Hybrid Warfare,International Negotiation,and an Experiment in “Remote Convening”

The authors are leading a multinational effort to understand the effects of “hybrid” warfare on international commercial negotiation. The start-up process is itself essentially a negotiation, among about forty individual practitioners and scholars with very diverse backgrounds, over whether and how they will work together. In a pandemic, a key risk is that the necessary cooperation and trust will be harder to build, particularly among professionals who are dealing with security-sensitive issues and who have never met each other. This article discusses the current necessity of replacing the in-person model for eliciting such cooperation which the authors had developed previously for large collaborative projects, and describes a “remote convening” replacement process.     

MAKING PUBLIC POLICY

MAKING PUBLIC POLICY
Mark Considine
Polity Press, 2005, 262 pp., £15.99 (pb) ISBN: 0745627544     

Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation: The British Columbia Experience

In 2001, the province of British Columbia (BC) became the first Canadian jurisdiction to enact anti-SLAPP legislation. While this legislation proved to be short lived, the BC experience around the issue of SLAPPs is instructive for law reformers both in Canada and beyond. In this article, the authors describe the legal and political processes that set the stage for the passage of the 2001 law, and its subsequent repeal. They also provide a detailed analysis and critique of key aspects of the debate surrounding the design of the law, and consider its efficacy in identifying, dismissing and deterring SLAPP lawsuits. They conclude with some observations with respect to the current status of the SLAPP issue in BC.     

The effect of linkage on the calculation of DNA match probabilities for siblings and half siblings

The loci in many forensic multiplexes are often selected to avoid linked loci. However as the multiplices used increase in the number of loci represented instances are occurring of loci that are loosely linked. As yet little attention has been paid to the likely consequence of this. We begin the process of developing formulae to give the match probability at two linked loci for full and half siblings. The methodology proceeds from the previously published joint IBD states for two linked loci [B.K. Suarez, J. Rice, T. Reich, The generalized sib pair IBD distribution: its use in the detection of linkage, Ann. Hum. Genet. Lond. 42 (1978) 87; J.K. Haseman, R.C. Elston, The investigation of linkage between a quantitative trait and a marker locus, Behav. Genet. 2 (1972) 3–19]. Our formulation has the drawback of assuming linkage equilibrium. This assumption may be tenable as a first order approximation. We hope to stimulate work on developing better treatments.     

The Impact of Psychological Consequences of Rape on Rape Case Attrition: The Police Perspective

This paper examines whether the psychological sequelae of rape relate to rape case attrition by leading police to see the victim as less reliable. A mixed methods approach with two linked studies, one qualitative and one quantitative, was used. In Study 1, the qualitative study, interviews with 12 specialist police officers were analysed using Framework Analysis. In Study 2, the quantitative study, 76 specialist officers completed an online questionnaire to assess the generalisability of Study 1’s findings. In Study 1, officers’ perceptions of victims clustered into three stereotypes, which we label “the real victim”, “the mad discloser”, and “the bad discloser”. Victims who exhibited signs of shame, self-blame, and post-traumatic stress reactions which impeded their ability to give a coherent account of the rape were perceived as less reliable “mad” or “bad” victims. The findings of Study 2 supported these results. Although police interview strategies have improved in recent years, there is evidence that signs of trauma and shame in the victim are sometimes misinterpreted as signs of lying. This may affect attrition by impacting on victim-officer relationships. Further training on recognising trauma and understanding its consequences is recommended both for specialist officers and front-line staff.