Die Konstitutionalisierung Europas zwischen Konvent,Regierungskonferenz und Verfassungsvertrag

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

An experimental study of sentencing by magistrates

A pilot study was carried out with 23 magistrates to develop a sentencing severity scale. An experiment was then conducted with 168 magistrates deciding sentences for simulated cases in 56 groups of three. The results showed that sentences were more severe when offenses were more serious, when offenders had a more serious criminal record, when offenders were male, and when offenders were of higher social status. The age of the offender, the race of the offender and victim, the plea, the prevalence of the offense, and whether breack of trust was involved, did not have significant effects on sentence severity. A comparison between real and simulated sentencing decisions showed that they were similar, and a comparison between individual and group decisions showed that the group decisions were more likely to be relatively severe than relatively lenient.This research was completed while Mr. Kapardis was supported by a Social Science Research Council studentship.     

The relevance of the detection of troponins to the forensic diagnosis of cardiac contusion

The forensic diagnosis of cardiac contusion has hitherto been based mainly on anamnesis, concomitant thoracic injuries and the detection of macroscopic changes to the heart. Parallel histological and serological investigations of the heart-specific troponins have been conducted with varying results. This paper aims to show whether heart-specific troponins are suitable as a means of securing the diagnosis in proven cases of cardiac contusion and of determining which of the three heart-specific troponins cTnT, cTnI and cTnC are most significant in serology and histology for postmortem diagnosis. In the study, 25 cases of known cardiac contusion and 11 controls without vital myocardial trauma taken from autopsy material were prospectively investigated. Investigation of the venous serum revealed significant differences in the concentrations of the case and control groups for troponin T (mean value 5.5056 versus 0.4982; p=0.014), for troponin C (mean value 263.9280 versus 68.5640; p=0.001) and for troponin I (mean value 1404.0560 versus 36.1650; p=0.003). In histology there are also significantly different depletions between the groups investigated (cTnT: p=0.002; cTnC: p=0.003; cTnI: p<0.001) taking into account the autolysis time.     

Y-chromosome STR haplotypes in Sweden

A total of 708 men, with Swedish names, from different parts of Sweden have been typed for the Y-chromosome minimal haplotype STR markers DYS19, DYS389I, DYS389II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392, DYS393 and DYS385. Of these, 403 men were of geographically undefined Swedish origin and the rest, 305, from seven defined geographical regions. PCR-products were detected by ABI377 using sequenced allelic ladders. An evaluation of the 708 chromosomes revealed 423 different haplotypes. Only 100 of the haplotypes were found more than once. The over all haplotype diversity was 0.994. The haplotype 14, 12, 28, 23, 10, 11, 13, 14-14 has the highest frequency of 5.79% and is significantly Swedish, when compared to other European populations.     

Shared Waters—shared Responsibility. Application of the Principles of Fairness for Burden Sharing in the Mediterranean

The paper addresses the issue of burden sharing within the context of the Barcelona Convention for the protection of the Mediterranean. The initial premise is that the perceived fairness of burden sharing rules is an important factor in the success of multilateral environmental agreements. We review briefly the basic ideas behind the fairness and equity debate in global environmental affairs before we apply a number of widely accepted equity rules in the case of Mediterranean marine protection. We derive arithmetic examples to illustrate the application of the rules and compare them in terms of their political attractiveness, cost-effectiveness and practical feasibility. It is shown that the simple rule of egalitarian justice scores high on all aspects.