The Prosecutor and the Press: Lessons (Not) Learned from the Mike Nifong Debacle

Current projections indicate that by 2050, two in every three people will live in urban areas, and that cities will accommodate 3 billion people during this period. Cities are consuming three-quarters of the world's energy and causing three-quarters of global pollution. To reduce these impacts, new technologies have been considered in the development of smart sustainable cities, but technology has not always favoured the idea of sustainable consumption. To address this issue, we have aimed to focus on identifying the role of sustainable consumption within implementations of smart cities’ projects across Europe. We have selected a set of smart city projects in 76 cities in Europe from CONCERTO initiatives, Mapping Smart Cities in Europe, Energy Study for the Stockholm Region and Joint European Support for Sustainable Investment in City Areas and classified them according to: smart governance, smart mobility, smart living, smart environment, smart citizens and smart economy. Furthermore, we established a number of categories for the classification of the evaluated projects based on their relevance to sustainable consumption, and considered several solutions for the integration of sustainable consumption in smart sustainable cities. The results show that in 18.9% of the projects, sustainable consumption is not relevant at all. The second classification shows the percentage of the remaining categories where sustainable consumption is relevant; 8.3% consider sustainable consumption as relevant even though it was not implemented in the project. These cities aim to achieve a higher level of sustainable consumption, which is expected to be included in future projects. If they keep themselves in this category, their behavioural consumption patterns will not change and the impact of citizens on the cities will remain the same. The majority of the projects, 54.2%, implemented technology to reduce consumption but if the projects do not coincide with the behaviour of citizens, a big rebound effect will occur. 37.5% of the projects consider relevant sustainable consumption to its full potential and this can change citizen’s behaviour. In conclusion, sustainable consumption is relevant in most of the projects analysed, with new technologies available to help energy savings and reduction of our consumption. However, if there is a lack of smart consumption from the citizens, the technologies available might not be sufficient and consumption could increase. One quarter of the analysed smart cities projects still do not consider the consumption behaviour of the citizens. This can be changed through campaigns and explanations targeting the population on how to manage and reduce energy and resource consumption. To reduce the negative impact of the cities’ growth, projects considering smart sustainable cities need to integrate sustainable consumption policies that account for citizens' behaviour

Galois Theory of Parameterized Differential Equations and Linear Differential Algebraic Groups

We present a Galois theory of parameterized linear differential equations where the Galois groups are linear differential algebraic groups, that is, groups of matrices whose entries are functions of the parameters and satisfy a set of differential equations with respect to these parameters. We present the basic constructions and results, give examples, discuss how isomonodromic families fit into this theory and show how results from the theory of linear differential algebraic groups may be used to classify systems of second order linear differential equations

Building a Curriculum for the English Language Learning Program at a New University

Turkish learners entering university for the first time have high expectations that a university education will be vastly different in its approach from their previous educational experiences. The hope is that learners will learn the skills needed to become independent, lifelong learners. While this may be true in their faculties, it is often not the case for learners attending English language preparatory programs (ELPP) where the course content is often dictated by textbooks. This use of the course books illustrates Krahnke\u27s (1987) concern that while course books are not intended to be syllabi, they often become so. Many current English language course books take a structural approach to their design that does not meet the learning needs of learners intending to study in an English language medium. This material development project aims to investigate the various approaches to curriculum design and use the tools found there to create the framework for an explicit four-module curriculum that provides student-centered learning, fosters learner autonomy, develops communication skills and prepares learners to study in their faculties in English. This project proposes to reach these goals through a systems approach to curriculum design (Nation & Macalister, Graves, 2000) utilizing the critical ideas of understanding by design (UbD) (Wiggins & McTighe, 2006) and Bloom\u27s Taxonomy

Creating the political spectacle during the Cold War: Guatemala and the United States

