Far-Right Lone Wolf Homicides in the United States

Little is known about the nature of far-right lone wolf terrorism and how this form of violence varies across different types of suspects. Relying on data from the Extremist Crime Database (ECDB), we comparatively examine characteristics of far-right homicides in the United States perpetrated by suspects with no evident affiliations with domestic terrorist organizations. Surprisingly, we found that this form of lone wolf terrorism has generally not increased during the past decade. We also found important differences, such as in suspects’ mental health, in statuses of homicide offenders who operate alone compared to those who associate or act with others.     

A Basic Model Explaining Terrorist Group Organizational Structure

Terrorist groups strive to balance efficiency with their need for security. This article examines the factors that affect a group's choice of organizational structure. I classify 254 groups from the Global Terrorism Database into one of four basic structures: market, all-channel, hub-spoke, or bureaucracy. The results of a multinomial logistic regression reveal that as secret organizations, terrorist groups are not just driven by achieving efficiencies in their organization but rather by protecting against infiltration and threats. Internal factors such as target selection, operational pace, ideology, and stated goals shape a group's structure. External environmental factors such as political rights, civil liberties, polity durability, and state wealth also help shape a group's structure.     

Age and lineup type differences in the own-race bias

The own-race bias (ORB) suggests that recognition for faces of one's own race is superior to recognition of other-race faces. A popular explanation for the ORB is amount of interracial contact, which may have cohort effects for older and younger adults. We compared White younger and older adults on the ORB utilizing a hybrid facial recognition and full diagnostic lineup (i.e., simultaneous and sequential target absent and target present lineups) paradigm. Both younger and older adults demonstrated an ORB. Signal detection estimates suggest younger adults compared to older adults have better discrimination accuracy for own-race over other-race faces. Interracial contact did not explain recognition for younger adults, but was related to a shift in response criterion for older adults.     

The Shape of Frontier Rule: Governance and Transition,from the Raj to the Modern Pakistani Frontier

Abstract

This essay examines British colonial debates about governance in India as a means of positing an analytical framework in which to address the current crises of governance in Pakistan's frontier. In light of the collapse of the antiquated system of tribal governance in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), and the spread of insurgent Talibanization into the heart of the ethnically Pashtun settled areas, this analysis maps several possible transition paths for governance reform in both the tribal and settled regions, and argues for an incremental approach that minimizes risks to political stability.     

Globalisation and Developing Countries – a Shrinking Tax Base?

This paper evaluates the impact of globalisation on tax bases of countries at varying stages of development. We see globalisation as a process that induces countries to embrace greater trade and financial integration. This in turn should shift their tax revenue from ‘easy to collect’ taxes (tariffs and seigniorage) towards ‘hard to collect’ taxes (value added and income taxes). We find that trade and financial openness have a positive association with the ‘hard to collect’ taxes, and a negative association with the easy to collect taxes.     

The origins of quare impedit

The writ of quare impedit was, until the mid-nineteenth century, a standard real action for the recovery of advowsons. This article argues that the writ was most likely created between 1187 and 1196, and that it was, at least in part, a response to pressure from religious houses that acquired advowsons by charter of gift and were precluded from bringing the writ of right of advowson or the assize of darrein presentment.     

Self-Control Theory and Nonlinear Effects on Offending

Objectives

This paper examines Gottfredson and Hirschi’s (A general theory of crime. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1990) self-control theory and develops theoretical arguments for why self-control may have a differential effect on offending depending on the level of self-control.

Methods

We test the argument that the association between self-control and violent offending (n = 5,681) and non-violent offending (5,672) is nonlinear by using generalized propensity score analyses of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.

Results

The results indicate that self-control and offending are nonlinearly related in a manner that involves two thresholds. Specifically, among individuals at the high end of the self-control spectrum, there was little evidence of an association between variation in self-control and offending. However, among individuals in the middle part of the self-control spectrum, a positive association obtained—that is, the greater the level of low self-control, the greater the likelihood of offending. Finally, among individuals at the low end of the self-control spectrum, there was, once again, little evidence of an association.

Conclusions

A nonlinear association between self-control and offending may exist and have implications for self-control theory and tests of it. Studies are needed to investigate further the possibility of a nonlinear association and to test empirically the mechanisms that give rise to it.     

Economic origins of the no-fault divorce revolution

Richard Posner argues that late twentieth-century divorce-law reform rendered marital relationships in the United States increasingly contractual in nature. Chief among such reforms was the no-fault divorce revolution: the widespread switch in states’ legal regimes from fault-based, mutual-consent divorce to no-fault based, unilateral divorce, which swept across America in the 1970s. While a growing literature considers the no-fault divorce revolution’s effects on divorce rates, almost no work considers its causes. Taking Posner’s observation as its starting point, this paper develops testable hypotheses relating to the potential origins of no-fault divorce reforms in the US.     

The Ethical Health Lawyer: An Empirical Assessment of Moral Decision Making

Writing in 1999, legal ethics scholar Brad Wendel noted that "[v]ery little empirical work has been done on the moral decision making of lawyers." Indeed, since the mid-1990s, few empirical studies have attempted to explore how attorneys deliberate about ethical dilemmas they encounter in their practice. Moreover, while past research has explored some of the ethical issues confronting lawyers practicing in certain specific areas of practice, no published data exists probing the moral mind of health care lawyers. As signaled by the creation of a regular column "devoted to ethical issues arising in the practice of health law" in the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , the time to address the empirical gap in the professional ethics literature is now. Accordingly, this article presents data collected from 120 health care lawyers. Presenting this population with a number of hypothetical scenarios relating to how they would respond when confronting an ethical dilemma without an obvious solution or when facing a situation in which their personal values were in tension with their professional obligations, this article represents a first step toward better understanding how lawyers who practice in health care settings understand and resolve the moral discomfort they encounter in their professional lives.