Cesare Beccaria: Utilitarian or retributivist?

Ever since Cesare Beccaria's On Crimes and Punishments first appeared in 1764, it has been common to regard its author as a theorist of criminal jurisprudence who stressed considerations of utility to the exclusion of considerations of justice. There is strong evidence for this view, and Beccaria was in many ways a forerunner of Bentham. There is, however, another side to Beccaria that has often been overlooked. In the way in which he established the right of the sovereign to punish and in his concern for the rights of the criminal (rights which no consideration of utility could override), Beccaria showed that he was much closer to the outlook commonly associated with Kant and Hegel than one would at first suspect. Though there were utilitarian aspects to his thought, Beccaria may be considered basically a retributivist who incorporated certain obvious, though by no means dominant, utilitarian themes into his work. In blending utilitarianism and retributivism, Beccaria was usually consistent, and he usually gave greater emphasis to the former.     

Serum levels of digoxin in sudden cardiac deaths

Digoxin was determined in postmortem serum samples from 100 patients who died suddenly of cardiac disease. Twenty patients had digoxin levels below the therapeutic range. Twenty-one patients had normal values within the therapeutic range (1.2-2.5 nmol/l). In ten cases there was probably an overdosage. Another 15 patients had markedly elevated levels. No digoxin concentration was found (below 0.5 nmol/l) in 34 patients. The importance of determination of digoxin levels both by the clinician and the pathologist is stressed as well as the necessity of using a correct sampling technique at autopsy.     

CURRENT RESEARCH ON CHILDREN'S POSTDIVORCE ADJUSTMENT

This article reviews the current research on the effects of marital conflict, parental adjustment, custody, and access on children following divorce. Evidence from research demonstrates that significantly more adjustment problems confront children, especially boys, of divorced parents compared to those in never-divorced families. However, when assessed in years following the divorce, these children are functioning in normal limits and do not appear "disturbed," although the media report the opposite. The article discusses an important British study finding that marital conflict and not the divorce affect children and that divorce may mitigate some of the more destructive effects. The analysis of research dealing with joint custody brings together both current and ongoing studies. A surprising finding in one study was that mothers who share custody are more satisfied than those having sole custody and whose children see their father periodically. However, both groups expressed more satisfaction with their residential arrangement than did sole-custody mothers whose children had no paternal contact. Court-ordered joint custody was less satisfactory than when the parents voluntarily agreed to that arrangement, and spouses reporting high levels of marital conflict tended to do less well in joint custody arrangements than did families with less conflict.     

THE POLITICS OF PARTICIPATION AND NONPARTICIPATION IN DISPUTE PROCESSES

Although the access to justice movement has placed great emphasis on expanding participation in dispute processing through informal mechanisms, little theoretical or empirical research in the area has explored the relationship between the organization of dispute processing and legal participation. This article develops a framework for investigating that relationship by examining the ideological and organizational structure of participation and nonparticipation in a comparison between mediation and prosecution of minor criminal cases. The analysis suggests that the concept of participation associated with informal mechanisms has played a role in transforming the institutional legitimacy of dispute processing, yet patterns of participation in conventional dispute processes are reproduced in the neighborhood justice center.