The appointments clause: Judge Bork and the role of ideology in judicial confirmations

The Law of Obligations: The Roman Foundations of the Civilian Tradition. Reinhard Zimmermann. Cape Town: 1990. Ixiv + 1241pp. (incl. Indexes).

Reconstructing the Criminal: Culture, Law and Policy in England, 1830–1914. Martin J. Wiener. Cambridge, 1991. The University Press, ix + 390pp. (incl. Index). £35/$39.50 hb. ISBN 0 521 35045 X.

Women, Crime and Custody in Victorian England, Lucia Zedner. Oxford, 1991. Clarenden Press. 364pp. (incl. Index). £40 hb. ISBN 0 19 820264 4.

St Albans Quarter Sessions Rolls 1784–1820. Edited with an Introduction by David Dean. Hitchen, 1991. Hertfordshire Record Publications, xx + 197pp. (incl. Indexes). £15.95 hb. ISBN 0 9510728 6 2.

The Background of the Common Law. Derek Roebuck. 2nd edn. Hong Kong, Oxford and New York, 1990. Oxford University Press, ix + 143pp. (incl. Index). £6.99 pb. ISBN 019 585165 X.

The Physician‐Legislators of France: Medicine and Politics in the Early Third Republic, 1870–1914. Jack D. Ellis. Cambridge, 1990. The University Press, xii + 305pp. (incl. Index). £35.00/$49.50 hb. ISBN 0 521 38208 4.

Combination and Conspiracy: A Legal History of Trade Unionism 1721–1906. John V. Orth. Oxford, 1991. Clarendon Press, xvi + 207pp. (incl. Index). £30hb. ISBN 0 19 825299 4.

Law and the Shaping of the American Labor Union Movement. William E. Forbath. Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1991. Harvard University Press, xvi + 211pp. (incl. Index). ISBN 0 674 517814.

The State, Law and Religion: Pagan Rome, Alanwatson. Athens, Georgia, 1992. University of Georgia Press, xv + 136pp. (incl. Index). $30 hb. ISBN 0820313874.

American Constitutional Rights: Cases, Documents, and Commentary. William A. Carroll and Norman B. Smith. Lanham, USA. 1991. University Press of America, Inc. xviii + 785pp.     

Book Reviews

The past decade has seen many developments in anti‐discrimination law in Great Britain, from the implementation of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and the Treaty of Amsterdam 1997, to the EU framework directive for equal treatment in employment introducing three new protected grounds between 2003 and 2006 (and the subsequent extension beyond employment, in national law, of two of those grounds). All of these, and myriad implementing regulations, build on the national foundations set by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and the Race Relations Act 1976. With formal equality remaining the dominant model, this article looks at the scope for positive measures within British anti‐discrimination law.     

Tax revenue instability,with particular reference to sub‐Saharan Africa

This article examines the temporal instability of tax revenues across a sample of developed and less developed countries. It is shown that instability is especially high in LDCs and is highest in open economies with low per capita income, high output variance and inflationary problems. Even allowing for these factors, revenue instability appears to be particularly high in sub‐Saharan Africa. Revenue instability can be expected, via the government budget constraint, to be associated with expenditure instability and/or instability in the sources of deficit finance. Cross‐section evidence for LDCs confirms that countries with high tax revenue instability tend also to have high expenditure instability. Time‐series evidence for six African countries however, suggests that revenues and expenditures do not move together in a uniform manner, and the direction of causality is generally ambiguous. There is some evidence however that foreign borrowing is used more to finance expenditure increases than to counteract revenue shortfalls.     

Conflict in MPA programs: A comparison of delivery systems

This article reports the findings from a nationwide survey of MPA directors’ perceptions of their programs’ conflict. The survey explored the directors’ general perceptions of their programs’ conflict and perceptions of conflict associated with thirty programmatic areas. The survey was designed to test commonly held assumptions that programs delivered by political science departments, business schools, and unconventional structures are more conducive to conflict than independent departments and schools of public affairs and administration. The article also explores the relationship between conflict and program effectiveness.     

Fighting Imaginary Wars

Abstract

“The abuse of greatness,” muses Shakespeare's Brutus, “is when it disjoins remorse from power.” (Julius Caesar, II, i) By remorse he means pity or compunction, and he hits exactly at the failure of imagination that marked and finally defeated America in Indochina. This failure, however, is scarcely recognized by either political leaders or the American public.