Popular Sovereignty, Judicial Supremacy, and the American Revolution: Why the Judiciary Cannot Be the Final Arbiter of Constitutions

Key to understanding the connection between popular sovereignty and judicial review is the historical development of the theory of sovereignty in England and America. Section One of this article traces the defeat of divine right theory in England and the emergence of parliamentary sovereignty. Section Two considers the American colonists’ rejection of parliamentary sovereignty during the Revolution and their establishment of popular sovereignty as the cardinal principle of American constitutionalism. Section Three studies English precedent often cited as providing the basis for the American doctrine of judicial review and shows that these English cases were simply exercises in statutory construction and cannot be classified as precursors to American judicial review. The final section examines the development of judicial review in American state courts both prior to and after ratification of the United States Constitution. This section also examines Marbury v. Madison in the context of these early state court decisions and concludes that Chief Justice Marshall never contemplated setting up the Supreme Court as the final arbiter of our Constitution. A believer in popular sovereignty, Marshall would not have reverted to British practice whereby a branch of government has total control over fundamental law. Instead, the Marbury opinion—like the state decisions before it—simply recognized that the judiciary is a co-equal branch of government empowered to interpret the Constitution along with the executive and the legislature

Popular Sovereignty, Judicial Supremacy, and the American Revolution: Why the Judiciary Cannot be the Final Arbiter of Constitutions

The development of constitutional government in Great Britain and America is inseparable from the debate and the conflict over sovereignty. In Britain, parliamentary sovereignty triumphed over the divine right of kings to form the foundation of British liberty. In America, popular sovereignty triumphed over parliamentary/legislative sovereignty to render government the servant of the people. Without acceptance of popular sovereignty, judicial review would likely be unknown in the United States. Under parliamentary/legislative sovereignty, the legislative body exercises ultimate authority over statutory law and fundamental law. The legislature can make or repeal law as it sees fit. With the exception of revolution, neither the judiciary, nor the executive, nor the people can override the legislature’s will

Documentation for the CETACEA database of marine mammal literature references

This documentation for the CETACEA database of marine mammal literature references updates and expands the original work by Watkins, Bird, Moore, and Tyack 1988 (Reference Database Marine Mammal Literature, Technical Report WHOI-88-2). The CETACEA database is a comprehensive index of literature references used to file, store, search, retrieve, and format the data on marine animals. Organization of the references is complementary to features developed by William E. Schevill for his library of older cetacea literature, having direct association of species with over 300 indexed subjects, and with observation dates, locations, etc. This documentation describes the operation of the database (360 records), including indexing, sorting, and retrieval information developed though continued use of these systems. SPECIES and SUBJECT HEADING lists with their codes have been updated. Other databases have also developed around these indexing and sorting strategies to complement the CETACEA database, including databases of animal sounds for both the recordng data and the acoustic spectral information stored in libraries of digital sound cuts.Funding was provided by the Office of Naval Research through Contract Number N00014-88-K-0273

Searching for Planets in the Hyades. I. The Keck Radial Velocity Survey

We describe a high-precision radial velocity search for jovian-mass companions to main sequence stars in the Hyades star cluster. The Hyades provides an extremely well controlled sample of stars of the same age, the same metallicity, and a common birth and early dynamical environment. This sample allows us to explore the dependence of the process of planet formation on only a single independent variable: the stellar mass. In this paper we describe the survey and summarize results for the first five years.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures; To appear in the July 2002 issue of The Astronomical Journa

Dosimetric comparison study between intensity modulated radiation therapy and three-dimensional conformal proton therapy for pelvic bone marrow sparing in the treatment of cervical cancer.

