What Clients Know: Client perspectives and legal competence

This article does not have an abstract     

New perspectives in the legal psychiatry of cocaine-related crimes.

The legal criteria for the insanity defense as it applies to cocaine-related crimes remains elusive because of cocaine's unique spectrum of effects on human thought and action. This paper discusses the literature relevant to cocaine and forensic psychiatry/psychology, and summarizes the results of a survey of forensic psychiatrists on the topic of drug-induced psychosis. A conceptual framework is posited for the expert witness to distinguish the separable effects of cocaine on human behavior and to clarify their relationship to criminal responsibility.     

Electronic health records: international, structural and legal perspectives

The EHR is a database record that incorporates a patient's health care details from conception to death and which can be distributed over a number of sites or aggregated at a particular source. This article describes the function and concept of the EHR by relating it to other medical information technologies, parallel changes in health care delivery, and a holistic health information model. The article compares the progress that Europe, Australia and the United States have made in the journey towards EHR implementation and concludes by highlighting some of the costs, barriers and consequences associated with the transition to a comprehensive EHR system.     

Convergence and conflict perspectives in Scandinavian studies of the legal profession

This article focuses on classic Scandinavian studies of the legal profession. These classic studies, which followed World War II and the development of the Scandinavian welfare states, focused on national developments in the legal profession and its relevance to the development of the states and the markets. The studies are divided into convergence perspectives with Aubert's studies dominating on the one hand, and conflict perspectives with Mathiesen's studies dominating on the other. This article examines their similarities and differences in theoretical backgrounds, methodology and empirical data. It demonstrates how the two research traditions, despite their different theoretical perspectives, build their research on comparatively the same kind of empirical data and methodology and how they reach some of the same conclusions.     

Psychopathy and instrumental aggression: Evolutionary, neurobiological, and legal perspectives

In the study of aggression, psychopathy represents a disorder that is of particular interest because it often involves aggression which is premeditated, emotionless, and instrumental in nature; this is especially true for more serious types of offenses. Such instrumental aggression is aimed at achieving a goal (e.g., to obtain resources such as money, or to gain status). Unlike the primarily reactive aggression observed in other disorders, psychopaths appear to engage in aggressive acts for the purpose of benefiting themselves. This is especially interesting in light of arguments that psychopathy may represent an alternative life-history strategy that is evolutionarily adaptive; behaviors such as aggression, risk-taking, manipulation, and promiscuous sexual behavior observed in psychopathy may be means by which psychopaths gain advantage over others. Recent neurobiological research supports the idea that abnormalities in brain regions key to emotion and morality may allow psychopaths to pursue such a strategy—psychopaths may not experience the social emotions such as empathy, guilt, and remorse that typically discourage instrumentally aggressive acts, and may even experience pleasure when committing these acts. Findings from brain imaging studies of psychopaths may have important implications for the law.     

Participation of children in clinical trials: UK, European and international legal perspectives on consent

The Declaration of Helsinki was, until recently, the leading international code on the conduct of clinical trials on human subjects. The Council of Europe's Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine (1997) and the ICH guidelines for Good Clinical Practice (1996) represent a significant step towards increased harmonization of standards in the conduct of medical experiments on human subjects. But in spite of emerging areas of consensus, there remain important areas of unclarity and divergence. Medical practitioners involved in paediatric research in the UK are concerned about the lack of certainty in the law, particularly on the application of consent rules to emergency research. This paper examines UK, European and International norms on the participation of children in medical research and compares the circumstances under which consent rules may be waived under each normative regime.     

Sexual assault cases in the legal system: Police,prosecutor, and victim perspectives

The purposes of this study were to assess (a) the extent of attrition in the processing of sexual assault cases in the legal systems, (b) factors associated with attrition at various stages in the process, and (c) victims' experiences in the legal system and the relations between these experiences and recovery. Our results suggest that substantial attrition continues to occur in the prosecution of rape cases, that more severe assaults are prosecuted more vigorously, that victims are generally satisfied with the police (but not with the legal system in general), and that neither attitudes nor case outcomes are associated with victims' postrape recovery. Research and policy implications are discussed.     

法律职业化探微

依法治国 ,建设社会主义法治国家 ,是一项系统工程 ,在这项工程中 ,必须具备的一个条件就是法律职业化。所谓法律职业化 ,简言之 ,就是“法专家”的形成和组织化。中国没有法律职业化或专业化的历史。目前 ,随着对法制的重视和加强 ,中国的法律职业正在形成 ,也存在不少困难 ,但前途光明。今年国家统一司法考试制度的实施向职业化迈出可喜的一步。在法律的职业化建设中 ,法律职业道德又是一个基本因素。而司法权威、法官的任职等也与法律职业化有着息息相关的联系。