Internal goods to legal practice: reclaiming fuller with macintyre

Lon Fuller rejected legal positivism because he believed that the ‘procedural morality of law’ established a necessary connection between law and morals. Underpinning his argument is a claim that law is a purposive activity grounded by a relationship of political reciprocity between lawgivers and legal subjects. This paper argues that his reliance on political reciprocity implicates a necessary connection between his procedural morality and an unarticulated ‘substantive morality of law’: it presupposes that law is properly understood by reference to the political task of achieving a common good. To establish this necessary connection, I propose we look to Alasdair MacIntyre. Understanding law as a ‘social practice’, on MacIntyre’s terms, can provide the necessary socio-political context to explain why and how legal practice is conditioned by political reciprocity. If we apply MacIntyre’s distinction between the internal and external goods of a social practice, legal positivism can be understood as confusing law as a co-operative social practice with the instrumentalisation of that practice by legal officials

A solution to the transition phase in classical novae

One century after the discovery of quasi-periodic oscillations in the optical light curve of Nova GK Per 1901 the cause of the transition phase in a certain part of the nova population is still unknown. Three years ago we suggested a solution for this problem and proposed a possible connection between the transition phase and intermediate polars (IPs). About 10 percent of the cataclysmic variable population are classified as IPs, which is consistent with the rarity (about 15 percent) of the transition phase in novae. Recent observations of three novae seem to support our prediction. The connection is explained as follows: The nova outburst disrupts the accretion disc only in IPs. The recovery of the disc, a few weeks-months after the eruption, causes strong winds that block the radiation from the white dwarf, thus dust is not destroyed. If the winds are very strong as is probably the case in DQ Her (perhaps since its spin period is very short) this leads to a dust minimum.Comment: 6 pages, 1 Latex file, 2 eps figures, 1 .sty file. To appear in the Proceedings of `Classical Nova Explosions', American Inst. of Physics, eds. M. Hernanz and J. Jos

A 6.4-hr positive superhump period in TV Col

Re-examination of photometric data of TV Col (Hellier, 1993) reveals positive superhumps in addition to the negative superhumps previously known. The superhump period is 0.265+/-0.005 day - about 16 percent longer than the orbital period - which obeys the relation between superhump-period excess and orbital period (Stolz and Schoembs 1984). As a confirmed permanent superhumper, the accretion disc of TV Col is naturally thermally stable. Therefore, our result supports the idea of Hellier and Buckley (1993) that the short-term outbursts seen in its light curve are mass transfer events rather than thermal instabilities in the disc. At 5.5-hr, TV Col has a longer orbital period than any known superhumper, and thus a mass ratio which is probably outside the range at which superhumps can occur according to current theory.Comment: 2 pages, Latex file, 2 .eps files. to appear in "Cataclysmic Variables: a 60th Birthday Symposium in Honour of Brian Warner", held in Oxforf, 12-16/4/99, eds. P. Charles, A. King, D. O'Donoghue, New Astronomy Reviews. also available at: ftp://ftp.astro.keele.ac.uk/pub/preprints/Oxford.htm

The Revival of White Holes as Small Bangs

Black holes are extremely dense and compact objects from which light cannot escape. There is an overall consensus that black holes exist and many astronomical objects are identified with black holes. White holes were understood as the exact time reversal of black holes, therefore they should continuously throw away material. It is accepted, however, that a persistent ejection of mass leads to gravitational pressure, the formation of a black hole and thus to the "death of while holes". So far, no astronomical source has been successfully tagged a white hole. The only known white hole is the Big Bang which was instantaneous rather than continuous or long-lasting. We thus suggest that the emergence of a white hole, which we name a 'Small Bang', is spontaneous - all the matter is ejected at a single pulse. Unlike black holes, white holes cannot be continuously observed rather their effect can only be detected around the event itself. Gamma ray bursts are the most energetic explosions in the universe. Long gamma-ray bursts were connected with supernova eruptions. There is a new group of gamma-ray bursts, which are relatively close to Earth, but surprisingly lack any supernova emission. We propose identifying these bursts with white holes. White holes seem like the best explanation of gamma-ray bursts that appear in voids. We also predict the detection of rare gigantic gamma-ray bursts with energies much higher than typically observed.Comment: 5 pages, accepted for publication in New Astronom

Predicting the Future of Superhumps in Classical Nova Systems

Oscillations observed in the light curve of Nova V1974 Cygni 1992 since summer 1994 have been interpreted as permanent superhumps. From simple calculations based on the Tidal-Disk Instability model of Osaki, and assuming that the accretion disc is the dominant optical source in the binary system, we predict that the nova will evolve to become an SU UMa system as its brightness declines from its present luminosity by another 2-3 magnitudes. Linear extrapolation of its current rate of fading (in magnitude units) puts the time of this phase transition within the next 2-4 years. Alternatively, the brightness decline will stop before the nova reaches that level, and the system will continue to show permanent superhumps in its light curve. It will then be similar to two other old novae, V603 Aql and CP Pup, that still display the permanent superhumps phenomenon 79 and 55 years, respectively, after their eruptions. We suggest that non-magnetic novae with short orbital periods could be progenitors of permanent superhump systems.Comment: 5 pages, 2 eps. figures, Latex, accepted for publication in MNRA