New PIL Sections: Aims and Scope

The journal Psychological Injury and Law has added three new sections, increasing the reach of the journal. The three new sections are: Malingering and Symptom Validity Testing, Practice Matters, and State/ Provincial/ International Affairs. The editorial describes the aims and scope of each new section.     

The Constitutional Limits of Judicial Activism: Judicial Conduct of International Relations and Child Abduction

Judges are increasingly visible in their participation in activities off the bench. This may create difficulties in drawing the line between their duties in court and their other activities. However, if judges are not acutely aware of the importance of this line their extra-curial activities may interfere with their judicial duties. This article considers the failure to observe the importance of this differentiation in the context of international child abduction. It is argued that some judges, on and off the bench, have wrongly taken over the role of the executive in international relations and that such activity jeopardises the independence of the judiciary. This raises broader issues, in particular it suggests that some judges are being seduced into exceeding their proper judicial role, by working with government in policy-making and by their increasing contacts with judges from other countries.     

Causality and causation in tort law

This paper considers alternative approaches to dealing with causal uncertainty in strict liability tort regimes. Beginning from the philosophical literature on causing, a distinction is made between the scientific idea of causality and the legal idea of causation. This distinction is generalized to a context of causal uncertainty and associated probabilities are constructed. It is shown that a rule of proportional liability whereby the tortfeasor pays damages in proportion to the probability in causation of them having caused the damage would be socially efficient. This contrasts with the implied use of the probability in causality by the courts and in the law and economics literature on causal uncertainty.     

An Experimental Study of Vertebrate Scavenging Behavior in a Northwest European Woodland Context

Vertebrate scavengers can modify surface deposited human remains which can hinder forensic investigations. The effects of such scavenging vary between species and regions. Published research into the effects of the scavenging of human remains is dominated by work from North America with few studies covering Northwestern Europe. Forensic scientists, investigators, and police search officers in Northwestern Europe are often left questioning on a basic level as to which scavengers are active and how they might affect human remains. This paper presents the results of a field study utilizing deer (Cervus nippon; Capreolus capreolus) as surface deposits observed by motion detection cameras in a British woodland. The most common avian and rodent scavenger species recorded included the buzzard (Buteo buteo), carrion crow (Corvus corone), wood mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus), and gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis). The scavenging behaviors observed were affected by seasonality, rates of decomposition, and insect activity. Scavenging by buzzards, unlike carrion crows, was most frequent during fall to winter and prior to insect activity. Overall, avian scavengers modified and scavenged soft tissue. Rodents scavenged both fresh and skeletonized remains with gray squirrels only scavenging skeletal remains. Wood mice were most active in winter and scavenged both soft tissue and bone.