Surrogate decision-making for incompetent elderly patients: the role of informal representatives

Informal or unofficial representation refers to the practice (more common in some European jurisdictions than in others), that persons not designed by a court or by the patient himself, make medical decisions on the patient's behalf in case of their incompetence. If the law provides for this, it is usually next of kin (spouse, children, brothers and sisters, etc.) who are allowed to act in such a capacity. Informal representation raises several questions. Are family members always familiar with what their relative would have wished, ready to take responsibility, and not too much reigned by their emotions? The basic legal concern is whether there are sufficient procedural and other safeguards to protect the incompetent patient from representatives who do not serve their best interests. In addressing these issues, after a brief survey of the law in the Netherlands as compared with that in Belgium, Germany and England/Wales, we will argue that informal representation as such is not at variance with international and European standards. However, an 'informal' approach to surrogate decision-making should always go together with sufficient protection of the incompetent patient, including procedural safeguards with regard to the decision that the patient is incompetent, limits to the decision-making power of informal representatives and effective forms of conflict resolution.     

State Capacity and Terrorism: A Two-Dimensional Approach

Conventional wisdom suggests that dissident groups use terrorism when they face an overwhelmingly more powerful state, yet attacks in developing countries have predominated in the post-Cold War era, suggesting that terrorism is an increasingly weak state phenomenon. Cross-national studies of terrorism find mixed results for how common measures of state capacity influence terrorism. We argue that these indeterminate findings are due in part to a partial understanding of both what constitutes state capacity and how different aspects of state strength or weakness relate to the propensity of groups to use terrorism. We decompose state capacity into two dimensions that we theorize are particularly relevant to dissident groups: military capacity, or the ability to project conventional military force, and bureaucratic/administrative capacity. Our analysis supports the claim that terrorist attacks are more frequently targeted at states with large, technologically sophisticated militaries but less frequently targeted at states with higher bureaucratic and administrative capacity. We also compare two militarily capable states, France and Russia, that have had different recent experiences with terrorism to help illustrate the causal mechanisms involved. Evidence from our models and cases suggest that states can be capable in different ways, and these various capabilities create differing incentives for using terror as a strategic and tactical tool.     

Jurisdiction,Crime, and Development: The Impact of Public Law 280 in Indian Country

Public Law 280 transferred jurisdiction over criminal and civil matters from the federal to state governments and increased the extent of nontribal law enforcement in selected parts of Indian country. Where enacted, the law fundamentally altered the preexisting legal order. Public Law 280 thus provides a unique opportunity to study the impact of legal institutions and their change on socioeconomic outcomes. The law's controversial content has attracted interest from legal scholars. However, empirical studies of its impact are scarce and do not address the law's endogenous nature. We examine the law's impact on crime and on economic development in U.S. counties with significant American‐Indian reservation population. To address the issue of selection of areas subject to Public Law 280, our empirical strategy draws on the law's politico‐historical context. We find that the application of Public Law 280 increased crime and lowered incomes. The law's adverse impact is robust and noteworthy in magnitude.     

Public Perceptions of the Legitimacy of the Law and Legal Authorities: Evidence from the Caribbean

Research on procedural justice and legitimacy has expanded greatly across the social sciences in recent years. The process‐based model of regulation, which links people's assessments of procedural justice and legitimacy to their compliance with the law and legal authorities, has become particularly influential in criminology and sociolegal studies. A review of the previous research on perceived legitimacy highlights two important features. First, legitimacy has been conceptualized and measured in many different ways. Second, most of the research on legitimacy has focused on only a handful of developed nations. Using survey data from Trinidad and Tobago, this article examines the conceptualization and measurement of the perceived legitimacy of the law and legal authorities. The findings indicate that some of the prominent conceptual and measurement models used in previous research are not empirically valid in the Trinidadian context. The implications of the results for conceptualization, theory, and future research are discussed.     

Mad Men in Bib Overalls: Media’s Horrification and Pornification of Rural Culture

The media play a key role in stereotyping as “ignorant and uncouth hillbillies” people who live in rural US communities. As well, since the early 1970s, popular films frequently portray rural areas as dangerous locations, places where urban people are at high risk of being savagely killed and tortured by demented, in-bred locals without conscience or constraint. Further, with the advent of the Internet, rural women continue to be depicted in a degrading, highly sexualized manner and “gonzo” pornographic videos of them are widely and freely accessible. Informed by feminist and cultural criminological modes of inquiry, this paper presents some exploratory research on rural horror films and pornographic videos. A key argument is that with the help of new information technologies, these media are normalized, mainstreamed, and contribute to the horrification/pornification of rural culture, and by doing so, mask the real issues about crime, violence, and gender relations in the rural context.     

Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Social Dominance Orientation Predict Different Moral Signatures

Moral Foundations Theory posits five distinct foundations of morality: Harm/Care, Fairness/Reciprocity, In-group/Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity/Sanctity. In combination, this should yield between four-to-six moral signatures—distinct combinations or patterns of support for these aspects of morality. We extend previous research by examining the replicability of these moral signatures in a New Zealand-based national sample (n = 3,635). Latent Profile Analysis identified four distinct moral signatures: Individuators, Moderates, Neutrals, and High Moralists. We integrate these moral signatures within the Dual Process Model (DPM) framework and show that Social Dominance Orientation predicts membership in the Neutral moral signature (moderate/lukewarm support for multiple moral foundations); whereas Right-Wing Authoritarianism predicts membership in the High Moralist signature (undifferentiated high support across moral foundations). These findings were observed controlling for Big-Six personality and various demographics. Thus, the authoritarian and dominance-based motives identified by the DPM independently predict categorical differences in the signatures people use to judge morality.     

Do bone elasticity and postmortem interval affect forensic fractographic analyses?

Forensic fractographic features of bone reliably establish crack propagation in perimortem injuries. We investigated if similar fracture surface features characterize postmortem fractures. Experimentally induced peri- and postmortem fractures were used to assess if fractographic features vary as bone elasticity decreases during the postmortem interval (PMI). Thirty-seven unembalmed, defleshed human femoral shafts from males and females aged 33–81 years were fractured at varying PMIs with a drop test frame using a three-point bending setup and recorded with a high-speed camera. Vital statistics, cause of death, PMI length, temperature, humidity, collagen percentage, water loss, fracture energy, and fractography scores were recorded for each sample. Results showed that fractographic features associated with perimortem fractures were expressed in PMIs up to 40,600 accumulated degree hours (ADH), or 60 warm weather days. Hackle was the most consistently expressed feature, occurring in all fractures regardless of ADH. The most variable characteristics were wake features (78.4%) and arrest ridges (70.3%). Collagen percentage did not correlate strongly with ADH (r = −0.04, p = 0.81); however, there was a strong significant correlation between ADH and water loss (r = 0.74, p < 0.001). Multinomial logistic regression showed no association between fractographic feature expression and ADH or collagen percentage. In conclusion, forensic fractographic features reliably determine initiation and directionality of crack propagation in experimentally induced PMIs up to 40,600 ADH, demonstrating the utility of this method into the recent postmortem interval. This expression of reliable fractographic features throughout the early PMI intimates these characteristics may not be useful standalone features for discerning peri- versus postmortem fractures.