European Court of Human Rights agrees to hear challenge to long-term "preventive detention" of HIV-positive man

On 10 December 2002, the European Court of Human Rights agreed to hear the case of a Swedish man who has been subject to a continuing series of mandatory isolation orders since 1995.     

South Africa: constitutional court rejects constitutional challenge to law criminalizing prostitution

On 9 October 2002, a majority of South Africa's Constitutional Court dismissed appeals from convictions for prostitution and keeping a brothel, rejecting arguments that the law was unconstitutional. However, the minority decision, endorsed by five of eleven judges, found that the provision that made the sex worker but not the client guilty of a criminal offence was discriminatory and should be struck down.     

Lessons learned from a small native American community

The decision not to build Orme Dam was a great political victory for residents of the Fort McDowell Indian Reservation in central Arizona. This article examines the conditions that gave rise to what most considered an unlikely outcome, and the lessons it suggests for understanding the politics of large water projects. These lessons include the importance of understanding that rationality takes multiple forms; that how value is expressed can be as significant as what, and how much, something is valued; that identity politics which elaborates and celebrates cultural differences can be an effective means for challenging even powerful bureaucracies; and that law can be an important mediating structure in the politics of bureaucratic decision‐making. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.