Pure water plays a vital role in keeping us away from water borne ailments. Whether it is plain tap water, dams, springs, steams or lakes, every water reservoir has already been contaminated over the years Aromhuset-org. You cant help but depend on water filters to get clean and also purified drinking water. Whether pertaining to drinking, washing laundry or even bathing. Thoroughly clean water is vital to help stay away from pathogens that spread illnesses. Whether it is home or office, using only pure as well as hygienic water is actually important. Pure flow water filtration systems happen to be perfectly dependable when it comes to any type of water needs. Whether it’s industrial or commercial, pure flow water filtration systems help you get hygienic as well as top quality water.
Pure flow water filtration systems are actually providing high quality hygienic and thoroughly clean water to many individuals. The actual technology utilized in pure- flow water filtration systems is of far better quality which can remove every type of pollutant and chemical compounds found in water. Pure flow water filtration have been giving excellent services ever since 1985. Since that time this brand name has managed to make a mark within the filter industry. The gadgets and technologies utilized to make pure flow water filtration system components is definitely of superior quality. The cartridge employed in this particular filter is likewise of a far better standard and has the capacity to clear all of the undesirable contaminants from water.
Pure flow water filtration offer substantial quantities of purified water with regard to both industrial and commercial usage. Dependant on your water requirements, it is possible to either pick a counter top filtration system or perhaps a huge model that can provide gallons of water. Pure flow filtration systems have got several quality items to help you get good quality and clean water. Although pure flow filter systems had been launched many years back, its specialized team continues including most recent methods to take care of the water in a far better way. Over all the many years pure flow has taken efforts to make use of the latest technology in order to purify water. A few of the technological know-how utilized in managing water are Deionization, Ultraviolet technology, Reverse Osmosis, pre- treatment and filtering, Ozonation, high purity piping and storage, and also controls and instrumentation.
Pure flow water filtering is among the leading brands in purification industry. Easy to use and low on maintenance, pure flow filters generate the perfect deal for consumers. The filter merchandise come in numerous size and shape and one can easily choose according to the needs. Stow it beneath your kitchen sink or fix it straight to the water water line, pure flow filtration has all of the desired filter varieties for your advantage. Besides residential use, pure flow filtration is also useful for industrial applications. Numerous industries depend on pure flow water filtration for all their own hygienic and pure water needs.
Each day, the requirement with regard to pure flow water filtration is growing. Using a pleasant customer service center, one realizes easy to use this product. The 24/7 customer support enables you to make phone calls at any odd time to ensure you get your issue resolved. The skilled staff at pure flow filtration guides you on upkeep of the merchandise as well as when an emergency takes place. Pure-flow water filtration systems are generally traditionally used in the United States. This brand name has lived up to its promise and therefore is a genuine provider of filtered water.


text:
A Life Regenerating Treasure Chest filled with helpful Links, Videos, and Information Highways to Health, Wisdom and Spiritual Knowledge.
Health Food Medicine
The water, the thirst. The cleansing, the blessings. The vitamins and supplements. Salads and ointments. The herbs, the healing, the quiet meditation. Truths revealed with daily dedication.
Would you like to taste the elixir of life? It's amazing at increasing brain function, mood, awareness, energetic levels, and ambition. "If we all start glowing we can save on the electric bill!"
The flash of insights, the teachings, the lessons. The path, the journey. The mind, the body, and the spirit at work. The flow, the rhythm, the internal answers. The spiritual growth, the science of breath.

domain: library


text:
In this program, Freedom Photonics will develop a compact, space-qualified LIDAR seed source package at TRL 6. The low SWaP presented by our monolithic photonic integration approach is attractive for small satellite and UAV applications, and the proposed work is necessary in order to mitigate the risk of environmental failure during the harsh conditions of launch and spaceflight. In collaboration with NASA LaRC, the proposed packaging and reliability work proceeds with the qualification study we devised in Phase I, and builds on the prototype hardware package we designed and assembled.
The package assembly and design in this program will directly translate to other wavelengths and photonic architectures, and we have selected water vapor and methane LIDAR as the initial target application in order to leverage the successful 1645 nm integration platforms we developed with the support of NASA GSFC. This space qualification effort will ultimately facilitate satellite-based remote sensing of other atmospheric gases, and paves the way for other spaceborne photonic integrated circuits (PICs).
The Phase II effort will culminate in an interim and a final hardware deliverable. The final LIDAR seed source package will be TRL 6.
This program was inspired by an existing need within NASA (LaRC) for new, more precise and powerful remote sensing instrument implementations. The package is being developed for an instrument capable of high spatial resolution 3D mapping of water vapor and methane. The space qualification campaign focuses on package design and assembly, which is directly applicable to other PIC architectures at other wavelengths, so it is relevant for high-resolution LIDAR mapping of other atmospheric gases such as CFCs, carbon dioxide and other volatiles.
This package technology will help us develop packaging that enables our PICs to survive launch and spaceflight. Space-qualified PIC packages can be used for terrestrial surveys, communications, atomic sensing, structural health monitoring, and other remote sensing. The extensive risk mitigation of the space qualification may also make our PICs attractive for automotive and aerospace applications.

domain: design


text:
Paddle to Glenorchy Islands
Horseride the Rees and Dart Rivers
The first pioneers explored this landscape by boat and on horseback. Relive these historical experiences by joining us for our Island Safari tour around remote Pigeon Island followed by an unforgettable two hour horse ride through the river valley with Dart Stables.
GLENORCHY ISLAND SAFARI
The Islands on Lake Wakatipu have played a significant part in this areas diverse history. They are now an important natural reserve surrounded by the breathtaking mountainous backdrop of the Southern Alps.
This safari launches from the shores near Glenorchy. A short paddle across the lake will take you to a secluded beach on either Pigeon or Pig Island.
THE RIVER WILD
Dart Stables has been offering visitors to the area the opportunity of exploring Glenorchy on horseback for over 20 years, and has gained a well-earned reputation for providing memorable horse riding in a stunning part of New Zealand.
The River Wild is a beautiful 2 hour ride with river crossings and magnificent views of The Misty Mountains and Lake Wakatipu. The ride is suitable for all levels of rider and is great for mixed ability couples or those who can, or want to learn to, ride.

domain: geography


text:
In May 2013 a bill to create a tax credit for the out-of-pocket costs associated with IVF and fertility preservation was introduced in the U.S. Senate by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and in the U.S. House of Representatives by Congressman John Lewis (D-GA). The Family Act of 2013, (S 881/HR 1851) will help thousands of people access medical treatment for infertility that otherwise would be out of reach for them due to lack of insurance coverage. RESOLVE supports this bill and needs your help getting this bill passed and made into a law.
Learn the details about this pending legislation.
See if your Senators and Representatives co-sponsor this legislation.
Send a letter right now to your Senators and Representatives asking for their support of this bill.
Read frequently asked questions about this bill.
Read the latest articles about the Family Act in the news.
Are you a Family Building Professional? Find out how you can support this important bill.

