Globalization and the Decline of Legal Consciousness: Torts, Ghosts, and Karma in Thailand

This study analyzes the transformation of legal consciousness associated with the process of globalization. It examines changing conceptions of injury and compensation in northern Thailand, where global economic and cultural flows have had a dramatic impact over the past twenty years. In their "injury narratives," ordinary Thai people describe the harm they have suffered, the causes they identify, the issues of responsibility with which they struggle, the obligations and remedy systems they consider relevant, and the role of law as they perceive it. These accounts, as well as litigation records from the Chiangmai Provincial Court, suggest that a transformation of Thai legal consciousness has indeed occurred, but not in the direction one might have expected. Rather than embracing liberal legalism or conceptualizing their grievances in terms of rights, injury victims in post-globalization Thailand are now less inclined to perceive their experiences in legal terms and more inclined to rely on a new form of religious discourse in which Buddhist precepts justify the injured person's decision to refrain from the pursuit of compensation. This article offers an explanation of why globalization appears to have pushed legal consciousness in the direction of religiosity rather than rights.     

The clinical problem of occult cardiac amyloidosis. Forensic implications.

A 68-year-old man with known coronary heart disease experienced rapidly progressive cardiac dysfunction and was found to have occult cardiac amyloidosis at autopsy. The amyloidosis was undiagnosed during life and initially at autopsy. Marked diffuse involvement of the intramural coronary arteries by amyloid deposits resulted in severe luminal compromise of numerous medium and small vessels. The myocardium proper was virtually spared from amyloid deposits. Amyloid-related coronary narrowing contributed to cardiac ischemia and sudden death. The significance of amyloid coronary disease in this patient relates primarily to the difficulty in considering the diagnosis when other reasons for cardiac signs and symptoms preexist. Also, the adverse effects of amyloid coronary disease may be profound without direct myocardial involvement.     

Frame Spillover: Media Framing and Public Opinion of a Multifaceted LGBT Rights Agenda

Between May and July 2003, a shift in how the US public viewed the legality of consensual homosexual sex occurred. While in May the largest percentage of respondents to date supported decriminalizing such activity, that percentage dropped eleven points two months later. Similar declines in support were evident in the same period over a range of gay and lesbian rights claims. The ruling in Lawrence v. Texas (2003) decriminalizing homosexual sex is the obvious intervening event. To explain this pattern, coding of print and televised news coverage of the ruling throughout 2003 was undertaken. Coverage was not overtly negative in terms of antigay rhetoric or hostility toward the judiciary; rather, the dominant media frame focused on the implications of Lawrence for an entirely separate rights issue: marriage equality. This article examines the dynamic of frame “spillover,” or the idea that media focus on a distinct and not widely supported rights claim in a multifaceted rights agenda might depress support across the entire rights agenda. The findings call for further research, and they have implications for scholarship on public opinion, social movement framing, and ideational development and policy debate as studied within the broader field of American political development.     

关于单位行贿罪中的主体认定及相关问题的法律思考

具有法人资格的企业是单位行贿罪主体已成定论,但随着我国经济的快速发展,单位行贿罪的主体逐渐多样化和复杂化。实践中,一人公司、私营企业、单位分支机构或内设机构、个人挂靠型、风险经营型企业、承包企业等几种特殊企业能否成为单位行贿罪的主体是司法实践中对于该类犯罪行为定性的关键。除了正面了解单位行贿罪的主体范围,还应了解其与相关因素的关系,以期准确把握单位行贿罪与相关行贿受贿犯罪的关系。     

Die Zust?ndigkeit der L?nder und Gemeinden zur Erlassung allgemeiner Bestimmungen auf dem Gebiet des Abgabenrechts und von Abgabenverfahrensregelungen

Die mit 1. J?nner 2010 in Kraft getretene Vorschrift des ?? 7 Abs 6 F-VG gibt dem Bundesgesetzgeber die Zust?ndigkeit zur Regelung der allgemeinen Bestimmungen auf dem Gebiet des Abgabenrechts und des Abgabenverfahrensrechts. Welche Zust?ndigkeiten nun den L?ndern und Gemeinden f??r die Erlassung von abgabenrechtlichen Vorschriften bleiben, war bereits Gegenstand von Untersuchungen einiger Fachautoren und wird in diesem Beitrag unter Ber??cksichtigung der aufgeworfenen Argumente nochmals vertieft analysiert.