Fiat Iustitia,Ruat Coeli?: The Misuse of Computers Act 1990

Conclusion It is considered, then, that wereCox v. Riley to come before the courts today, liability would arise under the offences of strict liability created by the Misuse of Computers Act 1990; as well as under the Criminal Damage Act 1971. Moreover, our sceptical layman, it is thought, would not be able to feel uneasy at the outcome, if the above arguments are correct. It is beyond doubt that the Act of 1990 was enacted to curb, insofar as is possible, the computer hacker and that still more insidious threat, the progenitor of computer viruses. It is interesting, too, that the act of a disaffected and possibly alienated employee, as presumably the act of the defendant in the case was, would now fall within the compass of that Act. The law would be applied; Justice would be done and seen to be done; and, dare it be said, Justice would be felt to have been done.     

Interviewing Preschoolers: Comparisons Of Yes/No and Wh- Questions

This study investigated the influence of question format on preschool-aged children's errors, their response accuracy, and their tendency to say I don't know when given non-misleading questions in a neutral, unbiased context. Children (3 to 5 years old) participated in a craft-making session that included a staged accident with two experimenters differing in gender and appearance; the environment also had several distinctive features. One week later children were interviewed about actions, participants, and environment; questions were yes/no format with the veridical response yes (yes questions), yes/no format with the veridical response no (no questions), and specific wh- format questions. Question format substantially influenced children's responses: they were most likely to make errors if asked no questions, and were unlikely to answer either yes/no question with I don't know. In contrast, children spontaneously and frequently said I don't know to wh- questions about content they did not recall (environment), but not about content that was well recalled (actions). Implications of question format for reliability of eyewitness testimony by preschoolers are discussed.     

The use of economic analysis by the Supreme Court in applying the concept of the relevant market

Attention by the courts to what constitutes a market has resulted from litigation enforcement by both the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, especially in connection with the amended section 7 of the Clayton Act. The termmarket is not mentioned in either the Clayton or the Sherman Acts. What constitutes a part of commerce, a line of commerce, or section of the country has been interpreted by the courts to mean a market. A market in antitrust administration then becomes judicial—a process of interpreting the language of the antitrust statutes.     

Social justice and legal justice

The main aim of this paper is to challenge the validity of the distinction between legal justice and social justice. It is argued that what we usually call legal justice is either an application of the more fundamental notion of social justice to legal rules and decisions or is not a matter of justice at all. In other words, the only correct uses of the notion of legal justice are derivative from the notion of social justice and, hence, the alleged conflicts between criteria of social and legal justice result from the confusion about the proper relationship between these two concepts. Two views about the social justice/legal justice dichotomy are of particular importance and will provide the focus for the argument: this dichotomy is sometimes identified with a classical distinction between distributive and commutative justice and sometimes with the distinction between substantive and procedural justice.     

Self-interested aid: Belated modernization and interwoven interests between East and West

The paper starts with an explanation of the term self-interested aid. Next it presents a sequence of constellations of problems between East and West, in order to analyze interwoven interest, focussing on problems arising from international environmental pollution. Finally the consequences which arise from divergences between the interests in solving the problems of Eastern reform states on the one hand and the interests of the reform states in their own problems on the other are analyzed. Within international relations which are ruled by the logic of self-interested aid donors act rationally, if they organize support in such a way that the improvement of the situation in the recipients' country becomes a means for improvement of the situation in the donors' country. The recipients act rationally, if they try to use international aid to solve their purely internal problems, but try to preserve such problems that radiate over their borders, thus evoking international support.     

Comparing the Social Service Utilization, Exposure to Violence, and Trauma Symptomology of Domestic Violence Female “Victims” and Female “Batterers”

Although some authors have suggested that women batterers may really be self-defending victims, to date, no research has been initiated to empirically support this assertion. This paper describes the design and outcomes of a research project that investigated the similarities and differences between women adjudicated as domestic violence batterers and women identified as domestic violence victims. Findings indicated group similarities in the areas of exposure to violence and social service utilization. Although both groups reported high levels of trauma symptomology, victim scores were significantly higher.     

