The UN Commission of Inquiry on Lebanon: A Legal Appraisal

In the wake of the Second Lebanon conflict, the UN Human RightsCouncil established an independent body of experts to investigatealleged violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) perpetratedby Israeli forces. The Commission's report suffers from oneserious and conspicuous flaw — the Commission was notcharged with simultaneously considering Hezbollah's violationsof the same body of law. In some instances, this one-sided focuswas not only politically unbalanced, but substantively inadequatesince a full understanding of Hezbollah's command structure,strategic objectives and military operations was essential indetermining whether targets destroyed by Israel were legitimatemilitary objectives and whether consequences for civilians weredisproportionate to the military advantage gained. Be that asit may, the Commission's final report testified to the excessive,indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force by Israeliforces and an overall lack of respect for the cardinal principlesregulating the conduct of armed conflict. The Commission's findingsare particularly disquieting, given the independent nature ofthe investigation and, ultimately, the compatibility of muchof the Commission's legal reasoning with orthodox interpretationsof IHL. The legal issues raised by the Inquiry are thereforeof ongoing importance, most notably for the Israeli-appointedWinograd Committee.     

Socio‐legal Studies in France: Beyond the Law Faculty

This article is the third in an occasional series dealing with the development, current status, and future of socio‐legal studies in selected countries. It follows articles by Kim Economides (Aotearoa/New Zealand) and Harry Arthurs and Annie Bunting (Canada). In this article we argue that in France one can identify work that corresponds to the key strands of socio‐legal research in Anglo‐American societies but that ‘socio‐legal’ as a category of research and scholarship does not have the presence it has in the United Kingdom. French law faculties continue to be strongly shaped by a traditional disciplinary orthodoxy rooted in a highly and distinctively structured form of doctrinal analysis. In the first part, we explain the relatively limited presence of socio‐legal studies in French law faculties in terms of the historical and institutional mechanisms by which disciplinary closure has been created and maintained around traditional orthodoxies. But in the second part we will trace the presence – predominantly outside law faculties – of significant fragments of socio‐legal practice in the scholarship of law and allied disciplines.     

Juvenile Waiver 2014: A Review of State Statutes

Juvenile waiver has received much attention from the public, practitioners, and scholars. Prior studies have documented the increased use and effects of waiver. In this study we examine the current state of the law regarding juvenile waiver. We replicate 1995 and 2003 studies that examined state waiver statutes and detail the changes in prosecutorial, judicial, and legislative waiver since 2003. While the juvenile crime rate has dropped dramatically, it is unclear why legislatures’ fascination with juvenile waiver has also decreased. In this study we determine that juvenile waiver remains popular with legislatures, although there are signs of change.     

Does Conflict Lead to Ethnic Particularism? Electoral Violence and Ethnicity in Kenya 2005–2008

What impact does violence have on ethnic identity? Do acts of violence tend to create greater segmentation and “hardening” of identities among ethnic groups? In this article, we empirically assess the claim that violence inevitably leads to the hardening of ethnic identity (which we operationalize as expressions of ethnic particularism over a national identity). Using survey data from Kenya covering the period 2005–2008, integrated with geocoded data on conflict events in Kenya during that period, and employing multilevel logistic regression analysis, we do not find support for the contention that ethnic identity hardens inevitably as the result of violence. Rather, our findings suggest support for a more nuanced view of the effects of violence on ethnic identity.     

One Quintillion Ways to Have PTSD Comorbidity: Recommendations for the Disordered DSM-5

Galatzer-Levy and Bryant (Perspect Psychol Sci 8:651–662, 2013) have calculated the number of ways that Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013) posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms can be combined as over 600,000. They concluded that the amount is astounding and the category is rendered amorphous. PTSD often occurs in the context of polytrauma or comorbidity. The epidemiological literature indicates that the most common comorbid conditions in cases of PTSD include major depressive disorder (MDD), chronic pain, neurocognitive disorder due to traumatic brain injury (e.g., mild), and alcohol use disorder, with premorbid personality disorder possible, as well (which we consider as exacerbated due to the traumatic incident at issue, as in borderline personality disorder). We calculated the possible symptom combinations for each of these disorders and then in comorbid combination with PTSD (e.g., PTSD with MDD, but also when all six conditions are present). The number of symptom combinations in full polytrauma involving all six conditions listed is truly astounding, over one quintillion. Also, we reviewed the range of PTSD comorbidities, which adds to the symptom heterogeneity in cases. We make recommendations to prioritize symptoms in disorders as primary (e.g., unique, marker), secondary (e.g., core essential), and tertiary (e.g., common, cross-diagnostic). The latter tertiary type of symptoms in a disorder, if any, should be kept apart in its own criterion. This approach might help make the next version of the DSM more clinically useful both to clinicians and to court.     

