日本的法医学鉴定体制

日本的法医学鉴定直到明治维新以前，一直受到中国法医学的影响，仅仅停留在尸表检验水平上。明治维新以来，法医学作为医学的分科正式得以承认。明治七年（1874年）东京警视厅的裁判医学校聘请外籍教师系统地传授法医学，开创了近代日本法医学教育之先驱。明治十五年（1882年），留学德国、奥地利归国的片山国嘉博士接替外籍教师，成为第一个从事法医学教育的日本人。明治甘一年（1888年），片山国嘉在东京大学医学部创设裁判医学教研室。从此，在日本的各主要大学相继开设了法医学课程及设立起法医学教研室。明治甘四年（1891年），裁判医…     

中国法医学家──吴家馼教授

中国法医学家──吴家馼教授吴家教授，１９２６年生于云南省昆明市，１９５２年毕业于湖南湘雅医学院，１９５３年结业于南京大学医学院法医学师资训练班，后在四川医学院从事法医学教学、科研和法医学实践至今。曾任华西医科大学首任法医学系主任。现为中国法医学会常务...     

新书介绍

<正>《中国法医学史》黄瑞亭、陈新山编著。该书采用史志结合的方式叙述了我国自战国时代直至现代的法医学发展历史,对不同朝代(时期)法医学发展、检验制度、案例以及重要事件进行全面阐述;对历代180位对法医学发展有影响的人物进行详细介绍。是法医学或史学、政法、律师、医学等领域工作者和相关在     

循证医学与循证法医学

循证医学已经在医学领域迅猛发展起来,本文在简介了循证医学之后提出了循证法医学的概念,指出循证法医学应该得到重视和发展。     

《中国法医学史》

正黄瑞亭、陈新山编著的《中国法医学史》即将由华中科技大学出版社出版。该书叙述了我国自战国时期至现代的法医学发展历史,共36万字,附图67幅,对不同朝代(时期)法医学发展进行深入研究;对不同时期的检验制度、检验案例、法医成就以及重要事件进行了阐述;对180位历代对法医学发展有影响和有贡献的人物进行详细介绍。所选古今人物,主要以法医人物为主,也选入了医学、立法、文学、历史等方面对法医学有影响或有贡献的人物。本书有别于其他法医学史书的一个重要特点是     

中国法医学简史

<正> 本文分四个部分介绍了中国法医学发展简史。 1.古代法医学发源于战国时代(公元前475～221年)。其代表作是《封诊式》,其中介绍了不少法医学检验的案例; 2.我国古代法医学的形成期在唐宋代(618～1279年)。古代法医学的主要标志,即     

中国法医学司法鉴定体制的问题及改革

法医学是为法律服务的医学科学。随着医学和自然科学的不断发展和提高,法医学的理论得到充实,研究方法日趋精确,检测技术也随之更新,但是法医学鉴定的发展却受到了制度体制等方面的制约。随着我国司法制度改革的不断深入,我国现行的法医学司法鉴定体制已经越来越不适应司法实践的需要,甚至已严重阻碍了司法工作和司法改革,因此,必须对现行体制进行改革,以使之适应当前社会发展的需要。本文拟分析中国法医学司法鉴定体制的弊端,从而提出可行的改革意见。     

法医学起源研究

正法医学的历史是自然科学和法学相互融合的过程。探寻法医学的起源,必须找到自然科学和法学的融合之处,这两者相结合之初,就是法医学的诞生之时。法医学起源阶段经历了漫长的时间,本文主要介绍了十九世纪前的法医学起源及历史性事件。     

林几的中国法医学史观探析

在林几的学术生涯中,中国法医学史是其研究的重要领域,并取得一系列研究成果,进而形成的法医学史观,构成了林几法医学术思想的重要组成部分。林几的中国法医学史观主要包括:以比较法医学的视野研究中国法医学发展史;运用实验法医学的方法鉴别中国古代法医学的精华和糟粕;古代法医学的现代转型具有必要性和迫切性;实现法医学的现代转型,应注意科学总结中外法医学发展史的经验教训。这些法医学史观对于全面理解中国古代法医学兴衰之路,以及推动民国时期中国法医学的现代转型具有重要的理论和实践意义。     

