No Job Too Small: Justice Without Bargaining in the lower Criminal Courts

Plea bargaining and other informal disposition devices dominate case processing in the lower criminal courts. Consistently, studies have found such courts characterized by assembly-line procedures, deemphasis or disregard of formal due process rights, and guilty plea rates approaching 100% of all convictions. Caseload pressures, tendencies toward cooperation among courtroom participants and, above all, process costs of litigation that greatly outweigh the stakes in minor cases are widely thought to render informality and high guilty plea rates inevitable.
The study reported here challenges these assumptions. The author finds that in Philadelphia roughly one-fifth of all misdemeanor dispositions and one-half of all determinations of guilt are the result of genuine adversarial trials. He shows that an adversarial trial system need not impose prohibitive resource costs, even when extended to misdemeanor cases involving little likelihood of imprisonment, and that process costs will not deter defendants from invoking formal procedures when the court culture is committed to providing trials. Finally, the author argues that even routine misdemeanor cases benefit from guarantees of fairness and accuracy afforded by trial but unattainable when cases are processed by plea bargaining.     

Immunohistochemical determination of maternal and child blood groups (ABO) in mature placental tissue

Using the indirect immunoperoxidase technique (PAP method), ABO characteristics of mother and child were correctly identified in tissue specimens from 10 mature human placentas. In one case, a weak infantile A reaction was overlooked in the agglutination test but correctly identified by immunohistochemistry. In accordance with the weak expression of ABO characteristics in cord blood, immunohistochemical labeling of infantile erythrocytes with monoclonal and human antibodies, as well as Ulex europeaeus agglutinin I (UEA I), was less pronounced than that of mature erythrocytes. Labeling of the chorionic vessel endothelium, in contrast to that of adult endothelial tissue, was negative with anti-A or anti-B but, regardless of the infantile blood group, pronounced with UEA I. Regular identification of the blood groups was possible in decomposed placental tissue stored at room temperature for 1 week, but not in tissue stored for 2 or more weeks.     

The mechanism of death in whole-body overheating

Data on anatomo-clinical analysis of 36 cases of death due to general overheating of a body are presented. On the basis of these data can be stated that in most cases the effect of high ambient temperature combined with great physical exercise and prolonged exposure to the caused death within short (up to 3 days) periods of time as a result of cessation of CNS functioning. Without physical exercise and direct insolation death usually occurred later (on the average of 5-9 days) from acute renal and renal-hepatic failure. Morphologic changes were unspecific.     

Sir Ernest Satow in Tokyo, 1895-1900: From Triple Intervention to Boxer Rebellion

Satow's term as minister plenipotentiary at Tokyo has not been studied much in detail, though it is arguably the highpoint of his career as a diplomat. Satow was the first British envoy to Japan to have a profound, scholarly understanding of Japanese culture and politics gained over many years of residence in the country. This article offers a survey of Satow's diplomatic activities, and focuses especially on the revision of the so-called unequal treaties in 1899 and the marked improvement in Anglo-Japanese relations during this period.