Distinctiveness of Adolescent and Emerging Adult Romantic Relationship Features in Predicting Externalizing Behavior Problems

Romantic relationship involvement has repeatedly been associated with the incidence of externalizing behavior problems, but little is known about the nature and developmental significance of this relation. The current study extends previous research by investigating whether and through what processes romantic relationships distinctively predict externalizing behavior problems during adolescence compared to emerging adulthood. Data came from the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. As predicted, higher levels of romantic relationship security at 16 years were associated with lower levels of externalizing behavior problems during both adolescence and emerging adulthood, but this inverse relation was stronger for emerging adults than for adolescents. This relation was not attributable either to earlier quality of family and peer relationships or emerging adulthood competence. Thus, security of romantic relationships may become increasingly predictive of individual differences in externalizing behavior problems as individuals move from adolescence to emerging adulthood.

Getting Down to Basics: A Situated Model of Conflict in Social Relations

The field of conflict resolution is fractured. Despite many decades of fine research, we still lack a basic unifying framework that integrates the many theories of conflict dynamics. Thus, the findings from research on conflict are often piecemeal, decontextualized, contradictory, or focused on negative outcomes, which contributes to a persistent research‐practice gap. In this article, we describe a situated model for the study of conflict that combines separate strands of scholarship into a coherent framework for conceptualizing conflict in dyadic social relations. The model considers conflict interactions in the context of social relations and employs prior research on the fundamental dimensions of social relations to create a basic framework for investigating conflict dynamics. The resulting model is heuristic and generative. We discuss the theoretical context and main propositions of this model as well as its implications for conflict resolution practitioners.     

The internationalization of the Polish criminal law: how the Polish criminal law changed under the influence of globalization

Globalization changed the Polish criminal law. During the last 15 years the Polish criminal law has been transformed under the influence of globalization. The purpose of this study is to assess the extent and character of this process. The change was mainly a result of the implementation of legal instruments adopted by international organizations, to which Poland already belonged or aspired (European Union, Council of Europe, OECD, UN). This is what we can call the internationalisation of the Polish criminal law. Modifications affected many areas, in particular criminalisation. Definitions of certain existing offences were extended to cover interests which were not protected before (i.e. corruption offences). Also, new definitions were introduced (i.e. act of terrorist character). Additionally, other elements were changed. However, the impact of globalization on Polish criminal law goes beyond internationalisation. Certain criminalisations were introduced under the influence of foreign laws as a tool of fight against new types of crime, characteristic for the era of unification of cultural and social behaviours (e.g. stalking).     

First amendment values and government participation in the marketplace,fifty years after the Hutchins report

The Hutchins Commission took a favorable view of government speech; Its report recommended that government act as a supplementary news source for the public. This article asserts that the commission was “fighting the last war” by focusing on government restraints on the press, while failing to propose limitations on the government's ability to circumvent the press. With the advent of new forms of telecommunications technology, the government might one day replace the private sector press as the public's primary source for news. This article asserts that the Supreme Court should recognize that the Press Clause of the First Amendment guarantees the existence of the private sector press as an independent, nongovernmental branch of our governance system. Based on a “separation of powers” view of Press Clause values, the article argues that the Court should create a First Amendment “right of reply” to any government dissemination of information to the American public in a manner that circumvents the traditional role of the private sector press.     