domain: law


MUBI presents the programming for December 2022.
MUBI: Watch and Discover Movies
To close three films released this year, different from each other but equally interesting. In THAT KIND OF SUMMER Canadian director Denis Côté offers the portrait of three women invited to a clinic to address their sexual problems. In BLANK NARCISSUS (PASSION OF THE SWAMP) a porn director comments on the reinterpretation of one of his films from the 70s.
A SHORT STORY by Bi Gan is a fable that follows the relationship between a man and his cat.
THE CASSANDRA CAT by Vojtěch Jasný is a lyrical film about a magical cat. It won three awards at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival, including the Special Jury Prize.
MUBI DECEMBER 2022
SUNDOWN by Michel Franco (2021)
Presented at 78th Venice International Film Festival, SUNDOWN from Michael Franco is a drama set in sunny Acapulco.
The protagonist is Neil Bennett (played by Tim Roth), heir to a multinational meat industry, whose vacation is interrupted by the news of his mother’s death; Bennet, seized by apathy, decides to stay in Acapulco ignoring family duties.
HOT SECRETS: A LEE CHANG-DONG REVIEW
In December we continue with “Burning secrets: a review of Lee Chang-dong”, a focus on the South Korean director with two of his best known works. POETRY of 2010, winner of the Best Screenplay award at the 63rd Cannes Film Festival, is the touching portrait of Yang Mi-ja, an elderly caregiver grappling with shocking family events. Based on Haruki Murakami’s short story Burning Barns, BURNING is an evocative exploration of a love triangle marked by class differences and its emotional implications for protagonist Jong-su.
BEAUTIFUL (1961), LUDWIG (1973)
On Mubi, a diptych on arrives in December 2022 Luchino Visconti.
BEAUTIFUL, third feature film by Visconti from a story by Cesare Zavattiniis an ante-litteram critique of the world of cinematic appearances and a first attempt to distance itself from neorealism, with Walter Chiari and Anna Magnani in what is perhaps his most famous performance. In LUDWIG of 1973, Visconti proposes a biopic on the life of Ludwig II of Bavaria, with Romy Schneider and Silvana Mangano.
MUBI DECEMBER 2022
For the end of the year some of the most popular films of recent years.
MY GODARD from Michel Hazanavicius, with Louis Garrel and Stacy Martin, tells the story of the Swiss filmmaker’s turbulent Parisian ’68. in GLORIA BELL we find one Julianne Moore who finds love after a divorce. In HOW TO TALK TO GIRLS AT PARTIESstarring Elle Fanning, director John Cameron Mitchell adapts a short story by Neil Gaiman.
A DREAM CALLED FLORIDA of the filmmaker Sean Baker, tells the poorest Florida through the eyes of the very young protagonists. THE BIG SICK instead it is a romantic comedy based on the experience of screenwriter Emily V. Gordon and the lead actor Kumail Nanjiani.
We end the year on a high note with Bong Joon-ho’s cult hit MEMORIES OF A KILLERa thriller about the first known Korean serial killer.
Mubi December 2022


The total cost for NASA to launch IXPE is approximately $50.3 million, which includes the launch service and other mission-related costs. IXPE measures polarised X-rays from objects, such as black holes and neutron stars, to better understand these types of cosmic phenomena and extreme environments.
The IXPE mission currently is targeted to launch in April 2021 on a Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A in Florida. IXPE will fly three space telescopes with sensitive detectors capable of measuring the polarisation of cosmic X-rays, allowing scientists to answer fundamental questions about these turbulent environments where gravitational, electric and magnetic fields are at their limits.
The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE) exploits the polarisation state of light from astrophysical sources to provide insight into our understanding of X-ray production in objects such as neutron stars and pulsar wind nebulae, as well as stellar and supermassive black holes. Technical and science objectives include:
- Improving polarisation sensitivity by two orders of magnitude over the X-ray polarimeter aboard the Orbiting Solar Observatory OSO-8;
- Providing simultaneous spectral, spatial and temporal measurements;
- Determining the geometry and the emission mechanism of Active Galactic Nuclei and microquasars;
- Finding the magnetic field configuration in magnetars and determining the magnitude of the field;
- Finding the mechanism for X-ray production in pulsars (both isolated and accreting) and the geometry; and
- Determining how particles are accelerated in Pulsar Wind Nebulae.
NASA’s Launch Services Program at Kennedy Space Center in Florida will manage the SpaceX launch service. The IXPE project office is located at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama and is managed by the Explorers Program Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft. The company was founded in 2002 to revolutionise space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets.
Receive the latest developments and updates on Australia’s space industry direct to your inbox. Subscribe today to Space Connect here.


text:
Former weekend sportscaster Sarah Palin, the President of Money, has allegedly endorsed the actual Son of God & Allah combined, Rand Paul, for his Kentucky senate GOP primary. Rand Paul announced this endorsement on his website and noted that her PAC has given him a monkey-buttload of cash. Hmm… does Sarah Palin know about Rand Paul’s foreign policy? That he wants to end our war on Saddam Hussein and 9/11? Or perhaps he’s sold out on that Unserious position by now, because, you know, “Kentucky.” In any event, Ben Smith adds, “Paul is claiming the endorsement, but worth noting that we haven’t had a statement from Palin yet.” Since when do endorsers actually have to endorse people, Ben? [Rand Paul via Ben Smith]
July 25, 2014
Sarah Palin Endorses Rand Paul, Says Rand Paul
To improve site performance, we did a thing. It could be up to three minutes before your comment appears. DON'T KEEP RETRYING, OKAY?
Also, if you are a new commenter, your comment may never appear. This is probably because we hate you.
Previous post: The Manly College Years Of Ross Douthat

domain: news


Less than a month after California’s Great America announced RailBlazer, land clearing on the site is nearly complete. With the park recently applying for a permit to construct the ride,...
It’s December — time for Gilroy Gardens’ annual Holiday Lights special event! New for 2009 is the spectacular presentation of “Nights of Fire”.
For more details, see: http://www.gilroygardens.org/hl.html
For more information on planning your visit, go to
the Gilroy Gardens web site.
— photo: Steven Wilson


