Strategic Analysis of the Body Shop International Research Paper

Strategic Analysis of the Body Shop International - Research Paper Example Based on the strategic internal analysis of the resources, capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses of the company and the analysis of the industry and global environments, it is reported that despite the highly competitive nature of the industry the company's performance can be stated to be more than satisfactory. Strategically the company would do well with the continuance of its own store design format and with the reduction of the dependence on the franchising mode of expansion. 1.0 Introduction While 'business strategy' represent the goal of the company to attain sustainable competitive advantage in one of the businesses of the company, 'corporate strategy' represents the objective of the company to manage multi-business activities to create corporate-wide advantage that will benefit each of the business the company owns and operates. The corporate strategy looks into the opportunities available to the company both internally and externally to enhance its competitive strengths and sustain its sales growth and profitability. A strategic analysis of any company thus includes assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the company on the basis of the internal environment as well as threats and opportunities that the company is subjected to because of its relative positioning in the market and the industry. This report on the Body Shop International Plc reports on the efforts of the company to enhance and to sustain its competitive advantages. 1.1 Global Cosmetic Industry - A Background The cosmetics and Toiletries Industry has registered an all round growth of 5 percent during the year 2006 as against the growth in the year 2005. This growth is the overall highest growth rate of... The cosmetics and Toiletries Industry has registered an all round growth of 5 percent during the year 2006 as against the growth in the year 2005. This growth is the overall highest growth rate of the industry since the year 2001. The growth of the industry is facilitated by the presence of strong macro economic factors signifying a worldwide increase in the consumer spending power. With the highest growth rate of 13 percent, Eastern Europe, and Latin America were the fastest growing regional markets. Western Europe accounts for less than 30 percent of the total market with a sales growth of just 3 percent in the year 2006. The sales in the North American region which include the United States Market were above $ 50 billion. The Asia Pacific region also has the characters of a key market with the potential linked to factors like large population, enhanced disposable income, modernized retail and distribution networks and increased consumer awareness – thanks to globalization. On the regional levels, Russia represented the largest market with a sale of $ 8.5 billion accounting for about 40 percent of the regional sales value. In the analysis of products, skin care products with the sales value of $ 60.1 billion in the year 2006 are the largest segment of all cosmetic and toiletries items which also is the fastest growing product of the industry. The market generally uses the distribution channels like supermarkets/hypermarkets, specialist stores, pharmacies and departmental stores.

Country Analysis Report - Saudi Arabia Research Paper

Country Analysis Report - Saudi Arabia - Research Paper Example Being a growing country, the government has launched strategies to encourage integration of the digital technology within the business sector. In this light, this is a potential market for ICT infrastructure. If Apple invests in this business sector, it is likely to benefit from high market demand, high customer loyalty, less competition and a stable market position. With a high bargaining power, the organization should expect more profits from this environment. These benefits are expected to last in the long term. The challenges that exist in this market sector cost of imports, delay in obtaining a license and high construction costs. In fact, this market is ranked as one of the hardest market for foreign investors to launch their products. This makes it quite hard for Apple Inc to launch its business plan in this market. Its ability to design a strategy that overcomes these challenges will determine its survival in this market. Numerous risks threaten business survival in this mark et. Existence of terrorism and political instability promises an unpredictable future within this market environment. Also, religious conflicts make it hard to predict consumer behavior in this market. On entry in this market, Apple Inc should be aware of these risk and devise plans to neutralize them. Altogether, Apple Inc should consider entry in this market as challenges and risks are inevitable in every market environment. Saudi Arabia Analysis Report Introduction In the 21st century, there is pressure for every business organization to push its operations in the international markets as a strategic plan to target more customers and optimize profits. Before developing an international investment plan, it is crucial to conduct a thorough environmental market scanning before choosing potential countries where business is viable. This process requires a clear identification of the opportunities available in the country, risk, difficulties and potential of the target country. This h elps a business entity to understand the nature of the new market, and decide whether it is worth to invest in this country. In addition, this helps the organization to devise the right market entry strategy to take advantage of the opportunities, neutralize risks and overcome difficulties associated with the new environment. Understanding the market environment goes way far in determining the success of the organization within the international market. Saudi Arabia is one of the countries that are becoming potential investment market sectors especially in the field of technology. As the country struggles to absorb technology within its industry, there is potential for ICT business in this part of the world. However, this market has associated risks that pose threat to business survival in this industry. For Apple Inc, this market sector is a potential investment environment due to the demand of technology infrastructure that is building up in this country. Although Apple Inc produc ts are already trending in this market, there is need to develop a manufacturing plant in this country to take better advantage of this market. This report is a presentation of the image of the Business environment in Saudi Arabia. It presents the opportunities, benefits, risks and difficulties that Apple Inc would encounter in launching manufacturing operations in this Saudi Arabia. The ICT Potentials of

