Amnesties in International Law: The Experience of the Special Court for Sierra Leone

The Special Court for Sierra Leone, a hybrid criminal tribunalestablished to try persons accused of serious crimes duringthe conflict in Sierra Leone, has recently commenced its judicialoperations. Several of the preliminary issues raised by variousdefendants have required the Court to examine the validity ofthe amnesty granted to combatants by the Lomé Peace Agreementand the amnesty's impact upon the Court's jurisdiction to trythe defendants. This article examines the decisions of the Courton the amnesty issue and evaluates the jurisprudence of theCourt with reference to the current status of amnesties in internationallaw.     

家庭暴力致骨折损伤机制分析1例(英文)

本文报道了一名37岁女性遭受丈夫殴打,造成下肢受伤。医院诊断为右髌骨和左胫骨骨折,伤者遂接受了切开复位内固定术。由于丈夫否认对其实施家庭暴力,声称其下肢骨折系交通事故坠落伤。警方遂委托对该女性的损伤进行法医学鉴定。经过审阅X线和CT检查资料,结果为伤者右侧髌骨骨折、左胫骨骨折,以及左眶内侧壁骨折。鉴定意见为髌骨的横向骨折系由肌肉的牵拉暴力引起,左胫骨损伤符合直接和间接外力所致,左眶内侧壁骨折在施暴期间形成的可能性较大。本文阐述了运用影像学技术对家庭暴力案件与交通事故损伤进行鉴别,强调了影像学技术在法医临床鉴定中的应用价值。     

Using Private-Public Linkages to Regulate Environmental Conflicts: The Case of International Construction Contracts

The article takes a pluralistic view of the 'trade-environment' conflict by exploring one of the settings of this conflict: the lex constructionis – international construction law. It seeks to unravel the way in which the unique structural-cultural attributes of this legal domain have affected its environmental (in)sensitivity. The article's main argument in that context is that the contractual tradition of the lex constructionis (as manifested in the standard contracts that dominate this field) and its unique institutional structure, have created a culture of ecological indifference. This culture has important practical consequences because of the deep ecological problematic of international construction projects. The article develops an alternative contractual model, which depicts the construction contract as a semi-political mechanism, rather than a private tool. This conceptual change seeks to break the public/private separation that characterizes the contractual discourse in the international construction market. The article explores, further, whether this alternative contractual vision could be realized in practice, and proposes several implementing modules which could further this goal. While the article explores a particular international regime, its methodology and conclusions – in particular, the political-constitutional interpretation of the contract and the critique of the public/private dichotomy (see sections III.3 and III.4) – should be relevant to the regulation of many other (national or international) environmental dilemmas.     

Jurisdictional Conflicts: A New Approach to the Development of the Legal Professions

This paper sketches a new theoretical approach to the study of professions and uses that approach to analyze differences that have emerged between the American and English legal professions since the late nineteenth century. Earlier studies have generally emphasized professional structure and organization while ignoring work and its control. I argue that control of work is central to professional development. Since work is central and since professions compete for it, interprofessional competition is the determining fact in the history of professions. This paper analyzes the work available to the legal profession, the numbers and types of legal personnel available to do that work, and the various competitors contesting it. Studying in detail complaints of unqualified practice in England (1870–1940) and two American states (1910–50), I locate the types of contested work and the competitors involved, using these to explain important aspects of the two legal prof essions today. Throughout, a variety of theoretical concepts are developed and applied to the particular case. One striking discovery is the contrast in competitors; American lawyers & rsquo;chief competitors were corporations, while British lawyers'chief competitor was the state. I close by evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the particular methodology here used—the study of conflicts—and suggest alternative methods using the same theoretical framework.     