“Staatswirtschaftslehre”—A Component of “Staatswissenschaften” Today and Tomorrow

The paper starts from problems of reorganization of the Welfare State. The second paragraph contains definitions and materials. The third paragraph turns to the development of Staatswissenschaften, especially to cameralistic views, public choice and deregulation. The fourth section deals with present Staatswirtschaftslehre as a component of Staatswissenschaften. The fifth paragraph is focussed on deregulation and reorganization of the state.The paper demonstrates: Staatswissenschaften and Staatswirtschaftslehre will be important academic disciplines also tomorrow, though the State will be reorganized by privatization, non-government-organizations and rearrangements of private and public sector activities under the conditions of new technologies and open markets.     

Expanding coupled shock fronts of urban decay and criminal behavior: How U.S. cities are becoming “hollowed out”

This work attempts to formalize an emerging paradigm in criminology, examining the structural consequences of feedback between community physical decay and behavioral pathologies caused by the social disintegration resulting from that decay. Adaptation of a standard reaction/diffusion approach produces a model of radially expanding coupled traveling-wave shock fronts of interrelated contagious physical decay and criminal activity. The standard threshold theorem associated with the model equations suggests that currently advocated triage policies, which recommend the virtual abandonment of bad communities behind the expanding front, will fail spectacularly. The model suggests that, just as the hollowing-out process has a complex, synergistic and dynamic structure, so, too, must interventions be interactive and mutually reinforcing, adaptively, targeted at communities in all stages of the phenomenon.     

European Editors of Economics Journals—A General Discussion

In a final inquiry at the end of the Conference on Editorial Policies the three editors, Bruno S. Frey (Kyklos), Manfred J. Holler (Homo oeconomicus), and Jürgen G. Backhaus (European Journal of Law and Economics), were asked to comment on their editorial policies. They answered by explaining the challenges they were or still are confronted with, which strategies they have already developed to go on and of course what they have learnt from the deliberations at this conference. In their statements they referred to their preceding paper presentations, and the contributions by Wolfgang Bergsdorf, who is the chief editor of Die Politische Meinung, and Peter Senn.     

Appeals to community and crime prevention

This paper considers the growing appeals to the idea of community in criminal justice policy and the involvement of actual communities in criminal justice initiatives. It draws on a completed two year research study of a number of community-based crime prevention initiatives in the South East of England. The paper considers the nature of community to which appeals are made in criminal justice discourse and policies, the contribution of community to the practices of social order and the nature of community representation and participation in crime prevention initiatives. It is argued that appeals to community in crime prevention, and crime control more generally, embody shifts in what constitutes the legitimate responsibilities of individuals, collectivities and the state. This has a number of implications, the first of which is a redrawing of the cost of policing and security services. Additionally, there is an associated shift in blame for failure. Finally, actual community involvement in crime control gives rise to new structures and forms of local governance that evoke key questions about the regulation of social relations, the nature of conflict resolution, citizenship, democracy and social justice.     

The effects of delay on voice recognition accuracy

Two experiments were conducted in which 176 listeners heard male and female objectively defined high- and low-recognition voices and then attempted to identify these voices from a voice parade containing 20 distractors after either 10, 40, 100, or 130 minutes (experiment 1), or 10 minutes, one day, seven days, or 14 days (experiment 2). In experiment 1 delay had no overall effect, although further analysis revealed that the shortest delay did produce better performance than all other delay conditions. Further, high-recognition voices were better identified than low-recognition voices. In experiment 2 delay had an overall effect, with the shortest delay interval again being significantly better than all other conditions, which did not differ among themselves. High- and low-recognition voices, however, did not exhibit a statistically significant difference, although these two factors entered into a marginally significant interaction. Theoretical speculation and forensic implications were drawn.This research was funded by the British Home Office, research grant no. RES 741/1/1, although the views expressed are not necessarily those of the funding body.     