A Survey on Ranking in Information Retrieval System

A Survey on Ranking in Information Retrieval System Shikha Gupta Abstract Available information is expanding day by day and this availability makes access and proper organization to the archives critical for efficient use of information. People generally rely on information retrieval (IR) system to get the desired result. In such a case, it is the duty of the service provider to provide relevant, proper and quality information to the user against the query submitted to the IR System, which is a challenge for them. With time, many old techniques have been modified, and many new techniques are developing to do effective retrieval over large collections. This paper is concerned with the analysis and comparison of various available page ranking algorithms based on the various parameters to find out their advantages and limitations in ranking the pages. Based on this analysis of different page ranking algorithms, a comparative study has been done to find out their relative strengths and limitations. This paper also tries to find out the further scope of researc h in page ranking algorithm. Keywords Information Retrieval (IR) System, Ranking, Page Rank, HITS, WPR, WLR, Distance Rank, Time Rank, Query Dependent, Context. 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Information Retrieval System Information retrieval systems are defined as some collection of components and processes which takes input in the form of a query from the user to the system, then compares it with the information which has been collected by the system, and then produce an output, which is some set of texts or information objects considered to be related to the query. It is the activity of obtaining the information resources which are relevant to an information need(query) from a collection of information resources. Data structure used by an IR system is Inverted index which is an index of {term, doc IDs} entries. IR system consists of three main components: firstly the user in the system; then the knowledge resource on which the user has an access and with which s/he interacts; and, a person(s) and/or device(s) that supports and mediates the interaction of the user with the knowledge resource (the intermediary). User FeedbackUser Query RankedExecutable DocumentsQuery Fig: IR architecture In an IR System the processes which are to be considered as important are: Representation of the user’s information problem which is in the form of texts in the knowledge resource: e.g. indexing; Comparison of representation of texts and information problem: e.g. retrieval techniques; Interaction between the user and an intermediary: e.g. human-computer interaction or reference interview; and, sometimes, Judgment of appropriateness of the text to information problem submitted by the user: e.g. relevance judgments; and Modification of the representation of an information problem: e.g. query reformulation or relevance feedback. 1.2 Ranking Ranking is a process of arranging the resulted documents in the order of their relevancy. An information retrieval process begins when the user enters aqueryinto a system. Queries can be defined as formal statements ofinformation needs, for example the search strings in web search engines. In information retrieval not only a single object uniquely identifies a query in the collection, rather, several objects may match the query, but, with different degrees ofrelevancy. Most of the IR systems compute a numeric score for each object in the database to determine how well each of them matches the query, and then it rank the objects according to this calculated value. After ranking, objects having top ranks are shown to the user. The user can then iterate the process by refining the query, if required. Use of ranking To improve search quality. To do effective retrieval over large collections. Granting relevant, efficient, fast and quality information against the user query. 2. RELATED WORK In this paper, a review of previous work on ranking is given. In the field of ranking, many algorithms and techniques have already been proposed but they all seem to be less efficient in efficiently granting the rank. The various algorithms are defined below. . Page Rank Algorithm Page Rank Algorithm is one of the most common ranking algorithms. It is alink analysisalgorithm which provides a way of measuring the importance of pages. Its working is based on the number and quality of links to a page to make a rough estimate of the importance of the page. It is based on the assumption that more important pages are will receive more links from other pages. The numerical weight that it assigns to any given elementEis referred to as thePageRank of Eand is denoted by PR (E). HITS Algorithm Hyperlink-Induced Topic Search(HITS; also known ashubs and authorities) is alink analysisalgorithmthat rates pages. In links and out links of the web pages are processed to rank them. A good hub represents a page that pointes to many other pages, and a good authority represents a page that was linked by many different hubs. The scheme therefore assigns two scores for each page: its authority, which estimates the value of the content of the page, and its hub value, which estimates the value of its links to other pages. HITS algorithm has the limitation of assigning high rank value to some popular pages that are not highly relevant to the given query. Hubs Authorities Fig: Hubs and Authorities Weighted