SUPERVISED VISITATION A Profile of Providers

Surveys with 94 administrators of supervised visitation programs, 51 family court judges, and 40 administrators of child protective services agencies provide a national picture of supervised visitation services, their utility, and areas of unmet need. Although the programs are perceived to fill an important need, they struggle to survive financially, particularly those that handle family court cases. In addition, because many programs operate without adequate access to the assessment and treatment services that some families need, judges frequently want visitation supervisors to assist them in determining suitable custody and visitation arrangements, a role that supervised visitation programs do not feel is appropriate. Many different types of entities provide effective supervised visitation services; many different service formats work. Architects of new programs should fashion services that use local resources to maximum advantage.     

Participation and political protest: A causal model with Australian evidence

This paper examines a model of political participation and political protest that includes the several well-established modes of orthodox participation as well as a number of dimensions of political protest, and also takes account of the causal order between conventional participation and protest. The analysis indicates that previous findings demonstrating a substantial positive association between unidimensional measures of conventional and unconventional political behavior are incomplete and indeed somewhat misleading. The connection between orthodox participation and protest weakens as the style of protest becomes more unorthodox, to such an extent that none of the separate modes of conventional participation are directly related to radical protest. Using sheaf coefficients, the paper also tests the relative explanatory power of three sets of determinants of participation and protest: social background characteristics, general orientations toward politics, and attitudes toward issues. Issues are repeatedly weaker than the other two groups of variables in predicting conventional participation but have relatively strong effects on political protest, particularly compared with political orientations, while social structure is consistently influential.     

Recent Developments

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique -     

Group Structure and Intergroup Relations in Global Terror Networks: Further Explorations

Studies have begun to look at the potentially crucial impacts of group decentralization and inter-group global networking in accounting for the extent and severity of violence in insurgencies and terrorism. Groups may be able to survive more effectively, evade anti-terror or counter-insurgency strategies, and inflict greater damage or more civilian attacks by operating under more or less centralized leadership, or by making use of the resources of other like-minded groups scattered across borders. While some analysts have examined each of these possibilities, few if any have done so simultaneously with both structural and networking indicators or examined the joint effects of these indicators. We propose to do so in this study by combining existing datasets on terrorist structure and networks. Hypotheses and findings in prior studies have indicated that structural decentralization may lead to more civilian attacks if not more destruction since local cells are freer to act on their own, and that group size and centrality in the global terror networks lead to greater lethality and group survival rates. We re-examine such assumptions here with OLS and logit models combining these effects, and find that in addition to group size, network reach (eigenvalue centrality) rather than group interconnections per se (number of allies) appears to have primary impacts on group lethality, targeting, and survival, sometimes in conjunction with decentralized organizational structure.     

Post-termination use of licensed intellectual property by licensees

Legal and practical context: The ongoing dispute between Nokia and Qualcomm exemplifies thecomplex issues that arise when the licensor–licensee relationshipbreaks down. It illustrates that any means by which a licenseecan secure rights to use licensed IP after termination of alicence agreement can be of great commercial importance, notto mention significant economic value. If a licensee can continueto use licensed IP notwithstanding that its agreement has beenterminated, a licensor's ability to control and derive maximumeconomic benefit from its IP may be fundamentally compromised. Key points: The means available to licensees to secure such rights varydepending on the kind of IP right licensed, but there are severalcommon themes, which draw on a diverse range of legal rulesand concepts, including specific IP concepts and laws (includingthe rules relating to assignment and licensing, the exhaustionof rights, revocation and invalidation, and defences to infringementclaims), contract law and competition law. This article discussespractical implications to be considered when drafting IP licenceagreements. Conclusions: From a licensee's perspective, the termination of its licenceagreement is not necessarily the end of the road. Licenseesshould be aware of these post-termination rights when expectingto face difficult renegotiations with a licensor. From bothparties' perspectives, but particularly that of licensor, thisarticle should demonstrate the importance of drafting to avoidany uncertainty that may arise on the termination of a licenceagreement.     

Governing the Chinese Economy: Regulatory Reform in the Service of the State

Pursuant to its extensive program of market reforms, China’s government tried to restructure itself to support a market‐dominated economy. Reform efforts have included elements that are familiar to scholars of public administration: streamlining government, strengthening bureaucratic capacity, distancing government from firms, and establishing independent regulators. But how deep have these reforms been, and with what ultimate goals? This article examines a crucial segment of the economy—China’s so‐called lifeline industries—to show how reforms to China’s economic governance system have been mapped onto an existing system characterized by extreme institutional fragmentation and an inability to imbue new governmental bodies with authority. Moreover, for these key industrial sectors, the Chinese party‐state’s strong interests in ownership, revenues, and social policy dictate that it use a variety of tools to protect these interests.     

Rapid determination of carbohydrates in heroin drug seizures using capillary electrophoresis with short-end injection

A simple and rapid method for the analysis of carbohydrates in heroin samples by capillary electrophoresis utilizing a borate complexation method is described. Separations were performed using an uncoated fused silica capillary, 50 cm x 50 micro I.D. x 360 microm O.D. with an effective separation length of 9 cm. The system was run at 60 degrees C with an applied voltage of -8 kilovolts. Injection of each sample was for 1 sec at -50 mbar. UV detection was employed with the wavelength set at 195 nm. The background electrolyte consisted of 65 mM borate, pH 12.0. Samples and standards were prepared in the run buffer containing 2 mg/mL of mannose as an internal standard. Under these conditions a test mixture containing glucose, sucrose, lactose, mannitol and mannose as an internal standard was resolved within 5 min. The method was used to determine the concentration of carbohydrates in heroin seizure samples and synthetic heroin samples. The results were in good agreement with the reported values.