Brad R. Roth

Expression of the two maize TATA binding protein genes and function of the encoded TBP proteins by complementation in yeast.

A single gene encodes the TATA binding protein (TBP) in yeasts and animals. Although two TBP-encoding genes (Tbp) previously were isolated from both Arabidopsis and maize, the expression and in vivo function of the encoded plant TBPs were not investigated. Here, we report that the two highly conserved maize Tbp genes are unlinked and reside within larger, ancestrally duplicated segments in the genome. We find quantitative differences in Tbp1 versus Tbp2 transcript accumulation in some maize tissues. These nonidentical expression patterns may indicate differences in the tissue-specific regulation of these genes, which might allow the two encoded maize TBP isoforms to perform nonoverlapping functions in the plant. In addition, we show that the maize TBP products, unlike animal TBPs, are functionally interchangeable with yeast TBP for conferring yeast cell viability. This is a conclusive demonstration of in vivo activity for a nonyeast TBP protein, and these complementation results point to particular amino acids in TBP that are likely to influence species-specific protein interactions.

Democracy and international law

The voluminous literature on recent transitions to democracy has generally lacked an analysis from the perspective of international law. This article explores four aspects of efforts to promote a normative ‘democratic entitlement’. First, it reviews the ways in which notions of democratic legitimacy have infiltrated virtually every aspect of international legal discourse. Second, it explores how a normative legitimacy standard may alter foundational doctrines of international law, such as non-intervention and the recognition of states and governments. Third, it reviews arguments against the emergence of ‘democratic entitlement’. These arguments both take issue with the sources of law relied upon by the entitlements proponents, and ask whether the substantive and procedural aspects of democracy implicit in the democratic entitlement thesis are conceptually coherent. Finally, the article explores the ways in which a legal analysis of democratization confronts questions not addressed by the methodologies of other disciplines.

Transient Expression and Stable Transformation of Maize Using Microprojectiles

High-velocity microprojectiles provide a direct means of introducing DNA into plant cells (Klein et al., 1987, 1988a, 1988b; Wang et al., 1988). In principle, this method could be used to introduce DNA into any accessible plant tissue, although the majority of DNA transfer seems to occur in the exposed cells on the surface of the tissue. This article describes progress in transient gene expression in intact plant tissues and in obtaining stably transformed maize plants.

Democratic Governance and International Law: Introduction: the spread of liberal democracy and its implications for international law

DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE AND INTERNATIONAL LAW Prior to the events of 1989–91, “democracy” was a word rarely found in the writings of international lawyers. Most scholars, and certainly most States, accepted the 1987 view of the American Law Institute that “international law does not generally address domestic constitutional issues, such as how a national government is formed.” Apart from its use in resolutions repudiating “alien, colonial, and racist” domination, the term “democratic” appeared in collective pronouncements as a mere platitude, so abstract as to encompass opposite interpretations. Although human rights instruments such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) had long provided for a right to political participation, the diversity (and, in the case of Cold War participants, mutual hostility) of governmental systems in the international “community” had precluded consensus on the specifications of this right. Moreover, any assertion of a determinate “right to democratic governance” would have suggested criteria of governmental legitimacy at odds with the “effective control” doctrine that had long prevailed in the recognition practices of most States and intergovernmental organizations. The United Nations, an organization founded on the principle of the sovereign equality of ideologically diverse States, seemed an unlikely vehicle to further a specific mode of internal governance. Although the UN had an extensive history of monitoring elections and referenda in States emerging from colonialism, it did not send a monitoring mission to a sovereign State until the 1990 elections in Nicaragua.

Retrieving Marx for the Human Rights Project

Marxian thought retains its relevance in the current period, not as a comprehensive replacement for liberal human rights theories, but as a source of critique that challenges those theories on the basis of the very values of human freedom and dignity that they espouse. The Marxian approach entails no general rejection of human-rights-oriented constraint, procedural or substantive, on efforts to achieve social change, but rather serves the human rights project by demonstrating how contradictory class interests manifest themselves as contradictions within the effort to apply liberal principles in a class-divided society.