Page Rank Algorithm Weighted Page Rank algorithm (WPR) is an extension to the standard Page Rank algorithm. The importance of both in-links and out-links of the pages are taken into account. Rank scores are distributed based on the popularity of the pages. Number of in-links and out-links are observed to determine the popularity of a page. This algorithm performs better than the conventional Page Rank algorithm in terms of returning a large number of relevant pages to the given query. Weighted Links Rank Algorithm Weighted links rank (WLRank) algorithm is a variant of Page Rank algorithm. Different page attributes are considered to give more weight to some links, for improving the precision of the answers. Various page attributes which are considered for assigning the weight are: tag in which the link is contained, length of the anchor text and relative position in the page. The use of anchor text is the best attribute of this algorithm. Distance Rank Algorithm It is an intelligent ranking algorithm based on learning. In this algorithm, the distance between pages is calculated. The distance is deà ¯Ã‚ ¬Ã‚ ned as the number of ‘‘average clicks’’ between two pages. It considers distance between pages as a punishment and therefore aims at minimizing this distance so that a page with less distance will get a higher rank. The Advantage of this algorithm is that it can find pages with high quality and more quickly with the use of distance based solution. Also, the complexity of Distance Rank is low. The Limitation of this algorithm is that it requires a large calculation to calculate the distance vector. Time Rank Algorithm This algorithm utilizes the time factor to increase the accuracy of the web page ranking. In this the rank score is improved by using the visit time of the page. The visit time of the page is measured after applying original and improved methods of web page rank algorithm to know about the degree of importance to the users. Time factor is used in this algorithm to increase the accuracy of the page ranking. It is a combination of content and link structure. It provides satisfactory and more relevant results. Query Dependent Ranking Algorithm This algorithm is used to point out a large variety of queries. The similarities between the queries are measured. The ranking of documents in search is conducted by using different models based on different properties of queries. The ranking model in this algorithm is the combination of various models of the similar training queries. Categorization by context This approach proposes a ranking scheme in which ranking is done on the basis of context of the document rather than on the terms basis. Its task is to extract contextual information about documents by analyzing the structure of documents that refer to them. It uses context to describe collections. It is used to overcome the disadvantages of term based approach. 3. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE SCOPE A large number of algorithms are present today which can be used for ranking the pages in Informational Retrieval System. There will always be a scope of better ranking of pages as each algorithm has its associated advantages and disadvantages. In term based approach, there are problems of Synonymy (means multiple words having the same meaning) and Polysemy (means that a word has multiple meanings). On the other hand, in context based approach, the problem is that the pages which refer to a document must contain enough hints about its content so that they are sufficient to classify the document. According to the requirements of the user, the IR system should use an appropriate algorithm. Use of an efficient algorithm will provide speedy response, and, accurate and relevant results. REFERENCES [1] Wenpu Xing and Ali Ghorbani, â€Å"Weighted PageRank Algorithm†, In proceedings of the 2rd Annual Conference on Communication Networks Services Research, PP. 305-314, 2004. [2] Ricardo Baeza-Yates and Emilio Davis ,Web page ranking using link attributes , In proceedings of the 13th international World Wide Web conference on Alternate track papers posters, PP.328-329, 2004. [3] H Jiang et al., TIMERANK: A Method of Improving Ranking Scores by Visited Time, In proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Machine Learning and Cybernetics, Kunming, 12-15 July 2008. [4] Jon Kleinberg, â€Å"Authoritative Sources in a Hyperlinked Environment†, In Proceedings of the ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, 1998. [5] Ali Mohammad Zareh Bidoki and Nasser Yazdani, â€Å"DistanceRank: An Intelligent Ranking Algorithm for Web Pages†, Information Processing and Management, 2007. [6] Dilip Kumar Sharma and A. K. Sharma,â€Å" A Comparative Analysis of Web Page Ranking Algorithms†, in International Journal on Computer Science and Engineering, 2010. [7] Giuseppe Attardi and Antonio Gullà ¬, â€Å"Automatic Web Page Categorization by Link and Context Analysis†, [8] Parul Gupta and Dr. A.K.Sharma, â€Å"Context based Indexing in Search Engines using Ontology†, 2010 International Journal of Computer Applications. [9] Abdelkrim Bouramoul, Mohamed-Khireddine Kholladi1 and Bich-Lien Doan, , â€Å" USING CONTEXT TO IMPROVE THE EVALUATION OF INFORMATION RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS† International Journal of Database Management Systems, May 2011. [10] Xiubo Geng, Tie-Yan Liu, Tao Qin, â€Å"Query Dependent Ranking Using K-Nearest Neighbor†, SIGIR’08, July 20–24, 2008, Singapore

