The Perceptions of Academic Lawyers Concerning the Effects of the United Kingdom's Research Assessment Exercise

In this article, the authors analyse quantitative and qualitative data compiled from a large-scale postal survey of legal academics concerning the United Kingdom's Research Assessment Exercise. The purpose of the study was to measure the attitudes of academic lawyers affected by the RAE rating process and institutional responses to that process. The study reveals that a substantial number of respondents lack faith in the objectivity of the rating process, believe institutional responses to the RAE have caused damage to academic working environments, and perceive that the RAE has failed to improve the quality of legal research.     

The Role of "Enemy Images" and Ideology of Elite Belief Systems

We use data from the Leadership Opinion Project (LOP), a panel survey of American opinion leaders which brackets the end of the Cold War, to investigate two interrelated questions about the structure of elites' foreign policy beliefs. We assess, first, whether the militant internationalism/cooperative internationalism scheme, developed primarily by Wittkopf (1981, 1990) and Holsti and Rosenau (1990), has continued relevance now that the USSR has collapsed; and second, whether Hurwitz and Peffley's (1987, 1990; see also Peffley and Hurwitz, 1992; Hurwitz, Peffley, and Seligson, 1993) domain-specific, hierarchical model of mass belief structure can be applied to elite belief systems. The evidence indicates that respondents' past stances toward military and cooperative ventures are highly predictive of their views once the Cold War ends. This continuity in leaders' postures toward international affairs, in itself, suggests that "enemy images" of the Soviet Union were less important within elite belief systems than Hurwitz and Peffley (1990; see also Peffley and Hurwitz, 1992) posited for the mass public. The starkest difference, however, between their findings for mass samples and our findings for a leadership sample centers on the importance of ideology in constraining foreign policy beliefs, and the close interconnection with domestic beliefs. Consequently, as we illustrate, predictable ideological divisions among opinion leaders persist in the post–Cold War era. In sum, our evidence demonstrates considerable continuity in elites' beliefs despite profound changes in the global system, and reaffirms the importance that ideology plays in structuring attitudes within elite belief systems.     

Identification and isolation of male cells using fluorescence in situ hybridisation and laser microdissection, for use in the investigation of sexual assault

In cases of sexual assault involving an azoospermic assailant, vaginal swabs taken from the victim may fail to provide an autosomal DNA profile with which to search a suspect database, as the signal from any male cells present would be masked by that from the overwhelming number of female cells collected on the swab. Here, we describe a method of visually identifying diploid male cells in such samples using fluorescence in situ hybridisation, and selectively harvesting them by means of laser microdissection. This combination of techniques was tested on 26 post-coital vaginal swabs taken at a range of times after intercourse; the collected cells were then subjected to a simple lysis procedure and DNA was amplified using the AmpFlSTR^® SGMPlus^® multiplex under low copy number conditions. Useful DNA profiles were generated from samples taken up to 24 h after intercourse.