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American mathematicians’ contributions to the engineering and production of equipment in World War II included the exploration of ways to improve choices between competing designs and maximize the value of experimental testing of prototypes. After the war, these contributions were extended, particularly at the RAND Corporation. Working on such matters, Kenneth Arrow took a keen interest in testing as a paradigm for information gathering in economic decision-making and in encouraging investment in R&D as an information-gathering exercise essential to making informed choices in military systems acquisition. He later extended insights about the shortcomings of information gathering as a market activity to his touchstone analysis of disparities of information between physician and patient as a crucial aspect of the economics of medical care. While it is difficult to trace the precise influence of the work of Arrow and others around him on engineering and R&D management, the issues they grappled with have remained relevant for more than half a century.

This essay examines the abbreviated fiction-writing career of an unlikely author, Central of Georgia Railway agricultural agent Jesse Frisbie Jackson. In the process, the essay explores the central...

In the most recent few years, state practice and opinio juris are increasingly converging to affirm that states must grant nationality to children born in their territory if they would otherwise be stateless. In prior scholarship, this author has argued that there is a customary international law norm requiring states to grant nationality in such cases. Certainly, UNHCR’s #IBelong campaign is a significant part of this development, placing statelessness back on the international agenda, as well as encouraging states to adhere to the statelessness conventions, adopt birth registration and statelessness determination procedures and revise domestic law. Partly due to this campaign, states are increasingly adopting practice and domestic law that provides for nationality from birth for stateless children but are also increasingly stating their opinion that such an approach is desirable, necessary and morally compelling. In fact, it is effectively impossible to identify any state that claims it has the unfettered right to refuse to grant nationality to a stateless child born in its territory. This article will complete a brief survey of recent practice and expressions of opinion, mostly as documented by UNHCR as a part of the #IBelong Campaign to End Statelessness, to confirm that this norm continues to strengthen under customary international law.

Fredrika Bremer (1801–65) was a Swedish novelist and reformer primarily known for her role in advocating for women’s voting and property rights in Sweden. This article analyzes her 1849–51 ...

The consensus among American historians couldn’t be clearer on at least one point concerning the Civil War: it was the single most important event that has ever happened in our history. The hundreds of thousands of deaths that methodically accumulated over the course of the war tragically highlighted the deep flaws and differences of opinion that lay at the very heart of our nation’s founding. The outcomes of the war--still noticeable today--revealed our struggles as we fitfully and all-too-slowly came to a fuller realization of what we have always considered to be our most sacred values.

Maps are a crucial item of evidence in international law, yet their limitations in terms of constructing reality are not usually considered in depth. Maps are not objective, but rather subjective, and hence political, documents. International courts and tribunals, and international negotiations, often apply maps as if they were unimpeachable. After all, they do appear on their face to be scientific instruments, depicting a photographic and naturalistic representation of reality. However, they are not naturally occurring themselves; they are constructions that function as imperfect models, representing reality for certain purposes. For whatever purposes the map is used, the map must be evaluated, and perhaps deconstructed. This article will examine the various ways in which maps are products of choices, errors and assumptions, and the implications those limitations have for maps when they serve as evidence in international relations.

Historians should heed Adrian Wilson’s call for deeper study of the “imagined pasts” of science, but they should avoid thinking of those pasts as corrupted versions of professional history. The past (and future) that historians of science have often imagined for themselves casts them in a heroic role within the history of science, destined to diagnose and dispel flaws in scientists’ broadly accepted ideas about the nature of their enterprise. Abiding by this narrative with respect to scientists’ imagined pasts would lead historians to presume that flaws in scientists’ historical understanding are reflections of flaws in scientists’ thinking more generally. Simon Schaffer’s work on the evolution and “end” of natural philosophy is exemplary of the historiographical rewards to be expected from careful research into the totality of scientific figures’ understanding of their own work.

The international media outlet of Al Jazeera has been dragged into the racial discrimination case between Qatar and the UAE before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and this paper will examine whether the media company can be protected under human rights law. The treaty that forms the basis of this case is the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and while persons, groups of persons and institutions receive protection under the CERD for their freedom of expression, it is not entirely clear whether a media company does. The ICJ has only just begun to examine the case, and ruled on two initial requests for provisional measures. No preliminary objections, jurisdiction or admissibility issues have been addressed yet, let alone the merits of the case. In those two provisional measures orders, the ICJ has so far been taking an ambiguous approach to the nature of Al Jazeera, with implications for admissibility and the ability to hold rights under the Convention. This paper will analyze the two orders and, with the benefit of the two other ICJ cases on CERD, the jurisprudence of the CERD Committee, and comparative practice under other human rights instruments, reach an initial conclusion on which entities are covered by the CERD and how they can have their rights protected.

