The Effects of Limiting Punitive Damage Awards

In response to concerns that jury awards in tort cases are excessive and unpredictable, nearly every state legislature has enacted some version of tort reform that is intended to curb extravagant damage awards. One of the most important and controversial reforms involves capping (or limiting) the maximum punitive damage award. We conducted a jury analogue study to assess the impact of this reform. In particular, we examined the possibility that capping punitive awards would cause jurors to inflate their compensatory awards to satisfy their desires to punish the defendant, particularly in situations where the defendant's conduct was highly reprehensible. Relative to a condition in which punitive damages were unlimited, caps on punitive damages did not result in inflation of compensatory awards. However, jurors who had no option to award punitive damages assessed compensatory damages at a significantly higher level than did jurors who had the opportunity to do so. We discuss the policy implications of these findings.     

One Swallow Does Not Make Spring: A Critical Juncture Perspective on the EU Sanctions in Response to the Arab Spring

This article examines to what extent the Arab Spring constitutes a critical juncture – a major turning point – for the EU’s sanctions policy towards Egypt, Libya, Syria and Tunisia. Based on a multidimensional critical juncture operationalization, we find that the Arab Spring only constitutes such a turning point for the EU’s sanctions policy towards Syria. Both the level and nature of measures differ substantially from previous years. By contrast, the EU’s sanctions practice towards Libya, Egypt and Tunisia shows more resilience. More generally, changes in the nature of the measures are prominent, whereas changes in the level of the policy instruments and in underlying norms and goals are limited.     

A Third Verdict Option: Exploring the Impact of the Not Proven Verdict on Mock Juror Decision Making

In most adversarial systems, jurors in criminal cases consider the binary verdict alternatives of "Guilty" and "Not guilty." However, in some circumstances and jurisdictions, a third verdict option is available: Not Proven. The Not Proven verdict essentially reflects the view that the defendant is indeed culpable, but that the prosecution has not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Like a Not Guilty verdict, the Not Proven verdict results in an acquittal. The main aim of the two studies reported here was to determine how, and under what circumstances, jurors opt to use the Not Proven verdict across different case types and when the strength of the evidence varies. In both studies, jurors were more likely to choose a Not Proven verdict over a Not Guilty verdict when the alternative was available. When evidence against the defendant was only moderately strong and a Not Proven verdict option was available (Study 2), there was also a significant reduction in the conviction rate. Results also showed that understanding of the Not Proven verdict was poor, highlighting inadequacies in the nature of judicial instructions relating to this verdict.     

The Evolution of Public Service Provision by the Third Sector in France

Public services have been externalised, in part, to the non‐profit sector in France and in the United Kingdom. This article begins by reviewing relations between the public and non‐profit sector in France before 2008, and its evolution since. This has been characterised by the slow reduction of public funding, the adaptation of non‐profit associations and organisations, and their clearer positioning within a wider ‘social and solidarity economy’, which was consolidated by a framework Law in 2014. The article then examines the current sharing of responsibilities between the public and non‐profit sectors in education, health and social services, pointing to the diverse historical and political conditions which have led to this shared organisation.     

Shorter notices

The Economics of Development: An Annotated List of Books and Articles Published. 1958–1962. By Arthur Hazlewood, London Oxford University Press, 1964. Pp. xii, 104, 12/6.

Libya : Its Oil Industry and Economic System. By Abdul Amir Q. Kubbah, The Arab Petro‐Economic Research Centre, Baghdad, Iraq, 1964. Pp. 274. 45/‐.

Levels of Economic Activity and Public Expenditure in India. By K. Mukerji, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Poona, Asia Publishing House, London. 1965. Pp. xvi, 140. 55/‐.

Leading Issues in Development Economics. Selected Materials and Commentary. By Gerald M. Meier, New York, Oxford University Press. 1964. Pp. xiii, 572. 35/‐.     

A comparison of the neuropsychological profiles of adult male sex offenders and non-offenders with a learning disability

Abstract

The present study compared the neumpsychologlcal pmfiles of a group of adult male sex offenden with a laming disability (n-42) with a group of adult male non-offenders with a learning disability (n-42) using the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale - Revised (1986). The groups wen matched for full-scale IQ. Thc study found that the non-offender group had significantly higher Verbal 1Q scorn than the sex offender group. No significant differences wen found for Performance IQ. The non-ofinder group was also found to have significantly hlgher scores on the Vocabulary sub-test than the sex offender group and the sex offender group was found to have significantly higher scores on the ObJecr Assembly subtest than the non-ofinder group. Finally. the sex offender group was found to have a significantly lower Verbal IQ than Performance IQ. No significant Verbal-Performance discrepancy was found for the non-offender group. Possible implications of these findings are dlscusscd.     

Predictors of the Authorities' Decision to Grant Asylum in Denmark

With the aim of identifying predictors for being granted a residencepermit, adult members of 149 refugee families from the MiddleEast answered a structured interview shortly after arrival onsocial and demographic background and family exposure to organizedviolence. At follow-up, 90 families (60.4 per cent) had beengranted a residence permit. This was positively associated withIraqi nationality, with the duration of the father's educationand the family's religion being another than Islam, and negativelywith being a single mother family. No association was foundwith exposure to war, having lived in a refugee camp or to humanrights violations. Without transparency of the asylum grantingdecision process the conclusion is that this seems to favourthe selection of socially and culturally well situated refugees,while human rights violations seem to play a diminishing role.In order to develop its quality, continuous and transparentmonitoring of the asylum granting decision process appears relevant.     

Recognising the People's Republic of China: A Reappraisal of Australian Foreign Policy During the First Menzies Ministry 1950–51

The attitude of the early Menzies Government towards the recognition of the People's Republic of China has not been well understood in the literature on Australia's international relations. The early Menzies regime has been taken by some scholars to be implacably opposed to communism, including Chinese communism, by others to have ceased to consider recognition because of the Korean War and by a third contingent to have been responsive to United States pressure not to recognise the Chinese communist government. A perusal of the foreign policy documents of the period of the first Menzies ministry reveals that both Menzies and Spender were giving favourable consideration to recognising the People's Republic of China during late 1950 and early 1951 and that none of these three views were decisive in preventing recognition. The question for Menzies and Spender was not whether to recognise but when to recognise and the actions of the Chinese communists themselves, in particular their attitude to British recognition, created the greatest impediment to recognition by Australia at that time.     

The victim zone: Recent accounts of Burmese military human rights abuse in the shan state

Burma's little-known frontier war is the context of six interviews with tribal people affected by the conflict. Burmese military abuse of ethnic minority civilians in the war zone includes forced labor, systematic looting, torture and destruction of tribal villages. American aid, intended to combat the Golden Triangle's opium production, has added to the tribes' persecution, as the Burmese military uses the herbicide 2,4-D (an Agent Orange ingredient) in saturation spraying of crops as part of counterinsurgency efforts.Project MAJE is an independent project on human rights in Burma.Project Maje is an independent information project designed to encourage American awareness of the political situation in Burma, particularly the frontier war and related issues. For more information on human rights in Burma, the 2,4-D program, narcotics trade, and other related topics, please contact: PROJECT MAJE, 14 Dartmouth Road, Cranford, NJ 07016 USA, (201) 276-8494.