CHILD SUPPORT IN THE UNITED STATES

This article reports on the results of a telephone survey conducted with a random sample of households screened for eligibility to receive child support in the state of Colorado. Despite the recent enactment of ambitious child legislation at the state and federal levels, the accounts of 731 custodial parents reveal a massive level of unmet need, with child support problems being most extreme for those never married to the chilďs other parent. These mothers typically lack an order establishing a legal obligation to pay child support and have incomes that fall below the poverty level. Overall, women of Colorado with child support orders received only about half of the support they were due, and 73 per cent of all women due support reported that they had experienced problems in collecting support either currently or in the past. The average amount of back due child support owed to the 60 per cent of women in the sample who reported an arrearage was $12,000. Analysis revealed that payment behaviour tracked with the length of time since separation with payment patterns worsening over time and irregular visitation and/or the presence of problems around child access. Female obligors exhibited the same payment patterns as their male counterparts but were more apt to maintain visitation. The article documents the dramatic, negative economic consequences of irregular or missing child support payments for custodial parents, and discusses the additional legal and financial commitments needed to improve the situation. The efficacy of private child support transfers to achieve an adequate standard of living for all children is called into question.     

CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE UNITED STATES*

Criminologists continue to debate fundamental issues about the nature of their work. Some of the issues were built into the field by the criminal anthropologists who founded it a century ago. By examining the work of major American criminal anthropologists—a nearly forgotten group—one can identify the origins of three enduring problems: criminology's difficulties in (1) establishing its disciplinary boundaries; (2) defining its methods: and (3) deciding whether its primary goal is crime control or the production of knowledge with no immediate use-value. The study of criminology's roots in criminal anthropology cannot settle these debates, but it can put them in historical perspective and clarify their substance.     

THE DETERMINATION OF ANTITRUST LIABILITY IN UNITED STATES v. MICROSOFT: THE EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE USED TO PROVE ITS CASE

This paper considers the empirical evidence used by the Departmentof Justice in the U.S. v. Microsoft antitrust case to provethat Microsoft engaged in exclusionary (and anticompetitive)actions in the browser market as part of its efforts to maintainits dominance of the personal computer operating system market.This evidence deserves special consideration because the DistrictCourt made the unusual decision to rely on the empirical evidencepresented by the Department of Justice rather than the empiricalevidence presented by Microsoft. This decision was unusual becauseMicrosoft's evidence had a strong presumption of validity asit was based on data that Microsoft collected and used in theordinary course of its business. Furthermore, no market participantsused the Department of Justice-sponsored data in any meaningfulway. Although it is impossible to determine with any certaintywhy the District Court ruled the way it did, I conclude thatthere were two driving forces in the court's decision. The Departmentof Justice identified serious flaws in Microsoft's data, makingit unreliable for the purposes for which Microsoft was usingit in the trial. The Department of Justice was also able toshow that no such flaws affected the data it sponsored and indeed,on many points, that data was more consistent with the testimonyof Microsoft executives than the data sponsored by Microsoft.     

A REGIONAL ANALYSIS OF HOMICIDE RATES IN THE UNITED STATES

Variations in regional homicide rates are examined in order to determine whether or not these areas are homogeneous An analysis of varbnce repeatedly isolates southern regions as having pronounced homicide rates. Intraregional varintions are noted. They indicate a need for a revision of Gastil's “Index of Southernness.” Finally, varktions are interpreted within a subcultural context.     

HISTORICAL CONTINGENCIES AND THE EVOLVING IMPORTANCE OF RACE,VIOLENT CRIME,AND REGION IN EXPLAINING MASS INCARCERATION IN THE UNITED STATES

This article combines insights from historical research and quantitative analyses that have attempted to explain changes in incarceration rates in the United States. We use state‐level decennial data from 1970 to 2010 (N = 250) to test whether recent theoretical models derived from historical research that emphasize the importance of specific historical periods in shaping the relative importance of certain social and political factors explain imprisonment. Also drawing on historical work, we examine how these key determinants differed in Sunbelt states, that is, the states stretching across the nation's South from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific, from the rest of the nation. Our findings suggest that the relative contributions of violent crime, minority composition, political ideology, and partisanship to imprisonment vary over time. We also extend our analysis beyond mass incarceration's rise to analyze how factors associated with prison expansion can explain its stabilization and contraction in the early twenty‐first century. Our findings suggest that most of the factors that best explained state incarceration rates in the prison boom era lost power once imprisonment stabilized and declined. We find considerable support for the importance of historical contingencies in shaping state‐level imprisonment trends, and our findings highlight the enduring importance of race in explaining incarceration.     

EXTENDING COMITY TO FOREIGN DECREES IN INTERNATIONAL CUSTODY DISPUTES BETWEEN PARENTS IN THE UNITED STATES AND ISLAMIC NATIONS

International custody disputes involving parents and children from Islamic nations and the United States have yielded a spectrum of interpretation of Islamic Shari'a law and the best interests of the child. The lack of a determinative treaty between the United States and all but one Islamic nation has led to an inconsistency of criterion in determining whether to extend comity to a custody decree from a court of an Islamic nation. The domestic law statutes, which determine jurisdiction in these matters, have provisions for international application and recognition of foreign custody decrees. The recognition of custody decrees from the courts of Islamic nations is contingent upon the satisfying of procedural and substantive thresholds. Focusing on the substantive, the author opines that American courts have a responsibility to understand certain aspects of the law, culture, and religion of Islam in order to accurately determine if the threshold has been meet.     

THE EVOLUTION OF THE GOVERNMENT-BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP IN THE UNITED STATES: COLONIAL TIMES TO PRESENT

Everything has a history. At least part of the answer to any question about the contemporary world can come from studying the circumstances that led up to it⃜The more you understand about these past influences, the more you will know about the present subject to which they are related.¹