A Multidisciplinary Approach to Detecting and Responding to Elder Mistreatment: Creating a University-Community Partnership

As the aging population grows, the problem of elder mistreatment is escalating. Cases of elder mistreatment are anticipated to increase further as the—baby boomers age and the number of elderly individuals living and receiving care at home increases (Stiegel 2006; Kennedy 2005; Meeks-Sjostrom 2004). While there has been increasing attention placed on understanding the dynamic of elder mistreatment, advancement of public policy and scholarly work has been hampered due to the fact that much of this work occurs in disciplinary silos. This paper spotlights one example in which university scholars from various disciplines partnered with social service providers, legal professionals, and healthcare educators in the community to enhance the development of a sustainable comprehensive elder justice network.     

The Humdrum of Legality and the Ordering of an Ethic of Care

This paper provides an ethnographic analysis of the ways that employees of an emergency shelter create and maintain order. The paper applies the framework of legal consciousness to explicate the practices of the employees that amount to “private ordering.” The employees administer the rules of the shelter in the context of an “ethic of care,” but one that is outside the purview of formal law. This ethic, however, is polysemic, and the employees, therefore, must adopt diverse styles based on their understandings of their professional roles regarding the needs of the clients. The practices of two employees are highlighted in detail, whose strategies in applying and maintaining adherence to shelter rules are at the opposite ends of the spectrum. Both make decisions in a somewhat spontaneous and, more importantly, inconsistent, fashion. Despite the complications that arise from applying the rules as such, the employees tolerate, even laud and celebrate, these methods. While this system of private ordering has little resemblance to the ordered, consistent, and rigid application of formal law, it allows the employees to administer diverse strategies of ethics of care and shape practices to fit their professional roles and the complex exigencies of an emergency shelter. The paper locates the extant private ordering not in the law, nor in its shadow—assumed to be preconditions—but outside or beyond them. Given that this ordering is founded against the law—it is not law, nor law‐like and has no desire to so be—the paper suggests that it can be thought of as private ordering proper and lays the framework for theorization that accounts for its instrumental and symbolic dimensions.     

Toward an Empirical Approach to Evidentiary Ruling

This paper responds to criticisms/misconstruals of our measure of the maximum probative value of evidence (D. Davis & W. C. Follette, 2002), and our conclusions regarding the potentially prejudicial role of intuitive profiling evidence, including motive. We argue that R. D. Friedman and R. C. Park's (2003) criticisms and example cases are largely based on inappropriate violation of the presumption of innocence. Further, we address the merits of our absolute difference measure of probative value versus those of the Bayesian likelihood ratio championed by D. H. Kaye and J. J. Koehler (2003). We recommend methods for presentation of measures of evidence utility that convey complexities of interdependence between new and existing evidence. Finally, we propose a probable cause standard for admission of potentially prejudicial evidence, dictating that admissibility of such evidence should be contingent upon other substantial evidence of guilt.     

A New Twist on an Old Approach: A Random-Interaction Approach for Estimating Rates of Inter-Group Interaction

There are numerous instances in which researchers wish to measure the rate of intra- or inter-group interactions (whether positive or negative). When computing such measures as rates there is great uncertainty regarding the appropriate denominator: we analytically illustrate how the choice of the denominator when calculating such rates is not trivial and that some existing strategies create a built-in relationship between the computed rate and the group composition within the entity. Another strand of prior work only focused on the relative occurrence of intra- versus inter-group events, which does not account for the important theoretical possibility that both types of events might increase in certain social contexts. Our approach provides an advance over these earlier strategies as it allows one to take into account the relative frequency of interaction between members of different groups, but then translates this into per capita rates. We also provide an empirical example using data on inter- and intra-group robbery and aggravated assault events for block groups in a section of the city of Los Angeles to illustrate how our procedure works and to illustrate how other approaches can lead to dramatically different conclusions.     

