The Statistical Analysis Of Roll‐Call Data: A Cautionary Tale

Roll‐call voting and congressional procedures are two of the most heavily studied aspects of the U.S. Congress. To date, little work has focused on the effect of procedures on the composition of the roll‐call record. This article takes a step in this direction by demonstrating the effect of chamber rules and institutional constraints on House and Senate roll‐call data, as well as on the inferences that scholars have drawn from the roll‐call record. More specifically, I focus on recent efforts to measure party effects and ideological alignments, and I demonstrate that the composition of the roll‐call record can affect these measures.     

Peer Interaction and Engagement Through Online Discussion Forums: A Cautionary Tale

Following an very inspiring presentation from the REAP (Re-Engineering Assessment Practices in Scottish Higher Education) team, I attempted to address problems of attrition and non-engagement amongst first year law students by introducing online small group activities based around discussion forums into the level 4 (first year) Legal Method course. The idea was to build student engagement through teamwork online, thus moving towards a constructivist theory of learning (Jonassen et al. in Am J Distance Educ 9(2):7, 1995), and to increase formative feedback to students at an early stage in their course without unduly increasing my workload. (The benefits of early formative feedback are well documented. See, for example Yorke in Leaving early; Undergraduate non-completion in higher education, Falmer, London, 1999; Yorke and Longden in Retention and student success in higher education, SRHE and Open University Press, 2004). The students were randomly divided into groups of between 8 and 12 students using the WebCT group function. WebCT was at that time the university??s main virtual learning environment and available to all students enrolled on courses through the university portal system. Group discussion forums were provided for a series of activities, complementing the normal lecture pattern of two hours?? lecture plus one hour??s seminar each week. This paper considers the results over 2?years of introducing this system in a widening participation university. It did not prove possible to reproduce the success experienced in the REAP project. This paper attempts to unravel the various reasons for this, technical, pedagogical and practical. This case study is an example of action research, as I was both dismayed and intrigued by the negative reaction of the students and attempted to discover the reasons for it. The findings and conclusions drawn from them will be used to remodel this aspect of the course in 2010?C2011.     

The Politics of Palliative Care and the Ethical Boundaries of Medicine: Gonzales v. Oregon as a Cautionary Tale

The U.S. Supreme Court's 6-decision in Gonzales v. Oregon is the latest defeat for the Bush administration in its sustained attack on Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law. Both the majority opinion and the major dissent in Oregon provide an opportunity to assess the dangers inherent in allowing a political agenda that emphasizes the sanctity of life and minimizes professional ethical obligations to overshadow quality patient care at the end of life.     

The Impropriety of Plea Agreements: A Tale of Two Counties

In this article, the author, a former prosecutor and a former assistant public defender, draws on his five and a half years of experience as a "professional plea bargainer" to explore the many subtleties of a practice that he suggests leads to work avoidance, misplaced loyalties, coercion, and other negative characteristics on the part of courthouse regulars, and to injustice for those criminal defendants who do not wish to plead guilty. He suggests that criminal courts have become overly dependent on plea bargaining, which is used much more extensively than is either necessary or appropriate.     

Revisiting the Use of Propensity Score Matching to Understand the Relationship between Gang Membership and Violent Victimization: A Cautionary Note

Previous research has consistently reported that gang members are more likely to experience violent victimization compared to non‐gang members. Recently, however, a study challenged this conventional wisdom using the Gang Resistance Education and Training (GREAT) data. Employing propensity score matching (PSM), this study reported no significant differences in violent victimization between gang and non‐gang members. Upon closer examination of the GREAT data and the PSM process used in this study, we note several theoretical, methodological, and statistical concerns. We reanalyze the GREAT data using both negative binomial regression and PSM. We find that self‐reported gang members were significantly more likely to report subsequent violent victimization compared to non‐gang members. Although contrary to this previous study, our findings are consistent with the bulk of previous empirical research and widely held beliefs about the relationship between gang membership and violent victimization.     

The Damage Done: Cocaine Methods in Detroit

The pro-competitive antitrust doctrine has originated in the free-market economies of Western capitalist countries but with economic transformations in Eastern Europe the doctrine ceased to be an exclusive Western concept. Using the example of the Polish law on combating Trust in the National Economy of 1987, the author demonstrates the spread of the antitrust doctrine from capitalism to socialism. Apart from these changes, the doctrine has been spreading on the international level because increasingly it has found application not only within particular countries but also with regard to trade and commerce between and among countries. The multidimensional nature of the antitrust doctrine has important implications for combating both domestic and international antitrust crime. The efficiency of efforts to combat abuse of a dominant market position, limiting access to the market or other forms of restraining competition will depend increasingly on the degree to which organs responsible for fighting antitrust crimes are willing to benefit from the multi-dimensional nature of the antitrust doctrine.     

Traveling There and Back Again: A Fingernail's Tale

This study focuses on the examination of stable isotope biomarkers in human fingernails of travelers who ventured away from Salt Lake City, UT and subsequently returned. Here, we describe three case studies examining: individual travelers (n = 4), paired travelers (n = 2), and a traveler (n = 1) who repeatedly left and returned. Our case studies examined the influences of dietary and drinking water inputs on fingernail stable isotope profiles for reconstructing travel histories. Stable isotope data were compared with theoretical and predictive models that laid the groundwork for anthropological and forensic geospatial reconstruction of travel histories. Drinking water inputs strongly influenced stable isotope profiles and the patterns observed were consistent with reported travel histories. Finally, observed fingernail stable isotope ratio data were consistent with modeled rates of stable isotope turnover and transition to expected values for the new environment. The results of our study further support the use of fingernail tissues for travel history reconstruction.     

A smugglers paradise: Cocaine trafficking through the Bahamas

During the last two decades The Bahamas have come to assume a central role in the transhipment of illicit drugs into the United States. This has occurred concomitantly with the dramatic development and escalation of the War on Drugs by the U.S. government. The author investigates the reasons why the United States has done so little to curb the blatant participation of this tiny island nation in these drug activities, while going so far as to invade Panama in order to remove Manuel Noriega from power, allegedly over his drug-related actions. The answers may be found, it is argued, in traditional fears of communist expansion in the Western Hemisphere, leading to the militarization of the region in the name of the War on Drugs.     

九龙与威海卫:两个围城的故事

中英两国政府关于九龙城管辖权问题长期存在争议,这种争议源于中英对《展拓香港界址专条》中争议条款的认知。《租威海卫专条》与中英《展拓香港界址专条》是两个极具相似性的条约。本文中,作者通过对《租威海卫专条》中有关威海卫城管辖权条款的探讨以及对当时威海卫城史事的分析,试图阐明中英《展拓香港界址专条》中有关九龙城条款的含义。     

Governing Cocaine Supply and Organized Crime from Latin America and the Caribbean: The Changing Security Logics in European Union External Policy

The logics of the European Union’s policy and practices against narcotic drugs in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have undergone a substantial shift the past decade: from development to security. Based on an empirical mapping of the EU’s drug-related projects in LAC, this article argues that an ‘integrated and balanced’ approach to drugs policy is being replaced by a bifurcation between the broader domains of development policy and security policy. Questions are raised as to how the EU’s projects on development and security might counteract one another, and how the Union’s programme aimed at dismantling transnational organized crime along the cocaine trafficking routes to Europe might have unintended consequences. While keeping in mind the shifting tectonics of the international drug prohibition consensus, the article goes on to analyze the increasingly salient security rationale in EU external drugs policy against the backdrop of the EU’s emerging role as a global security actor. In doing so, it touches upon the intrinsic tensions between human rights and (supra) national security.