美国监狱的教育——斯拜克岛的福特·米切尔监狱

教育是所有监狱的中心工作,其主要目的是:尽可能象社区那样提供相同或近似的教育机会.我们在教育自愿的情况下采取成人教育的模式让学生自主选择并让他们有责任感;课程都以学生为中心并针对"做个完人"的需要而设的.     

美国缓刑制度考察

美国缓刑是社区矫正方式之一,起源于中世纪英国,经19世纪40年代一名叫约翰·奥古斯塔斯的波士顿制鞋匠之不懈努力,逐步发展,目前已成为美国使用最为广泛的刑种。由于犯罪率的逐年上升,使用缓刑对缓解美国监狱的拥挤现象起到了至关重要的作用,同时也给美国带来新的问题。     

Drug contamination of US paper currency

It is known that US paper currency in the general circulation is contaminated with cocaine. Several mechanisms have been offered to explain this finding, including contamination due to handling during drug deals and the use of rolled up bills for snorting. Drug is then transferred from one contaminated bill to others during counting in financial institutions. The possibility of contamination of currency with other drugs has not been reported. In this study, the author reports the analysis of 10 randomly collected US$ 1 bills from five cities, for cocaine, heroin, 6-acetylmorphine (6-AM), morphine, codeine, methamphetamine, amphetamine and phencyclidine (PCP). Bills were immersed in acetonitrile for 2h prior to extraction and GC-MS analysis. Results showed that 92% of the bills were positive for cocaine with a mean amount of 28.75+/-139.07 microg per bill, a median of 1.37 microg per bill, and a range of 0.01-922.72 microg per bill. Heroin was detected in seven bills in amounts ranging from 0.03 to 168.50 microg per bill: 6-AM and morphine were detected in three bills; methamphetamine and amphetamine in three and one bills, respectively, and PCP was detected in two bills in amounts of 0.78 and 1.87 microg per bill. Codeine was not detected in any of the US$ 1 bills analyzed. This study demonstrated that although paper currency was most often contaminated with cocaine, other drugs of abuse may be detected in bills.     

Improper claim dependency invalidates US Lipitor patent

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has confirmedthat a patent claim may be invalidated for what was previouslyconsidered to be a minor technical defect: in essence, a dependentclaim is invalid if it is not a subset of the claim from whichit purports to depend. While Ranbaxy succeeded on this point,its generic Lipitor product was still held to have infringedPfizer's enantiomer patent, which expires on 24 March 2010,with pediatric exclusivity.     

Moderate Caucuses in a Polarised US Congress

Despite putting themselves in a thorny relationship with heavy-handed party leaders, some US legislators continue to join moderate coalitions. To understand why, this article derives seven explicit hypotheses concerning electoral, institutional, and strategic dimensions and tests them on two moderate coalitions from the 107th to the 110th Congress (2001–8): the Republican Main Street Partnership and the New Democrat Coalition, along with the Senate's ‘Gang of 14’ during the 109th Congress (2005–6). The article finds that, as expected, a member's ideology and previous affiliation strongly predict who joins these caucuses. What is surprising from the findings is that the constituencies' partisanship does not always predict the legislators' decision to be a moderate caucus member. There is little evidence that more electorally vulnerable members join these caucuses; on the contrary, when it does matter, members from competitive districts appear to stay away from moderate coalitions. Therefore, the findings call into question the prevailing ‘constituency-based’ understanding of moderate coalition membership in a polarised Congress and call for a new examination of electoral connection between moderate members and moderate caucuses.     

Reorganization in US and European Bankruptcy law

European countries have amended their bankruptcy statutes in the past decades to increase the likelihood of a company’s continuation in bankruptcy. Liquidation procedures are ill suited to realize the full value of the company as a going concern. An infusion of new finance raises company valuation and makes continuation through reorganization more likely. Reorganization preserves value, if general creditors as the main beneficiaries of reorganization play a crucial role in reorganization proceedings. Legal origins of national bankruptcy legislations are less important in explaining the incidence of reorganization than national attitudes towards failure and the prevalence of equity over debt finance. JEL Classification K12     

未雨绸缪:对美国反倾销的防范

随着关税降低和非关税壁垒的逐步减少 ,国际贸易自由化得到了进一步发展 ,作为自由贸易前提的公平贸易越来越受到国际社会的关注 ,反倾销和反补贴作为世界贸易组织允许的法律手段越来越得到广泛应用。就美国来看 ,反倾销和反补贴现在逐渐演化为美国国内生产商最常用的寻求救济手段 ,仅近二十年来美国国内生产商就已经提起上千件的此类调查要求 ,而美国国会也不断修订法律以便使美国请求者更容易得到救济。一旦被施加了反倾销或反补贴税 ,那么生产商与美国进口商继续交易的能力就会受到极大影响 ,而要使得一项反倾销或者反补贴决定在时间限度…     

美国核电安全与法律规制

日本强震引发的核污染事件对全球核电安全管理敲响了警钟。美国是世界的核电大国,多年来运行着一套全面、协调、成熟的法律规制体系,其系统化的法律法规、易于操作的法律制度与权威高效的职能主管部门,在保障全美核电安全发展进程中发挥了重要作用;其运行法律规制体系与经验做法对我国核电安全发展也是很值得借鉴与参考的。