Forensic applications of stable isotope analysis: Case studies of the origins of water in mislabeled beer and contaminated diesel fuel

This paper describes the use of oxygen (¹⁸O) isotope analysis of water contained in two different materials — beer and diesel fuel — involved in the resolution of two separate cases. In the first case study, it was possible to demonstrate that a sample of beer labelled as premium brand in fact belonged to a cheap brand. The second case related to the contamination of diesel fuel from a service station. The diesel fuel contained visible amounts of water, which caused vehicles that had been filled up with it to become defective. For insurance purposes, it was necessary to determine the source of water. The δ¹⁸O values for the water of nearly all samples of diesel was close to the δ¹⁸O of local tap water at the filling station.     

The Short-Lived Influence of the Napoleonic Civil Code in 19th Century Greece

During the Greek War of Independence (1821–1827) from the Ottomans—which had a nationalistic and liberal character—and for the first decades after the liberation, a number of liberal French-educated politicians and scholars attempted unsuccessfully to introduce the Napoleonic Civil Code (or some clone of it) as the Greek Civil Code. Despite the fertile political and intellectual ground for such an introduction, they failed to achieve their goal due to the temporary introduction of Justinian's Roman law as the Greek civil law. This led the Greek academic community to Pandektenrecht and the predominance of the 19th century German legal theory (boosted by its organized propagation on the part of a number of German-educated legal scholars).     

TheContaduria Mayor de Cuentas at the time of Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile (1474–1516)

TheContaduría Mayor de Cuentas of Castile—that is, the Audit Board of the Accounts of Castile—is one of the earliest supreme state auditing institutions of which we have a documentary record. This article discusses what we know about the organization and functions of theContaduría Mayor de Cuentas of Castile on the threshold of the modern age, in the hopes of finding some elements that can be incorporated into, and so enrich, our theoretical approach to the economic functions of supreme auditing institutions.     

Medicalization and social justice

Most social justice critiques of medical care focus upon the allocation of extant, but scarce, resources. In contrast to that focus, this article explores the preallocative arena of factors which shape the supply and availability of medical care. We identify four such factors: (1)medicalization — the tendency to regard as biologically caused various human problems which were in earlier eras ignored or attributed to other causes; (2)social inclusion — the bringing of economically deprived and socially marginal groups into participation in the medical care system; (3)biomedical transcendence — the elevation of biomedically derived concepts of human function into a social and personal world view; and (4)health absolutism — the ideology which holds individuals accountable for their own health and which, contrary to the thrust of the other factors, deemphasizes access and social equity for professionally provided medical care. While these forces all enhance the place of health as a social value, it is by no means certain that they will lead to a society which is more medically just. The article concludes with an appeal for critical analysis of the processes which shape both the medical care system and the broad social concern with medical care.     

On the Complexity and Accuracy of Geographic Profiling Strategies

Geographic profilers have access to a repertoire of strategies for predicting a serial offenders home location. These strategies range in complexity—some involve more calculations to implement than others—and the assumption often made is that more complex strategies will outperform simpler strategies. In the present study, we tested the relationship between the complexity and accuracy of 11 strategies. Data were crime site and home locations of 16 UK residential burglars who had committed 10 or more crimes each. The results indicated that strategy complexity was not positively related to accuracy. This was also found to be the case across tasks that ranged in complexity (where complexity was determined by the number of crimes used to make a prediction). Implications for police policies and procedures, as well as our understanding of human decision-making, are discussed.To whom correspondence should be addressed. Phone: +1-709-737-3101; E-mail: bsnook@play.psych.mun.ca     

Parental influences on deviant behavior in early adolescence: A logistic response analysis of age- and gender-differentiated effects

We used data from a 601-family longitudinal study to estimate the separate and combined effects of three risk factors—parental psychiatric disorders (principally depression and substance abuse), supportive parent-child communications, and household income—on the development of deviant behavior in boys and girls aged 11–14. Using logistic response models, we concluded that having fewer than two supportive parents generally increases the risk of deviant behavior, but more so for boys than for girls. This effect is amplified when one or more parent(s) has a chronic mental disorder, but thecombination of fewer than two supportive parentsand one psychiatrically impaired parent has a particularly marked effect on girls. Moreover, older children's behavior is affected more dramatically by parental mental disorders, especially among girls; 13 to 14-year-old girls with both parental risk factors are virtually as deviant as male agemates with both risks. Each one of these effects is present regardless of family income level; however, net of these risks, household income is negatively associated with deviant behavior—a 10% increase in income is associated with a 1.3% decrease in adolescent deviance.     