text:
This action might not be possible to undo. Are you sure you want to continue?
PUBLIC LAW & LEGAL THEORY RESEARCH PAPER SERIES WORKING PAPER NO. 11-83
How Law Protects Dignity
Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1973341
How Law Protects Dignity1 Jeremy Waldron
1. Legal Rights to Dignity The most obvious way in which law protects dignity is by proclaiming and enforcing specific norms that prohibit derogations from or outrages upon human dignity. Some of these norms are explicit, like Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits “outrages upon personal dignity.” Implicitly, dignity is protected also by prohibitions on degradation like those we find in Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Many pages have been devoted to the question of what these provisions mean.2 In this essay, I want to talk about a less obvious way in which law protects dignity, but a way that is deeper, more pervasive, and more intimately connected with the very nature of law. For when we consider Article 3 of the ECHR or Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, it may strike us as a matter of contingency that dignity is protected under these provisions. Maybe any worthwhile bill or charter of human rights should regard human dignity as something worth protecting, but it is notorious that at the level of positive law many bills of rights omit things that ought to have been included. There is no mention of dignity in the US Constitution, for example, and to the extent that the ideal has had any influence at all in American constitutional jurisprudence—and it has: for example in 8th Amendment jurisprudence3—it has had to be imported as judge-made doctrine. And that too is historically contingent, not to say vulnerable to passing fads and fashions. So there’s our question: are there connections between law and dignity that are less contingent than this?
This essay was presented originally as the 2011 Sir David Williams Lecture at the University of Cambridge. See Jeremy Waldron, “Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment: The Words Themselves,” 23 Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence (2010), 269 (also in Jeremy Waldron, Torture, Terror, and Trade-Offs (Cambridge, 2010), ch. 9. See Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86, 100 (1958) on the role of dignity in the 8th Amendment, and Furman v. Georgia 408 U.S. 238 (1972) and Gregg v Georgia 428 US 153 (1976), on the role of dignity in death penalty jurisprudence. 1
Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1973341
3 2 1
2. Dignity as the Basis of Rights Some have suggested not only that dignity ought to be protected as a human right, but that dignity is itself a ground of rights, perhaps the ground of rights. The ICCPR begins its preamble with the acknowledgment that the rights contained in the covenant “derive from the inherent dignity of the human person.” And some philosophers say the same thing.4 Even if this is not a connection between dignity and law as such, it certainly purports to identify a wholesale connection between dignity and the branch of law devoted to human rights. Others remark (more skeptically) that “dignity” is just a sonorous word we use whenever we are engaged in human rights talk, so it is no accident that it turns up all over the law in this area. In a recent paper, Christopher McCrudden remarks that that “dignity” operates mostly as “a place holder for the absence of agreement” in human rights discourse, used when people want to sound serious but are not sure what to say.5 That may be overly pessimistic, but it does alert us to the fact that dignity may not necessarily be a load-bearing idea. A term that is pervasive is in danger of platitude, and if we are tracking the pervasiveness of “dignity” in law, we must take care that we are not just on the trail of some embedded rhetorical bombast. 3. The Meaning of “Dignity” So what do I mean by “dignity”? What is it that we are tracking in the law? Dignity, in my view, is a sort of status-concept: 6 it has to do with the standing (perhaps the formal legal standing or perhaps, more informally, the moral presence) that a person has in a society and in her dealings with others. So what I mean by the term, when I ask about the various ways in which law protects, recognizes, vindicates, or promotes human dignity, is something like this: Dignity is the status of a person predicated on the fact that she is recognized as having the ability to control and regulate her actions
See Jacques Maritain, The Rights of Man and Natural Law (New York, 1951), 65 and James Griffin, On Human Rights (Oxford, 2008), 5-6 and 21-22.
Christopher McCrudden, “Human Dignity in Human Rights Interpretation,” European Journal of International Law 19 (2008), 655.
For the idea of status, see R.H. Graveson, Status in the Common Law (London, 1953). 2
Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1973341
in accordance with her own apprehension of norms and reasons that apply to her; it assumes she is capable of giving and entitled to give an account of herself (and of the way in which she is regulating her actions and organizing her life), an account that others are to pay attention to; and it means finally that she has the wherewithal to demand that her agency and her presence among us as human being be taken seriously and accommodated in the lives of others, in others’ attitudes and actions towards her, and in social life generally. As a general point, it is likely that a being with these capacities will have a status in law that is different from the status of a being (such as a nonhuman animal) that lacks these capacities. But people try to do all sorts of things with power, and one of the things they sometimes try to do is to treat certain people as having a status that is lower than this or treat people as though the capacities I have mentioned are unimportant and have no implications for the way those people are ruled. Because this is possible, dignity has to function as a normative idea: it is the idea of a certain status that ought to be accredited to all persons and taken seriously in the way they are ruled. I am not stipulating this as a definition of dignity. I believe that the definition I have given captures much that is already present in our ordinary usage of “dignity.” But it is controversial; and other accounts are different. I am using dignity as a status idea rather than a value idea (as it is used by Kant, for example, in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, where it refers to a certain kind of precious and non-fungible value). Twelve years after the publication of the Groundwork, Kant wrote again about dignity in “The Doctrine of Virtue” which is the second part of his late work, The Metaphysics of Morals, and there he spoke of it much more as a matter of status: he talks of the respect which a person can “exact” as a human being from every other man, and that respect is no longer simply the quivering awe excited in a person by his own moral capacity (which is what you find in the Second Critique, for example) but a genuine making-room for another on a basis of sure-footed equality and acting toward another as though he or she too were one of the ultimate ends to be taken into account. The later discussion preserves the element of infinite value but presents it much more in the light of this status idea. My conception does not directly capture all the work that “dignity” does in law. Rules against “degradation” and “outrages upon personal
dignity” are sometimes used to vindicate the human interest in elementary aspects of adult self-presentation (care of self, taking care of elemental physical needs) and to protect against forms of humiliation impinging on this interest.7 This is a cognate idea, connected with my conception via the idea of being recognized and treated as a being capable of self-control. So, consider the requirement in ECHR jurisprudence that it is degrading to parade criminals or suspects in shackles (unless they pose a clear and present danger to themselves and others).8 This requirement is connected to the idea that humans are capable of self-control. They are not just wild animals to be leashed. And they are not to be exhibited as such. There are many aspects of our proper moral treatment of humans that have little directly to do with dignity. I believe that our basic duty to respect and sustain human life, for example—important though it is—is not really connected to dignity. The preciousness or sacredness of human life is not really a dignitarian idea. I know that in Roman Catholic literature and in some bioethics literature, human dignity is used just in this sense of the special worth or sacredness of human life.9 In my view, the problem with this account is not that it has strong theological foundations, but that it appropriates the term “dignity” to do work that “worth” or “sacred worth” might do as well. But there is much more to be said—unfortunately elsewhere—about some of the indirect connections between this use of dignity and the use that I am insisting upon.10 When you hear my definition, the sense in which law inherently promotes dignity begins to become apparent. For it is easy to get the impression from the way I set this out of a person appearing in their own behalf before a public tribunal (say) and demanding to be listened to, demanding indeed that their view of things be taken account of before any public decision is made (for example, any public decision about what is to be done with them). This is evidently a legal idea, and it is arguably noncontingently so—in the sense that it is not a matter of the law-maker having just decided to promote dignity (in the way that the framers of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions decided to promote
7 8 9
See Waldron, “Inhuman and Degrading Treatment.” Cf. Tekin v Turkey (2001) 31 E.H.R.R 4.
See, e.g., Patrick Lee, and Robert George, “The Nature and Basis of Human Dignity,” Ratio Juris, 21 (2008), 173.
For some connections, see also the discussion in Jeremy Waldron, “The Image of God: Rights, Reason, and Order,” in Christianity and Human Rights: an Introduction, ed. John Witte and Frank Alexander (Cambridge, 2010), ch. 10. 4
dignity). Dignity seems to hook up in obvious ways with juridical ideas about hearings and due process and status to sue. And the basic aim of the rest of this paper is just to elaborate these connections and make them explicit. 4. Dignity and the Form of Rights: Hart, Feinberg and Dworkin Here is a preliminary foray. At the beginning of the lecture, I considered the idea of a specific right to dignity. A few minutes later I considered the idea—commonly expressed in the preambles of major human rights instruments—that dignity might be at the ground of every human right. A third possible connection is that the very form and structure of a right conveys the idea of the right-bearer’s dignity. This is familiar to us in the so-called “choice theory” or “will theory” of rights, once advanced by H.L.A. Hart.11 In an essay published in 1955, Hart believed that having a legal or a moral right was not just a matter of being the object of legal or moral concern. He rejected what is sometimes known as the “benefit theory” or the “interest theory” of rights. He favored instead the description of the right-bearer as having the power to determine what another’s duty should be (in some regard): Y is ... morally in a position to determine by his choice how X shall act and in this way to limit X's freedom of choice; and it is this fact, not the fact that he stands to benefit, that makes it appropriate to say that he has a right.12 Y (the right-bearer) can make a sort of demand upon X, that X is required to pay attention to, and it may be that this is what his dignity amounts to. Hart developed this argument first for natural rights, but he thought (at least for a while) that it was true of legal rights too.13 Something similar can be found in Joel Feinberg’s work on rights as claims: to have a right in law is to possess the dignity of a recognized claimant entitled to push his case before us and demand that it be considered.14 To the extent that rights are pervasive in law, the recognition and respect that claimants are
See H.L.A. Hart, “Are There Any Natural Rights?” Philosophical Review, 64 (1955), 175 (reprinted in Jeremy Waldron (ed.), Theories of Rights (Oxford, 1984). Ibid., 180.
But see H.L.A. Hart, “Bentham on Legal Rights” in A.W.B. Simpson (ed.) Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence (Oxford, 1973) for the beginnings of a retreat from this position. Joel Feinberg, ‘The Nature and Value of Rights,’ Journal of Value Inquiry, 4 (1970), 243. 5
