Transnational private governance between the logics of empowerment and control

Transnational private governance initiatives that address problems of social and environmental concern now pervade many sectors. In tackling distinct substantive problems, these programs have, however, prioritized different problem‐oriented logics in their institutionalized rules and procedures. One is a “logic of control” that focuses on ameliorating environmental and social externalities by establishing strict and enforceable rules; another is a “logic of empowerment” that concentrates on remedying the exclusion of marginalized actors in the global economy. Examining certification programs in the areas of fair trade, organic agriculture, fisheries, and forest management, we assess the evolutionary effects of programs prioritizing one logic and then having to accommodate the other. The challenges programs face when balancing between the two logics, we argue, elucidate specific distributional consequences for wealth, power, and regulatory capabilities that private governance programs seek to overcome.     

Citizenship and Unauthorised Migration: a Dialectical Relationship

The relationship between citizenship and immigration law is often conceived as a conceptual dichotomy in which the former functions as the rhetorical domain of inclusion while immigration law does the dirty work of detention, deportation and snooping into peoples’ lives in order to uphold the inclusive values of the internal domain. States however employ a variety of practices of immigration control that infringe citizens’ rights and produce lasting dilatory effects on citizenship itself. Focusing on two specific case studies – racial profiling in identity checks carried out for immigration purposes and the standards of interpretation developed by the European Court of Human Rights in regard to the right to family life in expulsion cases – this article argues that current practices of immigration control result in a transformation of citizenship along racialised lines, which hollows citizenship's normative core of equality and liberty.     

Injury potential of soft-air pistols

Report on a case in which an 8-year-old girl was injured on the left anterior thoracic wall by two shots fired by her 14-year-old cousin from a soft-air pistol (replica of mod. 17 make Glock, cal. 6 mm, solid plastic bullets); the projectiles caused two skin lesions, both reaching into the subcutis. The results of our own shooting tests with 2 different soft-air pistols and the injuries seen in our case confirm that soft-air pistols may cause penetrating soft-tissue injuries when fired from a short distance.     

A century of the The German Society of Forensic Medicine or Legal Medicine

On 20 September 1904 the Section of Forensic Medicine of the former Society of German Natural Scientists and Physicians decided in Breslau to found an independent "German Society of Forensic Medicine". The constituent assembly was held in Meran on 25 September 1905, with Fritz Strassmann from Berlin being elected as the first president. According to section 1 of the first statutes the object of the association was to "offer a platform for joint scientific work". Later the name of the association was changed several times; the last change (to "German Society of Legal Medicine") was made in 1968. The close relationship between legal medicine and criminalistics is demonstrated on the background of the historical development.     

Confusing injury findings in a suicidal gunshot fired to the chest from a carbine with a sawed-off barrel

The stellate bullet entrance wound is one of the facultative features of a contact shot. For the formation of a star-shaped wound two factors are of special importance: first, an extensive bony support underlying the skin in the entrance region, and second, a strong propellant charge of the cartridge fired. Contact shots to the precordial region usually do not cause stellate entrance wounds, even if high-powered rifle ammunition is used. In the reported case, an injury pattern was observed that was not in line with normal findings and seemed confusing at first. Following a suicidal gunshot to the chest from a sawed-off carbine 98a (cal. 8 x 57 Js), a 4.5 cm wide, gaping bullet entrance wound with radiating tears was found. Instead of the usual pocket, the anterior thoracic wall showed a fist-sized area of destruction with extensive undermining of the subcutis. Not far from the entrance hole, a rib fragment had become displaced retrogradely thus perforating the skin from the inside out. The unusual pattern of findings could be explained by the fact that the barrel had been sawed off: as a result of this manipulation, a considerable part of the propellant charge had been converted outside the barrel, i.e. in the initial section of the bullet path.     

Personality disorders and romantic adult attachment: a comparison of secure and insecure attached child molesters

This study analyzed personality disorders in a group of 33 securely and 51 insecurely attached child molesters. A total of 51 child molesters were selected from a community based educational training program, and the other group was selected from a Belgian prison (n = 33). Research shows that adult attachment styles and personality disorders share a common underlying structure. It is remarkable that very little is known about differences between securely and insecurely attached child molesters. In this study, the authors found that the schizoid personality disorder differed between securely and insecurely attached child molesters. These findings have implications for the aetiology and treatment of child molesters. Future research is necessary to determine patterns of attachment in relationship to personality disorders.     

Positive constitutional economics: A survey

The author distinguishes between normative and positive constitutional economics. Taking the observation that the normative branch of the new discipline is much better developed than its positive counterpart as a starting point, the available positive literature is surveyed nevertheless. The available evidence is arranged into four categories: (1) Constitutional rules and the procedures bringing them about, (2) constitutional rules as the result of preferences and restrictions, (3) constitutional rules channeling constitutional change, and (4) the economic effects of constitutional rules. Additionally, various concepts of the constitution are presented, the tools suited for a positive theory of constitutional economics discussed, and precursors as well as related research programs shortly described.     

Strategy-proof voting for single issues and cabinets

In a model with a continuum of voters with symmetric single-peaked preferences on the one-dimensional unit interval (representing the political spectrum) a voting rule assigns to each profile of votes a point in the interval. We characterize all voting rules that are strategy-proof, anonymous, Pareto optimal, and which satisfy a weak form of continuity. This result paves the way for studying cabinet formation rules. A cabinet is an interval which has obtained sufficiently many votes. The main result on cabinet formation is a characterization of all cabinet formation rules that are strategy-proof with respect to the endpoints of the cabinet, anonymous, Pareto optimal, and continuous.     

Forensic medicine significance of the fluid content of the sphenoid sinuses

In the forensic literature the opinion is often held that the presence of aqueous liquid in the paranasal sinuses in conjunction with other findings (plume of froth around the mouth and nostrils, emphysema aquosum, Paltauf's spots, increased haemolysis etc.) can be regarded as a sign of drowning. Especially the sphenoid sinus is easily accessible at autopsy; its content can be aspirated from the base of the skull with a cannula. The valency of the liquid content in the sphenoid sinuses was consecutively investigated in 60 deaths by drowning and 157 other deaths. The results showed that in 92% of the deaths by drowning between 1 ml and 4 ml of aqueous fluid could be found in the sphenoid sinuses. However, a positive result was also obtained in 52% of the other cases autopsied, but in the control group the average volume of the aspirate was smaller than in the group of deaths by drowning.