Views from the Front lines: Observations by Chicago Lawyers About the System of Civil Discovery

This is the first in a series of articles that will report the results of a pilot effort to assess how well the system of civil discovery is working and to identify the principal problems which burden that system. The study revolves around interviews with 180 Chicago area litigators. This first essay, which synthesizes observations, insights, and complaints by interviewed attorneys, suggests that the world of civil discovery is not one monolithic whole, but consists of subworlds which exhibit clearly distinguishable features and problems. In addition to describing the principal problems which afflict the discovery system in its two major subworlds, the author reports what the interviewed lawyers suggest are the primary causes of those problems. While the litigators identify many ways in which the character of lawyering encumbers and disrupts the discovery process, they also locate much of the blame for the system's problems in the behavior of judges and the inefficiency of the judicial machinery. The interviews produced a dramatically widespread appeal to the courts to increase use of sanctions as a means of restraining discovery abuse.     

Unusual facial markings and lethal mechanisms in a series of gasoline inhalation deaths

A review of deaths associated with hydrocarbon toxicity from gasoline sniffing in South Australia throughout a 10 year period from July 1987 to June 2002 revealed 4 cases. The victims were all Aboriginal people from remote inland communities. Each death had occurred while the victim was lying in bed sniffing gasoline from a can held to the face. Once unconsciousness had occurred, the mouth and nose had been pressed firmly against the can by the weight of the head. In each case, the effects of gasoline toxicity had been exacerbated by hypoxia and hypercapnia from rebreathing into the container once a tight seal had been established between the face and the can. The circular impressions left by the can edges on the faces of each of the victims provided an autopsy marker that assisted in clarifying the details of the fatal episodes. Discouraging solitary gasoline sniffing in bed may reduce the death rate in communities where this behavior is practiced.     

Prescriptions for punishment: Official ideologies and jall overcrowding

This study assesses key actors’ “worlds of fact” regarding jail overcrowding in California through an examination of their perceptions of causes and effects, support for different solutions, and adherence to major punishment ideologies. How policymakers define and structure a specific problem Gail overcrowding), can influence how policy options are differentially weighed as well as how existing policy processes can be improved. A mail survey was sent to two key decision making groups who largely regulate the intake and outflow of local jails: sheriffs and chief probation officers of the 58 California counties. Group differences in responses were predicted from the perspectives of blame avoidance, domain dissensus, and punishment theory. Relationships were examined among perceived causes, effects, solutions, and punishment ideologies. While both sheriffs and probation chiefs advocated highly similar “control-oriented” punishment ideologies, probation chiefs advocated more “progressive” solutions to jail overcrowding. Perceived causes and effects of jail overcrowding, along with support for deterrence ideology, were strongly related to elite support for three potential solutions: building more institutions, passing tougher laws to deter potential offenders, and using shorter sentences for low-risk offenders. Implications of these results for understanding jail overcrowding and policy processes are discussed.     

A New Start Toward a More Decentralized Federalism in Brazil?

Brazil's political history can be read as a cyclical alternationbetween centralization and decentralization—a contestbetween the center and the periphery. Centralizing tendenciesreached one height under the "Estado Novo" of GetúlioVargas (1937–1945) and peaked again under a series ofmilitary governments from 1964 to 1985. Forces favoring regionalismand more state and local autonomy have been given impetus duringthe 1980s by trends of regional differentiation, popular mobilization,return to civilian government in 1985, several key elections,and state and local financial crises. The constitution promulgatedin October 1988 features decentralizing fiscal provisions thatgive reason to believe that federalism may be revitalized inthe next several years in response to grassroots demands fromstate and local governments. However, these federalism reformsmay be threatened by the national government's attempts to thwartthe constitution's decentralization provisions and by nationaleconomic and political instability.     

The Covenantal Basis for the Development of Swiss Political Federalism: 1291-1848

This study argues that the modern political philosophy of federalismis directly linked to the Swiss Reformed idea of religious covenant,which was first formulated in the 1520s and 1530s by HeinrichBullinger in Zürich. Bullinger's concept of religious covenanthad roots both in the Old Testament and in the early federalideal and reality that had come out of the Swiss Middle Ages;it therefore had important social and political implicationsas well as theological meaning. During the sixteenth and earlyseventeenth centuries, this theological idea of federalism fedinto and helped to create the modern political concept of federalism,especially in the thought of Philippe Duplessis-Mornay and JohannesAlthusius. Political federalism became a reality in the Constitutionof the United States in the late eighteenth century. The Swissfederal Constitution of 1848 was instructed by the mature conceptof political federalism, by the Constitution of the United States,and by the long tradition of Swiss federalism. All of theseinfluences had some basis in the uniquely Swiss idea of religiouscovenant.     

