Rhetorical Construction of Legal Arguments

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique - This study examines the concept of argumentation empirically, to correct the normative...     

What’s left out and why? Informal provisions in formal international law

When states face an international cooperation problem requiring enforcement, when do they decide to make that enforcement formal versus informal? I introduce a research design for investigating how informal mechanisms might be relevant to formal international agreements. I present an overall theory of punishment provisions and a set of hypotheses about whether any needed punishments will be formalized or not. This theory gives rise to a two-part empirical analysis conducted on a large-n dataset. First, the presence of enforcement mechanisms in agreements is predicted, and, second, those cases that are “misclassified”—ones in which the model predicts the presence of such mechanisms, but the agreements lack them—are analyzed. These misclassified agreements, candidates for informal enforcement, are characterized by regime heterogeneity and military asymmetries among parties. Case study evidence supports the results.     

The Loosening of Professional Boundaries and Restructuring: The Implications for Nursing and Medicine in Ontario, Canada

This paper suggests that the combination of health care restructuring, legislation expanding, and redefining a regulated health profession in Ontario, Canada, has reduced medical dominance and increased managerial dominance of health care professionals. The paper focuses on nurses and doctors, and examines the effects of the Regulated Health Professions Act and the changes occurring within the health care system on their political, clinical, and economic autonomy. It argues that there has been a redistribution of power in the health care sector and suggests that the present autonomy of health care professionals is limited, and may be limited even further as the technical side of health care is prioritized over the indeterminate side.     

Fatal Intoxication with α‐PVP,a Synthetic Cathinone Derivative

This study presents the fatal case of a young man who was admitted to the ICAU due to sudden cardiac arrest. An interview revealed that the patient had taken some unspecified crystals. From the moment of admission, his condition deteriorated dramatically as a result of increasing circulatory insufficiency. After a few hours, sudden cardiac arrest occurred again and the patient was pronounced dead. In the course of a medicolegal autopsy, samples of biological material were preserved for toxicology tests and histopathological examination. The analysis of samples using the LC‐MS/MS technique revealed the presence of α‐PVP in the following concentrations: blood—174 ng/mL, urine—401 ng/mL, brain—292 ng/g, liver—190 ng/g, kidney—122 ng/g, gastric contents—606 ng/g. The study also presents findings from the parallel histopathological examination. Based on these findings, cardiac arrest secondary to intoxication with alpha‐PVP was determined as the direct cause of the patient's death.     

Recovery of DNA and fingerprints from touched documents

This study investigated the various factors affecting DNA profiling from DNA recovered from fingerprints deposited on paper before and after fingerprint enhancement treatments. The DNeasy^® plant mini kit (QIAGEN^®) was found to improve DNA recovery from paper by over 150% compared with the QIAamp^® mini kit. A significant decrease in the amount of DNA recovered was observed following treatment with DFO and/or Ninhydrin. This decrease in yield did not have a comparably significant effect on the quality of the SGM Plus™ profiles. Furthermore, this study found that whilst certain paper types, such as newspaper, magazine and filter paper allowed for the good recovery of DNA, common office paper and white card, strongly interfered with the recovery of DNA resulting in poor quality profiles.     

The legal implications of student use of social networking sites in the UK and US: current concerns and lessons for the future

This paper provides a comparative snapshot of the current state of the law in the US and UK with respect to potential liability of university and college students for use (and misuse) of social networking sites. It reviews the limited case law on this topic, highlights the differences in the two nations’ laws of defamation and the various possible legal claims available to individuals allegedly harmed by postings on these social networking sites, and concludes that neither country currently offers a satisfactory legal or quasi-legal model for resolving these disputes.     

State of the art in research on equity in health

This essay provided the introduction to a workshop in Bellagio, Italy, on the subject of translating research into policy for equity in health. The essay first defines equity in a way that facilitates its assessment and monitoring and then summarizes evidence from existing research. Directions for developing policy strategies follow from these principles. The role of health services in influencing the distribution of health in populations is discussed in the special context of primary-care-oriented health systems that are, at the same time, more effective, more efficient, and more equity producing than is the case for specialist-dominated health systems.