Can public international law prevent the Moon from becoming a Thucydides trap amid the ambitious Sino–American projects in space exploration at present, the growing risks of the weaponization and militarization of space, and the commercial craze for material extraction from the South Pole of the Moon? This article presents an original analysis of the politico-legal factors that could lead to armed conflict between China and the United States to dominate the Moon, along with legal solutions. The United States’ competition with China is no longer a choice but now seems inevitable. The American government rejected the possibility of cooperating with China in the sensitive space sector. This places the United States in a similar situation in form to the one it faced in the 1960s with the objective of winning the space race, but similar in substance to the Seven Years’ War. If the Cold War is understood as an ideological conflict in which two economic models clashed with the Moon as an element that divided them, this new rivalry seems to have had more of the features of the intercolonial wars in America that placed France against England in the 17th century. Recent interpretations of the Outer Space Treaty (OST) of 1967 have led to the legalization of the appropriation of space resources. Space could become a Wild West involving states with the necessary technical capacities rushing to exploit space resources. What are the legal and geopolitical implications for different states targeting one lunar territory? How can we legally and practically prevent and resolve a possible conflict on the Moon between the United States, China, and their allies? To escape the Thucydides trap, international law must encourage a spirit of cooperation and, above all, rethink its structures and the legal regimes of governance in terms of the Moon’s exploitation. The United States and China have too much to lose in a confrontation for it to be worthwhile for either, and even if a Sino–American war were likely, this article takes the position that it can be avoided.

Thousands of victims of human rights violations in Latin America bring their cases to the Inter-American System of Human Rights (IASHR), hoping for justice after all alternatives in their countries failed them. However, in recent years, data showing low compliance with IASHR decisions has triggered questions on the effectiveness of the Court in achieving social change through transformative remedies. Against this criticism, recent scholarship argues that civil society organizations continue to pursue strategic litigation at the IASHR for its capacity to generate an impact despite apparently low compliance. However, authors arguing in favor of an impact perspective have scarcely provided answers on how to define, understand, or describe impact. To fill this gap, I present a normative, empirical, and historical analysis of the impact achieved by civil society-led strategic litigation on forced disappearance in Peru, Guatemala, and Colombia, the three countries comprising 53% percent of cases of forced disappearance that have reached the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. I arrive at three main conclusions. First, an impact analysis presents a far more nuanced outlook of the effectiveness of the IASHR that reveals the effects of the IASHR that traditionally compliance-focused research hides. Second, civil society-led strategic litigation in cases of forced disappearance in Peru, Guatemala, and Colombia has produced an impact at the individual, social, and institutional levels. The Article concludes with the general recommendation of shifting toward an impact approach to assess the effectiveness of the IASHR.

With the declaration of the end of the public health emergency, the Department of Health and Human Services waivers permitting the use and disclosure of protected health information have since expired. These waivers promoted flexibility to healthcare providers and their business associates to aid public health responses to the novel coronavirus. However, that flexibility delicately balances a patient’s right to privacy and the disclosure of limited data for the public welfare. This Note will show how the United States and the European Union adapted their health privacy laws to address the unprecedented challenges emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic. It explores the efficacy of varying scopes of health privacy laws, determining that neither a broad nor narrow framework is individually successful in responding to such crises. Since the waivers, dismantling health data processing systems has had detrimental costs, given the rise of COVID-19 cases. This Note explores the potential value of standing waivers for COVID-19 health data and the next steps to expand their applicability to other highly transmissible viruses to promote public health without completely absolving a patient’s right to privacy.

Late Holocene deposits of Chaco Canyon, rather well known from studies beginning in the 1800s, include a filled prehistoric arroyo that we call the Bonito channel. Extensive dating via detrital ceramics, confirmed by in situ archaeological sites, shows the channel filled from about A.D. 1025 to 1090, earlier than some previous authors thought. Channel cutting may have begun as early as A.D. 900. The development of both the Bonito and modern arroyos is due to the anomalous position of the valley floor in Chaco Canyon, which is perched 4-5 m above and separated from the rest of its drainage network by an eolian dune. This dune apparently formed an effective dam at some times (when valley-floor units formed) but was breached at others (when channels formed). Thus base-level change drove stratigraphic evolution. The Bonito channel system is dendritic, cut in the older Chaco and Gallo units that define the valley floor surface, and is filled to the valley-floor level with little indurated sand and lesser gravel. A single soil-flood plain unit, not as strongly developed as the multiple soils on older units, is present on Bonito channel fill. The timing of base-level change, governed by eolian vs. fluvial energy, is uncertain but seems consistent with dendroclimatic, cultural, and stratigraphic chronologies of Chaco Canyon (new local dendroclimatic data are presented herein). Probably because of the unusual, rather mechanical nature of controls there, the alluvial chronology of Chaco Canyon does not correlate well with others of the region. Anasazi activity seems to have been tuned to changes in the Bonito channel with regard to construction of pueblos, roads, and water control features. Relations between fluvial and cultural features were especially intricate during channel filling, about A.D. 1025-1090, a period of great Chacoan influence and complexity. The extraordinary Chacoan water-control features may have been initiated in response to the Bonito channel system, and at least three Chacoan great houses were built entirely or in part on filled Bonito channels.

