Law Students on Interdisciplinary,Problem‐Solving Teams: An Empirical Evaluation of Educational Outcomes at the University Of Denver's Resource Center for Separating and Divorcing Families

Models of lawyering in separation and divorce disputes are evolving to emphasize interdisciplinary collaboration, problem solving, alternative dispute resolution, and changes in legal education that reflect these changes in practice. At the University of Denver's Resource Center for Separating and Divorcing Families (Center), supervised law and mental health graduate students worked as a team to provide assessment and service planning, mediation, therapy, and agreement drafting to parents. Evaluation results showed client satisfaction, and that students acquired new knowledge, skills, and values in line with a collaborative, problem‐solving orientation. Strengths and weaknesses of the model are considered.     

The national politics of EU enlargement in the Western Balkans

Abstract

European enlargement has often been viewed from an institutional perspective. The academic literature in the field has tended to focus primarily on how the Commission or the Council has addressed the issue of EU expansion. Relatively little attention has been paid to the role of individual member states. This article considers the way in which domestic political concerns and national politics affects the way in which EU members approach enlargement to the Western Balkans. It does this by examining studies conducted on seven countries: Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Hungary, Greece and Cyprus. It shows that there are in fact a wide variety of factors that shape individual member state attitudes towards enlargement. These factors include economic and commercial goals, ties to the region and to individual accession states, concerns over immigration, general foreign policy priorities and national ideological approaches towards the future shape and orientation of the European Union.     

Warning behaviors and leaked intent: Potential new avenues to prevent mass shootings

On March 12, 2018, John Laubscher, owner of AJ’s Archery in Nelson, NY, had a gut feeling and refused to sell a rifle to a Syracuse University student—disrupting a mass shooting ( https://www.syracuse.com/crime/2018/04/how_gun_shop_owner_thwarted_on_the_edge_su_student_from_buying_high-capacity_rif.html . Accessed 10 Nov 2021). Prompted by this, we surveyed the opinions, beliefs, attitudes, and current practices of gun sellers in Onondaga County, NY, in regard to safe gun sales. The primary outcome was to determine which types of “concerning behaviors” are more likely to cause a seller to intervene in some manner. Secondary outcomes included the following: ascertaining the frequency of denials of customer purchases, frequency of reporting to law enforcement, and identifying any gaps that make it difficult for gun sellers to report behaviors to the authorities. Follow-up interviews were conducted with those who were willing to speak with the authors in more depth. A response rate of 12.9% was achieved. Sixty-two percent (62.5%) of respondents had some experience in uniformed services, with specialized training in mental or emotional crises, as well as deception detection. The majority found the training helpful in their gun selling career. Reasons for personal denials were reported as: “interest in illegal fittings,” “information revealed during conversation,” and “lack of basic knowledge of using the firearm looking to purchase.” Two respondents stated that due to a lack of a “reporting protocol,” they would not report any concerns to law enforcement. The study helps inform future research in regard to surveying more sellers across NY state and nationwide.     

Awareness of Sexual Violence Services Among LGBQ-Identified College Students

ABSTRACT

The sexual victimization of sexual minorities enrolled in college is not a topic that has been well researched. The present study examines the awareness that college minority students have of services they can access in the event they experience sexual violence. The results indicate that many students are unaware of specific services that they can access if they are sexually victimized. Disclosing an incident of sexual violence, or being the recipient of a disclosure of sexual violence, is related to knowledge of aftercare services. Non-White students demonstrate less awareness of services than White students, indicating that these students may not receive aftercare in the event of sexual victimization because they do not have the knowledge of which services are available. Several policy recommendations and directions for future research stem from these findings.     

The Masculine Yardstick of Physical Competence: U.S. Police Academy Fitness Tests

State and local law enforcement training academies differ in a myriad of ways, including the content of their classes, the type of instruction received, and the tests mandated for graduation. The focus of this study is the physical fitness test and how it affects the proportion of women to men matriculating from these academies. A predictive model of academy completion rates is derived from a sample of 96 police training academies. The presence of gendered physical testing requirements was found to be positively related to the proportion of women to men graduating from training. In addition to the empirical models, data on the specific content of these tests are provided. The variability of tests suggests that gendered physical requirements are an illusionary panacea, as they do not address the fundamental assumptions of the tests themselves.     

