Holy Trinity of Network Power

Last Thursday the US Supreme Court ruled that prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have a right to hear and to challenge the reasons for their detention.

Eric M. Freedman, a habeas corpus expert at Hofstra University Law School, called the decision "a structural reaffirmation of what the rule of law means," and said it was as important a ruling on the separation of powers as the Supreme Court has ever issued, according to the NY Times.

Dating back at least to ancient Greeks, the separation of powers traditionally splits state power into three parts: executive, legislative, and judicial.

Over the next few posts, Connectedness will celebrate the separation of powers by comparing each of its three components to three notable pillars of the network perspective: centrality, clustering, and structural equivalence.

Stay tuned for something like this:

Politics	Networks	Easy-to-Remember Stereotype
Executive	Centrality	Tyrannical Dictator
Legislative	Clustering	Mob of Special Interests
Judicial	Structural Equivalence	Politically Unaccountable Intelligentsia

Hopefully by July 4th, we'll have celebrated all three.

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