Environmental mediation: An alternative approach to policy stalemates

Environmental mediation is a new and innovative attempt to overcome the policy stalemates that frequently hinder effective environmental policymaking. It brings together environmentalists, business groups, government officials, and a neutral mediator in an attempt to negotiate a binding settlement to a specific controversy. This essay describes this approach, discusses its advantages over more traditional dispute resolution processes, and explains how it is able to produce acceptable agreements in such a difficult policy area.     

Understanding the Judicial Role in Addressing Gender Bias: A View from the Eighth Circuit Federal Court System

The role of trial judges in the litigation process is frequently debated. Are judges to be dispassionate adjudicators, disengaged referees in a sport in which attorneys compete? Or are they charged with a more active role in promoting the substance, form, and process of justice? In the present paper, we explore the judicial role in addressing gender bias in federal litigation, using data gathered for the Eighth Circuit Gender Fairness Task Force. The federal judges of this circuit were surveyed about their experiences, observations, and opinions of gender-biased conduct. Results indicated that although judges viewed judicial intervention as an appropriate response to gender bias, they had little personal experience with intervention in such a situation. Fur thermore, when specific hypothetical scenarios were presented, they generally agreed that the described conduct was inappropriate but offered little consensus regarding the best course of action for an attorney or judge confronted with such behavior. The Eighth Circuit data thus provide the basis for expanded understanding of the conduct at issue, the options for action in response, and the persistent discrepancy in viewpoints on gender bias and the judicial role.     

Evolution and the Bounds of Human

Law and Philosophy -     

Why policy analysis and ethics are incompatible

Commentators in the field of policy analysis have argued persuasively for the inclusion of ethical evaluations in the analytic process, yet most practitioners in the policy field avoid analyzing moral issues. Standard explanations for this neglect of ethics tend to be inadequate; assertions that normative analysis is unnecessary, impractical, impossible, or undesirable are demonstrably weak. Political factors, on the other hand, provide a clearer understanding of the neglect of ethics. Ethical inquiry is shunned because it frequently threatens the professional and political interests of both analysts and policymakers. The administrator, the legislator, the bureaucracy, and the profession of policy analysis itself all resist the potential challenges of moral evaluation.     

Sexually Violent Predator Evaluations: Empirical Evidence,Strategies for Professionals,and Research Directions

Several states have passed civil commitment laws that allow the precautionary detention of sex offenders who have completed their criminal sentences. Over 2,500 sex offenders have been committed across states with such statutes and several thousand more sex offenders have been evaluated. Most statutes call for an evaluation of risk by a mental health professional and, although each state statute is worded differently, three main elements common to sexually violent predator evaluations are used to guide evaluators: mental abnormality, volitional capacity, and likelihood of future sexual violence. The current article presents empirical evidence for the main tenants of these forensic evaluations, provides recommendations for evaluators in light of current limitations of evidence, and offers suggestions for future research in this area of forensic assessment.     

Rates and predictors of sexual aggression among students and non-students

The authors compared rates and predictors of sexual aggression for women attending college with those of women from the same population who were not attending college. Because it has been suggested that less parental monitoring at college may be associated with risky behaviors that contribute to sexual aggression, they also compared rates and predictors of sexual aggression for those living with parents versus not living with parents. The results showed that women living away from parents reported significantly higher rates of sexual aggression than women living with parents, regardless of student status. Logistic regression analyses showed that for student and non-student women, heavy episodic drinking and number of sex partners predicted past-year rape and/or attempted rape. The current results do not provide evidence that college is a uniquely risky environment for experiencing sexual aggression. Rather, the behaviors in which young women engage are associated with sexual aggression during this time period.