The Nativity Scene Case: An Error of Judgment

On March 22, 1985, Professor of Law, Norman Dorsen of New York University School of Law, delivered the Georgetown Law Center’s fifth Annual Philip A. Hart Memorial Lecture: Nativity Scenes and Judicial Responsibility. Norman Dorsen is Counselor to the President of New York University and Stokes Professor of Law, NYU School of Law, where he has taught since 1961. He is co-director of the Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties Program and was the founding director of NYU\u27s Hauser Global Law School Program in 1994. Dorsen performed military service in the office of the Secretary of the Army, where he assisted the Army throughout the 1954 Army-McCarthy Hearings. He served as law clerk to Chief Judge Calvert Magruder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and to Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan. He is the author or editor of many articles and 16 books on all aspects of constitutional law. He is the founder and was editorial director of the International Journal of Constitutional Law 2003-2009 (I•CON). Dorsen served as president of the American Civil Liberties Union 1976-1991. Earlier, while general counsel to the ACLU, he argued many Supreme Court cases including those that won for juveniles the right to due process, upheld constitutional rights of out-of-wedlock children, and advanced abortion rights. He also helped write petitioner’s brief in Roe v. Wade and appeared amicus curiae in the Gideon case, the Pentagon Papers case and the Nixon Tapes case. Dorsen was the founding president of the Society of American Law Teachers and the founding president of the U.S. Association of Constitutional Law, an affiliate of the International Association of Constitutional Law. Dorsen also was a founding member of the governing board of the International Association of law Schools. He was chair for four years of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (now Human Rights First) and has chaired U.S. Government commissions for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and the Treasure Department. Among other honors, he received the Medal of Liberty from the French Minister of Justice in 1983 and the Eleanor Roosevelt Medal for contributions to human rights from Bill Clinton in 2000. In 2007, the Association of American Law Schools presented him with its first triennial award for “lifetime contributions to the law and to legal education.

VillageSoup: Sustaining News in a Rural Setting

In rural Camden, Maine, Richard Anderson has found a formula for sustainable news coverage in an age when the Internet seems to be killing the news business. He began by starting an online-only news site for the community in 1996, an ambitious and early web presence. By specializing in quick, hard news, community service, citizen involvement, and community leadership, Anderson built an audience for his VillageSoup website. But the community had a moribund weekly newspaper that soaked up much of the advertising revenue. After five years of online-only news, Anderson started his own weekly paper newspaper that republished his web content. Today, Anderson has a sustainable multimedia enterprise, and a business model that could serve as the savior for weekly newspapers in communities with a population around 30,000. VillageSoup may be the first genuine example of alternative news media reaching sustainability

Socioeconomic inequalities in childhood exposure to secondhand smoke before and after smoke-free legislation in three UK countries

Background: Secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure is higher among lower socioeconomic status (SES) children. Legislation restricting smoking in public places has been associated with reduced childhood SHS exposure and increased smoke-free homes. This paper examines socioeconomic patterning in these changes.<p></p> Methods: Repeated cross-sectional survey of 10 867 schoolchildren in 304 primary schools in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Children provided saliva for cotinine assay, completing questionnaires before and 12 months after legislation.<p></p> Results: SHS exposure was highest, and private smoking restrictions least frequently reported, among lower SES children. Proportions of saliva samples containing <0.1 ng/ml (i.e. undetectable) cotinine increased from 31.0 to 41.0%. Although across the whole SES spectrum, there was no evidence of displacement of smoking into the home or increased SHS exposure, socioeconomic inequality in the likelihood of samples containing detectable levels of cotinine increased. Among children from the poorest families, 96.9% of post-legislation samples contained detectable cotinine, compared with 38.2% among the most affluent. Socioeconomic gradients at higher exposure levels remained unchanged. Among children from the poorest families, one in three samples contained > 3 ng/ml cotinine. Smoking restrictions in homes and cars increased, although socioeconomic patterning remained.<p></p> Conclusions Urgent action is needed to reduce inequalities in SHS exposure. Such action should include emphasis on reducing smoking in cars and homes

From AAA to Junk: Credit rating agencies as news sources in the Irish print-media during the economic crisis, 2008–2013

From AAA to Junk: Credit rating agencies as news sources in the Irish print-media during the economic crisis, 2008–201

Hero or anti-hero?: Narratives of newswork and journalistic identity construction in complex digital megastories

Exploring constructions of journalistic identity in a digital age has been a lively area of scholarship as the field of digital journalism studies has grown (Franklin 2013, 2014; Steensen and Ahva 2015). Yet despite many approaches to understanding digital change, key avenues for understanding changing constructions of identity remain underexplored. This paper addresses a conceptual void in research literature by employing semiotic and semantic approaches to analyse performances of journalistic identity in narratives of newswork facilitated by and focused on digital megaleaks. It seeks to aid understanding of the way narratives describe changing practices of newsgathering, and how journalists position themselves within these hybrid traditional/digital stories. Findings show news narratives reinforce the primacy of journalists within traditional boundaries of a journalistic field, and articulate a preferred imagination of journalistic identity. Methodologically, this paper shows how semantic and semiotic approaches lend themselves to studying narratives of newswork within journalistic metadiscourses to understand journalistic identity at the nexus of traditional and digital dynamics. The resultant portrait of journalistic identity channels a sociohistoric, romantic notion of the journalist as “the shadowy figure always to be found on the edges of the century’s great events” (Inglis 2002, xi), updated to accommodate modern, digital dynamics

Constraints on Nucleon Decay via "Invisible" Modes from the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory

Data from the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory have been used to constrain the lifetime for nucleon decay to ``invisible'' modes, such as n -> 3 nu. The analysis was based on a search for gamma-rays from the de-excitation of the residual nucleus that would result from the disappearance of either a proton or neutron from O16. A limit of tau_inv > 2 x 10^{29} years is obtained at 90% confidence for either neutron or proton decay modes. This is about an order of magnitude more stringent than previous constraints on invisible proton decay modes and 400 times more stringent than similar neutron modes.Comment: Update includes missing efficiency factor (limits change by factor of 2) Submitted to Physical Review Letter

A Search for Neutrinos from the Solar hep Reaction and the Diffuse Supernova Neutrino Background with the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory

A search has been made for neutrinos from the hep reaction in the Sun and from the diffus

Measurement of the Total Active 8B Solar Neutrino Flux at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory with Enhanced Neutral Current Sensitivity

The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) has precisely determined the total active (nu_x) 8B solar neutrino flux without assumptions about the energy dependence of the nu_e survival probability. The measurements were made with dissolved NaCl in the heavy water to enhance the sensitivity and signature for neutral-current interactions. The flux is found to be 5.21 +/- 0.27 (stat) +/- 0.38 (syst) x10^6 cm^{-2}s^{-1}, in agreement with previous measurements and standard solar models. A global analysis of these and other solar and reactor neutrino results yields Delta m^{2} = 7.1^{+1.2}_{-0.6}x10^{-5} ev^2 and theta = 32.5^{+2.4}_{-2.3} degrees. Maximal mixing is rejected at the equivalent of 5.4 standard deviations.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev. Let