The Freedom to Circulate Documents: Regulating Contracts in Europe

Abstract:  Evidence collected by the European Commission indicates that insofar as the diversity between laws of national legal systems presents an obstacle to trade in the Internal Market, the problem consists of the inability of businesses to use their standard terms of business in cross-border trade with confidence. It is suggested that the solution to this problem lies not in legal integration through harmonisation of the private law of contract, but rather through the creation of procedures for autonomous agreements under which representatives of parties to standard types of contracts can agree upon model contracts containing fair ancillary terms.     

A Lust for Treasure and a Love of Gold…or Desperation? Global Facilitation of Piracy,Neoliberal Policies and the Control of the Somali Pirate

The issue of piracy is most often framed as being the product of dangerous individuals plundering and murdering for personal gain. What is less often discussed are the state, political, economic, and corporate interests that intersect with piracy (i.e. the corporate interest demand for protection of global shipping routes that are instrumental for capital accumulation in the world market). Here I utilize the concept of crimes of globalization to demonstrate that the motivations that undergird policies aimed at controlling piracy today are not dissimilar to those promoted through international financial institutions in their effort to advance the economic interests of highly empowered countries at the expense of addressing localized needs.     

Gender attitudes and the police in Bosnia and Herzegovina: male officers’ attitudes regarding their female counterparts

Utilizing survey data collected from 127 male Bosnian police officers, this study examines the impact attitudes toward women, individual characteristics, and work experiences have on officers’ perceptions of their female colleagues. It is hypothesized that officers who hold more traditional, patriarchal attitudes toward women will view females as incapable of effectively carrying out police work, regardless of their own work experiences, or demographic characteristics. Results suggest that a majority of Bosnian policemen believe that women are equally as effective as men in all aspects of policing, however, many still cling to stereotypical views of policing and continue to view female officers negatively.     

Social Security Disability Benefits Reform Act of 1984: legislative history and summary of provisions

This article describes the legislative history of the Social Security Disability Benefits Reform Act of 1984 (Public Law 98-460), and contains a summary of the provisions in the new law. Major provisions include: standards for continuing disability reviews (CDR's) of disability insurance (DI) beneficiaries and supplemental security income (SSI) recipients who get payments based on disability or blindness; the right of a DI beneficiary or an SSI recipient to have payments continued during appeal of a CDR decision to an administrative law judge that disability or blindness has ceased; and suspension of CDR's of mentally impaired persons until the evaluation criteria for mental impairments are revised. The new law was enacted in response to problems that arose as a result of the implementation by the Social Security Administration (SSA) of a provision in the 1980 disability amendments that required periodic CDR's. In enacting the new law, Congress intended to assure more accurate, consistent, and uniform disability decisions at all levels and equitable and humane treatment not only to beneficiaries who must undergo CDR's but also to new applicants for DI benefits or SSI payments based on disability or blindness.     

Effect of youth culture music on high school students' academic performance

This study investigated the assumption that youth culture orientation adversely affects school performance, using rock music as the youth culture component. Adolescents in grades 9–12 were assigned to a subject matter topic in the area of literature, mathematics, physical science, or social science and requested to study this topic intensely for 30 min in a music condition consisting of rock, classical, or no music. The subjects then were tested on their retention of the factual content of the article either immediately after the study period, 1 day later, or 3 days later. Retention was significantly lower in the rock music condition. Students recalled more content in the literature topic and in the immediate test. The results are discussed with reference to a social learning theory interpretation of youth culture.Received his Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Major interests are in the area of social and personality development in children and adolescents.Received her M.A. in psychology from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Major interests are in the area of child and family therapy and play behavior. At present she is working in a clinical setting.     

HIV vaccines: current challenges and future directions

Volume seven of the Review will mark the tenth anniversary of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network with a series of articles that describe past developments and future directions in several areas of policy and law related to HIV/AIDS. The following article is the first of these, discussing current challenges and future directions in the development of and access to HIV vaccines. It argues that governments are under public health, ethical, and legal obligations to develop and provide access to HIV vaccines. It further explains what is required for governments to fulfill their obligations: additional commitment and resources for HIV vaccine development in the context of increased global research and development regarding diseases of the poor; increased support and advocacy for partnerships to develop HIV vaccines; enhanced regulatory capacity in every country to review, approve, and monitor HIV vaccines; and assurance of global supply of, procurement of, delivery of, and access to vaccines in the context of efforts to increase global access to public health measures and technologies.     

Self-recognition of the face: A study of adolescent narcissism

Two adolescent groups and an adult group were given a self-recognition task involving the tachistoscopic presentation of inverted photographs of their faces. Measures of narcissism, certainty of response, and response strategy were recorded. The young adolescent group was found to be more successful than either the late adolescent or adult groups. The former were also the most narcissistic. No sex difference was found, nor was there any difference when the faces of known or unknown peers were used as distractors. Age and narcissism were found to be equally good predictors of both self-recognition and certainty of response. Young adolescents tended to use the complete gestalt of the face more often as a recognition strategy than older adolescents or adults, who seemed to use idiosyncratic facial features. The results are discussed in terms of integrated approach to the development of body image and how the internal representations of the body are gradually built and modified by perceptual, cognitive, and personality functioning.Received M.A. (Hons 1.) and Ph.D from University of Sydney. Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society. Principal research interest is psychology of adolescence.Received B.A. (Hons.) from Macquarie University; now a doctoral candidate at Macquarie University. Principal research interest is child and adolescent psychotherapy.     

Identification of a D8S1179 primer binding site mutation and the validation of a primer designed to recover null alleles

A population study of Chamorros and Filipinos using short tandem repeat (STR) loci amplified with the AmpFlSTR Profiler Plus PCR amplification kit demonstrated an excess of observed homozygosity at the D8S1179 locus. Use of a different set of D8S1179 primers to type the same samples did not demonstrate an excess of homozygosity and showed discordant genotypes at the D8S1179 locus. A single point mutation, G-to-A transition, 16 nucleotides from the 3' end of the reverse primer, was identified to cause allele dropout when using the AmpFlSTR Profiler Plus primer set. An additional D8S1179 reverse primer specific for the variant was constructed resulting in the recovery of the null allele. The primer was included in the newly developed AmpFlSTR Identifiler PCR amplification kit. No deleterious effects or non-specific peaks were observed in validation experiments evaluating primer concentration, Mg2+ concentration, annealing temperature and population samples.