Due to the character of the original source materials and the nature of batch digitization, quality control issues may be present in this document. Please report any quality issues you encounter to [email protected], referencing the URI of the item.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 34-35).The political spectacle is a show and a way of seeing things. In effect, the media reduces politics to theatre, simplifying complex issues into a world of black and white, where leaders compete with an enemy for influence over a social problem. On another level, the spectacle is a looking glass, used by politicians to distort the public's view of the world in order to maintain their own power. The political spectacle is more than an individual's interpretation of events, however. It is a social construction that has developed over a long period of time in which "the observer and what they observe construct one another" in an attempt to bring order to and make sense of reality. The political spectacle is created by the way leaders, enemies, and social issues interact with one another and reconstruct one another over time. Furthermore, some social constructions of reality are better than others. Good policymakers and citizens have a responsibility to step back and critically evaluate the political spectacle and determine if it created based on reliable evidence or assumptions. When the observer attempt to deconstruct the political spectacle and look at it from multiple perspectives they can reach a more complete understanding of the event. The objective of this research is to show how the interaction between the United States and Guatemala during President Arbenz's tenure in power is a good example of Edleman's political spectacle. Depending on how US policymakers interpreted Arbenz's policy decisions and actions determined if he was perceived as an enemy of the United States or a reformist leader. The accepted interpretation had important ramifications on government policy, the future of Guatemala, and ultimately human life. Regardless of whether an individual believes the Eisenhower Administration made the right or wrong decision about Arbenz, policymakers and concerned citizens need to be aware of the political spectacle and its mystifying properties, and attempt to evaluate their own positions and their political leaders in terms of it. Hopefully, this analysis of events will provide an example for how this can be done

Undue Influence: A Prosecutor's Role in Parole Proceedings

Professor Cassidy explores what it means for a prosecutor to act as a “minister of justice” in the context of parole proceedings. He argues that prosecutors should not perceive themselves as zealous advocates in what is essentially an administrative setting, and that prosecutors should not oppose release simply because they believe that the nature and circumstances of the crime warrant continued incarceration. Rather, Cassidy argues that prosecutors ordinarily should refrain from personally testifying at parole hearings, and should submit written comments to the parole board only in those rare situations where the prosecutor is in possession of otherwise unavailable information pertaining to an inmate’s post-conviction behavior that would assist the board in making an accurate legal and factual determination. Cassidy surveys the approaches taken by parole board statutes and regulations in fifty states and discusses which of those approaches properly calibrate the scope and limits of a prosecutor’s input in release decisions

(Ad)ministering Justice: A Prosecutor\u27s Ethical Duty to Support Sentencing Reform

This article stakes out an ethical argument in favor of prosecutorial leadership on sentencing reform. Prosecutors have a duty as “ministers of justice” to go beyond seeking appropriate conviction and punishment in individual cases, and to think about the delivery of criminal justice on a systemic level ― promoting criminal justice policies that further broader societal ends. While other authors have explored the tensions between a prosecutor’s adversarial duties and “minister of justice” role in the context of specific litigation, few have explored what it means to be an “administer” of justice in the wider political arena. The author sets forth a new construct of what is required for a prosecutor to be a neutral, nonpartisan “administer of justice” in her legislative and public advocacy activities. Applying this paradigm to the ongoing national debate about sentencing reform, the author argues that a prosecutor’s administrative responsibilities as a leader in the criminal justice establishment and her fiduciary responsibilities as a representative of the sovereign should compel her to join in the effort to repeal mandatory minimum sentencing provisions for most drug and non-violent offenses. Not only are mandatory sentences in most instances unduly harsh, coercive, and inefficacious, but they allow for an arbitrary and discriminatory application that is essentially unreviewable by courts. The author distinguishes this argument against mandatory minimum penalties from the so-called “Smart on Crime” movement, by grounding a prosecutor’s duty to promote sentencing reform in ethical reasoning as opposed to pragmatic or cost-savings considerations. Even with robust political support from some of this nation’s most conscientious prosecutors, state legislatures are unlikely to repeal or cut back on all mandatory minimum sentences. Some mandatory prison terms ― for crimes such as murder, repeat offense OUI, and aggravated sexual offenses — will likely stay on the books notwithstanding the advocacy recommended above. A second question the author addresses in this article is how an ethical prosecutor should make plea bargaining decisions in the face of mandatory minimum prison terms retained by the legislature. While there has been substantial legal scholarship to date that has decried the manner in which mandatory minimum penalties have transferred sentencing discretion from judges to prosecutors, beyond that descriptive lament there has been very little attention paid to how exactly prosecutorial discretion might be more meaningfully constrained through internal self-regulation. Prosecutors can mitigate many of the harsh and unjust consequences of mandatory minimum sentences by instituting and publishing clear office policies governing when line prosecutors may dismiss or reduce charges that carry them. The author proposes specific guidelines that state prosecutors should adopt to ensure a consistent and even-handed application of mandatory minimum penalties, so that line prosecutors do not abuse the substantial discretion that has been afforded them in the plea bargaining process