Ethnicity Matters: Transnational Ethnic Alliances and Foreign Policy Behavior

This article investigates the influence of transnational ethnic alliances on the international interactions of states. Transnational ethnic alliances exist when both states in a dyad contain members of the same ethnic group. We argue that two types of dyads will experience higher levels of conflict than other dyads: (1) those where an advantaged minority in state A has an ethnic tie to a nonadvantaged minority in state B, and (2) those with a transnational ethnic alliance where the group in one of the states is politically mobilized. Using data from the COPDAB, Minorities at Risk, Polity II, COW, and Penn World Tables projects we find support for these contentions.     

The deep error of political libertarianism: self-ownership,choice, and what’s really valuable in life

ABSTRACT

Contemporary versions of natural rights libertarianism trace their locus classicus to Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia. But although there have been many criticisms of the version of political libertarianism put forward by Nozick, many of these objections fail to meet basic methodological desiderata. Thus, Nozick’s libertarianism deserves to be re-examined. In this paper I develop a new argument which meets these desiderata. Specifically, I argue that the libertarian conception of self-ownership, the view’s foundation, implies what I call the Asymmetrical Value Claim: a dubious claim about the importance of choice relative to other valuable capacities. I argue that this misunderstands what is really valuable in life, and show how it causes libertarianism to generate counterintuitive public policy recommendations.     

A Separate Peace? The Politics of Localized Law in the Post‐Revolutionary Era

Law is often seen as peripheral to Southern life before the Civil War, and the South as an outlier in the American legal history of that era. In The People and Their Peace (2009), Laura Edwards demonstrates the profoundly legal nature of Southern society and takes an important step toward integrating the legal history of the South with that of the nation. Edwards identifies two dueling legal cultures in North and South Carolina between 1787 and 1840—the law of local courts, which she terms localized law, and the state law of professionalized lawyers and reformers. She argues that white women, slaves, and the poor fared better in localized law—which was based on notions of popular sovereignty and the flexible rubric of restoring “the peace”—than in state courts, which were steeped in a national culture of individual rights that led to more restrictive results. This essay questions Edwards's dichotomy between local law and state law and her depiction of the popular content of localized law, while building on Edwards's innovations to suggest a new direction for Southern legal history.     

Suicide of a man with known allergy to fish protein by ingesting tinned fish

On a day in November, the body of a 31-year-old man was found near a swimming lake with two open and partly emptied fish tins lying next to him. Further investigations showed that the man had been allergic to fish protein and suffered from severe depression and drug psychosis. Already some days before the suicide, he had repeatedly asked for fish to kill himself. Although the results of the chemical and toxicological examinations were negative, the autopsy findings and histological tests suggest that death was caused by an anaphylactic reaction.     

An evaluation of the effectiveness of positive behavioural support within a medium secure mental health forensic service

A number of recent influential reports recommend the use of proactive and preventative approaches such as Positive Behavioural Support (PBS) in the management of challenging behaviours. Although evidence supporting the use of PBS is mainly drawn from studies of learning disability and child populations, it is recognised that PBS could have a much wider utility. In this study, PBS was implemented in a medium secure forensic mental health service, a novel context. Impact was evaluated using an adapted version of the Checklist of Challenging Behaviour at baseline and then at 3 monthly intervals for a year. Significant reductions were observed in aggression frequency, management difficulty and severity and other challenging behaviour frequency and management difficulty. Reductions in challenging behaviour were still evident after six months for the full group and twelve months for the sub-group with the exception of other challenging behaviour management difficulty. In contrast, no such significant differences were found for a control group. This study indicated that PBS was an effective intervention in the management of challenging behaviour in this forensic mental health context.     

The possible influence of micro-organisms and putrefaction in the production of GHB in post-mortem biological fluid

In recent years, the post-mortem production of the drug of abuse gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) in biological fluids (e.g. blood and urine) has caused various interpretative problems for toxicologists. Previously, other researchers have shown certain microbial species (Pseudomonas spp. and Clostridium aminobutyricum) possess the necessary enzymes to convert GABA to GHB. A preliminary investigation involving putrefied post-mortem blood indicated there was no observed relationship between "endogenous" GHB concentrations and concentrations of common putrefactive markers (tryptamine and phenyl-2-ethylamine). Microbiological analysis identified the presence of various micro-organisms: Clostridia spp., Escherichia coli, Proteus vulgaris, Enterococcus faecalis and Aeromonoas spp. Equine plasma, human blood and urine samples were inoculated with these and an additional micro-organism (Pseudomonas aeruginosa) and incubated at 22 degrees C for 1 month. Following comparison with control samples and pre-inoculation concentrations, the data indicated an apparent production of GHB in unpreserved P. aeruginosa inoculated blood (2.3 mg/l). All other fluoride-preserved and unpreserved samples (including controls) had GHB concentrations <1mg/l. Although this concentration is lower than is typically associated with "endogenous" post-mortem GHB concentrations, this paper proposes a potential microbial production of GHB with time.