Implementing Equal Justice for Parents in Washington: A Dual Approach

In many states, legal representation for parents of dependent children is inadequate and can be a source of delays in securing permanency for children and unnecessarily protracted court proceedings. Often, such parents also face barriers to accessing services and independent evaluators. These issues are being addressed in the state of Washington through two approaches. The first is a successful enhanced legal representation program that has substantially improved case outcomes. The second is a statewide committee using innovative means to examine systemic responses to the challenges of the Adoption and Safe Families Act.     

Correlates of Mortality in a U.S. Cohort of Youth, 1980–98: Implications for Social Justice

This paper reports results of a study based on a nationally representative sample of U.S. youth (N = 11,549) that asked two questions: (1) How does family structure affect the likelihood of adolescent death beyond that of race/ethnicity, sex, socioeconomic status, personal behavior, and other structural factors and (2) under what conditions might appeals for social justice be warranted for relative mortality statuses and for absolute gains in mortality? The study found that marital instability increases the likelihood of dying when controlling for a variety of other factors including class, race/ethnicity, sex, and unemployment rate in area of residence. The author argues that this finding lends support to social justice arguments to redistribute resources in such a way as to ensure the likelihood of absolute gains in mortality. The study also found, however, that race/ethnicity/sex also accounted for the likelihood of dying independently of family structure when controlling for socioeconomic and other factors. The author argues that this finding lends support to social justice arguments to redistribute resources on the basis of relative mortality statuses.     

The individuality of fibres used to provide forensic evidence--not all blue polyesters are the same.

Fibres used in forensic casework suffer from a disadvantage common to other forms of trace evidence--it is not possible to state with absolute certainty that they originate from a specific source. Target fibre studies, population studies and research on 'blocks of colour' have effectively demonstrated the polymorphism of textile fibres (particularly man-made ones) and have shown that when a fibre is believed to have a specific putative source, the chance that it has originated from a different source purely by coincidence is extremely remote. A study by Houck MM (Houck MM, Inter-comparison of unrelated fibre evidence. Forensic Science International 2003; 135: 146-149) has shown that no coincidental matching fibres were recovered from items of clothing examined in 20 unrelated crimes. The study involved over two million comparisons. This work goes a step further, and using the example of blue polyester fibres shows that even within a very narrow segment of the whole general fibre population, many examples of a specific colour/type of man-made fibre taken from random sources can be compared and the chance of any two being the same is very low. These studies should help to show the specificity and value of transferred fibres in providing forensic evidence.     

The Revitalization of the Permanent Court of Arbitration

Netherlands International Law Review -     

Die Berücksichtigung von Auswirkungen auf charakteristische Arten der Lebensräume nach Anhang I der FFH-Richtlinie in der FFH-Verträglichkeitsprüfung Anmerkungen zum Urteil des Bundesverwaltungsgerichts vom 16. März 2006 – 4 A 1075.04 (Großflughafen Berlin-Brandenburg)

Das Bundesverwaltungsgericht hat in seinem Urteil vom 16.3.2006 zum Gro?flughafen Berlin-Brandenburg in einem Leitsatz festgestellt, dass das FFH-Schutzregime, dem bestimmte Biotope unterliegen, sich nicht auf V?gel erstreckt, denen das betreffende Biotop als Habitat dient. Diese Feststellung führt zu der Frage, inwieweit charakteristische Arten von Lebensr?umen nach Anhang I FFH-RL in der FFH-Vertr?glichkeitsprüfung nach § 34 BNatSchG überhaupt bewertungsrelevant sind. Der Beitrag setzt sich dazu mit dem Urteil kritisch auseinander.     

High performance liquid chromatographic determination of alcohols with reference to body distribution of methanol

A method has been developed on reverse phase high performance liquid chromatography for simultaneous determination of methyl, ethyl and isopropyl alcohols under refractive index detection using pure water as the mobile phase. A good separation has been achieved between these alcohols. Detector response was linear with a detection limit of 5 mg/100 ml. Recovery studies were performed by adding known amounts of methyl and ethyl alcohols to blood, lung and liver within the range 80–90%. The reproducibility of the results was always >90%. The quantitative distribution of methyl alcohol in postmortem body tissues and fluids has been reported in three cases of poisoning.