The Merowe Dam Project – When Does the Coin Flip from Legal Business Activity to Criminal Behavior? Reflections on the Concept of Guarantor’s Liablity in the Context of Transnational Business Activities

The individual liability of corporate officers for crimes that are often framed as transnational human rights abuses is much debated. While it seems that some standards of liability are developing in the field of international criminal law, standards of criminal liability in cases where the alleged crimes do not amount to international crimes remain to some extent unclear. This article will examine a concrete case that was investigated by the Frankfurt/Main prosecutor’s office. Additionally, it will be considered whether international soft law standards on corporate human rights due diligence have an influence on how the existing standards of guarantor’s liability, and especially that of principals (Geschäftsherrenhaftung), are to be interpreted in these cases.     

‘An error is feedback’: the experience of communication error management in crisis negotiations

A range of studies have examined what should be said and done in crisis negotiations. Yet, no study to date has considered what happens when an error is made, how to respond to an error, and what the consequences of errors and responses might be on the negotiation process itself. To develop our understanding of errors, we conducted 11 semi-structured interviews with police crisis negotiators in the Netherlands. Negotiators reported making errors of three types: factual, judgment, or contextual. They also reported making use of four types of response strategy: accept, apologize, attribute, and contradict. Critically, the negotiators did not perceive errors as solely detrimental, but as an opportunity for feedback. They advocated for an error management approach, which focused on what could be learned from another person’s errors when looking back at them. Suggestions for improvement of the communication error management experience in crisis negotiations are discussed.     

Victim resistance and offender weapon effects in robbery

What happens when victims resist robbers? Logistic regression analysis of over 4500 sample robbery incidents reported in the 1979–1985 National Crime Surveys reveals the following about various forms of victim resistance. Self-protection (SP) of any kind apparently reduces the probability of the robbery being completed, i.e., the robber getting away with the victim's property. Armed resistance is more effective than unarmed resistance, and resistance with a gun, though relatively rare, is the most effective victim response of all. Resistance with a gun also appears to reduce the likelihood of the victim being injured, while two types of resistance appear to increase it: (1) unarmed physical force against the robber and (2) trying to get help, attract attention, or scare the robber away. The robber's possession of a gun appears to inhibit victim resistance, which can sometimes provoke a robber to attack; robber gun possession thereby reduces the probability of victim injury. However, even controlling for victim resistance, robber gun possession, is associated with a lower rate of injury to the victim. Finally, robbers with handguns are much more likely to complete their robberies, and those with knives and other weapons are somewhat more likely to do so, compared to unarmed robbers.     

Post-mortem analysis of formic acid disposition in acute methanol intoxication

Fifteen cases of fatal massive methanol intoxication have been investigated. Victims received either no treatment or ethanol therapeutic treatment. Methanol poisoning cases were classified in three groups according to survival time: more than 3 days (group 1), up to 3 days (group 2) and few hours (group 3). Body distribution of methanol and formic acid, as the main metabolite, was analyzed in blood and in different organs (brain, kidney, lung and liver). Relationships between formic acid concentration in the different tissues, survival time and type of treatment applied to victims were studied. Formic acid in blood and tissues was analyzed by head space gas chromatography (head space-GC) with FID detector, previous transformation in methyl formate, essentially as described by Abolin. Formic acid concentration was between 0.03 and 1.10g/l in the samples under study. A good correlation between blood and brain, but poor between blood and the remaining tissues was found. Obtained data suggested that the use of blood and brain could help to improve the analysis of formic acid intoxication. The best correlation among organs was found between lung and kidney for all groups (r(2)=0.91, 0.84 and 0.87, corresponding to groups 1, 2 and 3, respectively). Lethality index was defined as LI = (concentration of formic acid in blood in (g/l)/0.5) x 100, taking into account that 0.5g/l is the concentration reported by Mahieu in severe methanol poisoning. LI parameter was used to estimate formic acid incidence on the lethality of methanol poisoning cases. LI showed a good correlation with total formic acid concentration of the different tissues analyzed (r(2)=0.80). Furthermore, LI allowed us to discriminate between individuals that received therapeutic treatment and survived different periods. LI>100 indicated a severe intoxication and short survival time if the victim was assisted with ethanol therapy and hemodialysis was not applied. With regard to victims who received no therapeutic treatment and died in few hours, LI was in the range 40-100. LI was below 40 for individuals that survived more than 3 days and hemodialysis was not performed. Results showed the importance of performing formic acid analysis to diagnose severe methanol intoxication in post-mortem cases.     

Why some market reforms lack legitimacy in health care

Market-oriented health policy reforms in the 1980s and 1990s generally included five kinds of proposals: increased cost sharing for patients through user fees, the separation of purchaser-provider functions, management reforms of hospitals, provider competition, and vouchers for purchasing health insurance. These policies are partly derived from agency theory and a model of managed competition in health insurance. The essay reviews the course of reform in five countries that had a national health service model in place in the late 1980s: Italy, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Special consideration is given to New Zealand, where the market model was extensively adopted but short lived. In New Zealand, surveys and polls are compared to archival records of reformers' deliberations. Voters saw health care differently from elites, and voters particularly felt that health care was ill suited to commercialization. There are similarities across all five countries in what has been adopted and rejected. Some market reforms are more legitimate than others. Reforms based on resolving principal-agent problems, including purchaser-provider splits and managerial reforms, have been more successful, although cost sharing has not. Competition-based reforms in financing and to a lesser extent in provision have not gained legitimacy. Most voters in these countries see health care as different from other parts of the economy and view managerial reforms differently from policies that try to make health care more like other sectors.     

Revisiting renewable portfolio standard effectiveness: policy design and outcome specification matter

Renewable portfolio standards (RPS) differ widely across US states. Prior research findings on the effectiveness of these policies to stimulate renewable electricity deployment are equally wide ranging. This study investigates patterns of RPS policy design and analyzes the effects on policy outcomes measured at the level of utility compliance. Measuring organizational outcomes of RPS corrects for the first time the challenges of prior research focused on state-level renewable capacity or generation outcomes. The quantitative analysis also takes into account the complexity of RPS design, by making use of a state-by-state database of RPS design characteristics developed for this study. Patterns of RPS design across states are compared, including the compliance schedule, scope, eligibility of resources, quotas and subsidies, renewable energy credit provisions, as well as enforcement and penalties. Together, the map of state RPS design and the new approach to RPS outcome analysis illuminate the diversity of RPS policy practice across the United States. They suggest the need to both account for the variety of design characteristics and accurately specify the policy outcomes in evaluations of these policies.