The accuracy and reliability of the Suchey–Brooks pubic symphysis age estimation method: Systematic review and meta-analysis

Suchey–Brooks method has been studied many times with varying reports of accuracy and reliability. A systematic review and meta-analyses were utilized to quantitatively determine the accuracy and reliability of the Suchey–Brooks (S-B) method. A systematic search of PubMed and EBSCO health and medical databases was performed. Meta-analyses were performed to quantify the relationship between actual known age at death and the S-B method using Spearman's Rho and Pearson's r for (1) combined males and females estimates, (2) male-only estimates, and (3) female-only estimates. Overall correlation coefficient using Cohen's kappa, Spearman's Rho, and Pearson's r was also calculated to determine the interrater and intrarater reliability using the S-B method. Eighteen studies classified as moderate-to-high methodological quality met the inclusion criteria. The sample sizes were different for the combined male and female (n = 2620), male-only (n = 2602), and female-only (n = 1431) meta-analyses. The effect size of the age at death meta-analyses was large and significant for combined males and females (Spearman's Rho = 0.62; Pearson's r = 0.65), male-only (Spearman's Rho = 0.77; Pearson's r = 0.75), and female-only (Spearman's Rho = 0.71; Pearson's r = 0.71). The overall correlation coefficients of the interrater (Kappa = 0.76; Spearman's Rho = 0.73; Pearson's r = 0.80) and intrarater (Kappa = 0.81; Spearman's Rho = 0.91; Pearson's r = 0.83) reliability meta-analyses were large and significant. A significant degree of heterogeneity was present in all meta-analyses, with minimal evidence of publication bias. The meta-analyses results suggest the S-B method is highly reliable with a moderate-to-high degree of accuracy. Our results also identified sample size and accuracy differences between male and female individuals.     

Bringing Back the States: A Congressional Perspective on the Fall of Slavery in America

In the aftermath of America's Civil War, national lawmakers who chronicled the fall of slavery described the North as a terrain of states whose representatives assembled in Congress, as evidenced in Henry Wilson's The Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America (1872–77) and Alexander Stephens’s A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States (1868–70). Beginning in the early 1900s, scholars who helped establish the field of American constitutional history redescribed the national government as the voice of the Northern people and the foe of the states, as evidenced in Henry Wilson's The Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America (1872–1877) and Alexander Stephens's A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States (1868–1870), a first generation of scholars writing during the Progressive Era redescribed the national government as the voice of the Northern people and the foe of the states, as evidenced in William A. Dunning's Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction (1898), John W. Burgess's The Civil War and the Constitution (1901–1906), and James G. Randall's Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln (1926). Although a second generation of scholars uncovered traces of the lawmakers' perspective of states, new efforts in the wake of the civil rights movement to understand the internal workings of political parties and the contributions of ordinary Americans kept the study of national lawmakers and their states on the margins of inquiry, as evidenced in leading revisionist histories of Reconstruction, including Harold Hyman's A More Perfect Union: The Impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on the Constitution (1973), Michael Les Benedict's A Compromise of Principle: Congressional Republicans and Reconstruction, 1863–1869 (1974a), and Eric Foner's Reconstruction: An Unfinished Revolution (1988). Today, the terrain of Northern states remains in the backdrop, as illustrated in recent studies featuring the wartime national government, including James Oakes's Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861–1865 (2012) and Mark E. Neely, Jr.'s Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation: Constitutional Conflict in the American Civil War (2011), as well as studies of the mechanisms of constitutional change during Reconstruction, including relevant sections of Bruce Ackerman's We the People II: Transformations (1998) and Akhil Reed Amar's America's Constitution: A Biography (2005). This review essay argues that incorporating the states back into this century‐old framework will open new lines of inquiry and provide a more complete account of federalism's role in the fall of slavery. In particular, a return to the archives suggests that in the uncertain context of mid‐nineteenth‐century America, slavery's leading opponents in Congress saw the Constitution's federal logic not simply as an obstacle, but as a crucial tool with which to mobilize collective action and accommodate wartime opposition at a time when no one could say for sure what would remain of the United States.     

