WHAT SHOULD FAMILY LAWYERS KNOW? RESULTS OF A SURVEY OF PRACTITIONERS AND STUDENTS1

The contemporary practice of family law demands that lawyers know far more than the law. Results of a recent survey of professionals and law students suggest that today's family lawyer needs knowledge and skills that are often missing from law school curricula. Survey respondents emphasized the importance of strong interpersonal skills like listening, negotiation, and working with clients in emotional crisis, as well as keen understanding of financial issues in family law, the impact of separation and divorce on children, and the ethical dimensions of family law practice. Law students held contrasting views to law faculty and to practicing attorneys on a number of measures, ranking adversarial courtroom skills as more important and placing less emphasis on skills, knowledge, and attributes related to ethics.     

Capital mobility and monetary adjustment in Western Europe, 1973–1991

The western European experience is perhaps the best known instance of formal exchange rate management and attempted monetary integration on a regional basis. This article examines the role of heightened international capital mobility in accounting for this phenomenon. The behavior of ten industrial western European states during the period 1973–1991 is analyzed in this regard. These states vary in terms of size, membership in the European Community (now the European Union), participation in the exchange rate mechanism of the European Monetary System, and their revealed policy preferences. Nevertheless, all ten states eventually accommodated German monetary policy in an effort to stabilize regional exchange rates around the deutsche mark. The pursuit of increasingly similar policies by states differing in non-trivial ways suggests that, at least by the end of the research period, the external constraint imposed upon each of them as a result of international financial integration had become severe indeed. Recognition of this constraint provides a basis for understanding the nature of the policy choices facing European monetary authorities. Nevertheless, heightened international capital mobility (in isolation from other factors) is found to provide an incomplete explanation of certain key features of the European experience. Suggestions for further research are proposed with this in mind.     

Protecting Ohio's Children: Ohio Juvenile Court Jurisdiction to Prevent Nonparty Interference in the Protection of the Best Interest of a Child

Ohio Rule of Juvenile Procedure 2(Y) allows juvenile courts to do what other courts cannot: designate additional parties to an action, allowing juvenile courts to better accomplish their statutory purpose of pursuing the best interests of children. However, sometimes this can lead to confusion about juvenile courts’ actions to protect children, especially when courts invoke Rule 2(Y) to stop interference with proceedings. This article will examine the historical foundations of Ohio's juvenile courts, the unique authority that they possess, and the conflicts that can arise due to interference with juvenile court proceedings. Ohio's juvenile courts have unique authority, and they can use that authority in a way that does not conflict with constitutional rights, while still working to protect the interests of children.     

The Effect of Pretrial Detention on Sentencing in Two Federal Districts

While a substantial body of research indicates that legal variables, such as offense severity and criminal history, principally shape sentencing decisions, other studies demonstrate that extralegal factors such as race, gender, and age influence sentencing outcomes, as well. The handful of studies focusing upon the effect of pretrial detention/release on sentencing outcomes indicate that pretrial detention is associated with greater lengths of incarceration. This study—the first to empirically examine the sentencing consequences of pretrial detention in the United States federal courts—employed a sample of 1,723 cases from two district courts (New Jersey and Pennsylvania Eastern). Pretrial detention and, to a lesser degree, revocation of granted pretrial supervision were associated with increased prison sentences; on the other hand, successfully completing a term of pretrial services supervision was associated with shorter sentence length. Implications for the federal criminal justice system are discussed.     

Capacity,Leadership, and Organizational Performance: Testing the Black Box Model of Public Management

According to recent “black box” models of public management, managerial capacity is a critical component for achieving service delivery improvement. In particular, black box models assume that the impact of management systems is maximized through integration with effective leadership. This assumption is tested by analyzing the effects of managerial capacity and organizational leadership on the performance of English local governments, while controlling for a range of other variables, including organizational size, resources, external constraints, and past performance. Empirical results show that capacity possesses a positive statistical association with local government performance and that leadership can enhance the impact of effective management systems.     

TQM and labor-management cooperation-- a noble experiment for the public sector

Recent initiatives by the Clinton Administration to promote labor-management cooperation and to reinvent government suggest reconsidering the efficacy of total quality management (TQM) and labor-management cooperation initiatives in the public sector. Key elements of both initiatives, for example, process improvement/innovation, focus on the customer, and employee empowerment, are inherent parts of the National Performance Review (NPR) and, as such, are critical to the achievement of NPR outcomes. Achieving these outcomes involves the simultaneous transformation of agencies and unions. This is no small task. The challenges and risks involved in such a large-scale transformation are identified, as well as the factors that make the public sector an appropriate (and safe) place for the American labor movement to experiment with new ways to manage relationships.