Vagueness in Progress: A Linguistic and Legal Comparative Analysis Between UN and U.S. Official Documents and Drafts Relating to the Second Gulf War

This paper is based on a doctoral thesis which aimed at investigating on whether the use of strategic vagueness in Security Council resolutions relating to Iraq has contributed to the breakout of the 2002–2003s Gulf war instead of a diplomatic solution of the controversies. This work contains a linguistic and legal comparative analysis between UN and U.S. documents and their drafts in order to demonstrate how vagueness was deliberately added to the final versions of the documents before being passed, and thus strategically used vagueness has played a crucial role in UN resolutions related to the outbreak of war in Iraq, and in relevant legislation produced by the United States for its Congressional authorisation for war. The comparative analysis between S/RES/1441(2002) and US legislation has evidenced that that there would have been diplomatic solutions to the Iraq crises which were not synonymous of light-handed intervention against Iraq, but deliberately vague UN wording allowed the US to build its own legislation with a personal interpretation implying that the UN did not impede military action.     

Visual Jurisprudence of the American Yellow Traffic Light

In the United States, the steady yellow light means that a driver should either speed up or slow down. State laws written about a driver’s behavior at these yellow lights are vague and indeterminate and result in what is referred to as the dilemma zone (Hurwitz et al. in Transp Res Part F Traffic Psychol Behav 15(2): 132–143, 2012). This paper will reconsider law’s vagueness as intentional rather than problematic, insofar as cultural understandings of the yellow light lead to a framework of visual jurisprudence in which drivers interact with law through legal discretion and common sense confronting a yellow light. Through a jurisprudential juxtaposition between the yellow light and red light cameras used to enforce yellow lights, the semiotics of automaticity compete with the semiotics of context-bound decision-making.     

Testing the Precision of Legal Translation: The Case of Translating Islamic Legal Terms into English

Legal translation is viewed as “a category in its own right” (Weston in An English reader’s guide to the French legal system. Berg, Oxford, (1991, p. 2). It is a kind of translation of the language used for specific purposes (Zhao in J Transl Stud 4:28, 2000). Legal translation requires accuracy in relaying the substance of the message, while respecting the form thereof as well as the genius of the target language (Zhao in J Transl Stud 4:19, 2000; Sarcevic in New approach to legal translation. Kluwer Law International, Hague, 1997, p. 52). As generally accepted worldwide, precision is deemed of paramount importance in legal translation. With this in mind, the present paper deals chiefly with the concept of how legal translation can correctly be tested in order to ensure precision and validity for application and implementation. The paper will argue that the main goal of legal translation and the major criterion against which the precision of legal translation should be tested is to reproduce the same legal effect in the target text as that conveyed in the source text regardless of the method(s) used in the translation process.     

An Overview of the Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R-PAS)

We provide an overview of the Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R-PAS; Meyer, Viglione, Mihura, Erard, & Erdberg, 2011). After providing a general introduction to Rorschach-based assessment, the rationale and features of R-PAS are outlined. As part of this discussion, some of the ways in which R-PAS differs from the Comprehensive System (CS) (Exner, 2003) are delineated.     

Ambiguous Measures of Unknown Constructs: The MMPI-2 Fake Bad Scale (aka Symptom Validity Scale, FBS, FBS-r)

The Fake Bad Scale (FBS; Symptom Validity Scale) has fundamental psychometric flaws, interpretive problems, and potentially adverse societal consequences that are not appreciated by Ben-Porath et al. (Psychological Injury and Law 2(1), 62–85, 2009a, b). The FBS was constructed without due consideration to scientifically based guidelines for scale development (Clark and Watson, Psychological Assessment 7, 309–319, 1995; Jackson, Psychological Review 78, 229–248, 1971; Nunnally 1978; Holden and Troister, Canadian Psychology 50, 120–130, 2009). After almost two decades in existence, its face, content, and construct validity have not been established in the empirical literature. Oft-cited discriminant studies that appear to support the FBS are premature because of the scale’s unestablished psychometric foundation. In addition, these studies have significant methodological weaknesses that preclude definitive conclusions about what the scale actually measures. We review these weaknesses and recent legal cases that challenge the scale. We recommend that the FBS’s validity and fairness be addressed in an independent scientific review by the Buros Mental Measurement Test Evaluation System, a non-profit center specializing in the evaluation of commercially available tests.     

