Party affiliation and support for capital punishment: An assessment of lawmakers from Canada and the United States

This article assesses the attitudes supporting capital punishment among lawmakers from two democratic countries — Canada and the United States. Accordingly, data were collected from three different populations responsible for legislating law either permitting or prohibiting the use of capital punishment in their respective jurisdictions — the Canadian House of Commons and the Michigan and Ohio state legislatures. These data were used to assess two general hypotheses: (1) Conservative parties will report higher levels of support for capital punishment; and, (2) Individual members from liberal political parties will report lower levels of support for capital punishment when compared to members of more conservative parties. The research findings supported both hypotheses.     

Addressing the shortage of kidneys for transplantation: purchase and allocation through chain auctions

Transplantation is generally the treatment of choice for those suffering from kidney failure. Not only does transplantation offer improved quality of life and increased longevity relative to dialysis, it also reduces end-stage renal disease program expenditures, providing savings to Medicare. Unfortunately, the waiting list for kidney transplants is long, growing, and unlikely to be substantially reduced by increases in the recovery of cadaveric kidneys. Another approach is to obtain more kidneys through payment to living "donors," or vendors. Such direct commodification, in which a price is placed on kidneys, has generally been opposed by medical ethicists. Much of the ethical debate, however, has been in terms of commodification through market exchange. Recognizing that there are different ethical concerns associated with the purchase of kidneys and their allocation, it is possible to design a variety of institutional arrangements for the commodification of kidneys that pose different sets of ethical concerns. We specify three such alternatives in detail sufficient to allow an assessment of their likely consequences and we compare these alternatives to current policy in terms of the desirable goals of promoting human dignity, equity, efficiency, and fiscal advantage. This policy analysis leads us to recommend that kidneys be purchased at administered prices by a nonprofit organization and allocated to the transplant centers that can organize the longest chains of transplants involving willing-but-incompatible donor-patient dyads.     

The Direction of Deception: Neuro-Linguistic Programming as a Lie Detection Tool

There is a myth in popular psychology, often echoed in police literature, but as yet untested, that specific eye movements pertain to lying and truth telling. According to this line of thought, eye movements to the sender??s right indicate lying, as the sender??s eyes are drawn to the side of his/her brain where their fabrication is being created. We have put this hypothesis, derived from ??Neuro-Linguistic Programming?? to the test in two experiments. In Experiment 1, a total of 204 participants (all air passengers) were interviewed at an international airport about their forthcoming trip. All participants answered one question truthfully and one question deceptively. Some participants answered a third question truthfully, whereas others answered the same question deceptively. No conclusive evidence was found for a relationship between specific eye movements and deception. In Experiment 2, a total of 31 participants discussed their real occupation in one interview and a pretend occupation in another interview. Only three of the 31 participants revealed the eye movement pattern predicted by NLP. Reasons for the existence of the myth that liars display specific eye movements are discussed.     

Forensic Facial Reconstruction: Relationship Between the Alar Cartilage and Piriform Aperture

During forensic facial reconstruction, facial features may be predicted based on the parameters of the skull. This study evaluated the relationships between alar cartilage and piriform aperture and nose morphology and facial typology. Ninety‐six cone beam computed tomography images of Brazilian subjects (49 males and 47 females) were used in this study. OsiriX software was used to perform the following measurements: nasal width, distance between alar base insertion points, lower width of the piriform aperture, and upper width of the piriform aperture. Nasal width was associated with the lower width of the piriform aperture, sex, skeletal vertical pattern of the face, and age. The current study contributes to the improvement of forensic facial guides by identifying the relationships between the alar cartilages and characteristics of the biological profile of members of a population that has been little studied thus far.     

Who Controls the Content of Supreme Court Opinions?

