Views from the Front lines: Observations by Chicago Lawyers About the System of Civil Discovery

This is the first in a series of articles that will report the results of a pilot effort to assess how well the system of civil discovery is working and to identify the principal problems which burden that system. The study revolves around interviews with 180 Chicago area litigators. This first essay, which synthesizes observations, insights, and complaints by interviewed attorneys, suggests that the world of civil discovery is not one monolithic whole, but consists of subworlds which exhibit clearly distinguishable features and problems. In addition to describing the principal problems which afflict the discovery system in its two major subworlds, the author reports what the interviewed lawyers suggest are the primary causes of those problems. While the litigators identify many ways in which the character of lawyering encumbers and disrupts the discovery process, they also locate much of the blame for the system's problems in the behavior of judges and the inefficiency of the judicial machinery. The interviews produced a dramatically widespread appeal to the courts to increase use of sanctions as a means of restraining discovery abuse.     

The Covenantal Basis for the Development of Swiss Political Federalism: 1291-1848

This study argues that the modern political philosophy of federalismis directly linked to the Swiss Reformed idea of religious covenant,which was first formulated in the 1520s and 1530s by HeinrichBullinger in Zürich. Bullinger's concept of religious covenanthad roots both in the Old Testament and in the early federalideal and reality that had come out of the Swiss Middle Ages;it therefore had important social and political implicationsas well as theological meaning. During the sixteenth and earlyseventeenth centuries, this theological idea of federalism fedinto and helped to create the modern political concept of federalism,especially in the thought of Philippe Duplessis-Mornay and JohannesAlthusius. Political federalism became a reality in the Constitutionof the United States in the late eighteenth century. The Swissfederal Constitution of 1848 was instructed by the mature conceptof political federalism, by the Constitution of the United States,and by the long tradition of Swiss federalism. All of theseinfluences had some basis in the uniquely Swiss idea of religiouscovenant.     

Prescriptions for punishment: Official ideologies and jall overcrowding

This study assesses key actors’ “worlds of fact” regarding jail overcrowding in California through an examination of their perceptions of causes and effects, support for different solutions, and adherence to major punishment ideologies. How policymakers define and structure a specific problem Gail overcrowding), can influence how policy options are differentially weighed as well as how existing policy processes can be improved. A mail survey was sent to two key decision making groups who largely regulate the intake and outflow of local jails: sheriffs and chief probation officers of the 58 California counties. Group differences in responses were predicted from the perspectives of blame avoidance, domain dissensus, and punishment theory. Relationships were examined among perceived causes, effects, solutions, and punishment ideologies. While both sheriffs and probation chiefs advocated highly similar “control-oriented” punishment ideologies, probation chiefs advocated more “progressive” solutions to jail overcrowding. Perceived causes and effects of jail overcrowding, along with support for deterrence ideology, were strongly related to elite support for three potential solutions: building more institutions, passing tougher laws to deter potential offenders, and using shorter sentences for low-risk offenders. Implications of these results for understanding jail overcrowding and policy processes are discussed.     

A New Start Toward a More Decentralized Federalism in Brazil?

Brazil's political history can be read as a cyclical alternationbetween centralization and decentralization—a contestbetween the center and the periphery. Centralizing tendenciesreached one height under the "Estado Novo" of GetúlioVargas (1937–1945) and peaked again under a series ofmilitary governments from 1964 to 1985. Forces favoring regionalismand more state and local autonomy have been given impetus duringthe 1980s by trends of regional differentiation, popular mobilization,return to civilian government in 1985, several key elections,and state and local financial crises. The constitution promulgatedin October 1988 features decentralizing fiscal provisions thatgive reason to believe that federalism may be revitalized inthe next several years in response to grassroots demands fromstate and local governments. However, these federalism reformsmay be threatened by the national government's attempts to thwartthe constitution's decentralization provisions and by nationaleconomic and political instability.     

Who are the most highly cited forensic scientists in the United States?

The most highly cited forensic practitioners in the United States were identified using a publicly available citation database that used six different citation metrics to calculate each person's composite citation score. The publication and citation data were gleaned from Elsevier's SCOPUS database, which contained information about ~7 million scientist each of whom had at least five entries in the database. Each individual was categorized into 22 scientific fields and 176 subfields, one of which was legal and forensic medicine (LFM). The database contained citation records for 13,388 individuals having LFM as their primary research discipline and 282 of these (2%) were classified as being highly cited. Another 99 individuals in the database had LFM as their secondary discipline, making a total of 381 highly cited forensic practitioners from 35 different countries. The career-long publication records of each individual were compared using their composite citation scores. Of the 381 highly cited scientists, 93 (24%) had an address somewhere in the United States. The various branches of forensics they specialized in were anthropology, criminalistics, DNA/genetics, odontology, pathology, statistics/epidemiology, and toxicology. The two most highly cited scientists, according to their composite citation score, were both specialists in DNA/genetics. Bibliometric methods are widely used for evaluating research performance in academia and a similar approach might be useful in jurisprudence, such as when an expert witness is instructed to testify in court and explain the meaning of scientific evidence.     

Arid Climate Adipocere—The Importance of Microenvironment

Skeletal remains were retrieved from a cave in an arid desert environment. The submitted material consisted of dried grass, soil, and malodorous skeletal remains wrapped in leather. After examination, it was revealed that the smell had not been due to recent decomposition but to adipocere. The cause of death was listed as “undetermined” and a suggested date of death as “unknown.” Although adipocere usually requires a damp environment or submersion in water to develop, this case provides further evidence for the rare possibility of adipocere formation in an otherwise very dry environment. Wrapping of the body in leather material had produced an impermeable barrier which had sequestrated and preserved bodily fluids allowing anaerobic decay with fat hydrolysis and adipocere formation. Microenvironments may have potentially significant and quite idiosyncratic effects on decompositional processes which may initially confuse investigations.     

Behind Harold's Bloomsday Book: Gothic Secrets in Literary History

Harold Bloom's influential theory of literary influence has been widely regarded as utterly patriarchal, and yet some feminist critics have adapted rather than attacked it. The theory argues that a great poem aggressively rewrites and thereby conceals its precursor in order to appear as completely original. Bloom's theory of precursors invites in its turn an application of itself to itself, and his Anxiety of Influence seems to trail several possible antecedents, such as Shakespeare and Freud. A more powerful precursor, however, is a novel written by a woman: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein . Just as Bloom's theory postulates only fathers replicating themselves through generational struggle and identification, so Mary Shelley's Gothic shocker represses the mother as both a source and an object of desire. What Bloom's theory thus represses behind its model of masculine sublime poets is a feminine Gothic novel. There is, however, a crucial difference: whereas Shelley's novel is profoundly critical of Victor Frankenstein's paternal shortcomings, such overweening Gothic masculinity provides the very basis of Bloom's Anxiety of Influence (1973), conceived as it is in the immediate post-Vietnam era. Such strong revision notwithstanding, behind the strong critic who re-asserts American masculinity after Vietnam stands the madman in the laboratory, and behind him stands the repressed mother, otherwise known to literary history as the Madwoman in the Attic. What she reveals is that literary history is Gothic rather than sublime, and that it will not ultimately cover and compensate for the worst creation of men: war itself. Even the enquiring spirit of the New Historicism emerges as a function of this Gothic exposure.