Current US immigration law appears to be in widespread violation of bilateral international agreements on trade and investment. The US is party to a number of treaties for investment or trade that include terms on issuing temporary immigration visas, "treaty trader" visas (E-1 visa) or "treaty investor" visas (E-2 visa). These treaties include the older Friendship, Commerce and Navigation treaties (FCNs); Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) and the more modern Free-Trade Agreements (FTAs). Rather than apply the immigration terms under each treaty, US immigration law imposes its own requirements, which in many cases are at odds with the terms under the treaties. This paper compares the various treaties to which the US is party and identifies their differences. It then contrasts the practice that the treaties require with US immigration law, further identifying where US immigration law may not be in compliance with the treaties. This practice is particularly problematic because some of the treaties for investment or trade include complaint mechanisms. Certainly a state would have grounds for complaining that the US is not living up to its treaty obligations, but there may be many reasons why a state party would not want to disturb its bilateral relationship by making such a complaint. However, many of these treaties also include a right for individuals or coporations to bring their own complaints directly against the US under mandatory investment dispute settlement. Thus, current US immigration law on treaty traders and investors is not only in violation of the underlying treaties, but the violations present a real risk of enforcement.

Increasingly some European Union Member States are undertaking practices to revoke or refuse nationality, and thus EU citizenship. The problem is that some of these practices are unlawful, meaning that the refusal of EU citizenship might also be unlawful in turn. This article will question the impact of measures denying nationality on EU citizenship, and conclude that, when an EU Member State unlawfully denies nationality, the person can nonetheless still acquire and assert EU citizenship. As international and European law continues to develop, it increasingly constrains state freedom in adopting domestic nationality law. Regarding the revocation of Member State nationality, EU law demands that the state consider the possibly disproportionate consequential loss of EU citizenship. European human rights law limits revocation for the impact that act has on other human rights, such as freedom from discrimination and the right to one’s identity. International law also restricts revocation of nationality when it results in statelessness or constitutes an arbitrary or discriminatory act. Regarding the refusal of Member State nationality acquisition, the same sources also constrain state freedom. EU law and European human rights law demand that such a refusal not otherwise infringe other human rights, and international law obliges states to protect every person’s right to a nationality. In many ways, both international and European law now make some revocations or refusals of nationality unlawful. If a denial of Member State nationality is indeed unlawful, then the next question is whether such an unlawful act can have consequences for EU citizenship. Under both international law and European law, there are several remedies for an unlawful act. For example, EU Member States must act in line with the duty of sincere cooperation. Also, under international law, unlawful acts cannot create legal rights. This article will argue that, when the denial of Member State nationality is unlawful, other Member States, and the Union itself, may nonetheless recognize and give effect to EU citizenship.

In considering the application of human rights law to non-state actors, we should not overlook one case where a non-state actor is quite clearly bound to human rights law: the case of the Holy See and its adherence to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). While many authorities have debated whether non-state actors can be held responsible for human rights obligations, most analyses omit notice of the unique case of the Holy See. Admittedly, it is very unusual for a religious institution to participate in international law, and the Holy See sometimes resists the “normal” application of international law to its activities, citing its unique nature. It does seem strange to subject a church to international law. However, the personality of the Holy See as a legal issue depends on the application of international law. This paper will assess whether human rights law can apply to the Holy See, as a non-state actor, in the same or similar manner as it applies to states. This non-state actor has an almost unimpeachable legal personality, yet it is not a state, and while it does participate in some human rights treaties, it is still rather unclear how those obligations apply.

The statelessness of children is a particularly concerning phenomenon, yet it does have some legal solutions in the wide variety of treaties that touch on the issue. The UNCHR is currently in the middle of an aggressive promotion of the 1954 and 1961 Statelessness Conventions, attempting to convince states to adhere to them. This goal is admirable and will add to the legal protection of a great number of stateless persons. In particular, it should have the result of bringing countless numbers of children into a legal bond with a state. Unfortunately, the Statelessness Conventions as of yet still have far from universal participation. However, there are a large number of other treaties that are relevant for the legal protection of stateless persons, especially for the particular case of children who are stateless. This paper seeks to survey the field of treaties that govern statelessness, in particular child statelessness, and determine whether states have a treaty obligation to grant nationality to stateless children at birth. This survey will include the major international treaties, such as the Statelessness Conventions and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, as well as the applicable regional treaties. Many authorities have concluded that states do not generally have an obligation to grant nationality to stateless children born in their territories, but this paper will counter this conclusion by demonstrating that most states have this obligation from the overlapping collection of treaty obligations.

Territorial entities in certain statuses might trigger a functional application of statehood. Many areas of the world operate as de facto states, yet for reasons of international law, such as ex injuria jus non oritur, the international community cannot treat the territory as a state. However, this result can lead to an unjust outcome for the inhabitants of the territory, or it may excuse the territory from participating in and complying with important rules of international law. Aside from statehood, there is no other form of international legal personality that would permit the territory to participate in international law in a satisfactory way. The territory must enjoy statehood under law, even if only on an ad hoc basis, in order to act within international law and engage in international relationships. Luckily, international law is quite flexible and states can find a practical solution which is to deny the territory full statehood, yet treat the territory as if it was a state for the issue at hand. However, treating a territory entity as if was a state for some purposes means that the international community is now tolerating a relative statehood regime alongside the objective statehood regime currently in place. Many scholars have argued that it is illogical, insensible or unreasonable to view statehood as a relative phenomenon. Statehood must either be or not be. The problem is that practice on point shows a wide variety of situations where territorial entities are treated as if they were states, but only for limited purposes. This view is supported by other scholars, though admittedly only a minority. Based on the sustained and extensive practice, we must bring quasi-states into the statehood regime and find a place for them in international law. And as of yet, there is no clear rule to determine which status results in treatment as a state. This paper will examine various types of status, and identify the case-by-case functional analysis being applied. The proposal of this paper is to accept that statehood can be applied relatively and that a functional analysis is the method for determining when an entity will be treated as if it was a state. In this way, this paper aims to build a more coherent and predictable test for whether an entity that is not a state will be treated as if it was a state.

