Autonomy and audit--striking the balance

The Data Protection Act 1998 purports to implement European legislation which aims to protect the privacy of individuals. There were such concerns about the implications of the Act for certain research and audit that it became necessary to enact further legislation to enable such essential activities to continue. Although this empowers the Secretary of State for Health to approve proposals for these purposes, there should still be a requirement that the use of identifiable personal information without consent must be justified on compelling public interest grounds. It is this that can confound those seeking to rely on such justification. There can either be too cavalier an approach to the issue, and/or there is little sense of what considerations should come into play. This paper attempts to highlight some of the difficulties that are theoretically raised by some audit activities and set out the legal framework within which they must operate. However, the key focus is on how ethical considerations might inform the public interest argument.     

Benefit estimation goes to court: The case of natural resource damage assessments

This article evaluates the feasibility of performing natural resource damage assessments under the current Superfund legislation. Using the analyses developed for two recent cases, it explains the sources of the substantial divergences between plaintiffs' and defendants' estimates of these damages. Three factors explain the differences in damage estimates: (1) the time horizon used and treatment of capitalization effects of past damages; (2) the extent of the market assumed in estimating the effects of a release of hazardous wastes on the demand for the affected natural resource; and (3) the character and availability of substitutes for the resource involved.     

Managerial Responsibility

The concept of managerial responsibility is a shining thread in the literature of public administration, but its definition within our constitutional scheme remains elusive. How will we know responsible public management when we see it? We propose one answer: Public administration should be conducted according to what we term a “precept of managerial responsibility,” which involves four interrelated elements derived from the classical literature of public administration: judgment, accountability, balance, and rationality. We apply this precept to one of the most vexing problems of public administration theory and practice, institutional reform litigation. This application illustrates how the precept solves a major theoretical problem of American public administration by defining a role for administrative officers that fully comports with the Madisonian scheme of separated institutions—legislative, executive, and judicial—sharing power.     

Individual and Family Predictors of the Perpetration of Dating Violence and Victimization in Late Adolescence

Teen dating violence is a crime of national concern with approximately one-fourth of adolescents reporting victimization of physical, psychological, or sexual dating violence each year. The present study examined how aggressive family dynamics in both childhood and early adolescence predicted the perpetration of dating violence and victimization in late adolescence. Children (n = 401, 43 % female) were followed from kindergarten entry to the age of 18 years. Early adolescent aggressive-oppositional problems at home and aggressive-oppositional problems at school each made unique predictions to the emergence of dating violence in late adolescence. The results suggest that aggressive family dynamics during childhood and early adolescence influence the development of dating violence primarily by fostering a child’s oppositional-aggressive responding style initially in the home, which is then generalized to other contexts. Although this study is limited by weaknesses detailed in the discussion, the contribution of longitudinal evidence including parent, teacher, and adolescent reports from both boys and girls, a dual-emphasis on the prediction of perpetration and victimization, as well as an analysis of both relations between variables and person-oriented group comparisons combine to make a unique contribution to the growing literature on adolescent partner violence.     

Australian news media’s representation of Cate McGregor,the highest ranking Australian transgender military officer

To date, no academic analysis has investigated the representation of transgender individuals by Australia’s news media (ANM). This paper conducts a discourse analysis of ANM’s representation of Cate McGregor, the highest ranking Australian transgender military officer. The author offers this analysis as a case study in which 28 articles were selected from a three-year period, beginning November 2012, when McGregor ‘came out’. By employing a feminist and transgender theory framework the author concludes that, on the one hand, ANM reproduces traditional transgender tropes (e.g. publishing ‘before/after’ photographs). On the other hand, ANM gives voice to McGregor’s views pertaining to living as a woman and a transgender woman, which are aligned with transgender theory. Thus, this author argues that ANM engages in a remediation of transgender theory. McGregor acknowledges that she has enjoyed the privilege of being socialized as a man and therefore her life as a woman, a transgender woman is different to other women. Moreover, as an ‘out’ transgender woman she is refusing to ‘pass’ and hide her sex/gender history. Subsequently, McGregor views on what it means to be a man, a woman, and a transgender woman, are disruptive to sex/gender normativities and she thereby embodies a ‘gender fuck’.     

Children’s and Adolescents’ Expectations about Challenging Unfair Group Norms

Youth often hold group norms that perpetuate inequality. One way these norms can be changed is by challenging these norms by choosing to include new members into these groups who hold morally just norms. In the current study, children’s and adolescents’ inclusion decisions and social reasoning about challenging group norms through inclusion were investigated. The sample included 9–10 (children) and 13–14 year-olds (adolescents) (N?=?673, 54.4% female). Participants supported including challengers into groups holding norms supporting relational aggression and unequal allocation of resources, but they were less likely to support including a challenger into a physically aggressive group. Age-related differences and gender differences were found: children and female participants were more likely to include challengers than were adolescents and male participants. The findings indicate that youth support including new members who would challenge morally questionable group norms, but that their support depends on the specific norm the group holds.