FUNDING JUVENILE DEPENDENCY MEDIATION THROUGH LEGISLATION

The legislative process is a dynamic but intimidating journey. For the uninitiated seeker the road through the legislative labyrinth can be fraught with hidden dangers and unexpected challenges. This article presents Los Angeles County's experience in obtaining funding for mediation of child abuse cases in juvenile dependency proceedings through legislation.     

EIGHT KEYS TO PASSING PARENT EDUCATION LEGISLATION

In May 1996, Domestic Relations Education on Children's Issues, House Bill 2063, was signed into law by the governor of Arizona after successfully passing through both houses of the Arizona legislature. This new law made it mandatory for all new divorcing parents and unmarried parents with custody/access disputes to attend a domestic relations parent information program that focused on the needs of their children. This article documents some of the key steps for passage of this type of legislation, with illustrations from Arizona's experience. The process began in November 1994, and it took two legislative sessions before the bill became a law.     

THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN ITALIAN LEGISLATION

The aim of the present paper is to highlight the unsatisfactory state of affairs obtaining in present-day Italy in relation to the use of gender-inclusive language in legislative texts. After recalling some of the main issues brought to the fore by Alma Sabatini et al.’s Report of 1987, which showed conclusively, through an analysis of the print media, that women were marginalized both in terms of gender usage and image, the paper focuses on the language of the four main Codes and of other, shorter legislative texts, showing how the masculine gender is invariably privileged, with the feminine being sidelined and/or ignored. Subliminally, this type of style relegates women to second-class citizens status.     

GUN CONTROL LEGISLATION: Impact and Ideology

This analysis attempts to measure the impact of state laws upon the rates of gun violence. While controlling for several standard social phenomena and using two different statistical techniques, it appears that laws governing the use of handguns in the various states have little effect on the rates of gun crime. It is suggested that the possible reason for such ineffectiveness is not necessasrily the nature of the solutions (laws), but rather the misunderstanding of the problem (gun violence) by policy implementers.