The Place of Legal Positivism in Contemporary Constitutional States

The aim of the paper is that of discussing some recent antipositivist theses, with specific reference to the arguments that focus on the alleged incapability of legal positivism to understand and explain the complex normative structure of constitutional states. One of the central tenets of legal positivism (in its guise of methodological or conceptual positivism) is the theory of the separation between law and morality. On the assumption that in contemporary legal systems, constitutional law represents a point of intersection between law and basic moral values, antipositivists contrast legal positivism with two main arguments. First, on a more general level, the positivist theory of the separation between law and morality is questioned; then, and consequently, the neutrality thesis in the juristic study of law is rejected. The author discusses both these antipositivist arguments, and offers a brief defence of methodological positivism.     

De facto departures from insanity instructions

De facto departures form the law (de jure) have been noted in such areas as jury revolts, jury nullification, extralegal concerns, and insanity. The thesis developed here is that (a) when such departures have occurred in insanity cases, acritical rather thaninstructive view of jurors has prevailed; (b) this critical view impedes efforts to empirically understand jurors' constructs of insanity and thereby restricts considered legal changes; (c) the Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984 is illustrative of such narrowly considered changes, and, based on empirical findings, this act fails to instruct jurors or produce verdicts different from its predecessors; and (d) based on empirical findings, the common sense construals ofsane andinsane do emerge, complex though they be. Suggestions toward an empirically derived common law test of insanity, one that harmonizes legal, psychological, and common sense perspectives, are offered.This article is based in part on a paper, De Jure and De Facto Insanity Tests, presented at the American Psychological Association's Annual Convention, August 14, 1988, Atlanta, Georgia.     

Terrorism and the law: Historical contexts, contemporary dilemmas, and the end(s) of democracy

Recent proposals by the G7 (and Russia) to clamp down on terrorists and terrorism do not define that which is prohibited. Instead, a threat is communicated which in turn allows, among other things, greater attention to be paid officially to camouflage charities and terrorist use of the Internet. Nevertheless, it is somewhat of a truism to note that terrorist violence is ultimately defined or characterized, for purposes of legal prohibition, within a highly politicized atmosphere. Starting with a short summary of anti-terrorist codification efforts made this century, this article examines some of the security interests cited by governments today in their respective struggles against terrorism. More specifically, it is argued that individual perceptions of personal and societal threat are heightened unnecessarily not only by a constant stream of governmental anti-terrorist rhetoric, but further, by an awareness of official and unofficial methods of anti-terrorist surveillance, and the use to which the information so obtained can be put.     

“Does Contain” vs. “Does Not Contain”: Does it Matter which GMO Label is Used?

An analytical framework where heterogeneous consumers are imperfectly informed about product content is used to investigate the welfare effects of a public labeling system. Although a mandatory label that reads Does Contain or one that reads Does Not Contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs) provides information for both the labeled and the unlabeled goods, there is no reason why these labels should cause the same welfare effects. This paper shows that the two labels imply different distortions due to the associated cost of labeling. It is shown that the label Does Contain should be used if the ratio of consumers with a strong reluctance for consuming GMO goods to indifferent consumers is high, while the label Does Not Contain should be used if this ratio is low. Given the findings, the authors argue that current labeling differences in various countries need not be the result of protectionist trade regulations.     

Distributive Justice and Crime

The heavy concentration of crime on a few areas, and the concentration on the chronically victimised within those areas, together illustrate the gross inequality of the risk of crime victimisation. This inequality also characterises other hazards of life. Criminology has too often reduced the problem of crime to the problem of the offender. Recognising crime hazard as an issue of distributive justice requires a different mind set. The Crime and Disorder Act 1998 recognises the drivers of crime as lying outside criminal justice, but does not put in place a panhazard analysis of the kind required, community safety being presented as a type of crime prevention. Movement towards panhazard thinking may well be somewhat facilitated by the workingthrough of the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights, actions flowing from section 17 of the Crime and Disorder Act, and a reconsideration of how emergency services might work.     

