Private Regulation of the Public Sector: A Neglected Facet of Contemporary Governance

The centrality of regulation among the tools deployed by governments is well established in the social science literature. Regulation of public sector bodies by non-state organizations is an important but neglected aspect of contemporary governance arrangements. Some private regulators derive both authority and power from a legal mandate for their activities. Statutory powers are exercised by private regulators where they are delegated or contracted out. Contractual powers take collective (for example, self-regulatory) and individuated forms. But a further important group of private regulators, operating both nationally and internationally, lack a legal mandate and yet have the capacity to exercise considerable power in constraining governments and public agencies. In a number of cases private regulators operate more complete regulatory regimes (in the sense of controlling standard setting, monitoring, and enforcement elements) than is true of public regulators. While private regulators may enhance the scrutiny given to public bodies (and thus enhance regimes of control and accountability), their existence suggests a need to identify the conditions under which such private power is legitimately held and used. One such condition is the existence of appropriate mechanisms for controlling or checking power. Such controls may take the classic form of public oversight, but may equally be identified in the checks exercised by participation in communities or markets.     

Identification and isolation of male cells using fluorescence in situ hybridisation and laser microdissection, for use in the investigation of sexual assault

In cases of sexual assault involving an azoospermic assailant, vaginal swabs taken from the victim may fail to provide an autosomal DNA profile with which to search a suspect database, as the signal from any male cells present would be masked by that from the overwhelming number of female cells collected on the swab. Here, we describe a method of visually identifying diploid male cells in such samples using fluorescence in situ hybridisation, and selectively harvesting them by means of laser microdissection. This combination of techniques was tested on 26 post-coital vaginal swabs taken at a range of times after intercourse; the collected cells were then subjected to a simple lysis procedure and DNA was amplified using the AmpFlSTR^® SGMPlus^® multiplex under low copy number conditions. Useful DNA profiles were generated from samples taken up to 24 h after intercourse.     

Introduction

Law and Philosophy -