Nonparty Remote Electronic Access to Plea Agreements in the Second Circuit

Widespread electronic access to case files gives rise to security concerns previously unrealized in the era of paper records. As the United States Department of Justice noted, the emergence of a cottage industry of websites that republish court filings online for the purposes of witness intimidation, retaliation, and harassment poses a grave risk of harm to cooperating witnesses and defendants. Accordingly, the benefits associated with remote electronic availability and dissemination of judicial documents may come at a considerable cost. This Note describes the options that district courts within the Second Circuit could implement to mitigate these concerns. Part I of this Note outlines how electronic access to court filings has altered the traditional balance between disclosure and privacy, and addresses the concerns associated with providing electronic access to plea agreements. Part I also outlines the qualified rights of access to judicial documents under the common law and the First Amendment. Part II examines these qualified rights\u27 constraint on the operation of proposals that would that would limit nonparty remote access to court documents. Part III argues that electronic access to court filings should be governed by the same standards which regulate access to paper filings, and that the proper inquiry is whether certain sensitive documents ought to be included in the public record at all. This Note concludes that Courts can best maintain the public\u27s qualified rights of access to court filings based on process-oriented concerns, and simultaneously provide security to cooperators, by not filing plea agreements

RURAL AMERICA AND THE INFORMATION REVOLUTION: AN EXPLORATION OF POSSIBILITIES AND POTENTIALITIES

Community/Rural/Urban Development,

Plasma sheath effects on ion collection by a pinhole

This work presents tables to assist in the evaluation of pinhole collection effects on spacecraft. These tables summarize results of a computer model which tracks particle trajectories through a simplified electric field in the plasma sheath. A technique is proposed to account for plasma sheath effects in the application of these results and scaling rules are proposed to apply the calculations to specific situations. This model is compared to ion current measurements obtained by another worker, and the agreement is very good

Ion collection from a plasma by a pinhole

Ion focusing by a biased pinhole is studied numerically. Laplace's equation is solved in 3-D for cylindrical symmetry on a constant grid to determine the potential field produced by a biased pinhole in a dielectric material. Focusing factors are studied for ions of uniform incident velocity with a 3-D Maxwellian distribution superimposed. Ion currents to the pinhole are found by particle tracking. The focusing factor of positive ions as a function of initial velocity, temperature, injection radius, and hole size is reported. For a typical Space Station Freedom environment (oxygen ions having a 4.5 eV ram energy, 0.1 eV temperature, and a -140 V biased pinhole), a focusing factor of 13.35 is found for a 1.5 mm radius pinhole

Subfactors of index less than 5, part 2: triple points

We summarize the known obstructions to subfactors with principal graphs which begin with a triple point. One is based on Jones's quadratic tangles techniques, although we apply it in a novel way. The other two are based on connections techniques; one due to Ocneanu, and the other previously unpublished, although likely known to Haagerup. We then apply these obstructions to the classification of subfactors with index below 5. In particular, we eliminate three of the five families of possible principal graphs called "weeds" in the classification from arXiv:1007.1730.Comment: 28 pages, many figures. Completely revised from v1: many additional or stronger result

Comparative Law: Problems and Prospects

The following is an edited transcript of the closing plenary session of the XVIIIth International Congress of Comparative Law. The session took place on Saturday, July 31, 2010, in Washington, D.C., at the conclusion of the week-long congress, which is held quadrennially by the International Academy of Comparative Law (Académie Internationale de Droit Comparé). The remarks were given in a mix of French and English, but for ease of reading the transcript below is almost entirely in English