Persons and available identities: Gender in Hegel's philosophy of law

Conclusion There is certainly a paradox in all this but it is not that of the constitution and the counterfactual beliefs it demands of us. It is rather that in the absence of Hegel's inspiration and of the actual closure on the dialectic of freedom that justifies his claims, his accomplishment, the logical reconstruction of modern Western ideas of right, would not have been possible. Some will cry irony in the face of this paradox and well they might. My argument,vis a vis Hegel isad hominem. But it is not made for the purpose of irony. It is made in the hope of recovering Hegel's sense of the ambiguity of tautology from the straitjacket of our legal and ethical thought. I would hope then to use this paradox to subvert anidée fixe — that right is right — and develop, from the lives of those whom the constitution has stripped bare, our understanding of its wrong.     

Judicial Career Incentives and Court Performance: An Empirical Study of the German Labour Courts of Appeal

This paper examines how the organization of a civil-law judiciary—the German labour court system—shapes court performance. It is argued that civil-law judiciaries can be considered as internal labour markets in which the main incentive derives from career opportunities. Resulting hypotheses are tested on data for nine German Labour Courts of Appeal (Landesarbeitsgerichte) over the period 1980–1998. Two performance measures are computed: the confirmation rate and a productivity measure. The confirmation rate captures how often decisions are upheld in an appeal at the Federal Labour Court. Court productivity is measured by a score derived via data envelopment analysis (DEA) and includes as outputs the number of finished cases and the number of published decisions. Regression analyses show: Courts employing more judges with a Ph.D. are more productive, but write decisions that are less often confirmed by the Federal Labour Court. Courts employing judges with higher ex ante promotion probabilities are less productive and write decisions that are less often confirmed.JEL Classification: J45, K31, M12     

Franz Böhm and the suggestive force of the undefined

Franz Böhm is seen as a cofounder of the Freiburg School of economists and of neoliberalism. As a member of the German Bundestag his influence was strongest on the development of German competition policy. Böhm's writings are widely read and quoted. Even today they are regarded as the obligatory foundation on which economic and systems policy is built. Analysis of his opinions and comparison with other neoliberal views—for example, those of Walter Eucken and Ludwig Erhard—do, however, reveal major differences of opinion. A good number of Böhm's opinions are now practically taken for granted as being the basis of economic policy. Yet taken in the context of strict market economics, some are not in any way acceptable.     

A Real Options-Driven Theory of Business Incubation

This article employs real options-theoretic reasoning to develop a theory of business incubation. This theory seeks to predict and explain how business incubators and the process of business incubation increase the likelihood that new ventures will survive the early stages of development. It conceptualizes the incubator as an entrepreneurial firm that sources and macro-manages the innovation process within emerging organizations, infusing these organizations with resources at various developmental stage-gates while containing the cost of their potential failure. The incubator is the unit of analysis while incubation outcomes—measured in terms of incubatee growth and financial performance at the time of incubator exit—provide indicators of success. Our model of the incubation process and specification of the range of possible incubation outcomes offer implications for managerial practice and policy-making vis-à-vis incubator management and good entrepreneurial failure.     

