A review of major factors contributing to errors in human hair association by microscopy.

Forensic hair examiners using traditional microscopic comparison techniques cannot state with certainty, except in extremely rare cases, that a found hair originated from a particular individual. They also cannot provide a statistical likelihood that a hair came from a certain individual and not another. There is no data available regarding the frequency of a specific microscopic hair characteristic (i.e., microtype) or trait in a particular population. Microtype is a term we use to describe certain internal characteristics and features expressed when observing hairs with unpolarized transmitted light. Courts seem to be sympathetic to lawyer's concerns that there are no accepted probability standards for human hair identification. Under Daubert, microscopic hair analysis testimony (or other scientific testimony) is allowed if the technique can be shown to have testability, peer review, general acceptance, and a known error rate. As with other forensic disciplines, laboratory error rate determination for a specific hair comparison case is not possible. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based typing of hair roots offer hair examiners an opportunity to begin cataloging data with regard to microscopic hair association error rates. This is certainly a realistic manner in which to ascertain which hair microtypes and case circumstances repeatedly cause difficulty in association. Two cases are presented in which PCR typing revealed an incorrect inclusion in one and an incorrect exclusion in another. This paper does not suggest that such limited observations define a rate of occurrence. These cases illustrate evidentiary conditions or case circumstances which may potentially contribute to microscopic hair association errors. Issues discussed in this review paper address the potential questions an expert witness may expect in a Daubert hair analysis admissibility hearing.     

Assessing Committee Roles in a Developing Legislature: The Case of the Ukrainian Parliament

The Ukrainian parliament consistently attracts scholarly attention as one of the developing parliaments in the Former Soviet Region that is succeeding with institutionalisation. This study assesses committee roles in the legislative process and discusses factors that are associated with strong or weak roles for committees. We bring evidence from the Ukrainian parliament to test traditionally hypothesised institutional factors in committee studies, such as roles of government and parties. To account for the difference between developed and developing legislatures, we add an attitudinal component to the analysis. The results confirm that traditionally hypothesised factors are important in assessing committee roles. However, important intervening factors such as strength and size of factions and the range of ideologies have to be taken into account to explain institutional dynamics in a developing legislature. In addition, an analysis of attitudes provides a valuable insight into the development of committee roles in a developing legislature.     

Conflict of laws and the cloud

Cloud technology offers wonderful potential for users in terms of convenience, ease of obtaining updates etc. However, it presents significant legal challenges. Our laws, largely based on notions of territoriality, struggle to respond to technology in which lines on maps are largely irrelevant. In this article, I articulate some of the specific challenges. The law of contract, tort and national regulation might all apply to a claim of breach of privacy in relation to material uploaded to the cloud. Unfortunately, each of the jurisdictions studied would approach the issues in different ways, potentially creating significant confusion. The article proposes a need for international co-operation and agreement on these matters.     

Narrative accounts from the citizens,victims, and offenders restoring justice program

This paper describes the Citizens, Victims, and Offenders Restoring Justice (CVORJ) program, a prison-based program conducted as a pilot study at the Washington State Reformatory. The program brings together offenders and victims - though not involved in the same crime - in the company of interested community members to discuss restorative justice principles. The program focuses on the sharing of personal narratives of crime to explore how the harms resulting from crime can best be addressed and justice achieved. Of interest was how a restorative justice model that highlighted community participation could be incorporated into a correctional setting and whether healing could result from the use of surrogate offenders, victims, and community members. The restorative nature of the program, its method of operation, results from the qualitative evaluation, and key implementation challenges are presented.     

What Workers Want Depends: Legal Knowledge and the Desire for Workplace Change among Day Laborers

In this article, we identify legal knowledge as a key difference between workers who desire workplace change and those who do not. Based on surveys with 121 day laborers, we find that not all day laborers are equally dissatisfied with their jobs, despite uniformly difficult working conditions. Some day laborers do not want to make any real changes to the day labor industry, while others desire a range of industry changes, from higher wages to greater government regulation and unionization. A key difference between these workers is their knowledge of employment law: Those who know the law are more likely to desire workplace change.     

Majority Party Power and Procedural Motions in the U.S. Senate

While the metaphor of House parties as cartels is widely accepted, its application to the Senate is difficult as the majority party lacks the power to unilaterally manipulate rules and pass legislation. Nevertheless, several scholars have argued that the Senate majority party is able to employ nondebatable motions to table to exclude unwanted amendments with procedural rather than substantive votes. Does the motion to table yield negative agenda control or special party influence? Using an analysis of individual Senators' behavior on thousands of votes and an assessment of interest group scores, we find that motions to table do not elicit higher party influence or provide much political cover. A desire to speed up the legislative process, rather than to insulate members from electoral scrutiny, seems to motivate the use of motions to table.