Judicial policy‐making in Italy: The constitutional court

This study focuses on the Italian Constitutional Court, the newest and most prestigious addition to a judicial tradition that can be traced as far back as the Roman Empire. This court has indeed been an effective policy‐making body, particularly in matters of civil liberties and church‐state relations, as well as in compelling the legislative branch, where it has been so charged, to complete the drafting of the Constitution. The Court has faltered at times in defending its independence, and this account argues that life appointments might be a viable means of achieving the goal of a constitutional body that serves ‘nee spe nee metu’     

Gender Parity and Quotas in Italy: A Convoluted Reform Process

In 1995, two years after the adoption of gender quota laws, the Italian Constitutional Court declared these laws to be unconstitutional. The Constitution was subsequently reformed in order to make way for new quota legislation. Such reforms came in late and in a contradictory way. The Constitution was first modified in 2001 to allow regions to adopt quota measures to enhance women's political representation at the regional level and then in 2003 to allow similar measures to enhance women's political representation at the national and European levels. Thus far, quotas have been introduced only in some regions and for European elections. Consequently, the 2001 and 2003 constitutional reforms have had a limited impact on legislative implementation measures and thus on the percentage of women in elected assemblies.     

Death by potassium chloride intravenous injection: evaluation of analytical detectability

Potassium chloride intravenous injection is used in suicide attempts and lethal procedures for state-sanctioned punishment. Owing to its relatively high concentrations in hemolyzed blood (25-80 mM) compared to serum (about 4 mM), it is difficult to conclude potassium poisoning by postmortem analysis of biologic samples. A 41-year-man was found dead with an injection sign on his foot and a syringe close to the corpse. No particular signs were noted during the autopsy. Blood, bile, and urine were submitted to xenobiotic screening procedures used in the laboratory. Syringe content was found positive to potassium ions. Blood potassium concentration was determined by ion-selective electrode measurement (range 3.0-150 mM). Blood was found positive for diazepam at therapeutic level. Potassium concentration was 160.0 (cardiac) and 87.3 mM (femoral blood). Our results show that potassium concentration was significantly higher in heart blood in a suicide case. Hence, the general issue of considering potassium poisoning hardly demonstrable by toxicology needs to be questioned and thoroughly studied.     

UK government's Open Standards Consultation – A step in the wrong direction?

This paper comments on UK government's Open Standards Consultation which opened on 7 February 2012. It questions the UK government's mandating of open standards defined as standards which include patents licensed on a royalty free basis. The paper suggests that instead of promoting a level playing field, the government's policy will actually restrict competition and hinder interoperability. This policy is contrary to EU policy in a number of different fields which have all accepted, despite significant in-depth debate on this issue, that the best way to ensure the most effective competition, innovation and interoperability is to allow both royalty free patents and royalty bearing patents to compete provided the latter are licensed on FRAND terms. Lastly the paper suggests that the public procurement rules are not the place to apply industrial policy, instead a full market analysis should be conducted involving other government departments such as BIS and the IPO.     

Correlates of Identity Configurations: Three Studies with Adolescent and Emerging Adult Cohorts

Adolescence and emerging adulthood are two core developmental periods in which individuals can develop a meaningful identity across domains. However, there is a lack of studies exploring correlates of different identity configurations. The purpose of this article was to fill this gap in examining correlates of configurations characterized by identity stability or instability in both ideological and relational domains or identity stability in one domain and instability in the other domain. Three studies were presented. In the first study, we investigated links between identity configurations and internalizing problem behaviors in early and middle adolescents (N=1,891; M (age) =14; 55% female); in the second study, we focused on associations between identity configurations and identity functions in late adolescents and early emerging adults (N=1,085; M (age) =19; 63% female); in the third study, we investigated relationships between identity configurations, sense of coherence, and basic psychological need satisfaction in emerging adults (N=489; M (age) =21; 71% female). Overall, findings highlighted that participants experiencing a condition of identity stability in both domains reported a better profile than their peers displaying a condition of instability in both realms. Further, individuals with identity stability only in one domain reported intermediate scores and the effect provided by each domain varied according to the correlate examined and the age group taken into account. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

