This world of ours 3

As the US's population grows in excess of 300 million, the world is found to be the warmest for 12,000 years--global warming being a significant threat to the world's growing population as it threatens the water supplies of many LDCs (and I hate that acronym/term, if I have yet to voice that). And on a more local side of things, Bush signed into law a 700 mile fence along our southern border in order to combat illegal immigration, which president Calderon has likened to the Berlin wall.
1. US population reaches 300 million
2. World 'warmest for 12,000 years
3. Climate water threat to millions
4. Bush signs Mexico fence into law
5. Mexico anger over US border fence

Meanwhile, Beijing is trying to curb it's blatant (though often humorous) misuse of the English language in time for the 2008 olympics, we're using too much of the earth's 'natural capital', a recent report asserts that the UN did a terrible job in initially acknowledging the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region, a record number of US troops have died this month in Iraq, a declassified report suggests that the "war on terror" has actually fuelled global terrorism, some guy cancelled his plans to sell a Picasso painting after accidentially puncturing it with his elbow, and Apple is blaming the inherent insecurity of Windows for its virus-infected iPods.
6. Beijing stamps out poor English
7. Planet enters 'ecological debt'
8. UN 'missed' Darfur crisis signs
9. Grim month for US in Iraq
10. US press unmoved by terror report
11. Tycoon holes dream Picasso deal
12. Apple blames Microsoft for virus-infected iPods

Also: Half a million displaced northern Ugandans are expected to return home by the end of 2006, the US was called 'arrogant and stupid' on its stance on Iraq by a state department official, and allowing the regulated hunting of exotic, endangered animals is being used to aid in conservation efforts.
13. Large numbers head home in Uganda
14. US 'arrogant and stupid' in Iraq
15. Hunting 'has conservation role'

Intersecting ups, downs,
Upside-down, across and around
Remind that the bent edges of this
Story's pages
Are neither deriding or accidental.



Update:

A few more that I unintentionally left out:

16. Displaced by Darfur: Your stories
17. Darfur campaign cuts Sudan money
18. Bush's Iraq options limited
19. DR Congo children 'still armed'
20. UN ponders North Korea sanctions

Philosophy of law- 2nd exam: A1 and B2

I have an exam in my philosophy of law class tomorrow. The essay questions were handed out a week ago, and I just recently outlined some potential responses to them. (During the actual exam, they are to be answered without the aid of notes.) I figured I'd post them or else I'd never make any other use of them except to benefit my personal understanding.

I did this once before but after writing them:
i. Two recycled essays

I'm not 100% certain that everything is accurate, as it reflects a course that covers a limited range of readings and is presented in light of the historical development of jurisprudence, rather than jurisprudence conceptually unabated.

Okay, so:

Question A1: Dworkin (in Law's Empire, ch. 7) discusses some of the important features of common law reasoning. Lay out Dworkin's account and criticize it.

