The writings of Sir Bernard Spilsbury: Part II

This is the second and final part of the compilation highlighting the rate works of Sir Bernard Spilsbury. Despite his vast experience he never chose to write a textbook or training book for his lectures. The second part of this work includes an address entitled "Some Medico-Legal Aspects of Shock", which was presented on October 26, 1933. It was published in the Medico-Legal and Criminological Review, Vol. 2, Part 1, January 1934. (This is a publication of the Medico-Legal Society of Great Britain). The second article is a case report entitled "A Hat from a Fatal Case of Shooting". This was published in The Transactions of the Medico-Legal Society, 1927, p. 103, and was presented at a meeting held March 24, 1927.     

The trust in Spanish and Italian private international law: Part I

Civil Law jurisdictions' recognition of trusts depends on theindividual conflict of law rules of each jurisdiction. The HagueConvention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Trusts intendsto bring a degree of certainty into how a foreign trust is received.However, the matter is complicated, in particular, as to thestatus granted in each jurisdiction to the convention. Thisarticle, based on a paper presented at the convention on CatalanCivil Law, ‘Los patrimonios fiduciarios y el trust’,held in Tarragona on 20 and 21 October 2005, examines the positionof trusts under the conflict of law rules in Italy and in Spainand the impact made on the recognition of trusts by the HagueConvention. This article appears in two parts; in this firstpart the position in Italy is examined and the second part concludeswith the position in Spain.     

Thomas Craig,Sir Martin Wright,and Sir William Blackstone: The English Discovery of Feudalism

F.W. Maitland claimed that Sir Martin Wright propagated among English lawyers the view that English law had a feudal origin and was part of a European family of law and that Wright's opinions were popularized by Blackstone. This article demonstrates that Wright's opinions on feudal law, its history, and its impact on English law owed a considerable amount to the Scottish author Thomas Craig, who, through Wright, Blackstone, and others, as well as independently, had a significant impact on English lawyers’ understanding of their legal history and in overturning theories of the ‘immemorial’ nature of the common law. The infusion of Craig's European learning on feudalism into discussion of English law helped English legal history to develop.     

The late Sir Thomas Reynes: a medieval identification

In the analysis of a 14th century skeleton believed to be that of Sir Thomas Reynes III, a knight who had fought at Crecy, palaeopathology was applied to try to establish a positive identification. The remains were exposed during recent repairs to a 14th century monument in the chapel at Clifton Reynes, Buckinghamshire. It was thought that the skeleton had been moved and reinstated during the 18th century. Evidence is presented to demonstrate that the identification of these remains as those of Sir Thomas Reynes is not incompatible with the anthropological and palaeopathological findings.     

全球行政法的产生(上)

一引言:被忽视的全球行政法的兴起 尽管很少得到关注,但是重要并处于发展中的全球行政法正在塑造着全球治理的新模式.的确,这个法律体系目前尚不统一,也还不是一个有序的学术或实践领域.纽约大学法学院的全球行政法研究项目<'[1]>就是将各种国内、跨国和国际框架中与全球治理中的行政法相关的研究系统化的一项努力.借助该项目第一阶段形成的理念,在本文中我们首先从这些多样化的实践中确定一些充分深刻和影响深远、从而构成全球行政法雏形的共性和关联模式.我们指出一些促进共同路径发展的因素和增进该领域一体化程度的学习、借鉴和参照机制.     

Part I: The NGRI Registry: initial analyses of data collected on Connecticut insanity acquittees

The NGRI Registry is a comprehensive census database collected by the Law and Psychiatry Division of the Department of Psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine. This longitudinal database was compiled following a systematic search of all available docket books from the superior courts and mental health records from the state hospitals in Connecticut beginning in January 1970. Detailed life span information is available for 364 insanity acquittees identified during the search. Comparative analyses with four other locales suggested that there were regional differences in diagnoses of and crimes committed by the acquittees. These initial analyses demonstrate the promise of this registry becoming one tool for collaborative research on issues relevant to law and mental health.     

Worldwide policy trends in agricultural extension: Part I

Agricultural extension is one of the oldest and most important prototypes for technology-transfer organizations. The purpose of this paper is to help policymakers to keep track of how extension is developing in countries throughout the world. Such attention is especially warranted as extension has come under attack both in its identification with the public sector and in how that tie is expressed. Five fundamental models for organizing extension are outlined: farmingsystems research and extension, farming-information dissemination, training and visit, communications for technology transfer, and the cooperative-extension system of the U.S. Part I of this two-part paper outlines the major policy issues raised by these models and Part II (to be published in a later issue) will provide an in-depth discussion of a central issue underlying these models: the appropriate role of public- versus private-sector extension.     

Moral theories of torts: Their scope and limits: Part I

One approach to legal theory is to provide some sort of rational reconstruction of all or of a large body of the common law. For philosophers of law this has usually meant trying to rationalize a body of law under one or another principle of justice. This paper explores the efforts of the leading tort theorists to provide a moral basis — for the law of torts. The paper is divided into two parts. In the first part I consider and reject the view that tort law is best understood as falling either within the ambit of the principle of retributive justice, a comprehensive theory of moral responsibility, or an ideal of fairness inherent in the idea that one should impose on others only those risks others impose on one. The second part of the paper distinguishes among various conceptions of corrective or compensatory justice and considers arguments — including previous arguments by the author himself — to the effect that tort law is best understood as rooted in principles of corrective justice. This paper argues that although the use of principles of justice may render defensible many (but by no means all) of the claims to repair and to liability recognized in torts, it cannot explain why we have adopted a tort system as the approach to vindicating those claims. Some other principle — probably not one of justice — is needed to explain why it is that the victims claims to repair is satisfied by having his losses shifted to his injurer — rather than through some other means of doing so. The paper concludes that the law of torts cannot be understood — in the sense of being given a rational reconstruction — under any one principle of morality.     

Criminals' explanations of their criminal behavior, Part I: The contribution of criminologic variables.

The author reviewed the literature concerning criminals' explanations of their crimes and then studied the explanations given by 100 incarcerated men. He found no significant associations between juvenile or adult arrest histories, alias use, age at time of the crime, trial plea, sentence length, duration of incarceration, and explanation types used. Only murderers significantly used a specific explanation type. These observations suggest that explanations are largely independent of traditional criminological attributes; that prolonged confinement to prison does not result in offenders admitting to their crimes; and, that killers have an especially difficult time accepting responsibility for taking the life of another human being.     

Analysis and discrimination of electrical tapes: Part I. Adhesives

This study involved the comparative analysis and discrimination of 90 electrical tape adhesives. The objectives included the evaluation of the ability of individual techniques to discriminate samples and the assessment of the ability of the techniques combined to distinguish samples. The techniques utilized were stereomicroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS), and scanning electron microscopy/energy dispersive spectroscopy (SEM/EDS). Stereomicroscopy, to assess adhesive colors of black, clear/colorless, and clear adhesives with brown tint, resulted in a discrimination of 53%. FTIR analysis yielded eight distinct groups with a discrimination of 67%. Py-GC/MS analysis resulted in 16 groups with a discrimination of 83%. These analyses confirmed and further subdivided the FTIR groups. SEM/EDS resulted in five separate groups at 17% discrimination, increasing the overall discrimination to above 85%.