The Scots Statute Style and Substance

New or renewed legislatures afford opportunities for reassessingold legislatures, and introducing new and improved forms oflegislative composition. Thus the North American experience,derived from the breakaway Colonies, came down heavily againstreferential legislation, the Australian and New Zealand experienceimplemented many Benthamite reforms ahead of the Old Country,and the tabula rasa afforded generally by Colonial and Commonwealthlegislation at first enabled, and eventually enforced on itsparent legislature, an explicit and consistently adhered tosystem of textual amendment. In view of the opportunities affordedby Scottish Devolution, what innovations may we expect of thenew Scottish statute? Thanks to the earlier work of Coode,¹to the continuing surveillance of the Statute Law Society,²to the committed enthusiasm of parliamentary counsel such asDriedger,³ Dale,⁴ and Bennion,⁵ and especially to the seminalwork of linguistic analysts such as Plowden,⁶ Mellinkoff,⁷ Frye,⁸and Bowers,⁹ new theories, practices, forms, and precedentsabound as never before for statute law. Nevertheless, thereare also questions of tradition, culture, and national identityat issue—especially for a restored or reborn legislaturesuch as the present Scottish Parliament.¹⁰ This paper examinessome of the issues, both in terms of legislative style and legislativesubstance, which pertain to the new Scottish statute.     

The gap between law student career aspirations and employment opportunities

Most law students in the UK embark upon their degrees hoping to become solicitors or barristers and yet the current legal landscape is in a state of flux. Students are incurring significant costs to try and break into an increasingly competitive market and are concerned that they do not have the skills and experience that many employers expect. With this in mind, Plymouth Law School tracked the aspirations and destinations of its LLB students and graduates over a number of years, exploring factors that encouraged or inhibited them along the path to their careers. This article evaluates the data from our students and considers its relevance to the employability issues highlighted by the LETR.     

Green Criminology and Crimes of the Economy: Theory, Research and Praxis

This paper describes several key developments and dimensions in the field of ‘green criminology’ and discusses some of the relevant debates and controversies arising. It then outlines overlaps and connections with other areas of work within critical criminology. The central focus of the paper is on crimes of the economy as they affect the environment and a substantive, illustrative case study is provided on environmental crimes and harms associated with the oil industry. The paper concludes with some critical observations on where directions in theory, policy and practice may need to turn in a post-growth world.     

MPs and their e-Newsletters: Winning Votes by Promoting Constituency Service

Commentators are divided on the electoral effect of constituency service, whether it provides unfair advantage or has limited electoral impact. The arrival of the Internet has added to this debate. This research note considers how pioneering MPs are using e-newsletters effectively to communicate their constituency service. A web-hosted survey of subscribers to two MPs' e-newsletters, with over 1,100 respondents, was conducted. The data suggest that receiving an MP's e-newsletter did have an effect on subscribers' voting behaviour at the 2005 General Election. Rather than something to fear, this vote-winning capacity of an e-newsletter may actually encourage MPs to have more dialogue between MPs and constituents.     

The use of a quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) model to predict GABA-A receptor binding of newly emerging benzodiazepines

The illicit market for new psychoactive substances is forever expanding. Benzodiazepines and their derivatives are one of a number of groups of these substances and thus far their number has grown year upon year. For both forensic and clinical purposes it is important to be able to rapidly understand these emerging substances. However as a consequence of the illicit nature of these compounds, there is a deficiency in the pharmacological data available for these ‘new’ benzodiazepines. In order to further understand the pharmacology of ‘new’ benzodiazepines we utilised a quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) approach. A set of 69 benzodiazepine-based compounds was analysed to develop a QSAR training set with respect to published binding values to GABA_A receptors. The QSAR model returned an R² value of 0.90. The most influential factors were found to be the positioning of two H-bond acceptors, two aromatic rings and a hydrophobic group. A test set of nine random compounds was then selected for internal validation to determine the predictive ability of the model and gave an R² value of 0.86 when comparing the binding values with their experimental data. The QSAR model was then used to predict the binding for 22 benzodiazepines that are classed as new psychoactive substances. This model will allow rapid prediction of the binding activity of emerging benzodiazepines in a rapid and economic way, compared with lengthy and expensive in vitro/in vivo analysis. This will enable forensic chemists and toxicologists to better understand both recently developed compounds and prediction of substances likely to emerge in the future.