This article examines certain issues in postwar economic theory and compares them with related issues in the nascent fields of cybernetics, industrial dynamics, and operations research. Because all these fields had close connections to MIT, the comparison provides an opportunity to assess to what degree a peculiar MIT “style” of economics, developed particularly by Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow, could be attributed to the MIT context, and to what degree this style developed in dialogue with a larger conversation taking place in and around the American economic profession as a whole. It is concluded that there were significant affinities in theoretical interest running between MIT economics and other fields at MIT, which revolved around the emergence of macro-scale phenomena out of the dynamic interplay of local decision-making processes. However, the methodology through which Samuelson and Solow, in particular, addressed these issues was peculiar to economic discourse.

The American Military is among the latest of the concise histories published by Oxford University Press that offer a very brief yet thorough introductory overview on a diverse range of historical t...

Concern over anthropogenic climatic change has been the major driver behind the rapid expansion in climate studies in recent decades. However, research agendas revolving around other intellectual or practical problems motivate much of the work that contributes to scientific understanding of present changes in climate. Understanding these agendas and their historical development can help in planning research programs and in communicating results, and it can often elucidate the sources of disagreements between scientists pursuing differing agendas. This paper focuses on research agendas relating to the possible glaciological instability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). For much of the history of this research, which dates back to International Geophysical Year traverses, WAIS instability was thought of as innate rather than climatically triggered, even as a growing program of intensive field research was heavily motivated by tentative links drawn between WAIS instability and concerns over anthropogenic climatic change. Meanwhile, climate models for many years did not countenance instability mechanisms. It is only over the past fifteen years that field glaciological research has been integrated with other forms of empirical research, and that empirical studies ofWAIS have been more closely integrated with the broader body of climate studies.

Maps are a crucial item of evidence in international law, yet their limitations in terms of constructing reality are not usually considered in depth. Maps are not objective, but rather subjective, and hence political, documents. International courts and tribunals, and international negotiations, often apply maps as if they were unimpeachable. After all, they do appear on their face to be scientific instruments, depicting a photographic and naturalistic representation of reality. However, they are not naturally occurring themselves; they are constructions that function as imperfect models, representing reality for certain purposes. For whatever purposes the map is used, the map must be evaluated, and perhaps deconstructed. This article will examine the various ways in which maps are products of choices, errors and assumptions, and the implications those limitations have for maps when they serve as evidence in international relations.

This article examines the establishment of the field of operations research (OR) at the Arthur D. Little consulting firm and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. OR advocates envisioned the field as a new kind of bureaucratic organ dedicated to general studies of business problems, staffed by trained scientists who could employ sophisticated methods if needed. The crux of their promotional strategy was to use their appreciation of general managerial practice to overcome the tensions to be expected from their claims to apply generic scientific methods to nonscientific activities. However, they discounted possible intellectual competition with established professions. This competition ultimately confined OR's identity to a jurisdiction defined by novel mathematical techniques.

Thomas reviews The Visioneers: How a Group of Elite Scientists Pursued Space Colonies, Nantotechnologies, and a Limitless Future by W. Patrick McCray

This paper explores the relationship between operations research (OR) as practised during the Second World War and the claims of many of its proponents that it constituted an application of scientific method. It begins with an examination of the pre-war work of two of the most notable leaders in wartime OR, the British experimental physicist Patrick Blackett and the American theoretical physicist Philip Morse. Despite differences in their scientific work, each saw science as an essentially creative act relying on the skill and judgement of the individual scientist in the deployment of rational methods for the development of legitimate conclusions. When scientists began to study military operations, their investigations were defined by the technically sophisticated heuristic practices already surrounding military planning. They did not seek to replace these practices with their own rational methods. Rather, they became scholars of the military's methods and adapted their pre-war experience by shifting their self-disciplined attitude to their own work to bodies of military knowledge. Thus scientists learned so well to navigate an alien heuristic system that investigations they conducted within it took on the characteristics that they judged defined scientific work.

While some historians continue their struggle to right American popular memory on the "Good War" and "Greatest Generation" mythology of World War II, other historians sometimes take us back to the first "Good War," the Great War of 1914-1918, to adjust popular memory on the American experience in that conflict. Memory recalls America's bold step onto the European stage, complete with eager young Doughboys boarding transports for France to defeat the barbarian Huns so that Woodrow Wilson could make the world