Civil Death

This chapter analyzes what happens to persons in two cases: the free person of property who commits a felony and undergoes civil death and the enslaved person, who, as bearer of “negative personhood,” has undergone social death. In most instances, though the person declared civilly dead has property to lose, the slave who never had property is property in fact, and can never have any independent relation to property. However, both of these characterizations possess juridical significance in so far as they recognize the individual as “a kind of civil ghost.” Rather than focus on the various and sometimes diffuse consequences of social marginalization, the chapter traces instead a developing logic in modern law. By the eighteenth century, Judeo-Christian antecedents and inchoate traditions of punishment were redrawn and fully articulated as a rationale appropriate to the needs of emerging modernity.

DENSITY OF DARK MATTER IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM AND PERIHELION PRECESSION OF PLANETS

Direct model-independent relation between the secular perihelion precession of a planet and the density of dark matter ρ dm at its orbit is indicated, and used to deduce upper limits on local values of ρ dm .