Review Symposium: Interdisciplinary Readings of Ari Bryen's Violence in Roman Egypt—Author's Reflections

Bryen, Ari Z. 2013 . Violence in Roman Egypt: A Study in Legal Interpretation . Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Pp. 376. $75.00 cloth; $75.00 eBook. In this brief comment, I respond to symposium reviewers of my book Violence in Roman Egypt (2013). I consider the insights each provides from their respective discipline, and identify connections across those disciplines as well. More broadly, I comment on the theoretical purchase and unique challenges of law and society scholarship.     

Law or Finance: Evidence from Finland

Although it is widely acknowledged that the benefits of corporate governance reform could be substantial, systematic evidence on such reforms is scant. We both document and evaluate a contemporary corporate governance reform by constructing 18 measures of shareholder and creditor protection for Finland for the period 1980–2000. The measures reveal that shareholder protection has been strengthened whereas creditor protection has been weakened. We also demonstrate how the reform is consistent with a reorganisation of the Finnish financial market in which a bank-centred financial system shifted from relationship-based debt finance towards increasing dominance by the stock market. We find evidence that the development of shareholder protection has been a driver of the reorganisation, whereas the changes in creditor protection have mirrored market developments.     

Multivariate Classification of Original and Fake Perfumes by Ion Analysis and Ethanol Content

The increased marketing of fake perfumes has encouraged us to investigate how to identify such products by their chemical characteristics and multivariate analysis. The aim of this study was to present an alternative approach to distinguish original from fake perfumes by means of the investigation of sodium, potassium, chloride ions, and ethanol contents by chemometric tools. For this, 50 perfumes were used (25 original and 25 counterfeit) for the analysis of ions (ion chromatography) and ethanol (gas chromatography). The results demonstrated that the fake perfume had low levels of ethanol and high levels of chloride compared to the original product. The data were treated by chemometric tools such as principal component analysis and linear discriminant analysis. This study proved that the analysis of ethanol is an effective method of distinguishing original from the fake products, and it may potentially be used to assist legal authorities in such cases.     

Some alternative scenarios for the role of the state in Vietnam

The Vietnamese economy has by most standards performed very well over the last decade. For instance, economic growth has averaged around 8 per cent per year during the 1990s. The high growth rate has mainly been achieved through large increases in investment, and a large share of the investment has come from foreign sources. However, it is likely that the Asian crisis will lead to a significant reduction in the inflows of foreign capital, which will make it difficult to maintain a growth strategy based on increased capital formation. Continued high growth requires improved economic efficiency. Such efficiency gains have to focus on the state-owned enterprises that account for a large share of the Vietnamese economy, but are known to face serious efficiency and profitability problems. This paper discusses economic consequences of some different choices regarding the role of the state-owned sector. We discuss two scenarios where the state will continue to play a dominant role – centralized or localized state-owned enterprises – and two scenarios with a stronger private sector – supporting the establishment of new private firms and privatizing existing state-owned enterprises.     

Procedural Justice and Conflict Management at School

In this research, we explored the contributions of perceived procedural justice (PPJ) to the conflict management behaviors of adolescents when they experience conflict with their teachers. We tested an extensive model to determine how PPJ contributes to conflict management. We also extended research on PPJ to examine its impact on adolescents. Our results, acquired from a large and diverse sample of 256 high school students, indicate that PPJ had an impact on adolescents' approach to managing conflicts with their teachers. Students who perceived that their teachers' decision processes were just were less dominating and more avoiding, obliging, and compromising. In addition, we found that students' perceptions about the legitimacy of their teachers' authority mediated the relationships between PPJ and conflict management style. This study contributes to the rather scarce research on PPJ's role in conflict management and should be useful for educators searching for constructive, relationship‐based tools for conflict management.     

Personal and Political Reconciliation in Post-Genocide Rwanda

The majority of scholarly research on Rwanda currently focuses on determining the causes of and participation in the genocide. In this paper, we explore a variety of questions that have come to the forefront in post-genocide Rwanda. In particular, we are concerned with the prospects for peace and justice in the aftermath of the gross abuses of human rights that occurred and, to that end, we consider the potential uses and limits of restorative justice initiatives in the process of healing and reconciliation in Rwanda. We argue that restorative justice initiatives have moved the country closer toward reconciliation than retributive measures, such as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. That said, we also suggest that the Rwandan government, despite claims that it seeks to achieve reconciliation, has not shown a serious commitment to healing the wounds that persist between either individual Rwandans or the groups that they comprise. In the end, then, we make a case for the importance of pairing a comprehensive search for justice in Rwanda with a commitment to truth-telling and accountability by the victims and perpetrators of the genocide, as well as by current government officials.     

Immature glomeruli in cot death kidneys

A morphometric study on the kidneys of cot death cases and age-matched controls was carried out using a point-counting method. The average proportions of the various kidney structures, especially the percentage of foetal glomeruli, were similar in both groups. This percentage decreased after the age of six months. The hypothesis that cot death may be caused by renal insufficiency associated with immaturity of glomeruli gained no morphological or morphometric support.