Abolishing Marriage: Can Civil Partnership Cover it?

This paper argues that all adult intimate relationships should be regulated under one single statute. This statute should be the Civil Partnership Act 2004 (which currently applies to same sex couples). The Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 (which applies to opposite sex couples), should be repealed; it should not be amended to include same sex couples. There would, as a consequence, be no such thing as (legal) marriage. Marriage as a legal construct is a heterosexual and patriarchal institution and is therefore so fundamentally flawed it is beyond the possibility of successful reform or repair. The present system of having two distinct legal means of relationship recognition is akin to sexual apartheid and is therefore unsustainable in the long term. Having a legal system which recognises only one form of legal partnership would therefore formally end a discriminatory system. Despite its drawbacks, Civil Partnership does not have the same extent of symbolic and practical degree of flaws as Marriage.

Child abuse: practical application of autopsy, radiological, and microscopic studies

A 17-month-old male infant died at home. The infant's right arm was immobilized because of a humeral fracture 1 month earlier. The circumstances of death appeared unclear to the police investigators and a medicolegal autopsy was carried out. External examination revealed diffuse ecchymoses of varying color. Postmortem imaging was performed prior to autopsy (X-rays, multislice computed tomography [MSCT], and focused brain magnetic resonance imaging [MRI]). These investigations revealed four rib fractures of varying ages, one of which was posterior. Cerebral and pericerebral traumatic lesions were also diagnosed: bilateral subdural hematomas, intraventricular, meningeal, and interpedoncular hemorrhages. In the abdomen, fresh blood was visible within the anterior abdominal wall and the mesenteric root. Autopsy and microscopic study confirmed these lesions. This case report illustrates the valuable assistance rendered by MSCT and MRI to diagnose abuse when a child has died in unclear circumstances.     

Associations in the Embrace of an Authoritarian State: State Domination of Society?

According to conventional wisdom, associations that are closely linked with and penetrated by an authoritarian state are significant chiefly as symbols of state domination of society. Yet a review of empirical evidence suggests that the nature and significance of incorporated or co-opted associations varies much more widely than the conventional perspective suggests. Not only are close association-state linkages sometimes looked upon favorably by societal participants, but some independent societal associations actually seek to be co-opted by an authoritarian state. Moreover, incorporated associations often have more to do with strategies by state agencies and officials to accomplish parochial goals than with state efforts to control society. This article elucidates a new analytical perspective for understanding the dynamics and functioning of incorporated associations, citing a wide range of empirical cases to show how this perspective facilitates a better understanding of the kinds of state-society engagement that occur within and through incorporated associations. The article concludes with a brief analysis of associations in contemporary China that builds on the preceding discussion, illuminating the importance of local-level interactions in determining the character of incorporated associations. Kenneth W. Foster is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include state-society relations in developing countries, comparative public administration and organizational behavior, and the politics of China and Taiwan. His Ph.D. dissertation focuses on the relationship between bureaucratic processes and the emergence of associations in contemporary China.     

Single-party government,Prime Minister psychology,and the diversionary use of force: theory and evidence from the British case

ABSTRACT

This paper develops expectations about the likelihood of diversionary conflict initiation by parliamentary democracies with single-party majoritarian (SPM) governments. While most of the literature on diversion and governmental arrangement claims that SPMs have little incentive and/or limited capacity to execute diversionary gambits, we contend that the structural and environmental impetuses for diversion in such states are in fact largely indeterminate. We posit that the psychological attributes of prime ministers under SPM – in particular, their level of distrust – is the most important predictor of how they view structural and environmental constraints, and thus of whether they will militarily divert from poor economic conditions. Distrustful prime ministers are predisposed to the use of force, will dwell on the costs of economic problems, and fear that co-partisan MPs (especially in the cabinet) have designs on their office. Thus, despite having a legislative majority, these leaders will choose diversionary conflict over economic policy fixes. We conduct a partial test of this hypothesis in the British case from 1945 to 2007, and our analyses provide robust support.     

District Judges and Possession Proceedings

In this article, we draw on data obtained in interviews with District Judges about the factors which they say influence the exercise of their discretion in possession proceedings. Analysing the data set enabled us to create three ideal types of judicial decision—making which we have labelled 'liberal', 'patrician', and formalist'. We discuss the differences between each ideal type across five different variables: the District Judge role; approach; view of occupiers; the problem; behaviour of occupiers. Our data demonstrate a set of reasons to explain different approaches and outcomes between different District Judges (as well as the perhaps unlikely identification of a 'maverick' or 'idiosyncratic' style of judging). We conclude by suggesting on the basis of our data that, despite calls to structure or remove the discretion from District Judges, any such changes are unlikely to have much effect.     

Federal health care policy and the geographic diffusion of physicians: A macro-scale analysis

The federal government passed legislation in the 1960's and 70's to increase physician supplies and reduce spatial inequalities in access to physicians. A major policy was to aggressively continue increasing the overall supply of physicians on the assumption that market forces would eventually divert physicians from areas of high physician density to those of low density. Using state-level, annual data collected over a 21-year period, this paper investigates the macro-scale spatial diffusion of physicians as an essential element in evaluating this policy. The results provide evidence of the policy impacting locational trends relating to primary care physicians, but not specialists. They also indicate that the Medicaid/Medicare programs may have adversely affected the maldistribution problem.