Education and Economic Growth

Economic growth determines the future well-being of society, but finding ways to influence it has eluded many nations. Empirical analysis of differences in growth rates reaches a simple conclusion: long-run growth in gross domestic product (GDP) is largely determined by the skills of a nation’s population. Moreover, the relevant skills can be readily gauged by standardized tests of cognitive achievement. Over the period 1960–2000, three-quarters of the variation in growth of GDP per capita across countries can be accounted for by international measures of math and science skills. The relationship between aggregate cognitive skills, called the knowledge capital of a nation, and the long-run growth rate is extraordinarily strong. There are natural questions about whether the knowledge capital–growth relationship is causal. While it is impossible to provide conclusive proof of causality, the existing evidence makes a strong prima facie case that changing the skills of the population will lead to higher growth rates. If future GDP is projected based on the historical growth relationship, the results indicate that modest efforts to bring all students to minimal levels will produce huge economic gains. Improvements in the quality of schools have strong long-term benefits. The best way to improve the quality of schools is unclear from existing research. On the other hand, a number of developed and developing countries have shown that improvement is possible.

Part IV Applicable Standards and Forms of Emergency Measures, 7 The Applicable Standards in Emergency Arbitration

This chapter assesses the standards for granting emergency measures. The question of urgency is central to any emergency arbitration. Aside from the need for urgency, the majority of Emergency Arbitration Rules do not specify the standards to be applied in determining whether the application for emergency measures should be granted. While the majority of Emergency Arbitration Rules do not specify the standards applicable to the grant of relief, appropriate standards are identifiable by reference to those rules which do identify standards, emergency arbitration practice to date, and from jurisprudence on interim measures applications before arbitral tribunals, tailored as appropriate to the emergency arbitration context. Among leading Emergency Arbitration Rules, there appear to be similarities in the approach adopted by emergency arbitrators. Aside from the key urgency standards, emergency arbitrators have identified that the claimant must face the risk of irreparable or substantial harm; that the balancing of the parties' interests and proportionality favour preventing that harm; and that the claimant has a prima facie case on the merits.

Novel Beings and Assisted Nonexistence

This article engages with the legal regulation of end-of-existence decisionmaking for novel beings, specifically assisted nonexistence for such entities. The author explains the concept of a legal model for assisted death by reference to the substantive features of legal regimes in three jurisdictions in which assisted suicide or euthanasia is lawful. He considers how these models might fit novel beings who may require or prefer assistance to end their own existence by reference to the constituent features—abstract legal ingredients—that models for assisted death share. The author argues that extant models may block some novel beings’ access to end-of-existence assistance or fail to track what matters to them. He then examines the merits of adopting a universal model for assisted nonexistence, that is, a legal framework whose substantive features capture the end-of-existence concerns of both human and novel beings. Consideration of a unified legal framework may illuminate the discussion of assisted nonexistence for humans and novel beings. However, the paper proposes that whereas novel beings may have similar interests to humans, they may be relevantly different also. The prima facie case for adopting a one regime to rule us all approach to assisted nonexistence may be defeated by reasons for divergent regulation.

Two systems of epistemic logic

Drawing on the results of chapters 2 to 4, two non-normal, multimodal axiomatic systems for both knowledge (k) and being in a position to know (K) are introduced—an idealized system and a weaker, more realistic system. Both share important theorems governing the complex operators ‘¬K¬K’ and ‘¬K¬K’, whose availability will be of crucial importance in later chapters. Unlike the realistic system, the idealized system requires subjects to be logically omniscient and must therefore ultimately be rejected in favour of the realistic system. A semantic characterization of the idealized system is devised that shows it to be sound and allows us to invalidate principles we previously found unacceptable for independent reasons. Since the realistic system is weaker, this result implies that it too has these features. Both systems imply that each of ⌜¬K¬Kφ‎⌝, ⌜K¬Kφ‎⌝, and ⌜¬K¬Kφ‎⌝ encodes a luminous condition. The scenario of the unmarked clock presents a prima facie case against this implication. It is shown that the relevant anti-luminosity argument presupposes the principle that being in a position to know (K) distributes across provable conditionals—a principle that has been shown to be deeply problematic and that the realistic system is designed to flout.

Does Art Change Us?

