A Framework for Understanding Consensus-Building Initiation

The potential of consensus building is dependent upon overcoming difficulties associated with the challenges in getting parties to the table. This article builds a framework for understanding the factors and variables most fundamentally involved in the initiation of consensus-building efforts. Nine factors involved at the beginning of a consensus-building process are identified and outlined. The framework is structured on three major functions of the initiation phase: the definition of the problem, the structure of negotiation, and the motivation to participate.     

THE PRINCIPLE OF VOLUNTARY AGREEMENT

There may be many perfectly good reasons, of a purely pragmatic sort, for policy-making by voluntary agreement between regulators and those whose conduct is to be regulated. Pragmatism aside, however, policy-makers characteristically claim that that strategy is also morally superior to legislative compulsion. That claim is incorrect. Voluntary agreement, as it is presently procured, does nothing to enhance the moral legitimacy of the policies thereby promulgated. Anything a government is morally entitled to do with voluntary agreement of that sort, it would be morally equally entitled to do without it.     

STRUCTURAL FACTORS AND BLACK INTERRACIAL HOMICIDE: A NEW EXAMINATION OF THE CAUSAL PROCESS*

This study evaluates the assumption that deprivation among African Americans and racial inequality lead to black interracial homicide due to racial conflict and antagonism. Using refined race‐adjusted Supplemental Homicide Report data, Uniform Crime Report data and census data, we test an alternative hypothesis that draws on the macrostructural opportunity theory to assess and more accurately specify the relationship between structural characteristics and black interracial homicide. We find that first, the relationship between economic factors and black interracial homicide can be explained in large part by high rates of financially motivated crime such as robbery, and second, that economic factors are associated with financially motivated but not expressive black interracial killings. Analyses of black intraracial killings are performed for comparison purposes. Collectively, the findings suggest that conflict‐based explanations rooted in racial antagonism and frustration aggression may be premature.     

MEDIATING JUDICIAL POLICY

Despite the widespread use of mediation to resolve public policy disputes, there is little written on the mediation of judicial rule disputes. A successful mediation of a dispute over proposed court rules to govern mediation of certain family law cases involving domestic violence concerns is reviewed. The authors conclude that the mediation provided (a) a confidential venue for disputing judges to respectfully disagree with one another, (b) an opportunity for collaborative problem solving, (c) an opportunity to reduce conflict among judicial colleagues. (d) a format for dialogue with other stakeholders, and (e) greater degree of influence with regard to the outcome of the dispute. Specific recommendations to encourage the effective use of judicial policy mediation are offered.     

Lifetime Abuse, Mental Health, and African American Women

This study examined the relationship between lifetime abuse and mental health among 126 African American women and 365 White women from a primary health care setting who participated in a telephone interview as part of a larger study. Seven types of childhood and adult intimate partner abuse were measured. Consistent with hypotheses, (1) lifetime abuse was associated with elevated levels of anxiety and depression, and (2) women who experienced childhood abuse were more likely to report adult partner abuse. African American and White women showed more similarities than differences in the associations between most abuse experiences and depression and anxiety, as well as types of childhood abuse. African American abused women reported more excessive jealousy by partners. Nonabused African American women reported higher levels of depression and anxiety than their White counterparts. Results are interpreted and discussed taking into account relevant social and cultural factors.     

A multitask scientific investigation resolved an unusual road crash case.

Crime or accident scenes are sometimes almost unbelievable. Elements of the scene can be so strange that a reconstruction of the event is almost impossible. What can the investigator do in such a case? The only solution is to collect all the evidence and samples, even if they appear useless, and send them to specialised laboratories. Scientific data are held in high esteem by the law and court proceedings consequent on crashes will almost certainly require analytical results of one sort or another to be presented as evidence. The case presented is one of those strange and almost unbelievable cases with little physical evidence, no eyewitnesses and the almost fortuitous collection of one unique, incredibly small, sample. The prosecutor's decision to instruct unusual but appropriate experts turned out to be successful.