“A Sacred Duty”: Red Army Women Veterans Remembering the Great Fatherland War, 1941–1945

Some 500,000 women fought with the Red Army in the Great Fatherland War, 1941‐1945. Based on a selection of women veterans’ memoirs published since the demise of the Soviet Union, this article looks at what these women choose to remember about the war, and how, and equally what they choose to forget or remain silent about. The paper seeks to illuminate shared or disparate collective and individual memory and experiences. A particular objective of the paper is to assess the degree to which these written recollections coincide with or deviate from the predominant patriotic, heroic, masculine paradigm of the Great Fatherland War and its historiography. The overall objective of the paper is to humanise the female faces behind the masculine mask of the Red Army at war against Nazism.     

Sir Henry Bland and the Fraser Government's Administrative Review Committee: Another Chapter in the Statutory Authority Wars?

The release of the 1976 Commonwealth cabinet records on 1 January 2007 provided the opportunity to review the work of the Administrative Review Committee (ARC) appointed by the Fraser government and headed by Sir Henry Bland and so to open up a hitherto little appreciated chapter in Australian administrative history. At first glance, it appeared that Bland's ARC had been strongly opposed to widespread use of statutory authorities, for so long a regular part of Australia's machinery of government, thus providing an interesting point of comparison with the Uhrig inquiry of 2003-04, which attracted much notice for its antipathy towards statutorily independent agencies. Given the unusual methodology of the ARC, it was also likely that an account of its work would shed further light on public inquiries generally, perhaps assisting in development of a typology of such inquiries.     

Spectres of Transnationalism: Changing Terrains of Sociology of Law

The growth of 'legal transnationalism'– that is, the reach of law across nation-state borders and the impact of external political and legal pressures on nation-state law – undermines the main foundations of sociology of law. Modern sociology of law has assumed an 'instrumentalist' view of law as an agency of the modern directive state, but now it has to adjust to the state's increasingly complex regulatory conditions. The kind of convergence theory that underpins analysis of much legal transnationalism is inadequate for socio-legal theory, and old ideas of 'law' and 'society' as the foci of sociology of law are no longer appropriate. Socio-legal theory should treat law as a continuum of unstable, competing authority claims. Instead of taking 'society' as its reference point, it should conceptualize the contrasting types of regulatory needs of the networks of community (often not confined by nation-state boundaries) that legal transnationalism addresses.     

Damages for Breach of Contract: Compensation, Restitution and Vindication

In this article we examine the role which vindication playsin contract damages. Vindication describes the making good ofa right by the award of an adequate remedy. We argue that, whilethe primary purpose of compensation is to provide an indemnityfor loss, an award of compensatory damages will neverthelessgenerally vindicate the right to performance of the contract.We go on to consider a distinct measure of damages, vindicatorydamages. These, we argue, are neither compensatory nor restitutionary,neither loss-based nor gain-based: they are a rights-based remedy.We then identify various situations in which the courts maybe seen to have awarded what are, in substance, vindicatorydamages. We conclude by considering the benefits which may followfrom recognition of the availability of vindicatory damagesas a contract remedy.     

LabCorp v. Metabolite Laboratories: The Supreme Court listens, but declines to speak.

In the United States, a longstanding legal rule exists against patenting natural phenomena. The Supreme Court recently had an opportunity to help define the boundaries and clarify the implications of this "natural phenomenon doctrine" in Laboratory Corporation of America v. Metabolite Labs., dismissed as improvidently granted. This article argues that the natural phenomenon doctrine renders both the patent claim at issue in LabCorp, and the patents that directly or indirectly claim biological correlations between genotypes and medical phenotypes, invalid or unenforceable under U.S. patent law.     

Megaesophagus and Possible Mechanisms of Sudden Death

Abstract:  Achalasia is a neurodegenerative condition characterized by esophageal dysmotility and megaesophagus. Two cases are reported that demonstrate unexpected deaths associated with previously unsuspected achalasia. Case 1: A 66-year-old woman was found dead at her home. At autopsy significant stenosing coronary artery atherosclerosis was found with cardiac failure. In addition, a striking finding was narrowing of the distal esophagus with marked proximal dilatation. The esophagus was completely filled with a large amount of soft masticated food and was bulging anteriorly, compressing the left atrium. Death was attributed to ischemic heart disease complicated by previously unsuspected achalasia. Case 2: An 84-year-old man collapsed and suffered a respiratory arrest while eating. Internal examination revealed narrowing of the cardioesophageal junction with marked proximal dilatation of the esophagus that contained approximately 50 mL of soft semi-fluid masticated yellow food paste. Fragments of yellow masticated food remnants were present in upper and lower airways but not within the stomach. There was a history of dementia with symmetrical cerebral ventricular dilatation found at autopsy. Death was attributed to food asphyxia complicating previously unsuspected achalasia with dementia. Megaesophagus may, therefore, be a significant finding at autopsy that may either be a primary cause of unexpected death or else may exacerbate or compound the effects of pre-existing underlying disease.