Drone Use ‘Outside Areas of Active Hostilities’: An Examination of the Legal Paradigms Governing US Covert Remote Strikes

Netherlands International Law Review - This article examines the use by the US of drone strikes in regions described as ‘outside areas of active hostilities’ a phrase that appears to...     

Victimization and fear of crime in an entertainment district crime “hot spot:” A test of structural-choice theory

Theories of criminal opportunity and criminal victimization (lifestyles, routine activities, and structuralchoice) all stress the convergence of motivated offenders, suitable targets, and the absence of guardianship in time and space. They each assert the chances of victimization increase as proximity to motivated offenders, exposure to highrisk environments, target attractiveness, and ineffective guardianship increase. This study tests Miethe and Meier’s structuralchoice theory by examining domainspecific victimization and fear of crime among patrons of an entertainment district crime “hot spot. ”Regression results show both victimization experience and fear of crime are associated significantly with indicators of proximity and guardianship, but not with exposure or target attractiveness. White patrons of this area are more likely to be victimized, nonwhites report significantly higher levels of fear. The research for this paper was supported by Grant No. 97PRWX0298 from the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. Findings and conclusions of the research reported here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.     

Acknowledging the Other Side in Negotiation

In a negotiation study, we investigated the efficacy of acknowledging an opponent's role in securing a concession made to that opponent. The study featured a face-to-face, one-shot bargaining session between a student favoring marijuana legalization and a confederate playing the role of a legalization opponent. When the confederate acknowledged the student's putative influence in producing a concession by the confederate, the student perceived the magnitude of the concession to be greater and was more likely to accept it. The student negotiators also reported that they liked the other party more following acknowledgement, and our mediational analysis suggested that enhanced interpersonal sentiments played a role in facilitating agreement. In this article, in addition to documenting these findings, we also discuss their implications, both for theoretical analyses of conflict and negotiation and for the practical problem of settling disputes.     

Literatur

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

The Perversions of History: Constitutionalism and Revolution in Burke’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Reflections</Emphasis>

Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France is one of the defining texts in the history of English constitutional thought. It is conservative in its overt defence of England’s ancient constitution, and in particular the twin bulwarks of Church and Crown. In more immediate terms, it was written against those who appeared to sympathise with the principles of the French revolution, men such as Joseph Price and Tom Paine. But the true ‘genius’ of Burke, as Wordsworth famously noted, does not lie in the surface defence of traditional conservative institutions and principles. It lies, rather, in an appreciation that constitutions are aesthetic expressions, their vitality dependent upon the strength of the political imagination which they strive to shape and to nurture. What is truly distinctive about Burke’s Reflections accordingly is that it was written as a poetic as much as a political treatise. The purpose of this essay is to explore this genius and this poetic.     

Ballistic characterization of the Remington Premier Copper Solid sabot shotgun slug

We evaluated the impact and penetration characteristics of the Remington Copper Solid sabot shotgun slug with standardized ballistic tests and used this information to predict tissue wounding patterns. This unique ammunition, first distributed in 1993, is composed of a solid copper, hollow-point slug with longitudinal slots cut into the nose. The slug is fitted into a hard plastic sabot with 8 finger-like projections and loaded into a shotgun shell with two plastic wads separating it from the underlying gunpowder charge. The ammunition was fired through a 12-gage shotgun using a rifled barrel, a smooth-bore barrel with rifled choke, and a smooth-bore barrel with a smooth modified choke into targets consisting of poster board and 10% ballistic gelatin at a variety of distances. The copper slug and plastic sabot created single 8-fingered asterisk-shaped defects in the poster board when fired at distances of less than 7 to 9 ft (approximately 2 to 3 m). All three barrel types performed similarly. At greater distances, the sabot impacted the targets separately from the slugs and created variably shaped defects that reflected base-first, nose-first, and side-first impacts. Increasing muzzle-to-target distances generally increased the impact distances between the slug and sabot. There was no predictable relationship between the sabot and slug impact points for any of the three barrel types. With each barrel tested, the wads created separate defects from the slug at distances greater than 5 ft (1.5 m). The distances between the slug and the wad impact points increased with increasing muzzle-to-target distances up to 40 ft (12 m), after which the wads generally no longer struck the targets. The slug created atypical defects at distances between 7 and 150 ft (approximately 2 to 45 m), probably due to yawing or tumbling. When the slug impacted the gelatin block in a nose-first orientation, the slotted nose portion tended to fragment and radially deposit pieces in the gelatin that were visible on radiographs. When the slug struck the gelatin target in a side-first orientation, it passed through the gelatin intact. The slug, sabot, and wads of this unique projectile separate and create independent impact points in a stereotypical manner independent of barrel type. This pattern of separation allows estimates to be made of ranges of fire. Wounds created in human tissues by this ammunition would likely have similar asterisk-shaped configurations, and nose fragments may be deposited in tissues and seen radiographically. Rectangular wounds created by the tumbling or yawing slug might be mistaken for intermediate target wounds.