A Faction of One: Revisiting Madison's Notes on the Constitutional Convention

This essay on Madison's Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention, Mary Bilder's revisionist account (2016) of James Madison's Notes on the Constitutional Convention argues that her central thesis, which is that Madison substantially revised the Notes long after the Convention adjourned, is groundbreaking but will have no effect on constitutional law. Madison's Hand is groundbreaking because the book yields many powerful insights into the deliberations of the Convention and into the evolution of Madison's thought. Nevertheless, constitutional practice in the Supreme Court and among elite lawyers is so divorced from the Notes that even a dramatic shift in their interpretation will not disturb the evolution of judicial doctrine applying the text written in 1787.     

The Fundamental Contradiction Redux? Liberty,Coercion, and American Legal Development

In Liberty and Coercion: The Paradox of American Government from the Founding to the Present, Gary Gerstle offers an ambitious account of American legal development from our nation's founding up to the present day. In many ways, Gerstle's account is in keeping with the long scholarly tradition of linking legal liberalism with changes in American law and politics. However, Liberty and Coercion also calls to mind critical legal scholarship, most notably Duncan Kennedy's “The Structure of Blackstone's Commentaries” and the idea of the fundamental contradiction. After reconstructing Kennedy's central claims, I highlight how they actually undermine Liberty and Coercion and jeopardize the larger legal liberal tradition.     

Taking Abortion Rights Seriously: Whole Woman's Health v Hellerstedt

In Whole Woman's Health v Hellerstedt the Supreme Court of the United States passed down its most important decision on abortion for just under a decade. By a majority of 5‐3, the Court ruled that two provisions in a Texas law regulating abortion on grounds of women's health were constitutionally invalid, placing a ‘substantial obstacle’ in the way of women seeking to exercise their right to abortion. This comment delineates the key ways in which the Court's application of the standard of constitutional review under Planned Parenthood v Casey (1992) to the Texas provisions marks a landmark development for the protection of the constitutional right to abortion established in Roe v Wade, not the least by making clear that state abortion regulations which cite ‘women's health’ justifications should not pass constitutional review where those justifications lack a credible factual basis.     

Lost in the System or Lost in Translation? The Exchanges between Hart and Ross*

According to the received opinion there is a theoretical incompatibility between Herbert Hart's The Concept of Law and Alf Ross's On Law and Justice, and, according to the received opinion, it stems above all from Hart's emphasis on the internal point of view. The present paper argues that this reading is mistaken. The Concept of Law does not go beyond On Law and Justice in so far as both present arguments to the effect that law is based on a shared understanding between participants in a project perceived by every participant to be a project in common. The paper demonstrates that there are substantive parallels between Hart's combination of “acceptance” or “acknowledgement” and a “critical reflective attitude” and Ross's combination of “motivation” or “feeling” and a “coherent whole of meaning and motivation.” The main conclusion is that the views of norms and normativity put forward in The Concept of Law and On Law and Justice are very close in essential respects, and, more specifically, that the two works are at root identical in their representation of the basis of normativity in reality.     

Fundamental rights in the EU after Kadi and Al Barakaat

This article takes stock of the emerging scholarship on the European Court of Justice's 2008 Kadi decision and seeks to make sense of the court's apparent evasiveness towards international law. The article argues that Kadi is best understood as an act of civil disobedience prompted by the UN Security Council's misapplication of foundational principles of the international order. In turn, the court's forceful articulation of the stakes in this case signals a prioritisation of basic rights within the supranational constitutional architectonic. In this respect, the ‘domestic’ constitutional implications of Kadi are just as far reaching as its consequences for the EU's status as an actor under international law.     