Breaking Bad: DSM-5 Description, Criticisms, and Recommendations

The special issue on the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition, American Psychiatric Association, 2013) in the journal Psychological Injury and Law has considered its changes relative to the DSM-IV-TR (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition, text revision, American Psychiatric Association, 2000) from both a clinical utility and scientific point of view. Although the manual did not undergo wholesale change, the changes to diagnostic categories relevant to the area of psychological injuries (especially posttraumatic stress disorder, mild traumatic brain injury, and chronic pain) present both practical and forensic conundrums, complicating clinical and legal work in the area. The articles in the special issue number nine (including the present one), and involve ones on the major psychological injuries, as well as personality. Separate articles deal with forensics and ethics, with a final one considering forensic psychiatric work using the DSMs. The authors collectively indicate that the DSM-5 is rife with utility and scientific difficulties, although it still might be used in practice and for court in the context of careful, comprehensive assessments and critical analysis. More importantly, ongoing and future research should be considered in revising the DSM-5. Some of the articles review in depth the extant research on their topics and all make recommendations that are useful. The articles include those (in order in the special issue) by: Zoellner et al. (Psychological Injury and Law, 6, 2013); Biehn et al. (Psychological Injury and Law, 6, 2013); Schultz (Psychological Injury and Law, 6, 2013); Young (2013); Hopwood and Sellbom (Psychological Injury and Law, 6, 2013); Thomas (Psychological Injury and Law, 6, 2013); Gordon and Cosgrove (Psychological Injury and Law, 6, 2013); and an opinion piece by Frances and Halon (Psychological Injury and Law, 6, 2013), the chief chair of the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition, American Psychiatric Association 1994).     

Chronic Pain in the DSM-IV and the DSM-5 Draft: The Pain of It All

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, DSM-IV-TR (American Psychiatric Association 2000) includes the diagnosis of pain disorder, and it has been revised in major ways in the DSM-5 draft (American Psychiatric Association 2010). Pain disorder has been relegated as a specifier of the new diagnosis of complex somatic symptom disorder. It cannot be diagnosed prior to 6 months of the pain’s onset. Also, there are still the pejorative connotations with which the disorder is associated. In terms of treatment, it might be more difficult to get treatment plans accepted as a result of the changes, and in terms of the legal arena, it might prove more difficult to have the disorder serve as the basis of action in legal proceedings.     

Surviving the Trenches: The Personal Impact of the Job on Probation Officers

The purpose of this study was to assess traumatic stress and burnout in probation officers who work with criminal offenders. Adult probation officers from five departments in three states (Arizona, California, and Texas) participated in this study (N?=?309). Officers completed several survey instruments including the Impact of Events Scale-Revised (Weiss & Marmar, 1997), the Compassion Satisfaction/Fatigue Self-Test for Helpers (Steed & Bicknell, 2001), and the Probation Personal Impact Scale (PPI). The results indicated officers who reported violent and sexual recidivism on their caseloads, offender suicide, and threats and/or assaults in the line of duty scored significantly higher on measures of traumatic stress and burnout than officers who did not experience these caseload events. Assessments, education, training, and stress management programs are discussed as options to mitigate negative impacts, enhance the resiliency of officers, and improve the quality of evidence-based practices.     