entitled to elicit is going to be a pervasive aspect of law’s commitment to dignity. It is sometimes said that we can imagine law without rights. If that means we can imagine law without any of the elements discussed in this section, I think that is false. Even if Hart is wrong about rights generally, law will nevertheless characteristically (not just contingently) establish and respect positions that have the features that Hart’s choice theory attributed to rights: for example, law will recognize potential plaintiffs and defer to their dignity in allowing them to make the decision whether some norm-violator is to be taken to task or not. It is even more evidently false if Ronald Dworkin is right in the basic “rights thesis” he set out years ago in Taking Rights Seriously.15 Dworkin argued that anyone making a case of any sort in law makes it in the tones and language of rights, in the mode of entitlement rather than request or lobbying. (This applies whether it is formally a case about human rights or just an ordinary action in, say, tort or contract.) A party in law does not phrase his argument in terms of its being a rather good idea to require a defendant or respondent to pay such-and-such a sum of money; he stands on his rights and in recognizing this standing the law accords him the dignity of a right-bearer. So that’s worth bearing in mind. Still, I think it is worth pursuing the possibility of even more direct connections than this this. Even if the rights thesis proves a red herring or takes us down a jurisprudential cul-de-sac, is there nevertheless a conceptual connection between dignity and the very idea of law? 5. Fuller and the Dignity of Self-Application Famously, in the book based on his 1963 Storrs Lectures, The Morality of Law, Lon Fuller developed an account of what he called the inner morality of law—the formal principles of generality, prospectivity, clarity, stability, consistency, and so on whose observance is bound up with the basics of legal craftsmanship.16 Positivist legal philosophers (beginning with H.L.A. Hart) have sometimes expressed bewilderment as to why Fuller called these internal principles a “morality.”17 I think this bewilderment is disingenuous; and I
15 16 17
Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Harvard University Press, 1977). Lon Fuller, The Morality of Law (New Haven, 1964), esp. ch. 2.
See, e.g., H.L.A. Hart, “Book Review of Lon Fuller, The Morality of Law,” Harvard Law Review 78 (1965), 1281 at 1284. 6
said so in an article published in the NYU Law Review in 2008.18 Fuller called these internal principles a “morality” because he thought they had inherent moral significance. It was not just that he believed that observing them made it much more difficult to do injustice; though this he did believe.19 It was also because he thought observing the principles he identified was itself a way of respecting human dignity. Fuller said this in The Morality of Law: To embark on the enterprise of subjecting human conduct to rules involves of necessity a commitment to the view that man is, or can become, a responsible agent, capable of understanding and following rules, and answerable for his defaults. Every departure from the principles of law’s inner morality is an affront to man’s dignity as a responsible agent. To judge his actions by unpublished or retrospective laws, or to order him to do an act that is impossible, is to convey to him your indifference to his powers of selfdetermination.20 These are not just platitudes. Fuller is referring here to a quite specific aspect of law—its general reliance on what Henry Hart and Albert Sacks in The Legal Process called “self application,”21 i.e., people applying officially promulgated norms to their own conduct, rather than waiting for coercive intervention from the state. Self-application is an extraordinarily important feature of the way legal systems operate. They work by using, rather than short-circuiting, the agency of ordinary human individuals. They count on people’s capacities for practical understanding, for self-control, for self-monitoring and modulation of their own behavior in relation to norms that they can grasp and understand. Even when the self-application of general norms is not possible and institutional determination is necessary, either because of disputes about application or because application inherently requires an official determination, still the particular orders that are eventually issued at law look towards self-application. Unsuccessful defendants in private law
Jeremy Waldron, “Positivism and Legality: Hart’s Equivocal Response to Fuller,” NYU Law Review, 83 (2008) 1135, esp. 1154-6. Lon L. Fuller, "Positivism and Fidelity to Law—A Reply to Professor Hart," Harvard Law Review, 71 (1958), 630., at 636-7 and 644-5 Lon Fuller, The Morality of Law, op. cit., 162.
For the idea of self-application, see Henry M. Hart, And Albert Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in the Making and Application of Law 120-1 (Westbury NY, 1994). 7
litigation are expected themselves to pay the damages that have been decreed; rare is the case where bailiffs have to turn up and take away their property. I do not mean to deny the ultimately coercive character of law (and I shall say more about this later). But even in criminal cases, where the coercive element is front and center, it is often the case that a date is set for a convict to report to prison of his own volition. Of course if he does not turn up, he will be hunted down and seized. Still, the law strains as far as possible to look for ways of enabling voluntary application of its general norms and many of its particular decrees. All this makes ruling by law quite different from (say) herding cows with a cattle prod or directing a flock of sheep with a dog. It is quite different too from eliciting a reflex recoil with a scream of command. The pervasive emphasis on self-application is, in my view, definitive of law, differentiating it sharply from systems of rule that work primarily by manipulating, terrorizing or galvanizing behavior. And as Fuller recognizes, it represents a decisive commitment by law to the dignity of the human individual. There is something of this recognition too in Joseph Raz’s famous article from 1977 on the Rule of Law, where he connects the rule of law to law’s action-guiding character and relates that in turn to the idea of dignity: [O]bservance of the rule of law is necessary if the law is to respect human dignity. Respecting human dignity entails treating humans as persons capable of planning and plotting their future. Thus, respecting people’s dignity includes respecting their autonomy, their right to control their future.22 Other positivists have indicated a reluctance to pursue the implications of law’s commitment to human dignity. Jules Coleman, of the Yale School, takes pains to argue that the action-guiding function of law is not necessarily expressive of a dignitarian value. He tries to separate the issues in this way: Law just is the kind of thing that can realize some attractive ideals. That fact about law is not necessarily part of our concept of it. … If one is moved by the moral ideals of autonomy and dignity, then one can see how the elements of my analysis constitute a thing (law) that has the capacity for accommodating those ideals in ways that
Joseph Raz, “The Rule of Law and its Virtue,” in his collection The Authority of Law: Essays on Law and Morality (Oxford, 1979), 221. 8
other forms of governance cannot. … But autonomy [and] dignity … do not enter at any point into the analysis that I offer…. These ideals are external to the concept of law; law happens to be the kind of thing that can serve them well. The capacity to do so is, in a metaphysically innocent sense, an inherent potential of law. This implies nothing about how the analysis of law must proceed.23 Coleman is surely right to emphasize that not every potential of a practice is part of its concept. Let me illustrate with some analogies. Religion has the potential to stir up murderous passions, yet this is not in any way definitive of religion. Other cases are more difficult. It is part of our concept of democracy to embody a principle of political equality. But is it also part of our concept of democracy to diminish violence by facilitating peaceful transitions from one regime to another? Joseph Schumpeter thought it was, but others have argued that this is fact about democracy rather than a conceptual truth.24 It is hard to see how one would decide this. It is certainly a notable fact about democracy. And equally the commitment to dignity—in the use of self-application—is also a notable fact about law. I suppose the argument the other way is that the choice of this definitive legal method of governance (as opposed to some other way of governing) might be merely a matter of efficiency; it does not necessarily betoken a moral commitment to human dignity, however minimal. On its own, that may be a plausible position. But in the following sections, as we consider other ways in which law also protects dignity, we may be less patient with Coleman’s view. We might suspecting that it is motivated more by a doctrinaire desire to resist any connection between the concept of law and values like dignity than by any real insight into the distinctiveness of an action-guiding rather than a purely behavior-eliciting mode of social control. One other point. It is tempting to say that law can guide conduct only if it is determinate, i.e. only if it is cast in the form of clear rules. But it is remarkable that law often presents itself in the form of standards, such as the standard of reasonable care in tort law. Some theories of legal process suggest that law can be self-applying only if the indeterminacy of these standards is reduced through official elaboration.25 But in many
23 24 25
Jules Coleman, The Practice of Principle (Oxford, 2001), p. 194-5; see also ibid., 205-6. Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York), ch. 22. See Hart and Sacks, The Legal Process, 150-2. 9
areas of life, law actually proceeds without such definitive elaboration. It evinces faith in individuals’ abilities to think about and proceed with the application of standards without any assurance that any two applications to similar circumstances will yield exactly the same result.26 I believe that this feature of law also presupposes a commitment to human dignity. Law assumes that ordinary people are capable of applying norms to their own behaviour and it uses this as the pivot of their being governed. Ordinary people are capable of acting like officials— recognizing a norm, apprehending its bearing on their conduct, making a determination, and acting on that. 6. Procedure A second way in which law respects the dignity of those who are governed is in the provision that it makes for trials or hearings in cases where an official determination is necessary. These are cases where selfapplication is not possible or desirable or where there is dispute about the application of norms that requires official resolution.27 A legal system is not just a set of general norms, officially recognized and applied to individual cases. We call a mode of governance law on account of the distinctive way in which official applications are conducted. Law is applied by courts, by which I mean institutions devoted to settling disputes about the application of norms and directives established in the name of the whole society to individual cases. And I mean institutions which do that through the medium of hearings, formal events which are tightly structured procedurally in order to enable an impartial tribunal to determine the rights and responsibilities of particular persons fairly and effectively after hearing evidence and argument from both sides. It is remarkable how little there is about courts in the conceptual accounts of law presented in modern positivist jurisprudence. In The Concept of Law, H.L.A. Hart conceives of law in terms of the union of primary rules of conduct and secondary rules that govern the way in which the primary rules are made, changed, applied and enforced. When he introduces the concept of secondary rules, he does talk of the
See Jeremy Waldron, “Vagueness and the Guidance of Action,” in Marmor and Soames (eds.) Philosophical Foundations of Language in the Law 58 (Oxford, 2011). Much of this section is adapted from Jeremy Waldron, “The Concept and the Rule of Law,” Georgia Law Review 43 (2008), 1. 10
