Therapeutic jurisprudence and outpatient commitment law: Kendra's Law and case study.

This article considers the implications of assisted outpatient commitment laws (OPC), with specific focus on New York's "Kendra's Law" through the lens of therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ). In this article, the author offers perspectives on the relationship between involuntary civil commitment, outpatient commitment, and the concept of the "least restrictive alternative"; considers pertinent empirical research, and looks at OPC's controversial relationship to forced drugging. Here, the civil libertarian critique is briefly considered, as well as the MacArthur Research Network research. Finally, the author looks closely at Kendra's Law, providing a brief overview of the law itself, and identifying some "pressure points" and pivotal issues, and considers the TJ implications of Kendra's Law, to determine how it "fits" into the public's "take" on all of mental disability law.     

Of white whale and countrymen in the eighteenth‐century Maratha Deccan. extended class relations,rights, and the problem of rural autonomy under the old regime 1

The problem is simply stated, but resists solution. We begin with the classical historiographic images of Old Regime societies of South Asia and suggest that beneath the surface of abstract formulations for and against these images, unrecognised difficulties of assumption and method allow them to persist in the contemporary imagination. This not only hampers understanding of historic societies, taken individually, but prevents proper assessment of their comparative significance on an international plane. The relationship between these images of discontinuity and similar sociological images of European peasantry is not coincidental. The errors of the latter are demonstrable through an abundant historiography; the burden of this essay is directed towards a solution to the former. We provide an empirically‐based structural study of social relationships in the countryside of Maharashtra in the 150 years preceding European occupation: a) to begin the accumulation of examples that contradict the received images; b) to provide an analysis of one Old Regime society for its own comparative sake. By examining the social distribution of certain types of right and of access to control of land, we demonstrate the existence of powerful forms of social dominance transcending the frontiers of the village, and strongly influencing the organisation of social, economic and political life in the countryside. Whilst we focus on a specific structural problem (namely, the conception of social totality and its internal ordering), the conclusion and footnotes permit the actual dynamism of the forms of relationship studied to emerge in incipient statement on social change under the old order.?     

TrueAllele® Genotype Identification on DNA Mixtures Containing up to Five Unknown Contributors

Computer methods have been developed for mathematically interpreting mixed and low‐template DNA. The genotype modeling approach computationally separates out the contributors to a mixture, with uncertainty represented through probability. Comparison of inferred genotypes calculates a likelihood ratio (LR), which measures identification information. This study statistically examined the genotype modeling performance of Cybergenetics TrueAllele^® computer system. High‐ and low‐template DNA mixtures of known randomized composition containing 2, 3, 4, and 5 contributors were tested. Sensitivity, specificity, and reproducibility were established through LR quantification in each of these eight groups. Covariance analysis found LR behavior to be relatively invariant to DNA amount or contributor number. Analysis of variance found that consistent solutions were produced, once a sufficient number of contributors were considered. This study demonstrates the reliability of TrueAllele interpretation on complex DNA mixtures of representative casework composition. The results can help predict an information outcome for a DNA mixture analysis.     

“The ladder of the law has no top and no bottom”: How therapeutic jurisprudence can give life to international human rights

In the past two decades, therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) has become one of the most important theoretical approaches to the law. But, there has, as of yet, been puzzlingly little written about the relationship between TJ and international human rights law. To be sure, there has been some preliminary and exploratory work on the relationship between TJ and international law in general, but virtually nothing on its relationship to international human rights law in a mental disability law context. This paper seeks to focus on this lack of consideration, to speculate as to why that might be, and to offer some suggestions as to how to infuse some new vitality and vigor into this important area of law and social policy.     

Validating TrueAllele® DNA mixture interpretation

Abstract: DNA mixtures with two or more contributors are a prevalent form of biological evidence. Mixture interpretation is complicated by the possibility of different genotype combinations that can explain the short tandem repeat (STR) data. Current human review simplifies this interpretation by applying thresholds to qualitatively treat STR data peaks as all‐or‐none events and assigning allele pairs equal likelihood. Computer review, however, can work instead with all the quantitative data to preserve more identification information. The present study examined the extent to which quantitative computer interpretation could elicit more identification information than human review from the same adjudicated two‐person mixture data. The base 10 logarithm of a DNA match statistic is a standard information measure that permits such a comparison. On eight mixtures having two unknown contributors, we found that quantitative computer interpretation gave an average information increase of 6.24 log units (min = 2.32, max = 10.49) over qualitative human review. On eight other mixtures with a known victim reference and one unknown contributor, quantitative interpretation averaged a 4.67 log factor increase (min = 1.00, max = 11.31) over qualitative review. This study provides a general treatment of DNA interpretation methods (including mixtures) that encompasses both quantitative and qualitative review. Validation methods are introduced that can assess the efficacy and reproducibility of any DNA interpretation method. An in‐depth case example highlights 10 reasons (at 10 different loci) why quantitative probability modeling preserves more identification information than qualitative threshold methods. The results validate TrueAllele^® DNA mixture interpretation and establish a significant information improvement over human review.     

