Systems in Legal Education

Until recent years there was but one system of teaching law in the schools. It was the good old system employed in all the professions of introducing the student to text-books of recognized authority and compelling him to commit their contents to memory, under the guidance of an instructor. As shown by Professor Theodore W. Dwight, it was the method advocated in the Roman law of introducting students to their first knowledge of that remarkable system of jurisprudence. In the earlier days, the work of the instructor was limited to ascertaining that the student had properly memorized the text and to oral explanations. The student\u27s memorizing feat being accomplished, he was admitted to the bar. But because law, like medicine, is not an exact science and a working knowledge of law involves knowledge not only of its rules, but of how those rules are applied, only the preliminary stage of a man\u27s legal education was finished when he passed out of the law school into the ranks of the profession. While the swearing in of a law school graduate placed upon him the imprimatur of the court in form notifying the public that he was competent to practice, it, in fact, was little more than a permission to enter upon the second stage of his education in which he would be given the opportunity to learn the application of the rules of law. Before his admission to the bar, he had been studying law only in the abstract, but afterwards he began a voluntary course of delving into the undigested mass of its original sources,--always more or less at the expense of clients, who were compelled to take the consequences of his lack of knowledge

Real-Time Collision Imminent Steering Using One-Level Nonlinear Model Predictive Control

Automotive active safety features are designed to complement or intervene a human driver's actions in safety critical situations. Existing active safety features, such as adaptive cruise control and lane keep assist, are able to exploit the ever growing sensor and computing capabilities of modern automobiles. An emerging feature, collision imminent steering, is designed to perform an evasive lane change to avoid collision if the vehicle believes collision cannot be avoided by braking alone. This is a challenging maneuver, as the expected highway setting is characterized by high speeds, narrow lane restrictions, and hard safety constraints. To perform such a maneuver, the vehicle may be required to operate at the nonlinear dynamics limits, necessitating advanced control strategies to enforce safety and drivability constraints. This dissertation presents a one-level nonlinear model predictive controller formulation to perform a collision imminent steering maneuver in a highway setting at high speeds, with direct consideration of safety criteria in the highway environment and the nonlinearities characteristic of such a potentially aggressive maneuver. The controller is cognizant of highway sizing constraints, vehicle handling capability and stability limits, and time latency when calculating the control action. In simulated testing, it is shown the controller can avoid collision by conducting a lane change in roughly half the distance required to avoid collision by braking alone. In preliminary vehicle testing, it is shown the control formulation is compatible with the existing perception pipeline, and prescribed control action can safely perform a lane change at low speed. Further, the controller must be suitable for real-time implementation and compatible with expected automotive control architecture. Collision imminent steering, and more broadly collision avoidance, control is a computationally challenging problem. At highway speeds, the required time for action is on the order of hundreds of milliseconds, requiring a control formulation capable of operating at tens of Hertz. To this extent, this dissertation investigates the computational expense of such a controller, and presents a framework for designing real-time compatible nonlinear model predictive controllers. Specifically, methods for numerically simulating the predicted vehicle response and response sensitivities are compared, their cross interaction with trajectory optimization strategy are considered, and the resulting mapping to a parallel computing hardware architecture is investigated. The framework systematically evaluates the underlying numerical optimization problem for bottlenecks, from which it provides alternative solutions strategies to achieve real-time performance. As applied to the baseline collision imminent steering controller, the procedure results in an approximate three order of magnitude reduction in compute wall time, supporting real-time performance and enabling preliminary testing on automotive grade hardware.PHDMechanical EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163063/1/jbwurts_1.pd

Seen at the Jameson Trial

The great State Trial was on. The witnesses for the Crown had willingly or unwillingly told with fatal certainty the story of Jameson\u27s raid from organization to defeat. The relentlessly exact reports of the testimony had frayed the cloak of chivalry which public opinion had hung upon the shoulders of the accused, and the suspicion was gaining ground that the raid was a bold stroke for wealth planned and carried out in detail by selfishness and greed. The Boer witnesses nightly proclaimed the wrongs of the Transvaal in the smoking-rooms of the hotels. They openly asserted their belief that Jameson and his officers could not be convicted in an English court. Their distrust provoked them, and their self-confidence permitted them, to use the boldest language in discussing the situation in mixed gatherings. The Chief of the Transvaal Mounted Police had exclaimed to a company of Englishmen: I hope Jameson will be acquitted! I hope he will be acquitted! Then the Transvaal will abrogate the Convention, and that will mean war with England! And we can defeat any army that England can send against us

