Mass deaths by gas or chemical poisoning. A historical perspective

This review chronicles the characteristics of deliberate and accidental mass poisonings that occurred in World Wars I and II, in Bhopal, and in other historical cases up to and including modern wars. It also considers approaches to the investigation of such cases from the medicolegal as well as general standpoints.     

The sentencing reform act of 1984: A bold approach to the unwarranted sentencing disparity problem

Conclusion In 1984, after years of study and thorough debate, a bipartisan majority of the Congress enacted perhaps the most far-reaching reform of the federal criminal justice system in the history of the United States. The Sentencing Reform Act and the federal sentencing guidelines are now beginning to produce data indicating that the objectives of avoiding unwarranted disparity and invidious discrimination are being achieved.After an uncertain beginning, the guidelines are gaining acceptance by courts and criminal justice practitioners. As one appellate court observed in admonishing lower courts that the guidelines must be respected:We have embarked on a new course. Only time will tell whether the use of the guidelines will result in an improvement over the old system. But unless we follow the spirit and written directions of the guidelines, we will never know if they have been given a fair test. They at least deserve that.Indeed, the bold new approach to sentencing that is being followed today in federal courthouses throughout the United States deserves an opportunity to succeed, given its many beneficial features and the lofty goals toward which the reforms are directed. While ample work remains for the United States Sentencing Commission to monitor and improve the guidelines, indications at this still early date are that the experiment is succeeding.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the fifth conference of the Society for the Reform of Criminal Law, Parliament House, Edinburgh, Scotland, August 5–9, 1990. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of the United States Sentencing Commission.B.A., Davidson College 1964; J.D., University of South Carolina School of Law 1967.B.A., Ohio State University 1974; M.S., Arizona State University 1980; M.A., University of California, Santa Barbara, 1983.B.S., Clemson University 1971; M.S., Clemson University 1975; J.D., University of South Carolina School of Law 1978.     

US Patent and Trademark Office refuses registration of flavour trade mark

In a case of first impression, the Trademark Trial and AppealBoard of the US Patent and Trademark Office has held that theflavour orange is not registrable for use with quick-dissolvingantidepressant tablets and pills.     

State crimes and state harms: a tale of two definitional frameworks

Criminologists have long debated the issue of how to define crime, and hence, the scope of criminological inquiry. For years, some critical criminologists have argued for expanded definitions of crime that include harmful behaviors of the state that may not be officially defined as criminal. Other critical criminologists have argued that existing legal frameworks may be used to study varieties of state crime, and that defining the harmful actions of the state as criminal is important to help mobilize public support for their control. In this paper, we first trace the historical development of these two perspectives, and then offer a tentative solution to the seeming tension between these two perspectives.     

Global custody of endowment funds

This article explores the law relating to the global custodianship of funds, notably as managed for endowed charities such as universities and independent schools. Is global custody based on the legal concept of bailment or of trusts? Just how secure are the legal underpinnings of this financial mechanism? The conclusions are that the legal foundations to the concepts of custodianship, and especially on a global level with the appointment of sub-custodians, is surprisingly uncertain and confused in English Law, providing rather less reassurance to charity trustees concerning the security of the financial assets for which they are accountable than they might reasonably have expected.     

Making Sense of COMPSTAT: A Theory-Based Analysis of Organizational Change in Three Police Departments

COMPSTAT, the latest innovation in American policing, has been widely heralded as a management and technological system whose elements work together to transform police organizations radically. Skeptical observers suggest that COMPSTAT merely reinforces existing structures and practices. However, in trying to assess how much COMPSTAT has altered police organizations, research has failed to provide a broader theoretical basis for explaining how COMPSTAT operates and for understanding the implications of this reform. This article compares two different perspectives on organizations—technical/rational and institutional—to COMPSTAT's adoption and operation in three municipal police departments. Based on fieldwork, our analysis suggests that relative to technical considerations for changing each organization to improve its effectiveness, all three sites adopted COMPSTAT in response to strong institutional pressures to appear progressive and successful. Furthermore, institutional theory better explained the nature of the changes we observed under COMPSTAT than the technical/rational model. The greatest collective emphasis was on those COMPSTAT elements that were most likely to confer legitimacy, and on implementing them in ways that would minimize disruption to existing organizational routines. COMPSTAT was less successful when trying to provide a basis for rigorously assessing organizational performance, and when trying to change those structures and routines widely accepted as being "appropriate." We posit that it will take profound changes in the technical and institutional environments of American police agencies for police departments to restructure in the ways anticipated by a technically efficient COMPSTAT.