"We Live in a Country of UNHCR"—Refugee Protests and Global Political Society

Between September and December 2005 over 3,000 Sudanese refugees held a sit-in demonstration at the Mustapha Mahmoud Square in Cairo, Egypt, which is located directly across from the offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). We analyze the events of the refugee sit-in as an act of global political society, one that saw people outside the realm of the political making demands for recognition and a say in the solutions being developed to relieve their plight. We argue that the sit-in at Cairo was fundamentally a disagreement between the refugees and the UNHCR over the politics of protection, care, and mobility. The article analyzes the strategies through which the refugees named their "population of care" in ways that countered the UNHCR's governmental strategies to classify the Sudanese refugee population in Cairo. We propose the concept of "global political society" as a way of thinking about global political life from the perspective of those who are usually denied the status of political beings. Global political society is a highly ambiguous site where power relations are enacted, taken and retaken by various actors, but in ways that do not foreclose opportunities for refugees to actively reformulate the governmentalities of care and protection.     

Men and women's attributions of blame for domestic violence

Attributions of blame for the first and latest episodes of violence were assessed in a sample of 139 couples who were referred to a mandatory domestic violence treatment program in the military. Use of a methodology which allows for reports of nonmutually exclusive categories of attribution from both members of the dyad revealed more complex patterns of attributions than reflected in the existing literature. In addition, there were low rates of agreement within couples as to who was to blame for the violence. Although both men and women exhibited a high frequency of blaming their partner for both episodes of violence, men were significantly more likely to blame themselves for the latest than for the first episode. Attributions of blame were related to contextual variables in both men and women. Sex specific relationships emerged. These results were discussed with specific reference to predictions derived from attribution theory and their clinical implications.     

Isolation of the DNA minisatellite probe MZ 1.3 and its application to DNA 'fingerprinting' analysis

A minisatellite probe, MZ 1.3, detecting hypervariable fragment patterns was isolated from a human genomic library. A repetitive sequence of 27 bp length was identified which is contained in the probe approx. 40 times. The MZ 1.3 repeat shows variable homology of 53-73% to the repetitive sequence of the protein III gene of the bacteriophage M13 genome. Polymorphic restriction fragment patterns were found with MZ 1.3 using the enzymes Hinf I, BstN I, Hae III, Mbo I, PstI/Pvu II, and Rsa I. An average of 18 polymorphic fragments was observed using Hinf I as enzyme. The band sharing frequency after Hinf I digestion among unrelated individuals was determined to be 23.8 +/- 7.2%. An example for the application of MZ 1.3 to paternity testing in an incest case is given. The probe can be used with radioactive or non-radioactive detection systems. An approach is presented to compare polymorphic fragment patterns from individuals obtained by independent gel runs on the basis of relative band positions (RBP) and calculated in a computerized analysis.     

Thirty Years of Social Science in Supreme Court Criminal Cases*

The Supreme Court early took note of extralegal, “social science” materials in Muller v. Oregon (1908), and a half-century later made specific reference to social science authorities in the famous footnote 11 of Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Since Brown, much has been written about the Supreme Court's use of social science research evidence, but there has been little systematic study of that use. Those writing on the subject commonly focus on areas of law such as jury size, where social science has been used, and have generally assumed that social science information has been utilized in Supreme Court decisions with increasing regularity. Surprisingly little is known, however, about either the justices' baseline use of social science authorities, or many other aspects of their uses of social science information. The focus here is on the citation of social science research evidence in a sample of 240 criminal cases decided during the 30 years between the Supreme Court's 1958 and 1987 Terms. The resulting portrait contributes to a fuller understanding of the justices' use of social science materials, and may ultimately help promote more effective utilization of social science research evidence in Supreme Court decisions.