Party Strategies,Constituency Links,and Legislative Speech

This article examines how parties organize legislative speech. Electoral incentives and legislative institutions affect speech participation. When electoral systems create personal vote‐seeking incentives, parties are less concerned with screening speeches and more supportive of members seeking to garner name recognition. But in many countries, legislative rules and norms constrain opportunities for individual position taking during the lawmaking debates. We argue that parties resolve this dilemma by organizing speech participation into nonlegislative speeches and lawmaking debates. In each instance, different types of legislators are more likely to speak. We examine the case of Chile and test the implications of our theory with data on congressional speeches.     

Differences in contract design between successful and less successful franchises

The aim of this paper is to identify differences in contract design between successful and less successful franchise chains. Comparing contracts from both groups of companies, we observe, on the one hand, that (1) franchise contracts are unbalanced irrespective of the chain’s success: contracts cover franchisees’ obligations more than franchisors’ obligations. On the other hand, we find that (2) contracts in successful franchise chains are more complete (i.e. cover a larger number of contingencies) than the less successful ones and (3) this difference lies in the contingencies regarding franchisees’ obligations, which are more fully covered in the contracts of more successful chains. More specifically, within the contingencies regarding franchisees’ obligations, (4) successful chains restrict the franchisee decision rights more frequently on day-to-day business operations than on financial conditions or post-contractual contingencies. These findings can be explained because successful chains are more sensitive to franchisees’ opportunistic behavior, because they have learned how to manage and solve any potential conflicts, or because of differences in bargaining power. Finally (5) franchisors’ obligations are not statistically different between groups, which we interpret as evidence that relational contracting mechanisms do not substitute formalization.     

Religious Motivated Hate Crimes: Reporting to Law Enforcement and Case Outcomes

Relative to non-bias motivated crimes, hate crimes have much graver consequences for victims and their community. Despite the large increase in religious hate crimes over the past decade relative to all other hate crime, little is known about these types of crimes and the factors associated with both reporting to law enforcement and case outcomes. Utilizing the National Crime Victimization Survey and National Incident-Based Reporting System datasets, this study examines the relationship between victim, offender, and incident characteristics on reporting to law enforcement and case outcomes. Most religious hate crimes are not reported (41.3 %) in part due to perceptions of law enforcement’s perceived response. Of the violent incidents that are reported, the vast majority do not result in the arrest of an offender (22.2 %). Whereas only a small number of variables related to the seriousness of the offense are associated with both reporting and arrest, these exhibited large effect sizes.     

Speaking the language of security: the Commonwealth,the Francophonie and the CPLP in conflict management in Africa

The last decade has seen an unprecedented increase in conflict management activities in Africa by international organisations. This has been accompanied by a flurry of academic publications and of policy reports that stress the comparative advantages at the legal and operational levels of regional and other intergovernmental organisations. The article assesses this dominant favourable view by examining the role of the Commonwealth, the Francophonie and the CPLP in Africa. Traditionally regarded as cultural organisations, they have gradually extended their profile to include a security mandate. Drawing from fieldwork and an extensive review of the literature, the article presents the first comparative study of the conflict management activities of these organisations in Africa.     

Fatal suicidal crossbow injury--the ability to act

We report a case of a 58-year-old man who committed suicide using a modern crossbow. The victim shot himself in the chest with a conical field-tip arrow from close proximity. We first presumed that this was a case of homicide committed with a firearm. We were, however, subsequently proved wrong. The reasons for the primary statement were as follows: the external morphology of the entrance wound being typical of a firearm discharged from long distance; the perforation found on the victim's clothing; the absence of the firearm at the place of death; the absence of the arrow in the wound. All of these reasons forced us initially to conclude that the case was one of homicide. In the reported case, the man, after having been shot with an arrow, was further able to act, even though the abdominal aorta and liver were seriously injured. While the arrow was in the wound, the injuries may not have led to massive bleeding because of incomplete tamponade of the defects by the arrow shaft. Pulling the arrow out of the victim's wound track initiated massive bleeding. Despite all these injuries, the man was capable of pulling the bow string again and reloading the crossbow with the arrow used in the first attempt. This case demonstrates that forensic investigations into crossbow injuries can be very difficult, especially when the bolt has been removed from the body.     

