Business Collusion as a Criminological Phenomenon: Exploring the Global Criminalisation of Business Cartels

Over the last dozen years or so there has been a burgeoning of criminal law for purposes of dealing with business cartels in a number of jurisdictions (for instance, the new ‘cartel offence’ introduced under the Enterprise Act 2002 in the UK). The discussion here provides first of all some account of this process of criminalisation, mapping it in terms of jurisdictions and the legal character of this category of cartel offending. It then seeks to explain and account for the phenomenon and more particularly to determine the extent to which it may be seen either as an element of more forceful prosecution strategy, or alternatively as a sea-change in moral perception and evaluation. Put another way, is this a development led by legal policy, or a genuine shift in outlook, which has produced a new legal policy? It will be argued finally that, in a more pragmatic perspective, the success of the criminalisation project in any case depends on the emergence of a genuine sense of ‘hard core’ delinquency, without which effective regulation by means of criminal law is unlikely to be achieved. In this respect, a manufactured sense of moral censure, fostered by prosecutors to facilitate leniency programmes, may (outside the US) eventually prove to be a point of vulnerability in such strategies.     

A Paradigm Shift? Employee Relations in the Victorian Public Service Since 1992

When Jeff Kennett was swept into office on 3 October 1992, one of his first priorities was to reform the Victorian public sector as one part of his broad strategy to get 'Victoria on the Move'. Without losing much time, and with very little community or parliamentary debate, both the Public Sector Management Act 1992 (Vic) and the Employee Relations Act 1992 (Vic) were passed. These pieces of legislation have been the main instruments to regulate terms and conditions of employment for employees in the Victorian public service. Changes to the legislation will be examined in this paper and discussed in the context of whether a paradigm shift has occurred in managing employee relations in the Victorian public service.     

Women, urban governance and the public service ethos

This article considers gender and the public sector, examining the degree to which women make a ‘difference’ to public service. In reporting on a research project into the 30% seat reservation or quota system for local female politicians in the Indian Mega-City of Mumbai (formerly Bombay), consideration is given to the ways in which women and men manage and organise their daily lives and contribute to public governance, with particular attention given to the cultural specificities of the Indian context in the period of post-colonial rule. It is argued that women politicians and officers are held in high regard as valued and respected holders of public office, that their values and attitudes are more closely aligned to a public service ethos than men's and that their role in the processes of change affecting India at the present time may prove to be significant. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Mother teresa meets Genghis Khan: The dialectics of hierarchy-enhancing and hierarchy-attenuating career choices

We replicated and extended earlier work showing the connection between social dominance orientation and the perceived attractiveness of hierarchy-enhancing and hierarchy-attenuating careers using data from two large and independent samples of UCLA students. Consistent with expectations, the data from both studies showed that the greater the students' level of social dominance orientation, the more attractive hierarchy-enhancing careers such as criminal prosecutor, police officer, and FBI agent were perceived to be. Similarly, the greater the students' social dominance orientation, the less attractive they found hierarchy-attenuating careers such as public defender, civil rights lawyer, and human rights advocate. These conclusions held even after controlling for the effects of socioeconomic status and political conservatism. Canonical correlation analysis disclosed that the attractiveness of these career paths within the general domain of law made only one, bipolar and unidimensional projection within social dominance space. The nature of this bipolar dimension reproduced the hypothesized distinction between hierarchy-enhancing and hierarchy-attenuating social roles. Theoretical implications of the results are discussed.     

The Phenomenon of the Urban Mummy

The environmental mummification of a body in an urban setting is an unusual event. Florida is known for its high temperatures and humidity, which typically result in the rapid putrefaction of bodies. However, under certain circumstances, Florida's climate provides an environment suitable for mummification, typically in isolated areas. We previously reported a case of a homicide/suicide in a residential neighborhood in which the mummified remains were undetected for several years. We have subsequently encountered two additional cases in which mummified bodies were discovered in urban settings. Presented in the historical context of the environmental conditions and postmortem processes involved in mummification, these cases illustrate the particular constellation of human behaviors and scenarios, as well as environmental conditions, which must coincide for this phenomenon to occur and highlight the necessity of the multidisciplinary approach to the medicolegal investigation of such deaths and the determination of the cause and manner of death.     

The Rise of Statutory Wills and the Limits of Best Interests Decision‐Making in Inheritance

This article addresses ‘statutory wills’ executed under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) for persons with impaired mental capacity. The article provides an overview of the historical development of statutory wills, before exploring their rising contemporary significance. It considers the shift from the previous ‘hypothetical substituted judgment’ test to the contemporary ‘best interests’ orientation of the MCA. The article assesses the problems that the best interests approach raises in this area, and its (in)compatibility with the right to equal recognition before the law under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, arguing that the pervasive reach of best interests in contemporary mental capacity law requires reconsideration. The paper concludes by suggesting that a more limited framing of the power to execute statutory wills is required in order to appropriately balance the rights of individuals with disabilities with practical considerations around the distribution of assets on death.