EU update

This is the latest edition of Baker & McKenzie’s column on developments in EU law relating to IP, IT and telecommunications. This article summarises recent developments that are considered important for practitioners, students and academics in a wide range of information technology, e-commerce, telecommunications and intellectual property areas. It cannot be exhaustive but intends to address the important points. This is a hard copy reference guide, but links to outside websites are included where possible. No responsibility is assumed for the accuracy of information contained in these links.     

What can we do to reduce disciplinary school exclusion? A systematic review and meta-analysis

Journal of Experimental Criminology - To systematically review and quantitatively synthesise the evidence for the impact of different types of school-based interventions on the reduction of school...     

Intimate Partner Violence: Victims’ Opinions About Going to Trial

Criminal justice officials assume that intimate partner violence victims oppose filing charges against their abusers. In a study of 94 respondents, reluctance actually occurred with the prospect of going to trial. While 70% supported filing charges, only 37% wanted a trial. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses help explain the reasons women gave for their opinions about trials. The strongest quantitative predictor was that as the level of the victim’s injury sustained from the crime increased, their support for a trial increased. Gondolf and Fisher’s (1988) survivor theory predicted factors that influenced victims’ support or opposition to a trial in the quantitative section. The nested ecological model explained approximately half of the open-ended responses to those opposing trials while the goals of sentencing model articulated most victims’ support for trials.     

Psychological models of mental disorder, human rights, and compulsory mental health care in the community

Recent amendments to the 1983 Mental Health Act in the UK (Mental Health Act 2007) include the controversial provision for: “supervised treatment in the community for suitable patients following an initial period of detention and treatment in hospital”. This provision is widespread, and more formal, in other English-speaking jurisdictions. Reviews of the international literature, human rights considerations and the perspective of psychological approaches to mental health care suggest that proposed ‘supervised community treatment orders’ are valuable, lawful, and compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights if certain specific conditions are met. Provisions for ‘supervised community treatment orders’ in the UK should be supported, but with the provisos that: the powers of the Mental Health Act are limited as in Scotland, to persons whose “ability to make decisions about the provision of [care] is significantly impaired”, that each order is time-limited and subject to review by a properly constituted Tribunal, and that the use of such orders should represent a benefit to people in terms of more appropriate treatment, or be a least restrictive alternative, or better preserve the person's private and family life.     

Texas Criminal Defense Attorneys’ Perceptions of Crime Victim Involvement in Criminal Prosecutions

The purpose of this study was to test the utility of the Victim Satisfaction Model of the criminal justice system by quantitatively assessing criminal defense attorneys’ perceptions of victims’ involvement in the charging and plea bargaining stages of the criminal process. A cross-section research design was used in this study. Self-administered questionnaires were mailed to defense attorneys who regularly practice criminal law in Texas. The results of this study support the utility of the Victim Satisfaction Model of the criminal justice system and further our understanding of victim involvement in the decision making and have important implications for the American criminal justice system.     

Vulnerability Factors among Women Victimized by Intimate Partner Violence and the Presence of Children

This study aimed to a) examine the presence of children in relation to victim vulnerability factors and assessed risk for intimate partner violence (IPV) re-victimization, and b) examine the police response, in terms of risk management, in IPV cases with and without children, respectively. Data from a sample of 1407 women who had reported IPV victimization to the Swedish police was analyzed. The material consisted of risk assessments conducted by the police using the Swedish version of the Brief Spousal Assault Form for the Evaluation of Risk (B-SAFER) checklist, as well as the recommended risk management strategies. A series of chi-square tests of independence revealed that women with and without children, respectively, displayed different vulnerability factors to different extents. Women with children expressed more extreme fear of the perpetrator and were more likely to have an unsafe living situation, whereas women without children displayed more inconsistent attitudes or behaviors and health problems. However, binary logistic regression analyses showed that the victim vulnerability factors that were most strongly associated with an elevated risk rating for IPV re-victimization were generally the same for both groups of victims. Finally, the presence of children was related to a higher risk rating for imminent IPV re-victimization and to recommendations of more than standard levels of risk management strategies. The results indicate that the Swedish police consider the presence of children in relation to a victim’s risk for re-victimization as well as in terms of recommended risk management strategies.

     

Challenging custom: rethinking national population surveillance policy in a global public health age

This article examines the current state of disease surveillance and reporting in the United States and seeks to answer two central questions: first, whether the increasing emphasis on the global importance of public health policies compels a fundamental reexamination of the long-standing deferential approach to state power where matters of population health surveillance are concerned and, second, how the nation's long-standing deferential legal customs might be modified to address the growing emphasis on global public health policy that is undergirded by technological advances. We examine the International Health Regulations, or IHR (2005), and suggest that these regulations offer a powerful impetus for reevaluating U.S. legal custom concerning the policy and practice of population health surveillance, not only as a matter of U.S. law but also as a core dimension of U.S. legal obligations to other nations, as embodied in international agreements and treaties. We find that if the political will exists to change the domestic disease surveillance and reporting system, the federal government has the power to act. Questions remain, however, about whether the public health and legislative communities are willing to challenge current customs or even if they desire to do so.     

Dealing with cryopreserved embryos upon divorce: a contractual approach aimed at preserving party expectations

The development of assisted reproductive technologies, including cryopreservation, or freezing, of embryos created through in vitro fertilization, has given rise to complex legal questions. Because cryopreservation permits indefinite storage of embryos, if couples fail to specify disposition directions, they may disagree regarding embryo treatment upon the occurrence of contingencies such as divorce. Few courts have resolved such disputes, and those that have appear to uphold the rights of the party seeking to prevent implantation in the absence of a written agreement specifying otherwise. In this Comment, Sara Petersen proposes that courts should draw upon contract law principles in determining whether the parties to such conflicts actually reached agreements regarding embryo disposition in the event of divorce. After analyzing existing precedent, the author assesses proposed approaches for deciding which party's interests should prevail and concludes that these methods are inherently ineffective. She then argues that, in an effort to preserve party expectations and to provide fair results, courts instead should examine whether the parties executed binding contracts or achieved mutual assent. Furthermore, she suggests that couples undergoing cryopreservation will be more likely to contemplate and to provide for various outcomes if they know that courts will look at evidence of their conversations and thought processes prior to cryopreserving their excess embryos.