Environmental mediation: An alternative approach to policy stalemates

Environmental mediation is a new and innovative attempt to overcome the policy stalemates that frequently hinder effective environmental policymaking. It brings together environmentalists, business groups, government officials, and a neutral mediator in an attempt to negotiate a binding settlement to a specific controversy. This essay describes this approach, discusses its advantages over more traditional dispute resolution processes, and explains how it is able to produce acceptable agreements in such a difficult policy area.     

Evolution and the Bounds of Human

Law and Philosophy -     

Why policy analysis and ethics are incompatible

Commentators in the field of policy analysis have argued persuasively for the inclusion of ethical evaluations in the analytic process, yet most practitioners in the policy field avoid analyzing moral issues. Standard explanations for this neglect of ethics tend to be inadequate; assertions that normative analysis is unnecessary, impractical, impossible, or undesirable are demonstrably weak. Political factors, on the other hand, provide a clearer understanding of the neglect of ethics. Ethical inquiry is shunned because it frequently threatens the professional and political interests of both analysts and policymakers. The administrator, the legislator, the bureaucracy, and the profession of policy analysis itself all resist the potential challenges of moral evaluation.     

Sexually Violent Predator Evaluations: Empirical Evidence,Strategies for Professionals,and Research Directions

Several states have passed civil commitment laws that allow the precautionary detention of sex offenders who have completed their criminal sentences. Over 2,500 sex offenders have been committed across states with such statutes and several thousand more sex offenders have been evaluated. Most statutes call for an evaluation of risk by a mental health professional and, although each state statute is worded differently, three main elements common to sexually violent predator evaluations are used to guide evaluators: mental abnormality, volitional capacity, and likelihood of future sexual violence. The current article presents empirical evidence for the main tenants of these forensic evaluations, provides recommendations for evaluators in light of current limitations of evidence, and offers suggestions for future research in this area of forensic assessment.     

Rates and predictors of sexual aggression among students and non-students

The authors compared rates and predictors of sexual aggression for women attending college with those of women from the same population who were not attending college. Because it has been suggested that less parental monitoring at college may be associated with risky behaviors that contribute to sexual aggression, they also compared rates and predictors of sexual aggression for those living with parents versus not living with parents. The results showed that women living away from parents reported significantly higher rates of sexual aggression than women living with parents, regardless of student status. Logistic regression analyses showed that for student and non-student women, heavy episodic drinking and number of sex partners predicted past-year rape and/or attempted rape. The current results do not provide evidence that college is a uniquely risky environment for experiencing sexual aggression. Rather, the behaviors in which young women engage are associated with sexual aggression during this time period.     

Hope, meaning, and growth following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks

Positive psychologists found the increase of seven character strengths that encompass the so-called theological virtues, including hope and spirituality, in Americans after the September 11, 2001, attacks. Little is known about how they may affect post-September 11, 2001, mental health. Using multivariate analysis, this study investigated the relationship of hope and spiritual meaning with depression and anxiety in a sample of 457 students 3 months after September 11, 2001. Both characters contributed to lower levels of symptoms. In qualitative analysis, of 313 answers to an open-ended question regarding personal change, four categories emerged. The first three were consonant with other studies on posttraumatic growth (PTG), including changes in the self or behavior, relationships, and worldviews. The fourth category unique to September 11, 2001, was changes in political views. These findings offer further credence to the study of positive aspects resulting from violence-related trauma and highlight the needs for addressing the nature of traumatic events and PTG.