The International Court of Justice and International Law-making: The Judicial Activism/Self-Restraint Antinomy

The antinomy between judicial activism and self-restraint, wellknown to students of the US Supreme Court, has implicationstoday also for international tribunals. The resort to judicialsettlement of international dispute is still predicated upona certain basic homogeneity of legal cultures and values goingwith them. When, however, social and cultural values are infundamental tension or collision with each other, there maybe an inclination towards activism to try to resolve the conflictsor contradictions. Any such activism on the part of the InternationalCourt of Justice, after the way seemed opened by the landmarkadvisory opinion in Nambia in 1971, effectively "overruling"earlier, more static jurisprudence, seems, however, to havebeen tempered by a perceived obligation of judicial respectfor the constitutional role and missions of the other policy-makingUN organs and other main players in the international community.As a result, this tends to lead to a situation in which theCourt may be dealing with no major, high political–legaltension-issues of the day.     

Ability, Effort, and Performance Among First-Year Law Students at Brigham Young University

This study considers the relationships between first-year law students' admission credentials, the amount of time they spend in study, and the grades they receive on examination. Findings include that there is a significant drop in effort during the first year, that while effort invested in study pays off in improved grades this effort is much less significant in explaining grades than is student ability as measured by LSAT and undergraduate grades, that students in the middle and bottom of the class are helped more by substantial study than are those in the top, that class attendance is much more valuable in raising grades than is equivalent time in other study, and that none of the various study techniques examined could be linked with major differences in results.     

Test–Retest Reliability of the Revised Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS2)

The Revised Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS2) are widely used to measure intimate partner aggression. Various aspects of the CTS2 and its subscales have been examined, e.g. factor structure, internal consistency, and validity, but little or no evidence exists regarding the stability of the self-report of aggression on the CTS2 This study examines the stability of reports of aggression against a partner on the CTS2 among 82 men court-mandated to a batterer intervention program. At both testing times men reported on aggression occurring in the year prior to beginning treatment. Using variety scores, stability of report was strong for psychological aggression (r = 0.69), physical assault (r = 0.76), injury (r = 0.70), and negotiation (r = 0.60), but weaker for sexual coercion (r = 0.30). Implications for the use of the CTS2 in court-mandated populations are discussed.

A validated SPME-GC-MS method for simultaneous quantification of club drugs in human urine

A solid-phase microextraction-gas chromatographic-mass spectrometric (SPME-GC-MS) method has been developed and validated for measuring four club drugs in human urine. These drugs include gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB), ketamine (KET), methamphetamine (MAMP), and methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA). These drugs are referred to as 'club drugs' because of their prevalence at parties and raves. Deuterium labeled internal standards for each of the four drugs was included in the assay to aid in quantitation. The drugs were spiked into human urine and derivatized using pyridine and hexylchloroformate to make them suitable for GC-MS analysis. The SPME conditions of extraction time/temperature and desorption time/temperature were optimized to yield the highest peak area for each of the four drugs. The final SPME parameters included a 90 degrees C extraction for 20min with a 1min desorption in the GC injector at 225 degrees C using a splitless injection. All SPME work was done using a 100microm PDMS fiber by Supelco. The ratio of pyridine to hexylchloroformate for derivatization was also optimized. The GC separation was carried out on a VF-5ht column by Varian (30m, 0.25mm i.d., 0.10microm film thickness) using a temperature program of 150-270 degrees C at 10 degrees C/min. The instrument used was a ThermoFinnigan Trace GC-Polaris Q interfaced with a LEAP CombiPal autosampler. The data was collected by using extracted ion chromatograms of marker m/z values for each drug from the total ion chromatograms (TIC) (full scan mode). Calibration curves with R(2)>0.99 were generated each day using the peak area ratios (peak area drug/peak area internal standard) versus concentration. The validated method resulted in intra-day and inter-day precision (% R.S.D.) of less than 15% and a % error of less than 15% for four concentrations in the range of 0.05-20microg/mL (MAMP) and 0.10-20microg/mL (GHB, KET, and MDMA). This method has the advantage of an easy sample preparation with acceptable accuracy and precision for the simultaneous quantification of these four drugs of abuse and shows no interference from the urine matrix.     

The ‘China Threat’ through the Lens of US Print Media: 1992–2006

China scholars have examined the ‘China threat’ theory from various theoretical perspectives, offered a range of explanations for the theory's emergence and forecast the potential implications for US–China relations. However, few scholars have empirically studied the ‘China threat’ theory through the lens of the US media. This is a critical oversight, because the media plays a pivotal role in shaping US public opinion and US foreign policy, and the media is a key channel for ‘China threat’ dissemination and popularization. This study seeks to redress this oversight by empirically examining ‘China threat’ coverage in the US print media over a 15-year period from 1992 to 2006. We use content-analysis methodology to systematically collect, code and analyze ‘China threat’ data from five major US newspapers and to track the frequency and content of this coverage over time.

Our analysis reveals many interesting patterns in ‘China threat’ media coverage. First, the initial emergence of ‘China threat’ arguments in the US print media corresponded with the sharp upward turn in China's economic growth rates in the early 1990s. However, since the early 1990s, ‘China threat’ coverage has not mirrored China's steady growth. Rather, the media coverage was cyclic, featuring three key peaks (1996, 2000 and 2005) followed by subsequent declining interest. Second, our analysis reveals that the focus of these stories also varied over time. Perceptions of China as a political/ideological threat dominated media coverage in the earlier years (1992–1994) but steadily declined after 1995 and totally disappeared from the US print media after 2001. Perceptions of China as a military/strategic threat replaced political/ideological concerns in 1995, and the military focus has dominated media coverage ever since. Perceptions of China as an economic/trade threat persisted steadily throughout the 15-year time period with a clear uptick in recent years. We conclude this analysis by turning to the literature on realism, agenda setting and information processing to offer possible explanations for these empirical trends.     

Voting for Pareto optimality: a multidimensional analysis

We compare unanimity rule and majority rule in their abilities to produce Pareto superior and Pareto optimal alternatives in fixed number of rounds of voting using a two-dimensional spatial voting model with random proposals, sincere proposals, and strategic proposals. Our findings show that for random or sincere proposals, majority rule is at least as likely to select a Pareto optimal outcome as unanimity rule. For strategic proposals, the subgame perfect equilibrium under unanimity rule is Pareto optimal. For other k-majority rules, the outcome is Pareto optimal or very close to it. For outcomes that are both Pareto optimal and Pareto superior, unanimity rule outperforms majority rule.