This chapter takes up the question of art’s effects on its audience. The thesis is that art probably does affect us in ways that matter morally, and so we should be suspicious of accounts that treat art’s effects as unimportant. The chapter has two main parts. First, it sets out a prima facie case for the claim that artworks might change their audiences in morally salient ways. Drawing on social science research, this section establishes that there is a plausible mechanism and supporting background evidence to suggest that we might well be affected by the art we enjoy: made more aggressive, for example, by narratives centered around violent protagonists. The second part argues that the principal approaches to judging art morally without talking about art’s effects suffer from significant weaknesses.

The Preliminary Inquiry

“A crowd of solemn-faced African villagers sat on the stone benches around the whitewashed walls of the court, squatted on the concrete floor and stood four deep outside.” In early May, the magistrate holds a preliminary inquiry (PI) in Maswa. After a three-day hearing, the magistrate orders Bill to be held for trial in the High Court in Mwanza because the prosecution has presented a prima facie case. Several eyewitnesses are called to testify about the events on Impala Hill on March 27, 1966. Although the prosecution presents its entire case, the defense offers none of its evidence because under Tanzanian law it can be reserved for later. A strategic decision is made based on the assumption that the prosecution has adequate evidence to lead the magistrate to order Bill to trial; in this way, the prosecution will be unprepared and surprised by evidence put forward at the trial.

Bioinformatic and experimental evidence for suicidal and catalytic plant THI4s

Like fungi and some prokaryotes, plants use a thiazole synthase (THI4) to make the thiazole precursor of thiamin. Fungal THI4s are suicide enzymes that destroy an essential active-site Cys residue to obtain the sulfur atom needed for thiazole formation. In contrast, certain prokaryotic THI4s have no active-site Cys, use sulfide as sulfur donor, and are truly catalytic. The presence of a conserved active-site Cys in plant THI4s and other indirect evidence implies that they are suicidal. To confirm this, we complemented the Arabidopsistz-1 mutant, which lacks THI4 activity, with a His-tagged Arabidopsis THI4 construct. LC–MS analysis of tryptic peptides of the THI4 extracted from leaves showed that the active-site Cys was predominantly in desulfurated form, consistent with THI4 having a suicide mechanism in planta. Unexpectedly, transcriptome data mining and deep proteome profiling showed that barley, wheat, and oat have both a widely expressed canonical THI4 with an active-site Cys, and a THI4-like paralog (non-Cys THI4) that has no active-site Cys and is the major type of THI4 in developing grains. Transcriptomic evidence also indicated that barley, wheat, and oat grains synthesize thiamin de novo, implying that their non-Cys THI4s synthesize thiazole. Structure modeling supported this inference, as did demonstration that non-Cys THI4s have significant capacity to complement thiazole auxotrophy in Escherichia coli. There is thus a prima facie case that non-Cys cereal THI4s, like their prokaryotic counterparts, are catalytic thiazole synthases. Bioenergetic calculations show that, relative to suicide THI4s, such enzymes could save substantial energy during the grain-filling period.

One Step at a Time in Roman Law

This chapter argues that the Roman law system of a staged system of pleadings, which emerged in the mature formulary system and then was eventually carried over into the common law, offers a superior way to understand and classify legal doctrine in ways that lead to overall economic efficiency. The arguments here stress the conceptual formation of classical Roman law on matters that retain their full salience today. It does not deal with the details of the historical evolution of Roman procedure. Indeed, its main purpose is to contrast the genius of the staged system of Roman law pleading with a flaw in the modern conception of civil procedure, which funnels all disputes through a reasonableness inquiry. In dealing with practical legal disputes it is virtually impossible to generate some major rule that leads to optimal results in a wide range of cases. The pleading system takes the reverse tack and seeks to achieve optimality through a system of successive approximations, starting with the prima facie case, working through defenses, and most critically, replies and further pleadings, finishing with joinder of issue to incorporate all the elements that are traditionally thought relevant to systems of tortious (as the civil side of delict) and contractual responsibility. These elements include identifying those obligations that should be strict, those that are governed by negligence principles, and those as intentional harms on both the tort and contract side of the line. The approach should be understood as an explicit rejection of the dominant modern approach that removes all the hard-edge distinctions and uses a generalized conception of reasonableness as an umbrella conception that encourages decline of doctrine and the ad hoc resolution of particular disputes.

