The Instability of Evolving Systems

Abstract

The differentiation of cells in developmental biology the emergence of order in chemical and biochemical reactions gravitational collapse in astrophysics and the instability of an atomic lattice are all considered in the present article as examples of an equilibrium path of a system which suddenly becomes unstable. The theory of elastic stability offers one set of explanations. Another comes from the more recent catastrophe theory associated with the name of René Thorn. In the following contribution these two approaches are taken a aspects of a unified non-linear bifurcation theory, able to reduce an original multi-dimensional problem to one which can be described in term of a small number of active internal coordinates and a corresponding number of external control parameters. This allow three-dimensional picture to be drawn for many of the most relevant singularities.     

Right-Sizing International Criminal Justice: The Hybrid Experiment at the Special Court for Sierra Leone

In the decade since their establishment, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) have made great advancements in the development of international criminal justice. Nonetheless, the ad hoc tribunals have been roundly criticized for their expense, inefficiency and slowness. When the Security Council decided to set up a court for Sierra Leone, it wanted to find a new model. The hybrid Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) is an effort to right-size international criminal justice: it has a pared-down budget, tightly focused mandate, limited time of operation, and a lack of institutional links to the Security Council. The negotiations over these issues led to repeated clashes between the UN Secretary General and the Security Council, with the Security Council consistently favouring a more modestly sized court. The SCSL has much to recommend it but its promise is shadowed by the paltry resources available to it. In its efforts to avoid creating another over-sized tribunal, the Security Council swung too far in the other direction. The lofty goals of ending impunity and providing justice demand more than a court on the cheap.     

The Yezidi Wednesday and the Music of the Spheres

The article is an attempt to answer the question why Wednesday has the status of a holy day in Yezidism. Wednesday can be seen as a commemoration of the fourth day of creation, when the life on earth began and the Peacock Angel became its ruler. The article points to the Yezidi worship of the Moon and the Sun and related angels (Melek Fakhradin and Melek Sheikh Shams) and connects it with the Pythagorean concept concerning the movement of the planets and the Music of the Spheres. Two sacred Yezidi instruments, def and shibab, appear as allegories of celestial bodies in the Yezidi sacred hymns in the cosmogonic context of the creation of the macrocosm and microcosm (Adam). The article also points out the meaning of Wednesday in Judaism as the day when God created the sun, moon and stars and briefly discusses relationships with planet worship in Harran, Zoroastrianism and Mandaeism, especially in the context of the Yezidi Çar?emiya Sor festival which takes place on the first Wednesday of the month of Nisan.     

Bringing Daesh to Justice: What the International Community Can Do

This paper explores the response of the international community to the atrocities perpetrated by Daesh in Syria and Iraq. The paper focuses on the crime of genocide and the recognition of the crime by several international institutions and states. Within this discourse, we argue that the Christian minorities should be included as victims of the Daesh genocide. The paper finds that the international community failed to respond to the Daesh atrocities adequately and explores the legal options to ensure that the Daesh fighters are brought to justice. The paper considers the legacy of previous responses to mass atrocities and explores their plausibility. The paper further scrutinizes the progress made to date to bring Daesh to justice and considers other options how the criminal justice can be achieved.     

The Original Justice Roberts

The Supreme Court had rarely, if ever, seen a fight quite like the one over the farewell letter to a departing Justice. It started routinely enough in the summer of 1955, when Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone drafted a letter of farewell to Justice Owen J. Roberts, who had suddenly resigned after fifteen eventful years on the Court. The six-sentence missive went first to the Senior Associate Justice, Hugo L. Black, to be signed and passed along to his Brethren.     

The Rapidly Evolving Geographies of the Eurasian Internet

A noted American geographer surveys the spatial distribution and growth (between 2000 and 2008) of Internet users in the 15 countries of the former Soviet Union, Mongolia, and Afghanistan (Eurasia). A major focus is exploration of the correlations between rapidly increasing penetration rates in the region and hypothesized drivers of Internet growth worldwide (such as income, literacy, and telephone access). The author proceeds to examine various forms of Internet censorship practiced in Eurasia, which exhibit different degrees of severity and types depending on the country in question. A third section of the paper assesses the potentially transformative role of electronic commerce and governance among the region's states, including types of applications and the obstacles that this phenomenon confronts. A concluding section includes penetrating observations on the implications of continued expansion of Internet use on commerce, information access, and civil society in the region.     

The Supreme Court and Juvenile Justice

For so many things I thank the Historical Society profoundly, but place right at the top of my list the delightful opportunity your invitation has given me to read the prior Annual Lectures—interesting, exciting, thoroughly intimidating—touching on the Court's history, its cases, its people, even its wives (the subject of Justice Ginsburg's 1999 lecture). Wholly apart from the Society's many initiatives to preserve the Court's history and increase public awareness of its contributions to our nation, the now nearly three dozen Annual Lectures alone offer an amazing insight into this great institution.     

Introduction: Biographies Between Spheres of Empire

ABSTRACT

Biographical research offers a promising approach to the study of empire, imperialism and colonialism. The careers and life stories of individuals and generations show particularly clearly the disruptions and constraints, but also the new possibilities and mobilities, that were created by colonial rule. This special issue focuses on practices and experiences of boundary crossing in imperial and colonial history. It explores how ‘ordinary’ individuals and groups navigated between the different imperial spaces and spheres into which they were categorised according to the ideologies and regulations of the well-ordered colonial world. Africa offers particularly interesting cases for studying these issues because, first, it was a field of particularly rigid colonial distinctions and, second, different colonial empires overlapped and competed there with particular intensity. This introduction outlines briefly the relevance of biographical research for new approaches in imperial, colonial and African history, and highlights the major themes of the five articles comprising this special issue. It is argued that these new biographical approaches tell us much not only about life in Africa on the eve of and under colonial rule, but also more generally about both the power and the permeability of imperial domination and of colonial categories.     

The Long Sunset of Strategic Partnership: Russia's Evolving China Policy

The strategic partnership between Moscow and Beijing is arguably the greatest Russian foreign policy achievement of the post-Soviet period. In just over a decade, the relationship has grown from a barely civil interaction to one of political and strategic convergence and flourishing economic cooperation. Once divisive issues such as border demarcation and Chinese 'illegal migration' into the Russian Far East have been largely defused, while bilateral trade has tripled during the past four years. Nevertheless, despite these successes, the strategic partnership remains fragile and vulnerable to bilateral and international developments. A negative historical legacy, enduring cultural prejudices and strategic suspicions, and even commercial disagreements threaten, over time, to undermine many of the gains of the recent past. In the transformed global environment after 9/11 there are signs that Moscow is rethinking its approach towards China as part of a more general evolution in Russian strategic calculus in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. China's emergence as the next super-power, the spectre of increased Sino-American tensions, the changing balance of power between Moscow and Beijing, and rival agendas in Central Asia all have the potential to rekindle once dormant political differences and security fears. Although the breadth of common interests means there is no early prospect of confrontation, the much-vaunted Russia–China strategic partnership may be giving way to a growing strategic divergence.