Attempted Drug‐facilitated Sexual Assault—Xylazine Intoxication in a Child

There are only a few cases of drug‐facilitated sexual assaults on children reported in the literature so far. Here, a case of a four‐year‐old boy is presented. He was unconscious, and the accompanying adults reported that the child had been at a playground on his own. Returning home, he complained of having been stung and collapsed immediately. Urine and serum samples of the child were investigated. In the toxicological analysis, xylazine, a sedative and muscle relaxant used in animals, was detected. Subsequent quantification by GC/MS after solid‐phase extraction revealed 0.053 mg/L xylazine in serum and approximately 0.63 mg/L in urine. Furthermore, the child was examined by a forensic medical specialist. Police investigations revealed that the godfather, who had been previously accused of sexual abuse of children, had injected the child with the drug, possibly in preparation for a shared bath.     

Eintragung in die Liste der Rechtsanwälte – Verfassungsfragen

Der vorliegende Aufsatz untersucht, ob die zur Ausübung der Rechtsanwaltschaft erforderliche praktische Verwendung bei einem Rechtsanwalt immer und in jeder Fallkonstellation die von der Rechtsanwaltsordnung geforderten vollen drei Jahre betragen muss. Es wird gezeigt, dass in bestimmten Konstellationen auch eine zeitlich geringere Verwendungsdauer bei einem Rechtsanwalt im Lichte verfassungsrechtlicher Anforderungen – konkret: des Gleichheitsgrundsatzes, der Erwerbsbetätigungsfreiheit und der Berufsausbildungsfreiheit – entgegen der bisherigen Judikatur des VfGH als Erfüllung der "Kernzeit" gewertet werden müsste.     

A Review of Evidence-Based Biopsychosocial Laws Governing the Treatment of Pain and Injury

The impact of scientific findings on medical, psychological, and legal concepts has led to the adoption of laws and regulations that do not easily fit into the established legal categories of medical law or mental health law. Instead, this convergence of forces has resulted in laws and regulations mandating biopsychosocial treatment guidelines, where both medical and psychological cares are integrated within the framework of a single paradigm. Laws and regulations of this type have been adopted by a number of US states and Canadian provinces, and could be considered to represent a new category, for which we offer the term “biopsychosocial law.” Biopsychosocial laws currently pertain to medical treatment guidelines for workers’ compensation, a medical treatment system noted for high costs, high levels of litigation, and psychological involvement. There are a number of examples of biopsychosocial laws, but the most noteworthy are based on guidelines developed by the Colorado Division of Workers’ Compensation, the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, the Work Loss Data Institute, and The Reed Group. These guidelines differ significantly with regard to features, conditions covered, and strength of evidence basis. However, all of these guideline systems were developed with the intent of providing good care while controlling costs, are evidence based, integrate the practice of medicine and psychology, and are legally mandated in certain jurisdictions. Taken together, these guidelines represent a growing convergence of scientific evidence, professional society positions, payor policies, and legal regulations. These forces are propelling a broad societal shift away from Cartesian assumptions that the body and mind are separate, and toward a biopsychosocial paradigm for the treatment of injury and illness.     

Call for papers: Organizations, social inequality, and social justice conference of the workgroup sociology of organizations, the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg, and the Junior Research Group ?Interdisciplinary Social Justice Research“ at Humboldt-Universit?t zu Berlin, April 23–24, 2004.

Mitteilungen und Berichte

Call for papers: Organizations, social inequality, and social justice conference of the workgroup sociology of organizations, the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg, and the Junior Research Group „Interdisciplinary Social Justice Research“ at Humboldt-Universit?t zu Berlin, April 23–24, 2004.     

论刑事诉讼的北美模式

发现案件的客观真实是刑事诉讼所追求的首要和主要目的,法庭审判选择哪种诉讼模式取决于其是否能够实现客观真实.在这方面北美国家纯粹的对抗制表现出严重缺陷,由陪审团进行审判甚至会加深这些缺陷.在北美刑事诉讼中占据支配地位的辩诉交易制度,由于取消了以公开和言词审理为中心的庭审方式,使得刑事诉讼脱离了其所追求的客观真实目的,而转向仅仅证明谁能在诉讼中取胜.这不仅在理论上破坏了北美刑事诉讼的公正性,而且导致了刑事诉讼实践中的根本改变.但是,正是辩诉交易存在的这些可疑却很有诱惑力的影响,使得北美的刑事诉讼模式对于欧洲当代的刑事诉讼改革有着如此大的吸引力.     

The predictability of international terrorism: A time‐series analysis

Abstract

The study examines the predictability of international terrorism in terms of the existence of trends, seasonality, and periodicity of terrorist events. The data base used was the RAND Corporation's Chronology of International Terrorism. It contains the attributes of every case of international terrorism from 1968 to 1986 (n = 5,589). The authors applied Box‐Jenkins models for a time‐series analysis of the occurrence of terrorist events as well as their victimization rates. The analysis revealed that occurrence of terrorist events is far from being random: There is a clear trend and an almost constant periodicity of one month that can be best described by a first‐order moving average model. The fit of this model was tested both by statistical diagnostics and the accuracy of predictions based on this model compared to actual occurrence. However, the series of victimization rates did not reveal any predictability aside from the overall trend of an increasing level of victimization. The findings of the study are discussed by two approaches: the contagiousness of terrorism and the concept of media‐oriented terrorism. These two concepts, separately or combined, may explain some of the patterns revealed in the occurrence of terrorist events. However, they both highlight the part played by the mass media, either as a target for publicity‐seeking terrorists or as an influential factor in the process of contagion.     

Regionalist Protest through Shared Rule? Peripherality and the Use of Cantonal Initiatives in Switzerland

In this article, we are interested in the extent to which federalism is able to deal with peripheral protest through shared rule channels. Shared rule as a key dimension of federal states has not thus far received adequate academic attention. Empirically, we analyse the use of all cantonal initiatives in Switzerland over the past 25 years as a particular instrument of shared rule, subsequently focusing on two peripheral regions with successful regionalist parties, Ticino and Geneva. We find that regionalist parties contribute towards radicalizing peripheral demands in search of attention from the centre. This leads to the mainstreaming of peripheral demands by pulling other parties along. We conclude that shared rule properly designed gives even the most peripheral regions a voice in national decisions, but that regionalist parties may also use shared rule instruments to mobilize their electorate at home to fight their non-regionalist competitors.