中国法医学家──刘明俊教授

刘明使教授是西安医科大学法医学系创始人之一，她1928年出生于湖南省长沙市，1946年进入湘雅医学院（现湖南医科大学）学习，1951年在南京大学医学院全国第一届法医高级师资班进修，1953年7月由中央卫生部统一分配至西安医科大学任教，先后担任西安医科大学法医学系法医病理学牧研室主任，法医物证学教研室主任，兼．任“中国法医学杂志”编委、副主任，“法医学杂志”编委，中国法医学会理本，陕西省法医学会常务理事，陕西省高级人民法院、西安市检察院、陕西省渭南地区中级人民法院技术顾问，享受国家突出贡献专家特殊政府津贴。刘明使…     

Bhartṛhari and Maṇḍana on Avidyā

The concept of avidyā is one of the central categories in the Advaita of Śaṇkara and Maṇḍana. Shifting the focus from māyā, interpreted either as illusion or as the divine power, this concept brings ignorance to the forefront in describing duality and bondage. Although all Advaitins accept avidyā as a category, its scope and nature is interpreted in multiple ways. Key elements in Maṇḍana’s philosophy include the plurality of avidyā, individual selves as its substrate and the Brahman as its field (viṣaya), and the distinction in avidyā between non-apprehension and misapprehension. A closer investigation shows that Maṇḍana is directly influenced by Bhartṛhari’s linguistic non-dualism in developing the concept of avidyā. This study also compares other key constituents such as vivartta and pariṇāma that are relevant to the analysis of avidyā. As the concept of counter-image (pratibimba) emerges as a distinct stream of Advaita subsequent to Maṇḍana, this study also compares the application of pratibimba in the writings of Bhartṛhari and Maṇḍana.     

Unraveling the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Kāvyaprakāśa</Emphasis>: Jayadeva Pīyūṣavarṣa’s idiosyncratic sequence of topics in the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Candrāloka</Emphasis>

In his twelfth century alaṃkāraśāstra, the Candrāloka, Jayadeva Pīyūṣavarṣa reverses the sequence of topics found in Mammaṭa’s Kāvyapr-akāśa, an earlier and immensely popular work. With such a structural revisionism, Jayadeva asserts the autonomy of his own work and puts forth an ambitious critique of earlier approaches to literary analysis. Jayadeva investigates the technical and aesthetic components of poetry in the first part of the Candrāloka, prior to his formal semantic investigations in the latter half of the text, thus suggesting that aesthetic evaluations of poetry beneficially inform scientific investigations of language. Jayadeva’s organization of his chapters on the semantic operations, moreover, intimates that the study of suggestive and metaphoric functions of language clarifies our understanding of denotation, which is conventionally understood to be the primary and direct path of verbal designation.     

The Supreme Array Scripture: A New Interpretation of the Title “Gaṇḍavyūha-sūtra”

This article argues for a new interpretation of the Sanskrit compound gaṇḍa-vyūha as it is used in the common title of the Mahāyāna text the Gaṇḍavyūha-Sūtra.The author begins by providing a brief history of the sūtra’s appellations in Chinese and Tibetan sources. Next, the meanings of gaṇḍa (the problematic member of the compound) are explored. The author proposes that contemporary scholars have overlooked a meaning of gaṇḍa occurring in some compounds, wherein gaṇḍa can mean simply “great,” “big” or “massive.” This general sense is particularly common in the compound gaṇda-śaila (a “massive rock” or “boulder”) and is found in such texts as the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, the Harivaṃśa and the Harṣacarita. Following the discussion of Gaṇḍa, the author examines the term vyūha (“array”) as it is used in the Gaṇḍavyūha-sūtra. The article concludes with the suggestion that a more appropriate translation of the Gaṇḍavyūha-sūtra would be “The Supreme array Scripture.”     

