Death Penalty: Texas Law - Subsequent Writs and Abuse of the Writ Doctrine in Texas

The purpose and scope of this paper is to introduce the practitioner to the concept of the abuse-of-writ doctrine as made applicable to death penalty habeas litigation via the recent enactment of article 11.071, section 5(a) of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure.\u27 It is generally pertinent in the context of serial or subsequent writ filings by the applicant. It is hoped that this article will help guide both the State\u27s and defendant\u27s habeas attorney through the various intricacies of the subsequent application for a writ of habeas corpus in death penalty litigation. Part I of this article examines the subsequent writ from a historical perspective, revealing the necessity for a procedure that not only preserves the rights of the condemned, but promotes judicial economy and finality as well. Part II explains the abuse-of-writ doctrine and discusses the operation of the exceptions to procedural bar under the statute

N. Hingley & Sons Limited - Black Country Anchor Smith and Chain Cable Maker : a study of the world's premier manufacturer of ships' anchors and cables in the period 1890-1918

The principal objective of this dissertation is to position the firm of N Hingley & Sons Limited in its rightful place in the economic history of the Black Country and of Britain in the period 1890 to 1918. As an original contribution to knowledge of the subject, the study focuses on a modestly sized firm of ironmakers in the Black Country that achieved a position of almost total hegemony in the provision of anchors and ships cables to the navies and merchant fleets of the world. This was at a time when 90 per cent of all chain manufactured in Britain came from the Black Country and when the bulk of the ships of the world were constructed in British yards. The success of the firm was based on the solid foundation built by Noah Hingley in harnessing natural resources to a cooperative labour force under the direction of a paternalistic family of marked goodwill. Chapters two and three place the Hingley firm in the economic context of the times. Particular attention is given to how well the enterprise conforms to NrCloskey's analysis that in this period British industry did well and did all that could have been reasonably expected of it. Chapter four draws heavily on the Hingley archival material to establish an outline of the firm's trading activities during the period under review. This process is extended to the limits of the files in chapters five, six and seven. Chapter five examines the evolution from a family partnership to a closely held family company to a broadly held private company demonstrating the continuing ability of the Hingley family to adapt, developing an appropriate structure at each stage. Chapter six examines the basis of Hingleys' hegemonic position : the excellence of its wrought iron, its ability to fashion large diameter cable (up to 6"), and its state-of-the-art anchors. Chapter seven examines the form and development of Hingleys' highly efficient method of marketing. This was a method that ensured that the entirety of its production was always sold year on year and regardless of the fluctuations of business activity. Chapter eight is supplementary to chapter seven and examines Hingleys' greatest achievement. This was the firm's ability to create combinations of manufacturers and mini-cartels in order to capture the lion's share of the production of large diameter ships' cables and anchors for a selected list of firms. This was not a simple rigging of the market. Rather, it was a precondition of sustained high quality that provided a first class product at a fair price. The navies of the world benefited from this strategy. The provision of first class products allied to excellent marketing was the key to Hingleys status in the industry. Chapter nine, dealing with relations with governments, examines the growing levels of state control in the period under review. Beginning with the unstoppable momentum for social and political change, the emergence of the military-industrial complex world wide ensured a greater degree of involvement by the state in matters of business and commerce. In the latter stages of the chapter, the way in which the Board coped with the command economy of the Great War is examined in the context of the resilience of the firm in adapting to the economic and cultural changes of the first quarter of the current century. It was this ability that enabled it to trade on successfully for a further fifty years after the end of this story. My dissertation endeavours to show that Noah Hingley's firm was a fine example of solid achievement within the parameters of what was sensible and economically achievable in Britain at that time

