Are disturbed and normal adolescents equally competent to make decisions about mental health treatments?

This study uses a structured vignette procedure to assess competency to make treatment decisions in two groups of adolescents, one at risk for institutional placement and the other a matched community sample. Scores on Factual Understanding (the ability to recall facts), Inferential Understanding (the ability to make inferences about those facts), and Reasoning (the ability to weigh risks and benefits of various treatment options and to make choices based on that reasoning) were compared. Results showed that while at-risk adolescents and their community, counterparts did not differ in their factual and inferential understanding abilities, the at-risk adolescents did significantly less well than the community adolescents in reasoning. This difference could not be fully explained by differences in verbal IQ. Girls, no matter what their risk status, scored higher than boys on the Reasoning scale. Implications for legal policies concerning adolescents are discussed.     

Campaign contributions in Texas Supreme Court races

One of the most disturbing features of an elective judiciary is judicial campaign finance. This paper explores the financing of the 1988 Texas Supreme Court races, probably the most expensive partisan judicial election campaign in history. It examines the sources of the funding of those six seats on the court in terms of competition among interest groups for control of the court. It also examines proposed reforms in the system of campaign finance and points out that those reforms are not neutral tools of good government, but that instead they have massive political implications for the interests vying to influence the direction of tort law in the state.     

Book reviews

Russland als Vielvolkerreich. Entstehung, Geschichte, Zerfall. Andreas Kappeler. München, Germany: C. H. Beck, 1992, 395 pp, bibliography, index.

A Traveller's Companion to Central Asia. Kathleen Hopkirk. London: John Murray, 1993, 292 pp, £16.

Samarkand and Bukhara. John Lawton. Photographs by Francesco Venturi. London: Tauris Parke Books, 1992, 128 pp, £16.95. Mirror of the Orient. Roland and Sabrina Michaud. London: Thames and Hudson, 1992, 96 pp, £12.95, paperback.

The Continuing Conflict in Kashmir. Regional Conflict in Jeopardy. Iftikhar H. Malik. London: Research Institute for the Study of Conflict and Terrorism, 1993, 25 pp, £10.