Sovereign Equality and Non-Liberal Regimes

A quarter-century ago in the Nicaragua judgment, the International Court of Justice insisted that to disallow a state’s adherence to any particular governmental doctrine ‘would make nonsense of the fundamental principle of State sovereignty, on which the whole of international law rests, and the freedom of choice of the political, social, economic and cultural system of a State’ (para 263). The Court invoked the 1970 Friendly Relations Declaration and related documents that ‘envisage the relations among States having different political, economic and social systems on the basis of coexistence among their various ideologies’ (para 264). Although the continued relevance of this model of sovereign equality has since been called into question – above all, in the name of human rights, international criminal justice, and the ‘responsibility to protect’ – no systematic replacement has emerged. Notwithstanding some modification and erosion, the sovereign equality principle continues to have significant (and worthy) implications for legal relations between liberal and non-liberal states.

Reconceptualizing Recognition of States and Governments

Much recent scholarship has identified the striving for recognition as a common denominator of political conflicts at all levels (e.g. Honneth, 1995; Lindemann and Ringmar, 2012). In some political conflicts, the quest for recognition is informal and embedded in other, less esoteric, demands. According to Axel Honneth, ‘even distributional injustices must be understood as the institutional expression of social disrespect—or, better said, of unjustified relations of recognition’ (Fraser and Honneth, 2003, p. 114). Unfavorable outcomes taken to imply misrecognition are experienced not as mere harm to be remedied (or endured), but as indignity to be redressed. Honneth points out that this sense of indignity can drive international as well as local conflict, as in both democratic and authoritarian states, makers of foreign policy must respond to (or can mobilize for their own advantage, as in the case of the Nazi exploitation of the perception of Germany’s national humiliation at Versailles) ‘collective strivings for identity’ (Honneth, 2012, p. 32). This observation argues for attention to the ways in which policies may mitigate or exacerbate international conflict by symbolically conveying respect or disrespect for a foreign population’s sense of collective identity.

War Law: Understanding International Law and Armed Conflict

Online_Pdf (War Law: Understanding International Law and ... Mon, 27 May 2019 19:11:00 GMT Online_Pdf (War Law: Understanding International Law and Armed Conflict) Published on May 23, 2019 International law governing the use of military force has been the subject of intense public debate. Understanding International Law and Armed Conflict (PDF ... Mon, 01 Jul 2019 05:58:00 GMT Michael Byers, a widely known world expert on international law, weighs these issues in War Law.Byers examines the history of armed conflict and international law through a series of case studies of past conflicts, ranging from the 1837 Caroline Incident to the abuse of detainees by U.S. forces at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Byers explores the legal controversies that surrounded the 1999 and ... THE LAW OF ARMED CONFLICT icrc.org Thu, 04 Jul 2019 06:44:00 GMT Serious violations of the law of armed conflict are considered war crimes that can be prosecuted in national courts or in international tribunals / courts such as the ad hoc tribunals established to investigate

Scope of Alien Tort Statute¿arbitrary arrest and detention as violations of custom

that the detainees have any legal rights under the Geneva Conventions. That position is untenable. The governments argument in support of its asserted authority relies almost exclusively on judicial decisions, such as Ex parte Quiring that antedate U.S. ratification of the Geneva Conventions. Quirin and other law-of-war cases applied customary international law-of-war rules as a form of federal common law. In terms of international law, the old customary rules have been superseded in all relevant respects by the Geneva Conventions. Moreover, in terms of domestic law, the federal common law rules have been superseded by the Geneva Conventions—at least insofar as there is a conflict between the two sets of rules. Therefore, the law of war that applies to the detainees is the law codified in the Geneva Conventions. The government cannot have its cake and eat it too. Insofar as die government invokes the law of war as a source of legal audiority, it must acknowledge diat die Geneva Conventions also constrain diat autiiority.