Prospects for cooperative security arrangements in the Asia-Pacific region

The concept of multilateral dialogue on Asia-Pacific security is attracting increasing support. This results from the improvement of relations among most of the major powers, the growing awareness of the problems that can best be addressed through cooperation, and the development of more realistic proposals for multilateral dialogue. The best approach to cooperative security is to utilize a combination of channels, including the ASEAN Regional Forum for discussion of region-wide and Southeast Asian issues, a parallel forum for dialogue on Northeast Asia, consideration of some security problems in APEC, and a recognized unofficial dialogue on regional strategic questions. In Spring 1994, he was a visiting professor of East Asian studies at The George Washington University and as of January 1995 he will be the new dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at GWU. He is the author ofA Fragile Relationship: The United States and China Since 1972 (Brookings, 1992).     

Sir Mark Potter And The Protection Of The Traditional Family: Why Same Sex Marriage Is (Still) A Feminist Issue

In Wilkinson v. Kitzinger, the petitioner (Susan Wilkinson) sought a declaration of her marital status, following her marriage to Celia Kitzinger in British Columbia, Canada in August 2003. The High Court refused the application, finding that their valid Canadian marriage is, in United Kingdom law, a civil partnership. In this note, I focus on Sir Mark Potter’s adjudication of the human rights issues under Articles 8, 12 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights (E.C.H.R.), highlighting his restatement of the ideology of the ‹traditional’ family as natural, normative and desirable. I argue that this case shows that the exclusion of same sex couples from marriage is a feminist issue, because denying same sex couples access to marriage works to sediment patriarchal ideas and re-inscribe gender roles within the family. Wilkinson v. Kitzinger [2006] E.W.H.C. (Fam.) 2022; [2006] H.R.L.R 36     

Participant or Spectator? Victim‐Focused Political Activity since 2010

The public significance of the victim has shifted over successive governments. Each party, when in power, has utilised and politicised the victim to support its policy and legislative agenda. However, on the whole, this attention has been reserved for those who are victims of serious crime (such as murder, sexual violence and domestic abuse) and not volume offences (such as burglary, criminal damage, theft). Recent years have seen the inquiry rising in popularity, a ‘quick political fix’ to satisfy victims—and the public—that action on societal ills is being taken. However, in so doing, successive governments have, perhaps inadvertently, tended to replicate the ‘hierarchy of victimisation’ that is witnessed in frontline criminal justice activities. This has the result of affording victims only a spectator role when policy and legislative changes are being developed in their name. By contrast, the actions taken in developing expert and practitioner‐led policy around victim experience have proved to be more ‘successful’ in generating lasting change. This article suggests that there is no single ‘right’ approach to involving victims in policy development, but that each particular incident or situation needs consideration as how most ‘effectively’ to involve first‐hand victim experience.     

The Rise of Statutory Wills and the Limits of Best Interests Decision‐Making in Inheritance

This article addresses ‘statutory wills’ executed under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) for persons with impaired mental capacity. The article provides an overview of the historical development of statutory wills, before exploring their rising contemporary significance. It considers the shift from the previous ‘hypothetical substituted judgment’ test to the contemporary ‘best interests’ orientation of the MCA. The article assesses the problems that the best interests approach raises in this area, and its (in)compatibility with the right to equal recognition before the law under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, arguing that the pervasive reach of best interests in contemporary mental capacity law requires reconsideration. The paper concludes by suggesting that a more limited framing of the power to execute statutory wills is required in order to appropriately balance the rights of individuals with disabilities with practical considerations around the distribution of assets on death.     

The Phenomenon of the Urban Mummy

The environmental mummification of a body in an urban setting is an unusual event. Florida is known for its high temperatures and humidity, which typically result in the rapid putrefaction of bodies. However, under certain circumstances, Florida's climate provides an environment suitable for mummification, typically in isolated areas. We previously reported a case of a homicide/suicide in a residential neighborhood in which the mummified remains were undetected for several years. We have subsequently encountered two additional cases in which mummified bodies were discovered in urban settings. Presented in the historical context of the environmental conditions and postmortem processes involved in mummification, these cases illustrate the particular constellation of human behaviors and scenarios, as well as environmental conditions, which must coincide for this phenomenon to occur and highlight the necessity of the multidisciplinary approach to the medicolegal investigation of such deaths and the determination of the cause and manner of death.     

Business Collusion as a Criminological Phenomenon: Exploring the Global Criminalisation of Business Cartels

Over the last dozen years or so there has been a burgeoning of criminal law for purposes of dealing with business cartels in a number of jurisdictions (for instance, the new ‘cartel offence’ introduced under the Enterprise Act 2002 in the UK). The discussion here provides first of all some account of this process of criminalisation, mapping it in terms of jurisdictions and the legal character of this category of cartel offending. It then seeks to explain and account for the phenomenon and more particularly to determine the extent to which it may be seen either as an element of more forceful prosecution strategy, or alternatively as a sea-change in moral perception and evaluation. Put another way, is this a development led by legal policy, or a genuine shift in outlook, which has produced a new legal policy? It will be argued finally that, in a more pragmatic perspective, the success of the criminalisation project in any case depends on the emergence of a genuine sense of ‘hard core’ delinquency, without which effective regulation by means of criminal law is unlikely to be achieved. In this respect, a manufactured sense of moral censure, fostered by prosecutors to facilitate leniency programmes, may (outside the US) eventually prove to be a point of vulnerability in such strategies.     

Sex differences in earnings: An analysis of Malaysian wage data

The conventional human capital earnings function is applied to a rich set of Malaysian wage data in an attempt to determine the origins of sex differences in average earnings. Several findings are of interest, the first being that the relationships estimated from the earnings function are similar to those typically reported for non‐LDCs. Second, less than a third of the average monthly wage difference between the sexes of about 34 per cent appears to be the consequence of either females having lower (measured) productivity than males, or females receiving lower rates of return to human capital than males. The major part of the earnings difference is apparently a consequence of employment distributions: females are much more likely to be in the low‐paying occupations.