Effectiveness of contamination prevention procedures in a trace explosives laboratory.

The effectiveness of a number of the explosives contamination prevention controls that are adopted within the Forensic Explosives Laboratory (FEL) principal trace laboratory has been scrutinised. Within the trace laboratory, rigorous procedures for processing forensic swab samples for traces of organic explosives are routinely adopted by forensic scientists. In order to demonstrate the effectiveness of these procedures, and the principle of separating the sample from the laboratory and the forensic scientist, explosives-free swab samples and appropriate controls have been processed, in accordance with trace laboratory procedures, in several explosives contaminated environments. In all cases, no explosives were detected in the post-processing samples, demonstrating that the contamination prevention procedures are effective, robust and fit-for-purpose.     

ETHICAL, LEGAL, AND PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE ISSUES INVOLVED IN ACTING AS A PSYCHOLOGIST PARENT COORDINATOR IN CHILD CUSTODY CASES

The use of Psychologist Parent Coordinators in child custody cases (called Special Masters in California) is becoming increasingly prevalent across the country. This postdivorce parenting coordination role is a legal/psychological hybrid, demanding knowledge and skill in legal domains (legal procedure, relevant case law, etc.), psychological domains (child development, family systems, etc.), and dispute resolution (mediation and settlement processes). Situated in the interface of legal and psychological paradigms, Parent Coordination may be reviewed by multiple legal and psychological regulatory bodies. Coming from varying perspectives, the practice guidelines and mandates of these legal, ethical, and licensing agencies impose multiple standards of review of Parent Coordination. A brief overview of the legal and psychological review processes applicable to Special Master work in California, as they relate to common issues that confront the Parenting Coordinator across the country, is the focus of this article. They suggest that the current lack of coordination of review processes creates a minefield of professional risk for the psychologist who chooses to practice in this role.     

Circling the Wagons: Soft News and Isolationism in American Public Opinion

This study investigates the differences in coverage of foreign policy by the soft and hard news media, and the implications of such differences for public attitudes regarding the appropriate U.S. role in the world. I find that, relative to traditional news outlets, the soft news media place greater emphasis on dramatic, human-interest themes and episodic frames and less emphasis on knowledgeable information sources or thematic frames, while also having a greater propensity to emphasize the potential for bad outcomes. I then develop a conceptual framework in order to determine the implications of these differences. I argue that the style of coverage of soft news outlets tends to induce suspicion and distrust of a proactive or internationalist approach to U.S. foreign policy, particularly among the least politically attentive segments of the public. I test this and several related hypotheses through multiple statistical investigations into the effects of soft news coverage on attitudes toward isolationism in general, and U.S. policy regarding the Bosnian Civil War in particular. I find that among the least politically attentive members of the public, but not their more-attentive counterparts, soft news exposure—but not exposure to traditional news sources—is indeed associated with greater isolationism in general, and opposition to a proactive U.S. policy toward Bosnia in particular.     

A difficulty with oaths: On trust, trustworthiness, and signalling

In the wake of the Enron and Worldcom financial scandals that rocked Wall Street in 2002, the US government’s financial regulatory body, the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) took the unprecedented step in June 2002 of requiring that the chief executives and chief financial officers of America’s 947 biggest companies to swear on oath that their company results and financial reports were to the best of their knowledge accurate. The one-off order was quickly followed by the passing of the Sarbanes-Oxely act, which will require many more CEOs and CFOs to certify their company reports and financial statements at regular intervals. In this paper we apply a simple signalling model to examine whether or not this type of institutional signal of trustworthiness is always efficient. We find that in the presence of signalling costs, the separating equilibrium can be socially inefficient as well as causing a general loss of trust. JEL classificationC72. D81. D82. K22     

Patents holders are not protected from US Government infringement by the Fifth Amendment

In a patent infringement action against the government, theUnited States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit interpreted28 USC section 1498 as rendering the government liable for theinfringement of a method patent only when every step of theclaimed method is practised in the United States and furtherheld that a plaintiff cannot allege patent infringement againstthe government as a Fifth Amendment taking.     

Why Does the Federal Government Appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada in Charter of Rights Cases? A Strategic Explanation

Despite the impressive body of scholarship dedicated to analyzing litigation involving the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the Supreme Court of Canada, there remains an incomplete understanding of why these cases come to the Court. Notably absent from the literature is sustained analysis of why governments, the most frequent class of appellant, bring Charter cases to the Supreme Court. Recent work has addressed the decision to appeal by the U.S. federal government and state attorneys general and provides an excellent theoretical starting point. I use case data collected from interviews with federal government lawyers and law reports to test whether the Canadian federal government's decisions to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada in Charter cases are also "procedurally rational." I conclude that these decisions are primarily shaped by strategic considerations related to policy costs, case importance, reviewability, and the prospect of winning on appeal, regardless of the party in power. In the process, the article further extends the application of strategic decisionmaking theory with regard to law and courts beyond judicial behavior, and beyond the U.S. context.     

Uncertain Justice for Nuclear Terror: Deterrence of Anonymous Attacks Through Attribution

In light of ongoing work to improve nuclear attribution capabilities, policymakers could be tempted to consider a nuclear terrorism deterrence doctrine relying strongly on the ability of those capabilities to support retaliation against states that supply materials used anonymously in an attack. Although the United States must develop the best possible nuclear attribution capabilities, at the very least to support response actions after an attack, prospects for deterrence are uncertain. To accommodate these uncertainties, as well as the wide range of possible nuclear terrorism scenarios, the United States should adopt a broadly scoped operationally ambiguous declaratory policy in the context of a comprehensive strategic doctrine to prevent nuclear terrorism.