A New Approach to the Interpretation of the French Constitution in Respect to International Conventions: From Hierarchy of Norms to Conflict of Competence

Netherlands International Law Review -     

Markets and Corporate Conflict: A Substitution-Cost Approach to Business Litigation

This paper examines the phenomenon of conflict escalaton in business relations. A theory of when conflict between firms will proceed from informal relationship-preserving norms to more formal and destructive end games involving litigation is developed and tested. The central theoretical claim is that substitution costs serve as an impediment against the escalation of conflict. Data on market concentration and dollar flows between aggregate markets in the economy are used to develop measures of substitution costs. Measures of substitution costs and trade figures are also used to describe power advantages in markets. The theory is tested through a series of regression models. The main findings are that (1) when substitution costs are high, parties are less likely to escalate conflict and (2) asymmetric market relations result in less conflict escalation than symmetric ones. Empirical analysis indicates that substitution costs are related in predictable and meaningful ways to conflict escalation and business litigation.     

国际民事诉讼中的协议管辖原则比较研究

协议管辖是各国民诉法上一项普遍制度 ,但各国立法都对其附有一定的限制性条件 ,协议管辖的效力受到当事人选择法院的形式 ,选择内外国法院 ,和协议性质等方面的影响。本文从条件限制和效力入手 ,对协议管辖若干问题进行分析 ,指出协议管辖虽是解决国际民事诉讼管辖权冲突的一项重要原则 ,但其在一定程度上也会引起管辖权冲突。     

Work-Home Conflict and Domestic Violence: A Test of a Conceptual Model

The relationship between work-home conflict and domestic violence is examined using data from 295 adults, who worked full time and were in serious relationships. Job satisfaction, gender, gender role attitudes, type of employment, and socioeconomic status were examined as predictors of work-family conflict. Backward stepwise regression analysis revealed that job satisfaction was the only predictor of work-home conflict. Regression analyses were again conducted to determine the moderating effects of general well-being, alcohol use, family of origin violence witnessed or experienced, communication skills, and social support on the relationship between work-home conflict and domestic violence. Both family of origin violence witnessed and personally experienced were revealed as moderators of this relationship. The remaining potential moderators were submitted to regression analyses to determine if they might, instead, be mediators. These analyses revealed that negative communication skills and social support mediated the relationship between work-home conflict and domestic violence.     

水资源立法制度研究——以民法的物权为视角

在我国,水资源所有权的主体具有行政主体和民事主体的双重属性。在地区间相邻用水关系中,各地方政府作为民事主体在维护国家整体利益的前提下代表各自所在地的地方利益。遵循大陆法系的传统观念,即将水资源视为土地的孳息,对土地的所有权中含有对地上及地下水资源的所有权,对土地享有利用权者也有权取得对水资源的利用权。因此,我国的水权包括水资源所有权、使用权和地役权。在水资源的利用中,主要表现为水资源使用权人之间的相邻权关系和地役权关系。     

Applying NIBRS Data to the Study of Intimate Partner Violence: Massachusetts as a Case Study

Using data from Massachusetts, we illustrate three ways in which National Incident-BasedReporting System (NIBRS) data can improve the collection of importantinformation on intimate partner violence. First, because NIBRS usesincident-based reporting, data are collected on all crimes associated witheach incident. In our sample of women victimized by an intimate partner, 10%had experienced more than one crime during the incident. Second, NIBRSinvolves expanded data collection on the offender–victim relationship, aswell as reporting about additional offenses. For female victims, partnerswere more likely than nonpartners to commit the crimes of simple assault,intimidation, and aggravated assault. For crimes involving male victims, anaquaintance was most likely to be the offender. Third, NIBRS data allow usto connect information about the incident, the offender(s), and thevictim(s). Our data indicted that several victim- offender-, and incident-relatedvariables were risk factors for injury, including victims ethnicity,offenders relationship to the victim, offender's use of a weapon, whether or not thecase was cleared, type of crime committed, and whether or not drugs and/or alcoholwere involved in the incident. Although there are several limitations to NIBRSdata, its potential usefulness to the study of intimate partner violence deserves furtherattention.     