The Economic Quest for the Development of Cuba Essay -- Essays Papers

The Economic Quest for the Development of Cuba Introduction: To state lightly, Americans generally frown upon communist countries. Though there are the obvious grievances of political and ideological differences that will not be discussed in this paper, the opinions with respect to the economy have also sparked heated discourse. Those that are capitalists feel that without a free market and the power of the invisible hand, the economy will not be efficient and eventually crumble. And in most cases, this assumption was true in the twentieth century. But with Cuba, a red country, communism may not be the major factor to blame at the present. Some feel Cuba has not focused enough on industrial growth, while others say it is the lack of physical capital combined with Cuba ´s inability to attract foreign direct investment. Yet most agree that as a small third world country in today ´s global economy, Cuba is facing many challenges to keep up with the pace of the world. In spite of its current condition, this country still has significan t economic potential. In reality, it is quite astounding to look upon Cuba and what this small country has had to encounter in the past fifteen years. At the start of the 1990 ´s, an economic crisis struck Cuba. When the Soviet Union collapsed and the socialist bloc disappeared, Cuba, being heavily reliant on this alliance, suffered immense economic consequences. The Soviet Union was Cuba ´s trading partner and vital contributor through investments, provision of resources and technology. Because of their socialist relationship, eighty-five percent of Cuba ´s trade[,...] including sugar and citrus fruit [was with the Soviet Union, while at the same time] eighty-eight percent of Cuba ´s i... ...d the Development Prospects of Cuba. Developing Prospects in Cuba: An Agenda in the Making. London: Institute of Latin American Studies, 2002. Monreal, Pedro. Export Substituition Reindustrialisation in Cuba: Development Strategies Revisited. Developing Prospects in Cuba: An Agenda in the Making. London: Institute of Latin American Studies, 2002. Oficina Nacional de Estadisticas (ONE) (1999), Anuario estadistico de Cuba 1998 (Havana). Oficina Nacional de Estadisticas (ONE) (1999a), Anuario estadistico de Cuba 1998 (Havana). Saney. Isaac. Cuba: A Revolution in Motion. Ed. Brenda Conroy. London: Fernwood, 2004. Snow, Anita. Cuba ´s economic growth slows. Associated Press. 21 December 2002. Academic Universe. 22 Jan. 2005 . Taylor, John. Economics: Fourth Edition. Ed. Jean L. Woy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.

