Modeling TADF: the role of the medium polarizability

A novel approch to estimate intersystem and reverse intersystem crossing rates (ISC and RISC rates, respectively) is proposed. We build on an essential state model recently parametrized {\it ab initio}...

The ‘Essential Practices’ Doctrine

This article explores how the Supreme Court of India, in applying the judicial doctrine of ‘essential practices’, has embarked on a dangerous exercise of determining whether a particular religious practice is significant enough to warrant constitutional protection under Article 25(1) or not. In tracing a string of judgments, it shows how courts have been guilty of making ill-founded observations about the validity of religious practices, thereby detrimentally affecting religious groups and minorities. Due to this constitutional transgression, the question of ‘what is essentially religious’ turned into the question of ‘what is essential in religion’. The court has neither the right nor the expertise to decide if the religious practice indeed is ‘essential’. State intervention is warranted only based on constitutionally stipulated restrictions of ‘public order’, ‘morality’ and ‘health’. The cardinal rule ought to be of limited state intervention but maximum protection.

The constitutionality of default arbitration

<p>A proposed Bilateral Arbitration Treaty would subject international commercial disputes between enterprises in signatory states’ jurisdictions to arbitration unless the parties agreed to the contrary. This marks a substantial departure from conventional understandings of arbitration as based on the consent of the parties. More importantly, the policy would modify the jurisdiction of the courts, removing a large number of disputes to offshore tribunals subject to minimal judicial oversight. This paper explores the constitutional propriety of such a policy, with particular attention paid to the principles of the separation of powers, the rule of law, public provision of essential State functions, open justice, and democracy. These constitutional principles would be subverted if the policy were to operate within the existing regulatory framework for arbitration. The paper makes recommendations for possible modifications to the policy that would make it a better fit with the constitution.</p>

The constitutionality of default arbitration

<p>A proposed Bilateral Arbitration Treaty would subject international commercial disputes between enterprises in signatory states’ jurisdictions to arbitration unless the parties agreed to the contrary. This marks a substantial departure from conventional understandings of arbitration as based on the consent of the parties. More importantly, the policy would modify the jurisdiction of the courts, removing a large number of disputes to offshore tribunals subject to minimal judicial oversight. This paper explores the constitutional propriety of such a policy, with particular attention paid to the principles of the separation of powers, the rule of law, public provision of essential State functions, open justice, and democracy. These constitutional principles would be subverted if the policy were to operate within the existing regulatory framework for arbitration. The paper makes recommendations for possible modifications to the policy that would make it a better fit with the constitution.</p>

Economic growth or development: the validity of the theories of celso furtado and eclac on the Brazilian reality

Discussion between economic growth and development has permeated economic-sociological studies for a long time. It has been used successively to explain the observed phenomena imposed, such as inequality and income concentration, dependence, and even the power of the investment multiplier effect when driven by the State. From socio-economic activity and social inequalities, this paper aims to discuss the connections between Celso Furtado and ECLAC theories, upon the thoughts of Raul Prebisch and Raul Pinto, and the existing reality in Ribeirão Branco, one of the poorest cities in Sao Paulo State in Brazil. Data collection was done through documental research and the application of targeted interviews. The results explain how essential state investments promote social welfare and how periphery-center relations heavily affect municipalities of minor economic relevance.

Maintaining Basic State Functions and Service Delivery During Escalating Crises

This rapid literature review explores how to maintain essential state functions and basic service delivery during escalating conflict situations. It draws on literature and ideas from various overlapping agendas including development and humanitarian nexus; development, humanitarian and peacebuilding nexus (the “triple nexus”); fragile states; state-building; conflict sensitivity; resilience; and conflict prevention and early warning. There has been an extensive exploration of these ideas over the past decades: as the international development agenda has increasingly focussed on the needs of fragile and conflict-affected contexts (FCAS); as violent conflicts have become more complex and protracted; as the global share of poverty has become increasingly concentrated in FCAS highlighting the need to combine humanitarian crisis strategies with longer-term development strategies; as threats emanating from FCAS increasingly affect countries beyond those states and regions e.g. through serious and organised crime (SOC) networks, migration, terrorism, etc; and as global trends like climate change and demographic shifts create new stresses, opportunities, and risks.

17. Mistake

This chapter assesses situations in which one or both parties enter into a contract on the basis of a mistake that is so serious that it negates their consent to a contract; or, it means they did not consent to the agreement in the first place. Following such an ‘operative’ mistake, the contract will be void from the start and therefore treated as though a valid contract never existed. The chapter then considers the law on mistake. It starts with mistakes that prevent the formation of an agreement. The most significant mistake of this type is known as a ‘unilateral mistake’, which is where one party appears to have entered the contract on the basis of a mistake. The next significant issue is known as ‘common mistake’, which is where, at the time of creating the contract, both parties appear to be making the same mistake about the existence of an essential state of affairs. Finally, the chapter addresses the related remedy of equitable rectification before finally turning to the highly exceptional defence of non est factum.

The thymus and the science of self

The conventional perception asserts that immunology is the science of ‘discrimination’ between self and non-self. This concept is however no longer tenable as effector cells of the adaptive immune system are first conditioned to be tolerant to the body’s own antigens, collectively known as self until now. Only then attain these effectors the responsiveness to non-self. The acquisition of this essential state of tolerance to self occurs for T cells in the thymus, the last major organ of our body that revealed its intricate function in health and disease. The ‘thymus’ as an anatomical notion was first notably documented in Ancient Greece although our present understanding of the organ’s functions was only deciphered commencing in the 1960s. In the late 1980s, the thymus was identified as the site where clones of cells reactive to self, termed ‘forbidden’ thymocytes, are physically depleted as the result of a process now known as negative selection. The recognition of this mechanism further contributed to the belief that the central rationale of immunology as a science lies in the distinction between self and non-self. This review will discuss the evidence that the thymus serves as a unique lymphoid organ able to instruct T cells to recognize and be tolerant to harmless self before adopting the capacity to defend the body against potentially injurious non-self-antigens presented in the context of different challenges from infections to exposure to malignant cells. The emerging insight into the thymus’ cardinal functions now also provides an opportunity to exploit this knowledge to develop novel strategies that specifically prevent or even treat organ-specific autoimmune diseases.

The essential state: Pandemic, norms and values, and the new authoritarianism

America’s long post war boom was underpinned by the state, by Roosevelt’s New Deal, by its wartime economy, and by Roosevelt’s plans for investment in post war science and infrastructure. In the 1970s America abandoned its developmental model, as critics from left and right attacked plans and planners: yet in the fast rising states of Asia it was embraced. Is it too late for a wakeup call in America and Britain, the champions of anti-planning and the small state? This paper looks for explanations, examines consequences and suggests that the Covid pandemic may trigger a sea change in norms, values and attitudes towards planning and governance.