Empirical and Legal Perspectives on the Impact of Pretrial Publicity: Effects and Remedies

Law and Human Behavior -     

Judicial Power in Russia: Through the Prism of Administrative Justice

This article assesses the power of judges in Russia (on courts of general jurisdiction, arbitrazh courts, and military courts) in dealing with cases in which the government or one of its officials is a party. Power, that is, the resources of judges to make binding decisions, is understood as including jurisdiction, discretion, and authority to ensure compliance. The article analyzes the dramatic growth of jurisdiction and caseload in administrative justice in post-Soviet Russia to the year 2002 and examines how the courts have performed in handling the review of actions by officials (including in the military), tax cases, electoral disputes, and the legality of normative acts (both regulations and laws of lower governments), especially in the late 1990s. High rates of success for persons bringing suits against the government suggest that judges were able by and large to adjudicate fairly and rule against the state. To a considerable degree (but not always), those decisions were implemented (more often than were constitutional and commercial decisions). Interestingly, citizens who challenged the actions of officials in court had much more success than those who brought complaints to the Procuracy. Finally, the article develops an agenda for future research that would deepen understanding of the significance of administrative justice in the Russian Federation and the power of judges.     

An improved method for semen alpha-L-fucosidase typing--distribution in the Wuhan population of China

An improved method for the separation of the genetic variants of alpha-L-fucosidase in human semen is described. The method involves, isoelectric focusing in ultrathin-layer PAG containing a mixture of ampholines, pH 5-7 and pH 3.5-9.5, and separator HEPES. The Fu pattern obtained is simple, easy to interpret, and reproducible. The occurrence of fucosidase phenotypes in 189 semen samples from the population of Wuhan was investigated, and the frequencies of the Fu alleles were calculated.     

Paolo Zacchia--the father of forensic medicine, 400 years after his birth

This article was the historical introductory lecture in the opening session of the Annual Meeting of the Polish Society of Forensic Medicine and Criminology held on 20 September 1984, in Katowice. Paolo Zacchia (1584-1659) was one of the fathers of forensic medicine and social hygiene, which were combined in his time. His work Quaestiones medico-legales is well known internationally.     

Endogenous bargaining power and the theory of small group collective choice

Contrary to some criticism (Musgrave and Musgrave, and West) the small group collective choice model may yield a determinate, Pareto optimal solution even with all or none bargaining. Such bargaining as well as the solution are implied by the basic assumptions of the theoretical model.     

Feminist consciousness vs profit—an unsolvable contradiction?

To survive in the capitalist system (which we are still part of), we have to deal with money, and in order to keep our projects going we have to make profit. The cold principles that rule the market will often clash with our feminist ideas of humane collectivity, but I will argue that we better face these conflicts and integrate them in our work structures, because the system sneaks in anyway and finds us unprepared and fighting with each other.     

Capillary electrophoresis: a new tool in forensic toxicology. Applications and prospects in hair analysis for illicit drugs

Capillary electrophoresis, the modern approach to instrumental electrophoresis, is probably the most rapidly expanding analytical technique that has appeared in recent years. In the hands of forensic toxicologists, capillary electrophoresis (CE) represents a powerful new analytical tool, which has proved suitable for the investigation of illicit drugs in seized preparations and also in complex biological matrices, among which is hair. CE can be applied according to different separation mechanisms, and among those that are toxicologically relevant are capillary zone electrophoresis and micellar electrokinetic capillary chromatography, which display different selectivities. For the investigation of hair for drugs of abuse, capillary electrophoresis proved effective, providing simultaneous determinations of different drugs without derivatization, with acceptable sensitivity (typically better than 1 ng of drug per mg of hair). The possibility of carrying out determinations of the same analytes, based on different separation mechanisms (capillary zone electrophoresis and micellar electrokinetic chromatography) with the same instrumentation, simply changing the buffer composition, provides an interesting possibility of ‘internal’ confirmation of the results.