emergence of “rules of adjudication” in the transition from a pre-legal to a legal society: he says these are “secondary rules empowering individuals to make authoritative determinations of the question of whether, on a particular occasion, a primary rule has been broken.”28 But that account defines the relevant institutions simply in terms of their output function— “the making of … authoritative determinations … of whether a primary rule has been broken.” There is nothing on the distinctive process by which this function is performed.29 A Star Chamber proceeding ex parte without any sort of hearing would satisfy Hart’s definition; so would the tribunals we call in the antipodes “kangaroo courts”; so, for that matter, would a Minister of Police rubber-stamping a secret decision to have someone executed for violating a command. Outside the hallowed halls of academic legal positivism, I suspect that most people would regard hearings and impartial proceedings, and the safeguards that go with them, as an essential rather than as a contingent feature of the institutional arrangements we call legal systems. It should certainly be treated as an essential rather than incidental aspect of the Rule of Law.30 Of course we should not be essentialist about details. In general jurisprudence (the study of law as such), our concept of a court and a hearing is necessarily rather abstract.31 The nature of hearings and the procedures that are used differ between one legal system and another. Still, it is not just the concept of a law-enforcement agency. The essential idea is much more than merely functional: applying norms to individual cases. It would be quite wrong, even in general jurisprudence, to abstract away from the elements of process, presentation, formality, impartiality, and argument. The basic idea is procedural: the operation of a court involves a way of proceeding which offers to those who are immediately concerned an opportunity to make submissions and present evidence (such evidence being presented in an orderly fashion according to strict rules of relevance oriented to the norms whose application is in question). The mode of presentation may vary; but the existence of such an opportunity does not. Once presented, the evidence is made available to
H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law, Revised edition (Oxford, 1994), 96.
Hart acknowledges that of course secondary rules will have to define processes for these institutions (ibid., at 97). But he seems to thinks that this can vary from society to society and that nothing in the concept of law constrains that definition. Jeremy Waldron, “The Rule of Law and the Importance of Procedure,” in Nomos 50: Getting to the Rule of Law ed. James Fleming (New York, 2011), 1. See Martin Shapiro, Courts: A Comparative and Political Analysis (Chicago, 1986). 11
be examined and confronted by the other party in open court. And each party has the opportunity to present arguments and submissions at the end of this process and answer those of the other party. In the course of all of this, both sides are treated respectfully, and above all listened to by a tribunal which is bound in some manner to attend to the evidence presented and respond to the submissions that are made in the reasons it eventually gives for its decision.32 These are abstract characteristics. But they are not arbitrary abstractions. They capture a deep and important sense associated foundationally with the idea of a legal system, that law is a mode of governing people that acknowledges that they have a view or perspective of their own to present on the application of the norm to their conduct and situation. Applying a norm to a human individual is not like deciding what to do about a rabid animal or a dilapidated house. It involves paying attention to a point of view and respecting the personality of the entity one is dealing with. As such it embodies a crucial dignitarian idea—respecting the dignity of those to whom the norms are applied as beings capable of explaining themselves. 7. Legal Argument. Indeed, it is not just a matter of hearing both sides of the story. I think it is part of our concept of law that legal positions are sustained or defeated as a matter of argument—argument by counsel for each side and responsive argument (rather than just peremptory decision) at the level of the tribunal making a determination. This, I believe contributes yet another strand to law’s respect for human dignity. Let me explain. Law presents itself to its subjects as something that one can make sense of. I do not just mean that one can make sense of each measure, as one might do on the basis of a statement of legislative purpose. I mean that a person can try and make sense of the “big picture,” understanding how the regulation of one set of activities relates rationally to the regulation of another. The norms that are administered in our courts may seem like just one damned command after another, but the way in which they are treated conveys an aspiration to systematicity. Though legislation and precedents add to law in a piecemeal way, lawyers and judges characteristically try to see the law as a whole; they try to see some sort of coherence or system in it, integrating particular items into a
Lon L. Fuller, “The Forms and Limits of Adjudication,” 92 Harvard Law Review 353, 358 (1978). 12
structure that makes intellectual sense. This is the stuff of codification and Restatements. But it is also a resource and an opportunity for ordinary parties. It is open to people when they are confronted with law’s particular demands to take advantage of this aspiration to systematicity in framing their own arguments—by inviting the tribunal to consider how the position a given party is putting forward fits generally into a certain conception of the logic and spirit of the law. In this way too, then, law pays respect to the people who live under it, conceiving them as the bearers of reason and intelligence.33 The individuals whose lives law governs are treated by it as thinkers who can grasp and grapple with the rationale of that governance and relate it in complex but intelligible ways to their own view of the relation between their actions and purposes and the actions and purposes of the state. This too, in its way, is a tribute to human dignity. The price of this strand of dignitarian respect is undoubtedly a certain diminution in law’s certainty. Occasionally an argument will be made, by counsel or by a judge, to the effect that the impact of the law on a particular type of event or transaction should be treated as embodied in some proposition, even though that proposition has not previously been explicitly adopted in legislative form or explicitly articulated (till this moment) by a court. The claim may be that since the proposition can be inferred, argumentatively, from the mass of existing legal materials, it too should be accorded the authority of law. It is a characteristic feature of legal systems that they set up institutions—courts—which are required to listen and respond in detail to submissions along these lines. These are not just arguments about what the law ought to be—made, as it were, in a sort of lobbying mode. They are arguments of reason presenting competing arguments about what the law is. Inevitably, of course, the arguments are controversial: one party will say that such-and-such a proposition cannot be inferred from the law as it is; the other party will respond that it can be so inferred if only we credit the law with more coherence than people have tended to credit it with in the past. And so the determination of whether such a proposition has legal authority may often be a matter of contestation. Law in other words becomes a matter of argument. This may seem to be at odds with the first dignitarian strain we identified: respecting
I have expanded on this theme in “Thoughtfulness and the Rule of Law,” British Academy Review, issue 18 (July 2011). 13
people enough to entrust them with front-line self-application of legal norms. How, it will be asked, can we maintain this mode of respect if law becomes contestable in the way I have outlined? But, as I said in my brief discussion of standards, the self-application idea does not rigidly presuppose that law has the form of determinate rules. The act of faith in the practical reason of ordinary people may be an act of faith in their thinking—e.g., about what is reasonable and what is not—not just in their recognition of a rule and its mechanical application. And so also it may be an act of faith not just in their ability to apply general moral predicates (such as “reasonable”) to their actions, but also to think about and interpret the bearing of a whole array of norms and precedents to their conduct—rather than just the mechanical application of a single norm. Courts, hearings and arguments—those aspects of law are not optional extras; they are integral parts of how law works; and they are indispensable to the package of law’s respect for human agency. To say that we should value aspects of governance that promote the clarity and determinacy of rules for the sake of individual freedom, but not the opportunities for argumentation that a free and self-possessed individual is likely to demand, is to slice in half, to truncate, what law and legality rest upon: respect for the freedom and dignity of each person as an active intelligence. 8. Rank and Equality Let me turn now in another direction for a different sort of link between dignity and our modern notion of law. In an article published in 2007, and in my 2009 Tanner Lectures at Berkeley, I argued that we should pay attention to the ancient connection between dignity and rank. (The article was called “Dignity and Rank” and the lectures were entitled “Dignity, Rank and Rights.”) 34 In Roman usage, dignitas embodied the idea of the honor, the privileges and the deference due to rank or office. And in English this was the original meaning of dignity, as when the 1399 statute taking the crown away from Richard II stated: “Ye renounsed and cessed of the State of Kyng, and of Lordeshipp and of all the Dignite and Wirsshipp that longed
Jeremy Waldron, “Dignity and Rank,” Archives Européennes de Sociologie (European Journal of Sociology), 48 (2007), 201, and “Dignity, Rank and Rights” in Suzan Young (ed.) The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Volume 29 (Salt Lake City, 2011), 207. 14
therto.”35 Some have suggested that this old connection between dignity and rank was superseded by an originally Stoic and then Jewish-Christian notion of the dignity of humanity as such.36 I am not convinced. As I argued in “Dignity and Rank,” I think that what happened was a generalization of high-rank—a sort of leveling up—rather than the abandonment of one (hierarchical) notion and its replacement by another.37 The idea is that the modern notion of human dignity does not cut loose from the idea of rank; instead it involves an upwards equalization of rank, so that we now try to accord to every human being something of the dignity, rank, and expectation of respect that was formerly accorded to nobility. (I got this idea from Gregory Vlastos,38 and Jim Whitman has also pursued in his work the idea of “an extension of formerly high-status treatment to all sectors of the population.”)39 I believe this is true also of the status-concept that I have been trying to elaborate here in connection with the institutions, processes and practices distinctive of law. One can imagine—historically of course one can actually trace— systems of governance that involved a radical discrimination among different sorts of rank. High-ranking persons would be regarded as capable of participating fully in something like a legal system: they would be trusted with the voluntary self-application of norms; their word and testimony would be taken seriously; they would be entitled to the benefit of elaborate processes etc. If they were coerced, they would be dealt with under the auspices of a quite respectful modes of coercion, quite different from, and much less brutal than, those applying to members of other strata of society. If they were executed even, there were special methods of noble execution: beheading rather than hanging, for example. At the other extreme there might be a caste or class of persons, who were dealt with
1399 Rolls Parl. III. 424/1, as cited in the Oxford English Dictionary, entry for “dignity.”
See, e.g., Teresa Iglesias, “Bedrock Truths and the Dignity of the Individual,” Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture, 4 (2001), 111. See Waldron, “Dignity and Rank,” pp. 215 ff. Gregory Vlastos, “Justice and Equality,” in Waldron (ed.) Theories of Rights, 41.
37 38 39
James Whitman, “Human Dignity in Europe and the United States’’ in G. Nolte (ed.) Europe and US Constitutionalism (Strasbourg, 2005), 95, at p. 97 argues that “[t]he core idea of ‘human dignity’ in Continental Europe is that old forms of low-status treatment are no longer acceptable. … ‘Human dignity,’ as we find it on the Continent today, has been formed by a pattern of leveling up, by an extension of formerly high-status treatment to all sectors of the population.” See also James Whitman, Harsh Justice (Oxford, 2003). 15
