Developing STR databases on structured populations: The native South Siberian population versus the Russian population

Developing a forensic DNA database on a population that consists of local ethnic groups separated by physical and cultural barriers is questionable as it can be genetically subdivided. On the other side, small sizes of ethnic groups, especially in alpine regions where they are sub-structured further into small villages, prevent collecting a large sample from each ethnic group. For such situations, we suggest to obtain both a total population database on allele frequencies across ethnic groups and a list of θ-values between the groups and the total data. We have genotyped 558 individuals from the native population of South Siberia, consisting of nine ethnic groups, at 17 autosomal STR loci of the kit packages AmpFlSTR SGM Plus и AmpFlSTR Profiler Plus. The groups differentiate from each other with average θ-values of around 1.1%, and some reach up to three to four percent at certain loci. There exists between-village differentiation as well. Therefore, a database for the population of South Siberia is composed of data on allele frequencies in the pool of ethnic groups and data on θ-values that indicate variation in allele frequencies across the groups. Comparison to additional data on northeastern Asia (the Chukchi and Koryak) shows that differentiation in allele frequencies among small groups that are separated by large geographic distance can be even greater. In contrast, populations of Russians that live in large cities of the European part of Russia are homogeneous in allele frequencies, despite large geographic distance between them, and thus can be described by a database on allele frequencies alone, without any specific information on θ-values.     

Morality in criminal law and criminal procedure: Principles,doctrines, and court cases

One of the drawbacks of the current era of predominance of Positive Law over Natural law, is that the moral roots of criminal law are all too easily overlooked or even ignored. Yet one should always keep in mind that moral standards (and the related area of Natural Law) historically preceded any type of criminal legislation or judicial decisions. This Note describes some selected aspects of criminal law of the United States (both substantive and procedural), with occasional references to other countries where necessary. Particular attention is focused on criminal law court cases and on how they deal with morality. The author argues that much more attention should be paid to the fundamental relationship between moral values and criminal law.     

Social justice and legal justice

The main aim of this paper is to challenge the validity of the distinction between legal justice and social justice. It is argued that what we usually call legal justice is either an application of the more fundamental notion of social justice to legal rules and decisions or is not a matter of justice at all. In other words, the only correct uses of the notion of legal justice are derivative from the notion of social justice and, hence, the alleged conflicts between criteria of social and legal justice result from the confusion about the proper relationship between these two concepts. Two views about the social justice/legal justice dichotomy are of particular importance and will provide the focus for the argument: this dichotomy is sometimes identified with a classical distinction between distributive and commutative justice and sometimes with the distinction between substantive and procedural justice.     

Law's Legitimacy and 'Democracy-Plus'

Is it the case that the law, in order to be fully legitimate,must not only be adopted in a procedurally correct way but mustalso comply with certain substantive values? In the first partof the article I prepare the ground for the discussion of legitimacyof democratic laws by considering the relationship between law’slegitimacy, its justification and the obligation to obey thelaw. If legitimacy of law is seen as based on the law beingjustified (as in Raz’s ‘service conception’),our duty to obey it does not follow automatically: it must bebased on some additional arguments. Raz’s conception oflegitimate authority does not presuppose, as many critics claim,any unduly deferential attitude towards authorities. Disconnectionof the law’s legitimacy from the absolute duty to obeyit leads to the second part of the article which consists ina critical scrutiny of the claim that the democratically adoptedlaw is legitimate only insofar as it expresses the right moralvalues. This claim is shown to be, under one interpretation(‘motivational’), nearly meaningless or, under anotherinterpretation (‘constitutional’), too strong tosurvive the pressure from moral pluralism. While we cannot hopefor a design of ‘pure procedural democracy’ (byanalogy to Rawlsian ‘pure procedural justice’),democratic procedures express the values which animate the adoptionof a democratic system in the first place.     

Allelic and haplotypic frequencies at 11 Y-STR loci in Buryats from South-East Siberia

We have obtained Y-STR haplotypes in 12 loci (DYS19, DYS385, DYS389I, DYS389II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392, DYS393, DYS437, DYS438 and DYS439) from 215 Buryat males. We have found that one haplotype (15-11,18-13-28-23-10-11-14-14-10-12) comprises more than 30% of Y chromosomes in this population while another haplotype (14-11,13-14-30-23-10-14-14-14-10-10) comprises additional 14% of chromosomes. The population under study seems to be very homogenous as far as Y chromosome is regarded and the most frequent haplotype seems to be the modal haplotype for Buryats.     

Three Kinds of Intention in Lawmaking

The nature of legislative intent remains a subject of vigorous debate. Its many participants perceive the intent in different ways. In this paper, I identify the reason for such diverse perceptions: three intentions are involved in lawmaking, not one. The three intentions correspond to the three aspects of a speech act: locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary. The dominant approach in legal theory holds that legislative intent is a semantic (locutionary) one. A closer examination shows that it is, in fact, an illocutionary one. In the paper, I draw the consequences for legal interpretation of this more theorized model of legislative intent.     

Poland's legal integration into the European community: Some past,present, and future dilemmas

The paper contains some thoughts on the issue of the legal aspects of Poland's integration into the European Community (EC) against the background of Polish efforts to adapt its legal system to European Community requirements. The discussion is divided into three substantive parts: The first part deals with the issue of various legal traditions constituting the general phenomenon of EC law, with the second part spelling out legal aspects of the process of European integration, and finally the paper will be presented by way of a more concrete discussion — e.g., human rights, criminal law in general, and computer crime specifically.     

Capital punishment in Poland: The debate continues

Throughout its modern history, Poland has not escaped controversies surrounding the use of the death penalty. Tracing the historical development of laws dealing with the issue demonstrates an evolution influenced by various legal, political, social, philosophical, and international factors, leading up to the current absence of the penalty from the Polish legal system. The debate in society revolves around some stereotypical views held by different social groups. One of the biggest challenges is how to reconcile those views with empirical evidence, especially on issues like the deterrent effect of capital punishment. The authors describe the death penalty debate in Poland from these perspectives and take a retentionist position with regard to some selected crimes. As long as there are individuals willing to take other people's lives in a premeditated and deliberate manner demonstrating callous contempt for another person's existence, death remains the only punishment satisfying a sense of social justice and upholding the value of human life.