Freedom of Speech and the Problem of the Lawful Harmful Public Reaction: Adult use Cases of Renton and Mini Theatres

The constitutional right of freedom of speech protects the speech of adult erotic entertainment. The state, consequently, can not suppress such speech unless it is obscene. This constitutional protection helped to turn adult erotic entertainment into one of the nation\u27s growth industries. The constitutionally protected speech of adult erotic entertainment includes explicit sex films, nude dancing and erotic books. Various adult land uses sprung up to satisfy an apparent large public demand for this entertainment. Adult film theaters, of course, show filmed reproductions of live sex on a big screen. Some taverns offer nude dancing. Some adult bookstores sell more than books and pictures. Adopting a practice of the beverage industry, they also sell films for consumption both on and off the premises. Some bookstores go farther and offer the customer live nude dancing in a booth with a protective, but transparent glass partition between the .performer and the viewer. Thus, although the basic form of this expression has probably changed very little since ancient times, it clearly appears adaptable to the improvements of modern merchandising. In effect, however, the recent case of City of Renton v. Playtime Theaters, Inc. may allow the nation\u27s towns and small cities to prohibit the future development of adult speech entertainment uses within their territory

Private Property, The Takings Clause and the Pursuit of Market Gain

This Article proposes a fair return model for the takings clause. This conception of the clause has been an operating principle of welfare capitalism for decades. The Article rejects the model of laissez faire capitalism that once dominated the landscape of the nation\u27s constitutional system and may come back again

Local Hire and the State-Market-Participant Doctrine: A Trojan Horse for the Commerce Power of Congress

Local hire laws require that when units of local government hire employees a preference be given to residents of the governmental unit. These laws affect employees directly hired by the city or state, as well as employees hired by private contractors to do construction work. Naturally, this employment preference for residents discriminates against those who do not reside within the city or state. Nonresidents, however, are afforded extensive protection against discrimination by states and their political subdivisions by two clauses of the Constitution: the commerce clause and the interstate privileges and immunities, or comity, clause. This Article will analyze the Court\u27s decision in United Building & Construction Trades Council v. Mayor of Camden and cases that preceded it. The commerce and privileges and immunities clauses will be examined with respect to local hiring preferences, with a consideration of the operation of the two clauses in the private sector and their impact on the control and disposition of state property. Attention will then turn to recent market-participant decisions. This discussion will show that a change-of-residence local-hire law has a good chance of being upheld. Finally, this Article will attempt to explain the Court\u27s decisions concerning the state market-participant doctrine

Harmful Use and the Takings Clause in the Eye of the Beholder: Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council

Whichever of these two possibilities prevails, both possibilities require the courts to perform essentially legislative functions regardless, in other words, of whether public ecological resources receive insufficient or ample protection from private enterprise that wants to consume them. The traditional Takings Clause precedents, on the other hand, would give public ecological resources and private property ample protection with minimum judicial oversight. The traditional position seems preferable for this reason

A Unique Resource Mutualism between the Giant Bornean Pitcher Plant, Nepenthes rajah, and Members of a Small Mammal Community

The carnivorous pitcher plant genus Nepenthes grows in nutrient-deficient substrates and produce jug-shaped leaf organs (pitchers) that trap arthropods as a source of N and P. A number of Bornean Nepenthes demonstrate novel nutrient acquisition strategies. Notably, three giant montane species are engaged in a mutualistic association with the mountain treeshrew, Tupaia montana, in which the treeshrew defecates into the pitchers while visiting them to feed on nectar secretions on the pitchers' lids

Rich Counter-Examples for Temporal-Epistemic Logic Model Checking

Model checking verifies that a model of a system satisfies a given property, and otherwise produces a counter-example explaining the violation. The verified properties are formally expressed in temporal logics. Some temporal logics, such as CTL, are branching: they allow to express facts about the whole computation tree of the model, rather than on each single linear computation. This branching aspect is even more critical when dealing with multi-modal logics, i.e. logics expressing facts about systems with several transition relations. A prominent example is CTLK, a logic that reasons about temporal and epistemic properties of multi-agent systems. In general, model checkers produce linear counter-examples for failed properties, composed of a single computation path of the model. But some branching properties are only poorly and partially explained by a linear counter-example. This paper proposes richer counter-example structures called tree-like annotated counter-examples (TLACEs), for properties in Action-Restricted CTL (ARCTL), an extension of CTL quantifying paths restricted in terms of actions labeling transitions of the model. These counter-examples have a branching structure that supports more complete description of property violations. Elements of these counter-examples are annotated with parts of the property to give a better understanding of their structure. Visualization and browsing of these richer counter-examples become a critical issue, as the number of branches and states can grow exponentially for deeply-nested properties. This paper formally defines the structure of TLACEs, characterizes adequate counter-examples w.r.t. models and failed properties, and gives a generation algorithm for ARCTL properties. It also illustrates the approach with examples in CTLK, using a reduction of CTLK to ARCTL. The proposed approach has been implemented, first by extending the NuSMV model checker to generate and export branching counter-examples, secondly by providing an interactive graphical interface to visualize and browse them.Comment: In Proceedings IWIGP 2012, arXiv:1202.422