Texas, Abortion, and State Action

The Texas Legislature recently passed what the Supreme Court describes as an “unprecedented” statutory scheme. Texas’s new law allows private, everyday citizens to sue anyone who assists a woman in obtaining an abortion after her sixth week of pregnancy. It’s clear that Texas chose this unusual enforcement mechanism to try to circumvent the Constitution’s “state action” requirement. Before a plaintiff can challenge a policy or action on constitutional grounds, they must show that the government somehow had a hand in causing their harm. But this Texas law strips the government of its enforcement power and instead gives it to everyday citizens, thereby allowing the law’s defenders to argue that the law does not trigger constitutional protections. This short article argues that the courts should have little trouble concluding that this law and its unusual enforcement mechanism amount to state action, meaning this law is subject to normal constitutional scrutiny. The Supreme Court’s decisions in Shelley v. Kraemer, Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Co., and Terry v. Adams make clear that private parties can be considered state actors, especially when they are working with the express approval of the government and when the courts are required to hand down rulings that seemingly infringe on well-settled constitutional protections. These decisions, among others, show that the private-citizen plaintiffs deputized under this new Texas law must be treated as state actors who are subject to constitutional limitations.

THE PROCURATOR CAMPANIAE AND THE ‘LANDS OF CAPUA’ ON CRETE

This paper presents a new edition of a boundary stone between Capua (on Crete) and Knossos. I identify the post of Publius Messius Campanus as procurator Campaniae rather than procurator Caesaris. The appearance of the procurator Campaniae on Crete is linked to a dispute between the colony of Capua and a private citizen called Plotius Plebeius. This new reading has several important historical consequences: first, it is the earliest attestation of a procurator Campaniae (and the first outside Italy); second, it offers a new interpretation of the juridical category of Knossian lands as part of the ager vectigalis of the Italian colony of Capua in the form of a praefectura Campana or Capuensis; third, it proposes a reinterpretation of the process of arbitration between a public entity (Capua) and a private owner.

Reordering the Royal Dead

This chapter narrates Agyeman Prempeh's return to Asante in 1924 from exile in the Seychelles. It unfolds how he had changed in the course of his 28 years in detention and repatriated as a private citizen, Mr Edward Prempeh. Two years later, having cemented a reputation among British officials as a progressive figure, he was appointed 'Kumasihene', head of the reconstituted Kumasi division of colonial Ashanti. That said, in his own mind and in those of his people, Agyeman Prempeh remained Asantehene. Despite his embrace of Anglicanism and colonial modernity, Prempeh was acutely conscious of this historical role and worked assiduously until his death to heal the wounds of the past and to ensure a reinvigorated future by attending to the dignity of the royal dead. The chapter examines his project, which took the form of three interconnected campaigns: to reorder the dominion of the dead in Kumasi; to rebuild the destroyed mausoleum at Bantama; and to repatriate the remains of those who died in the Seychelles and elsewhere. Together, they constitute a key episode in the political life of dead bodies in colonial West Africa.

THE DASGUPTA REVIEW: SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES ON INVESTMENT IN CONSERVATION AND RESTORATION, FAMILY PLANNING, AND REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH

Three broad categories of transformative changes have been recommended in The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review (henceforth Review): (i) The need to address the imbalance between our demands on Nature and its supply. (ii) The need to change our measures of economic success. (iii) The need for institutional change. However, what the private citizen would like to find in the Review differs from what someone in a government department or an international agency or a private company seeks. These notes have been prompted by the many virtual meetings I have had since the Review’s launch and they further explore aspects of the Review’s recommendations.

L'iscrizione di Mnesiepes dall’Archilocheion di Paro

The inscription, dated to the 3rd century BC, was carved on a series of marble blocks, of which only two were recovered. It informs us about the existence, on Paros, of an open-air shrine dedicated to Archilochus. This sacred area, called Ἀρχιλοχείον, was instituted by Mnesiepes, a private citizen who seems to have acted as a representative of the local community, even submitting his project to the approval of Delphi. Despite the fragmentary status of the stones, the text has preserved an important tale about some episodes of the poet’s life, which are displayed also using true metrical quotations.

Concerning the queer refugee: Staceyann Chin’s transient performance

Poet, performance artist, and activist, Staceyann Chin has created with her daughter Zuri an on-line “Living Room Protest” series. This work provides a focus to discuss the queer refugee and facilitates a broader inquiry into the spatial and temporal dimensions of transient performance as expressed through a digital platform. The Chins’ collaboration destabilizes assumed oppositions between child and adult, public and private, citizen and refugee. Their performances further investigate notions of home and subjectivity by highlighting some of the contradictions that obtain in relation to discourses of forced migration and related claims for asylum. Although the short videos of the protest series recall certain elements from Staceyann Chin’s larger oeuvre (specifically her spoken word performances, her solo theater shows, and her published writings), this dialogic form presented on YouTube participates in and potentially reshapes one particular family’s role in a public sphere constructed through new media.

In His Own Words

This chapter presents Hissène Habré's own thoughts on his regime and his threatened extradition, excerpted from his 2011 interview with Senegalese reporters from La Gazette. Habré moved to Dakar, Senegal following his expulsion from Chad in 1990, where he lived as a private citizen in an upscale residential neighbourhood. Although he left public politics, he participated in local Muslim political life in Senegal, and was protected by Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade. However, waves of international attention put pressure on Senegal to extradite or prosecute Habré. On 25 July 2011, a film crew and reporters from La Gazette interviewed Habré in his home in Almadies. It was rumoured that President Wade was preparing to extradite Habré to Chad, where he had already been sentenced to death, in absentia, under Idriss Déby's regime. In response, Habré broke his typical media silence and agreed to an interview. In this interview, Habré did not deny that ‘there were deviations or blemishes’ under his regime, but he insisted that he is not responsible for these.

The Blue-Green Urban Living Labs of Kuala Lumpur

The extraordinary societal challenges demand cities to be innovative and adaptable to the needs of urban citizens. In the Malaysian context, the Blue-Green Infrastructure (BGI) has not been well incorporated into the ULLs. This paper seeks to address this gap by exploring the potential of the Blue-Green Urban Living Labs (BGULLs) at the Sungai Bunus catchment area. Using Google Form, survey questionnaire is conducted among professionals and the public. Findings of this unprecedented study suggest the BGULLs offer beyond beautification works, and it is voicing the virtual idea of the BGULLs into a real setting that reflects the public-private-citizen partnerships.Keywords: Urban living labs; Blue-Green Infrastructure; Innovation; societal challengeseISSN: 2398-4287 © 2020. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia.DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/e-bpj.v5i13.2072

The President Is in: Public Opinion and the Presidential Use of Twitter

Analyzing President Trump’s Tweets ( N = 30,386) with the first tweet starting from 4 May 2009, this article looks at the nature of his conversations with the public and the building of public support for his candidacy, till he assumed office on January 2017. Drawing theoretically on deliberative democracy and technological populism as performance, this study, among the earliest to use interpretative qualitative analysis, reveals the different themes in his discourse, rather than only highlight specific attributes of his tweets. Our analysis shows that Trump tweets frequently and casts himself as a political outsider who can alone save America. His racist and sexist language with his confrontational style leaves no room for deliberative discourse. His messages may be populist in character, but they are aversive and uncivil and lack normative attributes of deliberation that one would expect in the leader of a powerful nation, such as the United States. These characteristics have been present in his tweets even as a private citizen. This research makes a new contribution to our understanding of how Trump uses Twitter, starting from before he emerged as a contender for the presidential office, and the discourses that emanate from his use of Twitter to make broader inferences about the messages the public is receiving from Trump.