-The authorial interpretation of law provided by Dworkin ('law as integrity') roughly operates on the assumption that the legal and judicial history of a state were written by a single author, or, perhaps more accurately, that they exist as a continuous narrative, hence they exhibit some consistency in principle when viewed as a holistic body of law.
-These past political events reflect 'legal principles' in tandem with the law proper ('policy') and ostensibly express the "character" (i.e. political morality) of the body politic.
-In accord with this principle, a judge's post-interpretive decisions ought to be drawn from an interpretation that follows two dimensions: fit and justification. Fit meaning that the possible decision is also be coherently applicable to preceding cases and can be retrospectively judged according to similar standards (as much as it is possible), and justification meaning just that: that the decision operates effectively from a standpoint of political morality, i.e. justice, fairness, and political due process (althoug not necessarily in its original historical justification... but rather one that demonstrates it in its best light.).
-The test for the judge then becomes whether his or her decision relates to existing political structures and prior decisions in a manner that forms an intellectually coherent whole.
-Dworkin also expresses a desire for judges to use a constructive interpretation in the compartmentalization of law, i.e. the creation of 'local priority', wherein divisions separating departments of law reflect the practice in its best light--in particular by creating normative boundaries that assent with popular conviction. In this case, normative boundaries are used in order to allow for the shifting social practices and moral opinions of the body politic. This promotes predictability and coherence or say says Dworkin's idealized fictional judge, Hercules.
-Local priority should, then, not be turned to unless the compartmentalization has proved to be justified in a similar fashion.
-It follows from this that "hard cases" result from a threshold test of fit that permits multiple localized principles but doesn't discriminate among them.
-Following this, Dworkin argues that localized principles that meet this threshold of fit should be construed as competing, not as contradictory. The two (or more) are "still in play", so-to-speak, but the inquiry shifts toward which one demands priority. After weighing these principles, the one that both fits and justifies BETTER than the rest (meets the judge's criteria of 'expanded fit'... presumably with consideration given to 'BIG' principles like justice, fairness, etc.) is the one that should be the basis for decision.
-Though judges may carry out this test of fit differently, under a given method of constructive interpretation, Dworkin holds that there is only one "right" (or "best") answer.
-Although Dworkin offers some possible objections to Hercules's method, they appear to me as radically imbalanced and not terribly substantive. Reidy's take on Dworkin's second objection ('Hercules is a Fraud'), seems to carry more weight than those provided in LE itself. Namely, how can there be only one correct interpretation (not simply for the plaintiff or defendent) when the dimensions of justification and fit have a tendency to pull in different directions? How does one prioritize them in a morally neutral way in order to reach a certain decision? It seems to me that Hercules's analysis of McLoughlin v. O'Brien suffers from this. Although I agree, morally, with his conclusion, I don't see any explicit method used to determine why value was given priority. The only answer I would foresee would be that this invariably differs among judges' conceptions of law, justice, fairness, etc. and that it is ultimately a matter of discretion.
-A second, but more minor objection, could be that in using the method of 'law as integrity', the application of law (in prioritization and justification) is still retroactive and thus not ideal as well as contingently unpredictable... however, this seems unavoidable in "hard cases", and the method which would avoid this, conventionalism, seems sufficiently unsatisfactory.


Question B2: One of the most contentious issues between Hart and Dworkin is whether judicial discretion (or judicial 'legislation') should be allowed. Discuss this issue carefully and ritically in the light of relevant readings/discussions in this part of the course, using (a) Dworkin, (b) Reidy, chs. 2 & 3, and (c) also Hart's 'Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals' paper, sect. III, pp. 68-72. Try to come to some sort of balanced overview as to which view (Hart's or Dworkin's) seems best.

-With concern to judicial discretion, Hart emphasizes the significance of the "penumbral" areas that result from the use of general langauge to apply to specific, concrete instances, something that Dworkin refers to (to the dismay of Riedy, who considers the phrase neednessly pithy) as the "semantic sting". This problem with language creates fundamental problems in 'policy' law (especially statutory law) that makes strict literalism and pigeon-holing on the part of the judge implausible--what Hart calls "Blackstone's fiction".
-Consequently, "logic is silent on how to classify particulars." This means that short of resubmitting this dilemma to the legislature (as Joe suggested), a constructive approach becomes necessary.
-This method of interpretation is thus one determined by the judge. Dworkin emphasizes that even though this grants some non-objective discretion to judges, there is not any singular "objective" method available. Even the decision to adhere to a conventionalist line of reasoning, he argues, is chosen due to a political reason on the part of the judge. Thus no alternative practice is free from this objection. So, in the sense that there are multiple interpretive theories available to judges, there is discretion... there is by no means a rigid, existing framework for judges to abide by.
-In this respect, the matter of judicial discretion does call morality into question.. but not in a manner that may properly be termed judicial 'legislation'. As Dworkin makes clear, legislatures need only be concerned with policy, not principle, this is a far cry from the role of the judiciary.
-Although Hart and Dworkin seem to agree that a solution must be a product of constructive interpretation, that does not necessarily pronounce that judges have free reign to decide cases purely in accordance with their personal morality.
-(Hart's views seem more concerned the nature and foundational criteria of law, while Dworkin's seem to deal almost exclusively with a practical judicial understanding of law... in this respect they aren't equally opposed, so the comparison becomes somewhat difficult.)
-In Dworkin's account of 'legal principles', the discretion is lessened (with special effort made on his part to avoid the possibility of "strong discretion"): possible justifications are limited to those that are expressed in existing law through latent legal principles. Decisions are therefore guided in light of these principles, and in accordance with the Herculean 'law as integrity' method. This offers some degree of predictability and legislative deference while still permitting forward-looking criteria inasmuch as it can.
-In this light, Hart and Dworkin seem to have fairly compatible views on the need for judicial interpretive construction. In the case that there are existing differences beyond this, they could be understood as separate interpretive understandings of the "role" of the judiciary, rather than attributed to the presence of fundamental inconsistencies in what 'law' essentially is.


