The Tarasoff dilemma in criminal court.

The duty to protect, or Tarasoff duty, has been conceptualized as arising solely in the context of a clinical setting. A recent California Supreme Court ruling in People v. Clark adds legal, clinical, and ethical dilemmas to the oftentimes contentious Tarasoff issue. Though the Tarasoff issue is but a minor legal point in Clark, a possible consequence of Clark is that a Tarasoff warning could be deemed nonconfidential and admissible in a criminal trial. Psychotherapists could therefore be testifying in criminal courts as prosecution witnesses. While the possibility of a chilling effect on patients' disclosure of violent ideation in the context of psychotherapy first caused apprehension after the California Supreme Court's 1976 decision in Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California, this same Court's ruling in People v. Clark some 14 years later may ensure that this fear finally becomes realized.     

Recidivist criminal behaviour and executive functions: a comparative study

This study sought to analyse the relation between executive functions and criminal recidivism. We assessed a set of cognitive abilities associated with executive functioning in a group of recidivist offenders (n = 19), primary offenders (n = 25) and non-offenders (n = 30). Our results, tested with nonparametric statistics and Monte Carlo method, revealed that there were no executive differences between both groups of offenders but, when compared with non-offenders, the recidivists showed a worse performance in Trail Making Test part B, and the primary offenders presented a significant lower score on Porteus Maze Test Age score. This study suggests that there can be a different pattern of executive functioning deficits associated with the offenders’ criminal record: recidivism may be more related to mental flexibility impairments and primary offenders’ antisocial behaviour may be aggravated by planning deficits.     

Keeping face in the public sphere: recognition,discretion and Uzbekistan's relations with the United States and Germany, 1991–2006

The manner in which President Karimov's roles were recognized in the global arena affected how Uzbekistan's international relations developed – a perspective that highlights both the form and the content of bilateral relationships. While mutual interests are crucial to beginning a relationship, it is also important to understand how those relations were recognized in public and dealt with in private. If partners managed to recognize Karimov's agenda publicly, or at least act with discretion, this tended to create an atmosphere favouring cooperation. As such, recognition and discretion reveal much about Karimov's concerns with international equality and self-reliance, pointing to the reasons why Uzbekistan's relations fluctuated more with some actors than others. The United States and Germany are ideal examples of that ambivalent situation: Washington often cooperated with Uzbekistan on security matters, but then saw its military personnel excluded from Qarshi-Qanabad after the 2005 Andijan crisis; whereas Berlin witnessed little change in its relationship with Uzbekistan and continued to lease a base in Termez after 2005. This difference in outcomes can be explained in part by a dynamic of recognition and discretion.     

Brazilian judges in-between professionalism,gender and difference

This paper analyzes how Brazilian judges experience difference, focusing on how professionalism, gender, generation and diversity intersect in identity formation among women and men who are judges in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. In attempting to avoid attaching one fixed meaning to the concept of difference, we work with Avtar Brah's typology; this in turn enables us to capture how difference is perceived and experienced by our interviewees. Our results provide a look at how the specificities of the professionalization process influence the composition of the two courts we have studied (one at state and another at federal level), and how they increase or reduce the gender stratification within these careers. Being a judge is experienced through difference, in particular as the ‘Other' to those outside the career, and wherein identification is intersected by questions of gender, sexuality and generation. Although professionalism establishes boundaries between ‘us' and ‘them', it is also diluted through the ways in which the above-mentioned social markers and attributes permeate the self and professional groups. We interviewed 18 judges (women and men) from the São Paulo State Courts (Tribunal de Justiça de São Paulo) and 10 judges from the Regional Federal Courts (Tribunal Regional Federal) from the São Paulo circuit.     

Parliamentarianism and anti-parliamentarianism in Portugal. The voices of the republicans, 1910–26

In Portugal the republican regime broke ties with the monarchy, advocating the need to reassume the national principle, as well as the secularization of its foundations and of the state itself. With the establishment of the new parliamentary republic in 1910 and the debate between republic and monarchy, the supporters of parliamentarianism saw a rupture in the composition and relationship between the powers foreseen in the constitutional charter of 1826, which gave more power to the king during the period of the constitutional monarchy. This made republicans grow closer to the constitution of the French Third Republic, the Brazilian constitution of 1891, the 1812 constitution of Cadiz and the 1822 Portuguese constitution, owing to the fact that these were radical liberal constitutions that conferred national sovereignty. The republicans put forward various arguments both to defame and to defend parliamentarianism. Nevertheless, as in the constitution of 1822, the republican constitution of 1911 stipulated that the congress (the Portuguese Parliament) would be, in theory, the only body that could regulate the political guidelines of the republic.     

Allele frequencies of nine STR loci—D16S539, D7S820, D13S317, CSF1PO, TPOX, TH01, F13A01, FESFPS and vWA—in the population from Alagoas, northeastern Brazil

The polymorphism of nine STR loci has been studied in a sample of 598 individuals from the population of Alagoas, Northeastern Brazil. Determination of the allele frequencies as well as of several commonly used statistics in forensic and paternity testing were defined. The most polymorphic loci were TH01 and D7S317. The exact test demonstrated that the nine loci analyzed in the population have no deviation from Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium (P>0.05).     

Capgras syndrome and dangerousness

This article discusses Capgras syndrome and its association with harmful and potentially harmful behaviors. Phenomenological and psychodynamic analysis of a series of cases will highlight danger signals that may be present in Capgras patients.