Judges,Litigants, and the Design of Courts

Two important perspectives on courts highlight fundamentally different elements of adjudication and yield distinct predictions about judicial outcomes. The Attitudinal Model of judicial voting posits judge ideology as a strong predictor of court outcomes. Alternatively, the Law and Economics perspective focuses on the settlement behavior of litigants and reasons that while judges may vote ideologically, litigants adapt to these ideological proclivities, nullifying the effect of judge ideology. This analysis focuses on reconciling expectations about the effects of judge ideology and litigant strategies by examining their contingent nature and the conditioning effects of institutional design. The analysis examines state supreme courts from 1995–1998 to identify empirical evidence supporting both perspectives. While some state supreme courts have discretionary dockets allowing judges greater opportunities to exercise their ideology, others lack discretionary docket control, making dockets and outcomes largely litigant driven. Support for each perspective largely hinges on this fundamental feature of institutional design.     

The consequences of perpetrating psychological aggression in dating relationships: a descriptive investigation

Psychological aggression is the most prevalent form of aggression in dating relationships, with women perpetrating as much, if not more, psychological aggression than men. Researchers have advocated for an examination of the consequences that follow psychological aggression for the perpetrator, in hopes that this will lead to innovative intervention programs aimed at ameliorating dating violence. The current study investigated the self-reported consequences of having perpetrated psychological aggression against a dating partner among female college students in a current dating relationship (N = 115). Participants endorsed numerous consequences as having followed their perpetration of psychological aggression, including both punishing and potentially reinforcing consequences. Furthermore, findings indicated that for some perpetrators, psychological aggression may function as a method of emotion regulation. Implications of these findings for future research and intervention are discussed.     

Dynamic Tempered Transitions for Exploring Multimodal Posterior Distributions

George Casella Department of Statistics, University of Florida, Griffin-Floyd Hall, P.O. Box 118545, Gainesville, FL 32611 e-mail: casella{at}stat.ufl.edu Multimodal, high-dimension posterior distributions are wellknown to cause mixing problems for standard Markov chain MonteCarlo (MCMC) procedures; unfortunately such functional formsreadily occur in empirical political science. This is a particularlyimportant problem in applied Bayesian work because inferencesare made from finite intervals of the Markov chain path. Toaddress this issue, we develop and apply a new MCMC algorithmbased on tempered transitions of simulated annealing, addinga dynamic element that allows the chain to self-tune its annealingschedule in response to current posterior features. This importantfeature prevents the Markov chain from getting trapped in minormodal areas for long periods of time. The algorithm is appliedto a probabilistic spatial model of voting in which the objectivefunction of interest is the candidate's expected return. Wefirst show that such models can lead to complex target formsand then demonstrate that the dynamic algorithm easily handleseven large problems of this kind.     

Understanding rib fracture patterns: incomplete and buckle fractures

Reconstructing traumatic thoracic events, especially when soft tissues are absent, requires an advanced understanding of ribcage fracture patterns. The morphology and orientation of ribs complicate the fracture pattern, as a single blow often causes multiple fractures at various locations. Furthermore, fracture types observed in ribs are not explained easily by current bone biomechanic literature. Using evidential skeletal material archived at the Regional Forensic Center, Memphis, the ribs of 43 blunt force trauma cases were analyzed. A total of 195 incomplete fractures and 63 buckle fractures were noted. Incomplete fractures, previously thought to be common in children but rare in adults, were found among individuals ranging in age from 21-76 years. A buckle fracture, failure resulting from compressive instability, has been undefined previously in bone trauma literature but was repeatedly observed in this sample. This study elucidates recognizable rib fracture patterns while emphasizing gross bone examination for force and mechanical factors.     

Changing aid patterns in Southern Africa

The paper argues that the increase in official development assistance to South Africa following its transition to majority rule was largely at the expense of other countries in the region. While this refocusing of aid has been aimed at disadvantaged black groups, it will also reinforce the regional dominance of the South African economy. Aid to Botswana, Lesotho, and Namibia has also become far more concentrated on human resource investment than on, for example, assistance for industrial development. It is argued that this will create a skill base which will benefit South African business expansion and which, when placed in the context of liberalised trade regimes, will tend to favour those already well placed in market terms who will often be white, male, and South African. Only a properly coordinated gender- and poverty-sensitive regional aid programme will help to counterbalance the polarisation in favour of established South African business interests that seems the likely consequence of present policies.     