The Policy of Strategic Demobilisation: The Social Policy of the Christian Democratic–Liberal Coalition, 2009–13

This article addresses two research questions: which course did the CDU, CSU–FDP coalition government choose to follow in social policy from 2009 to 2013? And what relationships exist between social policy in this period and the Bundestag election in 2013? The analysis of primary and secondary data reveals both continuity and discontinuity in social policy in the 17th legislative period of the Bundestag. The decisions and non-decisions on social protection and labour market regulation in this period mirror a wide variety of determinants. These include partisan effects, electoral cycles, co-governing judges and anonymous social policy of market forces. The data also suggest that the CDU/CSU has been relatively successful in its strategy of ‘asymmetric demobilisation’, the strategy of changing its social policy profile to one more similar to that of its social democratic opponent, in order to demobilise the SPD's voters rather than mobilising them. More ambivalent has been the electoral outcome of the FDP's role in social policy. The FDP's first foray into leading a large welfare state ministry, the Federal Ministry of Health, in 2009 to 2013 did not prove to be a winning proposition for the Liberals electorally. Social policy in general and welfare state recalibration in particular thus seem to be an electorally especially risky project for a liberal party such as the FDP.     

Regulating balance sheet audit: A game theoretical analysis

Summary  The decision situation implicit to balance sheet audit is modelled as a game theoretical model and examined for its behavioural implications. Possible types of decisions are identified as Nash equilibria. The basic game model is characterized by an equilibrium in mixed strategies. Its properties are discussed in detail with respect to alternative scenarios of statutory audit. The regulatory propositions of separation between audit and consulting, on the one hand, and the rotation of auditors, on the other, are analyzed in the context of the game. It turns out that these measures may have contradictory effects on the quality of the balance sheet audit and it depends on the specification of regulatory details and the reaction of the agents whether the one or the other effect dominates in the end. Another proposition to enhance the audit performance is the extension of the liability of statutory auditors. Prerequisites for the success of this measure are that either no professional liability insurance exists or that, if otherwise, deductibles are calculated as a fixed percentage of the loss. The examples refer to German legal rules, however, similar legal rules are valid for most of the developed market economies.     

Versuch/Vollendung im Strafprozess

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

The value of skull-photo superimpositions in identifying corpses found in domestic settings

The identification of decomposed corpses found in domestic settings is frequently problematic because comparative material for methods such as forensic odontostomatology, comparative X-ray analysis, or DNA analysis, is not available. In the case presented here, a photograph from an old, expired passport could be used to successfully identify a "domestic setting" corpse in a skull-photo superimposition. In an additional DNA analysis, 13 STR-loci could be amplified from tissue samples taken from the corpse. DNA comparison with the presumed brother of the deceased yielded a probability of 97.09% for siblingship. Y-STR-analysis was, therefore, performed. The results showed that all of the systems for the presumed brother and the corpse conformed, with the exception of the DYS390 locus, in which allele 21 was found for the corpse and allele 22 for the brother. Despite the rapid development of other identification procedures, skull-photo superimpositions remain an important means of identification. Last not least this is due to the increasing ubiquity of personal photo documents in the age of digital photography. The validity of the results from a DNA analysis in an identification process depends largely on the authenticity of the samples available for comparison and the degree to which the DNA from the corpse is preserved. In the case presented by the authors, positive identification of the corpse solely on the basis of the DNA analysis would not have been possible. Numerous constellations can be imagined for decomposed corpses found in domestic settings for which skull-photo superimpositions may be the only possible option for identifying the corpse.     

Criteria for the classification as a "domestic-setting corpse"--a literature search and review to define the term

In German medical and media circles (daily routine, specialist literature, press, novels), the term "domestic-setting corpse" is frequently used, but the term is only vaguely defined. The authors thus decided to perform an in-depth study of the literature, including historic textbooks and all German- and English-language medicolegal journals, going as far back as their first issues, in an attempt to more clearly define the term. Inclusion criteria used in the search were a post-mortem interval of at least 24 hours prior to discovery and discovery of the corpse in a domestic setting. In the literature, 37 cases that complied with the above-mentioned inclusion criteria were found. These cases frequently described "advanced decomposition", often "unclear cause of death" and "problems in identification". These characteristics can thus be considered as being additional pointers in the definition. However, we suggest that the two general defining characteristics of a "domestic-setting corpse" are a post-mortem interval of more than 24 hours before discovery and the discovery of the corpse in a domestic setting.