Age-at-death estimation by pulp/tooth area ratio in canines: study of a 20th-century Mexican sample of prisoners to test Cameriere's method

Accurate age estimation has always been a problem for forensic scientists, and apposition of secondary dentine is often used as an indicator of age. Cameriere et al. studied the pulp/tooth area ratio by peri-apical X-ray images of the canines, to observe the apposition of secondary dentine. The present study examines the application of this technique in a Mexican identified sample coming from the Department of Physical Anthropology of the INAH, at Mexico City. The main aim of this work is to test the reliability of this method in a skeletal sample of a specific population, different from the samples used for its development. The obtained regression model explained 96.2% of total variance (R(2) = 0.962) with a standard error of estimate of 1.909 and a standard deviation of 1.947. These results demonstrate great reliability and that the age/secondary dentine relationship is not variable in this specific population.     

Comparative study of Greulich and Pyle Atlas and Maturos 4.0 program for age estimation in a Portuguese sample

Age estimation of living individuals has become one of the big issues of forensic anthropology. The increase of children and adolescents with no valid proof of their chronological age is a legal concern to many countries, especially in situations of illegal immigration, sub adult delinquency and juvenile work. For this purpose, the use of radiological methods for evaluation of skeletal maturation is particularly useful. In this study we compare the two of the most common methods applied in age estimation by hand/wrist radiographs: the Radiographic Atlas of Skeletal Development of the Hand and Wrist made by Greulich and Pyle (GP), 1959,and the Sempé method developed for computer--Maturos 4.0 (MT) program. These methods were applied to a sample of 230 radiographs of the hand and wrist from Portuguese children and adolescents of known sex age and age, aged between 12 and 20 years, who performed medical examination at the University of Coimbra Hospitals during 2005. The methods achieved different performances, depending on the age group. Between 12 and 15 years the bone age with the MT program is closer to the chronological age, whereas in older ages the GP Atlas method is more trustworthy. At the ages with legal consequences in Portugal (16 and 18 years) the GP Atlas method is most accurate, namely to decide whether an individual is younger or older than 18 years. Around 16 years old, although there are doubts in relation to the accuracy of both methods, GP Atlas seems to perform better.     

Validated method for the simultaneous determination of Delta9-THC and Delta9-THC-COOH in oral fluid, urine and whole blood using solid-phase extraction and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry with electrospray ionization

A fully validated, sensitive and specific method for the extraction and quantification of Delta(9)-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and 11-nor-9-carboxy-Delta(9)-THC (THC-COOH) and for the detection of 11-hydroxy-Delta(9)-THC (11-OH THC) in oral fluid, urine and whole blood is presented. Solid-phase extraction and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) technique were used, with electrospray ionization. Three ions were monitored for THC and THC-COOH and two for 11-OH THC. The compounds were quantified by selected ion recording of m/z 315.31, 329.18 and 343.16 for THC, 11-OH THC and THC-COOH, respectively, and m/z 318.27 and 346.26 for the deuterated internal standards, THC-d(3) and THC-COOH-d(3), respectively. The method proved to be precise for THC and THC-COOH both in terms of intra-day and inter-day analysis, with intra-day coefficients of variation (CV) less than 6.3, 6.6 and 6.5% for THC in saliva, urine and blood, respectively, and 6.8 and 7.7% for THC-COOH in urine and blood, respectively. Day-to-day CVs were less than 3.5, 4.9 and 11.3% for THC in saliva, urine and blood, respectively, and 6.2 and 6.4% for THC-COOH in urine and blood, respectively. Limits of detection (LOD) were 2 ng/mL for THC in oral fluid and 0.5 ng/mL for THC and THC-COOH and 20 ng/mL for 11-OH THC, in urine and blood. Calibration curves showed a linear relationship for THC and THC-COOH in all samples (r(2)>0.999) within the range investigated. The procedure presented here has high specificity, selectivity and sensitivity. It can be regarded as an alternative method to GC-MS for the confirmation of positive immunoassay test results, and can be used as a suitable analytical tool for the quantification of THC and THC-COOH in oral fluid, urine and/or blood samples.