Going to Jail Sucks (And It Really Doesn’t Matter Who You Ask)

A growing body of research suggests that, according to both offenders and criminal justice practitioners, jails and correctional boot camps are viewed and experienced as significantly more punitive than prison. Nevertheless, limited research exists examining the perceptions of the public regarding jail conditions and operations. Using responses from 1,183 Kentucky adults, we examine public opinion regarding the punitiveness of jail when compared to prison. We determine that, with the exception of boot camp, respondents feel that jail is the most punitive noncapital sanction. Additionally, respondents who had been convicted of a felony at some point in their lives and respondents with lower household income indicated that they would serve significantly less time in jail to avoid prison than their counterparts if given the option. Implications for policy and future research are discussed.     

Serious Youth Violence and Innovative Prevention: On the Emerging Link Between Public Health and Criminology

It was not so long ago that scholarly writings pointed to the vast chasm that existed between criminal justice and public health approaches to understanding and controlling interpersonal violence. Other scholarship of the day examined how criminal justice and criminology could benefit from adopting elements of the public health approach. For sure, there still exist many differences in how the two disciplines approach the violence problem, but over the years there have been some promising developments at the intersection of public health and criminology. This paper surveys the evolving link between public health and criminology, with a special focus on serious youth violence. It is concerned with both research and practice and how these efforts—across primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention strategies—are contributing to improved public health-criminology collaborations or public health-influenced programs that have a discernable impact on youth violence.     

Structural Topic Models for Open‐Ended Survey Responses

Collection and especially analysis of open‐ended survey responses are relatively rare in the discipline and when conducted are almost exclusively done through human coding. We present an alternative, semiautomated approach, the structural topic model (STM) (Roberts, Stewart, and Airoldi 2013; Roberts et al. 2013), that draws on recent developments in machine learning based analysis of textual data. A crucial contribution of the method is that it incorporates information about the document, such as the author's gender, political affiliation, and treatment assignment (if an experimental study). This article focuses on how the STM is helpful for survey researchers and experimentalists. The STM makes analyzing open‐ended responses easier, more revealing, and capable of being used to estimate treatment effects. We illustrate these innovations with analysis of text from surveys and experiments.     

Use of Craniofacial Superimposition in Historic Investigation

A skeleton discovered in Grand Forks, North Dakota was purported to belong to Clelland “Clell” Miller, a James‐Younger gang member, who was killed during the Northfield Bank robbery on September 7, 1876. A 3‐D image from a computer tomography (CT) scan of the skull was obtained, and a craniofacial superimposition was conducted to determine if the skull could belong to Miller. The superimposition method used in this case was to overlay the CT image of the skull onto Miller's postmortem photograph. In addition to the craniofacial superimposition, the images were juxtaposed to compare similarities or differences in facial morphology between the skull and photograph. Superimposition methods can be used to exclude identifications; however, they should not be used as a conclusive method for identification. In this case, there were sufficient similarities between the skull and Miller's photograph; therefore, the skull could not be eliminated as possibly being that of Miller.     

The hung authorities ‐1993 onwards

Overview and scrutiny committees were intended to provide a counterbalance to executive decision-making. This paper presents an 'audit' of local government scrutiny based upon research conducted over the last five years. Three key findings emerge from the review of evidence to date: the research findings are remarkably consistent over time and between authors; all research concludes that, in general, overview and scrutiny is still struggling; although a mixed picture emerges when examining progress on individual roles for scrutiny. Indeed, research indicates that scrutiny is - in some authorities - making a valuable contribution in terms of policy review but is still failing to hold the executive to account effectively. The relationship between scrutiny and performance management remains underdeveloped, whilst external scrutiny constitutes a marginal activity for most authorities. The paper concludes that such findings reflect the importance of local political and organisational factors which dictate the boundaries and shape of overview and scrutiny: representing a triumph of local context over government-prescribed structural and constitutional change.