Distributive and procedural justice in interpersonal and intergroup situations: Issues,solutions, and extensions

This paper addresses theoretical issues relating to distributive and procedural justice. Specifically, comparisons are made between interpersonal and intergroup situations. Within the realm of distributive justice, two reinterpretations of the ingroup allocation bias are offered. One reinterpretation states that people show this bias to prevent being exploited by the outgroup. The other reinterpretation states that the bias can be regarded as a measure of the perceived worth of the ingroup in relation to the outgroup. The related issue of the procedure used for allocating resources is addressed by extending Tyler and Lind's (1992) Relational Model of Authority to all ingroup members in both interpersonal and intergroup situations. Reinterpretations and extensions offered in this paper lead to new theoretical insights and to several suggestions and predictions for future empirical research.     

Validation of an ELISA-based screening assay for the detection of amphetamine, MDMA and MDA in blood and oral fluid

The use of amphetamine and 'ecstasy' (MDMA) has increased exponentially in many European countries since the late nineties, leading to a rapid growth in the number of clinical and forensic analyses. Therefore, a rapid screening procedure for these substances in biological specimens has become an important part of routine toxicological analysis in forensic laboratories. The objective of this study was to evaluate the Cozart amphetamine enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for the screening of plasma samples and oral fluid samples (collected with the Intercept device). Authentic plasma samples from drivers (n=360) were screened, using an 1:5-fold dilution. True positive, true negative, false positive and false negative results were determined relative to the in-house routine GC-MS analysis. Samples consisted of 144 amphetamine-only positives, 141MDMA/MDA-only positives, and 74 negatives when using the limit of quantitation as the cut-off level for confirmation (10 ng/mL). Using these results, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were generated and optimal cut-off values for the screening assay were calculated. Analysis showed that the ELISA is able to predict the presence of either amphetamine or *MDMA/MDA (*MDMA as its metabolite MDA) in plasma samples with 98.3% sensitivity and 100% specificity at a cut-off value of 66.5 ng/mL d-amphetamine equivalents. A similar analysis was conducted on 216 oral fluid specimens collected from a controlled double blind study. Subjects received placebo or a high (100 mg) or low (75 mg) dose of MDMA. Oral fluid samples were collected at 1.5 and 5.5h after administration. Combined results of the analysis of the high and low dose oral fluid samples indicated a screening cut-off of 51 ng/mL d-amphetamine equivalents with both a sensitivity and specificity of 98.6% (using a LC-MS/MS confirmation cut-off of 10 ng/mL). In conclusion, these data indicate that the Cozart AMP EIA plates constitute a fast and accurate screening technique for the identification of amphetamine and MDMA/MDA positive plasma samples and oral fluid specimens (collected with Intercept. It should be emphasized that method validation should be performed for each type of biological matrix.     

Behold the shut-eyed sentry!

Whistleblowers, employees of conscience who report on wrongdoing, integrate into their socially useful role one of exposing institutional torpor and bureaucratic incompetence in those official structures responsible for the investigation and correction of wrongdoing. This paper reports on the finding from Australia's largest study into whistleblowers. It shows a crisis of competence in the official capacity of government structures to respond effectively to disclosures made in the public interest.     

Legal Aid in Mental Hospitals

This report on the experience of five in-hospital legal aid projects and one community-based project for the deinstitutionalized examines the workloads of the lawyers and paralegals who labor in this setting and the various approaches and predispositions they bring to the job or learn while they are at it. The caseloads as well as interviews and observations reveal enormous differences in approach from project to project. The work of some lawyers and their aides confirms the utility and importance of making legal aid directly available to patients on the hospital grounds. But the experience of a couple of other projects warns that certain styles of lawyering can be counterproductive and damaging. In general, lawyers in the mental hospital setting must avoid the legalistic and overly adversarial approach to the problems that are brought to them—many of which are of uncertain legal content, credibility, or psychological makeup. Lawyers must also be careful not to have their own legal priorities get in the way of the best interests of their patient-clients or even those of the hospital as a total institution. The best approach to lawyering in the institutional setting is one that softens the "traditional" legal and adversarial aspects in favor of a more mediatory stance in which fact finding, counseling, and the resolution of issues by compromise are dominant functions. And significant legal attention should be devoted to each of the major categories of problems faced by patients—commitment-discharge, institutional, and civil—if the institutional lawyer's credibility and effectiveness are to be maintained both with the patients and the staffs in charge of their treatment and custody.     

URLTA in Operation: An Introduction

The following articles examine the impact of legislation modeled after the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act (URLTA) in Portland, Oregon, and Cleveland, Ohio. Their conclusion is that the legislation has been only marginally effective, benefiting primarily middle-income tenants in the suburbs or in the cities' better neighborhoods, while largely failing in the aim of helping the inner-city poor and upgrading the quality of slum housing. The general lesson is an old one: law reform attempts at rearranging basic social-legal relationships often fail to achieve their intended effects, particularly when their effectuation is left to the initiative or ingenuity of those individual private parties who are least likely to possess or display these traits.     

Disclosure practices under the EU Prospectus Directive and the role of CESR

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. Key points

• In February 2005, CESR issued its Recommendationsfor the consistent implementation of the Prospectus Regulation.
• SinceJuly 2006, CESR has begun to develop a line of clarificationson disclosure practices under the Prospectus Directive and theProspectus Regulation in the form of common positions basedon Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs).
• This article first analysesthe question to which extent CESR's Recommendations and commonpositions have binding effect, in the sense that individualnational securities regulators are under some form of obligationto apply these.
• Subsequently, the article discusses a selectionof CESR's common positions on FAQs which are of material importancefor day-to-day disclosure practice.