Evaluation of six presumptive tests for blood, their specificity, sensitivity, and effect on high molecular-weight DNA

Luminol, leuchomalachite green, phenolphthalein, Hemastix, Hemident, and Bluestar are all used as presumptive tests for blood. In this study, the tests were subjected to dilute blood (from 1:10,000 to 1:10,000,000), many common household substance, and chemicals. Samples were tested for DNA to determine whether the presumptive tests damaged or destroyed DNA. The DNA loci tested were D2S1338 and D19S433. Leuchomalachite green had a sensitivity of 1:10,000, while the remaining tests were able to detect blood to a dilution of 1:100,000. Substances tested include saliva, semen, potato, tomato, tomato sauce, tomato sauce with meat, red onion, red kidney bean, horseradish, 0.1 M ascorbic acid, 5% bleach, 10% cupric sulfate, 10% ferric sulfate, and 10% nickel chloride. Of all the substances tested, not one of the household items reacted with every test; however, the chemicals did. DNA was recovered and amplified from luminol, phenolphthalein, Hemastix, and Bluestar, but not from leuchomalachite green or Hemident.     

Monks Who Have Sex: Pārājika Penance in Indian Buddhist Monasticisms

In the study of Buddhism it is commonly accepted that a monk or nun who commits a pārājika offence is permanently and irrevocably expelled from the Buddhist monastic order. This view is based primarily on readings of the Pāli Vinaya. With the exception of the Pāli Vinaya, however, all other extant Buddhist monastic law codes (Dharmaguptaka, Mahāsāṅghika, Mahīśāsaka, Sarvāstivāda and Mūlasarvāstivāda) contain detailed provisions for monks and nuns who commit pārājikas but nevertheless wish to remain within the saṅgha. These monastics are not expelled. Rather, they are granted a special status known as the śikṣādattaka. In this paper I explore the rules. concerning pārājika penance and the śikṣādattaka with specific regard to monastic celibacy. Given that five out of six extant law codes recognise this remarkable accommodation to the rule of celibacy, I argue that we must look to Vinayas other than the Pāli Vinaya if we are to arrive at a nuanced and representative view of Indian Buddhist monasticism.

Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet. Augustine of Hippo (354–430 C.E.)

     

Family breakdown and the ‘Welfare Child’ in 19th and 20th century Britain

This article traces new cycles of interest in past children as distinct from past childhood. Recent work highlighting that a conceptualisation of childhood existed even in periods with few written records closes the chapter begun by Philippe Ariès in 1960. Instead, there has been a new surge of interest in children on the edges of family life, as well as children in similarly liminal positions between the worlds of adults and children: runaways, delinquents and orphans. Several themes in the literature are identified, based on the conflicting ideas of ‘body/mind’, ‘victim/threat’, ‘needs/rights’. It is noted that researchers are using more imaginative ways of reaching the lived experience of children than the family or institutional framework, and that an increasing link is drawn between historical and modern concerns such as child abuse and the care of ‘at risk’ children.     

