渎职罪中身份犯与非身份犯共同犯罪问题探讨

在司法实践中,渎职犯罪的身份犯与非身份犯共同犯罪问题是个难点。文章从对渎职罪中身份犯与非身份犯共同犯罪基础性关系的形式分析入手,综合评析了渎职罪、身份犯与非身份犯、共同犯罪等刑法疑难问题错综交叉语境下罪名确定的正反观点,并对相关问题的刑法适用操作原则和具体认定进行了探讨。     

Status of Mandibular Third Molar Development as Evidence in Legal Age Threshold Cases

The completion of the third molar roots has played an important role in ascertaining whether individuals may be at or over a legal threshold of age, often taken as 18 years. This study demonstrates that root apex completion in the third molar is relatively uninformative regarding the threshold of age 18 years in a sample of 1184 males, where mean age‐of‐attainment of root apex completion for third mandibular molars is about 19.4 years. This paper also considers the legal age threshold problem for cases where the third mandibular molar is not completely formed, and outlines the use of parametric models and Bayes’ factors to evaluate dental evidence in statistically appropriate ways. It attempts to resolve confusion over age‐within‐stage versus age‐of‐attainment, likelihood ratios versus other diagnostic tests, and prior odds for a case versus the prior density for an age distribution.     

Abolition and pedagogy: reflections on teaching a course on alternatives to punishment,state repression and social control

Abolitionism is an important, but often overlooked, theoretical and political alternative to the failings and injustices of the penal system and other forms of social control. While many have documented different approaches to abolitionist strategy, few have explored the work that is done sensitizing individuals to abolitionism, including in university settings. Through an analysis of student journal entries, this study discusses how students enrolled in a mandatory abolition course engaged with the viability of, and barriers to, a world without prisons, punishment and other forms of control. By looking at abolition as a threshold concept, we consider how students negotiate the concept of abolition as a radical justice alternative. As the journal entries showed, while students were able to understand the basic tenets of abolition, many remained in a liminal state between the existing system and the unknown landscape of abolition, and could not see its viability or possibility as a radical alternative. We conclude that other learning strategies may have been helpful in moving student through such a ‘dangerous’ concept. Further research on sensitising individuals to abolition is needed given the current proliferation and intensification of penal and carceral institutions today.     

自由与民主:宪法诉讼的价值理念探幽

自由是宪法诉讼的核心价值 ,自由价值之中镌刻着深刻的民主价值思想。宪法诉讼的自由价值表现在 :1 矫正和修饰多数形成机制本身所存在的瑕疵 ,弥合宪法既定约束和现实多数之间的冲突 ,拓展宪法中关于自由范围和内容的规定 ;2 维护公民的“反向自由” ,防御政府的“正向侵犯” ;确认公民的“正向自由” ,救济立法缺位而引起的权利虚置 ,最终实现公民“反向自由”和“正向自由”的结合。宪法诉讼自由价值的民主性表现在如下层面 :1 宪法诉讼机制对自由价值的诉求和保障实现了民主的现代转型 ,即由古代的纯粹民主向现代的自由民主之转变 ;2 反向自由的宪法定位和正向自由的个案满足使民主和自由之间保持了持久的张力和不断的平衡 ,从而使自由主义民主具备了得以实现的现实基础。     

《侵权责任法》视野下的纯粹经济损失问题研究

纯粹经济损失问题在我国的研究较晚,尽管近几年来出现了不少与之相关的案例,各界依然没有对其产生足够的重视,然而时代的发展与公众意识的觉醒对个体权益的保护提出了更高的要求,该问题终于进入公众视野。我国《民法通则》由于颁布时间相对较早,其对纯粹经济损失问题的指导意义掺入了学者很多推理和猜测的成分,虽勉强说得过去,但毕竟与立法原意无太多关联,直到《侵权责任法》出台,理论界对纯粹经济损失的讨论才真正有了着力点。     

听力正常人颅顶慢反应阈值与行为听阈的比较

目的通过比较听力正常人的颅顶慢反应(slow vertex response,SVR)阈值与纯音测听(pure toneaudiometry,PTA)阈值的关系,探讨SVR检测技术在听觉功能障碍法医学鉴定中的应用价值。方法对听力正常的46名志愿者,分别对双耳进行0.125～8kHz频率范围内的PTA阈值及0.5～4kHz频率范围内的SVR反应阈测试,通过配对t检验比较0.5、1、2、4 kHz频率范围的SVR反应阈与PTA阈值的差异,并运用方差分析比较不同频率间的SVR反应阈与PTA阈值差值的差异。结果各频率的SVR反应阈与PTA阈值差异有统计学意义(P0.05)。SVR反应阈与PTA阈值的差值在1kHz频率时最小,为(3.86±6.12)dBHL,而在0.5、2、4kHz频率时的差值分别为(5.98±6.72)、(7.12±6.56)、(8.53±7.90)dBHL。不同频率之间的SVR反应阈与PTA阈值差值的差异有统计学意义。结论听力正常人的SVR反应阈在各频率均稍高于行为听阈,在运用SVR反应阈推断行为听阈时需进行校正。     

美国侵权法中的纯粹经济损失解读

纯粹经济损失问题是美国侵权法领域的热点问题之一,它的解决主要依据一般过失侵权规则和经济损失规则两种方法。作为占主导地位的规则,经济损失规则源于法院对缺陷产品引起纯粹经济损失案件的判决,现在已经广泛适用于一般过失侵权领域。经济损失规则的理论依据主要包括维持侵权法与合同法的界限、合同优先理论、＂诉讼洪闸＂理论和社会成本理论。经济损失规则在服务合同、过失误述等特殊情况下的适用例外,在不同的州得到不同程度的承认。总体而言,美国侵权法在纯粹经济损失问题上达成了尚不稳定的一致,相关的判例及学说仍在不断发展之中。     

Notes on recent articles

An increasing number of studies in political communication focus on the “sentiment” or “tone” of news content, political speeches, or advertisements. This growing interest in measuring sentiment coincides with a dramatic increase in the volume of digitized information. Computer automation has a great deal of potential in this new media environment. The objective here is to outline and validate a new automated measurement instrument for sentiment analysis in political texts. Our instrument uses a dictionary-based approach consisting of a simple word count of the frequency of keywords in a text from a predefined dictionary. The design of the freely available Lexicoder Sentiment Dictionary (LSD) is discussed in detail here. The dictionary is tested against a body of human-coded news content, and the resulting codes are also compared to results from nine existing content-analytic dictionaries. Analyses suggest that the LSD produces results that are more systematically related to human coding than are results based on the other available dictionaries. The LSD is thus a useful starting point for a revived discussion about dictionary construction and validation in sentiment analysis for political communication.     

Hearing Campaign Appeals: The Accountability Implications of Presidential Campaign Tone

Citizen understanding of candidate priorities is highly consequential for both elections and postelection accountability and is especially key to the office of the presidency. I examine the impact of campaign advertising tone on citizen understanding of candidate agendas in the context of the 2000 presidential election. Merging data on political ads from the Wisconsin Advertising Project with individual survey data, I test whether citizens are more likely to accurately hear a positive campaign theme. The analysis provides empirical support for this benefit of positivity.