Family Law,Parents with Disabilities,and the Americans with Disabilities Act

Parents with disabilities contend with bias within the family law system, often threatening their custody and visitation rights. The overarching goal of this article is to explore the experiences of parents with disabilities involved in custody and visitation disputes and the application of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in these cases. This article begins with an overview of parents with disabilities and their interactions with the family law system. Next, the article examines the ADA and its applicability to custody and visitation disputes. Finally, the article offers thoughts about strategies that can be utilized by attorneys to ensure that the rights of parents with disabilities are protected.     

Enhancing Information Sharing in Family Drug Courts: A Lean Six Sigma Case Study

Given the variety of stakeholders involved in cases within family drug courts, efficient communication and information sharing, which are needed to support decision‐making, can be quite challenging. Through a case study in one family drug court system, this research employed an action research approach to improve the information sharing process following the Lean Six Sigma methodology. The solutions implemented through this study contributed to improving the quality of the services provided by this court system and its overall productivity. In addition, this research extends our knowledge about methods for improving court systems from which others can learn to guide future improvement efforts.     

‘The beneficent and legal godfather’: a history of the guardianship of unaccompanied immigrant and refugee children in Australia, 1946–1975

Abstract

In Australia in 1946, the Immigration (Guardianship of Children) Act was passed. This Act was intended to support the postwar migration to Australia of British children, unaccompanied by their parents, and provided them a guardian in Australia: the Immigration Minister. This key provision of the Act continues into the present, covering all unaccompanied child migrants, including refugees. Starting with the parliamentary debates which occurred at the formation of the Act in 1946, this article traces a history of the Act until its first High Court challenge in 1975. In doing so, a focus is placed on a series of key questions raised by its production of categories: How does the Act construct ideas of migranthood? What do the discussions it has provoked have to say about notions of parenthood and the ideal family? And, finally, what concepts of the child have been produced through this legislative and legal history? Through an examination of archival materials, parliamentary debates, court records, and newspaper coverage, this article explores the discursive productions of the Act, following the understanding that ideas of the family, of parenthood, of guardianship, of migrant status, and of the child are not natural, but instead are historically created and produced, here through racialized techniques of governmentality.     

Only a Matter of Time? The Role of Criminal Competence in Avoiding Arrest

While prior research has shown that the probability of detection plays a role in the decision-making of many offenders, much less is known on offenders’ relative success in avoiding arrest. In this study, we draw from detailed criminal career data on 172 offenders involved in lucrative criminal activities to examine the role of criminal competence in the probability of being arrested in a given month. We examine a particular aspect of competence, criminal efficiency, which is defined as the ability to earn a relatively large amount of money for each crime committed. Our research design allows us to disentangle the effect of criminal efficiency as a static trait of offenders from the dynamic variations in efficiency that offenders experience over time. Results show that efficiency is a strong, negative predictor of arrest, both at the static and dynamic levels.     

A Brief History of Arts Marketing Thought in North America

Marketing is a relatively new academic discipline. Arts marketing as a subfield of marketing began in the 1960s. Sociologists and economists were the first to contribute to the knowledge. American authors then stepped in the late 1970s to the 1990s. Starting in the 2000s, European as well as Australian colleagues took the lead in terms of number of articles published. Currently, academic research by marketing scholars is enriching this new field of inquiry on consumer behaviors and on the four traditional P's of marketing: product (and brand), price, place, and promotion.     

Predictors of Initial Court Agreement and 1‐Year Relitigation in Title IV‐D Contested Paternity Cases

We examined potential predictors of initial court agreement and 1‐year relitigation in a sample of contested paternity cases involving unmarried parents coming to court to establish paternity, child support, and other issues. Cases participated in an RCT of a parent program and of a waiting period between establishment of paternity and court hearing. We controlled for RCT study factors and used baseline assessment data to predict likelihood of reaching full agreement in the initial court hearing and relitigation in the following year. Findings suggest that cases in which parents get along better outside of court are more likely to reach agreement and less likely to return to court. Additionally, particular parent demographics predict lower likelihood of reaching initial agreement (e.g., parents are non‐White, father earns below $10,000 yearly), more relitigation (e.g., parents are non‐White, mother earns above $10,000 yearly, father has children with others), and less relitigation (e.g., father earns above $10,000 yearly). Child demographics and most parent relationship characteristics did not predict outcomes. We discuss findings and offer suggestions for court interventions.     

Study on the tracking revision history of MS Word files for forensic investigation

Document forensics remains an important field of digital forensics. To date, previously existing methods focused on the last saved version of the document file stored on the PC; however, the drawback of this approach is that this provides no indication as to how the contents have been modified. This paper provides a novel method for document forensics based on tracking the revision history of a Microsoft Word file. The proposed method concentrates on the TMP file created when the author saves the file and the ASD file created periodically by Microsoft Word during editing. A process whereby the revision history lists are generated based on metadata of the Word, TMP, and ASD files is presented. Furthermore, we describe a technique developed to link the revision history lists based on similarity. These outcomes can provide considerable assistance to a forensic investigator trying to establish the extent to which document file contents have been changed and when the file was created, modified, deleted, and copied.     

日本社会对华心态析论

中日关系被认为是中国与20多个邻国中最重要的双边关系之一.尽管中日关系大体上是好的,但是两国之间仍然存在着许多不容忽视的矛盾.为此,本文从中日双方角度对两者之间矛盾的表现及其原因进行分析,进而分析日本失衡的民族心态与当前日本消极民族主义的郁结.在此基础上,作者认为在当前的国际形势下,在如何处理中日矛盾问题上,除了事关两国政治基础的历史问题和台湾问题之外,对于双方之间不断涌现的具体摩擦,我们应该继续坚持"韬光养晦"的原则,一切服从于国家"全面实现小康社会"发展战略的大局.     

论宪法效力的终极依据

在法律的效力链条中,宪法常常被置于效力的终端。但是,宪法本身的效力依据,却是一个值得追问的终极性问题。宪法序言,就是宪法效力的终极依据。中国宪法序言是通过＂历史＂向宪法提供了终极性的效力依据或正当性依据。相比之下,美国宪法序言是通过＂契约＂向美国宪法提供了终极性的效力依据。