Facing reality in the George Bush era

where he is Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor. He was Ronald Reagan’s first chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. He is author of the recently published Rendezvous with Reality: The American Economy After Reagan,and coauthor of Public Policy toward Corporate Takeovers.     

Operational criteria for the determination of suicide

Suicide is an important public health problem for which we have an inadequate public health database. In the United States, decisions about whether deaths are listed as suicides on death certificates are usually made by a coroner or medical examiner. These certification decisions are frequently marked by a lack of consistency and clarity, and laws and procedures for guiding these decisions vary from state to state and even from county to county. Without explicit criteria to aid in this decision making, coroners or medical examiners may be more susceptible to pressures from families or communities not to certify specific deaths as suicide. In addition, coroners or medical examiners may certify similar deaths differently at different times. The degree to which suicides may be underreported or misclassified is unknown. This makes it impossible to estimate accurately the number of deaths by suicide, to identify risk factors, or to plan and evaluate preventive interventions. To remedy these problems, a working group representing coroners, medical examiners, statisticians, and public health agencies developed operational criteria to assist in the determination of suicide. These criteria are based on a definition of suicide as "death arising from an act inflicted upon oneself with the intent to kill oneself." The purpose of these criteria is to improve the validity and reliability of suicide statistics by: (1) promoting consistent and uniform classifications; (2) making the criteria for decision making in death certification explicit; (3) increasing the amount of information used in decision making; (4) aiding certifiers in exercising their professional judgment; and (5) establishing common standards of practice for the determination of suicide.     

Public Opinion, Privatisation and the Electoral Politics of Telstra

During the 1996 election campaign, the Liberal-National Party Coalition pledged that if elected it would partly privatise Telstra. The pledge was a central part of its campaign pitch. This paper argues that the proposal came at a time when the tide of public opinion had moved against privatisation; it shows how the Opposition used poll data both to present its own proposal in the most favourable light and to portray the difference between its position and that of Labor Government's as minimal; and, using the surveys commissioned by both sides, it evaluates the success of this strategy. More generally, it suggests that in a "post-ideological" age, party ideology remains important. And it illustrates how polls can be used by parties not just to establish what the majority thinks but to galvanise support, neutralise opposition and convert those who harbour doubts.     

Journal Publishing, Journal Reputation, and the United Kingdom's Research Assessment Exercise

Many academic lawyers believe that the Research Assessment Exercise has encouraged writing for academic journals, often at the expense of other forms of scholarly discourse. Moreover, it is widely perceived that the reputation of the journal in which research is published affects how that research is assessed in connection with the RAE. In this article, the authors report data gathered from a large-scale study measuring the perceptions of academic lawyers concerning the journal publishing process, how the RAE has affected journal quality generally, and how specific journals rank in terms of academic quality and their perceived importance to the RAE process.     

Regulating E-commerce: Formal Transactions in the Digital Age

As digital transactions become more common the need to regulate the commercial frontier of cyberspace becomes increasingly urgent. This has been recognised by national governments, supranational bodies and international organisations. The regulations proposed have though been offered in a piecemeal fashion. National governments attempt to fit cyberspace within the four corners of their (familiar) domestic jurisprudence, and even supranational and international bodies have been guilty of simply extending previous rules to the realm of cyberspace. This paper suggests that a coherent approach to the regulation of electronic commerce may start with an identification and application of principles rather than with the transference of rules. It uses as a reference, proposals for the modernisation of land transfer systems introduced in Canada and Australasia, currently being evaluated by the Keeper of the Registers of Scotland and the Law Commission/HM Registry. Underlying these proposals is a central issue: how are traditional formal requirements for property transactions accommodated in cyberspace? More fundamentally, if that most formal of transactions, the transfer of real property, can be modernised to meet the challenge of a new digital age, can not all modes of commerce be similarly modernised for the digital era? This paper evaluates whether a principled approach to answering these questions can, more generally, provide a workable framework for approaching e-commerce regulation.     

Mental health correlates of intimate partner violence in marital relationships in a nationally representative sample of males and females

It is important to understand the epidemiology of intimate partner violence (IPV) experienced by both males and females. Data were drawn from the U.S. National Comorbidity Survey Replication. The relationships between physical IPV and child abuse, mental disorders, and suicidal ideation and attempts among males and females were examined. The results indicate that child sexual abuse was associated with IPV among males, whereas child physical and sexual abuse was associated with IPV among females. IPV was associated with poor mental health outcomes for males and females, although sex differences are noted. The sex differences indicate that females experience a wider range of poor mental health outcomes compared to males. Knowledge about correlates of IPV can be useful in identifying individuals exposed to violence. Further research is required to identify effective methods to reduce exposure to IPV and to adequately address the specific needs of male and female victims of IPV.