英国仲裁司法年度评论—2002

评论2002年英国法院对仲裁事项所作出的决定,包括:(1)执行仲裁条款的情况,对仲裁协议的形式要求和仲裁协议的独立性原则;(2)法院不支持仲裁协议的裁定;(3)仲裁员回避;(4)当事人就仲裁裁决上诉,包括上诉的程序、理由、案件事实认定的问题和法律适用的问题;(5)执行仲裁的裁决;(6)结论,总体评论2002年英国法院对仲裁的司法审查的情况。     

Corporate governance for NGOs?

Official aid funding for the development NGO sector grew fast in the late 1980s and early 1990s. These halcyon days are over. Thinkers within the NGO community are concerned with how to adapt to the end of the funding boom, and to correct its adverse effects. However, in spite of many calls to reorganize, re-think, and professionalize, one major set of issues has been largely ignored: the scope for introducing collective self-regulation of the organizational structure and procedures of NGOs in developing countries. The authors argue that this could make a major contribution to solving several problems currently faced by NGOs.     

Can a human rights framework improve biomedical and social scientific HIV/AIDS research for African women?

In most countries in Africa, the epidemiologic profile of HIV/AIDS is significantly different from that of the USA or Europe. Women in Africa are as likely to be HIV positive as men, while young women are significantly more likely to be HIV positive than young men. How can health research in Africa be made more responsive and relevant to women’s health needs? And how would a human rights perspective change the conduct of biomedical and social scientific research on gender and HIV/ AIDS in Africa? The application of a human rights framework to HIV/AIDS typically has focused on social justice issues employing national and international legal structures to legislate and advocate for HIV positive persons. This essay, however, offers some broad considerations of the links between the health of African women, biomedical and social scientific research, HIV/AIDS, research ethics, and the human rights movement.     

Effects of Family Violence on Child Behavior and Health During Early Childhood

Looking at families where children have been abused/neglected in early childhood, this study examined measures of child behavior and health to see if they tended to be worse when domestic violence is or has been present in a family. Further, caregiver and family characteristics as well as other case factors were examined, as possible moderators or mediators of the effects of domestic violence. Results indicate that domestic violence, of the type and severity occurring in our sample, does not have a direct effect on child outcomes by Age 6, when other associated variables are taken into account, but has considerable indirect effects. There is a pronounced impact of domestic violence on family functioning, the caregiver's general health and well being, and the quality of the caregiver's interaction with the child, which in turn are significantly associated with decrements of child functioning related to behavior problems and health. Some implications of this study for research in the area of domestic violence and child maltreatment are discussed.     

Consensus on validation of forensic voice comparison

Since the 1960s, there have been calls for forensic voice comparison to be empirically validated under casework conditions. Since around 2000, there have been an increasing number of researchers and practitioners who conduct forensic-voice-comparison research and casework within the likelihood-ratio framework. In recent years, this community of researchers and practitioners has made substantial progress toward validation under casework conditions becoming a standard part of practice: Procedures for conducting validation have been developed, along with graphics and metrics for representing the results, and an increasing number of papers are being published that include empirical validation of forensic-voice-comparison systems under conditions reflecting casework conditions. An outstanding question, however, is: In the context of a case, given the results of an empirical validation of a forensic-voice-comparison system, how can one decide whether the system is good enough for its output to be used in court? This paper provides a statement of consensus developed in response to this question. Contributors included individuals who had knowledge and experience of validating forensic-voice-comparison systems in research and/or casework contexts, and individuals who had actually presented validation results to courts. They also included individuals who could bring a legal perspective on these matters, and individuals with knowledge and experience of validation in forensic science more broadly. We provide recommendations on what practitioners should do when conducting evaluations and validations, and what they should present to the court. Although our focus is explicitly on forensic voice comparison, we hope that this contribution will be of interest to an audience concerned with validation in forensic science more broadly. Although not written specifically for a legal audience, we hope that this contribution will still be of interest to lawyers.