Understanding court nominee evaluation and approval: Mass opinion in the Bork and Thomas cases

This article explores public opinion formation in reaction to the controversial nominations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court. When asked to justify their approval or disapproval of these well-recognized nominees, an interesting pattern emerged. Citizens opposed to the nominations tended to cast their arguments in terms of ideology and specific issues. Supporters, however, called attention to the nominee's character, abilities, achievements, or some notion of deference to the president. We speculate that this asymmetry in responses is traceable to the content of the elite debate. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for presidential nomination strategy.     

Motherhood at center: Ellen key's social vision

The new Swedish women's movement was hampered in its analysis in part by the association of ‘feminism’ with a glorification of traditional feminity attributed to turn-of-the-century essayist Ellen Key. This paper examines Key's production during one controversial decade (1896–1905) and finds that she, in fact, sought freedom for women to be true to their own characters rather than follow patriarchal definitions or emulate male behavior. She advocated a new world-view based on social solidarity and the ‘self-assertion and self-surrender’ of the mother-child relationship, as well as a transformation of society that would put motherhood at the center of public life. Dismayed at sexual hypocrisy and the suffering it caused, she wanted to remove reproduction from its patriarchal moral and legal strictures and replace ‘man's erotic dualism’ with genuine love and a new understanding of sexuality based on ‘maternal feeling’. Several interpretive questions are raised: Where is the locus of feminism? How do we recognize it when we see it? Why is the so-called ‘exaltation’ of motherhood so problematic for modern feminists?     

Reviews

R. W. Davies, The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia 3: The Soviet Economy in Turmoil. 1929–1930. London: Macmillan, 1989, xx+601 pp., £47.50.

Peter Nolan, The Political Economy of Collective Farms: An Analysis of China's Post‐Mao Rural Reforms. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988, viii+259 pp., £29.50.

Adam Zwass, The CMEA: The Thorny Path from Political to Economic Integration. Armonk, NY: M E Sharpe inc., 1989, xiii+268 pp., $45.00.

Szymon Jakubowicz, Wer rettet Polens Wirtschaft? Das Ringen urn die Arbeiterselbstverwaltung. (Who will save Poland's Economy? The Struggle about Workers’ Self‐Management). Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder Taschenbuch Verlag, 1989, 334 pp., DM18.90.

Jim Riordan ed., Soviet Youth Culture. London: Macmillan, 1989, x+148 pp., £27.50 h/b, £9.95 p/b.

Richard Sakwa, Soviet Politics: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 1989, xvi+356 pp., £12.95 p/b.

Walter D. Connor, Socialism's Dilemmas: State and Society in the Soviet Bloc. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988, x+299 pp., $37.00.

R. W. Davies, Soviet History in the Gorbachev Revolution. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan in association with the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham, 1989, viii+232 pp., £29.50 h/b, £7.99 p/b.

Takayuki Ito, ed. Facing Up to the Past: Soviet Historiography under Perestroika. Sapporo: Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, 1989, 290 pp.

Seweryn Bialer and Michael Mandelbaum, The Global Rivals: The Soviet‐American Contest for Supremacy. London: I. B. Tauri's, 1989, 220 pp., £14.95.

Matthew Evangelista, Innovation and the Arms Race. New York: Cornell University Press, 1988, xvi+ 300 pp., $32.95.

Steven Merritt Miner, Between Churchill and Stalin: The Soviet Union, Great Britain, and the Origins of the Grand Alliance. North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1989, 319 pp., $39.60.

Olimpiad S. Ioffe, Soviet Civil Law, ser. Law in Eastern Europe, no. 36. Dordrecht, Boston, MA, Lancaster: Reidel, 1988, ix+382 pp.

Stephen White, Soviet Communism: Programme and Rules. London and New York: Routledge, 1989, vii+141 pp., £25.00.

Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History. Toronto, Buffalo, NY, and London: The University of Toronto Press in association with the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1988, xii+666 pp., £35.00, $57.50.

Francesco Benvenuti, The Bolsheviks and the Red Army, 1918–1922, translated by Christopher Woodall. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, viii+264 pp., £27.50, $44.50.     

The detection of cocaine in hair specimens using micro-plate enzyme immunoassay.

The analysis of hair for drugs of abuse is becoming increasingly popular and is under consideration by the Division of Health and Human Services as a possible alternative or adjunct to urinalysis in workplace programs. The detection of cocaine in human hair using a commercially available micro-plate enzyme immunoassay is described for the first time. Sample size and incubation time were the major variables in the optimization of the method. In order to validate the procedure, the method was applied to 105 consecutive hair samples routinely received into our laboratory. The samples were simultaneously analyzed by the Micro-Plate immunoassay (EIA), as well as our current fluorescence polarization immunoassay (FPIA) procedure and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/MS). The sensitivity of the EIA and FPIA assays were 75% and 67.8% respectively; specificity 97.4% and 80.5% respectively; and efficiency 91.4 and 77.1% respectively. The Micro-Plate EIA was shown to be a valid alternative to other immunoassay screening methods for the detection of cocaine in hair by demonstrating increased sensitivity, specificity and efficiency over our current technique.     

Globalisation and homelessness in the USA: Building a social movement to end poverty

The authors explore the deleterious effects of economic globalisation on people in the USA, and explain the rise of poor people's organisations as a response to these conditions. They look at the impact of economic changes in terms of public policy and argue that the global economy is preventing a growing number of people from being able to meet their basic needs, by limiting or eliminating living-wage jobs as well as welfare programmes. However, poor people in the USA are organising to end poverty, and the Kensington Welfare Rights Union is given as a case study. Finally, the authors discuss the challenges faced by social workers and how they can be most effective in the face of a dying welfare state alongside growing exploitation and exclusion of the poor.     

The detection of cotinine in hydrolyzed meconium samples.

To date, the screening of meconium for the determination of tobacco exposure in newborns has proven difficult. It was hypothesized that cotinine forms reversible Schiff base bonds with free amino functions on proteins, therefore, hydrolysis of meconium would be necessary for the detection of 'free' cotinine. One-hundred-and-two (102) meconium samples received into our laboratory were extracted using a routine non-hydrolysis screening procedure for drugs of abuse. Separate aliquots of the specimens were hydrolyzed and re-extracted according to the same procedure. The results of the two methods were compared using a highly specific cotinine micro-plate enzyme immunoassay procedure (EIA). Of the non-hydrolyzed samples, 33% were positive for cotinine, while 79% of the hydrolyzed samples were cotinine-positive. Common drugs of abuse did not interfere with the analysis. Micro-plate EIA provides a rapid, simple and reliable screening method for the determination of cotinine in meconium following hydrolysis and extraction. In general, the meconium specimens received into our laboratory are from newborns considered to be at risk for post-natal problems due to suspected drug and/or alcohol abuse during pregnancy.