The Nordic countries have often been portrayed as pioneers of human rights and international law. However, few are aware that court-protected human rights played an almost negligible role in post-Second World War Scandinavia. Instead, scepticism towards natural law thrived, and minimalist procedural democracy alongside legal positivism positioned ‘the people’ as represented in parliament at the apex of the democratic hierarchy. Therefore, while the desire to impose judicial limits on parliamentary majorities after the Second World War came to dominate most international constitutional discourse as a combination of judicial review and rights, the Nordics cultivated a form of political and even anti-constitutionalist position long before the term gained popularity elsewhere. This article presents the untold story of how and why the Nordics became a symbol of procedural democracy and majoritarianism, making it challenging for the region to embrace a European constitutional order in full. It also argues that by having few judicial safeguards in place nationally, the Nordic countries are badly positioned in the event of a populist or illiberal takeover. The article warns that a procedural and anti-constitutional democracy model, still strongly hailed in the Nordic countries and increasingly prominent in recent constitutional literature, may legitimate illiberal leaders around the globe with its strong link between the idea of unconstrained power of the majority and the right to rule. It may also, in a European context, significantly obstruct the European Court of Justice’s efforts to flesh out a stronger European constitutional democracy.

A conventional 1D beam structural model from numerically obtained cross-sectional data was compared to a 2D/3D finite element (FE) model from geometry and material data for weakly fluid and structure-coupled rotor blade analysis. The commercial structural solver MSC NASTRAN was used to compare the static and dynamic structural properties of both approaches. Model blades with available experimental data were used to verify the employed computational framework. Piezoelectric actuator patches for active control were modelled with FEs, using a thermal analogy method. A framework for direct loads and deformation interpolation between structural and fluid flow solvers was used. This achieved a high-fidelity simulation of the aerodynamic, structural and servo-structural components. Degradation of actuator effectiveness under centrifugal force was demonstrated. Hovering rotor results for beam and FE method (FEM) models are shown, building towards an accurate simulation of periodic and non-periodic flight conditions with 3D piezoelectric structural models in the near future. FEM–CFD coupling will accelerate blade design by additionally considering the structural stresses in the simulation phase and the potential integration of on-blade actuators and sensors.

Surveying nocturnal arboreal mammals in the tropics is challenging. Traditional methods are poorly suited to observing cryptic, often small-bodied mammals in the canopy. Subsequently, little is known about their ecology and behaviour despite the important functional roles they play within tropical forest ecosystems. We describe a method for observing behaviour from an elevated platform using thermal binoculars, evaluating the method against four criteria relating to species detected, field of view, potential disturbance, and richness of data. We surveyed for 205 h across 18 nights, recording 14 nocturnal arboreal mammal species with 126 independent events. Nocturnal arboreal species accounted for 61% of all observations. We found that elevating the observer aided the detectability of mammals by lessening the observation distance and the amount of foliage between the observer and the target. The observer also had a three-dimensional field of view and could follow mammals as they moved around the area. Thermal imaging emits no light source that will reveal the observer’s presence, and so the risk of influencing mammal behaviour is likely to be reduced. This method shows potential to help fill behavioural knowledge gaps in nocturnal arboreal mammals in the tropics. Furthermore, the costs of the approach would make it accessible to many researchers.

The promise of a full stomach drew many emigrants to the United States. Defending an American standard of living—one that included steak dinners—was also an argument marshaled in favor of immigration restriction. By the turn of the twentieth century, food in the United States had become abundant enough for people to no longer strive for a full belly only. About half of the population was still involved in agriculture, but with a clear trend of fewer people necessary to produce more food.1 Consumers emerged as an important political factor. Government policies and agencies concerned with consumer protection and food production mushroomed, with the Food and Drug Administration forming in 1906. Some of these agencies had opposite goals. For instance, David Fairchild headed the Office of Plant and Seed Introduction (founded 1898), scouring the world for food crops to enrich American agriculture and palates. Meanwhile, at about the same time, the Bureau of Entomology, tasked with the study of insects, became concerned about the introduction of foreign pests, leading to the Plant Quarantine Act of 1912.2

Today’s “democratic ideal,” claimed Columbia University economist E. R. A. Seligman, was nothing more and nothing less than the “socialization of luxury,” the opportunity for everyone to find pleasure and contentment in the world around them. In early twentieth-century America, an era of growing material abundance, democratic life required that “leisure and culture will no longer be the possessions of the favored few” but be available to everyone in the course of daily life. Seligman’s insistence that democracy was as much in the streets as in the voting booth was far from novel, as he surely knew. Seligman lived in New York City, where working-class men and women made the same point every day. They laid claim to the new abundance of American life, an abundance they helped create, each time they put on fancy hats, went to Coney Island, strolled through Central Park, listened to opera, or laughed at vaudeville. Seligman translated their actions into economic prose and made a theoretical, as well as practical, argument for pleasurable consumption as a basis for modern democratic life.1