A Socio-Legal Approach to Administrative Justice

The first part of this article outlines two complementary approaches to enhancing administrative justice. Internal mechanisms, which can be put into place by government departments and public bodies themselves, are contrasted with external mechanisms, which result in the imposition on government departments and public bodies of principles enunciated by courts, tribunals, and ombudsmen. Lawyers are all too familiar with the external approach but tend to be much less familiar with the internal approach. The article seeks to redress this imbalance. It emphasizes the importance of the internal approach, not as an alternative but, rather, as a complement to the external approach and develops a framework for analyzing administrative justice in terms of "trade-offs" between different normative models of administrative decision-making. The second part of the article demonstrates how this approach to the study of administrative justice has informed research on the impact of computerization on social security in the United Kingdom; on decision making in the Scottish prison system; on the assessment of special educational needs in England and Scotland; and on the computerization of social security in thirteen countries. The article concludes by attempting to show that this approach to the study of administrative justice satisfies all the defining characteristics of the socio-legal paradigm.     

A Philosophical Approach to Norm Logic

The author outlines his views on the essence of philosophical logic. There are two means of philosophical argumentation: intuition and analysis of the problem situation under examination. Logical intuition can be replaced by improved intuition based on new intellectual constructions. Then the author explains—in opposition to von Wright—the main philosophical traits of his conception of norm logic. The structure of the information processing determining action justifies the application of dichotomous semantics in action theory and in practical philosophy. The theory of action and institutions is based on three anthropological features of man: our capacity of acting, our being a zoon politikon , and our capacity to form institutions. These features determine our ontology, our semantics and the logics of practical thinking. The action-theoretical approach leads to a formal and finalistic theory of action in which action is not only analysed as an element of the norm content, but as the essential basis of the whole field of practical philosophy. In the frame of this action theory a conception of freedom of will is provided which does not contrast with determinism. The formalism of action is applied in two different problem situations: in action deliberation and in motive interpretation. Jørgensen's dilemma is discussed and overcome by the introduction of a generalised notion of inference. Deontic logic is confronted with the idea of a genuine logic of norms. The main principles of norm logic are discussed and a normative conditional is introduced. Von Wright's conception of a genuine norm logic is confronted with the present author's conception. The author shows that norm-logical skepticism would be detrimental to analytical jurisprudence.     

A Legal Conventionalist Approach to Pollution

There are no moral entitlements with respect to pollution prior to legal conventions that establish them, or so I will argue. While some moral entitlements precede legal conventions, pollution is part of a category of harms against interests that stands apart in this regard. More specifically, pollution is a problematic type of harm that creates liability only under certain conditions. Human interactions lead to harm and to the invasion of others’ space regularly, and therefore we need an account of undue harm as a basis of assigning legal protections (rights) and obligations (duties) to different agents, which creates standards for holding those agents responsible for harm. Absent such positive standards with respect to pollution at the domestic or international level, it does not make sense to hold agents responsible. This fact has two fundamental implications. First, contrary to what some defenders of environmental justice argue, we cannot hold people responsible for polluting without a system of legal rights in place that assigns entitlements, protections, and obligations, and second, contrary to what opponents of environmental regulation claim, the lack of moral entitlements to pollute creates room for quite extensive legal restrictions on people’s ability to pollute for the sake of the environment and human health. Indeed the scope of those restrictions is wide and open-ended.     

Criminal Behavior: A Real Option Approach With an Application to Restricting Illegal Insider Trading

Traditionally, criminal behavior is analyzed within an expected utility framework. This paper offers an alternative model to analyze criminal behavior based on real option models. It is shown that all criminal decisions can be analyzed as real options, in a sense that they confer the possibility but not the obligation to commit a crime in the future. The criminal option model is a richer model compared to conventional economic models of crime, because it takes into account four additional variables. As such, the conventional economic analysis of crime is a special case of criminal option models. The criminal option model is then applied to the enforcement of illegal insider trading. Based on the six value-drivers of criminal options, an active management strategy can be developed for the criminal as well as for the legislator.     