Resisting Multiple Narratives of Law in Transition Countries: Russia and Beyond

Burbank, Jane . 2004 . Russian Peasants Go to Court: Legal Culture in the Countryside, 1905–1917 . Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press. Pp. xix + 374. $49.95 cloth. Feifer, George . 1964 . Justice in Moscow . New York : Simon and Schuster. Pp. 336 . $20.95 paper. Kaminskaya, Dina . 1982 . Final Judgment: My Life as a Soviet Defense Attorney . Trans. Michael Glenny. New York : Simon and Schuster. Pp. 364 . Out of print. Ledeneva, Alena V . 2013 . Can Russia Modernise? Sistema, Power Networks and Informal Governance . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. Pp. xv + 332. $90.00 cloth; $32.99 paper. McDonald, Tracy . 2011 . Face to the Village: The Riazan Countryside under Soviet Rule, 1921–1930 . Toronto : University of Toronto Press. Pp. xvii + 422. $75.00 cloth. Politkovskaya, Anna . 2004 . Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy . Trans. Arch Tait. London : Harvill Press. Pp. 304 . $17.00 paper. Popova, Maria . 2012 . Politicized Justice in Emerging Democracies: A Study of Courts in Russia and Ukraine . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. Pp. xii + 197. $103.00 cloth; $29.99 paper. Romanova, Ol'ga . 2010 . Butyrka . Moscow : Izdatel'stvo Astrel'. Pp. 316 . 240 rubles. The literature on the role of law in countries with so‐called hybrid regimes that are stuck somewhere between democracy and authoritarianism tends to dwell on the politicization of law and the courts. This has the effect of discounting the importance of the vast majority of cases that are decided in accord with the law. Taking Russia as a case study, this essay reviews a cross‐section of the literature on its courts in order to document this tendency and explore why alternative narratives of law have failed to gain traction: Burbank's Russian Peasants Go to Court ( 2004 ); Feifer's Justice in Moscow ( 1964 ); Kaminskaya's Final Judgment ( 1982 ); Ledeneva's Can Russia Modernise? ( 2013 ); McDonald's Face to the Village ( 2011 ); Politkovskaya's Putin's Russia ( 2004 ); Popova's Politicized Justice in Emerging Democracies ( 2012 ); and Romanova's Butyrka ( 2010 ).     

Machiavelli at 500: From Cynic to Vigilant Supporter of International Law

Machiavelli's 500‐year‐old treatise The Prince outlined the central features of the realist tradition in international relations. His premises led him to question the likelihood of efficacious and stable international law and international courts, a skepticism that has present‐day proponents. Machiavelli's reluctance was due to a combination of features of human nature and a focus on anarchic features of the relations among states. This article challenges these assumptions and implications: Other interpretations of human nature are closer to Machiavelli's text, and current relations among states are significantly different. The revised assumptions should make Machiavelli's followers more optimistic about international law and international courts.     

Using social norms to reduce men's rape proclivity: Perceived rape myth acceptance of out-groups may be more influential than that of in-groups

Abstract

Feedback about a reference group's rape myth acceptance (RMA) has been shown to affect men's rape proclivity (Bohner, Siebler, & Schmelcher, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 286–297, 2006). In two experiments with male university students (total N=294), this research was extended by varying the in-group vs out-group status of the reference group. Results showed that feedback about other men's RMA influenced self-reported RMA (Experiment 1) and rape proclivity (Experiments 1 and 2). Overall, participants' rape proclivity was affected by feedback about both in-groups' RMA and out-groups' RMA. The strongest reduction of rape proclivity was produced by low-RMA feedback about an out-group that participants expected to be high in RMA (Experiment 2). Implications for theory and intervention are discussed.     