Early Intervention with Compensated Lower Back-Injured Workers at Risk for Work Disability: Fixed versus Flexible Approach

Low back pain (LBP), a leading cause of disability, has been linked with profound economic, personal, and social costs (Hills 2006; World Health Organization 2003). This significant effect propels research in identifying modifiable risk factors that protract LBP; these factors can be targeted in early intervention (EI) (Pransky, Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine, 49(3):249–251, 2007; Schultz et al., Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation, 17:327–352, 2007, Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation, 18(2), 140–151, 2008; White et al. 2013). This randomized controlled study evaluated the effectiveness of two approaches, fixed versus flexible, in delivering proactive, interdisciplinary EI with 63 workers within a workers' compensation interdisciplinary case management setting (i.e., WorkSafeBC, Canada). Off-work 4 to 10 weeks post-back injury, the workers were also at risk of protracted work disability (N?=?24 at high risk; N?=?39 at moderate risk). Fixed, protocol-driven, interdisciplinary, multimodal, clinical, occupational, and case management-based EI was compared with a flexible, individual need-driven EI with the same modalities as the fixed approach. Results showed a significant narrowing of the outcome gap between the two interventions. High-risk injured workers tended to benefit more from a fixed, protocol-driven approach, as shown in the pilot study (Schultz et al. Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation, 18(2), 140–151, 2008). The results indicated that moderate-risk workers benefitted from a more flexible, need-based, individual, and low-intensity approach as compared with a fixed approach. The flexible approach for moderate-risk workers was also less costly and consumed fewer rehabilitation and health care resources. Recommendations for future research and practice included larger sample sizes, controllability of research interventions, risk for disability-EI matching, and conditions under which a flexible delivery of multimodal EI is more efficacious than a fixed approach, and vice versa.     

A Sensitivity Analysis of Egocentric Measures of Peer Delinquency to Latent Homophily: A Research Note

Objectives

Egocentric measures of peer delinquency, obtained through a census of a social network, have become the preferred operationalization for examining the relationships between social influence and delinquency. Studies regressing ego’s delinquency on the delinquency of nominated friend/s (i.e. alter/s) conclude that a statistically significant coefficient provides evidence of social influence. However, the inferences drawn from these studies may be biased by the introduction of artificial statistical dependence as a consequence of using social network data in a regression framework. Recent work (Shalizi and Thomas Sociol Methods Res 40:211–239, 2011) shows that latent homophily, or unmeasured confounding of observables, may lead to nonzero estimates of social influence, even if there is no causal significance. To examine this possibility, sensitivity analyses have been created (e.g. VanderWeele and Arah Epidemiology 22:42–52, 2011; VanderWeele Sociol Methods Res 40:240–255, 2011) to determine the robustness of an estimated coefficient to latent homophily.

Methods

In this research note, I examine the robustness of estimates for social influence from two articles (Haynie Am J Sociol 106:1013–1057, 2001; Meldrum et al. J Res Crime Delinq 46:353–376, 2009) using egocentric measures of peer delinquency.

Results

Findings indicate that for large, precise point estimates, highly improbable conditions are needed to explain away the effects of social influence. However, less precise point estimates (i.e. large standard errors) are more sensitive to latent homophily.

Conclusions

The analyses indicate that studies using egocentric measures should conduct sensitivity tests, particularly when the estimated effect is weak and/or has a relatively large standard error. Scripts written in the free programming language R (R Core Team R: a language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, 2012) are provided for researchers to conduct such analyses.     

The More You Say the Less It Means: Overreporting and Attenuated Criterion Validity in a Forensic Disability Sample

A recent publication in Psychological Bulletin by McGrath et al. (Psychological Bulletin 136:450–470, 2010) challenged the necessity of response bias indicators in applied psychological assessment on the grounds that there is insufficient empirical support that shows that they are able to moderate the prediction of substantive measures. The current study challenges their conclusions by examining the effects of response bias in a sample of 2,275 disability litigants. We utilized the validity scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 Restructured Form (MMPI-2-RF; Ben-Porath and Tellegen, 2008) in order to establish a group of litigants who did not exhibit evidence of overreporting and compared them to a group of overreporting litigants. The overreporting group scored significantly higher on every Restructured Clinical Scale. Moreover, we compared the criterion validity between various substantive scales on the MMPI-2-RF and extratest measures [e.g., Beck Depression Inventory-II (Beck, Steer, & Brown, 1996)] and found evidence of significantly attenuated criterion validity in the overreporting group. Implications of the study in light of the review by McGrath and colleagues are discussed.     