Postmodern Hindu Law

The Hindu law has been a guiding principle for our society, especially in certain matters like the conjugal affairs or the responsibilities of kinship. The Kutia Kandha customs are also based on the lines of Hindu law but they seem to be more systematic. Maintenance As per the Hindu law, regardless of ownership of property, a person is morally obliged to take over the responsibility of his wife, old parents and minors. This norm is followed by the Kutia Kandha people with some further inclusions. Accordingly, the inheritance of a property should not become the basis of a son's commitments towards his parents or his wife. It's the duty of sons to look after their parents even if they don't inherit the property in return. But the nuance is that the responsibility of staying with the old parents comes down to the youngest one. He has to take care of everything, even the funerary rights of his parents. Same rule applies on an adopted son; no property will be inherited if he fails to fulfill his responsibilities.Similarly, maintenance of minors and unmarried or handicapped children is a responsibility that parents cannot avoid. In circumstances like death of parents, the duty is accorded to near male kin, if he is inheriting the property. In another situation, if the husband dies, the widow has to maintain the minors until the eldest one turns a major. And in case, she marries some outsider, the responsibility of the minors and the property, everything goes under the control of the family of deceased husband, basically a male kin of his.GuardianshipWhether a minor is legitimate or illegitimate, there should be a guardian to take over his responsibilities. The Kutias have elucidated certain points that are needed for the consideration of guardianship. Father is the natural guardian of a child, and in case of his death, the mother becomes one. A major child may become a guardian of his minor siblings in case both the parents are dead. In absence of such a major child, the responsibility goes to either of the grandparents. Grandparents to next full brother and then to half brother, this process continues until and unless there is some male kin of their father available for such guardianship. Else the process is repeated in maternal clan.Illegitimate child goes with the legitimate husband of the deceased woman, and in case he denies, the family of woman is supposed to take care of the child.Adopted father of an adopted son is his guardian and not the real father, in such a case.Lastly, in case of a divorce, the children stay with father. If they are small enough not to live without mother, they remain with the mother and go to the father once they grow up.AdoptionThere are many reasons, for which a person may want to adopt a child; some childless couple may want an old age support or some may not be willing to have their own kids and just go for adoption. Whatever the reason maybe, anyone can adopt a child.The Kutia Kandhas have delineated the conditions of adoptions. One can adopt a child of any gender but he should start choosing from his paternal kinsmen, if not available then from an outsider, whether from same clan or not. The adopted son is entrusted with all the responsibilities of a real son (ibid) thereafter and becomes the inheritor of his adopted parents' property, too. Even the responsibility of minors, widow, old grandparents etc is invested on him. Failing to which, his property may be forfeited. If a situation arises wherein the adopted son and father separate, the question of inheritance of property depends upon the case of separation. If the adopted son is guilty, he may not get anything; otherwise he can claim the rights.Not every rule is just for adopted son, even the adopter have some duties towards him, like looking after his welfare, marriage and every other aspect that he may do or have done for his real son.

