产品责任:北美视角的比较法评论

美国采纳严格产品责任的主要原因是:早期的法律不能给消费者提供充分的保护;调整保证的法律不是从消费者的角度出发的;美国的社会福利很大程度上不如其他西方国家。当今美国主要对于设计和信息性缺陷适用过失责任制度,严格产品制度仅适用于制造缺陷和非制造缺陷的销售者。欧洲和其他法域的严格产品制度远比美国严格。各种结构化和程序化的事务赋予美国公民更多诉至法院的机会。     

Kant and the Transnational Order: Towards a European Community Jurisprudence*

Abstract. This paper seeks to suggest a jurisprudential grounding for the European Community, and seeks to do so by using a specifically Kantian philosophy of law. Kant's observations on the nature of transnational orders, like so much of his political theory, have tended to be overlooked. To do so is to overlook one of the great political and jurisprudential treasures in modern western thought. It will be suggested that a proper understanding of a Kantian normative order, and the application of such a model to the European Community will serve to dispel much of the confusion and sometimes near histrionic commentaries which have characterised recent attempts to understand the jurisprudence of the Community.     

美国城市规划中的社区听证及我们的思考

20世纪60-70年代,美国城市化进程加快。在老城区改造和新社区建设中,规划权被授予给了社区,社区作为自治组织,通过听证会的形式,让社区居民参与到社区基础设施建设、环境保护等环节,不仅有效维护了低收入人群的利益,也很好地平衡了社区建设中各利益群体的权利与义务,为打造舒适、安逸的社区人的社区做出了突出贡献。我国的城镇化进程需要借鉴美国城市规划中社区听证的经验,让政府、公众、开发企业及其他利害关系方在城市规划听证中沟通、了解、妥协,以有效避免因规划不合理导致的社会冲突与矛盾的频发。     

The Distinctive Characteristics and Needs of Domestic Violence Victims in a Native American Community

The objectives of the research described in this paper were to describe specific features of Native American domestic violence (DV), and identify the needs and barriers to service delivery for American Indians experiencing DV. Qualitative methods of data collection were used in this research. The results suggest that DV in Native American communities may be distinct in a number of ways. The cause of Native American DV may be anchored in historic trauma, poverty, alcohol and drugs, and rural isolation. Cultural and economic features of Native American DV are discussed. The complexity of DV in the Native American community, its association with a number of co-morbid problems, suggests a multi-modal intervention approach and collaboration among a variety of professionals.     

Diversity and heterogeneity in mitochondrial DNA of North American populations

Variation in the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region as detected by sequence-specific oligonucleotide (SSO) probes is described for 2282 individuals from African-American, European-American, and Hispanic subpopulations from five broadly defined regions of North America (Northeast, Southeast, Central, Northwest, Southwest). Population diversity estimates were uniformly high for all subpopulations and for each major ethnic group. Only the Pennsylvania Hispanic group was remarkable with respect to its mitochondrial DNA types, having both six low frequency population specific types (ranging from 1.2-8.6%) and three high frequency shared types (10-20% each). There was no statistically significant subpopulation heterogeneity present within any of the three major groups at either the subpopulation level or the regional level (p > 0.01). However, statistically significant heterogeneity was measured when comparing the three major groups to each other, with the variance component attributable to this large division accounting for 18.60% of the total variance (p < 0.001). Overall mtDNA is a satisfactory forensic typing locus within broadly defined African-American, European-American, and Hispanic groups from North America, based on the high diversity estimates and absence of heterogeneity, as characterized by SSO typing.     

美国北卡罗来纳州社区矫正简况

一、组织机构（一）概况。北卡罗来纳州（下文简称“北卡州”）位于美国东南沿海,面积136560平方公里,居民700多万。该州非监禁罪犯的矫正工作由北卡州社区矫正局负责。在2007财政年度,北卡州社区矫正局的雇员总数为2．572人,年度预算1．34亿美元,在册犯人126．381人。社区矫正官与犯人的比例约为1：50。     

Small area analysis: a review and analysis of the North American literature

Variations in health service use rates by geographic area have long interested researchers and policymakers. Typically, investigators comparing population-based health care utilization rates among geographic areas have demonstrated substantial variations in use among seemingly similar communities. One method of investigation is "small area analysis." Numerous areas in North America have been studied extensively using this technique. This research has attempted to document the amount of variation found in health care use rates among areas; determine whether or not there is a pattern to such use in high- versus low-use areas; and identify the variables that are associated with the variation and explain a portion of the variation. Beyond this, many researchers have attempted to ascertain whether such variables are associated with characteristics of the population, whether they reflect differences in access and need, or whether a substantial portion of the variation is associated with differences in the medical care system itself. This review discusses the methods used to define the areas, the dependent variables that have been studied and the patterns found within them, the independent variables that have been tested, the statistical methods and analysis procedures used, the results of each study, and the policy recommendations emanating from the research. More importantly, based on what has been learned, the paper provides researchers in small area analysis with a set of recommendations for both analyzing and reporting results. These recommendations are designed to facilitate the development of a common research methodology, increase the comparability across studies, and enhance the use of this technique in the health policy formulation process.     