The Admissibility of the R-PAS in Court

The admissibility of the Rorschach has been a concern of forensic psychologists for many years. The focus of this debate has been the Comprehensive System, which is the most researched of the current Rorschach Systems available in the USA. However, recently, a new, competing system has been published: the Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R-PAS; Meyer et al., Rorschach Performance Assessment System: Administration, Coding, Interpretation, and Technical Manual, 2011). Using Heilbrun’s (Law and Human Behavior 16:257–272, 1992) guidelines as a framework, we examine the admissibility of this new system according to the standards outlined in Daubert (1993) and Frye (1923). We conclude that we have reservations about the admissibility of the R-PAS in court at the present time, notwithstanding ongoing work on this system.     

Redeploying Bayh-Dole: beyond Merely doing good to optimizing the potential in results of taxpayer-funded research

Opinions about the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 and its implementation by US universities can depend on whether one views the Act as a series of tactics that are ends in themselves or as a policy declaration designed to protect the public against nonuse of taxpayer-funded discoveries and encourage their commercialization, utilization, and public availability. Those views appear to influence how universities and their leaders measure performance and define success, identify and allocate resources, approach transfer strategies, and negotiate terms and apportion risks relative to those terms. Those who view the Act as tactical tend to obscure the broader policy objectives which can result in substantial amounts of university research that is “never commercialized” (President’s Council of Advisors 2003), “restrained” (Schacht 2010b), and “left unused and unapplied” (Seipman in Univ Dayt Law Rev 30:209–243, 2004). Society then is deprived of the new products, services, approaches and experiences that can stimulate economic growth and advance human welfare. These and other consequences demand evaluations and assessments of university practices and behaviors and the extent to which they narrowly serve the Act’s tactics or more broadly serve its purposes of pursuing and maximizing the potential usefulness of the results of taxpayer-funded research. Too frequently, there seems to be a disconnect between federal policy and practices adopted or tolerated by universities and their leaders to implement that policy.     

法律语言的模糊性及准确运用

根据传统的范畴理论,法律表达应符合准确性这一基本要求,故追求准确为立法语言和司法语言的目标之一。但是,由于对事物的界定模糊不清以及人类的认知能力有限,法律语言尤其是立法语言中常使用模糊词语,有助于增强语言表达的效率及保护当事人权利,但也会带来诸如过分扩大法官自由裁量权等不利后果。对于法律语言的模糊性,可借助内外部指导、司法判决以及相关语境而使之明确化,从而有效地限制法官的自由裁量权过分膨胀。     

Police GPS Surveillance on Vehicles and the Warrant Requirement: “For a While I’ve Been Watching You Steady”

The global positioning system (GPS) has become ubiquitous to modern American life. The system supplies direction for travel through navigation systems as well as employee monitoring capabilities (Rosenberg Washington Journal of Law, Technology, and Arts 6:143–154, 2010). Law Enforcement has also found GPS to be a valuable tool. The technology provides a relatively cheap and highly effective way to monitor a suspect’s movement. Depending on the device, travel data can be reported in real time or be retrieved from the implanted device at intervals (Shah Journal of Law, Technology, and Policy 2009:281–294, 2009). This paper will first explore the core foundational Fourth Amendment cases that shape the use of GPS devices by law enforcement. Next, the federal circuits and state supreme courts’ decisions that have addressed the use of GPS will be reviewed. Third, the case of U.S. v. Jones (2012), which was recently decided by the United States Supreme Court, will be examined. Last, the policy implications of the current legal landscape regarding the use of GPS by police will be discussed.     

