How do parents experience relocation disputes in the family courts?

Relocation cases are known to be amongst the most difficult decisions for family court judges. This article reports the findings of an empirical study of parents who were involved in relocation disputes, reporting their views on the experience of being involved in one of these difficult cases. We consider the origins of the disputes and parents’ perceptions of how their cases were resolved, as well as some initial discussion of the aftermath of the cases as seen in the first few months.     

How Much Can We Trust Causal Interpretations of Fixed-Effects Estimators in the Context of Criminality?

Researchers are often interested in estimating the causal effect of some treatment on individual criminality. For example, two recent relatively prominent papers have attempted to estimate the respective direct effects of marriage and gang participation on individual criminal activity. One difficulty to overcome is that the treatment is often largely the product of individual choice. This issue can cloud causal interpretations of correlations between the treatment and criminality since those choosing the treatment (e.g. marriage or gang membership) may have differed in their criminality from those who did not even in the absence of the treatment. To overcome this potential for selection bias researchers have often used various forms of individual fixed-effects estimators. While such fixed-effects estimators may be an improvement on basic cross-sectional methods, they are still quite limited when it comes to uncovering a true causal effect of the treatment on individual criminality because they may fail to account for the possibility of dynamic selection. Using data from the NSLY97, I show that such dynamic selection can potentially be quite large when it comes to criminality, and may even be exacerbated when using more advanced fixed-effects methods such as Inverse Probability of Treatment Weighting (IPTW). Therefore substantial care must be taken when it comes to interpreting the results arising from fixed-effects methods.     

How do college students in Ukraine and the United States view criminal offenders?

This paper introduces an original data set that provides insight into how Ukrainian and US college students would punish criminal offenders. Students on four campuses in Ukraine and four in the United States completed surveys that help us better understand these differences. In general, Ukrainian students are more likely than American students to be crime victims than are American students and they are consistently more fearful of being victimised. Ukrainian students are more punitive than American students for some types of crimes (e.g., drug possession) while Americans are more punitive on other crimes (e.g., burglary).     

How do offenders move through the stages of change?

This study sought to investigate the way in which offenders moved through the stages of change. The University of Rhode Island Change Assessment Scale (URICA) was administered to a group of general offenders (N = 371) who participated in the Short Motivational Programme (SMP), a brief motivational interviewing programme administered to medium-risk offenders in New Zealand. The offenders' URICA responses were subjected to a cross-lagged panel analysis using structural equation modelling. Four models specifying different prospective associations between stage engagements were examined. It was hypothesised that there would be support for sequential transitions through the stages as proposed by the Stages of Change model. However, the analysis rendered support for and against sequential transitions, in that offenders regressed to earlier stages or skipped a stage post-SMP. Offenders who skipped to an adjacent stage after the SMP may have actually passed through an intermediary stage during the intervention, and those who regressed to an earlier stage post-SMP may have gained a more realistic awareness of their problem behaviour. This finding also raises questions about the practical utility of the model with offenders and highlights the need for more rigorous studies investigating the way offenders move through the stages of change.     

How do drug courts work?

Journal of Experimental Criminology - We report the results of a multilevel structural equation model of the Multisite Adult Drug Court Evaluation that empirically tests theoretical pathways to...     

Global Birthright Citizenship Laws: How Inclusive?

Netherlands International Law Review - The principal way in which formal citizenship status is acquired is on the basis of birth, whether by descent (ius sanguinis) or territory of birth (ius...     

How Successful and Distinctive is the Human Rights Act? An Expatriate Comparatist's Assessment

This article first assesses the success and distinctiveness of the Human Rights Act 1998 from the perspective of its status as an exemplar of ‘the new Commonwealth model of constitutionalism.’ This new, intermediate model attempts to straddle the dichotomy of parliamentary sovereignty and judicial supremacy by protecting rights through a reallocation of powers between courts and legislatures that brings them into better balance than under either of these two traditional, more lopsided models. As part of its assessment, the article critically examines an influential strand of commentary claiming that in practice the HRA has proven to be less distinctive from US‐style constitutionalism than initially claimed or hoped. The second part of the article seeks to contribute to current debates about reform of the HRA by proposing ways to address its main structural weaknesses, especially the problem of remedial distortion.     

Must the Surgeon Take the Pill? Negligence Duty in the Context of Cognitive Enhancement

Recently, attention has turned to the possibility of enhancing human cognitive abilities via pharmacological interventions. Known as ‘cognitive enhancers’, these drugs can alter human mental capacities, and in some cases can effect significant improvements. One prime example is modafinil, a drug used to treat narcolepsy, which can help combat decreases in wakefulness and cognitive capacity that arise due to fatigue in otherwise healthy individuals. In this paper, we respond to calls in the philosophical and ethical literature that surgeons and other medical professionals should be morally obliged to take cognitively enhancing drugs. We examine whether surgeons who make fatigue‐related errors during patient care might be considered legally obliged to enhance themselves. We focus on liability for a failure to medicate, and conclude that it is highly unlikely that surgeons will be legally obliged to address their fatigue through the use of cognitive enhancing drugs.     

How do Judges think about risk?

