In Search of a European Identity

Jacques Derridu, The Other Heading: Reflections on Today's Europe , translated by P-A Brault and M. Naas     

New Carrots and Sticks: Proposals for Reform of CPR Part 36

Part 36 of the Civil Procedure Rules is an important component of English civil procedure's costs apportioning mechanism and its primary means of encouraging early settlement. Two changes to make Part 36 more attractive to defendants have been proposed. Firstly, public and insured defendants would be exempted from the requirement of payment into court. Secondly, the costs protection given to a claimant that betters its Part 36 offer at trial – indemnity costs assessment and enhanced interest – would apply to defendants' offers. It is argued that the payment into court requirement should be abolished. Claimants do not reject settlement offers over doubts as to the defendant's solvency as this risk remains throughout the litigation. The requirement only deters defendants from using Part 36. Awarding indemnity costs under Part 36 creates perverse incentives. Where bettering a Part 36 offer weakens costs scrutiny there is an additional incentive to expend disproportionate resources in achieving a better result.     

Masks,Mingling and Magic: Gibberish Law in the Age of Covid

Liverpool Law Review - The experience of Covid-19 has taught us many things, not least the consequence of what John Milton termed ‘gibberish law’. Law drafted amidst the ‘throng...     

Do Democracies Attract Portfolio Investment? Transnational Portfolio Investments Modeled as Dynamic Network

For many, transnational capital is an important driving force of economic globalization. However, we know little about the political determinants for cross-border portfolio investments. Recent economic literature focuses upon information asymmetries. We move beyond this and introduce an explicitly political element into the study of international asset flows. Democratic institutions attract portfolio investments because they reduce the chances of government predatory practices. Applying a dynamic latent space model on the bilateral portfolio investment data from 2001 to 2005, we empirically examine the effects of important country-level characteristics of both exporters and importers of portfolio investments. The empirical findings suggest that democracies are often associated with higher levels of inward portfolio investments. Interestingly, we also find that portfolio investments are associated with business communities’ subjective estimate of property rights protection, but not with more comprehensive, index-based aggregate measures from international think tanks.     

Politics,presidents, and DCIs

Sukarno's Apologists Write Again

Audrey R. Kahin and George McT. Kahin: Subversion as Foreign Policy: The Secret Eisenhower and Dulles Debacle in Indonesia, The New Press, New York, NY, 1995, 318 pp., $25.00.

The Ames Case: Various Versions

James Adams: Sellout: Aldrich Ames and the Corruption of the CIA, Viking, New York, 1995, 322 p., $23.95.

Peter Maas: Killer Spy: The Inside Story of the FBI's Pursuit and Capture of Aldrich Ames, America's Deadliest Spy, Warner Books, New York, 1996,264 p., $6.50 (paperback; first published in hardback by Warner Books in 1995).

Tim Weiner, David Johnston, and Neil A. Lewis: Betrayal: The Story of Aldrich Ames, An American Spy, Random House, New York, 1995,308 p., $25.00.

David Wise: Nightmover: How Aldrich Ames Sold the CIA to the KGB for $4.6 Million, HarperCollins, New York, 1995,356 p., $25.00.

The Brutal March Backward

Dmitri Volkogonov: Lenin: A New Biography (Translated and edited by Harold Shukman), The Free Press, New York, 1994, 529 p., $30.00.

The Big Stretch

John Newman: Oswald and the CIA, Carroll &; Graf, New York, 1995,627 p., $28.00.

More About the Past

Oleg Gordievsky: Next Stop Execution, Macmillan, London, 1995, 396 pp., £16.99.     

The effects of visual priming on information processing in child sexual offenders

Abstract

Child sexual offenders are hypothesized to hold offence-supportive beliefs that set them apart from others. The current study seeks support for this view via a cognitive-experimental approach. Child sexual offenders and offender controls were exposed to pictures of semi-clothed children (priming condition) or clothed, mature adults (control condition). Participants then read ambiguous sentences describing children's actions that could be interpreted in a sexualized manner. Next, participants completed a surprise recognition test in which half the sentences were re-presented in an unambiguously sexual form, and half in an unambiguously non-sexual form. Contrary to hypotheses, primed and/or control child sexual offenders did not show a memory bias for sexualized sentences, suggesting that they did not interpret the original sentences in line with offence-supportive beliefs. Results raise questions about whether child sexual offenders universally hold abnormal beliefs that facilitate their offending. Results also highlight the need for further experimental research within this field.