The energy model muddle

It is well-known that modelers and policy analysts gain access to policymaking arenas based on what they know. Therefore, critics of models are quick to employ various types of technical standards when evaluating policy models in order to assess validity and reliability of claims to knowledge. This article argues that, in the effort to make models better, overreliance on technical standards misses the important political and policy reasons to model: models call attention to the modelers and to their advice about important policy problems of the day. In this sense, models are used as symbols, as claims to authority, whether or not the underlying knowledge is technically up to snuff. Drawing on the experience of energy policy models, this article explores the problem of models as knowledge versus models as symbols and it examines the muddle that conflicts between them produce.     

What Difference Does a Robe Make? Comparing Mediators with and without Prior Judicial Experience

This article reports the results of two studies. The first study, based on the responses of attorneys to questions about the reasons for the success of mediators with and without prior judicial experience, shows that the capacity of the mediator to gain the confidence of the disputants was most important for mediators with and without prior judicial experience. Although certain process skills were viewed as important to the success of both former judges and nonjudges, in general, process skills were significantly more important for nonjudges than for former judges. The capacity to provide useful case evaluations, on the other hand, was significantly more important for former judges than for nonjudges. The second study, based upon attorney responses to questions about unsatisfactory mediators, reinforced the conclusions of the first study regarding the importance of confidence-building attributes. For both judges and nonjudges, the mediator's inability to gain the confidence of the parties was a major reason for his or her lack of success.     

UK Abortion Law: Reform Proposals,Private Members’ Bills,Devolution and the Role of the Courts

UK abortion law remains unsettled, and subject to on‐going controversy and reform. This article offers a comprehensive critique of all reforms implemented or proposed since 2016. It examines reforms proposed in both Houses of Parliament and contextualises them within a public law analysis, showing both that the complex parliamentary processes relating to Private Members’ Bills have frustrated reform attempts, and that these attempts have been contradictory in their aims between the two Houses. Secondly, it examines the unique positions of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales to show the extent to which devolutionary settlements have influenced both reforms and executive involvement. Finally, it examines the potential impact of the courts on abortion law following Re Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission's Application for Judicial Review, showing that the Supreme Court's reframing of the debate in human rights terms is likely to affect abortion law, not only in Northern Ireland, but in the whole of the UK.     

Household furniture tip-over deaths of young children

The potential for the injury or death of a child resulting from the tip-over of a piece of household furniture or a domestic appliance has not been previously well recognized. We reviewed nine accidental deaths of young children that resulted from avoidable residential hazards and/or lapses in supervision of the children by their caregivers. The offending household items included televisions, bedroom dressers, a kitchen stove, and a lounge chair. The causes of death were mechanical asphyxia, blunt trauma, and combined blunt head trauma and asphyxia. All of the deaths could have been prevented by appropriate anchoring of the piece of furniture and/or closer supervision of the child. A thorough multidisciplinary investigation is essential in establishing the cause and manner of death in such cases and in identifying risk factors that may aid in the prevention of future childhood deaths.     

State Failure and Success in Uganda and Zimbabwe: The Logic of Political Decay and Reconstruction in Africa

This article uses the post-colonial experiences of Uganda and Zimbabwe to demonstrate both the strengths and weaknesses of competing theoretical explanations for problems of state and economic failure in Africa. It shows that they all explain some but not all of these processes. It demonstrates the crucial role of contextual circumstances and ongoing structural changes in each country in determining the success or failure of policy regimes and, of current prospects for a long-term transformation to liberal democratic capitalism.     

Sanya: Japan's internal colony

Abstract

You have to get up early to know Tokyo. Take Baba as a case in point. By day, it is an ordinary, slightly run-down park beside the tracks of the city's central commuting loop, halfway between Shinjuku and Ikebukuro stations. Go at dawn and a thousand men populate the park—young men in shirts and sneakers, carpenters in their belling, knicker-like pants, the muscular dokata, construction workers, duffle bags thrown over their shoulders and heavy black cloth shoes on their feet, a handful of men in office suits and leather shoes, old men, hoboes—the park is a different world. At six, the action begins. Vans pull up and encircle the square, the contractors dismount, enter the crowd, and wait as clusters of men gather around them to negotiate the sale of their day's labor. Small eating carts dot the park and along the cement paths second-hand clothes vendors peddle pants and jackets piled on squares of open cloth. The bargaining reaches a climax at seven, when wages are highest, and goes on for another hour as weaker, less aggressive men take what is left. Then, one by one, the vans with their cargoes of workers drive off, the cart-owners lock up, the clothes vendors bundle their goods back into their squares of cloth, and by eight Baba is once more a drab, empty park.     

Militarized Justice in New Democracies: Explaining the Process of Military Court Reform in Latin America

While a large body of literature emphasizes the importance of judicial reform in new democracies, few scholars have examined the reform of military justice systems in these settings—despite the potential for these courts to compete directly with civilian courts and subvert the rule of law. This article focuses on Latin America to empirically examine how the process of reforming military courts has played out in each democracy following authoritarian rule. We outline two distinct pathways: (1) unilateral efforts on the part of civilian reformers, and (2) strategic bargains between civilian reformers and the military. Within the unilateral category, we further distinguish efforts driven by civilian courts, those pursued by politicians, and those undertaken in the context of larger political transformations. Ultimately, we find that, absent a dramatic defeat of an authoritarian regime and its armed forces, reform efforts that do not engage and bargain with the military directly often fail to achieve long‐term compliance and improvements in human rights practices. The success of such reform efforts, therefore, may come at a cost in other areas of democracy and civil‐military relations. We conclude the article by summarizing our findings and reflecting on the lessons they provide for ongoing military justice reform efforts around the globe.