The Original Theory of Constitutionalism

The U.S. Constitution embodies a conception of democratic sovereignty that has been substantially forgotten and obscured in today’s commentary. Recovering this original idea of constitution-making shows that today’s originalism is, ironically, unfaithful to its origins in an idea of self-rule that prized both the initial ratification of fundamental law and the political community’s ongoing power to reaffirm or change it. This does not mean, however, that living constitutionalism better fits the original conception of democratic self-rule. Rather, because the Constitution itself makes amendment practically impossible, it all but shuts down the very form of democratic sovereignty that authorizes it. No interpretive strategy succeeds in overcoming the dilemma of a constitution that at once embodies and prohibits democratic sovereignty

Inequality Rediscovered

Widespread recognition that economic inequality has been growing for forty years in most of the developed world, and in fact has tended to grow across most of the history of modern economies, shows that the period 1945-1973, when inequality of wealth and income shrank, was a marked anomaly in historical experience. At the time, however, the anomalous period of equality seemed to vindicate a long history of optimism about economic life: that growth would overcome meaningful scarcity and usher in an egalitarian and humanistic period that could almost qualify as post-economic. This has not been the experience of the last four decades. In this intellectual history of the anomalous period, we trace the main lines of that optimism and its undoing

Using formal game design methods to embed learning outcomes into game mechanics and avoid emergent behaviour

This paper offers an approach to designing game based learning experiences inspired by the Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics (MDA) model (Hunicke et al, 2004) and the elemental tetrad (Schell, 2008) model for game design. A case for game based learning as an active and social learning experience is presented including arguments from both teachers and game designers concerning the value of games as learning tools. The MDA model is introduced with a classic game- based example and a non-game based observation of human behaviour demonstrating a negative effect of extrinsic motivators (Pink, 2011) and the need to closely align or embed learning outcomes into game mechanics in order to deliver an effective learning experience. The MDA model will then be applied to create a game based learning experience with the goal of teaching some of the aspects of using source code control to groups of Computer Science students. First, clear aims in terms of learning outcomes for the game are set out. Following the learning outcomes the iterative design process is explained with careful consideration and reflection on the impact of specific design decisions on the potential learning experience, and the reasons those decisions have been made and where there may be conflict between mechanics contributing to learning and mechanics for reasons of gameplay. The paper will conclude with an evaluation of results from a trial of computer science students and staff, and the perceived effectiveness of the game at delivering specific learning outcomes, and the approach for game design will be assessed

Analysis of the use of video tape in the assessment center method

This study examined the feasibility of employing video-taping procedures in the operation of assessment centers. Six trained assessors observed 23 participants in four separate assessment centers. While one group of three assessors observed the assessment proceedings in person, the other group of three saw only the video-tape playbacks of the performances. A high degree of reliability was found between the ratings given by the two teams of assessors. The Pearson Product Moment Correlation computed on the total scores of all 23 participants yielded a reliability of r = . 86. The Spearman rank-order correlation coefficient was r = . 85. Videotaping procedures did indeed convey the essential behavioral information necessary to evaluate an individual\u27s management potential. Positive and negative factors of video taping are discussed in the paper

Intelligent Based Terrain Preview Controller for a 3-axle Vehicle

Presented at 13th International Symposium on Advanced Vehicle Control, AVEC'16; Munich 13-16/09/2016The paper presents a six-wheel half longitudinal model and the design of a dual level control architecture. The first (top) level is designed using a Sugeno fuzzy inference feedforward architecture with and without preview. The second level of controllers are locally managing each wheel for each axle. As the vehicle is moving forward the front wheels and suspension units will have less time to respond when compared to the middle and rear units, hence a preview sensor is used to compensate. The paper shows that the local active suspensions together with the Sugeno Fuzzy, (locally optimised using subtractive clustering), Feedforward control strategy is more effective and this architecture has resulted in reducing the sprung mass vertical acceleration and pitch accelerations

Introduction: Law and Neoliberalism

The concept of neoliberalism has been influential in the humanities and interpretive social sciences, but it has little foothold in legal scholarship, and its very coherence has been controversial, as it is often a polemical term. In this Introduction to a special issue of Law and Contemporary Problems, we argue for a meaning of neoliberalism that can help to organize the stakes of various areas of law while also showing the usefulness of the term more generally. We define neoliberalism as an overlapping set of arguments, value commitments, predispositions, and ways of framing problems that are unified by the context and purpose of their use: Neoliberal claims serve to protect and expand market imperatives in a persistent political conflict between those imperatives and countervailing democratic demands for values such as security, dignity, fairness, and solidarity. Our definition of neoliberalism helps to tie together various public and private-law areas by showing how market and democratic imperatives are in conflict there, and how law is mediating those conflicts. Legal scholarship, then, needs the concept of neoliberalism. But a useful theory of neoliberalism also needs law: as legal realism showed, and sophisticated economists agree, markets are not natural phenomena, but products of legal choices. Therefore, the contexts of conflict in which neoliberalism does its work are always specified in law

Introduction: Law and Neoliberalism

“Neoliberalism” refers to the revival of the doctrines of classical economic liberalism, also called laissez-faire, in politics, ideas, and law. These revived doctrines have taken new form in new settings: the “neo-” means not just that they are back, but that they are also different, a new generation of arguments. What unites the two periods of economic liberalism is their political effect: the assertion and defense of particular market imperatives and unequal economic power against political intervention. Neoliberalism’s advance over the past few decades has reshaped most important domains of public and private life, and the law has been no exception. From constitutional doctrine to financial regulation to intellectual property and family law, market and market-mimicking approaches are now commonplace in our jurisprudence

The Original Theory of Constitutionalism

The conflict between various versions of “originalism” and “living constitutionalism” has defined the landscape of constitutional theory and practice for more than a generation, and it shows no sign of abating. Although each camp has developed a variety of methodological approaches and substantive distinctions, each one also returns to a core concern: the democratic authority of constitutional review. The late Justice Scalia crystallized the originalist concern in his dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges: “It is of overwhelming importance … who it is that rules me. Today’s decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court.” The concern voiced by Scalia is, in a word, usurpation – the arrogation of the right to rule by the judiciary, invoking the authority of the Constitution’s “We the People,” but responding, in fact, to the vicissitudes of present-day party politics, social movements, and what Scalia once famously called “Kulturkampf.” On the living-constitutionalist side, the core concern is the Constitution’s legitimacy in the eyes of those it rules today. Here, too, it might be said that the question remains “who it is that rules me.” But living constitutionalism holds that “my Ruler” cannot legitimately be the mummified hand of those who ratified constitutional text long ago, when “the people” was restricted to adult white males (and often to property holders) and formal discrimination on racial and other grounds was widespread. Whatever “equal protection” or a “right of the people” might have meant to their ratifiers, the argument goes, legitimacy requires that they be acceptable to a twenty-first century polity when they are invoked today to weigh the constitutionality of state action