Priming Gender: Campaigning on Women's Issues in U.S. Senate Elections

The gender gap has been an important feature of American elections since 1980. Yet, most explanations for the effects of gender on voting behavior focus on differences between men and women without taking account of how campaign strategies may serve to highlight or mask these differences. I examine how Senate candidates act strategically in deciding whether and how to target women voters. I find that candidates make these decisions based largely on two factors: (1) the importance of these issues to the state's voters and (2) whether gender gaps had been decisive in previous statewide contests. Analysis of exit-poll data indicates that when campaigns focused more on women's issues, women became more likely to vote Democratic while the vote choices of men were unaffected. Thus, campaign strategies do appear to influence the importance of gender differences in voting behavior.     

Explosions in the Sky: Coverage for Non-Contaminating Properties of Pollutants

Pollution liability and general liability insurance policies, in theory, should afford complementary rather than overlapping coverage. While this works well in theory, non-traditional pollution events challenge this outcome. This article focuses on loss events resulting from explosions, and in particular whether the resulting harms should be considered for coverage under a pollution policy or a general liability policy.     

Research note: Rand's research on terrorism

Repeatedly, during the last few years, small groups of extremists have demonstrated that by using terrorist tactics they can achieve disproportionate effects. They attract worldwide attention to themselves and their causes; they arouse worldwide alarm, and can create international incidents that national governments are compelled to deal with, often before a worldwide audience. To protect against their attacks or to respond to crisis situations they create, they force governments to expend resources—manpower, money, the attention of senior officials—vastly out of scale with the magnitude of the actual threat they pose.¹     

Ten Years On, the ‘Three Circle’ Model of Restorative & Transformative Justice: A Tool to Combat Victimization and Recidivism

This paper had its genesis 10 years ago in the authors’ development of a communitarian ‘three circle’ model of restorative and transformative justice for a pilot restorative justice study used with serious and repeat adult offenders appearing in the Magistrates’ Courts in Western Australia. The model was designed in part to place their crimes within a context, something that rarely occurs within the mainstream adversarial criminal justice system in Australia. The model was primarily designed to provide victims of crime with the best outcome and offenders with the opportunity to provide apology and restitution, as well as take responsibility for their actions. The three circles, each including two facilitators, are: Circle 1: consists of the perpetrator who has pleaded guilty to a specified criminal act together with his/her family and/or friends; Circle 2: consists of the victim(s) of the crime together with their family and/or friends. Circle 3: consists of a combination of the first two circles, tasked to seek, if possible, a mutually agreeable resolution that culminates in a report to present to the Magistrate in court to use in mitigation of sentencing. Importantly, although the 30-month study had socially and economically significant results, 10 years after its completion there is still no restorative justice program in the adult courts in Western Australia. Because of this, the authors also set out to question the state government’s motivation in largely ignoring this successful process.     

Asia-Pacific news

This column provides a country by country analysis of the latest legal developments, cases and issues relevant to the IT, media and telecommunications' industries in key jurisdictions across the Asia Pacific region. The articles appearing in this column are intended to serve as ‘alerts’ and are not submitted as detailed analyses of cases or legal developments.