Legal Pluralism in an American Community: Perspectives on a Civil Trial Court

This article explores the role of a local trial court in terms of the plurality of legal systems-both formal and informal-found in the community in which the court operates. The concept of legal pluralism in American society is examined, and a comparison is made between the study of plural normative systems and the study of disputes and dispute processing. Two examples of legal pluralism drawn from an empirical study of a mid western community are presented: the first exploring oral contractual agreements among farmers and the second examining formal and informal norms concerning divorce. The application of this form of analysis is found to reveal important distinctions between the manifest and latent functions that the trial court performs in its community setting.     

Spectator Violence in Sports: A North American Perspective

Spectator violence has long been associated with professional football in Europe. This article examines the issue of spectator violence from a North American perspective. We begin by noting that there is little systematic research into the scope of spectator disorder in North America. Perhaps for this reason there is little consensus about the true scale of the problem on this side of the Atlantic. It does seem clear at least that there is less spectator violence associated with professional sports in North America. After reviewing a number of explanations for this finding, we conclude that it has less to do with criminal justice policies or practices, than the social context surrounding the 'spectatorship' of sports in North America. Perhaps the most important explanation for the variance in crowd behaviour concerns the demographic profiles of sports spectators in European football and North American sports.     

Sexual Entitlement: Rights and AIDS,The Early Years*

While traditionally social scientists saw politics as an independent force acting on law, today it seems appropriate to also view law as an agent in the construction of political identities, aspirations and tactics. Here, the AIDS epidemic illuminates this relationship. Soon after AIDS was identified, the cities of San Francisco and San Diego moved to close the gay baths as breeding grounds for the disease. The struggle over that policy reveals how law enters into the debates within the homosexual community, and at least partially constitutes individual identity in that community.     

Community policing,loose coupling,and sensemaking in American police agencies

This study examines the community policing movement in the United States using two concepts from organization theory—loose coupling and sensemaking—to frame the analysis and discussion. In particular, we focus on the degree of coupling between police agencies' general and specific community policing claims. Because community policing may be considered a fairly ambiguous (or broad) reform movement, police agencies must engage in interpretive processes to define, make sense of, and enact it at the local level. While we did not observe these interpretive processes, our analyses enable us to observe the products of these processes.     

Comparison of ages of epiphyseal union in North American and Bosnian skeletal material

The accurate determination of age at death is a critical component in the analysis of human skeletal remains. Population specific techniques are often used without due consideration of the provenance of the material being studied. This communication considers the ages at which epiphyseal union occur in young Bosnian males and compares those findings to data published by McKern and Stewart on young North American soldiers killed during the Korean War. Of the ten epiphyses considered in this study, all elements were observed to be at least two years in advance in the Bosnian sample compared to the American sample. This article demonstrates that whilst standards based on an American sample produce broadly applicable age ranges for use on forensic work in the Balkans, the age ranges generated produce an upper age limit that is often two or more years older than the chronological age. Therefore, it is desirable, that wherever possible, appropriate standards should be devised for more accurate aging reflecting population specific profiles.     

Environmental regime effectiveness and the North American Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement

Scholars and practitioners around the globe are grappling with how to improve the effectiveness of complex, transboundary, and multilevel environmental regimes. International environmental agreements (IEAs) have been around for decades yet achievements and outcomes have not met expectations. While international relations scholars have primarily focused on the effectiveness of agreements between states, public policy scholars have been interested in outcomes at a variety of scales including international, national, sub-national, and local across various environmental policy domains and at the instrument and program levels. This article presents findings from a case study of environmental regime effectiveness that uses a modified version of the Oslo-Postdam solution to assess the effectiveness of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, a long-standing, bilateral international environmental agreement between Canada and the USA. The findings indicate that there is a need to more broadly define international environmental agreements in complex transboundary systems to include both formal and informal regime features and multilevel governance efforts and to focus on specific policy goals and ecological outcomes associated with IEAs. This case also illustrates the potential to modify the Oslo-Postdam approach by combining expert assessment and data collection methods with traditional policy analysis and program evaluation methods in assessments of environmental regime effectiveness.     

On Incompetent Monks and Able Urbane Nuns in a Buddhist Monastic Code

Most modern scholars seem to assume that Buddhist monks in early India had a good knowledge of Buddhist doctrine and at least of basic Buddhist texts. But the compilers of the vinayas or monastic codes seem not to have shared this assumption. The examples presented here are drawn primarily from one vinaya, and show that the compilers put in place a whole series of rules to deal with situations in which monks were startlingly ignorant of both doctrine and text. One of these examples is particularly interesting for what it suggests about the linguistic sophistication of nuns, and another because it presents a case in which a nun is required to fill an important liturgical role in public and in the presence of monks.