"Too stubborn to ever be governed by enforced insanity": Some therapeutic jurisprudence dilemmas in the representation of criminal defendants in incompetency and insanity cases

Little attention has been paid to the importance of the relationship between therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) and the role of criminal defense lawyers in insanity and incompetency-to-stand-trial (IST) cases. That inattention is especially noteworthy in light of the dismal track record of counsel providing services to defendants who are part of this cohort of incompetency-status-raisers and insanity-defense-pleaders. On one hand, this lack of attention is a surprise as TJ scholars have, in recent years, turned their attention to virtually every other aspect of the legal system. On the other hand, it is not a surprise, given the omnipresence of sanism, an irrational prejudice of the same quality and character of other irrational prejudices that cause (and are reflected in) prevailing social attitudes of racism, sexism, homophobia, and ethnic bigotry, that infects both our jurisprudence and our lawyering practices. Sanism is largely invisible and largely socially acceptable, and is based predominantly upon stereotype, myth, superstition, and deindividualization. It is sustained and perpetuated by our use of alleged "ordinary common sense" (OCS) and heuristic reasoning in an unconscious response to events both in everyday life and in the legal process. This paper examines the literature that seeks to apply TJ principles to the criminal law process in general, drawing mostly on the work of Professor David Wexler. It considers why the lack of attention that I have referred to already is surprising (given TJ's mandate and the fact that many TJ issues are inevitably raised in any insanity or IST case). The paper then considers why this lack of attention is not surprising, given the omnipresence of sanism. It will consider some of the actual counseling issues that might arise in these contexts, and offer some suggestions to lawyers representing clients in cases in which mental status issues may be raised. The paper concludes that we must rigorously apply therapeutic jurisprudence principles to these issues, so as to strip away sanist behavior, pretextual reasoning and teleological decision making from the criminal competency and responsibility processes, so as to enable us to confront the pretextual use of social science data in an open and meaningful way. This gambit would also allow us to address-in a more successful way than has ever yet been done-the problems raised by the omnipresence of ineffective counsel in cases involving defendants with mental disabilities.     

Validating TrueAllele® Interpretation of DNA Mixtures Containing up to Ten Unknown Contributors

Most DNA evidence is a mixture of two or more people. Cybergenetics TrueAllele^® system uses Bayesian computing to separate genotypes from mixture data and compare genotypes to calculate likelihood ratio (LR) match statistics. This validation study examined the reliability of TrueAllele computing on laboratory-generated DNA mixtures containing up to ten unknown contributors. Using log(LR) match information, the study measured sensitivity, specificity, and reproducibility. These reliability metrics were assessed under different conditions, including varying the number of assumed contributors, statistical sampling duration, and setting known genotypes. The main determiner of match information and variability was how much DNA a person contributed to a mixture. Observed contributor number based on data peaks gave better results than the number known from experimental design. The study found that TrueAllele is a reliable method for analyzing DNA mixtures containing up to ten unknown contributors.     

Growth of money economy and some questions of transition in late pre‐colonial India

One of the more remarkable but neglected features of the growth of commercial capitalism on an international scale from the sixteenth century consists of widespread processes of monetization affecting a number of Asian societies, and especially India. This was in turn connected with commercialization of both agrarian and urban economy, and the development of markets and manufactures. By the middle of the eighteenth century, this development had become distorted through increasing European intervention in both trade and manufacture; in this respect colonial occupation was both a culmination of earlier processes, and the means (through political monopoly, use of violence, control over the taxation system) for the East India Company to destroy competition and drive prices downwards in an increasingly competitive world. The corollary was that up until the mid‐nineteenth century at least India's integration into a colonial empire was marked by a broad‐based process of under development of which deindustrialization was merely part, and including a process of relative demonetization.¹ This article begins by presenting the problem in terms of the unprecedented international flow and sub‐continental use of monetary media which took place between the sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The author then considers the implications of these phenomena for an understanding of the development of commercial capitalism during this crucial period, firstly within India itself, and secondly within a broader international context. Finally, he ends with some statements concerning the implications of this hypothesis for an understanding of the early colonial period. The result is to place India firmly on the map of developments affecting the world more generally, long before colonialism.     

Cycles,trends and academics among the peasantry of North‐West India

Vilyatpur. 1848–1968: Social and Economic Change in a North Indian Village by Tom G. Kessinger. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1974. Pp. xiii + 227, index, tables, maps, figures; £6, $12.00.