Trade Measures and Climate Compliance: Institutional Interplay Between WTO and the Marrakesh Accords

This article examines the potential of trade measures to induce more climate-friendly policies, focusing on the relationship between global trade rules and the Kyoto climate regime. At the core of this interplay is the normative consistency of trade-related rules in the two regimes and any hierarchical relationship between them. The stronger clout of the WTO and its compulsory dispute settlement system suggest that issues involving competing claims would be referred to WTO bodies. Such bodies have so far been restrictive regarding the exceptions in WTO agreements to the general ban on embargoes and discrimination. The normative compatibility of the two regimes will also depend on their participatory interplay, specifically how they differentiate groups of actors as to rights and obligations. Non-members of WTO receive the least protection, and their vulnerability to climate-related trade measures is largely determined by their interdependence with states that consider employment of such measures. Among WTO members, the findings of a dispute settlement body would presumably differ depending on the status of the target under the Kyoto Protocol. A non-complier with Kyoto commitments would be more shielded than a non-party, because by joining the Kyoto regime a non-complier has exposed itself to regime-internal and less trade intrusive measures that should be exhausted first. A third dimension of interplay is linkage, or efforts to influence the regime interplay. To date there has only been moderate cross-agency coordination, but considerable attention is paid within each regime, including in the Millennium Round of trade negotiations, to the desirability of avoiding conflict between them.     

Materialities of Legal Proceedings

The author explores materialities as pre-established and co-producing features of criminal proceedings. This is done by discussing courtrooms, files and stories in relation to English Crown Court hearings. The three materialities gain significance in the course of the court hearing, but do not derive from it. They exceed the course of talk-in-court. Once the hearing started, the pre-established materialities can be referred to but not simply modified. Materialities, in this line, provide stability and guidance for the hearing. They facilitate, purify and condense it. However, their temporal separation causes problems for those who run the show. Materialities can be employed but not fully integrated. Unwelcome parts do, at times, disturb, disrupt and complicate the current dealings.     

Constraints in the police use of force: Implications of the just war tradition

The “just war” philosophy of Cicero, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas has had momentous and provocative implications for modern political theory. The use of force by police is one theme through which the just war tradition can be utilized to demonstrate the extent of infusion for the concept in the Western political archetype. As police become constrained in their use of force, they are bound by the concepts inherent in the philosophy of the just war doctrine. The Supreme Court, likewise, has been influenced by the philosophy of the just war tradition in many of its decisions regarding the proper use of force by police.     

Differences in attitudes toward gays and lesbians among criminal justice and non-criminal justice majors

The criminal justice system is supposed to protect and serve all members of the community equally; therefore, any prejudicial attitudes harbored by criminal justice students may negatively impact their job performance as future justice professionals. Four hundred and eighty-four students at a large Midwestern university were surveyed on their views toward gay and lesbian persons and issues. The responses of criminal justice majors were compared to the responses of students majoring in other fields. Criminal justice majors tended to have more negative views of gays and lesbians than students in other majors. However, there was not a significant difference between the two groups of students in their willingness to extend rights to and socialize with gay and lesbian individuals.     

Analysis of STR loci in Cartagena, a Caribbean city of Colombia

Allele frequencies, together with some parameters of forensic interest were estimated for nine STRs included in the AmpF/STR Profiler kit (CSF1PO, D3S1358, D5S818, D7S820, D13S317, FGA, TH01, TPOX and vWA) in a sample of 215 unrelated individuals from Cartagena (Colombia). For all loci, no significant deviations from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium were observed. Comparative analysis results between our data and those from other Colombian and African population samples revealed significant differences, except with two Colombian Caribbean Coast sub-regions.     

Does media freedom improve government effectiveness? A comparative cross-country analysis

Government effectiveness could be explained by the level of well-informed electorate members, who use the press to learn more about politicians and public servants. Thus, a free press may improve citizens’ accessibility to this information, which in turn will make it more difficult for politicians and public servants to cover up or get away with corrupt behaviour, so the quality of the government could be affected by the media freedom. Accordingly, the main aim of this paper is to determine the effect of the freedom of the press on government effectiveness, considering additionally environmental, institutional, and political characteristics as factors that could determine the level of government effectiveness. To achieve this aim, we examined 202 central governments and compared them across countries using the World Bank data set of Governance Indicators for 2002–2008. The results show that the media, the organizational environment, and political characteristics may be determinants of the level of government effectiveness, taking countries’ economic development into account.     

Reporting a sudden death due to accidental gasoline inhalation

The investigation of uncertain fatalities requires accurate determination of the cause of death, with assessment of all factors that may have contributed to it. Gasoline is a complex and highly variable mixture of aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons that can lead to cardiac arrhythmias due to sensitization of the myocardium to catecholamines or acts as a simple asphyxiant if the vapors displace sufficient oxygen from the breathing atmosphere. This work describes a sudden occupational fatality involving gasoline. The importance of this petroleum distillate detection and its quantitative toxicological significance is discussed using a validated analytical method. A 51 year-old Caucasian healthy man without significant medical history was supervising the repairs of the telephone lines in a manhole near to a gas station. He died suddenly after inhaling gasoline vapors from an accidental leak. Extensive blistering and peeling of skin were observed on the skin of the face, neck, anterior chest, upper and lower extremities, and back. The internal examination showed a strong odor of gasoline, specially detected in the respiratory tract. The toxicological screening and quantitation of gasoline was performed by means of gas chromatography with flame ionization detector and confirmation was performed using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Disposition of gasoline in different tissues was as follows: heart blood, 35.7 mg/L; urine, not detected; vitreous humor, 1.9 mg/L; liver, 194.7 mg/kg; lung, 147.6 mg/kg; and gastric content, 116,6 mg/L (2.7 mg total). Based upon the toxicological data along with the autopsy findings, the cause of death was determined to be gasoline poisoning and the manner of death was accidental. We would like to alert on the importance of testing for gasoline, and in general for volatile hydrocarbons, in work-related sudden deaths involving inhalation of hydrocarbon vapors and/or exhaust fumes.