We'll see how it goes...

Hapless poetry concatenated

A pallid refrain
Treaded on treaded line...
Embraced, confined.

Saturated thoughts in empty, unchanging sky.

Through milkwashed eyes,
A siren rests
Softly
Upon enclaves,
Sleeping.

Winding breaths in heresy,
Terraced shades of asymmetric rescindency...

A flight
Compounded in emerald strata:
A Bouguereauic pendency,
Like the arms of a dream
Thoughtfully caressing.

A myriad resting,
A blushfaced sunspot
With leaves streaming
Seriatim.

A pang of dissonance

Shed in revenant line,
Staining black as folding midnight
Beneath echoes, creeping.

Like silhouettes.

(Cleaving.)

A positioned aria
Between the eye and austerity.
Layering. With
Wings in ink.
Draping, never dripping.

Weaning a palisade undefined.
Cast in open Walls,
Shifting.

Gray on brownish gray;
The autumnal agglomeration
Feasting.

Hapless poetry 12

A palisade undefined.

The future of humanity: elves and goblins?

Read this:

1. Human species 'may split in two'
2. The future ascent (and descent) of man


This is absolute nonsense for the following reasons:

1. This relies on WAY too many unstated assumptions.


2. That's just not how natural selection works... it's not that simple. If the argument is based on the assumption that the upper class will relentlessly alter their genes in order to be more appealing to potential mates, assuming that that is possible in the future, why would jaw muscles and skin color then be subject to natural selection, but not other physical characteristics?


3. The numbers in both articles don't make sense. What's the 100,000 year mark predicting? The 1,000? I'm confused.


4. Wait, so purely aesthetic sexual preference is not going to change at all in the course of 1,000 years? We'll have no cultural developments in that time; after a torrent of globalization everyone around the world will adopt current mainstream western preferences? Even after all of the supposed interbreeding?


5. The "highly educated" stratifications of society are not as apt to make their mating preferences primarily on physical appearance, nor are they statistically as likely to have as many children as the less educated. One could argue that the this assertion could apply to the bourgeoisie or a materialistic upper class, but even then the distinction would not be nestled in two simple categories.


6. Assuming that this new genetic modification technology was inexpensive enough to have become widespread, what reason would there be to justify the STRICT class distinctions between the poor, short-asymmetry-faced stupids and rich, tall-symmetry-faced "smarts"? Everyone has interbred to create a coffee-colored skintone and presumably accepted similar views on culture (at least with regard to aesthetics), yet there remains a class-based divide (which is ostensibly arbitrary) that cannot be resolved?


7. Since when has creativity been a strictly genetic aptitude? Indeed what is 'creativity'? I could be wrong, but 'imagination' and it's application are not primarily rooted within innate genetic traits as they are in psychology and social circumstance. Or so I doth claim.



8. Dr. Curry’s predictions were commissioned by the television channel Bravo to celebrate its 21st anniversary on air.

   Does that not jovially exclaim, 'BULLSHIT'?


9. What reason do we have to believe that human civilization as we know it will be around in 1,000 years (much less in 100,000 years)? We've already exceeded the planet's natural carrying capacity (and the population is still growing). And the optimistic "Star Trek"-like future seems implausible. What says that human civilization wouldn't revert to a "leaver" way of life before we reach the year 3000 (if it's still around by then)?

I can't go on... it's not worth the effort.

"..." 2

"How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life!"

—Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value

Hapless poetry 11

Wrinkled white tile cringes its woven frame,
Non sui generis, flocks in golden repeat,
Statures rewinding, gently

Un-tiding,

In subdued carpet scent, indign, confided:
Ex silentium the film-grain rattles,
Opening blinds of stitch-sown eyes.

