What’s wrong with murder?

In a rational system defences should interlock with the elements of the offence to ensure that conviction labels are differentiated according to the defendant’s degree of wrongdoing and culpability. The overall grading structure of criminal homicide, as represented in contemporary doctrine, goes some way to reflect this ethic. But the substance lacks precision and, in some key details, moral coherence. The recent Law Commission Consultation Paper, in a pragmatic and sensible attempt to rid the law and procedure of murder of the malign influence of the mandatory sentence, has unnecessarily compromised such structural coherence as it currently enjoys and which could properly form a satisfactory basis for reform already precise and morally coherent. This is evident both in relation to the abandonment of the attack based template for the fault element in murder, and also in the unwillingness to view the partial defences as affecting the wrong in homicide as opposed to the grade.     

Role Effects in Negotiation: The One-Down Phenomenon

Role is a concept that underlies most studies of human behavior in negotiation as subjects take on the roles of buyers and sellers or labor and management contract bargainers, for example Naturalistic studies also focus on such roles as teacher and administrator contract bargainers, hostage takers and hostage negotiators, Palestinian and Israeli peace negotiators, and husbands and wives in divorce mediations. This article examines these role effects and finds consistent patterns across both experimental and naturalistic contexts. Specifically, a "one-down effect" emerges when individuals in lower power roles assume more aggressive negotiation strategies that are significantly less effective in achieving desired outcomes. The article concludes by identifying the theoretical frameworks that might explain these role differences.     

GUIDELINES FOR UTILIZING COLLATERAL SOURCES OF INFORMATION IN CHILD CUSTODY EVALUATIONS

A structure for utilizing third party or collateral sources of information in the child custody evaluation is discussed. Collateral information is vital to the process of trying to assess the credibility and validity of information obtained from the primary parties in a dispute. Information that is from more neutral parties has higher credibility and when the party has access to key information it produces more discriminant validity. When a source with high discriminant validity agrees with information from a primary party, then it enhances the convergent validity on an issue or hypothesis. Child custody cases are inherently characterized by biased data within the adversarial process. Gathering data from collateral sources and using a system to evaluate their usefulness on confirmation of hypotheses is a necessary part of the emerging forensic-clinical-scientific child custody evaluation paradigm.