UK Abortion Law: Reform Proposals,Private Members’ Bills,Devolution and the Role of the Courts

UK abortion law remains unsettled, and subject to on‐going controversy and reform. This article offers a comprehensive critique of all reforms implemented or proposed since 2016. It examines reforms proposed in both Houses of Parliament and contextualises them within a public law analysis, showing both that the complex parliamentary processes relating to Private Members’ Bills have frustrated reform attempts, and that these attempts have been contradictory in their aims between the two Houses. Secondly, it examines the unique positions of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales to show the extent to which devolutionary settlements have influenced both reforms and executive involvement. Finally, it examines the potential impact of the courts on abortion law following Re Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission's Application for Judicial Review, showing that the Supreme Court's reframing of the debate in human rights terms is likely to affect abortion law, not only in Northern Ireland, but in the whole of the UK.     

Analyzing and Interpreting Lime Burials from the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939): A Case Study from La Carcavilla Cemetery

Over 500 victims of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) were buried in the cemetery of La Carcavilla (Palencia, Spain). White material, observed in several burials, was analyzed with Raman spectroscopy and powder XRD, and confirmed to be lime. Archaeological findings at La Carcavilla's cemetery show that the application of lime was used in an organized way, mostly associated with coffinless interments of victims of Francoist repression. In burials with a lime cast, observations made it possible to draw conclusions regarding the presence of soft tissue at the moment of deposition, the sequence of events, and the presence of clothing and other evidence. This study illustrates the importance of analyzing a burial within the depositional environment and taphonomic context.     

Sickle cell trait-associated deaths: a case series with a review of the literature

This study presents a series of 16 carriers of hemoglobin S (HbS) who died during various circumstances. Many of the cases were associated with mild to moderate exertion. The onset and/or duration of symptoms varied from a few minutes to several hours with many displaying a prolonged lucid interval with stable vital signs. Despite seeking medical treatment, sickle cell trait-related micro-occlusive crisis was never considered in the differential diagnosis. Several cases were associated with sudden death. In those deaths which were delayed, high anion gap and uncompensated metabolic acidosis were typical and were not heat related. Also characteristic were large increases in creatine kinase, alanine aminotransferase, and aspartate aminotransferase along with myoglobinemia. Although the antemortem diagnosis of rhabdomyolysis was made, the underlying cause was never deduced by the clinicians. The sickling found at autopsy is not always a postmortem artifact, and in the right circumstances can be diagnostic.     

Quantitative assessment of the percent fat in domestic animal bone marrow

Measurement of the amount of fat in femoral bone marrow can provide a quantitative assessment of the nutritional status of an individual animal. An analytical method is presented for quantitating the percent fat in bone marrow from three domestic species: bovine, canine, and equine. In this procedure, fat is extracted from bone marrow using pentane, and the percent fat recovered is determined gravimetrically. Based on analyses from adult animals (normal body condition scores), the average percentage of fat in the bone marrow was >80%. In cases in which animals have been diagnosed as emaciated or exhibit serous atrophy of fat (body scores of 1 or 2), the femoral bone marrow fat was less than 20%. In domestic animals, bone marrow fat analysis can be a useful, quantitative measure that, when used in conjunction with all other data available, can support a diagnosis of starvation or malnutrition.     

Thoughtfully Reflective Decision Making and the Accumulation of Capital: Bringing Choice Back In

In this paper we relate a particular type of decision making, thoughtfully reflective decision making (TRDM) in adolescence, to successful and unsuccessful life outcomes in young adulthood. Those who are thoughtfully reflective in their decision making are more likely to consider possible alternative routes to goal attainment, weigh the costs and benefits of those alternatives, and critically revisit the decision once made to examine what went well and what went wrong. We also argue that what mediates the effect of TRDM on later life outcomes is the accumulation of capital. Those who use better decision making practices are more likely to recognize the resources provided by and make the necessary investments to accumulate human, social and cultural capital. These notions are theoretically linked to conceptions of criminal offenders as both rational planners and decision makers and as fully human agents. Using data from the Add Health data set, our hypotheses are largely confirmed. Those who are higher in TRDM as adolescents were more likely to have enrolled in or graduated from college, to be in better physical health, are more involved in civic and community affairs, less likely to commit criminal acts, use illegal drugs and be involved in heavy drinking as adults. TRDM is also positively related to the accumulation of human, social and cultural capital. Finally, a substantial part of the effect of TRDM on young adult outcomes was mediated by capital accumulation. The implications of these findings for future theory and research are discussed.     

