MOVING INTO GLOBAL COMPETITION: A Case Study of Alabama's Recruitment of Mercedes-Benz

Globalization is changing the game of economic development, but the emerging rules and optimal strategies remain somewhat unclear. The Mercedes case discussed in this article illustrates the rough and uncertain nature of this transition. From the perspective of the traditional strategy, the price of the jobs initially promised by Mercedes seemed high; and the ultimate cost was increased by the intense competition among the bidding states. Yet from another perspective, the incentives offered by Alabama can be viewed as “table stakes” for the new global game of economic development.     

Artifacts of CD burning in the Microsoft Windows master file table

When theft of a physical item occurs it is detectable by the fact that the object is missing, however, when the theft of a digital item occurs it can go unnoticed as exact replicas can be created. The original file is left intact but valuable information has been absconded. One of the challenges facing digital forensic examiners is detecting when files have been copied off of a computer system in some fashion. While certain methods do leave residual evidence behind, CD Burning has long been held as a copying method that cannot be identified. Through testing of the burning process and close examination of the New Technology File System (NTFS), artifacts from the master file table in the various versions of Microsoft Windows, markers have been found that are associated with copying or "burning" files to CD or DVD. Potential evidence that was once overlooked may now be detectable.     

A Primer on Criminal Child Abuse and Neglect Law

This article surveys major aspects of criminal child abuse and neglect law encountered by judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers, child advocates, and child care professionals. The author, whose casebook, Children and the Law: Doctrine, Policy and Practice (West 4th ed. 2010) (with Sarah H. Ramsey), is required reading in law schools throughout the United States, analyzes both constitutional and statutory law.     

Utility of the Frontonasal Suture for Estimating Age at Death in Human Skeletal Remains*

Abstract: This project evaluated the utility of the frontonasal suture for estimating age at death. Utilizing human remains of known age at death with varying degrees of fusion, curated at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, data were collected from the ectocranial surface of 522 crania; 68 of these were sagittally sectioned, allowing collection of internal data and observation of suture closure through the bone. Degree of ectocranial suture closure does not significantly predict age, even when sex and ancestry are accounted for. Suture closure progression data were converted into a Hershkovitz ratio (sum of the measurement of open portion divided by the total suture length), and regression models demonstrate that the effect of age accounts for only 13% of variation in suture closure.     

Book review: Criminal justice history and co‐corrections

Lawrence M. Friedman and Robert V. Percival, The Roots of Justice: Crime and Punishment in Alameda County, California, 1870–1910 Chapel Hill, N.C.: The University of North Carolina Press, 1981, 335 pp.

Charles Campbell, Serving Time Together: Men and Women in Prison Fort Worth, Texas Christian University Press, 1980, 237 pp.     

Violence,Law, and Politics: Hannah Arendt and Robert M. Cover in Comparative Perspective

Despite many significant points of intersection between his work and that of Hannah Arendt, the legal scholar Robert Cover largely declined to engage her perspective, which posed major challenges to his own. While scholars seeking to rethink Cover's legacy in order to develop a jurisprudence of violence have criticized Cover's acquiescence to the Hobbesian model of the sovereign state, they have similarly ignored Arendt's critique of the Hobbesian model and her attempts to build an alternative to it. This article examines central issues of convergence and divergence between Arendt's and Cover's approaches to law, politics, and violence with the aim to redress this neglect of Arendt's perspective. It begins by focusing on their interpretations of the role and significance of the courtroom trial. It then compares their analysis of the character, effects, and implications of domination as a type of organized power and as a means of conceptualizing punishment, before it concentrates on their instrumental conception of violence, the issue of justification, and its relationship to power. The article concludes by arguing that Arendt's approach, which situates an analysis of law and violence within a broader critique of modernity, provides a more trenchant critical framework for examining the rise of the carceral state than does Cover's.     

When,How and Why Are Junior Coalition Parties Able to Affect a Government's Foreign Policy? A Study of Swedish Coalition Governments 2006–2014

Junior partners in a coalition government are torn between an eagerness to profile themselves, and to show loyalty to the coalition. We investigate when, how and why junior coalition parties affect foreign policy and profile themselves despite demands for national unity. We study two Swedish centre‐right governments in 2006–2010 and 2010–2014. The parties' foreign policy positions in election manifestos are compared to the foreign policy positions presented in the joint Alliance manifesto and yearly government declarations. An explorative analysis of possible explanations for junior parties' influence is based on elite interviews. The results indicate that junior coalition parties might influence the foreign policy in symbolic value related issues, but less so in issues with real policy implications. Our analysis reveals the importance of the leading member of the coalition and how junior parties converge over time towards the position of the senior coalition member.     

The Scope of Conversion: Property and Contract

The article asks whether the tort of conversion should be expanded so as to protect contractual rights. The suggestion, found in recent case law and academic texts, that conversion should protect contractual rights because such rights belong to the law of property is rejected. It is argued that this approach is purely semantic and ignores the fact that contractual rights have different characteristics to other kinds of rights that we typically class as ‘property rights’. The better approach, it is argued, is to ask whether it is actually possible to protect contractual rights through the tort of conversion. The article attempts to show that the absence of certain features from contractual rights, in particular the fact that such rights do not relate to a physical object and are not exigible against the world, makes the expansion of conversion extremely difficult.     

Radiocarbon analysis of dental enamel and bone to evaluate date of birth and death: perspective from the southern hemisphere

Radiocarbon analysis was conducted on dental enamel, cortical bone and trabecular bone from four human adults from Andean Peru with known birth dates and death dates, the latter all falling within the modern bomb-curve period. Radiocarbon results were compared with known tropospheric values from the southern hemisphere. The results demonstrate that dental enamel can provide useful information regarding birth dates in consideration of known formation times of the specific teeth examined if the radiocarbon values fall within the modern bomb-curve period. Trabecular bone radiocarbon values are closer to the tropospheric values at the date of death than are values from cortical bone reflecting relative differences in the rate of bone remodeling in those tissues. Age at death also represents an important factor.