by the Spanish MINECO (Secretaria de Estado de Investigacion, Desarrollo e Innovacion) projects CGL2010-15416 and CGL2014-54180-P. L. Struth was supported by a FPI PhD grant (BES-2011-050262) from MECD (Spain). The stay at the University of Cincinnati for cosmogenic analysis was supported by MECD grant EEBB-I-14-08485. The authors acknowledge Mireia Domenech for her help in the field sampling. The authors thank Alan J. Hidy for his help and suggestions in the cosmogenic profile modeling. The authors are also grateful to Andres Mora and Andres Valencia for assistance and discussion during fieldwork.Peer reviewe

Expression and function of thyroid specific genes in human skin.

Patients affected by autoimmune thyroid diseases (AITD) are characterized by several alterations of skin function. Although skin is considered a target tissue for thyroid hormones (TH), very little is known on the molecular mechanisms involved in cutaneous manifestations during AITD. Recent data show the presence of the transcripts for the thyroid specific genes TSH receptor (TSH-R) and thyroglobulin (Tg) in immortalized keratinocytes and melanoma cells. This finding suggests that during AITD the skin could be a target of autoantibodies directed against thyroid specific antigens. To get insight into the expression and function of thyroid specific genes in skin cells, in the present study we analyzed the expression of TSH-R, Tg, sodium iodide symporter (NIS) and thyroperoxidase (TPO) genes in primary cultures of normal human keratinocytes and dermal fibroblasts by quantitative RT-PCR, in comparison with that of normal human thyrocytes (NHT). The results revealed the presence of TSH-R, Tg and NIS transcripts in both human keratinocytes and fibroblasts, while TPO mRNA was found only in keratinocytes. Immunohistochemical analysis of human healthy skin specimens confirmed the presence of TSH-R and Tg protein in keratinocytes and dermal fibroblasts. Cultured normal human keratinocytes and dermal fibroblasts were then treated with TSH (10 UI/ml) for 72 h and the effect on cell proliferation evaluated by BrdU incorporation. The results indicated the ability of TSH to significantly increase proliferation in both cell types. Moreover, TSH treatment for 2 h induced a significant increase in intracellular cAMP levels. However, differently from its action on thyrocytes, TSH did not stimulate the expression or the secretion of Tg in cultured keratinocytes and dermal fibroblasts. In conclusion, our data demonstrate that keratinocytes and fibroblasts express thyroid specific genes which may be involved in the pathogenesis of skin alterations during AITD

Espressione di geni specifici della tiroide nella cute umana

La cute rappresenta un organo bersaglio degli ormoni tiroidei (OT) ed è ben noto come le tireopatie autoimmuni si accompagnino ad alterazioni strutturali e funzionali della pelle. Nel presente studio abbiamo analizzato l’espressione cutanea delle varie isoforme del recettore per gli OT (TR), per l’acido 9-cis retinoico (RXR) e delle desiodasi D1, D2 e D3 nonché quella di geni specifici della tiroide, quali la tireoglobulina (TG), il recettore del TSH (TSH-R), il trasportatore dello iodio (NIS) e la tireoperossidasi (TPO). L’espressione dei suddetti geni è stata analizzata a livello di mRNA tramite RT-PCR eseguita su RNA totale estratto da colture primarie di cheratinociti e fibroblasti umani e da biopsie di cute sana. L’espressione del TSH-R e della TG è stata inoltre valutata a livello di proteina tramite esperimenti di immunoistochimica (IIC) su sezioni di cute sana, utilizzando anticorpi monoclonali la cui specificità è stata verificata mediante esperimenti di Western Blot su estratti proteici di tessuto tiroideo sano. I risultati ottenuti hanno dimostrato che i fibroblasti e i cheratinociti esprimono sia le isoforme α1, α2 e β1 del TR sia le isoforme α e β del RXR sia le desiodasi D2 e D3. Il trattamento di colture primarie di cheratinociti e fibroblasti per 72 ore con T3 (10 nM) induce un aumento significativo (P<0.01) della proliferazione di entrambi i tipi cellulari. Per quanto concerne l’espressione di geni specifici della tiroide, i risultati hanno dimostrato l’espressione a livello di mRNA della TG, del TSH-R e del NIS sia nei cheratinociti che nei fibroblasti, mentre la TPO è apprezzabile nei soli cheratinociti. Infine, in accordo con i dati sopra riportati, i risultati degli esperimenti di IIC hanno evidenziato l’espressione delle proteine TG e TSH-R nei fibroblasti e nei cheratinociti dello strato basale dell’epidermide. In conclusione, i dati riportati indicano che la cute esprime il complesso macchinario molecolare deputato alla risposta tissutale agli OT, come anche gli antigeni specifici tiroidei implicati nella sintesi degli stessi. Tutto ciò suggerisce che la cute sia sensibile non solo alle variazioni degli OT, ma verosimilmente anche all’azione degli autoanticorpi diretti verso gli antigeni tiroidei