A Prima Facie Case for the Coercion Thesis: Sanctions as a Paradigmatic Feature of Municipal Law

Chapter 3 undertakes the first of the two steps of the modest approach explicated in Chapter 2 by showing that the Coercion Thesis better coheres than its negation with the canons of ordinary usage as they reflect our experience with systems of municipal law. It begins with an explanation of the canons of ordinary usage with respect to using the term law as it pertains to legal systems. It then argues that every existing system of municipal regulation we characterize as law backs some mandatory legal norms governing non-official behavior with the threat of incarceration. Since our experience with respect to distinguishing things counting as law from things not counting as law conforms to what one would expect given dictionary reports of the relevant canons of usage, these reports accurately express the linguistic conventions we adopt for using law and define a prima facie case for the Coercion Thesis.

PEMAKAIAN PRIMA FACIE DI AKHIR KES PENDAKWAAN JENAYAH SYARIAH DI MALAYSIA: ISU DAN PENYELESAIAN

Latar belakang dan tujuan: Terdapat dua peringkat perbicaraan kes jenayah syariah yang berkaitan dengan pemakaian darjah pembuktian iaitu pada akhir kes pendakwaan dan kes pembelaan. Peruntukan undang-undang yang tidak jelas berkaitan darjah pembuktian di akhir kes pendakwaan telah menyebabkan pemakaian darjah pembuktian yang tidak seragam. Kajian ini bertujuan untuk menganalisis pemakaian prima facie sebagai darjah pembuktian di akhir kes pendakwaan jenayah syariah. Selain itu, kajian ini juga cuba untuk mengenalpasti faktor-faktor yang mendorong kepada pemakaian prima facie bagi kes jenayah syariah di negara ini. Metodologi: Data diperolehi melalui bahan-bahan dokumentasi seperti statut perundangan, kes-kes yang dilaporkan dan yang tidak dilaporkan. Di samping itu, kajian ini telah menemubual enam orang pengamal undang-undang syariah yang berpengalaman luas yang terdiri daripada empat orang hakim syarie, seorang pendakwa syarie dan seorang peguam syarie bagi mendapatkan penjelasan dan pandangan. Data dan maklumat yang diperolehi dianalisis menerusi instrumen analisis kandungan secara kritis dan kritikal. Dapatan Kajian: Dapatan penulisan mendapati pemakaian prima facie bagi kes jenayah syariah adalah tidak sesuai dan kurang tepat. Ini kerana frasa prima facie tidak diperuntukkan dalam undang-undang dan hukum syarak. Sumbangan: Hasil kajian ini penting dalam memberikan penjelasan kepada pengamal undang-undang syariah supaya darjah pembuktian yang sesuai dengan prinsip syariah dapat di aplikasi pada akhir peringkat pendakwaan kes jenayah syariah bagi menggantikan pemakaian prima facie selaras dengan kehendak undang-undang dan roh prinsip jenayah syariah. Kata kunci: Beban pembuktian, darjah pembuktian, isu, jenayah syariah, prima facie. ABSTRACT Background and Purpose: There are two stages in the trial of shariah criminal cases related to the application of the degree of evidence, namely at the end of the prosecution case and the defense case. There is an ambiguity in the provision of laws with regards to the burden of proof at the end of prosecution case. This paper aims to analyze the prima facie application of the degree of proof at the end of the prosecution case in the shariah criminal justice. Besides, this paper aims to identify the factors of the prima facie application in the shariah criminal cases in the country. Methodology: Data were obtained through documentation materials such as statutes, reported cases and unreported cases. Six experienced shariah law practitioners including four shariah judges, a shariah prosecutor and a shariah lawyer were interviewed to obtain their view and clarifications. The data were analyzed using a critical and analytical content analysis approach. Findings: The study found that prima facie used in the shariah criminal cases was inappropriate and inaccurate as the meaning of prima facie has never been clearly clarified by shariah law. Contributions: The findings of this study are useful in guiding shariah law practitioners so that a degree of proof that is in accordance with shariah principles can be applied at the end of the criminal prosecution stage to replace prima facie application in accordance with the legal requirements and the spirit of the principles of shariah criminal justice. Keywords: Burden of proof, issues, prima facie, shariah crime, standard of proof. Cite as: Saifuddin, S., Mohd Shariff, A. A., & Md. Said, M. H. (2020). Pemakaian prima facie di akhir kes pendakwaan jenayah syariah di Malaysia: Isu dan penyelesaian [Application of prima facie case at the end of prosecution case in the syariah criminal justice: Issues and solutions]. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 5(1), 395-413. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol5iss1pp395-413