A method for calculating the strength of evidence associated with an earwitness's claimed recognition of a familiar speaker

The present paper proposes and demonstrates a method for assessing strength of evidence when an earwitness claims to recognize the voice of a speaker who is familiar to them. The method calculates a Bayes factor that answers the question: What is the probability that the earwitness would claim to recognize the offender as the suspect if the offender was the suspect versus what is the probability that the earwitness would claim to recognize the offender as the suspect if the offender was not the suspect but some other speaker from the relevant population? By “claim” we mean a claim made by a cooperative earwitness not a claim made by an earwitness who is intentionally deceptive. Relevant data are derived from naïve listeners' responses to recordings of familiar speakers presented in a speaker lineup. The method is demonstrated under recording conditions that broadly reflect those of a real case.     

Constructing citizenship? Women, welfare and refugees in France, 1939-1940

Women were central to the provision of welfare services in France during the refugee crises of the late 1930s. By building on the services created during the First World War, women, as either volunteers or professionals, actively cared for refugees and others during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), the phoney war (September 1939-May 1940) and the German invasion of 1940. French women's involvement with refugee aid enabled them to develop a sense of autonomous civil and political activism, especially—although not exclusively—in their work with the French Red Cross. In addition, the history of welfare activities for refugees illuminates how ordinary people dealt with the extraordinary circumstances of war, invasion and the forced movement of populations.     

Mortgages, seniors and the common law contractual doctrine of mental incapacity in Australia

Seniors in Australia are being called upon to mortgage their most precious economic asset, the family home. They may be asked to guarantee the liabilities of other family members by providing a mortgage-based guarantee or they may decide to enter into a reverse mortgage to supplement financially their savings and pensions. As the family home is the single most valuable asset for most older Australians, the creation of any obligations in regard to it ought to be undertaken with care and vigilance. While seniors are free to create mortgages, they may lack the capacity to understand the legal ramifications of these complex transactions or be unable to protect their interests when entering into them. It is not suggested that older Australians necessarily suffer a lack of contractual capacity. Many seniors are more than able to take care of their interests and assets. However, some seniors do suffer cognitive impairment which adversely affects their capacity to act in their best interests and to navigate the complexities of contractual relations. In contract and mortgage law, this raises the issue of mental incapacity.For centuries, the common law has recognized not only that mentally incapacitated people exist, but that they may enter into contracts such as mortgages and may later wish to have the mortgage set aside. The present formulation of the contractual doctrine of mental incapacity is the product of 19th century jurisprudence in which the courts framed the doctrine to accommodate commercial dealing rather than the interests of persons who lacked the necessary mental capacity. Accordingly, the doctrine has been very difficult to rely on successfully when challenging mortgages made by persons lacking capacity. Therefore, Australian litigators and courts alike have sought to deal with mental incapacity issues in the contractual context by using and modifying other doctrines (such as non est factum, undue influence and unconscionable dealing) in which the issue of capacity may be incorporated, but where mental incapacity need not be the sole or primary focus. While this had led to greater success for mortgagors, this has been at the expense of the common law doctrine. The article concludes by offering some suggestions as to how the doctrine may be modernized and mental capacity dealt with in a way both to empower competent seniors and protect those vulnerable seniors suffering cognitive impairment.     

Score based procedures for the calculation of forensic likelihood ratios – Scores should take account of both similarity and typicality

Score based procedures for the calculation of forensic likelihood ratios are popular across different branches of forensic science. They have two stages, first a function or model which takes measured features from known-source and questioned-source pairs as input and calculates scores as output, then a subsequent model which converts scores to likelihood ratios. We demonstrate that scores which are purely measures of similarity are not appropriate for calculating forensically interpretable likelihood ratios. In addition to taking account of similarity between the questioned-origin specimen and the known-origin sample, scores must also take account of the typicality of the questioned-origin specimen with respect to a sample of the relevant population specified by the defence hypothesis. We use Monte Carlo simulations to compare the output of three score based procedures with reference likelihood ratio values calculated directly from the fully specified Monte Carlo distributions. The three types of scores compared are: 1. non-anchored similarity-only scores; 2. non-anchored similarity and typicality scores; and 3. known-source anchored same-origin scores and questioned-source anchored different-origin scores. We also make a comparison with the performance of a procedure using a dichotomous “match”/“non-match” similarity score, and compare the performance of 1 and 2 on real data.     

Leadership in Local Government: ‘No Girls Allowed’

This article explores the under‐representation of women at the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) levels of Western Australian (WA) local government. It draws on data collected from 21 second tier senior women managers about their perceptions and experiences of leadership within the sector, as well as their aspirations for CEO appointment. By applying critical gender analysis to the data, gender and specifically masculinity emerges as a significant and valued leadership attribute. While this analysis is not unique to local government, what sets the sector apart is its apparent disinterest in examining the reasons for, or the impacts of this continued leadership stereotype when at the same time Australian public and private institutions are challenging these traditional leadership models. This article points to fundamental weaknesses in the formal power structures and processes of local government that support deeply embedded biases about leadership. Perhaps the most significant contributor to these outcomes that emerged from the study is the apparent unencumbered power of Mayors and elected members over all aspects of CEO employment, especially recruitment.     

Public Attitudes to Gaelic and the Debate about Scottish Autonomy

Scotland seems to be a counter-example to general theories of the relationship between language and national identity or nationalism. These theories point to three components in the ideology of language and nation—that being able to speak the national language is necessary for full national membership, that the national language is a core part of the nation's culture, and that the future of national political autonomy and the future of the national language are connected with each other. In Scotland, it has appeared that language is not central to national membership or culture, and language campaigning has not been central to the political campaigns for autonomy. The article presents new evidence, from the 2012 Scottish Social Attitudes Survey, which questions these beliefs about the relationship between language and national identity or nationalism in Scotland.