The Enactment of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857: The Campbell Commission and the Parliamentary Debates

Rather surprisingly none of the existing accounts of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 considers the mechanics of reform which brought about the legislation in any great detail. Yet this subject as much as the final legislation merits attention in its own right. The nineteenth century in England was a significant period of law reform and the legislation provides a vivid illustration of the inner workings of the process. The passage of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 was not entirely smooth. The fact that it succeeded at all makes it an ideal case study in Victorian law reform. This article considers the pressures for divorce reform, the working of a Royal Commission, the debates in Parliament, and ultimately how reform was finally achieved through a series of compromises between those who wanted more radical change and defenders of the status quo.     

The new randomised controlled trials (RCT) movement in public policy: challenges of epistemic governance

Since 2012, a new movement of government departments, think tanks and high-profile individuals within the UK has sought to promote the increased usage of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) in public policy. They promote RCTs as an evidence-based corrective for the inappropriate certainties of experts. Recent government reports and public debate around this initiative are reviewed and analysed within a framework for epistemic governance: normative insights into how knowledge for policymaking should be understood and governed drawn from science and technology studies and the policy sciences. The legitimacy of RCT evidence within policymaking is found to rest on the recognition of three key features: (1) how multiple meanings of evidence limit generalisability, (2) ensuring a plurality of evidence inputs, including those from other forms of research and expertise, and (3) building institutions for governing the use of RCTs in the public interest. Producing evidence for policymaking is a hybrid activity that necessarily spans both science and politics. Presenting RCTs as naively neutral evidence of what policy interventions work is misleading. The paper concludes by calling for more work on how the new RCT movement might engage with its own history in social and policy research on the value of experiments for policymaking.     

Politics,presidents, and DCIs

Sukarno's Apologists Write Again

Audrey R. Kahin and George McT. Kahin: Subversion as Foreign Policy: The Secret Eisenhower and Dulles Debacle in Indonesia, The New Press, New York, NY, 1995, 318 pp., $25.00.

The Ames Case: Various Versions

James Adams: Sellout: Aldrich Ames and the Corruption of the CIA, Viking, New York, 1995, 322 p., $23.95.

Peter Maas: Killer Spy: The Inside Story of the FBI's Pursuit and Capture of Aldrich Ames, America's Deadliest Spy, Warner Books, New York, 1996,264 p., $6.50 (paperback; first published in hardback by Warner Books in 1995).

Tim Weiner, David Johnston, and Neil A. Lewis: Betrayal: The Story of Aldrich Ames, An American Spy, Random House, New York, 1995,308 p., $25.00.

David Wise: Nightmover: How Aldrich Ames Sold the CIA to the KGB for $4.6 Million, HarperCollins, New York, 1995,356 p., $25.00.

The Brutal March Backward

Dmitri Volkogonov: Lenin: A New Biography (Translated and edited by Harold Shukman), The Free Press, New York, 1994, 529 p., $30.00.

The Big Stretch

John Newman: Oswald and the CIA, Carroll &; Graf, New York, 1995,627 p., $28.00.

More About the Past

Oleg Gordievsky: Next Stop Execution, Macmillan, London, 1995, 396 pp., £16.99.     

Hot Air: The Impact on the Insurance Industry from Climate Change Disclosure Rules

This article addresses certain recent rules and regulations promulgated by the Securities and Exchange Commission requiring companies to disclose the risks presented to their business from climate change. It subsequently examines how these added risks may impact the insurance industry—specifically with regard to director and officer liability. In the author's view, climate change will bring a tectonic shift to industries worldwide and a potential avenue for liability in the insurance industry may be able to circumvent standard pollution exclusion language by making claims under director and officer policies.     

UNDERSTANDING JAPANESE DEMOCRACY IN A POPULIST AGE

In this article, Sir David Warren, who was British Ambassador to Japan from 2008 to 2012, lays out the historical background to modern Japan, its political and economic structures (and international relationships); explores why we tend not to think of Japan as affected by the populism that we see in other Western democracies; and asks why Japan still presents itself as such a ‘different’ country.     

Book reviews

Indonesia. By J. D. Legge. Prentice‐Hall, New Jersey, 1965. Pp. iii, 184. 40/‐

Pre‐capitalist Economic Formations. By Karl Marx. With an introduction by Eric Hobsbawm. Trans, by Jack Cohen. Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1964. Pp. 153. 25/‐.

Economic Survey of Latin America, 1962. Organization of American States. The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1964. Pp. 425. 68/‐