Insanity,justification, and culpability toward a unifying schema

Insanity has long been viewed as an excuse rather than a justification: Insane people are acquitted not because they did nothing wrong, but because they are considered morally blameless for their wrongful conduct. A new substantive test based on justificatory rather than exculpatory principles—a quasisubjective justification (QSJ) test—is compared to Finkel's relative culpability test, and to two excuse oriented tests, ALI and IDRA, across seven cases. QSJ and Finkel's test both produced significant verdict differences, whereas ALI and IDRA verdicts were not significantly different. The QSJ effect, however, was observed only in cases judged low in justification, and thus did not play a determinative role across cases; other variables, such as perceived severity of the disorder and culpability for bringing about the disorder, to which only Finkel's test was sensitive, seem to have more explanatory power.     

Egocentric bias in perceived fairness: Is it observed in Japan?

Experiment 1 was a Japanese replication of the studies reported by Messicket al. (1985) and Liebrandet al. (1986). Subjects were asked to write down fair or unfair behaviors that they or others did, giving as many examples as possible in 5 min. As in the previous studies, the subjects began more fair behaviors with the word I than with others. Likewise, they began more unfair behaviors with the word others than with I. In Experiment 2, 80 examples of behaviors (40 fair and 40 unfair) were selected randomly from the results of Experiment 1. The difference between the number of frequent behaviors sorted into the fair/I category and that sorted into the unfair/I category was greater than that between the number of behaviors sorted into the fair/others and that sorted to be unfair/others. Salient behaviors were more likely to be sorted into the category of unfair than into fair, and more likely to be sorted into others than I. On the whole, the egocentric bias of fairness was confirmed in Japan as well as in the Netherlands and the United States. However, in both experiments, gender differences were found; women, compared to men, recalled more others' behavior than their own and were likely to attribute fair and/or unfair behavior to others rather than to themselves.     

Development and Validation of the Validity Indicator Profile

The Validity Indicator Profile (VIP; Frederick, 1997) is a two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) procedure intended to identify when the results of cognitive and neuropsychological testing may be invalid because of malingering or other problematic response styles. The test consists of 100 problems that assess nonverbal abstraction capacity and 78 word-definition problems. The VIP attempts to establish whether an individual's performance in an assessment battery should be considered representative of his or her true overall capacities (valid or invalid). Performances classified as valid are classified as compliant and reflect a high effort to respond correctly. Performances classified as invalid are subclassified as careless (low effort to respond correctly), irrelevant (low effort to respond incorrectly), or malingering (high effort to respond incorrectly). The VIP development sample included 944 nonclinical participants and 104 adults undergoing neuropsychological evaluation. The cross-validation sample consisted of 152 nonclinical participants, 61 brain-injured adults, 49 individuals considered to be at risk for malingering, and 100 randomly generated VIP protocols. The nonverbal subtest of the VIP demonstrated an overall classification rate of 79.8%, with 73.5% sensitivity and 85.7% specificity. The verbal subtest of the VIP demonstrated an overall classification rate of 75.5%, with 67.3% sensitivity and 83.1% specificity.Ross Crosby was at NCS Assessments, Minnetonka, Minnesota, during much of this project     

Commentary on Seagrave and Grisso: Impressions of the State of the Art

Seagrave and Grisso (2001) questioned the clinical-forensic utility of tests designed to assess juvenile psychopathy. They discussed potential problems with such tests and some avenues for future research. We agree with the points made by Seagrave and Grisso, but believe their critique did not go far enough. The state of the art with respect to the assessment of juvenile psychopathy is like an Impressionist painting: fine from a distance;but the closer you get, the messier it looks. We conclude that although tests of juvenile psychopathy measure something, it is impossible to be sure at this time they are actually measuring psychopathy.