purely coercively by the authorizes: there would be no question of trusting them or anything they said; they would appear in shackles if they appeared in a hearing at all; their evidence would be required to be taken under torture; and they would not be entitled to make decisions or arguments relating to their own defense, nor to have their statements heard or taken seriously. They would not have the privilege of bringing suit in the courts, or if they were it would have to be under someone else’s protection; they were not, as we sometimes say, sui juris. Slave societies were like that, and many other societies in the past, with which we are uncomfortably familiar, evolved similar discriminating forms that distinguished between (if you like) the legal dignity of a noble, the legal dignity of a common man, the legal dignity of a woman, and the legal dignity of a slave, serf or villein. I think it is part of our modern notion of law that all such gross status differences have been abandoned (though there are relics here and there). And the equalization has been an upwards equalization, which is why I think it is a matter of dignity. Consider this incident. In 1606, in London, a carriage carrying Isabel, the Countess of Rutland, was attacked by serjeants-at-mace pursuant to a writ alleging a debt of £1,000. [T]he said serjeants in Cheapside, with many others, came to the countess in her coach, and shewed her their mace, and touching her body with it, said to her, we arrest you, madam, at the suit of the [creditor] and thereupon they compelled the coachman to carry the said countess to the compter in Wood Street, where she remained seven or eight days, till she paid the debt.40 The Star Chamber held that “the arrest of the countess by the serjeants-atmace … is against law, and the said countess was falsely imprisoned” and “a severe sentence was given against [the creditor], the serjeants, and the others their confederates.” The court quoted an ancient maxim to the effect that “law will have a difference between a lord or a lady, &c. and another common person,”41 and it held that the person of one who is a countess by marriage, or by descent, is not to be arrested for debt or trespass; for although in respect of her sex she cannot sit in Parliament, yet she is a peer of the realm, and shall be tried by her peers. There are two reasons, the court went on, why her person should not be arrested in
Isabel, Countess of Rutland’s Case, 6 Co. Rep. 52 b, 77 Eng. Rep. 332 (1606), at 336. Ibid., at 333. 16
such cases; one in respect of her dignity, and the other in respect that the law doth presume that she hath sufficient lands and tenements in which she may be distrained.42 In light of this presumption of noble wealth, the seizing of her body could not legally be justified as it could in those days to recover the debts of a commoner. But now we apply the first point at least to all debtors: no one’s body is allowed to be seized; no one can be held or imprisoned for debt. We have evolved a more or less universal status—a more or less universal legal dignity—that entitles everyone to something like the treatment before law that was previously confined to high-status individuals. True, we might still use the term “legal system” to describe the highly stratified society I have been imagining, with some members having legal dignity and being sui juris and others not. But it would be much in the way that we describe ancient Athens, nineteenth century Britain, or apartheid South Africa as “democracies”: they had sort of gotten hold of the idea of democracy—governance through the participation of the common people rather than oligarchic elites—but had failed to extend that to all the common people in the society, excluding large sections of the population such as women, slaves, non-whites and so on. They had a proto-democracy, but not a true democracy. And in a similar way, I am inclined to say that the idea of law or of a legal system now embodies the assumption that everyone in a society ruled by law is treated as sui juris, as having full legal dignity in the sense that I have been discussing. A system that embodied radical differences of legal dignity might be a sort of proto-legal system, but we should not call it a true system of law. 9. Dignity and Representation Obviously the sense in which we all have equal access to the law, participate equally in its proceedings, and enjoy the benefits of its confidence is somewhat fictitious. Most ordinary people are not in a position of straightforward familiarity with law; most law is technical and forbidding and takes years of study to master. And, as Max Weber was famous for pointing out, this is getting worse not better.43 Moreover, law often still excludes and denigrates some of those it deals with, discriminates in favor of the rich and powerful, and so on.
Idem. Max Weber, Economy and Society, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley, 1978), 894-5. 17
These are fair points. And we have to come to terms with the normative rather than the purely descriptive character of equal legal dignity. Even if it is conceived as a response to the objective moral facts of inherent human dignity, still legal status—equal legal dignity—has to be understood as a constructed human artifice, with all the fragility, bad faith, and ramshackle character of human constructions. Moreover, as I said at the beginning, the artifice is a normative one, and like all norms honored often in the breach. And even at its best, it has to deal with descriptive and inequalities among people using a variety of practices and techniques to create something likely a rough and artificial equality in standing before the law. The primary technique we use is the artifice of legal representation. David Luban has developed a persuasive account along these lines,44 building on some philosophical insights of Alan Donagan. Forgive me if I quote Professor Luban at length, but he makes exactly the points I want to make. He asks why should litigants have professional representatives: The answer that, over the years, has appealed to me the most rests on a principle stated by the late philosopher Alan Donagan: “[N]o matter how untrustworthy somebody may have proved to be in the past, one fails to respect his or her dignity as a human being if on any serious matter one refuses even provisionally to treat his or her testimony about it as being in good faith.” An immediate corollary to this principle is that litigants get to tell their stories and argue their understandings of the law. A procedural system that simply gagged a litigant and refused even to consider her version of the case would be, in effect, treating her story as if it did not exist, and treating her point of view as if it were literally beneath contempt. Once we accept that human dignity requires litigants to be heard, the justification of the advocate becomes clear. People may be poor public speakers. They may be inarticulate, unlettered, mentally disorganized, or just plain stupid. They may know nothing of the law, and so be unable to argue its interpretation. Knowing no law, they may omit the very facts that make their case, or focus on pieces of the story that are irrelevant or prejudicial. They may be unable to utilize basic procedural rights such as objecting to their adversary's leading questions. Their voices may be nails on a
David Luban, Legal Ethics and Human Dignity (2007); David Luban, “Lawyers as Upholders of Human Dignity (When They Aren't Busy Assaulting It),” 2005 University of Illinois Law Review 815. 18
chalkboard or too mumbled to understand. They may speak a dialect, or for that matter know no English. None of this should matter. Human dignity does not depend on whether one is stupid or smooth. Hence the need for the advocate. Just as a non-English speaker must be provided an interpreter, the legally mute should have—in the very finest sense of the term—a mouthpiece. Thus, Donagan's argument connects the right to counsel with human dignity in two steps: first, that human dignity requires litigants to be heard, and second, that without a lawyer they cannot be heard.45 The account that I gave in sections 6, 7, and 8 might have seemed rather rosy and utopian, especially the account of process and argumentation. It becomes a little less so when we realize that law does not just throw us back on our own natural resources in this regard. It sets out to create the equal legal dignity that it is committed to. 10. Dignified Coercion Some of you will be tempted to complain that I am making law seem too “nice,” and that all this emphasis on dignity obscures the ultimately power-ridden, violent and coercive character of law.46 Law kills people, ruins them, beats them up, spoils their reputation, and locks them up and throws away the key. And these are not aberrations; this is what law characteristically does. Where, it might be asked, is the dignity in that? In The Morality of Law, Lon Fuller seemed to suggest that we have to choose between definitions of law that emphasize coercion and definitions of law that emphasize the sort of dignitary considerations I have been explaining.47 I think this is a mistake. It is because law is coercive, because its currency is ultimately life and death, prosperity and ruin, freedom and imprisonment, that its inherent commitment to dignity is so momentous. Fuller actually recognizes this when he observes that the “branch of law most closely identified with force is also that which we
Luban, “Lawyers as Upholders of Human Dignity,’ 819, quoting Alan Donagan, “Justifying Legal Practice in the Adversary System,” in David Luban (ed.) The Good Lawyer: Lawyers' Roles and Lawyers' Ethics 130 (Lanham MD, 1983).
See, e.g. Austin Sarat and Thomas Kearns, “A Journey through Forgetting: Toward a Jurisprudence of Violence,” in Austin Sarat and Thomas Kearns eds. The Fate of Law (Ann Arbor, 1993). The suggestion there is that law is always violent and that the most important feature about it is that it works its will, in Robert Cover’s phrase, “in a field of pain and death” (Cover, “Violence and the Word,” Yale Law Journal 95 (1986), 1601). Fuller, The Morality of Law, 108. 19
associate most closely with formality, ritual, and solemn due process.”48 Law is a mode of governance and governance is the exercise of power. But that power should be channeled through these processes, through forms and institutions like these, even when that makes the exercise of power more difficult or requires it occasionally to retire from the field defeated, is exactly what is exciting about rule by law.49 That is a wholesale answer to the objection. We might also give some retail responses. The coercive character of law manifests itself in a number of ways. (i) Law presents its norms as categorical and nonnegotiable demands. (ii) Law is committed, in extremis, to doing what it takes to see that its orders are obeyed and its demands complied with. (iii) Law imposes punishment. And (iv) law has and exercises the power to hold persons against their will and sometimes uses force to tightly control their behavior. These four points are undeniable. But in each case, there is a strong dignitarian strand in the manner in which law exercises its power. (i) I have already mentioned (in section 5), the importance of selfapplication, so far as the administration of law’s demands is concerned. Law looks wherever possible to voluntary compliance, which of course is not the same as saying we are free and never coerced, but which does leave room for the distinctively human trait of monitoring and applying norms to one’s own behavior. This is not a trick; it involves a genuinely respectful mode of coercion, even though the coercive element is not dispelled. (ii) Max Weber is famous for observing that, although “the use of physical force is neither the sole, nor even the most usual, method of administration,” still “the threat of force, and in the case of need its actual use, is the method which is specific to political organizations and is always the last resort when others have failed.”50 But it would be wrong to infer from this that law uses any means necessary to get its way. The use of torture, for example, is now banned by all legal systems. Elsewhere I have argued that modern law observes this man as emblematic of its commitment to a more general non-brutality principle:
48 49 50
Ibid., 109. Cf. E.P. Thompson, Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act (Harmondsworth, 1976), 265. Weber, Economy and Society, 54. 20
