Perceived justice of ecological policy and proenvironmental commitments

A model was outlined (i) to explain readiness to proenvironmental commitments and decisions in everyday life by six categories of predictor variables, including justice appraisals of pollution control, basic rights, appraisals of pollution, of pollution causation, of the efficacy of pollution control measures, and of ecological responsibility, and (ii) to generate hypotheses on the relationships between the predictor variables. Model variables were assessed by a questionnaire study (N=518) referring to the problem of air pollution. Proenvironmental commitments and decisions could be well predicted by morally relevant appraisals, especially by justice appraisals (e.g., approving proenvirommental laws, taxes, and subsidies, rejecting the justice of the current environmental policy and of mere appeals), whereas predictors representing self-protective motivations remained insignificant. Justice appraisals are in line with the “causation principle of justice”: Those who caused the pollution are made responsible for its reduction and should pay the costs for the pollution control. Results demonstrate that justice appraisals are essential determinants of people's ecologically relevant emotions, cognitions, and engagements. Moreover, they reveal that the responsibility for pollution control is not left with state and economy but is also regarded as a matter that concerns the citizens.     

Sudden, unexpected death in a 5-year-old boy with an unusual primary intracranial neoplasm. Ganglioglioma of the medulla

This report documents sudden, unexpected death in a 5-year-old boy from a ganglioglioma of the medulla. Gangliogliomas are rare, primary brain tumors that are encountered predominantly in childhood. We are unaware of any previous report of a similar case.     

"Revolting to humanity": oversights, limitations, and complications of the English Legitimacy Act of 1926

This article analyses three areas that limited the effectiveness of the English Legitimacy Act of 1926. First, re-registration was public, expensive, and time-consuming. Second, the Treasury Office used the change in the law of intestacy to refuse more distant relatives' claims on estates. Third, the law separated legitimacy from nationality, thus denying citizenship to legitimated children born abroad of British fathers and foreign mothers. In short, both because of parliamentary oversights and civil servants' narrow interpretations of the law, relatively few children took advantage of the Act, and the minority who did, rather than being 'illegitimate' or 'legitimate', were a third category, the 'legitimated'.     

Gender,Sexuality and the Latin American Left: testing the transformation

This article examines the extent of change under Latin American left governments by assessing their actions on women's and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights. To provide a historical context, it first offers an overview of the relationship between feminist movements and the left. It then employs a four-country comparison of Brazil, Bolivia, Chile and Venezuela on women's socioeconomic status; feminist state–society relations; women's representation in national decision-making positions; legislation on violence against women; reproductive rights; and sexual rights. It concludes that standard political and economic divisions among the cases do not explain their response to the demands of feminists and LGBT activists. While governments have improved women's status and inclusion, the transformation of gender and sexual power relations remains unfinished.     

Legal restrictions on marriage

Under the legal restrictions on marriage in the Tyrol and Vorarlberg region of Austria between 1820 and 1920, members of the lower classes could marry only with the prior consent of the village authorities. Local and provincial politicians justified the necessity of these laws on the basis of the overpopulation and widespread impoverishment, which, they alleged, had resulted from the rise in lower-class marriages since the onset of industrialization. An analysis of the background and objectives of these legal interventions into marital behavior, however, reveals a different picture in regard to their effect and their effectiveness. The limitations on marriage affected life most profoundly in precisely those areas where people already tended to marry less often and later in life. Where changes in marital behavior did occur, they did not conflict with traditional behavior but rather resulted from the adaptation of the latter to altered living and working conditions. Thus it was material considerations that led the group of new wage-earners to delay or even forego marriage. The analysis shows that the limitations on marriage were directed less against the supposed causes of impoverishment than towards the continuation of social inequality in marriage and the stabilization of the status quo.