Virtual forensic anthropology: Novel applications of anthropometry and technology in a child death case

Full-body 3D virtual reconstructions were generated using 3D technology and anthropometry following the death of a young girl, allegedly from severe malnutrition as a result of abuse and neglect. Close range laser scanning, in conjunction with full colour digital texture photography, was used to document the child's condition shortly after death in order to demonstrate the number and pattern of injuries and to be able to demonstrate her condition forensically. Full-body digital reconstructions were undertaken to illustrate the extent of the malnutrition by comparing the processed post mortem scans with reconstructed images at normal weight for height and age. This is the first known instance of such an investigative tool.     

Australia's highest court raises the patent invalidity bar

In a long-awaited decision, the Australian High Court reviewedseveral key questions pertaining to patent validity and inventivestep in particular; in so doing, it has made it harder to invalidateAustralian patents.     

A critique of the Global Pact for the environment: a stillborn initiative or the foundation for <Emphasis Type="Italic">Lex Anthropocenae</Emphasis>?

In May 2018, the process which may ultimately lead to the negotiation of a legally binding Global Pact for the environment formally commenced under the auspices of the United Nations General Assembly. Expectations for the Pact are high, evidenced in particular by its multiple and overlapping objectives: to serve as a generic binding instrument of international environmental law (IEL) principles; to integrate, consolidate, unify and ultimately entrench many of the fragmented principles of IEL; and to constitute the first global environmental human rights instrument. In the wake of the impending intergovernmental process, the paper offers a thorough critique of the draft Pact in its present iteration. We do so with the aim of evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the present draft Pact by interrogating: (a) its diplomatic and symbolic relevance and possible unique contribution at the policy level to global environmental law and governance, and (b) its potential at the operational level of IEL and global environmental governance, focusing on the extent to which the draft Pact accommodates both existing and more recent rules and principles for environmental protection. As the Pact’s primary ambition is to become a universally binding global treaty, it would be churlish not to recognise its potential for innovation, as well as the considerable opportunity that the negotiation of the Pact will have to generate broad-sweeping and positive impacts. However, our central thesis is that only if the Global Pact were to incorporate ambitious normative provisions to strengthen those public and private global governance efforts that aim to halt the deterioration of Earth system integrity, as well as to maintain and improve integrity, will it be able to offer a firm foundation of the type of Anthropocene Law, termed here as the Lex Anthropocenae, required to confront head-on the deep socio-ecological crisis of the Anthropocene.     

“Shifting the stuff wasn’t any bother”: Illicit enterprise, tobacco bootlegging and deconstructing the British government’s cigarette smuggling discourse

This paper presents the results of interactions/interviews with an active tobacco bootlegger regarding his illicit entrepreneurial activity spanning his illegal career. This narrative is intended to portray a snapshot of a type of organised criminality within an illicit market place but seeks to add to the critical academic literature responding to State-led depictions of organised crime as an apocalyptic menace. The results of the fieldwork suggest that illicit market enterprise in this context is neither threatening nor predatory, is very ordinary and, crucially, is driven by insatiable consumer demand within local trading networks.     

Welfare Reform, Mississippi Style: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the Search for Accountability

Through an examination of the implementation of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act in the state of Mississippi, we explore the adequacy of traditional two-actor principal-agent theory. Using this as our lens, we suggest that the choices made by Mississippi in the area of welfare reform to privatize much of the work and to add several layers to the existing principal-agent relationship substantially reduced accountability and the effectiveness of the monitoring systems. We conclude that not only is traditional principal-agent theory an insufficient tool for understanding the complex interrelationship between democratic actors in this particular case, the decisions of the state of Mississippi to complicate the principal-actor relationship through privatization also undermined the reform effort itself in ways that may have general implications for other like-minded efforts in other policy areas.
There are those who are undermining what we are trying to achieve ...
—Bud Henry, Director of Economic Assistance, Mississippi Department of Human Services     

Book reviews

R. Bahro: Die Alternative. Koln‐Frankfurt, 1977, 542 pp. 34.00DM.

R. Bahro: The alternative in Eastern Europe, New Left Books, 1978. 463 pp. £9.50.

Bergson, Abram, Productivity and the Social System—The USSR and the West, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978. xi+256 pp. £12.25.

Alec Nove; Political Economy and Soviet Socialism, London, Boston, Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1979. 249 pp. £10.00.

Gail Warshofsky Lapidus, Women in Soviet Society: Equality, Development and Social Change. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1978. x + 381 pp. £12.25.

Nationalism in the USSR & Eastern Europe in the Era of Brezhnev and Kosygin. Papers and Proceedings of the Symposium held at University of Detroit on 3–4 October, 1975. Edited by George W. Simmonds. Detroit, Mich.: University of Detroit Press, 1977. 534 pp. $6.95 soft bound, $12.00 hard bound.

Alexander Yanov, The Russian New Right: Right‐ Wing Ideologies in the Contemporary USSR. Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1978. 185 pp. $3.95.

John J. Stephan, The Russian Fascists: Tragedy and Farce in Exile, 1925–1945. New York: Harper and Row, 1978. 450 pp. $15.00.

Michael A. Newcity, Copyright Law in the Soviet Union. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1978. x + 212 pp. Appendix and selected bibliography.

Robin Higham and Jacob W. Kipp, Soviet Aviation and Air Power. A Historical View. London: Brasseys’, 1978; Boulder Co.: Westview Press, 1977. xii + 328 pp. $25.

James Riordan (ed.), Sport Under Communism. London: C. Hurst & Company, 1978. x +177 pp. £6.95.

Vahan D. Barooshian, Brik and Mayakovsky, Slavistic Printings and Reprintings 301. The Hague: Mouton, 1978. 154 pp. + index. Paperback.

Vladimir FiSera (ed.), Workers’ Councils in Czechoslovakia: Documents and Essays 1968–69. London: Motive, 1978. 200 pp. £8.50.

Richard F. Starr (ed.), Yearbook on International Communist Affairs 1978, Stanford, California: Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University, 1978. 497 pp. $35.00.

G. E. Skorov (ed.), Science, Technology and Economic Growth in Developing Countries. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1978. (tranlated by J. Warren).