Law is not brutal in its operation; law is not savage; law does not rule through abject fear and terror, or by breaking the will of those whom it confronts. If law is forceful or coercive, it gets its way by methods which respect rather than mutilate the dignity and agency of those who are its subjects.51 People may fear and be deterred by legal sanctions, they may on occasion be literally forced against their will by legal means or by legally empowered officials to do things or go places they would not otherwise do or go to. But even when this happens, they are not herded like cattle or broken like horses or beaten like dumb animals. Instead, there is be an enduring connection between the spirit of law and respect for human dignity—respect for human dignity even in extremis, even in situations where law is at its most forceful and its subjects at their most vulnerable. No one denies that law has to be forceful. But forcefulness can take many forms and not all of it involves, for example, the savage breaking of the human will a regression of the subject into an infantile state, where the elementary demands of the body supplant almost all adult thought that is the aim of torture. The force of ordinary legal sanctions and incentives does not work like that, nor does the literal force of physical control and confinement. For example, when a defendant charged with a serious offense is brought into a courtroom, he is brought in whether he likes it or not, and when he is punished, he is subject to penalties that are definitely unwelcome and that he would avoid if he could; in these instances there is no doubt that he is subject to force, that he is coerced. But in these cases force and coercion do not work by reducing him to a quivering mass of “bestial desperate terror,”52 which is the aim of every torturer. If something cannot be done without torture, law generally accepts that it cannot be done. (iii) Law punishes, but again there is a sense that we work with modes of punishment that do not destroy the dignity of those on whom it is being administered. Some of this is the work of the external dignitary provisions we noted at the beginning of this paper. Provisions like ICCPR Article 7 and ECHR Article 3 impose a requirement that any punishment inflicted should be bearable—should be something that a
This formulation is adapted from Jeremy Waldron, “Torture and Positive Law: Jurisprudence for the White House,” Columbia Law Review, 105 (2005), 1681, at 1726 (reprinted in Waldron, Torture, Terror and Trade-offs). Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, 1973), 441. 21
person can endure, without abandoning his elementary human functioning. One ought to be able to do one’s time, take one’s licks, while remaining upright and self-possessed. Even going to one’s execution is something that a human can do; and to the extent that these provisions affect the death penalty, there is an implicit requirement that it be administered in a way that enables the persons to whom it is applied to function as human beings up until the point at which their lives are extinguished.53 (iv) Even in circumstances where behavior is very tightly controlled by law (e.g. the behavior of a person in custody), there is an assumption that people will stand upright and move in response to commands rather than being dragged as though they were incapable of self-locomotion. And the commands will be given rather than screamed at them, Nazistyle. These may seem trivial matters. I have hard-ass colleagues who will say: If someone is about to be killed, who cares how he gets form his cell to the execution chamber? If someone is under tight custodial control, who cares whether someone is dragged into and out of a courtroom or allowed to walk in under his steam? Who cares about the tone of voice in which coercive commands are issued? They will say: These are just matters of sentiment. Once we have abandoned negative freedom all the rest is detail. I disagree. For one thing, the individuals concerned do seem to care greatly about these things, however dismissive legal scholars may be. Also, we know from the case-law on degradation that things sometimes do come down to details like this, and that in the extreme situation of custody such details loom large for human dignity. Dignity has long had a connection with something like physical bearing—standing upright: a sort of moral orthopedics.54 We have an idea, too, that indignity on these “trivial” matters may presage much more substantial affronts: is it an accident that, at the beginning of the war on terror, Guantanamo Bay detainees did not walk to their interrogations but were carried to and fro in wheel barrows like scarecrows? Those who take what I am calling the hard-ass line on custodial control often also take the hardass line on abusive interrogation
This might be one ground on which the “death row phenomenon” is seen as inhuman. See Pratt v. Attorney General of Jamaica  2 AC 1 (U.K. Privy Council in respect of Jamaica). By the “moral orthopedics” of human dignity, I have in mind what some Marxists, following Ernst Bloch, used to call “walking upright.” See Jan Robert Bloch & Caspers Rubin, “How Can We Understand the Bends in the Upright Gait?” New German Critique, 45 (1988) 9, at 9-10. See also the account in Aurel Kolnai, “Dignity,” Philosophy, 51 (1976), 251 at 253-4. 22
This last point reminds us that various systems of power that call themselves legal systems fall often short of this respect in one way or another. The discipline of dignity is a normative discipline and as such it is a costly and demanding discipline. It presents itself on the one hand as an aspiration, and on the other hand as a reproach to our shortcomings— shortcomings that sometimes come close to a betrayal of the whole idea. Add to that the fact that any actually-existing legal system has to cope with the burden of its own history, which may not always have been a history of respect for human dignity, and we can see how complicated and controversial the characterization I have given in this paper might become. The United States illustrates a number of these points. It is burdened by a history of slavery and racism, which particularly affects the law: it is notable for example that the Thirteenth Amendment that abolished slavery did not do so pervasively or unconditionally, but made an exception for the treatment of prisoners.55 Critics have observed that in regard to the dignitarian aspect of its treatment of prisoners, America remains an outlier, compared say to West European systems of penal law.56 And so too with some of the other aspects I have mentioned. Defendants are sometimes kept silent and passive in American courtrooms by the use of technology which enables the judge to subject them to electric shocks if they misbehave.57 Reports of prisoners being “herded” with cattle prods emerge from time to time.58 Conditions in our prison are de facto terrorizing and well-known to be so, even if they are not officially approved or authorised; and we know that prosecutors (who pride themselves on their righteousness) feel free to make use of
U.S. Constitution, 13th Amendment: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime …, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction” (my emphasis).
Whitman has argued that American history tells quite a different story from the development of dignitarian jurisprudence in Europe. (See Whitman, “Human Dignity in Europe and the United States,” op. cit., and Whitman, Harsh Justice, op. cit.) See also Nicola Lacey, The Prisoners’ Dilemma: Political Economy and Punishment in Contemporary Democracies (Cambridge, 2008), 30-40.
See, e.g., Harriet Chiang, “Justices Limit Stun Belts in Court,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 23, 2002, A7 and William Glaberson, “Electric Restraint's Use Stirs Charges of Cruelty to Inmates,” New York Times, June 8, 1999, A1. See, e.g., “37 Prisoners Sent to Texas Sue Missouri,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri), September 18, 1997, 3B: “Missouri prisoners alleging abuse in a jail in Texas have sued their home state and officials responsible for running the jail where a videotape showed inmates apparently being beaten and shocked with stun guns,” and Mike Bucsko and Robert Dvorchak, “Lawsuits Describe Racist Prison Rife with Brutality,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 26, 1998, B1. 23
defendants’ dread of this brutalization as a tactic in plea-bargaining. Some would say too that the use of the death penalty represents a residuum of savagery in our system that shows the limits of American adherence to the principles that I have been talking about—though, as indicated, I think everything depends on the way it is administered. In recent years, too, we have seen the United States tempted away from dignitarian ideals in a number of important regards—in its attempt to establish a form of legally unreviewable detention at Guantánamo Bay, for example, and in its recent use of torture. Other examples, and examples from other countries (France, the United Kingdom, Russia, Israel, etc.) could be multiplied. All have fallen short of the characterization given in this paper. A legal system is a normative order, both explicitly and implicitly. Explicitly it commits itself to certain norms—the rules and standards that it says publicly it will uphold and enforce. Some of these it actually upholds and enforces, but for others, in certain regards, it fails to do so: the law says that the state should pay a pension or should pay compensation to Smith, but Smith does not receive it. The explicit content of the legal system provides us with a pretty straightforward basis for saying on these occasions that the legal system has fallen short of its own standards. Less straightforward is the case where a normative commitment is embodied implicitly in the institutions or traditions of a system of governance. But I believe a very similar logic obtains. The commitment to dignity that I think is evinced in our legal practices and institutions may be thought of as immanently present even though we sometimes fall short of them. Our practices sometimes convey a sort of promise59 and, as in ordinary moral life, it would be mistake to think that the only way to spot a real promise is to see what undertakings are actually carried out. Law may credibly promise a respect for dignity, and yet fall short of that in various respects. Institutions can be imbued in their structures, practices, and procedures with the values and principles that they sometimes fall short of. In these cases, it is fatuous to present oneself as a simple cynic about their commitments or to neglect the power of imminent critique as the basis of a reproach for their shortcomings.
See Jeremy Waldron, “Does Law Promise Justice?” Georgia State University Law Review, 17 (2001) 759, at pp.760-1. For analogous arguments about justice, see Philip Selznick, The Moral Commonwealth: Social Theory and the Promise of Community 443 (1992) and John Gardner, “The Virtue of Justice and the Character of Law” (2000) 53 Current Legal Problems 1. 24
Of course the interesting thing, now, about law’s commitment to dignity is that the promise is embodied institutionally in both the ways we have been describing. It is there, internally or inherently, in the tissue of our practice and institutions, but it is also present in rules and standards that we have explicitly committed ourselves to (like the Geneva Conventions or Article 7 of the ICCPR or, in Europe, Article 3 of the ECHR). The two sorts of commitment reinforce each other. This is not unusual in regard to legal ideals. Think of an analogy: Article I. 9 of the U.S. Constitution states that “[n]o Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed,” but many people would say that this is also a definitive feature of the Rule of Law as such. We didn’t need the provision of positive constitutional law to know that retroactive laws were an abomination. We knew that anyway. Still, the combination of an explicit standard and an implicit principle represent an abundance of riches. And just as it would be quite wrong to infer from the fact that Article I. 9 might have been different that law is only contingently committed to prospectivity, so it would be quite wrong to infer from the fact that the ICCPR or Geneva Conventions might have been different that law is only contingently committed to the protection of dignity. There is an implicit commitment to dignity in the tissues and sinews of law—in the character of its normativity and in its procedures—and we do well not to sell this short by pretending that dignity is a take-it-or-leave-it kind of value.
This action might not be possible to undo. Are you sure you want to continue?
We've moved you to where you read on your other device.
Get the full title to continue reading from where you left off, or restart the preview.


