Speedy trial and the legal process

The role of speedy trial in state proceedings is empirically investigated for defendants in criminal homicide (N=444). Employing multiple regression techniques, an assessment is made of the relationship between the length of time involved in defendants' legal processing, their sociolegal status, and the final dispositions awarded by the court. The findings show that blacks and jailed defendants are processed more swiftly than their white and bailed counterparts. The consitutional guarantee of speedy trial also appears to be a state resource, in that cases adjudicated promptly result in higher conviction rates than those which are delayed. This is especially so for defendants who are not released on bail, and may be attributed to the prosecutorial success that accompanies the availability of witnesses whose memories are unclouded by time and the existence of a social climate that calls for retribution. While not related to postponement in the present study, it is suggested that the efforts of counsel in obtaining delay may become increasingly important with the adoption of the new federal guidelines.     

Moonlighting in Law School: A Multischool Study of Part-Time Employment of Full-Time Students

The part-time employment of full-time law students is a significant aspect of contemporary legal education. Successful socialization and training in law are presumed to require the undivided time, effort, and commitment of students. Part-time employment, therefore, is commonly believed to siphon those scarce personal resources away from the central task of legal education. This multi-school study of a sample of 1,370 law students attempted to determine the significant ways in which employed students were differentiated from nonemployed classmates in finances, attitudes, and uses of time, and whether type of law school and student's year in school had effects on patterns of student employment.
The incidence of part-time employment, while strongly related to personal financial resources, was found to be equally influenced by the type of school attended and year in school. While those settings varied substantially in the degree of permissiveness toward student part-time employment, students employed part time could not be distinguished statistically from their nonemployed classmates in terms of levels of involvement in law school or their levels of morale. Both temporal and attitudinal disengagement from law school were found to be commonplace among upper-class students in all school settings, but part-time employment did not appear to contribute to it uniquely.     

THE BOOKSHELF

STEPFAMILIES: A GUIDE TO WORKING WITH STEPPARENTS AND STEPCHILDREN Emily B. Vishar and John S. Vishar
The Dream And The Underworld. By James Hillman     

THE BOOK SHELF

FAMILY THERAPY: AN INTRODUCTION TO THEORY & TECHNIQUE, Edited by G. D. Erickson and T. P. Hogan
HELPING YOUR CHILD LEARN RIGHT FROM WRONG, by Sidney Simon, Ph.D. and Sally W. Olds
TREATING RELATIONSHIPS, by David H. Olson, Ph.D.     

Failure to detect elevated levels of carboxyhemoglobin in infants dying from SIDS

Carboxyhemoglobin (COHb) levels were determined in stored blood samples from 91 infants diagnosed to have died from the sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) (0.59+/-0.41%, excluding one outlying value of 10.83%); 48 age-matched controls (0.53+/-0.38%); and three individuals who died from fire related causes (41+/-20%). No statistical differences in COHb levels were detected between blood from SIDS and control infants (p = 0.43).     

Science and the climate change regime

Given rapidly increasing losses from extreme climate events, the world community already has a common interest in action to mitigate and adapt to climate change. However, this common interest is not well served through continued promotion of either mandatory (legally-binding) policies or do nothing policies by various participants in the regime established by the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. The common interest would be better served by a third way, comprised of voluntary no regrets policies that are commensurate with the limited political power of the regime and already have succeeded on small scales in reducing vulnerabilities to extreme climate events and in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Both mandatory and do nothing policies, as well as the regime itself, have depended upon scientists for political support in the past. But scientists might better serve the common interest of the world community through support of a third way in the future.