Reward Management Essay

Recently, Reward Management is an important role in Human Resources Management. Many organizations realized the benefit of the reward system , in a way that it could reinforce the employee’s performance, enhance motivation and gain their commitment. For example, when employees know that rewards are tied to their performance, they will try to perform better and take ownership of their jobs. Also, it is a motivation that makes employees evolve a sense of accomplishment and take pride in their work, which in turn increases ownership. Remuneration is a major feature for employment. It is the reason that why people are working. The contribution of employees to the organization can be compensated in terms of monetary or non-monetary terms. Remuneration does not just compensate employees for their efforts, but also affect the recruitment and retention of talented people. There are three recommendations for improving performance by using modern reward management techniques. First, we would recommend that remuneration to be linked to performance, linking to the pay to the quantity of the employee’s output or productivity charts, and therefore the remuneration with be depending on the result, whether the outcome is to be of good quality or outstanding quantity. Another type of performance-linked remuneration is performance related pay, where the performance of employee is measured against previously set objectives, or compared with the various tasks listed in the job description by using performance appraisal system. Based on the above features, we propose to add in these kinds of features into the reward system. We can hold some reward planning, which is related to pay that to encourage most of employees. Secondly, staff motivation can be enhanced through the reshaping of working routines and hours. Nowadays, many employees have complaint about the long working hours and the private life being invaded. However, reducing working hours is not always possible due to the huge amount of workload. In order to deal with the problem, we would recommend flexi-working hours. The concept of flexi-working is to suit the convenience of the employee without influence the organization’s functioning. Nowadays, many people are busy on working, studying and managing their family life. To such extent, flexi-work allows flexible entry and leaving times for employee, which is beneficial for employees in managing their time schedule. Being able to manage their work, study and family life, they are able to obtain a work-life balance, and thus being able to increase their productivity, decline in absenteeism, and reduction in employee turnover and increases their moral. Thirdly, competition among work increases vigorously, and employees tend to undertakes different training courses or opt for further study. As a result, we would recommend the linking of training or education sponsorship with the performance. For example, if the employees opt for a course related to their job nature, the company can sponsor their cost of training. In order to enhance performance, we suggest the amount of sponsorship to be linked with the employee’s performance, and the payment is to be made upon the successful completion of the course. To such extent, the employee’s motivation to perform is enhanced, and they are more willing to equip themselves with the necessary skills related to their job. In conclusion, reward management is essential in managing the performance of the employee. Remuneration is the major and yet the most essential element in employment term, and therefore managing the reward system can effectively enhance the employee’s performance and motivation. Yet, both monetary and non-monetary reward can be used for the aforementioned purpose.