McElmo Canyon in southwestern Colorado, which drains the Montezuma basin into the San Juan River, contains excellent exposures of Holocene sequences that underlie a broad valley-bottom terrace system. These exposures are the vehicle for this study of the stratigraphy and geometry of fluvial deposits and their contained archaeological remains. Anasazi sites in alluvium range from Basketmaker III to Pueblo III in age, thus providing age guides for the period AD. 500-1300. Fluvial deposits include channel, floodplain, and tributary alluvial fan facies. During times when (and at locales where) the system aggraded, these facies are interbedded and gradational in a way that suggests a braided channel, in contrast to degrading episodes that suggest a meandering channel. Local deposition rate was as great as about three meters in 100 years where distal fan deposits on the northern side of the valley are interbedded with main-channel floodplain deposits. Two main depositional packages are present, separated by an unconformity that mostly formed during the Pueblo I period. The age of this high relief unconformity is apparently diachronous, and the overlying package is certainly diachronous, both suggesting upstream migration of about five kilometers in 200 years. Our stratigraphic record of migrating loci of entrenchment and aggradation corresponds to studies of modern drainages, in which such changes are internal drainage adjustments. However, the broader time intervals of dominant erosion versus deposition are similar to alluvial chronologies elsewhere in the region and are thought to be controlled by climate change. An intricate feedback system apparently operated between sedimentary and geomorphic events on one hand, and Anasazi agriculture and habitation on the other. Agricultural water-control features show the importance of actively aggrading toes of northside fans in Anasazi agriculture. Habitation, situated on adjacent quasi-stable landforms, closely tracked loci of aggradation as these loci migrated. No habitation adjacent to valley segments suffering coeval entrenchment was found. The relation of migrating entrenchment loci and observed Anasazi habitation patterns suggest that the deleterious effects of entrenchment on Anasazi floodland agriculture probably resulted only in migration to nearby loci of deposition. The floodland component of Anasazi agriculture in this region may explain some Anasazi migration patterns that are otherwise anomalous. Adjacent floodlands and uplands, both in zones favorable for agriculture, may be required for successful habitation at certain times. The locations of the zones favorable for each agricultural strategy may vary through time somewhat independently of one another.

This is the sixth in a series of seven volumes reporting results of archaeological investigations at Las Colinas, a predominantly Sedentary and Classic period settlement on the Salt River within the boundaries of what is today urban Phoenix. Excavations at Las Colinas were funded by the Arizona Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway administration, with the additional support of the University of Arizona during report preparation and publication phases of the project. Work was conducted under Arizona State Permit S-82-16. Earlier volumes in this series presented data summaries and interepretation by project analysts, and a final volume (7) provides basic data and results of some specialized studies. The present volume synthesizes results of the various studies within the larger context of the project research design (Volume 1 in this series), in order to interpret the relevance of this site for better understanding the prehistoric Hohokam of central Arizona. Specific topics addressed include the implications of archaeomagnetic dating for regional chronology, the development and structure of Las Colinas itself, implications of project data for problems of social organization and economy, relationships within central and southern Arizona during the occupation of the site, and the inferences that may be drawn from Las Colinas data, in conjunction with other information, regarding the end of a recognizably Hohokam presence in central Arizona after about A.D. 1450.

The principal focus of this volume is a reconsideration of the construction history and organization of the Mound 8 precinct at Las Colinas. Seven stages of mound construction were identified, with some changes in construction methods and mound configuration over time. As a consequence, Mound 8 provides a record of the transition from an earlier mound form, similar to some stages of the pre-Classic mound at the Gatlin Site, to a later form similar to patterns evident in other Classic period sites. The organization of the Mound 8 precinct as a whole changes with these modifications of the central feature. From these physical changes, shifts in the function and use of Mound 8 have been inferred. Among these is an apparent transition from a predominantly ritual function to one of residence, probably by an elite group within the general population. A comparison of these aspects of the Mound 8 precinct with characteristics of other known platform mounds is made. Although no precise parallel to Stage VI at Las Colinas is identified, strong similarities of the remaining construction stages to those at other sites indicate that there was a shared concept of the appropriate formal organization of the mounds, which might be presumed to reflect similarities in their function within the society.