A sample of almost 100 judges exhibited well-known patternsof biases in risk beliefs and reasonable implicit values oflife. These biases and personal preferences largely do not affectattitudes toward judicial risk decisions, though there are someexceptions, such as ambiguity aversion, misinterpretation ofnegligence rules, and retrospective risk assessments in accidentcases, which is a form of hindsight bias. Although judges avoidedmany pitfalls exhibited by jurors and the population at large,they nevertheless exhibited systematic errors, particularlyfor small probability-large loss events. These findings highlightedthe importance of judicial review and the input of expert riskanalysts to assist judicial decisions in complex risk cases.     

How much power do oppositions have? Comparing the opportunity structures of parliamentary oppositions in 21 democracies

A political system cannot be imagined without opposition. Despite this crucial position in politics, political science has largely neglected to study oppositions. Attempting to fill this gap, this article analyses the institutional opportunities of parliamentary oppositions. It offers a parsimonious framework by distinguishing two dimensions of opposition influence: some institutions enable oppositions to control governments, while others offer opportunities to present alternatives. A comparison of oppositions’ opportunities in 21 democracies shows that countries fall into four groups along these dimensions: in majoritarian democracies, weak control mechanisms are countered by excellent opportunities to publicise alternatives. Consociational democracies are characterised by strong control mechanisms, but provide only weak opportunities to present alternatives. Moreover, in Southern Europe, control mechanisms and opportunities to present alternatives are weak, while both are pronounced in Nordic Europe. The results are summarised in three indices that can easily be applied in future research examining oppositions and their power.     

Should Empathy Play any Role in the Interpretation of Constitutional Rights?

This paper explores the role that empathy can play in the interpretation of constitutional rights. It starts by analyzing the complex concept of empathy, comparing it with similar yet distinct concepts such as projection, sympathy and emotional contagion, then it discusses the widespread distrust of empathy among lawyers and legal thinkers. It will be argued that empathy can play a significant role in the interpretation of constitutional rights, mostly in identifying the interests and needs put forward in the claims and counterclaims of the parties. In the final section, the impact of empathetic judging on judicial minimalism will be briefly discussed.     

What Is the Will Theory of Rights?

This article helps to clear up some misunderstandings about the Will Theory of rights. Section 2 briefly outlines the Theories of Rights. Section 3 elucidates some salient differences amongst self‐described anti–Interest Theory accounts. Section 4 rebuts Carl Wellman's and Arthur Ripstein's respective arguments about the Will Theory differing from “Choice” or Kantian theories of a right. Section 5 then offers a candidate explanation of why people might subscribe to the Will Theory in the first place.     

How reliable is the sub-population model in DNA testimony?

The performance of the sub-population model first proposed by Balding and Nichols [D.J. Balding, R.A. Nichols, DNA profile match probability calculation: how to allow for population stratification, relatedness, database selection and single bands. Forensic Sci. Int. 64 (1994) 125-140] is examined using a simulation approach. This work extends the investigations of Curran et al. [J.M. Curran, J.S. Buckleton, and C.M. Triggs, What is the magnitude of the sub-population effect? Forensic Sci. Int. 135 (2003) 1-8]. In particular the effect of underestimating the coancestry coefficient, theta, and the effect of departures from the modelling assumptions were investigated. The model tends to give strongly conservative estimates if the estimate for the coancestry coefficient is accurate. If this coefficient is underestimated then a larger fraction of cases give non-conservative estimates. Departures from the modelling assumption that the sub-population is in Hardy-Weinberg and linkage equilibria appear to have very little effect.     

Going Unnoticed? Diagnosing the Right to Asylum in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union

Article 18 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union enshrines the right to asylum. Nonetheless, despite its ‘constitutionalisation’ within primary law, asylum remains a far too amorphous right, whose axiological potential has gone virtually unnoticed in the ongoing migratory crisis. The paper will argue that this is partly due to the fact that the Court of Justice on a few occasions has declined to clarify the scope of Article 18. The provision at issue therefore remains a pathological element that requires an adequate diagnosis on which accurate prognoses can be based. In an attempt to diagnose the right to asylum enshrined in Article 18 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, this paper will compare different hermeneutical approaches and reflect on the contextualisation of the mentioned provision through the lens of domestic and EU case law and in the light of the recent EU–Turkey Statement. The article will ultimately propose to interpret the EU asylum legislation as instrumental to the effective exercise of the right to asylum.     

Cutting Global Justice Down to Size? Rights,Vulnerabilities, Immunities,Communities

This article attempts to expand the scope of the project of global justice on one parameter but to circumscribe that project on three other parameters. It is argued that the difference of level of application as between individuals and collectives should be transcended in a ‘collective turn’. But this inclusiveness must be accompanied by an insistence on the distinction between a generic or intrinsic understanding of vulnerability on the one hand, and a contingent understanding of vulnerability on the other. Another distinction that must be observed is that between private and public entities. On both dimensions the latter option is to be preferred. Only the contingent vulnerabilities of public entities are of relevance to a practical program of global justice. It is also suggested that formal distinctions in entitlements should be observed. Hohfeld’s scheme is called upon in order to distinguish between claim-rights and immunities and to advocate for the latter as better reflecting the desiderata of global justice. Frequently presupposed connections between vulnerability and rights are thus brought into question. Finally, the proposed framework for global justice enables a novel articulation with, and an illumination of, the demands of equality. For that which is private in a legal sense is constituted by the clash of wills of individual legal persons. Public interests are always shared, thus connoting spheres of equality; understood in this way equality is the stuff of global justice.