Who are the most highly cited forensic scientists in the United States?

The most highly cited forensic practitioners in the United States were identified using a publicly available citation database that used six different citation metrics to calculate each person's composite citation score. The publication and citation data were gleaned from Elsevier's SCOPUS database, which contained information about ~7 million scientist each of whom had at least five entries in the database. Each individual was categorized into 22 scientific fields and 176 subfields, one of which was legal and forensic medicine (LFM). The database contained citation records for 13,388 individuals having LFM as their primary research discipline and 282 of these (2%) were classified as being highly cited. Another 99 individuals in the database had LFM as their secondary discipline, making a total of 381 highly cited forensic practitioners from 35 different countries. The career-long publication records of each individual were compared using their composite citation scores. Of the 381 highly cited scientists, 93 (24%) had an address somewhere in the United States. The various branches of forensics they specialized in were anthropology, criminalistics, DNA/genetics, odontology, pathology, statistics/epidemiology, and toxicology. The two most highly cited scientists, according to their composite citation score, were both specialists in DNA/genetics. Bibliometric methods are widely used for evaluating research performance in academia and a similar approach might be useful in jurisprudence, such as when an expert witness is instructed to testify in court and explain the meaning of scientific evidence.     

A National Picture of Prison Downsizing Strategies

Abstract

Many states faced fiscal pressures on their corrections budgets as the country entered a deep recession in 2008. A 2011 survey by the Association of State Correctional Administrators (ASCA) asked corrections officials in all 50 states about changes in correctional facilities, focusing on closures, new facilities, and altering existing facilities as a response to budget pressures. States employed a combination of these strategies. Between fiscal year (FY) 2007–2008 and FY 2011–2012, 148 facilities were closed, 29 new facilities were opened, and 23 states added 22,740 beds to existing facilities, resulting in about a 19,000 net bed reduction overall. Closures did not necessarily appear to be related to fiscal pressures or always related to reductions in the prison population. Despite the Great Recession, correctional funding is still a large part of state expenses and many states’ correctional populations continue to grow.     

Reflections on variability in the blood–breath ratio of ethanol and its importance when evidential breath-alcohol instruments are used in law enforcement

Variability in the blood–breath ratio (BBR) of alcohol is important, because it relates a measurement of the blood-alcohol concentration (BAC) with the co-existing breath-alcohol concentration (BrAC). The BBR is also used to establish the statutory BrAC limit for driving from the existing statutory BAC limits in different countries. The in-vivo BBR depends on a host of analytical, sampling and physiological factors, including subject demographics, time after end of drinking (rising or falling BAC), the nature of the blood draw (whether venous or arterial) and the subject’s breathing pattern prior to exhalation into the breath analyzer. The results from a controlled drinking study involving healthy volunteers (85 men and 15 women) from three ethnic groups (Caucasians, Hispanics and African Americans) were used to evaluate various factors influencing the BBR. Ethanol in breath was determined with a quantitative infrared analyzer (Intoxilyzer 8000) and BAC was determined by headspace gas chromatography (HS-GC). The BAC and BrAC were highly correlated (r = 0.948) and the BBR in the post-absorptive state was 2 382 ± 119 (mean ± SD). The BBR did not depend on gender (female: 2 396 ± 101 and male: 2 380 ± 123, P > 0.05) nor on racial group (Caucasians 2 398 ± 124, African Americans 2 344 ± 119 and Hispanics 2 364 ± 104, P > 0.05). The BBR was lower in subjects with higher breath- and body-temperatures (P < 0.05) and it also decreased with longer exhalation times into the breath-analyzer (P < 0.001). In the post-absorptive state, none of the 100 subjects had a BBR of less than 2 100:1.     