From Nomos to Hegung: Sovereignty and the Laws of War in Schmitt's International Order

Carl Schmitt's notion of nomos is commonly regarded as the international equivalent to the national sovereign's decision on the exception. But can concrete spatial order alone turn a constellation of forces into an international order? This article looks at Schmitt's work The Nomos of the Earth and proposes that it is the process of bracketing war called Hegung which takes the place of the sovereign in the international order Schmitt describes. Beginning from an analysis of nomos, the ordering function of the presocratic concept moira is explored. It is argued that the process of Hegung, like moira, does not just achieve the containment of war, but constitutes the condition of possibility for plural order.     

Queer Legal History: A Field Grows Up and Comes Out

This essay examines recent scholarship on the legal history of sexuality in the United States. It focuses on Margot Canaday's The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Modern America (2009) and Marc Stein's Sexual Injustice: Supreme Court Decisions from Griswold to Roe (2010). It also reviews recent work on the history of marriage, including Sarah Barringer Gordon's The Spirit of the Law: Religious Voices and the Constitution in Modern America (2010) and George Chauncey's Why Marriage? The History Shaping Today's Debate Over Gay Equality (2004), and the history of military law Defending America: Military Culture and the Cold‐War Court Martial (2005), by Elizabeth Lutes Hillman. The essay argues that this scholarship is significant because it offers a different view of sex and power than the one derived from the early writing of Michel Foucault. “Queer legal history” treats the liberalism of the 1960s‐1970s as sexually discriminatory as well as liberatory. It underlines the exclusions that were part of public policy under the federal G.I. Bill and the New Deal welfare state.     

What does it mean to suffer loss? Haxton v Philips Electronics

In Haxton v Philips Electronics the Court of Appeal considered whether a widow could recover the diminution in value of her dependency claim following the defendant's tortious reduction of her life expectancy. The note outlines the development of the common law, demonstrating that Haxton is novel but not unorthodox, and tests whether Haxton's principles can provide a sound foundation for future cases. Positing three hypothetical scenarios, it argues that the disparity in outcome, rather than indicating a lack of unifying principle, as was suggested in Jobling v Associated Dairies, may be explained by combining Austin's division between primary and secondary rights with Gardner and Stevens' contributions as to how they are protected. Restitutio in integrum requires consideration of the reasons and values underlying the right in question and these are discernible in the jurisprudence. The note also considers whether Haxton could have been decided on the basis that a defendant should not profit from its own wrongdoing.     

Ameron International: Expanding Insurance Recovery for Administrative Environmental Proceedings

In Ameron Int'l Corp. v. Ins. Co. of Pennsylvania, the California Supreme Court issued its long-awaited reconsideration of Foster-Gardner v. National Union Fire Ins. Co. which adopted the minority position that administrative notice letters are not “suits” that trigger a CGL insurer's duty to defend. In an important development for insurers and policyholders alike, Ameron limited Foster-Gardner, holding that an administrative process that resembles a court proceeding is a “suit” insurers must defend. This article surveys the majority rule, Ameron, and Ameron's possible impact in minority rule jurisdictions with Foster-Gardner-like precedent.     

Al Rawi,Tariq, and the Future of Closed Material Procedures and Special Advocates

This note considers the impact of the Supreme Court's decisions in Al Rawi v The Security Service and Home Office v Tariq on the use of closed material procedures and special advocates. The government's subsequent Justice and Security Green Paper is also discussed.     

Kogan v Martin: A New Framework for Joint Authorship in Copyright Law

The Court of Appeal has set out a new framework for the application of copyright law's joint authorship test in a recent landmark case. Kogan v Martin brings some welcome clarity to the complex joint authorship landscape, embedding an inclusive pro-collaboration default standard. This case note contrasts the appeal court's nuanced framing of the dispute with the first instance court's narrower approach. The note then examines the new joint authorship framework and explains how it allows the test to be applied with an eye to the reality of collaborative creative endeavours. Finally, the significance of Kogan v Martin is highlighted, as are some questions which remain unanswered.     

