MEDIATION IN THE LOS ANGELES COUNTY SUPERIOR COURT JUVENILE DEPENDENCY COURT

This article presents the results of a 9-month interdisciplinary task force convened to review the mediation process in the juvenile dependency court and to develop guidelines for its operation by the conciliation court, stemming from a grand jury recommendation.     

Teaching negotiation with computer simulations: Pedagogical and practical considerations

In Conclusion Two sets of issues — one set focused on teaching objectives, the other set on practical concerns — must be addressed if the instructor hopes to use computer-based teaching materials effectively in the classroom. If these issues are not addressed, the simulation may either be used in ways that do not forward the instructional objectives of the seminar or course, or the technology will not be managed and used in a manner that is most conducive to effective learning.     

How Do We Write the History of Brexit?

The vote to leave the European Union in 2016 and the political crisis that followed offer obvious subjects for the political historian. Yet, the study of Brexit raises serious challenges for academic writing, concerning method, the political preferences of the historian and the implication of history as a discipline in the European debate. This article explores some of the dilemmas and opportunities confronting the historian of Brexit, focussing, in particular, on the challenges to be addressed, the utility of conventional political methods and the insights that might be drawn from allied fields. It argues for a greater emphasis on the imaginative resources on which the different campaigns could draw, urging greater attention to conventional wisdoms, languages of class, collective memory and the forging of cultural or exceptionalist identities.     

Current psychopathology in previously assaulted older adults

Older adult women age 55+ years (N = 549) were interviewed as part of a population-based epidemiological research study of lifetime experiences with physical and sexual assault and current mental health problems. Although overall rates of psychopathology were low, producing very small cells for comparison, women who reported experiencing physical assault an average of 28 years previously were more likely to present with past year substance abuse, depression, and avoidance and reexperiencing symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than those with no previous physical or sexual assault. Women who reported experiencing sexual assault an average of 50 years previously were more likely to present with autonomic arousal and avoidance symptoms of PTSD than those with no prior sexual assault. The aforementioned findings should be considered with caution, however, as sample cell sizes were minimal for all but the PTSD symptom subtypes. Mental health service implications for older adults are discussed.     

Juridifications and religion in early modern Europe: The challenge of a contextual history of law

To end Europe's great cycle of religious wars, some early modern states imposed a secular ‘rule of law’ in spheres of life previously governed by religion. The following essay compares two instances of this basic fact of seventeenth-century European political history, one German and the other English. In these different religious and political settings, different juridifications were undertaken that do not reduce to manifestations of a single underlying process of social change. Considered in a legal-historical light, early modern juridifications therefore invite a clear disciplinary alternative to the socio-theoretical and socio-critical perspective on juridification associated with Jürgen Habermas. The larger challenge on behalf of legal history is to end the subordination of historical method to critical social theory. This revised version was published online in November 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.