Brief Research Report: Age Factors Affecting the Believability of Repressed Memories of Child Sexual Assault

Two experiments investigated how mock jurors react to testimony involving claims of a repressed memory in a case involving child sexual assault. Participants read a fictional civil trial summary presented in one of three conditions: (a) immediate condition—the alleged victim testified immediately after the incident; (b) repressed condition—the alleged victim reported the assault 1–39 years later, after remembering it for the first time; or (c) not-repressed condition—the alleged victim reported the assault 1–39 years later, but the memory of the assault had been present for those years. When there was any type of delayed reporting, either the age of the alleged victim at the time of the assault was constant and her age at reporting varied (Experiment 1) or the age of the alleged victim at the time of the assault varied and her age at reporting remained constant (Experiment 2). The results showed that (1) a delay in reporting an incident adversely affected believability of the alleged victim and led to fewer rulings in support of the plaintiff compared to reporting it immediately, (2) longer delays in reporting generally led to lower alleged victim believability and fewer decisions in support of the plaintiff than shorter delays, (3) the age of the alleged victim at the time of the incident was a critical variable in determining belief of the alleged victim, and (4) men generally rated believability of the alleged victim lower and ruled in favor of the plaintiff less often than women. The results are discussed in terms of the psychosocial factors affecting the perception of delayed reporting in a child sexual assault trial.     

REACH revisited—Der Verordnungsvorschlag zur Reform des Chemikalienrechts als Beispiel einer neuen europäischen Vorsorgestrategie

Die europäisch motivierte Reform des Chemikalienrechts hat in den Medien zunächst für einige Aufmerksamkeit gesorgt; in der Folgezeit wurde es jedoch immer stiller um dieses weitreichende—und daher mit erheblichen Konsequenzen für die gesamte Industrie verbundene—Reformprojekt. Der Beitrag befasst sich mit dem im Anschluss an das vieldiskutierte Weißbuch1 erlassenen Verordnungsvorschlag (VV) der Kommission2. Dieser Vorschlag, dem—trotz Kritik im Einzelnen—konzeptionell große Durchsetzungschancen eingeräumt werden, unterwirft das Chemikalienrecht einer neuen Vorsorgestrategie, die eine teilweise Beweislastumkehr vorsieht. * Christian Calliess ist Inhaber des Lehrstuhls für Öffentliches Recht und Europarecht an der Universität Göttingen sowie Direktor des dortigen Instituts für Völkerrecht und des Instituts für Landwirtschaftsrecht; Martina Lais ist Doktorandin und Wiss. Mitarbeiterin am Lehrstuhl.     

The Believability of Hearsay Testimony in a Child Sexual Assault Trial

Two experiments investigated how mock jurors react to hearsay testimony in a case involving child sexual assault. Participants read a fictional criminal trial summary involving the sexual assault of a 4-(Experiment 2 only), 6-, or 14-year-old female. The summaries were presented in one of four conditions: (a) child condition—the alleged victim testified; (b) hearsay condition—the alleged victim did not testify, but an adult hearsay witness did testify; (c) multiple condition (Experiment 1 only)—both the alleged victim and the adult hearsay witness testified; and (d) no-witness condition—neither the alleged victim nor the hearsay witness testified. The hearsay testimony was believed to a considerable degree, and this testimony led to an increase in the perceived guilt of the defendant. Moreover, these results were comparable to those of conditions in which the alleged victim testified. The results are discussed in terms of the psychosocial factors affecting the perception of hearsay testimony in a child sexual assault trial.     

Moral theories of torts: Their scope and limits: Part I

One approach to legal theory is to provide some sort of rational reconstruction of all or of a large body of the common law. For philosophers of law this has usually meant trying to rationalize a body of law under one or another principle of justice. This paper explores the efforts of the leading tort theorists to provide a moral basis — for the law of torts. The paper is divided into two parts. In the first part I consider and reject the view that tort law is best understood as falling either within the ambit of the principle of retributive justice, a comprehensive theory of moral responsibility, or an ideal of fairness inherent in the idea that one should impose on others only those risks others impose on one. The second part of the paper distinguishes among various conceptions of corrective or compensatory justice and considers arguments — including previous arguments by the author himself — to the effect that tort law is best understood as rooted in principles of corrective justice. This paper argues that although the use of principles of justice may render defensible many (but by no means all) of the claims to repair and to liability recognized in torts, it cannot explain why we have adopted a tort system as the approach to vindicating those claims. Some other principle — probably not one of justice — is needed to explain why it is that the victims claims to repair is satisfied by having his losses shifted to his injurer — rather than through some other means of doing so. The paper concludes that the law of torts cannot be understood — in the sense of being given a rational reconstruction — under any one principle of morality.     

