Biological monitoring: the employer's dilemma

The industrial workplace contains many potential health hazards that not only can cause great harm to workers, but also can destroy the employers' economic stability. Often these hazards are documented and dealth with, but frequently they are unknown. When health-conscious employers monitor the physical well-being of their employees in an effort to avoid the terrible personal and economic costs these hazards can produce, they may be supplying their employees with the documentation necessary to recover financially for their industrial illnesses. This Article analyzes this dilemma confronting employers. It describes the many factors employers must consider when deciding whether to institute a monitoring process that takes full advantage of technological developments in medical care. The Article suggests an approach employers may take until some of the disincentives surrounding the implementation of monitoring are removed.     

Electoral-system change in Latvia and the elections of 2010

Latvia’s highly distinctive proportional electoral system owes its origins to Latvia’s 1922 Constitution and the new democracy’s electoral legislation of 1919 and 1922. Latvia’s unique feature lies in its preference system, offering the voters the opportunity to judge each candidate on their party’s list. Although the system appears to maximise responsiveness to voters’ preferences, in practice this promise remained unfulfilled and the representative quality of parliament was questionable. This was in large measure because of the capacity of candidates to stand in multiple constituencies. In 2009 amendments to the electoral law altered this key provision. This change clearly made a difference, but it could not resolve fundamental problems of Latvia’s political process in general and its political parties in particular.