Identity Styles,Positive Youth Development,and Civic Engagement in Adolescence

Identity formation is a core developmental task of adolescence. Adolescents can rely on different social-cognitive styles to seek, process, and encode self-relevant information: information-oriented, normative, and diffuse-avoidant identity styles. The reliance on different styles might impact adolescents’ adjustment and their active involvement in the society. The purpose of this study was to examine whether adolescents with different identity styles report differences in positive youth development (analyzed with the Five Cs—Competence, Confidence, Character, Connection, and Caring—model) and in various forms of civic engagement (i.e., involvement in school self-government activities, volunteering activities, youth political organizations, and youth non-political organizations). The participants were 1,633 (54.1 % female) 14–19 years old adolescents (M _age  = 16.56, SD _age  = 1.22). The findings indicated that adolescents with different identity styles differed significantly on all the Five Cs and on two (i.e., involvement in volunteering activities and in youth non-political organizations) forms of civic engagement. Briefly, adolescents with an information-oriented style reported high levels of both the Five Cs and civic engagement; participants with a normative style reported moderate to high scores on the Five Cs but low rates of civic engagement; diffuse-avoidant respondents scored low both on the Five Cs and on civic engagement. These findings suggest that the information-oriented style, contrary to the diffuse-avoidant one, has beneficial effects for both the individual and the community, while the normative style has quite beneficial effects for the individual but not for his/her community. Concluding, adolescents with different identity styles display meaningful differences in positive youth development and in rates of civic engagement.     

Identity Formation in Early and Middle Adolescents From Various Ethnic Groups: From Three Dimensions to Five Statuses

We used three identity processes (i.e., commitment, in-depth exploration, and reconsideration of commitment) from a recently developed model of identity formation to derive empirically identity statuses in a sample of 1952 early and middle adolescents. By means of cluster analysis, we identified five statuses: achievement, foreclosure, moratorium, searching moratorium, and diffusion. Specifically, we found an intra-status differentiation within moratorium, unraveling the positive and negative facets of this status documented in prior literature. The five clusters could be meaningfully distinguished on a number of variables, such as personality features, psychosocial problems, and parental relationships. These findings indicated that a valid distinction in identity statuses could be made in early and middle adolescence. Finally, age and ethnic background strongly affected the distribution of the participants among the five identity statuses. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Tax rates and tax evasion: an empirical analysis of the long-run aspects in Italy

We use official time series of the Italian evaded VAT base (Ministry of Finance) for the period 1980:1–2006:4 to investigate empirically the long-run characteristics of tax evasion and the relationship with the tax burden. Three hitherto unexplored issues are addressed. First, using different measures of aggregate economic activity as reference variables in estimating the average tax burden, we examine the size and dynamics of the overburden traceable back to tax evasion. Second, exploiting cointegration techniques, we quantify the elasticity between tax evasion and the average tax rate in Italy. We then comment on the complex dynamic interaction between the tax burden and tax evasion to ascertain whether in the Italian experience there is evidence for any “vicious circle” between them.     

Atomic force microscopic investigation of commercial pressure sensitive adhesives for forensic analysis

Pressure sensitive adhesive (PSA), such as those used in packaging and adhesive tapes, are very often encountered in forensic investigations. In criminal activities, packaging tapes may be used for sealing packets containing drugs, explosive devices, or questioned documents, while adhesive and electrical tapes are used occasionally in kidnapping cases. In this work, the potential of using atomic force microscopy (AFM) in both imaging and force mapping (FM) modes to derive additional analytical information from PSAs is demonstrated. AFM has been used to illustrate differences in the ultrastructural and nanomechanical properties of three visually distinguishable commercial PSAs to first test the feasibility of using this technique. Subsequently, AFM was used to detect nanoscopic differences between three visually indistinguishable PSAs.