Eating Attitudes and Weight-Loss Attempts in Female Adolescents and Their Mothers

This study examined the relationship between mothers' eating attitudes and weight-loss attempts and their adolescent daughters' body dissatisfaction and weight-loss attempts. Two modes of transmission of mother's values to the daughter (modeling and encouragement) and two forms of weight-loss behavior (moderate and extreme) were examined. Female 10th and llth graders and their mothers completed eating attitudes and behaviors questionnaires. Daughter's moderate weight-loss attempts (e.g., dietary restraint and exercising) and its associated body dissatisfaction were significantly associated with mother's encouraging her daughter to lose weight. In contrast, daughter's more extreme weight-loss behaviors (e.g., fasting, crash dieting, and skipping meals) were predicted by mother's reports of her own body dissatisfaction and mother's use of extreme weight-loss behaviors herself. These effects were not simply an artefact of daughter's body weight. Implications for theory and prevention were noted.     

Ontological Anti-naturalism and the Emergence of Life and Mind: Castoriadis and Deacon

This essay compares the ideas of Cornelius Castoriadis and Terrence W. Deacon. Castoriadis’s anti-Naturalistic ontology, with its conception of radical ontological creation and fundamental indeterminacy, along with his analysis of the category of the “for-itself”, comprising all subjective beings from the living organism to the social-historical, is compared to Deacon’s exploration of the emergence of life and mind, which sees the emergence of teleological beings as resulting from the creation of form-generating constraints that involve new types of dynamic process. Significant parallels and convergences between Castoriadis and Deacon are uncovered and explored.     

A Community-Level Comparison of Terrorism Movements in the United States

The aim of this article is to identify characteristics of communities where persons indicted under terrorism charges lived, planned, and prepared prior to carrying out a terrorist act. Guided by a model of community deterioration and using data from the Terrorism and Extremist Violence in the United States database, findings indicate: (1) half of all census tracts where terrorists planned and prepared for attacks were located in the western United States; nearly one fourth were in the Northeast; (2) nationally, terrorist pre-incident activity is more likely to occur in census tracts with lower percentages of high school graduates for Al Qaeda and associated movements (AQAM) terrorism but not for far-right terrorism, higher percentages of households living below the poverty level, more urban places, and more unemployed; and (3) communities with terrorist pre-incident activity are different types of places compared to those where there was no pre-incident activity, generally between different regions of the country, and specifically in terms of differences across far-right and AQAM terrorist movements.     

A Three-Step Latent Class Analysis to Identify How Different Patterns of Teen Dating Violence and Psychosocial Factors Influence Mental Health

Although multiple forms (i.e., physical, threatening, psychological, sexual, and relational abuse) and patterns (i.e., perpetration and victimization) of violence can co-occur, most existing research examines these experiences individually. Thus, the purpose of this study is to investigate: (1) homogenous subgroups based on victimization and perpetration of multiple forms of teen dating violence; (2) predictors of membership in these subgroups; and (3) mental health consequences associated with membership in each subgroup. Nine hundred eighteen adolescents in the 9^th or 10^th grade at seven public high schools in Texas participated in the survey (56?% female, White: 30?%, Hispanic: 32?%, African American: 29?%, others: 9?%). A three-step latent class analysis was employed. Five latent teen dating violence classes were identified: (1) nonviolence; (2) emotional/verbal abuse; (3) forced sexual contact; (4) psychological?+?physical violence; and (5) psychological abuse. Females, African Americans, and youth who had higher acceptance of couple violence scores and whose parents had less education were more likely to members of dating violence classes compared with the nonviolence class. Adolescents who experienced multiple types of dating violence reported greater mental health concerns. Prevention programs may benefit by identifying the homogenous subgroups of teen dating violence and targeting adolescent teen dating violence accordingly.