Law and Nonlegal Norms in Government Lawyers\u27 Ethics: Discretion Meets Legitimacy

This Essay is about the role of unwritten norms in the ethical decisionmaking of government lawyers. Because the ethical obligations of lawyers, including government lawyers, are closely tied to the legal rights and obligations of clients, this analysis necessarily depends on understanding the relationship between written law and unwritten norms. As we all know, however, written law leaves gaps, ambiguities, and zones of unregulated discretion. Prosecutors in the United States, for example, have virtually unreviewable discretion to decide who to investigate and charge, what charges to bring, and whether to offer immunity in exchange for cooperation. No one has a legal entitlement not to be prosecuted, nor does anyone else—official or private citizen—have the power to compel a prosecutor to bring charges. The president possesses nearly unconstrained discretion to grant clemency to people convicted of criminal offenses. The impeachment power of Congress is constrained only by the Constitution’s requirement that the president be charged with certain enumerated offenses, including the open-ended phrase “high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” In other areas, a government official may possess the legal authority to do something but may nevertheless be criticized for exercising that authority contrary to standards that are not reducible to positive law. The question is, what standards, norms, or ethical values, if any, constrain the actions of lawyers advising government officials who exercise their power within discretionary unwritten areas of the law? In other words, is there a type of official discretion that is distinguishable from the exercise of raw power or whimsical decision-making, despite being unconstrained by positive law? If so, what is its relationship to positive law and its claim to legitimate authority

Lawyering in the Christian Colony: Some Hauerwasian Themes, Reflections, and Questions

One who shared Hauerwas\u27s theological commitments might find it difficult to serve as a lawyer, given that the principles of legal ethics are grounded in the kind of political liberalism that Hauerwas finds repellent. For example, Stephen Pepper\u27s well known liberal defense of the standard conception of legal ethics pretty much pushes all of the buttons that set off Hauerwas. Pepper argues that while the law necessarily imposes restrictions on what we may do, but no one else is empowered to place restrictions on our autonomy. In a complex, highly legalistic society, however, citizens are necessarily required in some cases to seek advice from legally trained professionals to determine whether their proposed course of conduct may violate the law, or to employ mechanisms provided for by the legal system (such as contrasts, wills and trusts, and business entities) to achieve their goals. In providing this assistance, lawyers should not impose their own views about the morality of their clients’ conduct; rather, they should assist their clients in implementing their own plans, providing technical assistance but not moral suasion. As any reader of Hauerwas knows, this is an aspect of the modernist anomie he warns about, in which the autonomy to decide for oneself is exalted into the first principle of ethics, with the result that individuals are cut off from the resources they need (traditions, communities, stories) to construct meaningful lives for themselves. This kind of alienation can be cured only by associating oneself with a community -- for Hauerwas this is the church -- and sharing in the ongoing development of its history. Thus, one may ask whether a Christian lawyer can follow some version of the standard conception, at least on Hauerwas\u27s conception of Christian social ethics. With considerable hesitation, given the size and complexity of the corpus of Hauerwas\u27s scholarship, this paper attempts to offer an engaged Christian legal ethics in which the primary obligation of lawyers, acting in their professional capacity, is to respect the law. The linchpin of the argument is a critique of Hauerwas\u27s anti-liberalism. Hauerwas’s objections to liberalism do not hold against a theory of politics that begins with foundational assumptions other than deracinated individuals, and assumes that politics is something more than merely a technology to satisfy pre-existing wants. A different liberal theory might assume, by contrast, that people have reasons to live together in communities and work out a common approach to living together, while treating one another as equals. To the extent there are good theological grounds for treating one another as equals, this version of liberalism can be understood as a political response to God’s presence in the world. A consistent theme in Hauerwas’s work is the dependence of values upon communities, traditions, and stories. I do not see why part of a community’s tradition and self-understanding cannot be pluralism and the corresponding need for some means of dealing with one another despite empirical uncertainty and disagreement about morality. If a community’s history and traditions can be so characterized, then any duties a citizen, public official, or lawyer may have toward the community’s institutions, including the legal system, may be understood as a way of expressing respect for one’s fellow citizens

Extrinsic Parameter Calibration for Line Scanning Cameras on Ground Vehicles with Navigation Systems Using a Calibration Pattern