Variations in traditional marriage and family forms: Responses to the changing pattern of family-based social security systems in Sierra Leone and Kenya

A multitude of family forms can be found in African societies, and the functions we associate with the European term “family” do not necessarily belong to any specific form. The variety in the formation of different residence, consumption, and production units becomes obvious through the analysis of the social structure of individual b peoples, as well as through inter-ethnic comparisons. This article focuses on the differences between various types of social organization of an East- and a West-African people, and analyzes the complexities of and changes in family structures in the relevant socio-political and economic contexts. It also looks at the impact of the introduction of public administration and the commercialization of agriculture on social dynamics and family forms.     

Multilingual Sentiment Analysis: A New Approach to Measuring Conflict in Legislative Speeches

Comparative scholars of legislative politics continue to face the challenge of measuring a key theoretical concept: conflict at the level of legislative bills. We address this challenge with a multilingual sentiment‐based approach and show that such a measure can effectively capture different types of parliamentary conflict. We also demonstrate that an automated translation of the dictionary yields valid results and therefore greatly facilitates comparative work on legislatures. Our applications show that a sentiment approach recovers government‐opposition dynamics in various settings. The use of a simple, translatable sentiment dictionary opens up the possibility of studying legislative conflict in bill debates across languages and countries.     

Law, Politics, and Violence Against Women: A Case Study of Palestinians in Israel

Major controversies regarding the value of legal and policy reforms have accompanied research on wife battering and social reactions to it. The present study examines the utility of law enforcement and emphasizes the relationship between gender, culture, and politics. It points to the difficulties arising from the shift from private, traditional methods of dealing with violence against women to a more public approach characterized by intervention of the state and the criminal justice system. In this connection, it was hypothesized that enforcement of the Israeli Law Against Family Violence among the oppressed and discriminated Palestinian minority generates new conflicts within the group, exacerbating control and abuse and re-victimizing women. Social control agents (formal and informal) who were interviewed about their perceptions and attitudes regarding the applicability of such a law pointed to obstacles created by sociocultural variables, the political legacy and procedural barriers. An attempt is made to show that application of the law without prior preparation and understanding of its sociocultural and political ramifications may produce adverse effects at the victim's expense. That is, unless power struggles, cultural pressures, and political priorities are taken into consideration, criminal strategies that seek to eliminate abuse may prove to be dangerous.     

Correction to Tzidony and Ravreby (1992): A Statistical Approach to Drug Sampling: A Case Study

Abstract:  In 1992, Tzidony and Ravreby presented a confidence interval for the total weight of a seizure of illicit drugs present in a population. Their approach has subsequently been applied by several researchers in the field. The formula on which their approach is based does, however, not fully take into account the proportion of drug units found in the sample. In this paper, a modification is presented that consistently uses the correct sample size in all terms of the confidence interval, based on the proportion of drug units found in the sample. The effective sample size is smaller than the original sample size, and this should consequently be accounted for in the estimation of the standard error and in the corresponding t -distribution. The new confidence interval is again based on the assumption that the proportion of drug units in the population is known after sampling.     

Evaluating Police Reform in Post‐Conflict Nations: A Solomon Islands Case Study

The process of post‐conflict police reform has been the subject of serious scholarly attention, principally driven by the sense that police institutional rebuilding cannot be achieved quickly and that the police are only one part of the wider justice sector. However, police reform is a complicated process, and the cultural, institutional, and political challenges to effective development are immense. The process of reform is further complicated through the inherent difficulty in evaluating the impact of a development programme on police performance. This study uses an outcomes‐ or evidence‐based police measurement system called ‘Police Reform Indicators and Measurement Evaluation’ (PRIME) to assess the performance of the police capacity‐building programme and other improvement projects that have commenced since the deployment of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) in July 2003. The application of the process to the Royal Solomon Islands Police (RSIP) identified that, although there are a number of areas that are still to be strengthened or rebuilt, the Participating Police Force (PPF) has been able to implement capacity development programmes that have resulted in the advancement of the RSIP towards a professional police service. The application of PRIME to the RSIP and the intervening police mission demonstrates that it could be used as a tool to evaluate police reform efforts in similar post‐conflict nations such as Iraq and Afghanistan.