Stepping Up to the Plate: Minor Leaguers Attempt to Remedy their Unconscionable Plight

Professional baseball players are often thought of as making multi-million-dollar salaries, but most professional baseball players have recently made under $15,000 a year. Minor league players toiled under an onerous system resulting from baseball's judicially created antitrust exemption and lobbying efforts that exempted them from minimum wage and overtime. These factors allowed teams to impose a uniform player contract (UPC) on players with numerous unconscionable provisions for years. However, a late-night Tweet in August of 2022 sent shockwaves through the sports and labor world, announcing that the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) was sending out authorization cards to represent minor league players. After years of fighting to maintain the authority to impose conditions on minor league players, through lobbying and litigation, Major League Baseball (MLB) turned over a new leaf and recognized the unionization of minor league players under the MLBPA less than three weeks later. In light of this long sought-after recognition, this article takes a novel approach. First, it provides historical context for baseball's unique ability to impose working conditions on minor leaguers without significant concern for legal ramifications. Second, it provides an overview of the doctrine of contractual unconscionability and analyzes the prior UPC as an unconscionable agreement. Finally, it details the historic unionization process and makes detailed recommendations to ameliorate the unconscionable conditions minor league players have faced when they negotiate with MLB owners to draft their initial collective bargaining agreement.     

A mixed DNA profile controversy revisited

Semaan et al. (J Forensic Res, 2020, 11, 453) discuss a mock case “where eight different individuals [P₁ through P₈] could not be excluded in a mixed DNA analysis. Even though … expert DNA mixture analysis software was used.” Two of these are the true donors. The LRs reported are incorrect due to the incorrect entry of propositions into LRmix Studio. This forced the software to account for most of the alleles as drop-in, resulting in LRs 60–70 orders of magnitude larger than expected. P₁, P₂, P₄, P₅, and P₈ can be manually excluded using peak heights. This has relevance when using LRmix which does not use peak heights. We extend the work using the same two reference genotypes who were the true contributors as Semaan et al. (J Forensic Res, 2020, 11, 453). We simulate three two-donor mixtures with peak heights using these two genotypes and analyze using STRmix?. For the simulated 1:1 mixture, one of the non-donors’ LRs supported him being a contributor when no conditioning was used. When considered in combination with any other potential donors (i.e., with conditioning), this non-donor was correctly eliminated. For the 3:1 mixture, all results correctly supported that the non-donors were not contributors. The low-template 4:1 mixture LRs with no conditioning showed support for all eight profiles as donors. However, the results from pair-wise conditioning showed that only the two ground truth donors had LRs supporting that they were contributors to the mixture. We recommend the use of peak heights and conditioning profiles, as this allows better sensitivity and specificity even when the persons share many alleles.     

Prisons or Problem-Solving: Does the Public Support Specialty Courts?

ABSTRACT

Recently, “problem-solving” courts have been developed as an alternative to imprisonment. They are often called “specialty” courts because they process and divert into treatment programs offenders who are seen as different from the general criminal population, such as those with mental health or drug problems, those who are homeless or veterans, and those who engage in domestic violence. Based on a 2017 national survey of 1,000 respondents, the current study examines overall public support for rehabilitation as a goal of corrections and then focuses specifically on support for different types of specialty courts. The analysis reveals that the American public endorses not only the rehabilitative ideal but also the use of problem-solving courts. Further, with only minimal variation, strong support for these courts appears to exist regardless of political orientation and sociodemographic characteristics.     

Applying Moral Foundations Theory to the Explanation of Capital Jurors’ Sentencing Decisions

Abstract

This study applies moral foundations theory to capital juror decision making. We hypothesized that binding moral foundations would predict death qualification and punitive sentencing decisions, whereas individualizing moral foundations would be associated with juror disqualification and a leniency effect. Additionally, we considered whether moral foundations can explain differences in death penalty application between conservatives and liberals. Respondents from two independent samples participated in a mock-juror task in which the circumstances of a hypothetical defendant’s case varied. Results revealed moral foundations were strong predictors of death qualification. The binding and individualizing foundations were related to sentencing decisions in the expected ways. Supporting our contention that moral foundations operate differently across different types of cases, heterogeneity in the effects of moral foundations was observed. Finally, we found support for the hypothesis that the relationship between sentencing decisions and conservatism would be attenuated by moral foundations.     

Congressional Vote Options

Numerous accounts reveal that congressional leaders often secure “hip‐pocket votes” or “if you need me” pledges from rank‐and‐file legislators. These are essentially options on votes. Leaders exercise sufficient options—pay legislators to convert to favorable votes—when those options will yield victory. Otherwise, they release the options. A model shows that this optimal strategy for leaders produces many small victories, few small losses, and losses that are, on average, larger than victories. We find precisely these patterns, hence strong evidence for vote options, in Congressional Quarterly key votes from 1975 through 2001 and in non‐key votes from the 106th Congress (1999–2000).     

Crime and justice in the context of resource scarcity

This concept paper presents a theory of environmental scarcity developed byHomer-Dixon. Homer-Dixon developed a model to describe the consequences of scarcity for sub-national violence in third world countries. This paper hasfour interrelated purposes. First, it presents the model of scarcity developedby Thomas Homer-Dixon in 1999. Second, it assesses the way in which the scarcity model contextualizes criminal justice and criminology research, andby extension, how research in crime and justice processes can broaden the scarcity model. Third, it applies elements of the model to the United States,a goal that represents a generalization of the model from third-world to first-world settings. Fourth, it presents a particular case, the migrationof African-Americans from the rural South to urban centers in the 1950s and1960s and consequent inner-city violence in the 1960s, that displays manyelements of the environmental scarcity model.     

Maltreatment and Family Dysfunction in Childhood and the Subsequent Adjustment of Children and Adults

The adjustment problems associated with sexual abuse, physical abuse, psychological maltreatment, neglect, and witnessing family violence during childhood were examined in three studies. Study 1 demonstrated significant overlap between maltreatment types in parent reports (N = 50) of maltreatment experiences of their child aged 5–12 years. Parental sexual punitiveness, traditionality, family adaptability and family cohesion significantly predicted scores on 4 maltreatment scales and children's externalizing behavior problems. Level of maltreatment predicted internalizing, externalizing, and sexual behavior problems. In Study 2, significant overlap was found between adults' retrospective reports (N = 138) of all 5 types of maltreating behaviors. Parental sexual punitiveness, traditionality, family adaptability, and family cohesion during childhood predicted the level of maltreatment and current psychopathology. Although child maltreatment scores predicted psychopathology, childhood family variables were better predictors of adjustment. Study 3 demonstrated that child maltreatment scores predicted positive aspects of adult adaptive functioning (N = 95).     

Bahrain: Central Bank of Bahrain succeeds Bahrain Monetary Agency

The Central Bank of Bahrain came into existence on 7 Septemberand has taken over all the tasks previously conducted by theBahrain Monetary Agency (‘BMA’). The Central Bankof Bahrain and Financial Institutions Law (‘CBB Law’)issued by Decree No. 64 of 2006 gives the CBB strong operationalindependence and a wider range of enforcement powers. The CBBLaw has also replaced the Insurance Law (Legislative DecreeNo. 17