Reviews

The Enforcement of Morals. By Patrick Devlin. Legal Systems and Lawyers' Reasonings. By Julius Stone. Law in Society. By Geoffrey Sawer. [London: Oxford University Press. Clarendon Law Series: edited by H. L. A. Hart. Advocacy in Our Time. By O. C. Mazengarb, C.B.E., Q.C., M.A., LL.D. Salmond on the Law of Torts. Fourteenth edition. By R. F. V. Heuston, M. A., LL. B., Professor of Law in the University of Southampton, of Gray's Inn and King's Inn, Dublin, Barrister-at-Law. Jurisdiction and Illegality. By Amnon Rubinstein. Die Erforschung des Sachverhalts im Prozess. By Erich Döhring, Professor at the University of Kiel. A Casebook of Administrative Law. By J. A. G. Griffith and H. Street. Tribunals and Inquiries―A Guide to Procedure. By Neville D. Vandyk. Capital Gains Tax. By G. S. A. Wheatcroft, assisted by A. E. W. Park and John E. Talbot. Corporation Tax. By Peter M. B. Rowland and John E. Talbot with Annotations to Finance Act 1965 by S. Michael Young and John Silberrad. Disarmament and International Law. By Allan Gotlieb. United Nations Forces. By D. W. Bowett with the assistance and collaboration of Dr. G. P. Barton, H. C. Carnegic, Wing-Commander A. E. Cobus, J. G. Collier, M. Hardy, Dr. Rosalyn Higgins and Professor L. B. Sohn. The Theory of Nationalisation. By Konstantin Katzarov. Criminal on the Road. A Study of Serious Motoring Offences and those who commit them. By T. C. Willett. Curtis and Ruoff on The Law and Practice of Registered Conveyancing. Second edition. By Theodore B. F. Ruoff, C.B.E., Chief Land Registrar. Banking Law for Trustee Savings Banks. By C. L. Lawton, Barrister-at-Law. The Practitioner's Guide to Hire-Purchase Cases. By Harold Brown, Q.C. The Mercantile and Industrial Law of Scotland. By J. J. Gow. The Quantum of Damages in Bodily and Fatal Injury Cases. Second edition. By M. M. Corbett and J. L. Buchanan. Law Relating to Hospitals and Kindred Institutions. Fourth edition. By S. R. Speller, O.B.E., LL.B. Introduction to Modern Hindu Law. By J. Duncan M. Derrett, M.A., PH.D., of Gray's Inn, Barrister-at-Law, Professor in Oriental Laws in the University of London, Tagore Professor of Law for 1953, University of Calcutta. Le Droit de Visits des Parents Séparés de leurs Enfants en Suisse, en France et en Allemagne. By Maurice Marthaler. A Deliktuális Felelösség a Társadalom és a Jog Fejlödésének Történetében (Delictual Liability in the History of the Evolution of Society and Law). By Ferenc Mádl. Das Deutsche Seerecht. First edited by Georg Schaps and others. Third edition. By Hans Jürgen Abraham. Criminal Law in Nigeria (excluding the North). By C. O. Okonkwo and M. E. Naish.     

Bipolar disorders and the law

Bipolar disorders are a neglected subject in legal scholarship. Yet they affect decision-making across the spectrum of the law. This editorial analyses the approaches adopted across a variety of areas of legal decisions. It observes a lack of coherence in the approach of the law and attempts to identify a number of issues that are posed by the diverse symptoms of the bipolar disorders. It argues in favour of greater judicial and tribunal member education about the disorders.     

Utility of infectious disease coding sheets for surveillance in a state medical examiner's office

Medical examiners are often first to recognize unusual occurrences of fatal infectious diseases. Recognition of these deaths allows public health officials to institute appropriate public health measures. Therefore, we developed a simple method of identifying and tracking infectious disease deaths in a statewide medical examiner's office. One-page infectious disease forms were completed for 1566/1949 autopsies (80%) performed at the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator in 2004. In 241 cases one infectious disease was identified at autopsy and 58 cases had two infectious diseases. Fourteen of the infectious-diseases caused deaths involved diseases that are notifiable conditions in New Mexico. Pneumonia was the most commonly reported infectious process (47 deaths) followed by sepsis (25 deaths). Tracking infectious disease deaths highlighted the importance of recognizing these deaths, although hand-written entries were unstandardized. Preferably, a tracking system would be built into electronic databases at medical examiner and coroner's offices, expediting the identification of these diseases and contact of public health agencies.     

Discriminant function sexing of the mandible of indigenous South Africans

South Africa currently has a high homicide rate. This results in a large number of unidentified bodies being recovered each year, many of which are referred to the forensic examiner. This situation has resulted in considerable growth of forensic anthropological research devoted to devising standards for specific application in South African medico-legal investigations. The standards suitable for Black South Africans now encompass a wide variety of skeletal elements (e.g. cranium, humerus, pelvis, femur, patella, talus, calcaneus), each with differing degrees of accuracy. Apart from a preliminary investigation of the Zulu local population, however, we note that there appears to be no established metric mandible discriminant function standards for sex determination in this population. The purpose of the present study is to undertake a comprehensive analysis of sexual dimorphism in the mandible of Black South Africans, incorporating individuals from a selection of the larger local population groupings; the primary aim is to produce a series of metrical standards for the determination of sex. The sample analyzed comprises 225 non-pathological mandibles of Black South African individuals drawn from the R.A. Dart Collection. Nine linear measurements, obtained from mathematically transformed three-dimensional landmark data, are analyzed using basic univariate statistics and discriminant function analyses. All of the measurements examined are found to be sexually dimorphic; the dimensions of the ramus and corpus lengths are most dimorphic. The sex classification accuracy of the discriminant functions ranged from 70.7 to 77.3% for the univariate method, 81.8% for the stepwise method, and 63.6 to 84% for the direct method. We conclude that the mandible is a very useful element for sex determination in this population.     

Helping Friends or Influencing Foes: Electoral and Policy Effects of Campaign Finance Contributions

Campaign finance contributions may influence policy by affecting elections or influencing the choices of politicians once in office. To study the trade‐offs between these two paths to influence, we use a game in which contributions may affect electoral outcomes and signal policy‐relevant information to politicians. In the model, a campaign donor and two politicians each possess private information correlated with a policy‐relevant state of the world. The donor may allocate his or her budget to either an ally candidate who has relatively similar preferences or a moderate candidate whose preferences are relatively divergent from the donor's preferred policy. Contributions that increase the likelihood of the moderate being elected can signal good news about the donor's preferred policy and influence the moderate's policy choice. However, when the electoral effect of contributions is too small to demand sufficiently high costs to deter imitation by groups with negative information, this informational effect breaks down.