Bioterrorism meets privacy: an analysis of the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act and the HIPAA privacy rule

Ms. Bruce's paper analyzes the interplay between the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act and the HIPAA Privacy Rule. The article begins by examining specific relevant provisions of the Act and Rule. Next, it traces the history of public health law through the court system and then uses this foundation to discuss how the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act and the HIPAA Privacy Rule could co-exist, protecting Americans in the case of a bioterror attack, while being appropriately sensitive to the confidentiality of private health information.     

A BPA Approach to the Shroud of Turin

An investigation into the arm and body position required to obtain the blood pattern visible in the image of the Shroud of Turin was performed using a living volunteer. The two short rivulets on the back of the left hand of the Shroud are only consistent with a standing subject with arms at a ca 45° angle. This angle is different from that necessary for the forearm stains, which require nearly vertical arms for a standing subject. The BPA of blood visible on the frontal side of the chest (the lance wound) shows that the Shroud represents the bleeding in a realistic manner for a standing position while the stains at the back—of a supposed postmortem bleeding from the same wound for a supine corpse—are totally unrealistic. Simulation of bleeding from the nail wounds contacting wood surfaces yielded unclear results.     

多元翻译理论初探

本文在比较中西典型译论的基础上指出,翻译的本质是涉及诸多要素的交流活动,而这些译论仅侧重反映了其中的某些方面,因此,提倡通过“对话”,吸收其合理内核,使其共存,从而建立一种多元对话的翻译理论新体系非常必要。     

A Normative Approach to the Quistclose Trust

This is the first article to undertake a sustained analysis of normative justifications for the Quistclose trust. Whilst much of the existing writing on this topic has focused on the better classification of such trusts – for instance, whether they are express, resulting, constructive or sui generis – this article asks why the law should recognise a trust in addition to any underlying legal relationship. Four key justifications are addressed, based on respecting party intention, unconscionability, fairness, and the incentivisation of desirable transactions. It will be argued that: (i) there are difficulties with each of these justifications, although an intention‐focused explanation is probably the most convincing; and (ii) the existing law and commentary lacks coherence and consistency, as seen in the mismatch between normative and doctrinal analysis, and the failure to properly address the ramifications of the Quistclose trust during insolvency.     

法官职业道德建设的文化障碍及路径转向

法官职业道德建设是人民法院遏制司法腐败,加强队伍建设的重要举措,但长期以来,法官职业道德建设的成效却差强人意,主要原因在于对中国传统人情文化障碍缺乏充分认识,因此,解决问题的路径必须建立在实现三个转向的基础之上。     

Antemortem and Postmortem Nonapposite Data—A Multidisciplinary Identification Strategy

Identification of human remains is often achieved by comparing documented reference data with the same type of evidence obtained from the remains. We present a case of a decomposed unidentified body, whose identity was presumed but because of the low validity range of the available data, the identification process could not be completed. Antemortem radiographs of the teeth found in the house of the reputed victim could not be compared to the edentulous cadaver and the kinship between the victim and the only living relative that could provide DNA for comparison was too tenuous. Isolated teeth found at the scene, were neither a source of DNA reference information nor questioned data to be compared to the antemortem radiographs. The strategy implemented by the investigators to reallocate the status of the isolated teeth from the questioned source to the reference source of DNA to be compared with the cadaver is presented.     

A Practical Approach to Evaluating and Improving Juvenile Justice Programs

For more than a decade, the juvenile justice field in the United States has been dominated by the seventh “moral panic” over juvenile delinquency. This panic led to an overreaction to juvenile delinquency by legislators and juvenile justice officials. The main consequence is a “crisis of overload” in many state and local juvenile justice systems across the country. Tools are available to help juvenile courts effectively manage the overload of court clients. Most important, a new method has been developed for evaluating existing programs against research‐based standards that have been synthesized from juvenile justice program evaluations. This tool enables states and localities to take a practical approach to improving juvenile justice system programs.