The objective was to compare intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) with 3D conformal proton therapy (3DCPT) in the treatment of cervical cancer. In particular, each technique's ability to spare pelvic bone marrow (PBM) was of primary interest in this study. A total of six cervical cancer patients (3 postoperative and 3 intact) were planned and analyzed. All plans had uniform 1.0 cm CTV-PTV margin and satisfied the 95% PTV with 100% isodose (prescription dose = 45 Gy) coverage. Dose-volume histograms (DVH) were analyzed for comparison. The overall PTV and PBM volumes were 1035.9 ± 192.2 cc and 1151.4 ± 198.3 cc, respectively. In terms of PTV dose conformity index (DCI) and dose homogeneity index (DHI), 3DCPT was slightly superior to IMRT with 1.00 ± 0.001, 1.01 ± 0.02, and 1.10 ± 0.02, 1.13 ± 0.01, respectively. In addition, 3DCPT demonstrated superiority in reducing lower doses (i.e., V30 or less) to PBM, small bowel and bladder. Particularly in PBM, average V10 and V20 reductions of 10.8% and 7.4% (p = 0.001 and 0.04), respectively, were observed. However, in the higher dose range, IMRT provided better sparing (> V30). For example, in small bowel and PBM, average reductions in V45 of 4.9% and 10.0% (p = 0.048 and 0.008), respectively, were observed. Due to its physical characteristics such as low entrance dose, spread-out Bragg peak and finite particle range of protons, 3DCPT illustrated superior target coverage uniformity and sparing of the lower doses in PBM and other organs. Further studies are, however, needed to fully exploit the benefits of protons for general use in cervical cancer

Refined measurement of SecA-driven protein secretion reveals that translocation is indirectly coupled to ATP turnover

The universally conserved Sec system is the primary method cells utilize to transport proteins across membranes. Until recently, measuring the activity—a prerequisite for understanding how biological systems work—has been limited to discontinuous protein transport assays with poor time resolution or reported by large, nonnatural tags that perturb the process. The development of an assay based on a split superbright luciferase (NanoLuc) changed this. Here, we exploit this technology to unpick the steps that constitute posttranslational protein transport in bacteria. Under the conditions deployed, the transport of a model preprotein substrate (proSpy) occurs at 200 amino acids (aa) per minute, with SecA able to dissociate and rebind during transport. Prior to that, there is no evidence for a distinct, rate-limiting initiation event. Kinetic modeling suggests that SecA-driven transport activity is best described by a series of large (∼30 aa) steps, each coupled to hundreds of ATP hydrolysis events. The features we describe are consistent with a nondeterministic motor mechanism, such as a Brownian ratchet

SOUND database of marine animal vocalizations : structure and operations

The SOUND database system for marine animal vocalizations has been updated to include changes in the structure and operations that have evolved with use. These include more convenient operations, greater flexibilty in analysis routines, and a revised database structure. The formats for data sorting and indexing, database structure, and analysis routines have developed into a convenient research tool. This report is a revision of the earlier operating manual for the SOUND databases (Watkins, Fristrup, and Daher 1991.) The interactive databases that comprise the SOUND system provide comprehensive means for quantitative analyses and statistical comparisons of marine animal vocalizations. These SOUND databases encompass (1) descriptive text databases cataoging the WHOI collection of underwater sound recordings of marine animals, (2) sets of files of digital sound sequences, (3) text databases organizing the digital sound cuts, and (4) software for analysis, display, playback, and export of selected sound files. The text databases index and sort the information about the sounds, and the digital sound cut files are accessed directly from the text record. From the text database, the sound cut data may be analyzed on screen, listened to, and compared or exported as desired. The objective of this work has been the development of a basic set of tools for the study of marine animal sound. The text databases for cataloging the recordings provide convenient sorting and selection of sounds of interest. Then, as specific sequences are digitized from these recordings, they become part of another database system that manages these acoustic data. Once a digital sound is part of the organized database, several tools are available for interactive spectrographic display, sound playback, statistical feature extraction, and export to other application programs.Funding was provided by the Office of Naval Research through the Ocean Acoustics Program (code 11250A) under Contract No. N00014-88-K-0273 and No. N00014-91-J-1445 with supplemental support by ORINCON/DARPA and NRL (code 211)

Software tools for acoustic database management

Digital archiving of bioacoustic data provides both curatorial and scientific benefits. To realize these benefits, key system requirements must be satisfied. This report discusses these requirements, and describes the software tools developed by the WHOI bioacoustic laboratory to maintain and utilize an archive of digitized biological sounds. These tools are written in standard C code, and are designed to run on PC-compatible microcomputers. Both the usage and structure of these programs are described in relation to the SOUND database of marine animal sounds. These tools include software for analog-to-digital conversion, text header maintenance, data verification and interactive spectrographic review. Source code listings are supplied.Funding was provided by the Office of Naval Research through the Ocean Acoustics Program (code 11250) Contract N00014-88-K-0273 and Grant N00014-J-1445 with supplemental support from NOARL (code 211)