Litigation and legal evolution: does procedure matter?

Gordon Tullock’s critique of the common law runs against much of the conventional wisdom in the law and economics literature. In this paper we revisit one of the most controversial aspects of Tullock’s critique. By applying Tullock’s own model of rent-seeking to litigation, we study the effect of alternative procedural rules on civil litigation. Our results provide support for Tullock’s controversial critique of the common law, revealing an evolutionary bias in the production of legal rules by courts. We extend the standard litigation model to study the effects of alternative procedural systems on the evolution of the common law.     

A Fatal Case of Anaphylactic Shock During Paragliding

Abstract: The growth in popularity of flying ultralight aircraft and paragliding has been associated with an increased involvement of Emergency Medical Services because of various types of trauma suffered from both inexperienced and skilled individuals. This case presentation reports on a paraglider pilot, who was seen spinning “unusually” rapidly toward the ground, without visible attempts to regain control of the aircraft. Besides the bilateral mydriasis and the absence of any ECG activity, there was a significant swelling of face, lips, neck, and tongue. Upon opening the mouth, a dead bee was found over the tongue, underneath the palate. A fatal anaphylactic shock was the likely cause of death of the pilot while still “in mid‐air.” This case is certainly different from the commonly reported accidents during paragliding. An updated review of the medical literature shows no reported cases of fatal anaphylactic shock during the practice of paragliding.     

The structure of drug trafficking mafias: the ‘Ndrangheta and cocaine

The paper analyses the social organization of two drug trafficking mafia groups. The groups belonged to the 'Ndrangheta, a mafia from Calabria, a Southern Italian region. Based on judicial sources, multiple linked analyses examine the tasks, statuses and social network structures of the two groups. The analyses showed that the formal hierarchy of the mafias does not play a relevant role in the organization of drug trafficking. At the same time, the two groups exhibited a particular organizational structure, with a clear division of tasks and signals of status differentiation among the members. Remarkably, the analyses highlighted the strategic positioning of the criminal leaders. The most prominent participants (high-status individuals) were not those most involved in criminal activities (i.e. the most central in the network). This positioning strategy allowed minimizing the risks and ensuring effective management of smuggling operations. Criminal leaders were able to control the activities thanks to the specific cultural, family, kinship and ritual ties characterizing the mafias. This specific organizational structure may explain the strong resilience of mafias to law enforcementaction. Implications for both research and law enforcement are discussed.     

US mainland,EU archipelago? Convergence and divergence on transnational organized crime

The fight against organized crime has become a top security priority for the European Union (EU). While a new policy area is emerging, it is difficult to understand who is in lead and how the process develops. This article delves into the post-Lisbon EU security model, exploring how Washington and Brussels collaborate in combating organized crime in a context of changing definitions, actors and policies. It argues that US definitions, operational models and policies influence EU institutional thinking and policies, shifting the emphasis from prevention and rule of law to execution and intelligence. The dynamics of policy convergence and divergence on criminal matters in the transatlantic community reflect tectonic shifts in the deepest levels of thinking security in the West, affecting the moulding of a European security identity.     

Legal Argumentation and Justice in Luhmann’s System Theory of Law

The paper reconstructs Luhmann’s conception of legal argumentation and justice especially focussing on the aspects of contingency and self-referring operative closure. The aim of his conception is to describe/explain in a disenchanted way—from an external, of “second order” point of view—the work on adjudication, which, rather idealistically, lawyers and judges present as being a matter of reason. As a consequence of some surface similarities with Derrida’s deconstructive philosophy of justice, Teubner proposes integrating the supposed reductive image of formal justice described by Luhmann with the ideal conception of justice presented by Derrida. Here this kind of attempt is rejected as epistemologically wrong. In addition, Luhmann’s theory is argued to have other shortcomings, namely: the failure to understand the pragmatic function of principles, and the incapacity to describe the current legal questions linked with cultures and legal pluralism, which characterise our society.     