A steady hand swaying, lacing brick after brick,
Binding rust to coursing forehead sweeps;
Blush-stroked clouds feasting, lashes tracing awry,
Deaf, crippling contraception winding

Behind closed doors, grinding.

Faceted lampshades stolen,
Cobblestone vanities plucked;
Lakes shuffling behind frostbitten syllables
To fill stare-fought depressions--

Winding, harrowing
Stumbling beneath a lark's breath,

Wet, dripping clouds easing the air,
Precipitating beneath cold feet and toes;
Declining empty, statuesque terrain,
Palpitations fragrant, annulled,
Stagnant like felicific protases.

Amaranths sating.

Layered walls hide the grass-stained weaves,
Blue stripes swagger, undestined in a row;
Scenic belt-flaps dripping from the walls,
A blind mouse flashback against the back-lit screen,

Blossoming, draping shade in shadow,
Faces on mute, clock after clock, creasing,
Red before the white, 'i' before the 'e',
Pennies on the dollar,
A neo-halycon propagation lain with
Two-and-a-half famished cradles per capita.
Shingles heaving condensed.

Light-headed suffrages,
Flattering viscous antipathy,
Hard to swallow, innate haphazard neckties--
Succumbed to glass-watered malnourishment,
Satirical like-minded abstinence,
Stretching beneath folded arms,
With teeth.

Barrelclatters, shimmering prismic collateral
Subsuming aromatic prescience,
Divisive trajectories weaving nascent, quantum,
Scatological substrata.

Pillowfaced. Clattering clattering.

Atavistic parasols,
Meandering, traversing.
A placid serif redux, commodified.

Cleansing.

Cleaving.

Livid lucre consigned to neither
Meadows nor shallows,
House nor home,
Interstices nor gallows,
Proudpleased resuscitation-liberation
From the serried cold.

Mouseteasing abstraction, detraction from
Neck-laced Bouguereauic pendency,
Asymmetric dependency, oligopsony,
Concentric ascendancy.
Jejune inter-associations
Ad hominem.

Terraformed ancillaries,
A flanger of parsimony, a flame of carotids,

A catafalque shattering, tumbling, tumbling, tumbling...

Nurse and leisure,
The list goes on.

The flooring ceiling,
The valenced doors:
The postmodern lifestyle.
Subsistence piled upon subsistence.

En masse.

Ceaseless sauntering,
Dilapidated shallows blinking,
Sparse tear-shed blankets of austere assembly
Soaked in sour-lipped petulance or perdition,
Inclined without warrant;
Lonely in abundance.
Worry-less syllogisms censuring in defiance.

A fistclenching aversion, a grimace
Of antipathetic cadence
Set loosely upon a landing;
A satyr or savior
Deteriorating or ascending
Upon or below Escherian overpasses

With

Flasks of sublimated paraffin
Pouring Eleatic aridity, a soporific antinomy,
Between street, road, and boulevard,
Crux of the intersection as destination;
A sophomoric despondency
Terraced by mane and mudra,
Contantric arriere-pensee
Ad infinitum.

Pacification: substratic corollaries crinkling,
Codified assimilation retreating,
Syllables transfusing, stitches stretching:
An existential comatose refined in sacra.
Cradling hand in hand.

Bound in nest and quarry, bloom and coffer.
Adiabatic sentience:
A pang of fidelity, staple and mold,
As the world passes on.

Teratogenic concatenation.

Suffering
From heath and hearth,
Dust and pollen; caltrop and flower,
Spine and plethora.

A concertina rising
With echoes grinding--
Clouds parting, no longer conceiving, contrite.
No longer weaving:
A respite, concise.

No longer penitent, peripatetic,
Lachrymal, or dreamlusting.
Confusing serif and seraph,
Paraffin and penchants,
Mudra and mantra,

Prosaic cacophonies.

Draping, never dripping,

This vacant clutterscape divided-decisive:
Footnotes in umbilical perdition,
Layered shelves of erudition.
Autumnal agglomeration.
Chamber and chromosome.
Wings in ink.

Following the vagary to its end,
Slowly drowning--
Neatly folded, loop after loop.