The Troika: The Interlocking Roles of Commission v. Luxembourg and Belgium,Van Gend en Loos and Costa v. ENEL in the Creation of the European Legal Order

Through comparisons with dispute resolution procedures in the North American Free Trade Area's Side Agreements, and with the debate over the direct effect of World Trade Organization obligations in the European legal order, this paper demonstrates that three of the European Court of Justice's most important decisions—Commission v. Luxembourg and Belgium, Van Gend en Loos and Costa v. ENEL—should be understood as combining to reorganise general international law's relationship between the EU Member States by substituting national court application of European obligations for the use of interstate retaliation as an enforcement mechanism, and thus providing the foundations for the EU's distinctive legal order.     

‘Hermann Heller and the European Crisis: Authoritarian Liberalism Redux?’

This essay tentatively buttresses Alexander Somek's view that Hermann Heller's 1933 essay, ‘Authoritarian Liberalism’, provides a useful starting point for thinking about the ongoing European crisis, in which European authorities are favouring rigid austerity and pro‐business policies while undermining basic liberal and democratic rights. Heller's unfortunate neglect, especially in Anglophone scholarship, is discussed. Nonetheless, Somek and other recent scholars who have turned to Heller to make sense of the European crisis downplay some of the tough questions raised by any attempt to apply Heller's analysis of the Weimar crisis to the contemporary setting. In particular, Heller's theory relied on a robust social democratic statism which has become increasingly unpopular even among theorists on the political left.     

Redesigning the Family Law System to Promote Healthy Families

Family law professionals should be proactive in seeking and implementing constructive reforms. We identify some successful cutting‐edge reforms: (1) family resource centers, where all kinds of needs can be met; (2) informal family law trials, which streamline clogged calendars and provide an empowering and efficient forum; (3) licensed legal technicians, who increase public access to legal services; and (4) unbundled family law services. Second, we outline a protocol for implementation of reform developed by the Oregon Task Force on Family Law which is effective and replicable. Thoughtful reform of dispute resolution processes will serve family health and promote peace.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:
• Evolving family constellations, private ordering through pre‐ and postmarital agreements, an increase in self‐represented litigants, and shrinking judicial resources are changing family law dramatically.
• Thoughtful, practical process reforms are needed in order to accommodate these changes.
• Practitioners should be proactive about seeking out and implementing such reforms.
• Some reforms already finding success include family relationship resource centers, informal domestic relations trials, licensed legal technicians, and unbundled legal services.
• We outline a protocol with a proven track record of success for implementing cutting‐edge family law reform.

     

Algeria's Roles in the OAU/African Union: From National Liberation Promoter to Leader in the Global War on Terrorism

Even prior to the country's independence, Africa has always been central to Algeria's foreign policy. Algerian nationalists not only found support on the African continent in their struggle for independence, but they also sought to contribute to the decolonization of Africa and to free it from all forms of neocolonialism. Algerian diplomacy became even more involved in African affairs after independence. Using the Role Approach, this article shows how Algerian policymakers exercised various roles within the structures of the Organization of African Unity and, to this day, in those of the African Union to serve the country's perceived national interests. While from the 1960s through the 1990s, Algerians played the roles of developer, mediator, and anti-imperialist, since the 1990s, they have played the role of antiterrorist in order partly to regain the credibility that the regime had lost during the domestic civil strife. The antiterrorist role has been relatively successful as the country succeeded in greatly improving its relations with the West, the United States in particular. At the same time, though, this had led to a relative neglect of Algeria's bilateral relations with African states which allowed its regional rivals to fill the vacuum. However, since 2013, Algeria has shown some resolve in reclaiming its influence on the continent and to strengthen the role it has played in the structures of the African Union.     

TESTING FOR TEMPORALLY DIFFERENTIATED RELATIONSHIPS AMONG POTENTIALLY CRIMINOGENIC PLACES AND CENSUS BLOCK STREET ROBBERY COUNTS

This study examined street robbery patterns in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from the years 2009 to 2011 to determine whether the effects of potentially criminogenic places are different across different periods of the day. Census block (N = 13,164) street robbery counts across four periods (6:45 a.m . to 9:59 a.m., 10:00 a.m . to 4:29 p.m ., 4:30 p.m . to 9:14 p.m ., and 9:15 p.m. to 6:44 a.m. ) were modeled with 12 different potentially criminogenic places, 3 measures of illicit markets, 4 compositional control variables, and spatially lagged versions of the 12 potentially criminogenic places and population using simultaneously estimated negative binomial regression models. Differences in the magnitudes of the parameter estimates across the time periods were assessed with Wald tests. Overall, the patterns across the four models were mostly consistent with the effects hypothesized based on the study's crime pattern theory and time‐geography theoretical frame; yet differences in the magnitudes of the coefficients were less pronounced than hypothesized. Overall, the results provide moderate support for the crime pattern theory and time‐geography explanation of spatial‐temporal robbery patterns; however, numerous points are raised for future crime and place research.     

Comparing Electronic News Media Reports of Potential Bioterrorism-Related Incidents Involving Unknown White Powder to Reports Received by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Federal Bureau of Investigation: U.S.A., 2009–2011

There have been periodic electronic news media reports of potential bioterrorism-related incidents involving unknown substances (often referred to as “white powder”) since the 2001 intentional dissemination of Bacillus anthracis through the U.S. Postal System. This study reviewed the number of unknown “white powder” incidents reported online by the electronic news media and compared them with unknown “white powder” incidents reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) during a 2-year period from June 1, 2009 and May 31, 2011. Results identified 297 electronic news media reports, 538 CDC reports, and 384 FBI reports of unknown “white powder.” This study showed different unknown “white powder” incidents captured by each of the three sources. However, the authors could not determine the public health implications of this discordance.