Mixing it up: food mixers, design marks, and when similarity becomes confusion

While the High Court accepted that there was some similaritybetween Kenwood's new kMix mixer and the KitchenAid Artisanfood mixer (the ‘Artisan mixer’) manufactured anddistributed by Whirlpool, it rejected Whirlpool's claims fortrade mark infringement and passing off because such similaritywas insufficient to cause confusion in the mind of the averagedesign conscious consumer, or to cause detriment to the distinctivecharacter or repute of Whirlpool's mark.     

Substantive due process after Gonzales v. Carhart

This Article begins in Part I with a doctrinal evaluation of the status of Washington v. Glucksberg ten years after that decision was handed down. Discussion begins with consideration of the Roberts Court's recent decision in Gonzales v. Carhart and then turns to the subject of Justice Kennedy's views in particular on substantive due process. In Part II, the Article goes on to consider whether the Glucksberg test for substantive due process decision making is correct in light of the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.The Article concludes in Parts II and III that Glucksberg is right to confine substantive due process rights recognition to recognition only of those rights that are deeply rooted in history and tradition.     

Does Dworkin Commit Dworkin's Fallacy?: A Reply to Justice in Robes

In an article entitled ‘Dworkin's Fallacy, Or What thePhilosophy of Language Can't Teach Us about the Law’,I argued that in Law's Empire Ronald Dworkin misderived hisinterpretive theory of law from an implicit interpretive theoryof meaning, thereby committing ‘Dworkin's fallacy’.In his recent book, Justice in Robes, Dworkin denies that hecommitted the fallacy. As evidence he points to the fact thathe considered three theories of law—‘conventionalism’,‘pragmatism’ and ‘law as integrity’—inLaw's Empire. Only the last of these is interpretive, but each,he argues, is compatible with his interpretive theory of meaning,which he describes as the view that ‘the doctrinal conceptof law is an interpretive concept’. In this Reply, I arguethat Dworkin's argument that he does not commit Dworkin's fallacyis itself an example of the fallacy and that Dworkin's fallacypervades Justice in Robes just as much as it did Law's Empire.     

Regularities in Eyewitness Identification

What do eyewitness identification experiments typically show? We address this question through a meta-analysis of 94 comparisons between target-present and target-absent lineups. The analyses showed that: (a) correct identifications and correct-nonidentifications were uncorrelated, (b) suspect identifications were more diagnostic with respect to the suspect’s guilt or innocence than any other response, (c) nonidentifications were diagnostic of the suspect’s innocence, (d) the diagnosticity of foil identifications depended on lineup composition, and (e) don’t know responses were nondiagnostic with respect to guilt or innocence. Results of diagnosticity analyses for simultaneous and sequential lineups varied for full-sample versus direct-comparison analyses. Diagnosticity patterns also varied as a function of lineup composition. Theoretical, forensic, and legal implications are discussed.     

Criminal victimization in contemporary China: a review of the evidence and challenges for future research

The rapid economic growth in China over recent decades has been accompanied by higher levels of crime, but there have been few studies of the Chinese experience of criminal victimization. A recent victimization survey of a representative sample of households in Tianjin represents a major effort to fill this gap in the literature. The present paper reviews the research based on the Tianjin survey along with other studies of crime and criminal victimization in China that have been published since 1990. We summarize the major findings, discuss the theoretical perspectives and methodological strategies that have been applied, identify the limitations of the research to date, and offer suggestions for future research.

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The discrimination of automotive clear coats by pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry and comparison of samples by a chromatogram library software

Identification particles used for the purpose of the post-blast identification of explosives have a coding system based on the combination of metal oxides and their various concentrations. These materials are composed of the polymeric matrix, iron powder (ferromagnetic properties), UV light active dyestuff and various metal oxides in a various ratios. A suitable analytical method has to be used for an accurate characterization of these metal components in the particles in order to find the required information, i.e. to determine the place and the year of production and as the case may be, also the production batch of misused explosives. In this work, the method of microwave digestion and flame atomic absorption spectrometry (F-AAS) was developed for an accurate determination of Zn, Mg, Cu and Pb in a few novel types of identification particles and applied to their characterization. When using specific sample treatment (digestion with a mixture of nitric acid with hydrochloric or hydrofluoric acid), the 3 sigma limits of detection (LODs) for the determination of Zn, Mg, Cu and Pb in 5mg original samples were 1.9, 0.2, 1.3 and 2.4 mg g(-1), respectively. The signal suppression due to the presence of HNO3+HCl or HNO3+HF was observed for Zn; therefore, the calibration solutions had to be prepared exactly with the same acids as those used for the sample mineralization. The determination of Mg, Cu and Pb was free of interferences; hence a simple calibration curve method could be adopted for attaining accurate results. The accuracy was checked by comparison of the results with those obtained by means of independent inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES). Good precision values, as relative standard deviation, in the range of 1-5% were obtained. A total number of 71 samples was analysed and classified by multivariate methods to prove the suitability of the procedure proposed for the purpose of the identification of explosives.     

Accepting One's Punishment as Meaningful Suffering

Law and Philosophy -     

Institutions and Economic Performance: The Use and Abuse of Culture in New Institutional Economics

Important research programs within New Institutional Economics advance culturalist arguments to explain failures of economic development. Focusing on the work of Douglass C. North and Avner Greif, this article argues that such arguments rely on an essentialist conception of culture that is both historically inaccurate and analytically misleading. Greif’s work in particular rests on a selective use of empirical data that ultimately distorts the deductive models that are at the core of his work. As a result, both scholars use culture to account for outcomes that are more adequately explained as the product of social conflict and political struggles—struggles in which culture plays a far more contingent and destabilizing role than the one they attribute to it. What is needed, I argue, is to link arguments about the persistence of inefficient institutions with a sociologically informed conception of culture as an ensemble of resources that enhance rather than constrain the scope of individual agency. To come to terms with the effects of culture on institutional formation and change it is necessary to replace the essentialism articulated by North and Greif with a strategic-instrumentalist view in which culture is compatible with a wide spectrum of economic behaviors, individual actions, and thus institutional trajectories.