Due Process of Law in the US Constitution

Due Process of Law in the US Constitution How important did America’s Founding Fathers consider the concept of â€Å"due process of law?† Important enough that they made it the only right guaranteed twice by the U.S. Constitution. Due process  of law in government is a constitutional guarantee that actions of the government will not impact its citizens in an abusive manner. As applied today, due process dictates that all courts must operate under a clearly defined set of standards crafted to protect peoples’ personal liberty. Due Process of Law in the United States The Constitution’s Fifth Amendment adamantly commands that no person may be â€Å"deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law† by any act of the federal government. Then, the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, steps up to use exactly the same phrase, called the Due Process Clause, to extend the same requirement to the state governments.   In making due process of law a constitutional guarantee, America’s Founding Fathers drew on a key phrase in the English Magna Carta of 1215, providing that no citizen should be made to forfeit his or her property, rights, or freedom except â€Å"by the law of the land,† as applied by the court. The exact phrase â€Å"due process of law† first appeared as a substitute for Magna Carta’s â€Å"the law of the land† in a 1354 statute adopted under King Edward III that restated the Magna Carta’s guarantee of the liberty. The exact phrase from the 1354 statutory rendition of the Magna Carta referring to â€Å"due process of law† reads: â€Å"No man of what state or condition he be, shall be put out of his lands or tenements nor taken nor disinherited, nor put to death, without he be brought to answer by due process of law.† (emphasis added) At the time, â€Å"taken† was interpreted to mean being arrested or deprived of liberty by the government. ‘Due Process of Law’ and ‘Equal Protection of the Laws’ While the Fourteenth Amendment applied the Bill of Rights’ Fifth Amendment guarantee of due process of law to the states it also provides that the states may not deny any person within their jurisdiction â€Å"the equal protection of the laws.† That’s fine for the states, but does the Fourteenth Amendment’s â€Å"Equal Protection Clause† also apply to the federal government and to all U.S. citizens, regardless of where they live? The Equal Protection Clause was mainly intended to enforce the equality provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which provided that all U.S. citizens (except  American Indians) should be given â€Å"full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property.† So, the Equal Protection Clause itself applies only to state and local governments. But, enter the U.S. Supreme Court and its interpretation the Due Process Clause. In its decision in the 1954 case of Bolling v. Sharpe, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause requirements apply to the federal government through the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. The Court’s Bolling v. Sharpe decision illustrates one of the five â€Å"other† ways the Constitution has been amended over the years.   As the source of much debate, especially during the tumultuous days of school integration, the Equal Protection Clause gave rise to the wider legal tenet of â€Å"Equal Justice Under Law.† The term â€Å"Equal Justice Under Law† would soon become the foundation of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in the 1954 case of Brown v. Board of Education, which led to the end of racial segregation in public schools, as well as dozens of laws prohibiting discrimination against persons belonging to various legally define protected groups. Key Rights and Protections Offered by Due Process of Law The basic rights and protections inherent in the Due Process of Law clause apply in all federal and state government proceedings that could result in a person’s â€Å"deprivation,† basically meaning the loss of â€Å"life, liberty† or property. The rights of due process apply in all state and federal criminal and civil proceedings from hearings and depositions to full-blown trials. These rights include: The right to an unbiased and speedy trialThe right to be provided with notice of the criminal charges or civil action involved and the legal grounds for those charges or actionsThe right present reasons why a proposed action should not be takenThe right to present evidence, including the right to call witnessesThe right to know the opposing evidence (disclosure)The right to cross-examine adverse witnessesThe right to a decision based solely on the evidence and testimony presentedThe right to be represented by a lawyerThe requirement that the court or other tribunal prepare a written record of the evidence and testimony presentedThe requirement that the court or other tribunal prepare written findings of fact and reasons for its decision Fundamental Rights and the Substantive Due Process Doctrine While court decisions like Brown v. Board of Education have established the Due Process Clause as sort of a proxy for a wide range of rights dealing with social equality, those rights were at least expressed in the Constitution. But what about those rights not mentioned in the Constitution, like the right to marry the person of your choice or the right to have children and raise them as you choose? Indeed, the thorniest constitutional debates over the last half century have involved those other rights of â€Å"personal privacy† like marriage, sexual preference, and reproductive rights. To justify the enactment of federal and state laws dealing with such issues, the courts have evolved the doctrine of â€Å"substantive due process of law.† As applied today, substantive due process holds that the Fifth and the Fourteenth Amendments requires that all laws restricting certain â€Å"fundamental rights† must be fair and reasonable and that the issue in question must be a legitimate concern of the government. Over the years, the Supreme Court has used substantive due process to emphasize the protections of the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments of the Constitution in cases dealing with the fundamental rights by constraining certain actions taken by police, legislatures, prosecutors, and judges. The Fundamental Rights The â€Å"fundamental rights† are defined as those having some relationship to the rights of autonomy or privacy. Fundamental rights, whether they are enumerated in the Constitution or not, are sometimes called â€Å"liberty interests.† Some examples of these rights recognized by the courts but not enumerated in the Constitution include, but are not limited to: The right to marry and procreateThe right to have custody of one’s own children and to raise then as one sees fitThe right to practice contraceptionThe right to identify as being of the gender of one’s choiceThe right work at the job of one’s choiceThe right to refuse medical treatment The fact that a certain law may restrict or even prohibit the practice of a fundamental right does not  in all cases mean that the law is unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause. Unless a court decides that it was unnecessary or inappropriate for the government to restrict the right in order to achieve some compelling governmental objective the law will be allowed to stand.