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Article 102 CE is a «historical reminiscence» of the old constitutional tradition in which the political and criminal responsibility of the Government were inter-mingled. In addition to a special jurisdiction (section 1) and a limitation on the Monarch's right to pardon (section 3), the precept provides for the accusatory initiative of the Congress. This initiative is required when it is a question of demanding criminal responsibility from members of the Government for crimes of treason or any other crimes against the security of the State. The rule, which does not oblige the Congress to support the accusation as in the past, raises today both substantive difficulties (which crimes require the procedure of art. 102.2 CE?) and procedural difficulties (what is the temporal scope of the immunity? what are the ways for the injured parties to challenge the decision of the Congress? or what is the role reserved for the Senate when it is intended to indict a member of the Government who is also a Senator?). To the above must be added the added difficulty of political influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by the recent activation of the ultra vires review of the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany, the article analyses one of its restrictive elements: the concept of obviousness and its concretization through objective arbitrariness. These concepts are used with good intentions insofar as the ultra vires review requires some conceptualization of deference. But they are incapable of fulfilling this purpose: they disregard the expressive function of law, grant either too much or no deference, and are incompatible with each other. Instead, the substantive standards of structural significance and openness, combined with the procedural rule of unanimity, could serve the purpose of deference in a better and less conflictual way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Abstract: Constitutive equations for elastically anisotropic nonlinear elastic–viscoplastic solids are often formulated assuming that the strain energy function depends on an elastic deformation gradient. Also, dependence on a triad of vectors can be introduced to characterize directions of material anisotropy. The elastic deformation gradient is usually written in terms of the total deformation gradient and a plastic deformation gradient, together with a specification of the reference configuration. Alternatively, it is possible to introduce a triad of microstructural vectors which are determined by integrating evolution equations and which characterize the elastic response and orientations of directions of anisotropy. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the elastic, total and plastic deformation measures and the vectors used to characterize directions of material anisotropy contain unphysical arbitrariness which prevents them from being measured. In contrast, the microstructural vectors used in the alternative formulation can be measured and remove this unphysical arbitrariness. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]