Detention and treatment down under: human rights and mental health laws in Australia and New Zealand

Mental health law reform in recent decades has drawn on the international human rights movement. The entering into force of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) on May 3 2008 has been hailed by some as signalling a new era in relation to how domestic mental health laws should be reformed. Both Australia and New Zealand have ratified the CRPD and Australia has acceded to its Optional Protocol. New Zealand and the Australian Capital Territory and Victoria have statutory bills of rights which have an interpretive effect, but are unable to render other statutes invalid. Drawing on the results of interviews conducted with fifty-two representatives of consumer and carer organisations, lawyers, and mental health professionals across Australia and New Zealand, this paper examines the current thinking on human rights and mental health laws in these countries and outlines what changes, if any, may be brought to domestic legislation in light of the Convention.     

An experimental study of compressed work schedules in policing: advantages and disadvantages of various shift lengths

Objectives  

The objectives of this research were to test the impacts of three shift lengths (8-, 10-, and 12-hour) on performance, health, safety, quality of life, sleep, fatigue, alertness, off-duty employment, and overtime among police.     

A Retributive Argument Against Punishment

This paper proposes a retributive argument against punishment, where punishment is understood as going beyond condemnation or censure, and requiring hard treatment. The argument sets out to show that punishment cannot be justified. The argument does not target any particular attempts to justify punishment, retributive or otherwise. Clearly, however, if it succeeds, all such attempts fail. No argument for punishment is immune from the argument against punishment proposed here. The argument does not purport to be an argument only against retributive justifications of punishment, and so leave open the possibility of a sound non-retributive justification of punishment. Punishment cannot be justified, the paper argues, because it cannot be demonstrated that any punishment, no matter how minimal, is not a disproportionate retributive response to criminal wrongdoing. If we are to hold onto proportionality—that is, proportionality as setting a limit to morally permissible punishment—then punishment is morally impermissible. The argument is a retributive argument against punishment insofar as a just retributive response to wrongdoing must be proportionate to the wrongdoing. The argument, that is, is concerned with proportionality as a retributive requirement. The argument against punishment is set out on the basis of a familiar version of the ‘anchoring problem’, according to which it is the problem of determining the most severe punishment to anchor or ground the punishment scale. To meet the possible criticism that we have chosen a version of the anchoring problem particularly favourable to our argument, various alternative statements of the anchoring problem are considered. Considering such statements also provides a more rounded view of the anchoring problem. One such alternative holds that the punishment scale must be anchored not just in the most severe punishment, but in the least severe punishment as well. Other alternatives hold that it is necessary and sufficient to anchor the punishment scale in any two punishments, neither of which needs to be the most or least severe punishment. A further suggestion is that one anchoring point anywhere along the punishment scale is sufficient, because it is possible to ‘project’ from such a point, so as to determine the correlative punishments for all other crimes, and so derive a complete punishment scale. Finally, the suggestion is considered that one can approach the issue of a punishment scale ‘holistically’, denying any distinction between anchoring and derived (or ‘projected’) punishments.     

Developing and Validating a New Classroom Climate Observation Assessment Tool

The climate of school classrooms, shaped by a combination of teacher practices and peer processes, is an important determinant for children's psychosocial functioning and is a primary factor affecting bullying and victimization. Given that there are relatively few theoretically-grounded and validated assessment tools designed to measure the social climate of classrooms, our research team developed an observation tool through participatory action research (PAR). This article details how the assessment tool was designed and preliminarily validated in 18 third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade classrooms in a large urban public school district. The goals of this study are to illustrate the feasibility of a PAR paradigm in measurement development, ascertain the psychometric properties of the assessment tool, and determine associations with different indices of classroom levels of relational and physical aggression.     

Special-interest groups and growth

This paper explores empirically the relation between special-interest groups and economic growth. Our analysis exploits new data on the number of groups observed across countries and time, in order to mitigate the identification problems associated with earlier studies. Also in contrast to earlier work, we examine the impact of groups on two sources of growth??capital accumulation and technological change??in addition to the impact of groups on output growth. The findings are consistent with Olson??s (The rise and decline of nations: the political economy of economic growth, stagflation, and social rigidities. New Haven, Yale, 1982) claim that societies with greater numbers of interest groups grow slower, accumulate less capital, and experience reduced productivity growth relative to others.