Jurors' knowledge of battered women

An increasing number of psychologists with expertise in the area of battered women are participating in the legal system as expert witnesses and occasionally testify on behalf of a battered woman who has injured or killed her partner. Testimony about the battered woman syndrome has been offered to help the jury understand why the defendant reasonably perceived that she was in danger of harm. One of the requirements of expert testimony is that it be beyond the common understanding of the jury. Many commentators assume that jurors are uninformed or misinformed about battered women and, thus, that expert testimony is necessary to educate them. This study evaluated what jurors know about violent relationships. Approximately 300 jurors read scenarios about spousal violence and answered a questionnaire dealing with circumstances surrounding such abuse. Results suggest that on certain dimensions of spousal violence, jurors are aware of empirical research findings. On other dimensions, jurors are less well-informed and could potentially benefit from the testimony of an expert.     

Editor's Note on Policy Advocacy Essays

As our legion of obviously highly observant and dedicated readers will immediately note, this issue of the Policy Studies Review is marked by the introduction of a new feature which we have chosen to characterize as policy advocacy essays. Specifically, the two essays featured in this issue—"Strategic Treasury Debt Management in Public Policy" by Campbell R. Harvey and "How the Clinton Administration Can Make Foreign Aid Work" by Neil S. Zank—are significantly different from our typical articles. They go a good way beyond the usually rather cautious recommendations for policy change that are upon occasion put forward at the conclusion of our typically quite analytical and often empirically based articles. In contrast, neither of the two essays that follow intend to be objective. Rather, both authors, as individuals with long-time expertise in the areas about which they are writing, have quite decided opinions about significant reforms in major areas of national policy which they would like to see implemented.     

Deadlines,routines, and change

Routines, the habitual and predictable behavior patterns of an organization, play central roles in both maintaining organizational performance and in adapting such performance to changing conditions. Deadlines interact with routines in important ways in influencing the course of organizational adaptation. This paper examines the role of routines and deadlines in influencing change in a regulatory program. It describes the adaptation of routines in the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) water pollution and pesticide programs in response to pressures and deadlines imposed by Congress, the courts, and the White House. The programs analyzed offer contrasting glimpses of the effects of routines on organizational change. Routines may be collective and shared by the members of an organization or unique to the specific groups or subgroups within it. When the organization primarily has widely-shared routines, few options will be perceived; consequently, collective routines tend to blunt the impact of pressures for change. On the other hand, routines that become fragmented, diverse, and individual in the face of repeated external pressures may facilitate change.