Preventing construction deaths: The role of public policies

Are stronger direct financial incentives or regulatory enforcement effective in reducing fatalities in the construction industry? We examine two important policies—state workers' compensation (WC) programs and federal and state Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) activities—which embody those strategies. We examine their impact by looking at state-level fatality rates in the construction industry from 1992 to 2016. Setting aside highway crashes and violence, the majority of employee deaths occur in construction. We find that states which exempt small firms from the requirement to buy WC insurance have higher fatality rates. When eligibility for compensation is restricted by longer waiting periods, fatality rates are substantially higher. More frequent federal or state OSHA inspections and, especially, consultation visits are associated with lower fatality rates, but higher average penalties are not. Limited variation in these policies over our sample period, especially for WC, makes these results suggestive rather than definitively causal.     

>Pedagogy and politics: Origins of the special conference of 1905 on primary education for non‐Russians in the east

Sean R. Roberts, Waiting for Uighurstan. 55 minute video documentary with Companion Study Guide, 1996. Study Guide: xi, 73 pp., 2 maps, works cited, Appendix I: Script to video, Appendix II: Annotated bibliography of suggested readings.

Dennis P. Hupchick and Harold E. Cox, A Concise Historical Atlas of Eastern Europe. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996, viii, 120 pp., 50 maps, index.

Jörg Brechtefeld, Mitteleuropa and German Politics: 1848 to the Present. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996, vii, 195 pp. + maps, index. $49.95.

Seamus Dunn and T. G. Fraser, eds, Europe and Ethnicity: The First World War and Contemporary Ethnic Conflict. London: Routledge, 1996, xii, 218 pp. + index.

Marc A. Weiner, Richard Wagner and the Anti‐Semitic Imagination. Lincoln, NB. &; London: University of Nebraska Press, 1995, 353 pp. + notes, bibliography, index.

Robert B. Pynsent, ed., The Literature of Nationalism. Essays on East European Identity. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996, 282 pp. + index.

Ladislav Holy, The Little Czech Nation and the Great Czech Nation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, x, 226 pp., index.

Jaroslav Krej?í and Pavel Machonin, Czechoslovakia 1918–92: A Laboratory for Social Change. St Antony's series. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996, 244 pp. + notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 0–312–12693‐X (hard). $49.95.

Jan Rychlík, Thomas D. Mazrik and Miroslav Bielik, eds, R. W. Seton‐Watson and His Relations with the Czechs and Slovaks; Documents, 1906–1951, 2 Vols. Ústav T. G. Masaryka and Matica Slovenská, 1995, footnotes, photographs, register of documents, name index, geographic index. Distributed by Interpress, London, England. $50.00.

Peter F. Sugar, Nationality and Society in Habsburg and Ottoman Europe. Aldershot, Hampshire, U.K.: Variorum, 1997, ix + 253 + index.

Eric Roman, Hungary and the Victor Powers: 1945–1950. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996, 172 pp.

Graham Smith, ed., The Baltic States: The National Self‐determination of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996, xx, 214 pp. + maps, tables, index.

V. Stanley Vardys and Judith B. Sedaitis, Lithuania: The Rebel Nation. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997, 222 pp. + maps, illustrations, index. $60.00 ($21.50 pbk).

Moshe Rosman, Founder of Hasidism: A Quest for the Historical Ba'al Shem Tov. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996, xii, 296 pp. + maps, photographs, tables, index.

David R. Marples, Belarus: From Soviet Rule to Nuclear Catastrophe. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996, xxi, 179 pp. + photographs, tables, bibliography, index.

Jeff Chinn and Robert Kaiser, Russians as the New Minority: Ethnicity and Nationalism in the Soviet Successor States. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996, xii, 308 pp. + tables, maps, index.

Leokadia Drobizheva, Rose Gottemoeller, Catherine McArdie Kelleher and Lee Walker, eds, Ethnic Conflict in the Post‐Soviet World: Case Studies and Analysis. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996, xv, 365 pp.

Kathleen E. Smith, Remembering Stalin's Victims: Popular Memory and the End of the USSR. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996, xv, 220 pp. + photographs, appendix, index.

Peter H. Solomon, Jr, Soviet Criminal Justice Under Stalin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, xvii, 494 pp. + photographs, tables, index.

Stephen White, Russia Goes Dry: Alcohol, State and Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, xiii, 189 pp. + photographs, illustrations, notes, index.

Hafeez Malik, ed., Central Asia: Its Strategic Importance and Future Prospects. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994, xi, 325 pp. + index.