Line scanning cameras, which capture only a single line of pixels, have been increasingly used in ground based mobile or robotic platforms. In applications where it is advantageous to directly georeference the camera data to world coordinates, an accurate estimate of the camera's 6D pose is required. This paper focuses on the common case where a mobile platform is equipped with a rigidly mounted line scanning camera, whose pose is unknown, and a navigation system providing vehicle body pose estimates. We propose a novel method that estimates the camera's pose relative to the navigation system. The approach involves imaging and manually labelling a calibration pattern with distinctly identifiable points, triangulating these points from camera and navigation system data and reprojecting them in order to compute a likelihood, which is maximised to estimate the 6D camera pose. Additionally, a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm is used to estimate the uncertainty of the offset. Tested on two different platforms, the method was able to estimate the pose to within 0.06 m / 1.05$^{\circ}$ and 0.18 m / 2.39$^{\circ}$. We also propose several approaches to displaying and interpreting the 6D results in a human readable way.Comment: Published in MDPI Sensors, 30 October 201

Philosophical Legal Ethics: An Affectionate History

The modern subject of theoretical legal ethics began in the 1970s. This brief history distinguishes two waves of theoretical writing on legal ethics. The “First Wave” connects the subject to moral philosophy and focuses on conflicts between ordinary morality and lawyers’ role morality, while the “Second Wave” focuses instead on the role legal representation plays in maintaining and fostering a pluralist democracy. We trace the emergence of the First Wave to the larger social movements of the 1960s and 1970s; in the conclusion, we speculate about possible directions for a Third Wave of theoretical legal ethics, based in behavioral ethics, virtue ethics, or fiduciary theory

Ectoparasites of Isle Royale, Michigan

Isle Royale National Park is a rocky archipelago of approximately 200 islands and islets in northwestern Lake Superior. Politically it belongs to the State of Michigan situated 50 miles to the southeast. The main island lies parallel to the Canadian shore, which is from 12 to 15 miles to the northwest. It is 45 miles long, and 9 miles wide at its broadest point. A review of the climatological, vegetational, and geological features of the island is given by Mech (1966). Most of the material included in this paper was collected incidently by Johnson during a three-year study (1966-68) of the food habits of the red fox (Vulpes vulpes (Linnaeus)), and population dynamics of three of its principal prey species--the snowshoe rabbit (Lepus americanus), red squirrel (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus), and deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus) (see Johnson, 1969). The remaining material (196061) was collected by L. D. Mech during his studies of gray wolf (Canis lupus Linnaeus)-moose (Alces alces) relationships (see Mech, 1966)

Dynamic Agent Compression

We introduce a new method for processing agents in agent-based models that significantly improves the efficiency of certain models. Dynamic Agent Compression allows agents to shift in and out of a compressed state based on their changing levels of heterogeneity. Sets of homogeneous agents are stored in compact bins, making the model more efficient in its use of memory and computational cycles. Modelers can use this increased efficiency to speed up the execution times, to conserve memory, or to scale up the complexity or number of agents in their simulations. We describe in detail an implementation of Dynamic Agent Compression that is lossless, i.e., no model detail is discarded during the compression process. We also contrast lossless compression to lossy compression, which promises greater efficiency gains yet may introduce artifacts in model behavior. The advantages outweigh the overhead of Dynamic Agent Compression in models where agents are unevenly heterogeneous — where a set of highly heterogeneous agents are intermixed with numerous other agents that fall into broad internally homogeneous categories. Dynamic Agent Compression is not appropriate in models with few, exclusively complex, agents.Agent-Based Modeling, Scaling, Homogeneity, Compression

The main fault with traditional research on banking competition

Revises 78-01

Shared Value in Emerging Markets: How Multinational Corporations Are Redefining Business Strategies to Reach Poor or Vulnerable Populations

This report illuminates the enormous opportunities in emerging markets for companies to drive competitive advantage and sustainable impact at scale. It identifies how over 30 companies across multiple sectors and geographies design and measure business strategies that also improve the lives of underserved individuals

Situation-Based Shifts in Consumer Web Site Benefit Salience: The Joint Role of Affect and Cognition

This study addresses the process by which differences in web site benefit salience arise in consumers’ minds for different anticipated usage situations. We investigate two routes by which situation may determine consumer benefit salience and find support for both route structures. The results indicate that individuals’ relative benefit importance ratings shift between different anticipated usage situations, both directly, and indirectly, through consumers’ anticipated affective states. Furthermore, the number of benefits that is rated as important by consumers is found to also differ depending on their anticipated affective states, providing further insight into why consumer benefit salience may vary across situations.affective route;cognitive route;situatieafhankelijkheid;usage situation;web site benefit salience;HD9696.82