Framing Capital Punishment in Japan: Avoidance,Ambivalence, and Atonement

This article examines how two of Japan’s largest newspapers frame death penalty issues. Through a content analysis of 7,153 Asahi and Nikkei articles in the 66-month period from January 1, 2007 to June 30, 2012, 11 death penalty frames are identified: inevitability, atonement by dying, atonement by living, victims’ rights and emotions, human rights, miscarriage of justice, calls for discussion, life without parole, deterrence, public support, and retribution. In addition to frames, we examined who the main voices are in each article on capital punishment. We found that avoidance and ambivalence are the two main approaches taken by Asahi and Nikkei to cover death penalty issues, and the most surprising finding is the high salience of atonement as a frame for thinking about capital punishment. In Japan, atonement is used to justify (atone by dying) and oppose (atone by living) the death penalty. Although atonement by living in prison and atonement by dying at the gallows imply radically different outcomes, the flexibility of the atonement frame may suggest new possibilities for Japan’s anti-death penalty movement.     

The mourning process and “living with the dead”: Two case reports and a review of the literature

The discovery of mummified bodies in domestic settings is not unusual in the medico‐legal context. It is often a marker of social isolation, even in our urban modern society, and usually occurs among elderly people living alone or in precarious conditions. However, bereaved subjects can sometimes be found managing their grief by deliberately keeping the corpses of their loved ones at home. Investigation of these atypical cases can be challenging and often requires a multidisciplinary effort by different forensic specialists. We report two cases of people who lived for several months with the mummified remains of a relative. In both cases, the judge ordered a forensic psychiatry assessment of the survivors’ competency and the reasons for this peculiar behavior, which is regarded as abnormal in our society. Case 1 describes a shared psychosis, which developed out of a condition of extreme seclusion of the entire family. Case 2 shows that even a mild personality disorder on which a series of traumatic events operates can trigger psychotic decompensation, causing extreme denial of the reality of death. The analysis of these cases contributes to our knowledge of the scantly studied phenomenon of “Living with the Dead” and raises questions about the psychopathology behind it. It is useful to identify subjects who are more prone to developing this “deviant” behavior, in order to distinguish people with mental illness from those who merely want to profit from the death of a loved one.     

Optimal liability for optimistic tortfeasors

As Alicke and Govorun (The self in social judgment, Psychology Press, New York, 2005, p. 85) observed, “most people are average, but few people believe it.” Optimism and other forms of inflated perception of the self lead parties to exercise suboptimal precautions when undertaking risky activities and often undermine the incentive effects of tort rules. In this paper, we show that the presence of optimism undermines several critical assumptions, upon which law and economics scholars have relied when modeling the incentive effects of tort law. We construct a model representing the incentives of “optimistic” tortfeasors and victims, and consider mechanisms for mitigating the effects of biased decision-making. We show that in the presence of optimism, comparative negligence rules are preferable to contributory negligence rules (i.e., the traditional equivalence between contributory and comparative negligence does not hold). Further, we discover the surprising conclusion that the most effective way to correct optimism may often simply be to “forgive” it, shielding optimistic individuals from liability, rather than holding them liable for the harms they cause.     

Fingerprint Change: Not Visible,But Tangible

Hand–foot syndrome, a chemotherapy‐induced cutaneous toxicity, can cause an alteration in fingerprints causing a setback for cancer patients due to the occurrence of false rejections. A colon cancer patient was fingerprinted after not having been able to use fingerprint recognition devices after 6 months of adjuvant chemotherapy. The fingerprint images were digitally processed to improve fingerprint definition without altering the papillary design. No evidence of skin toxicity was present. Two months later, the situation returned to normal. The fingerprint evaluation conducted on 15 identification points highlighted the quantitative and qualitative fingerprint alteration details detected after the end of chemotherapy and 2 months later. Fingerprint alteration during chemotherapy has been reported, but to our knowledge, this particular case is the first ever reported without evident clinical signs. Alternative fingerprint identification methods as well as improved biometric identification systems are needed in case of unexpected situations.