Melancholia in Vita Sackville-West’s Hogarth Press Novels

Author Vita Sackville-West (1892–1962) has been understood as an author who celebrates in both prose and verse the institution of the English country estate, in part because of her personal attachment to her family’s Kentish house, Knole. The four popular novels that Vita Sackville-West published with the Hogarth Press during the early 1930s—The Edwardians (1930), All Passion Spent (1931), Family History (1932), and The Dark Island (1934)—are no exception, save for their particular focus on the agnatic inheritance of both aristocratic title and estate along with the female subject’s exclusion from that system. While the first pair of novels entertain the possibility of mediated success in obtaining the loved object, either the estate itself or an effective substitute, the latter works become melancholically resigned to the restrictions that effectively disinherit the aristocratic eldest daughter. This escalating melancholia, often Freudian in its narrative presentation, directs the novels’ successive focus less toward the act of mourning the loss of the country house, of some version of Knole either real or imagined, and more to the vexing inability to both acknowledge the disinheritance and mourn the loss. In fact, the melancholic dynamic threatens to erase each of Sackville-West’s protagonists, and as her novels detail the advancing impact of this disinheritance, the female characters face literal extinction. Thus, the celebratory stance so often attributed to Sackville-West is, in these works, a far more critical and essentially abject perspective that demands compensation.     

Calling 911 during episodes of domestic abuse: What justifies a call for help?

This preliminary investigation built on the work of Johnson and Sigler (2000), indicating that the public was highly intolerant of wife abuse and increasingly willing to criminalize its occurrence. Videotaped or written scenes containing domestic violence were presented to college students who were asked to indicate the seriousness of each situation, as well as respond to the question, “Is a call to 911 emergency services justified?” The results suggested that these participants were highly intolerant of both physical and nonphysical spousal abuse and that they reliably viewed 911 calls to be justified following scenes with physical violence and no physical injury, as well as scenes with verbal threats, but no physical violence.     

Canada's voluntary ARET program: Limited success despite industry cosponsorship

The Accelerated Reduction/Elimination of Toxins (ARET) Challenge was a voluntary program initiated in 1994 by the Government of Canada. Unlike the U.S. 33/50 Program, ARET involved industry partners in negotiation and cosponsorship of the program, with the intention that early involvement would yield stronger commitment to voluntary reductions. We review the program's self‐reported success in delivering emissions reductions. For 17 ARET substances that were also covered by Canada's National Pollutant Release Inventory, we employ treatment effects regressions to control for self‐selection bias. We find evidence that ARET accelerated emission reductions in five cases, slowed reductions in two cases, and had no discernible effect in ten cases. Industry cosponsorship apparently did not have the intended effect and instead resulted in program features such as data confidentiality that significantly undermined the program's credibility. © 2007 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

HIPAA privacy: the compliance challenges ahead

This Article reviews the HIPAA Privacy Standards' impact on healthcare organizations. It discusses whether a healthcare organization is a "Covered Entity" under the regulations, what information the Privacy Standards protect, what restrictions the regulations place on the use and disclosure of protected health information, what individual rights the Privacy Standards create, and what agreements they require between healthcare organizations and their business associates. The author provides relatively extensive guidance to organizations that are embarking upon their voyage of compliance with these broadly applicable regulations, but notes that the full extent of necessary compliance remains unclear, pending DHHS issuance of the next iteration of the rulemaking in this area. The Article was finalized in January 2002, before HHS issued any modifications to the Privacy Standards.     

Patenting medical devices: the economic implications of ethically motivated reform

This article explores whether the current patent system strikes the optimal balance between providing incentives to inventors to bring new medical devices to the marketplace and promoting public health by ensuring that these medical devices are widely available at a reasonable price. After providing an overview of the relationship of patent law to medical devices, the author explains how ethical and economic considerations suggest the need for an alternative patent system for medical devices and notes the difficulties with this proposal. The author concludes that a combination of alternatives to the current system most equitably account for the interests and needs of both healthcare device consumers and producers.     

Battleground: Why the Liberal Party Shirtfronted Tony Abbott

Battleground: Why the Liberal Party Shirtfronted Tony Abbott. By Wayne Errington and Peter van Onselen (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2015), pp.277. AU$29.99 (pb).     

D. Hovell,The Power of Process: The Value of Due Process in Security Council Decision-Making

Netherlands International Law Review -