英国的调解制度--近期发展

本文分析了英国近来的一些案例,介绍了英国在采取非诉方法解决争议方面的最新发展,强调了法院在一些案件中的态度.     

Fatal accidents on glaciers: forensic, criminological, and glaciological conclusions

The rare event of a corpse immersed in glacier ice becoming exposed on a glacier surface is closely connected with the glaciological conditions at the scene and the site of the accident. Provided that the time since death is known, certain questions relative to the circumstances of a mountain accident can only be answered by considering glaciological aspects. How the scene of an accident can be reconstructed by inference from the site of discovery is discussed by means of three exemplary cases that occurred on Tyrolean glaciers (Austria) during the past 40 years: (1) Two corpses were discovered close above the equilibrium line in the accumulation area after 25 years. The two victims had fallen down a rock face after the breaking off of a cornice and had come to rest in the uppermost part of the accumulation area. (2) A victim was discovered in the lower ablation area 8 years after falling down a crevasse in the middle part of the ablation area. (3) A female alpinist was discovered at the very end of the glacier after 29 years; it was concluded that the accident must have happened in the accumulation area.     

‘Bilingual’ education and discontent in Xinjiang

Efforts to promote and impose Mandarin Chinese as the language of instruction in ethnic minority schools in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, aimed at further integrating the state and raising regional educational and economic quality, have had mixed success. The 2004 plan to consolidate Han Chinese and minority elementary and middle schools and to make Mandarin the universal language of instruction in those schools is fostering an immersive second-language environment without prior preparation for students, bringing native speakers of Mandarin into unfair competition with non-native speakers. The increased focus on Mandarin has already had grave consequences for ethnic relations, especially in urban Uyghur schools, where the project is focused, while the mandate for change in educational curriculum and methodology has also been poorly planned and remains under-resourced, negatively impacting educational quality. The Chinese government has available to it other language policy solutions that are both more workable and friendlier to minority sensibilities.     

Countering Punitiveness: Understanding Stability in Canada's Imprisonment Rate

Canada's imprisonment rate has not changed appreciably since 1960. This stability contrasts with the increased imprisonment rates experienced by Canada's most obvious comparators—the United States and England and Wales. We examine this divergence and propose several interrelated explanations for Canada's anomalous pattern. While Canada is shown not to be immune to pressure for harsher practices and policies, it has been able to counter or balance these trends with other more moderating forces. In particular, we suggest that Canadians have largely been able to escape several of the wider forces or "risk factors" at the root of higher incarceration in other countries. Further, we suggest that certain protective factors of a historical, cultural, and structural nature can also be identified that have limited the extent to which Canada has adopted the same punitive policies documented in the United States and England and Wales.     

US Patent and Trademark Office refuses registration of flavour trade mark

In a case of first impression, the Trademark Trial and AppealBoard of the US Patent and Trademark Office has held that theflavour orange is not registrable for use with quick-dissolvingantidepressant tablets and pills.     

Newspaper juries

This article reports on a field experiment on the effect of media information on people’s attitudes towards the justice system. For the duration of a year a Dutch local newspaper took small groups of readers, called ‘newspaper jurors’, to court sessions of criminal cases and subsequently reported on their experiences and perceptions. Using a quasi-experimental design, we examined whether an attitude change in the general reader population of this particular local newspaper occurred as a result of the jury’s newspaper reports. Findings show that, after the treatment interval of 1 year, no attitude change in the general reader population could be identified that was absent in the control group.