Vedic Language and Vaiṣṇava Theology:Madhva’s Use of Nirukta in his Ṛgbhāṣya

This article explores the way in which Madhva (1238–1317), the founder of the Dvaita Vedānta system of Hindu thought, reformulates the traditional exegetic practice of nirukta or “word derivation” to validate his pluralistic, hierarchical, and Vaiṣṇava reading of the Ṛgvedic hymns. Madhva’s Ṛgbhāṣya (RB) is conspicuous for its heavy reliance on and unique deployment of this exegetical tactic to validate several key features of his distinctive theology. These features include his belief in Viṣṇu’s unique possession of all perfect attributes (guṇaparipūrṇatva) and His related conveyability by all Vedic words (sarvaśabdavācyatva). Such an understanding of Vedic language invokes the basic nirukta presupposition that words are eternally affiliated with the meanings they convey. But it is also based onMadhva’s access to a lexicon entitled Vyāsa’s Nirukti with which his critics and perhaps even his commentators seem to be unfamiliar.While the precise status of this text is the subject of ongoing debate, Madhva’s possession of special insight into the sacred canon is established in part by his unique claim to be an avatāra of the wind god Vāyu and a direct disciple of Viṣṇu Himself in the form of Vyāsa₁. Thus, Madhva’s use of nirukta invokes his personal charisma to challenge not only conventional understandings of the hymns but traditional exegetic norms. Madhva’s provision of an alternative tradition of nirukta provoked sectarian debate throughout the Vijayanagara period over the extent to which one could innovate in established practices of reading the Veda. Articulating the Veda’s precise authority was a key feature of Brahmin debates during this period and reflects both the empire’s concern with promoting a shared religious ideology and the competition among rival Brahman sects for imperial patronage that this concern elicited. By looking at how two of Madhva’s most important commentators (the 14^th-century Jayatīrtha and the 17^th-century Rāghavendra) sought to defend his niruktis, this article will explore how notions of normative nirukta were articulated in response to Madhva’s deviations. At the same time, however, examining Madhva’s commentators’ defense of his niruktis also demonstrates the extent to which Madhva actually adhered to selected exegetic norms. This reveals that discomfort with Madhva’s particular methods for deriving words stemmed, in part, from a more general ambivalence towards this exegetical tactic whose inherent open-endedness threatened to undermine the fixity of the canon’s very substance: its language. Vyāsa’s Nirukti is one of several ”unknown sources” cited in Madhva’s commentaries whose exact status continues to be debated. Some scholars (e.g. Rao, Sharma, Siauve) maintain that these texts are part of a now lost Pāṅcarātra tradition that Madhva is attempting to preserve. This may be true for many of these citations. However, in addition to claiming to be both an avatāra of Vāyu and Viṣṇu-as-Vyāsa’s student, Madhva states in several places (e.g., VTN 42, RB 162) that the canon has suffered loss during transmission and that only Viṣṇu can reveal it in its entirety. Thus, it is possible that Madhva intends texts like Vyāsa’s Nirukti to be viewed as part of an ongoing and corrective revelation, a notion that is compatible with many Vaiṣṇava traditions (Halbfass, 1991: 4).     

Policing Outlawed Desire: ‘Homocriminality’ in Beat Spaces in Australia

Drawing on interview data of gay men who have had their behavior in public spaces scrutinised by agents of the law for signs deviance, this article explores the historical characteristics of police animosity towards such conduct in Australia. This entails examining encounters between police and gay men who pursue desire in ‘beat’ (or ‘cottage’ to the use the UK term) spaces. Exploring why these outlaw gay male subjects are so abject and troubling to the law, the discussion documents how law’s desire to regulate gay men plays out in the masquerade of ‘plain-clothes’ agent provocateur operations where police entrap gay men by mimicking gay bodily appearances, gestures and mannerisms. This article also examines how police regulation of gay desire functions as a form of violence that delimits expressions of same sex desire in public spaces. A key theme that underpins the analyses in this paper is that the policing of desire in ‘beat’ spaces helps produce qualities of illicitness and dangerousness and that this, in turn, fuels the circuit of desire at play between gay men and agents of the law.

Interrupting the Myth of the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Partage</Emphasis>: Reflections on Sovereignty and Sacrifice in the work of Nancy,Agamben and Derrida

Agamben traces the bio-political essence of modern politics to the non-sacrificial killing of Homo Sacer in Roman law. Nancy, on the other hand, links the history of Western politics to the fundamental logic of sacrifice in Western metaphysics. He nevertheless contemplates the possibility that Western societies may finally have arrived at the threshold of a non-sacrificial existence. Derrida seeks to resist the sacrificial logic of Western metaphysics and politics, but nevertheless appears to accept it as an irreducible fact of human co-existence. Unlike Nancy, he envisages no actual or actualised beyond beyond the realm of sacrificial metaphysics and politics. He thus can be said to interrupt Nancy’s ‘myth’ of a non-sacrificial partage. This article compares these three philosophical stances in the hope of throwing more light on the role of sacrifice in the law and politics of our time. Professor of Law, Rand Afrikaans University. Conversations with Ann van Sevenant, Carol Clarkson, Louise du Toit, Peter Fitzpatrick, Costas Douzinas and Adam Thurschwell gave impetus to many of the themes developed in this article. Concomitant shortcomings and inaccuracies, as always, are mine.