Proxy-PET Building Blocks as a Design Element for Library Synthesis

In exploring radioligands for positron emission tomography (PET) imaging, it is not unusual to synthesize a library of compounds around some targeting scaffold, screen for optimal binding to a relevant diagnostic cellular target, remove some portion of optimized molecule so as to append the requisite reporter group, and then re-evaluate. To this end, the use of click labeling in radiochemistry is proving an increasingly attractive means of conjugating a 18F-reporter group, wherein the targeting scaffold bearing a terminal alkyne is allowed to react with a 2-[18F]-fluoroethylazide to forge a linkage as a 1,2,3-triazole substituent. Since the triazole linked prosthetic group is a necessary portion of the eventual PET imaging agent, it was envisioned that building blocks possessing a cold version of the triazole linked fluoroethyl group might be incorporated early in the synthetic plan as a crucial library design element. The analog so designed and exhibiting optimal binding would, in a radioactive form, represent the eventual PET imaging agent. To that end, we have prepared such building blocks from the copper(I) catalyzed click reaction between sodium azide, 2-fluoroethyl tosylate (or benzyl bromide) and propargylic alcohol. Conversion of the alcohol building block to the corresponding aldehyde could be effected using MnO2, which was appended to a scaffold of interest using an aldol condensation. Conversion to the bromomethyl derivative was achieved with PBr3 in the case of the benzyl surrogate but not the fluoroethyl derivative. The usefulness of such building blocks has been demonstrated in the case of synthesizing and evaluating small libraries around the oxindole and isatin privileged scaffolds. Subsequent manipulations led to the ultimate target structure, being a benzylidene oxindole bearing a N-triazole linked moiety. For instance, whereas the bromomethyl triazole can be utilized for N-alkylations of the aforementioned scaffolds towards targets of importance in Alzheimer\u27s disease (such as tau proteins, caspase-3, cdk5, and AChE), the aldehyde can be employed in aldol reactions. The introduction of such proxy-PET moieties at an early stage of the library synthesis has an added benefit of avoiding the presence of copper species in the last step before biological testing

Equity Premium: - Does it exist? Evidence from Germany and United Kingdom

Malkiel and Xu (1997) state that idiosyncratic volatility is highly correlated with size and that it plays a powerful role in explaining expected returns. In this paper we ask (a) whether idiosyncratic volatility is useful in explaining the variation in expected returns; and, (b) whether our findings can be explained by the turn of the year effect. We find that (a) our three-factor model provides a better description of expected returns than the CAPM. That is, we find that firm size and idiosyncratic volatility are related to security returns. In addition, we also find that our findings are robust throughout the sample period. We show that the CAPM beta alone is not sufficient to explain the variation in stock returns.Idiosyncratic Volatility, Size Effect, CAPM, Risk Premia

Monitoring corporate boards: evidence from China

China’s listed companies have two-tier boards comprising of a supervisory board and a board of directors. The supervisory board has the responsibility to oversee and monitor the board of directors. Similarly, the role of the independent non-executive directors (INEDs) is to advise and monitor directors. In this paper, we investigate the main board structure hypotheses namely the scope of operations, monitoring and negotiation hypotheses for a sample of Chinese Initial Public Offerings floated on both the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges. Our results provide evidence to support the three hypotheses. Interestingly, we find that the larger the size of the board of directors, the larger the supervisory board size. Moreover, we find that the higher the proportion of INEDs, the smaller the supervisory board size and this implies that INEDs are perhaps a substituting mechanism for the supervisors’ monitoring role. Finally, we argue that as the Chinese governance structure combines both the German and the Anglo-Saxon models, this creates a conflict between the two boards with respect to the monitoring role. Our results, therefore call for a comprehensive reform in the Chinese governance mechanism

Board Diversity and Financial Fragility: Evidence from European Banks

In the wake of the recent debt crisis in Europe, we investigate the influence of board diversity on financial fragility and performance of European banks. Corporate governance codes in Europe recommend unitary and dual-board systems; therefore, we believe that the influence of board diversity may vary across governance mechanisms and that no other studies have addressed these variations and their influence on financial fragility across European countries. The results show that a critical mass of female representation on both the supervisory board and the board of directors may reduce banks’ vulnerability to financial crisis. However, interestingly, we find evidence that female directors on the management board are not risk averse. We argue that the degree of risk taking for female directors may vary based on their roles (non-executive or executive) and that female and male executive directors may have the same risk taking behaviour. Our empirical results provide guidelines to the regulators in Europe with respect to the recently approved proposal by the European Parliament on female representation

The association of European microstates with the EU: integration test with model value

The European microstates Andorra, Monaco, and San Marino have only been partially integrated into the European single market. Consequently, there are several regulatory gaps in areas such as financial markets, the free movement of workers, as well as within the Schengen Agreement. Moreover, the smooth adaptation of Community acquis is being hampered. In December 2013, the European Council called for the negotiation of a framework Association Agreement with the three countries. For Brussels, the rapprochement of these countries might also serve as a test run for dealing with other European countries whose full membership is rejected either by the EU or by the state concerned. (author's abstract