text:
8 months ago
Stokoe Farms LOVES Texas BBQ Joint for catering! Our go to for special events, we can't say enough. All the great touches are there. From the timely delivery, to the black and white gingham napkins, they make sure your party is a success.
Our suggestion for catering...the brisket of course. I honestly would have said no way to brisket before. I always found it tough and unappealing. Texas BBQ Joints Brisket is so good, I didn't even know what I was eating! So tender you can cut it with a fork.
Seriously for all of your catering needs, they make it so easy. They were even kind enough to leave us hot boxes to keep the food warm that I easily returned a few days later.

domain: food


text:
Our volunteers are the backbone of ESC.
Our community services including cultural awareness, youth support, personal & professional development provided to anyone who needs them. This is why we depend so much on our volunteers to help others get the educational insight, development, and connection we need to live.
But it’s not just about helping others. Your experience as a trained volunteer gives you valuable skills and experience, and helps strengthen your own competency as well.
Learn more. If you’re interested in learning more about volunteering, or have questions, please fill out our online interest form below. Our volunteer coordinator will get back to you within 48 hours.
We'll match you with an opportunity that meets your needs and interests:

domain: sociology


text:
This work is financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers. 20773123, 20621063, 31000392). We thank Prof. Zhaochi Feng, Prof. Qihua Yang and Dr. Jun Li for helpful discussions, particular acknowledgement to Dr. Xin Zhang of the Scripps Research Institute for revising the manuscript.
Enantioselective Diels–Alder Reactions with G-Quadruplex DNA-Based Catalysts†
Article first published online: 15 AUG 2012
Copyright © 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
Angewandte Chemie International Edition
Volume 51, Issue 37, pages 9352–9355, September 10, 2012
How to Cite
Wang, C., Jia, G., Zhou, J., Li, Y., Liu, Y., Lu, S. and Li, C. (2012), Enantioselective Diels–Alder Reactions with G-Quadruplex DNA-Based Catalysts . Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 51: 9352–9355. doi: 10.1002/anie.201204850
- Issue published online: 5 SEP 2012
- Article first published online: 15 AUG 2012
- Manuscript Received: 21 JUN 2012
- National Natural Science Foundation of China. Grant Numbers: 20773123, 20621063, 31000392
- asymmetric catalysis;
- Diels–Alder reaction;
DNA in command: An enantioselective Diels–Alder reaction can be achieved using human telomeric G-quadruplex DNA-based catalysts. The absolute configuration of the product can be reversed when the conformation of G-quadruplex DNA is switched from antiparallel to parallel, and both the reaction rate and the enantioselectivity of the Diels–Alder reaction were found to be dependent on the DNA sequence.

domain: literature