Criminalizing Big Tobacco: Legal Mobilization and the Politics of Responsibility for Health Risks in the United States

This article reinterprets the discursive terms and cultural meanings that redefined the legal campaign against Big Tobacco during recent decades. We underline the palpable shift from a conventional tort‐based logic of products liability claims, which most analysts emphasize, to a logic incorporating key features identified with criminal law or “crimtorts.” The study builds on legal mobilization theory and combines narrative history of events with systematic analysis of media coverage across a twenty‐year period to demonstrate how Big Tobacco was criminalized over two decades.     

论美国海洋环境执法对我国的启示

美国海洋环境治理成效显著,主要通过违法通知、标准处罚程序、行政守法令、紧急令和行政处罚评估等多种方式的运用,加大处罚力度,公平公正执法,鼓励采取即时补救措施,结合民事和刑事制裁,不断完善相关立法,从而达到保护海洋环境、防治污染的目的.美国的做法可以为我国海洋环境的治理提供借鉴,即进一步完善执法措施,加大处罚力度;实行环境激励措施;行政执法与民事责任承担、刑事制裁相结合;注重发挥公众参与的作用等.     

The Integration of Women into West German and United States Police Service

This article describes the West German attitudes toward full employment of women in police service and the results of an experimental study of the successful integration of women into the uniformed police in Hamburg, West Germany. It compares experiences in the United States and concludes that the West German acceptance and use of women in the uniformed service is five to ten years behind the United States but that the German Police have very deliberately sought to create equal opportunities for women over the past decade. Expectations are that more women will be recruited into the German police service, but that it will be eight to ten years before large numbers of females are employed in the uniformed service or in the higher ranks of the German police forces.     

Health policy and the politics of research in the United States

During the past decade research has been more important to the health policy-making process in the United States than at any time in the past. This article describes and assesses three competing normative models for research on health affairs: economizing, social conflict, and collective welfare. The three models provide a context for the history of research bearing on health policy in the past half century, with particular pertinence to the years since 1980. The article concludes with a discussion of some of the consequences of the new legitimacy of research.     

Fraud by Certified Public Accountants in Japan and the United States

In recent years, Japanese and American societies have been beset by massive corporate scandals involving accounting firms and their certified public accountants (CPAs). These scandals included major accounting frauds by CPAs and have led to deep distrust of corporate accounting in both societies. This paper provides a detailed probe into three major financial scandals in Japan and United States: Enron, Kanebo, and Livedoor. Case histories are used to highlight both the characteristics of frauds perpetrated by CPAs as well as the social reactions to these economic crimes in Japan and the US. Finally, the paper outlines similarities and differences in CPA frauds perpetrated in both countries and considers how cultural variations play a major role in producing these outcomes.     

Public Policy and Political Dynamics of Heritage Conservation in the United States

Policy making and advocacy efforts throughout the legislative history of heritage conservation display the gaps in heritage conservation in the United States. To represent the political dynamics at the federal level in both intangible and tangible cultural heritage policy discussions, this article will examine cases of legislative processes: the policy discussions to amend the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) in 1997 and 2005 and the reauthorization of the American Folklife Center (AFC). The study will focus on the subgovernment framework in heritage policy to demonstrate institutionalization of policy discussion and review the intergovernmentalism and decentralization in heritage conservation.     

普遍服务理念下公共医疗卫生服务的法律调整

我国公共医疗卫生服务发展失范所引致该领域存在的诸多问题,在根源上归结于:在价值层面是"普遍服务"理念的缺失,在机制层面则是政府与市场双重失灵共同作用的结果。经济法因具备特有的赋权与限权的双重性质而成为调整公共医疗卫生服务这一领域的重要法律,可以通过对现有经济法资源的整合,适用、制定、修订或细化相关法律法规,构造保障公共医疗卫生服务领域实现"普遍服务"理念的法律规范体系,促进"普遍服务"理念的贯彻,推动新一轮医疗卫生体制改革顺利进行。     

The Unraveling of Public Security in the United States: The Dark Side of Police-Community Co-Production

In this article we review the emergence of police-community ‘co-production’, as a prominent crime control paradigm in the United States. We argue that although allowing citizens to co-produce through programs like Neighborhood Watch may be beneficial in many respects, such co-production is not an unmitigated virtue. While its proponents contend that co-production promises to enrich the provision of public security in the United States, recent events have reinforced warnings voiced by policing scholars and practitioners of a dark side that also continues to threaten, not enhance, public security. As such, we advocate that the future co-production should be embraced cautiously, and its downside risks managed with care.     

Service Quality Effects of Incentive Regulation on Access Service in Telecommunications in the United States

Incentive regulation in the form of price caps was adopted for interstate access service in 1991 as a way to provide local exchange carriers with an incentive to improve their productive efficiency. An issue that has arisen with the adoption of price cap regulation is whether deterioration in service quality for interstate access service has been an unintended consequence. The analysis in this paper uses several different measures of service quality, including the average installation interval, the percent of commitments met, total trouble reports, and the average repair interval for both switched access service and special access service, to investigate empirically whether there has been a decline in service quality between 1991 and 2000. The results are conclusive. Overall service quality has fallen. To rectify the situation, a proposal is offered to adjust the price cap index to penalize LECs who fail to provide an acceptable level of aggregate service quality.     

Public beliefs about the accuracy and importance of forensic evidence in the United States

Recent advances in forensic science, especially the use of DNA technology, have revealed that faulty forensic analyses may have contributed to miscarriages of justice. In this study we build on recent research on the general public’s perceptions of the accuracy of 10 forensic science techniques and of each stage in the investigation process. We find that individuals in the United States hold a pessimistic view of the forensic science investigation process, believing that an error can occur about half of the time at each stage of the process. We find that respondents believe that forensics are far from perfect, with accuracy rates ranging from a low of 55% for voice analysis to a high of 83% for DNA analysis, with most techniques being considered between 65% and 75% accurate. Nevertheless, respondents still believe that forensic evidence is a key part of a criminal case, with nearly 30% of respondents believing that the absence of forensic evidence is sufficient for a prosecutor to drop the case and nearly 40% believing that the presence of forensic evidence – even if other forms of evidence suggest that the defendant is not guilty – is enough to convict the defendant.     

美国环境执法和解制度探究

《超级基金法》(Superfund Act)是美国第一部明确授予行政机关执法和解权的联邦法律,执法和解制度能够促使潜在责任方积极、自愿达成协议,高效完成环境清理工作。行政和解协议主要有两类:以行政为主导的合意行政裁决(Administrative Order on Consent)与行政协议,以及需提交法院审查后才可达成的同意令(Consent Decree)。当前中国正面临严峻的环境污染问题,传统的高权行政行为往往在个案中陷入执法困境,环境保护作为美国执法和解制度适用最广的领域,取得了卓越的成效,特别是限制行政和解范围、建立司法审查程序以及完善公众参与制度等经验可资中国参考借鉴。