The costs of class actions: allocation and collective redress in the US experience

Once a preserve of the American legal landscape, the class action device today transcends geographic boundaries. In the past decade, efforts have intensified to establish collective litigation instruments in diverse legal terrains outside the United States—including Europe—often with the common goal of allowing some form of collective legal redress while avoiding perceived disadvantages of class actions in the American experience. Today more than ever, from legislators to litigants to scholars, European reformers face the challenge—and the opportunity—of making fundamental choices about the scope and shape of the collective legal remedies they wish to make available. Choices about the shape of the class action device reflect foundational judgments about the proper allocation of costs, and there is much from the US experience that can inform Europe’s prospective reformers. This article describes the history and current status of class action rules in the US, and then compares class actions and another form of extra-compensatory damages—one type of punitive damages—as means of doing the same thing. Although neither punitive damages of this sort nor class actions generally have traditionally existed in civil law systems, they both—and especially this particular form of punitive damages—can, from an economic view, be made to vindicate the same kind of social cost accounting goals. By considering these legal devices together, we hope to shed light on crucial choices facing Europe as it grapples with how best to provide collective legal redress in light of the lessons of the US experience with class actions.     

全球信息保密管理：在网络环境下的跨境信息流

美国隐私权项目与Paul M.Schwartz教授合作形成的《全球信息保密管理：在网络环境下的跨境信息流》报告,基于一系列结构化自我报告案例研究,介绍了六家公司计划及实施跨国个人信息保护的方案,展示了私人企业中国际信息安全的巨大变革,集中表现为三个方面：规模的改变,信息处理的转变,信息管理的转变。该报告提出,要致力于将案例研究与相关信息保护法政策研究有机结合,以寻求新的解决方案,其关键在于重视各项法规的具体实施,以及如何保证强有力的执行。     

Compensating for the ‘Authoritarian Advantage’ in Crisis Response: A Comparative Case Study of SARS Pandemic Responses in China and Taiwan

Why do some countries more effectively respond to crises than others? This paper compares China??s relatively effective response to the 2002?C3 SARS outbreak with Taiwan??s relatively ineffective response, focusing on three variables that constitute China??s ??authoritarian advantage?? - centralized decision making powers; public support; and, relations with the mass media. The paper rejects a fourth explanatory variable specific to the Taiwan case ?C membership in international organizations. Drawing heavily on the Taiwan example, the paper concludes by suggesting options for overcoming the authoritarian advantage in pandemic response.     

Similarities or Differences in Identity Development? The Impact of Acculturation and Gender on Identity Process and Outcome

This study examined the effects of variations in acculturation and gender on identity processes and outcomes. Three hundred fifty-seven students at a culturally diverse university completed measures of identity processes (exploration, commitment, and identity style) and outcomes (identity status). The generalizability of the underlying identity processes across contextual variations was ascertained by evaluating the consistency of factor solutions across immigrant generation and gender. Results suggested that the processes underlying identity development are consistent across variations in acculturation and gender. Supplemental analyses revealed effects of acculturation and gender on the extent to which individuals utilized various identity processes and manifested various identity outcomes.     

Sexual problems found in users of a student mental health clinic

The authors were interested in discovering the spectrum and prevalence of sexual problems among young adults. With this goal in mind, they devised a Sexual Problems Check List as a comprehensive instrument utilizable by both clinicians and researchers. The Sexual Problems Check List was derived by reviewing therapists' treatment summaries and 146 recent answers to applications written by patients themselves as the first step in applying for treatment at a university mental health clinic. Data were then obtained from 52 subsequent student mental health clinic patients; such patients were selected as the sample because they were late adolescents and young adults thought likely to exhibit a broad range of clinically significant probelms. General patterns of concerns were noted which indicated that the sexual revolution has not been as liberating as the respondents were led to believe.Received his M. D. from Yale University School of Medicine in 1963. Psychiatric Residency at Yale, 1964–1967. Main interests include psychiatry residency training, psychoanalytic study of peotry, student mental health.Receved his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia in 1971. Psychiatric Residency at University of Chicago, 1972–1975. Main interests include hospital psychiatry and group treatment for rheumatoid arthritis.Received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago in 1968. Main interests include urban problems, socialization, and deviance.     

Using resolution calculations to assess changes in capillary electrophoresis run parameters

Capillary electrophoresis is widely used in the forensic community for the analysis of Short Tandem Repeat DNA. The CE system used in most forensic laboratories allows the user to modify standard operational protocols to accommodate some samples that fall outside of interpretational guidelines. We have made operational changes and monitored system resolution and the ability of the software to identify alleles as a result of these modifications. Increased amount of amplified product in the injection preparation, lengthened injection times or repeated injections of the same sample were all investigated along with variations in run voltages. Certain protocol modifications offer some advantages to the analysis of STRs and may allow the analyst to avoid extraction of additional portions of crime scene samples to achieve interpretable results.     

Ideology and interests in congressional voting: The politics of abortion in the U.S. Senate

Many studies suggest that personal ideology accounts for much more of congressional voting behavior than does attention to the desires of the electorate. There are two main explanations given for this seemingly robust conclusion: 1) poor measures of constituency preferences compared to those for ideology or behavior, and 2) representatives “shirk” on an inattentive electorate. We argue that existing studies have been biased against the “interest” explanation by ignoring the structure of American Congressional elections, in particular the party primary process. Correcting for the party primary effect, we show, within the context of abortion politics, that constituency interests possess greater explanatory power than previous models would suggest.     

Deregulating Federalism? The Politics of Mandate Reform in the 104th Congress

This article examines the politics and substance of mandatereform in the 104th Congress. It briefly describes the evolutionof the mandate issue, examines the process by which the issuewas placed on the national agenda, and traces the formulationof a legislative response. It analyzes in detail the politicsof enacting mandate-reform legislation, paying particular attentionto patterns of support and opposition and to changes in thesepatterns over time. It concludes by examining the prospectsfor successful implementation of the legislation and its likelyconsequences for the intergovernmental system.