The recent years have seen the revival of neo-Roman republicanism through the works of Philip Pettit, who has replaced Isaiah Berlin’s taxonomy of positive/negative liberty with freedom as nondomination. This essay compares the neo-Roman conception of nondomination to the liberal conception of noninterference, with the purpose of clarifying whether nondomination is a distinct concept of liberty and preferable to that of noninterference. The essay highlights the exchange between Pettit/Skinner and Carter/Kramer, wherein Carter and Kramer make their case for ‘pure negative liberty’, which is claimed to be the proper articulation of negative liberty. Pure-negative theorists believe that nondomination is a strand of negative liberty, adding nothing new to the concept, whereas their republican counterparts disagree. My essay argues that nondomination is a distinct, preferable concept of liberty, thanks to its view on fundamental unfreedom and the mere presence of arbitrary power, which the pure negative view fails to account for satisfactorily.

In this work, we have reported the design, MBE-growth and fabrication of strain-balanced n-type modulation-doped (MD) InGaAlAs/InGaAs multiple quantum wells laser/SOAs on InP. The quantum well contains a lattice-matched InGaAs core, a compressive-strained InGaAs padding, and a tensile-strained InGaAlAs spacer. Two kinds of samples having similar structure but different fundamental transition wavelength of 1.55 £gm and 1.48 £gm are separately prepared for investigating their characteristics in optical amplification under forward bias and electro-absorption under reversed bias. Also, the technique of growing high-quality InGaAlAs with solid-source molecular beam epitaxy has been established and the resulting InGaAlAs bulk and QWs samples are extensively characterized by double-crystal X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy, electroluminescence, and photoluminescence measurements. For £f = 1.55 £gm samples, ridge-waveguide lasers of Fabry-Perot (FP) type and tilted-end-facet (TEF) type were fabricated by a new developed multi-step wet-etching process. When injection current density > 20A/cm^2, electroluminescence spectra show higher optical gain for the quantum well e1-hh2 transition at £f = 1460 nm than the e1-hh1 transition at £f = 1550 nm. The FP laser shows a lasing peak of £f = 1514 nm at threshold. Additional lasing wavelength at £f =1528 nm and 1545 nm were observed sequentially as the injection current increased. However, for the TEF laser, only the emission at £f = 1511 nm was observed. These TE-polarized lasing wavelengths are consistent with the £_-like absorption peaks in photocurrent spectra. The lasing performance is possible attributed to optical transitions within quantum dots/wires which are formed by the strain-field profile and alloy segregation/migration. For £f = 1.48 £gm samples, the differential absorption spectroscopy, which measures the change of transmission (£GT/T) in the presence of electric field, is used to study the electro-absorption modulation behavior of MD-SOA¡¦s. A sample with n-type modulation-doping amounting to a sheet density of 3.5 ¡Ñ 10^11 cm^-2 per QW and combining with a hole-stopping barrier represents the largest chirp parameter (£Gn/£Gk) under reversed bias, which offers an excellent platform to realize electro-refractive devices with larger refractive index changes (£Gn) but lower differential absorption (£G£\) near £f = 1.55 £gm, which is also our interested region of operation. In addition, we have succeeded in reducing the length of conventional constant-width multimode interference (MMI) coupler of K = 0.15 and 0.28 more than 32% by a novel stepped-width design concept. By extending the stepped-with idea, we show that it is possible to obtain 2x2 waveguide couplers with new power splitting ratios of 7%, 64%, 80% and 93% for cross coupling by cascading two short MMI sections. We further realize freely chosen power splitting ratio by interconnecting a pair of unequal-width waveguides as the phase-tuning section into the middle of two short MMI sections. These compact and low loss MMI-based devices use only rectangular geometry without any bent, curved, and tapered waveguides. They offer valuable new possibilities for designing waveguide-based photonic integrated circuits.

La question de la mesure du pouvoir du juge s’impose lorsqu’on souhaite comparer l’étendue des pouvoirs du juge dans différents ordres juridiques donnés. Or force est de constater que les pouvoirs du juge sont appréhendés sous diverses notions dans les systèmes juridiques nationaux : il est fait tour à tour référence au pouvoir souverain d’appréciation du juge du fond, au pouvoir facultatif du juge, à son pouvoir modérateur, discrétionnaire, arbitraire. Toute la difficulté de la comparaison réside dans l’absence d’un instrument de mesure uniforme. A l’échelle supranationale, le terme anglais « Judicial discretion » constitue souvent le point de départ de discussions et d’analyses comparatives sur les pouvoirs du juge. Cette notion à forte coloration doctrinale sert de critère de mesure de l’ampleur des pouvoirs du juge dans les systèmes juridiques respectifs. On entend par pouvoir discrétionnaire le pouvoir donné au juge de choisir entre deux ou plusieurs décisions également conformes à la légalité. Le critère du libre choix est au cœur de la notion du pouvoir discrétionnaire du juge. Le pouvoir discrétionnaire constitue ainsi la forme la plus libre du pouvoir exercé par le juge. Bien qu’elle fasse office de dénominateur commun, la notion de pouvoir discrétionnaire est diversement entendue en droits français et allemand. Il en va ainsi en particulier à propos des notions-cadre et standards : ces derniers confèrent-ils au juge un pouvoir discrétionnaire ? Les réponses divergent d’un système à l’autre, ce qui a un impact sur l’image qu’on se fait des pouvoirs du juge. Une fois ces malentendus dissipés, reste à déterminer la part faite à ce pouvoir dans les suites de l’inexécution du contrat : exécution forcée en nature, délai d’exécution et révision, résolution. / How to measure a judge’s power? This question is necessary, when it comes to comparing the extent of the powers of a judge in various given jurisdictions. It has tobe noted, that the powers of a judge are gathered under diverse notions in national legal systems: successively, references are made to the sovereign judicial authority of the judge, the unfettered discretion of the lower courts, the authority to modify the legal situation, the discretionary power, the arbitrary power. The challenge in the comparison lies in the absence of a uniform measuring tool. On a supranational level,the English term“Judicial discretion”is very frequently the starting point for discussions and comparative analyses regarding the judge’s power. This notion serves as criteria to measure the extent of the judge’s powers in the respective legal systems. Discretionary power means the power given to the judge to choose between different decisions that are all conformable to law. The criterion of freedom of choice is in the center of the judge’s discretionary power. The discretionary power is the most powerful authority of the judge. It is common sense that the judge has a discretionarypower but the meaning of this term is differently interpretated by the national law,especially by the German and French law systems. This applies especially to the standards provisions or“open-textured”provisions : do they grant the judge a discretionary power? The answers vary from one system to the other, which has an impact on the image one has on the judge’s powers. Once these misunderstandings are dispelled, it remains to determine the proportion this power has in the consequences of the non-performance of contract: specific performance, delay inexecution, revision and termination.