Guardianship for crime prevention: a critical review of the literature

Cohen and Felson??s (Cohen and Felson American Sociological Review 44(4):588?C608, 1979) routine activity theory posits that for a crime to occur three necessary elements must converge in time and space: motivated offenders, suitable targets, and the absence of capable guardianship. Capable guardians can serve as a key actor in the crime event model; one who can disrupt, either directly or indirectly, the interaction between a motivated offender and a suitable target. This article critically reviews the literature on guardianship for crime prevention. Our specific focus is two-fold: (1) to review the way guardianship has been operationalized and measured, and (2) to review experimental and quasi-experimental evaluations and field tests of guardianship. Research on routine activities has had an uneven focus resulting in the neglect of the guardianship component (Reynald Crime Prevention and Community Safety 11(1):1?C20, 2009; Sampson et al. Security Journal 23(1):37?C51, 2010; Tewksbury and Mustaine Criminal Justice and Behavior 30(3):302?C327, 2003; Wilcox et al. Criminology 45(4):771?C803 2007). Evaluations of guardianship-related interventions demonstrate support for the theoretical construct; however, high-quality field tests of guardianship are wholly lacking. Implications for theory and research are discussed.     

The role of the Asia Pacific Partnership in discursive contestation of the international climate regime

After withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol, the US Bush Administration and the Australian Howard Government pursued an international climate change policy focussed on voluntary international agreements outside the UN climate negotiations. This strategy included the formation of several climate agreements directed at technology development, including the 2005 Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (APP). The APP provides a model for international climate change policy directed at voluntary national greenhouse gas intensity targets, technology development through sectoral public–private partnerships and technology diffusion through trade. This article situates the APP within these US and Australian inspired climate agreements formed outside the UN negotiations. Bäckstrand and Lövbrand’s (in M. Pettenger (ed.) The social construction of climate change: power knowledge norms discourses, 2007) discourse analysis in relation to the international climate negotiations is used to explore differences between the APP and UN climate treaties. We find the APP embodies a discourse of what we call ‘deregulatory ecological modernisation’ that promotes limited public funding to ease informational failures in markets for cleaner technologies and management practices. The deregulatory ecological modernisation discourse is a deeply intensive market liberal approach to international climate change policy, which contests binding emission reduction targets and the development of a global carbon market. The USA, Australia, Japan and Canada represented a core group of countries that used the APP to promote the deregulatory ecological modernisation discourse and thereby contest any deepening of developed nations' emission reduction targets for the post-2012 period. However, with changes of leadership and new parties in power in the USA and Australia, it appears that the deregulatory ecological modernisation discourse has lost ground compared to a reengagement with discourses supportive of developed country emission reduction targets and equity-based adaptation and technology transfer assistance for developing nations.     

Setting the Record Straight: Comment on Gurley,Piechowski, Sheehan,and Gray (2014) on the Admissibility of the Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R-PAS) in Court

Gurley et al. (Psychological Injury and Law 7:9–17, 2014) express reservations about the admissibility of testimony based on the Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R-PAS) in court. They question whether there is sufficient evidentiary foundation in the underlying psychometrics and adequate general acceptance among psychologists for R-PAS-based testimony to meet either the Daubert or Frye criteria for admissibility and also raise doubts about how well it meets the criteria for the use of forensic tests proposed by Heilbrun (Law and Human Behavior 16:257–272, 1992). This invited comment addresses their concerns about the admissibility of R-PAS-based testimony and corrects some erroneous statements about the psychometrics of R-PAS and the pertinent empirical literature. Gurley et al. characterize R-PAS as being in competition with the established Comprehensive System (CS; Exner 2003), though we clarify that it is actually an evolutionary development from the CS and designed to be a replacement for it. We also point out how their conclusion that R-PAS-based forensic testimony may be hazardous or premature is based on an insufficient familiarity with the R-PAS scientific and professional literature, a misinterpretation of the Frye and Daubert evidentiary standards, and a mischaracterization of several of Heilbrun’s (Law and Human Behavior 16:257–272, 1992) criteria for the use of tests in forensic testimony.