What the Trial Judge Needs to Know about the Convention of 23 November 2007 on the International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of Family Maintenance

Since the 1950s, there have been several international multi‐lateral treaties for recognition and enforcement of child and spousal support orders. They operated, primarily, in civil law countries where “creditor‐based jurisdiction” allowed establishment of an order in the country of habitual residence of the child or the custodial parent. The United States, requiring “minimum contacts” with the debtor to establish personal jurisdiction, could not be a party to such agreements. For nearly fifty years the U.S., and a few states, sought to fill the need for international reciprocity by negotiating individual country‐to‐country or state‐to‐country arrangements. With ratification of the 2007 Family Maintenance Convention, the United States was finally able to join in a multi‐lateral treaty. The treaty took effect in the United States on January 1, 2017, establishing procedures for international recognition, enforcement and modification of family support orders with 35 other countries already party to the Convention (including the entire European Union). The grand bargain struck during the negotiations between 2003 and 2007 was that the U.S. would honor a foreign order if, under the facts presented, there were sufficient minimum contacts with the debtor that would have supported personal jurisdiction if the order had been entered in any state in the U.S. If unable to recognize a foreign order, the U.S. agreed to take steps to issue a new one. The treaty establishes administrative procedures that, in many respects, are nearly identical to interstate enforcement of domestic support orders in this country. But there are also aspects of the treaty that are entirely new and warrant explanation for family and juvenile court judges. This article focuses on several unique provisions of the treaty that judges and attorneys need to understand.     

Estimating the Time of Death in Domestic Canines

Abstract:  Because 36.1% of U.S. households have dogs, the time of death (TOD) of dogs at crime scenes can be useful to forensic investigators. However, there are few published studies based on postmortem changes in dogs. This study, conducted indoors in still air at approximately room temperature, monitored the postmortem reduction in rectal, liver, brain, and aural temperatures in 16 dogs for 32 h after death. Graphs of temperature reduction were prepared to estimate the TOD of dogs within the first 32 h postmortem. Sex, body mass, and hair coat density did not affect the rate of body temperature reduction, but increased body weight and volume slowed it. Rectal temperature was the most convenient, reasonable site for measuring body temperature. Vitreous humor potassium ion concentration [K⁺] was measured in both eyes at c.  1.5 and 7 h after death. Both eyes had the same [K⁺] when measured simultaneously, and [K⁺] increased after death.     

Thermal degradation analysis of amino acids in fingerprint residue by pyrolysis GC-MS to develop new latent fingerprint developing reagents

Conventional development of latent fingerprints is compromised when the prints are decomposed by extreme temperatures, such as those encountered when a weapon cartridge is fired, an improvised explosive device is detonated, and/or in arson cases. Understanding how these extreme temperatures alter the chemical and physical properties of latent fingerprint residue could aid in the discovery of a reagent that could effectively develop these decomposed fingerprints. To mimic scenarios where fingerprints may be exposed to high heat conditions, standards of the five most abundant amino acids in fingerprint residue as well as extracted fingerprint residue were pyrolized under controlled conditions. Compounds identified as pyrolytic decomposition products were 3,6-dimethylpiperazine-2,5-dione (from alanine), maleimide, and 2,5-furandione (from aspartic acid). The pyrograms and selected ion traces show these products to hold promise as indicators of decomposed fingerprint residues and, therefore, may serve as good candidate substrates for a developing reagent.     

Army administration tensions over Algeria's Centres de regroupement, 1954–1962

Thirty years after the end of the Algerian War of Independence the bulk of the contemporary military documentation has been released, after classification, and is available at the military archives of the Service Historique de l'Armée de Terre at Vincennes. This study re‐examines the French army's pacification policy and its strategy of regrouping the rural population into resettlement centres and re‐evaluates the role of the Sections Administratives Spécialisées (SAS) in administering this resettled population. The speed and scale of regrouping is reconfirmed from army statistical data. The significant critical inspections carried out by the quasi‐civilian Inspection Générale des Regroupements de la Population (IGRP) led to army‐civilian conflict as did the efforts of SAS units to turn this damaging military operation into a more positive rural renovation programme. By the end of the war both the IGRP and the SAS gave ground to military evaluations of the situation and disillusionment crept in as the resettlement programme came to an end. The newly available archival documentation also serves to substantiate the accuracy of Michel Cornaton's pioneering mid‐1960s research on Algeria's centres de regroupement which was carried out in the face of the then prevailing military secrecy.     

Informing Jurors of Their Nullification Power: A Route to a Just Verdict or Judicial Chaos?

The current studies sought to test whether explicitly informing jurors of their power to nullify the law does invite chaos, defined by jurists as undisciplined and biased juror judgment. A series of four studies examined juror biases predicated on defendant status, remorse, gender, national origin, penalty severity, and extenuating circumstances. None, however, were amplified by nullification instructions, providing little evidence that such instructions invite chaos with respect to the biases examined in these studies. To the contrary, several results suggested that nullification instructions simply encourage jurors to nullify when the strict application of the law would result in an unjust verdict. Limitations of the studies and public policy issues are discussed.     

Parties in Elections, Parties in Government, and Partisan Bias

Adam Meirowitz Department of Politics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 e-mail: ameirowi{at}princeton.edu Thomas Romer Department of Politics and Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 e-mail: romer{at}princeton.edu Political parties are active when citizens choose among candidatesin elections and when winning candidates choose among policyalternatives in government. But the inextricably linked institutions,incentives, and behavior that determine these multistage choicesare substantively complex and analytically unwieldy, particularlyif modeled explicitly and considered in total, from citizenpreferences through government outcomes. To strike a balancebetween complexity and tractability, we modify standard spatialmodels of electoral competition and governmental policy-makingto study how components of partisanship—such as candidateplatform separation in elections, party ID-based voting, nationalpartisan tides, and party-disciplined behavior in the legislature—arerelated to policy outcomes. We define partisan bias as the distancebetween the following two points in a conventional choice space:the ideal point of the median voter in the median legislativedistrict and the policy outcome selected by the elected legislature.The study reveals that none of the party-in-electorate conditionsis capable of producing partisan bias independently. Specifiedcombinations of conditions, however, can significantly increasethe bias and/or the variance of policy outcomes, sometimes insubtle ways.