Conventional arguments identify either the median justice or the opinion author as the most influential justices in shaping the content of Supreme Court opinions. We develop a model of judicial decision making that suggests that opinions are likely to reflect the views of the median justice in the majority coalition. This result derives from two features of judicial decision making that have received little attention in previous models. The first is that in deciding a case, justices must resolve a concrete dispute, and that they may have preferences over which party wins the specific case confronting them. The second is that justices who are dissatisfied with an opinion are free to write concurrences (and dissents). We demonstrate that both features undermine the bargaining power of the Court's median and shift influence towards the coalition median. An empirical analysis of concurrence behavior provides significant support for the model.     

Interdisciplinary Teamwork in Family Law Practice

For attorneys who engage in matrimonial practice, work is often performed by a sole practitioner. While members of other professions have already demonstrated that interdisciplinary practice and teamwork are integral to efficiency, client satisfaction, and career success, matrimonial attorneys are just beginning to work in deliberately constructed interdisciplinary teams. In this article, we examine the definition of teamwork and highlight the characteristics of an effective team, drawing examples from the business, medical, and mental health fields. We then determine how successful teams are built and explore the application of such approaches within matrimonial practice, offering recommendations for research and effective use of teams to help families that are facing conflict and reorganization.     

Civil Wrongs: Personal Injury Law in the Late 19th Century

This is a report of data drawn from a study of personal injury actions in the Superior Court of Alameda County, California, and in the federal district court for Northern California, for the period 1880–1900. Tort actions, in this period, were relatively uncommon compared to the number of accidents. The most frequent type of action was against common carriers—railroads and street railways. Malpractice actions were rare. Most fired cases were settled or dropped out before full trial and jury verdict. Though plaintiffs won damages in most jury cases, the overall finding is that the system provided little compensation for most victims of accidents. Tort law and practice disfavored passengers less than employees or "trespassers." Three types of barrier blocked the path to compensation: legal doctrines which made recovery difficult; an accident-compensation system which, especially for workers, discouraged enforcement of claims; and the legal culture, which was a culture of low expectations.     

Bodies found in the waterways of New York City

We reviewed the case records for all decedents recovered from the waterways of New York City over a three year period (1997-2000). The epidemiological profile, circumstances, toxicology findings, putrefactive changes, date of recovery, length of immersion, and injuries were examined. There were 123 deaths: 52 suicides, 50 undetermined, 16 accidents, and five homicides. The causes of death included: 97 drownings, 13 undetermined, and 13 other. Of all the floating decedents, 27% were without putrefactive change. All found after two or more weeks of immersion were recovered from November to May. The detection of ethanol and illicit drugs was 53% in the accident, 41% in the suicide, and 33% in the undetermined groups. Detection of ethanol and/or drugs of abuse is not a reliable criterion to distinguish suicide from accident. The identification of the deceased is pivotal for determining the manner of these deaths. Therefore, a great reliance is placed upon the medical investigator and the police (including the missing persons bureau) to determine the circumstances and identification of the decedent.     

Dental characteristics of a large military population useful for identification

The number and complexity of dental restorations has decreased for younger Americans. Since the presence and extent of restorations are important data for forensic science identification purposes, the Computer-Assisted Postmortem Identification (CAPMI) system was used to assess the practical effect of the decreased selectivity expected as a result of improved dental health. Dental examination data from 7030 soldiers were recorded on optical mark read forms and entered into a database. The data were reorganized and analyzed to generate summary statistics about the incidence of each type of restoration (divided into 16 categories) for both anterior, posterior, upper, lower, and combined segments. Patients' ages ranged from 17 to 49 with a mean of 24 years 5 months. Sixty percent were from 18 to 25 years old. A characteristic is defined as any situation other than a virgin tooth; for example, extracted, missing, unerupted, or restored. The average subject had 7 dental characteristics with approximately 75% having 4 or more. Within the entire population, 9% had 32 unrestored teeth. 3.6% had only one characteristic. To test the selectivity and uniqueness of various combinations of dental characteristics, 363 simulations using the CAPMI system were made against the entire 7030 subject database. Sample records (33 per group) with 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9-11, 12-14, 15-18, and 19+ characteristics were chosen at random from the database and searches were made.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)