Collaborations between drug courts and service providers: Characteristics and challenges

Addressing the multiple treatment needs of drug-involved offenders can enhance outcomes including sobriety and recidivism. Meeting drug court offenders' needs requires collaborative linkages between courts and providers of treatment and other services; however, there has been limited research on linkages. Using semi-structured interview data collected from administrators of fourteen drug courts and providers of services to offenders in those drug courts, this study described collaborative linkages and the challenges involved in fostering them. Although results suggest a moderate to strong level of linkage as perceived by both drug court administrators and service providers, services other than substance abuse treatment were sparsely provided through the drug courts. Limitations in funding, management information systems, and staffing were perceived as barriers to linkage. Results offer directions for enhancing linkages between drug courts and service providers and should be of value in improving quality of drug court treatment and offender outcomes.     

Beteiligungsrechte der anerkannten Umweltverbände im Rahmen der Abweichungsentscheidung nach § 34 Abs. 3 BNatschG Besprechung der Entscheidung des OVG Sachsen-Anhalt vom 8.1.2007 (2 M 358/06)

Die Frage, ob den anerkannten Naturschutzverb?nden bei der Beeintr?chtigung von europ?ischen Schutzgebieten (FFH-Gebiet und SPA) ein Mitwirkungs- bzw. Klagerecht zusteht, wird in Literatur und Rechtsprechung unterschiedlich beantwortet. § 60 Abs. 2 Nr. 5 BNatSchG gew?hrt den anerkannten Naturschutzverb?nden ein Mitwirkungsrecht vor Befreiungen von Ge- und Verboten zum Schutz von „Schutzgebieten im Rahmen des § 33 Abs. 2 BNatSchG“. § 33 Abs. 2 BNatSchG verpflichtet die Landesgesetzgeber, Gebiete von gemeinschaftlicher Bedeutung (gelistete FFH-Gebiete) und Europ?ische Vogelschutzgebiete in nationalen Schutzgebietskatogerien auszuweisen. Das vorgenannte Regelungssystem wirft zwei kl?rungsbedürftige Fragen auf. Zum einen stellt sich die Frage, welche Gebiete als „Schutzgebiete im Rahmen des § 33 Abs. 2 BNatSchG“ anzusehen sind. Eine enge Auffassung z?hlt zu den „Schutzgebieten im Rahmen des § 33 Abs. 2 BNatSchG“ nur bereits in nationalen Schutzgebietskategorien (z.B. NSG oder Biosph?renreservat) ausgewiesene Gebiete. Die Gegenauffassung unterstellt FFH-Gebiete und Europ?ische Vogelschutzgebiete unabh?ngig von einer nationalen Schutzgebietsausweisung der Mitwirkungsregelung. Ferner ist umstritten, ob die Abweichungsentscheidung in § 34 Abs. 3 BNat- SchG, die einen Dispens von den in § 34 Abs. 2 BNatSchG konkretisierten Verboten des Art. 6 Abs. 2 FFH-RL zul?sst, als „Ausnahme“ oder „Befreiung“ anzusehen ist. Das OVG Sachsen- Anhalt hat in einem Beschluss vom 8.1.2007 die vorgenannten Fragen zugunsten der Verbandsbeteiligung beantwortet.     

Key Issues for Implementation of Chinese Open Government Information Regulations

The Chinese context is in many ways fundamentally different from other countries where freedom of information laws and regulations are currently implemented. The authors, Suzanne Piotrowski, Yahong Zhang, and Weiwei Lin of Rutgers University – Newark, and Wenxuan Yu of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, identify the primary issues surrounding implementation of China's new Open Government Information (OGI) regulations and compare the key concerns with those that have emerged in other contexts. The research included a survey of mid- and upper-level Chinese government bureaucrats. The authors compare their findings to an established international framework of freedom of information implementation. The essay concludes that while the Chinese context is unique, the key issues surrounding implementation of the OGI regulations mirror in many ways what is found in other countries.     

Securitization and Judicial Review: A Semiotic Perspective on the Relation Between the Security Council and International Judicial Bodies

This article examines therelation between the Security Council andinternational judicial bodies. The first partexplains, on the basis of linguistic theoriesof international security, the new role assumedby the Security Council after the Cold War. Thesecond part analyses, on the basis of insightsborrowed from legal semiotics, the position ofinternational judicial organs vis-à-vis theSecurity Council (especially the InternationalCourt of Justice and the Tribunals for Rwandaand the former Yugoslavia). The article arguesthat international judicial bodies havedeveloped ways of checking the power of theSecurity Council, which go beyond thetraditional modes of judicial review. Legalsemiotics offers the tools necessary tounderstand these countervailing activities andthus the relation between internationaljudicial bodies and the Security Council ingeneral.     

Abbasid Panegyric: Badīʿ Poetry and the Invention of the Arab Golden Age

This study argues that the third AH/ninth CE century panegyrists (praise poets) of the Abbasid caliphal court at Baghdad (and briefly at Samarra) were responsible for constructing the image of a Golden Age of Arab-Islamic dominion that was subsequently adopted by the poets and thinkers of the Nah?a or ‘Arab Awakening’ of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Challenged to create a poetry that would serve as the linguistic correlative of the astounding and unprecedented might and dominion of the rulers of the Arab-Islamic state, the Abbasid Modernist Poets (al-shu?arā? al-mu?dathūn) invented a powerfully and radically innovative poetic style, termed badī?. The panegyric odes of poets such as Abū Tammām and al-Bu?turī were canonized so as to promote a vision of an Arab-Islamic Golden Age and, further, to serve as models for the expression of Arab-Islamic hegemony and the conferral and contestation of legitimate authority. In the Nah?a of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Neo-Classical poets such as A?mad Shawqī recouped the Abbasid master poets to both retroject and project a vision of an Arab-Islamic ‘Enlightenment’. Finally, this study examines the fraught relationship of the post-Naksa (1967) Arab poet, as exemplified in the modern Yemeni poet ?Abd Allāh al-Baradūnī, with the poets and poetry of the Golden Age.