Higher Capillary Electrophoresis Injection Settings as an Efficient Approach to Increase the Sensitivity of STR Typing

Abstract:  Evidentiary traces may contain low quantities of DNA, and regularly incomplete short tandem repeat (STR) profiles are obtained. In this study, higher capillary electrophoresis injection settings were used to efficiently improve incomplete STR profiles generated from low-level DNA samples under standard polymerase chain reaction (PCR) conditions. The method involves capillary electrophoresis with higher injection voltage and extended injection time. STR peak heights increased six-fold. Inherent to the analysis of low-level DNA samples, we observed stochastic amplification artifacts, mainly in the form of allele dropout and heterozygous peak imbalance. Increased stutter ratios and allele drop-in were rarely seen. Upon STR typing of 10:1 admixed samples, the profile of the major component did not become overloaded when using higher injection settings as was observed upon elevated cycling. Thereby an improved profile of the minor component was obtained. For low-level DNA casework samples, we adhere to independent replication of the PCR amplification and boosted capillary electrophoresis.     

Turnout in Germany in the course of time: Life cycle and cohort effects on electoral turnout from 1953 to 2049

The steadily rising share of older voters could lead to them gaining an ever increasing level of political representation compared to younger voters not only because of the imbalance of numbers between the young and the old, but also because turnout rates among the old have always been above-average. The latter argument only applies if the so-called life cycle effect is assumed to be dominant. However, diverse socialisation backgrounds, captured by the cohort effect, also have to be taken into account. It is also unclear what the interplay of these two effects of time implies for future aggregate turnout. Focusing on the German case, we base our analyses on the Repräsentative Wahlstatistik (Representative Electoral Statistic, RES) and population forecasts to estimate consequences of the demographic shifts for all federal elections from 1953 until today, as well as for future elections. First, we calculate life cycle, cohort and period effects on turnout for previous elections by using cohort analysis; second, we apply these net effects to the future age distribution under certain assumptions concerning life cycle and cohort effects. Our results show that the recent decline in turnout is in particular due to negative period effects and (in West Germany) to a minor extent also due to consequences of cohort replacement, whereas changes in the age structure have had a positive effect on turnout since 1990 in both parts of Germany. Additionally, our forecasts suggest that turnout rates will decline and that the over-representation of the old will continue until around 2030 and diminish afterwards in a 'greying' population.     

A cognitive perspective on ethnicity,race, and termination of parental rights

The determination of parental “fitness” in termination of parental rights cases is open to much judicial discretion and, thus, potentially open to bias. Even if judges look to mental health professionals as expert witnesses, misattributions of racial and ethnic cues may still be likely given the poor state of our parenting models and the lack of ethnically and racially relevant normative data and measurement instruments. A social cognitive framework is used to examine the potential for bias in the nature of categories of information that judges and mental health evaluators currently use to make decisions. Recommendations for research and practice that might enhance judicial and mental health evaluator sensitivity to racial and ethnic differences in interaction, family structure, and parenting practices are reviewed.     

A Short-Term Longitudinal Study of Pubertal Change,Gender, and Psychological Well-Being of Mexican Early Adolescents

This study examined the role of pubertal development on depression, externalizing behavior problems, self-esteem, and body-image of 951 Mexican early adolescents. The 5th through 7th grade students were assessed at the beginning and end of the school year. The main finding of this study is that the acute experience of menarche adversely affected Mexican adolescent girls psychological well-being, most specifically in terms of depressive symptomatology. On the other hand, pubertal change in Mexican boys, as measured by voice-change, did not appear to adversely affect psychological well-being above and beyond a nonsignificant minimal and temporal readjustment and in fact had a positive effect on body-image. Results suggest that perceived maternal control, prior social–emotional adjustment, and menstrual attitudes may moderate the effects of pubertal change.