Trading & Investing System Development: A System of Systems

Developed an autonomous stock trading algorithm. Each group member created their own trading system, and parts of each system were combined into a single system. The final system consists of a separate algorithm for selecting stocks, buying stocks, allocation money, and selling stocks. The buy process uses a Random Forest machine learning algorithm trained on historical stock prices and modified bars based on volume to predict when to buy. The system and backtesting software were developed in Python using modules Numpy, Pandas, Scikit-learn, and Matplotlib. The system was tested across short, intermediate and long term periods. The average annualized return on investment for the three time periods was 26.67%

Systems in Legal Education

Until recent years there was but one system of teaching law in the schools. It was the good old system employed in all the professions of introducing the student to text-books of recognized authority and compelling him to commit their contents to memory, under the guidance of an instructor. As shown by Professor Theodore W. Dwight, it was the method advocated in the Roman law of introducting students to their first knowledge of that remarkable system of jurisprudence. In the earlier days, the work of the instructor was limited to ascertaining that the student had properly memorized the text and to oral explanations. The student\u27s memorizing feat being accomplished, he was admitted to the bar. But because law, like medicine, is not an exact science and a working knowledge of law involves knowledge not only of its rules, but of how those rules are applied, only the preliminary stage of a man\u27s legal education was finished when he passed out of the law school into the ranks of the profession. While the swearing in of a law school graduate placed upon him the imprimatur of the court in form notifying the public that he was competent to practice, it, in fact, was little more than a permission to enter upon the second stage of his education in which he would be given the opportunity to learn the application of the rules of law. Before his admission to the bar, he had been studying law only in the abstract, but afterwards he began a voluntary course of delving into the undigested mass of its original sources,--always more or less at the expense of clients, who were compelled to take the consequences of his lack of knowledge

THE NEW EQUITY RULES OF THE UNITED STATES COURTS

Archive of work produced using the resources of the Imperial College High Performance Computing Service

The Jury System under Changing Conditions

When we stop to theorize about our courts, we find no room for the conception of a judicial tribunal which is not perfectly unbiased and free to determine the facts as they exist and to apply the law as it stands. But judicial tribunals must be comlosed of men-with men\u27s infirmities, both mental and moral. No human tribunal can be infallible in its judgments; but on the whole, no country has succeeded better than the English speaking people in providing for the just determination of causes–notwithstanding the fact that reforms in judicial procedure are needed, especially in this country. Our judges command respect for their learning and judicial temperament. Respect for the men has begotten respect for the office and that, in turn, has caused the men to be selected with a view to their fitness. This seems to be generally true, whether the office is filled by appointment or by popular vote. And yet, in spite of the general presumption that must exist in favor of a judge\u27s fitness to preside in the trial of causes, so jealous is the law. in the administration of justice that there are cases in which a judge, by reason of his relation to the parties in the cause, or to the subject matter, is absolutely disqualified from acting. In certain jurisdiction, were he to insist upon performing the judicial functions in such a case, the proceedings before him would be a nullity. In other cases, the judge is expected to recuse himself if he finds in his own mind a bias which might influence his rulings. To the honor of our judges, be it said, this confidence reposed in them by the law is rarely abused

Seen at the Jameson Trial

The great State Trial was on. The witnesses for the Crown had willingly or unwillingly told with fatal certainty the story of Jameson\u27s raid from organization to defeat. The relentlessly exact reports of the testimony had frayed the cloak of chivalry which public opinion had hung upon the shoulders of the accused, and the suspicion was gaining ground that the raid was a bold stroke for wealth planned and carried out in detail by selfishness and greed. The Boer witnesses nightly proclaimed the wrongs of the Transvaal in the smoking-rooms of the hotels. They openly asserted their belief that Jameson and his officers could not be convicted in an English court. Their distrust provoked them, and their self-confidence permitted them, to use the boldest language in discussing the situation in mixed gatherings. The Chief of the Transvaal Mounted Police had exclaimed to a company of Englishmen: I hope Jameson will be acquitted! I hope he will be acquitted! Then the Transvaal will abrogate the Convention, and that will mean war with England! And we can defeat any army that England can send against us