Public Values, Private Contractsand the Colliding Worlds of Family and Market:German Federal Constitutional Court,`Marital Agreement' Decisions of 6 February2001 and 29 March 2001

In two decisions delivered inFebruary and March 2001, the German FederalConstitutional Court voided the maritalagreements struck between a man and a pregnantwoman on the grounds that they were the productof an inequality of bargaining power betweenthe parties. These findings, involving anapplication of the fundamental rightsprovisions of the German Basic Law to privateagreements, demonstrate the creeping competenceof the F.C.C. into the sphere of contractualrelations and an ongoing questioning ofthe traditional public/private law divide. Exploring some of the implications of applyingpublic values and constitutional reviewstandards to private agreements, this notecontextualises the decisions within the debateupon competing (and ultimately colliding)social systems of the family and the market.     

A Method for Estimating Sex Using Metric Analysis of the Scapula*

Abstract: The most accurate and precise methods for the assessment of age and stature often require knowledge of sex. Thus, being able to correctly identify sex from skeletal remains is critical in the forensic context. The presence of the os coxae or skull can never be guaranteed, making the development of reliable methods of sex estimation using other skeletal elements necessary. Using a 724 individual calibration sample from the Hamann‐Todd collection, this study identifies sexual dimorphism in the human scapula, and presents a new five‐variable discriminant function for sex estimation. The overall accuracy of this method proved to be 95.7% on the cross‐validated calibration sample, 92.5% on an 80 individual test sample from the Hamann‐Todd collection, and 84.4% on a 32 individual test sample from the skeletal collection of the Wichita State University Biological Anthropology Laboratory. Additionally, a slightly less accurate two‐variable model was developed and has cross‐validated accuracy of 91.3%.     

Postmortem Detection of Hepatitis B,C, and Human Immunodeficiency Virus Genomes in Blood Samples from Drug‐Related Deaths in Denmark*

Abstract: Blood‐borne viral infections are widespread among injecting drug users; however, it is difficult to include these patients in serological surveys. Therefore, we developed a national surveillance program based on postmortem testing of persons whose deaths were drug related. Blood collected at autopsy was tested for anti‐HBc, anti‐HBs, anti‐hepatits C virus (HCV), or anti‐human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) antibodies using commercial kits. Subsets of seropositive samples were screened for viral genomes using sensitive in‐house and commercial polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays. Hepatitis B virus (HBV) DNA was detected in 20% (3/15) of anti‐HBc‐positive/anti‐HBs‐negative samples, HCV RNA was found in 64% (16/25) of anti‐HCV‐positive samples, and HIV RNA was detected in 40% (6/15) of anti‐HIV‐positive samples. The postmortem and antemortem prevalences of HBV DNA and HCV RNA were similar. Postmortem HIV RNA testing was less sensitive than antemortem testing. Thus, postmortem PCR analysis for HBV and HBC infection is feasible and relevant for demonstrating ongoing infections at death or for transmission analysis during outbreaks.     

Strategies in a volatile world

Globalization and localization are usually considered to be two very opposite theoretical frames for studying today's political economy. Rather than accepting this theoretical dualism, this article argues that the combination of the two worlds is dependent on strategies. By analysing the action of a business unit of a multinational corporation, it is shown how it is possible for local actors to combine their strategies into a coherent whole by which a locality takes advantage of its channels to the corporate markets of the multinational corporation. This case-study then questions our usual theortical observations concerning internationalization and sketches out an alternative way of thinking, combining globalization and localization.     

Regulation under uncertainty: The coevolution of industry and regulation

As production and design disintegrate and become more collaborative, involving dynamic relations between customers and firms supplying complex subsystems and service, products and production methods become more innovative but also more hazardous. The inadvertent co‐production of latent hazards by independent firms is forcing firms and regulators to address the problem of uncertainty – the inability to anticipate, much less assign a probability to future states of the world – more directly than before. Under uncertainty, neither the regulator nor the regulated firms know what needs to be done. The regulator must induce firms to systematically canvas their practices and identify potential hazards. But recognizing the fallibility of all such efforts, the regulator must further foster the institutionalization of incident or event reporting procedures: systems to register failures in products or production processes that could be precursors to catastrophe; to trace out and correct their root causes; to alert others in similar situations to the potential hazard; and to make certain that countermeasures to ensure the safety of current operations are taken and the design requirements for the next generation of the implicated components or installations are updated accordingly. In this essay we develop these arguments and look closely at changes in the Norwegian offshore oil and gas industry and its regulator, the Petroleum Safety Authority to better understand the coevolution of vertically disintegrated industry and new forms of regulation.