Durie v Gardiner: Public Libel Law and Stare Non Decisis

This note examines the controversial case of Durie v Gardiner, a recent decision of the Court of Appeal of New Zealand, which radically altered the nation's public libel jurisprudence. It argues that Durie is incorrect as a matter of public libel law for three reasons. First, both Durie judgments failed to engage in freedom of expression theorising. Second, this undertheorising has caused significant confusion in Durie, including misinterpretation of material facts, breakdown of the ‘theory-doctrine’ interface, and a precipitous and unwarranted dismissal of the Court of Appeal's settled public libel principles. Third, owing to these difficulties, the Durie courts were in no position to import a new ‘public interest’ defence from foreign jurisdictions. Above all, by hastening towards wholesale law reform and ignoring its earlier comparative law deliberations, Durie arguably scuppers public libel law's best hope for advancement.     

Is It a Fight or Are They Just Drunk? Attributions about Drunken Behaviour in a Hypothetical Male‐to‐Male Aggression Scenario1

Objective. This paper examines the excuse‐value of alcohol in a hypothetical provoked male‐to‐male violence scenario. There are two main questions. Does intoxication result in decreased blame? Does intoxication lessen the propensity to call the police?

Methods. 1004 random digit dialing (RDD) quantitative telephone surveys were completed with Swedes aged 16–25. The response rate was 73.8%. Besides the aggressor's intoxication, severity of the outcome, the victim's intoxication and the respondent's hypothetical relationship to the aggressor or to the victim were also randomly manipulated. Whether the police should be called and the attribution of blame to the aggressor have been analysed using ANOVA in SAS.

Results. Analyses were stratified by sex. For male respondents, the aggressor's intoxication interacted (four‐way) with all the manipulated variables in predicting the attribution of blame. In the more severe act, intoxication tended to reduce blame; the least amount of blame was assigned when both the aggressor and the victim were intoxicated. For female respondents, the aggressor's intoxication was involved in a three‐way interaction. For them also, intoxication decreases the blame for the severe acts but not for the less severe acts. The aggressor's intoxication had very little effect on whether the police should be called or not.

Discussion. Intoxication provides some excuse from blame but only for certain acts and under certain circumstances. It also changes the way people perceive acts of violence.     

Court evaluations of young children's testimony in child sexual abuse cases

Purpose

Prosecutors working with child sexual abuse (CSA) cases involving young children have raised concerns that reliability criteria from the Supreme Court of Sweden are holding children's testimony to impossible standards (e.g., expecting the child's testimony to be long, rich in detail and spontaneous). This study aimed to address these concerns by investigating how District Courts and Courts of Appeal employ said criteria in their testimonial assessments of young child complainants.

Methods

Court documents from District Courts (n = 100) and Courts of Appeal (n = 45) in CSA cases involving 100 children age 7 years and under were analysed with respect to the courts’ testimonial assessments.

Results

Testimonial assessments were more frequently referenced in acquitting verdicts and in cases with evidence of low corroborative value. Richness in detail was the most frequently used reliability criterion, followed by spontaneity. Most criteria were used in favour of the children's testimony. However, the length criterion was typically used against the reliability of the children's testimony.

Conclusions

Our findings confirm prosecutors’ concerns that criteria from the Supreme Court are frequently used in evaluations of young children's testimony. This is troublesome, as some criteria do not correspond to current research on young children's witness abilities. For example, compared to testimony given by older children or adults, testimony provided by a young child is typically not long or rich in detail. We encourage prosecutors to extend their own knowledge on young children's capability as witnesses and present this to the court.     

Russian Society on the Threshold of 21 September

The tables presented below for the reader's attention were prepared using materials included in the Public Opinion Foundation (POF) pamphlets titled What Kind of Authoritarian Regime is Possible in Russia? and Russia's Regions: The Population's Economic and Political Orientations,¹ as well as materials from a survey carried out by the foundation in the fall of 1993. The tables are accompanied by brief commentary by POF analysts.