Suicide by fire in a car trunk: a case with potential pitfalls

We present an unusual case in which an adult female committed suicide by fire while enclosed in the trunk of her vehicle. A finding of suicide was reached only because several key investigative facts were uncovered. Without these discoveries the case may still remain open as a suspicious death. Fire is rarely used as a mechanism of suicide in Western culture, and, as such, similar cases should be reported to advance our recognition of this phenomenon.     

The Appointment and Removal Process for judges in Argentina: The Role of Judicial Councils and Impeachment Juries in Promoting Judicial Independence

This article explores the conditions that allow judicial councils and impeachment juries to promote judicial autonomy. In theory, these bodies intervene in the appointment and removal of judges in order to reduce executive control over court composition, thereby promoting judicial independence. Using the case of Argentina at the federal and the subnational levels, this study demonstrates that competitive politics enhances the capacity of judicial councils and impeachment juries to bolster judicial autonomy. Interparty competition provides incentives for the executive to develop a meaningful system of checks and balances, which includes an independent judiciary that can check executive power. In contrast, monolithic party control—defined as a prolonged period of unified government under a highly disciplined party—permits the executive to maintain a monopoly on power and thereby control judicial appointments and removals.     

Measuring Legislative Accomplishment, 1877–1994

Understanding the dynamics of lawmaking in the United States is at the center of the study of American politics. A fundamental obstacle to progress in this pursuit is the lack of measures of policy output, especially for the period prior to 1946. The lack of direct legislative accomplishment measures makes it difficult to assess the performance of our political system. We provide a new measure of legislative significance and accomplishment. Specifically, we demonstrate how item-response theory can be combined with a new dataset that contains every public statute enacted between 1877 and 1994 to estimate "legislative importance" across time. Although the resulting estimates and associated standard errors provide new opportunities for scholars interested in analyzing U.S. policymaking since 1877, the methodology we present is not restricted to Congress, the United States, or lawmaking .