Developing an Empirically Based Typology of Delinquent Youths

A number of personality-based typologies have been developed to differentiatejuvenile delinquents. Some of these typologies have been faulted for theirmethod of construction, for their failure to provide outcome measures, orbecause they are dated and have not been retested with more recent delinquentpopulations. This paper describes efforts to develop an empirically derived,inductive typology of juvenile delinquents that can be used in appliedsettings to facilitate a better understanding of program outcomes and enableplacement authorities better to predict program effectiveness. The dataemployed in the analysis come from an outcome-based informationsystem—ProDES—that has been operational for more than4 years in Philadelphia. Unlike many such databases, ProDES was jointlydesigned by researchers and practitioners to serve a large system ofcommunity and institutional programs. Included among the outcome measuresare four standardized, self-reported personality scales that comprise 14subscales and form the basis of the typology. This paper describes themethods used to construct the typology, the substance of the classificationsystem, and its potential utility for program evaluation.     

Analyzing conflict severity: Predictions of distributive justice theory for the two-subgroup case

This paper formulates a model of conflict based on the theory of distributive justice. The model begins with a condition we termcleavage: There is a perfect correlation between the distribution of a valued good and a grouping variable such as race, ethnicity, or sex. Cleavage sets the stage for conflict. Two key elements are specified—conflict severity and subgroup effectiveness—and their mathematical representation described. The paper analyzes the special case where the conflict involves two subgroups, and focuses on conflict severity. Analysis identifies several sources of variability in conflict severity: the relative sizes of the two subgroups; whether the advantaged subgroup is the smaller or larger; whether the collectivity values personal attributes (such as noble birth or athletic skill) or instead values material possessions; and the extent and shape of inequality in the distribution of material possessions. Results indicate, among other things, that, in a collectivity which values personal attributes, the smaller is the disadvantaged subgroup, the greater is the conflict severity. In contrast, in a collectivity which values material wealth, the direction of the effect of subgroup relative size on conflict severity depends on the distributional form of the valued material possessions. Results also indicate that, for given subgroup relative size, conflict severity is higher the greater the inequality in the distribution of valued material possessions.     

Women's law: methods,problems, values

Conclusion The five areas of women's law that I have chosen to focus — money law, housewives' law, paid-work law, criminal law and birth law — represent different coordinating perspectives on women's legal position. These perspectives could certainly have been supplemented by others, for example, discrimination law. The feminist perspective can also be used in several traditional areas of legal science e.g., social insurance law, tax law, family law etc. I, however, have chosen a problematic other than the traditional one: first, to underline the importance of theory through the development ofconcepts anddiscussions of values in women's studies in general; and second, to indicate the especial fields in focus within the Institute of Women's Law at the University of Oslo. Through the perspective discussed in this article we think that we are on our way to describe, explain and understand women's legal status. The fundamental aim is to improve women's position both in law and society.     

Distributive and procedural justice in the workplace

The interrelatedness of procedural and distributive justice has implications for organizational practice, especially in the area of performance appraisal. I explore these implications by first describing how procedures can influence perceptions of distributive justice: Procedural improprieties can bring to mind the possibility that a more just outcome might have been obtained if only more acceptable practices had been followed. Next I discuss a second form of interrelatedness — how distributive consequences can influence perceptions of procedural justice — by suggesting that the fairness of a procedure can be assessed in terms of its expected-value (typical or most probable) outcome. These points are illustrated by a discussion of howvoice, or the opportunity for employees to contribute information during the performance appraisal process, can affect both appraisal accuracy and perception of fairness.