The Enactment of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857: The Campbell Commission and the Parliamentary Debates

Rather surprisingly none of the existing accounts of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 considers the mechanics of reform which brought about the legislation in any great detail. Yet this subject as much as the final legislation merits attention in its own right. The nineteenth century in England was a significant period of law reform and the legislation provides a vivid illustration of the inner workings of the process. The passage of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 was not entirely smooth. The fact that it succeeded at all makes it an ideal case study in Victorian law reform. This article considers the pressures for divorce reform, the working of a Royal Commission, the debates in Parliament, and ultimately how reform was finally achieved through a series of compromises between those who wanted more radical change and defenders of the status quo.     

Examining the Consequences of the “Prevalent Life Events” of Arrest and Incarceration among an Urban African-American Cohort

The life course perspective has traditionally examined prevalent adult life events, such as marriage and employment, and their potential to redirect offending trajectories. However, for African-Americans, the life events of arrest and incarceration are becoming equally prevalent in young adulthood. Therefore, it is critical to understand how these “standard” criminal justice practices, which are designed to deter as well as punish, affect deviance among this population. This study evaluates the long-term consequences of criminal justice intervention on substance use and offending into midlife among an African-American community cohort using propensity score matching and multivariate regression analyses. The results largely point to a criminogenic effect of criminal justice intervention on midlife deviance with a particularly strong effect of young adult arrest on rates of violent and property arrest counts into midlife. The theoretical and policy implications of the findings are discussed.     

Law,the State,and the Dialectics of State Crime

Drawing on material from a study of civil society and state crime in six countries, this article reflects on two themes from Chambliss’s work: the debate between state-centred and more pluralistic views of law, and the “dialectical” approach to the analysis of state crime. It argues for a more pluralistic approach to law than Chambliss and Seidman adopted in Law Order and Power, along with a broader approach to the definition of state crime as a form of deviant behaviour. Case studies from the civil society research illustrate how the strategies adopted by organizations challenging state practices can be understood in terms of an interplay between different forms of law. With some qualifications, we support Chambliss’s dialectical approach, and attempt to clarify just what the term “dialectical” means. Finally we bring together the two strands of the argument to propose an approach to state crime founded on “dialectical legal pluralism”.     

The new randomised controlled trials (RCT) movement in public policy: challenges of epistemic governance

Since 2012, a new movement of government departments, think tanks and high-profile individuals within the UK has sought to promote the increased usage of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) in public policy. They promote RCTs as an evidence-based corrective for the inappropriate certainties of experts. Recent government reports and public debate around this initiative are reviewed and analysed within a framework for epistemic governance: normative insights into how knowledge for policymaking should be understood and governed drawn from science and technology studies and the policy sciences. The legitimacy of RCT evidence within policymaking is found to rest on the recognition of three key features: (1) how multiple meanings of evidence limit generalisability, (2) ensuring a plurality of evidence inputs, including those from other forms of research and expertise, and (3) building institutions for governing the use of RCTs in the public interest. Producing evidence for policymaking is a hybrid activity that necessarily spans both science and politics. Presenting RCTs as naively neutral evidence of what policy interventions work is misleading. The paper concludes by calling for more work on how the new RCT movement might engage with its own history in social and policy research on the value of experiments for policymaking.     

Droplet-based optical trapping for cell separation in mock forensic samples

Optical tweezers have a wide range of uses for mechanical manipulation of objects in the microscopic range. This includes both living and static cells in a variety of biomedical and research applications. Single-focus optical tweezers, formed by focusing a laser beam through a high numerical aperture immersion objective, create a significant force, which enables controlled transport of a variety of different cell types and morphologies in three dimensions. Optical tweezers have been previously reported to capture and separate spermatozoa from a reconstituted simulated postcoital sample. We report herein the development of a simplified, more efficient cell transfer protocol that can separate and isolate both spermatozoa as well as leukocytes, with similar efficiencies as those previously reported. The new cell transfer method was used to separate sperm cells from a reconstituted mixture of spermatozoa and vaginal epithelial cells, with complete STR profiles developed from 50 cells with little evidence of contribution from the female contributor to the mixture. This modified protocol was then used to separate 21 samples of enriched leukocytes, with trapped cells ranging from 5 to 22 cells. Complete STR profiles were developed from as few as 10 leukocytes. Thus, with minimal sample preparation and a short trapping time, this method has the potential to provide an alternative to traditional differential extraction methods for separation of sperm:nonsperm mixtures while also providing versatility for separation of cells with differing morphologies.     

Politics,presidents, and DCIs

Sukarno's Apologists Write Again

Audrey R. Kahin and George McT. Kahin: Subversion as Foreign Policy: The Secret Eisenhower and Dulles Debacle in Indonesia, The New Press, New York, NY, 1995, 318 pp., $25.00.

The Ames Case: Various Versions

James Adams: Sellout: Aldrich Ames and the Corruption of the CIA, Viking, New York, 1995, 322 p., $23.95.

Peter Maas: Killer Spy: The Inside Story of the FBI's Pursuit and Capture of Aldrich Ames, America's Deadliest Spy, Warner Books, New York, 1996,264 p., $6.50 (paperback; first published in hardback by Warner Books in 1995).

Tim Weiner, David Johnston, and Neil A. Lewis: Betrayal: The Story of Aldrich Ames, An American Spy, Random House, New York, 1995,308 p., $25.00.

David Wise: Nightmover: How Aldrich Ames Sold the CIA to the KGB for $4.6 Million, HarperCollins, New York, 1995,356 p., $25.00.

The Brutal March Backward

Dmitri Volkogonov: Lenin: A New Biography (Translated and edited by Harold Shukman), The Free Press, New York, 1994, 529 p., $30.00.

The Big Stretch

John Newman: Oswald and the CIA, Carroll &; Graf, New York, 1995,627 p., $28.00.

More About the Past

Oleg Gordievsky: Next Stop Execution, Macmillan, London, 1995, 396 pp., £16.99.     

Hot Air: The Impact on the Insurance Industry from Climate Change Disclosure Rules

This article addresses certain recent rules and regulations promulgated by the Securities and Exchange Commission requiring companies to disclose the risks presented to their business from climate change. It subsequently examines how these added risks may impact the insurance industry—specifically with regard to director and officer liability. In the author's view, climate change will bring a tectonic shift to industries worldwide and a potential avenue for liability in the insurance industry may be able to circumvent standard pollution exclusion language by making claims under director and officer policies.