Wrongful termination lawsuits: the employers finally win a few

Much attention has been given of late to the erosion of the "employment-at-will" doctrine. Exceptions to this doctrine began to emerge when courts held that at-will employees could sue if their termination violated public policy. The at-will doctrine was further eroded by court rulings that a contract requiring good cause in order to terminate could be inferred from employee handbooks, company personnel policies, and circumstances of employment. As the initial flood of wrongful termination lawsuits now reaches the appellate level, some guidance on the standards employers must observe can be drawn from court decisions. The authors examine these decisions as well as the legislative reform being proposed in response to them.     

Reviews

David W. Lovell, From Marx to Lenin. An Evaluation of Marx's Responsibility for Soviet Authoritarianism. London: Cambridge University Press, 1984, xii + 231 pp. £19–50.

A. J. Polan, Lenin and the End of Politics. London: Methuen, 1984, vi + 229 pp. h/b £12–95, p/b £5–95.

David Lane, State and Politics in the USSR. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985, xv + 398 pp. h/b £27–50 p/b £8.95. Soviet Economy and Society. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985, xiii + 342 pp. h/b £27–50 p/b £8.95.

Curtis Keeble, ed., The Soviet State. The Domestic Roots of Soviet Foreign Policy, London: Gower, 1985, 244 pp. h/b £17.50 p/b 8.95.

Adam B. Ulam, Dangerous Relations: The Soviet Union in World Politics, 1970–1982. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983 vi + 325 pp., £5–95.

Gerald Segal, ed., The Soviet Union in East Asia: Predicaments of Power. London: Heinemann, 1983. x + 150 pp., h/b £14–50 p/b £6–50.

Bruce D. Porter, The USSR in Third World Conflicts: Soviet Arms and Diplomacy in Local Wars 1945–1980. Cambridge, London, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, Sydney: Cambridge University Press, 1984, viii + 248 pp., £20–00, $29.95.

Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr., and Uri Ra'anan, eds., National Security Policy. The Decision‐making Process, Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1984, xiv + 311 pp. £35.30.

Yosef Avidar, The Party and the Army in the Soviet Union. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, 1983, 340 pp., h/b $25.00.

William Moskoff, Labour and Leisure in the Soviet Union: The Conflict Between Public and Private Decision‐Making in a Planned Economy. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984, xv + 225 pp., £25.00.

Raymond Hutchings, The Soviet Budget. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1983, x + 204 pp., £25.00.

Gary Littlejohn, A Sociology of the Soviet Union. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1984, ix + 286 pp., h/b £18–00, p/b £6–95.

J. P. Cole, Geography of the Soviet Union. London: Butterworths, 1984, xiv + 452 pp., £14.95.

Robert G. Jensen, Theodore Shabad and Arthur W. Wright eds., Soviet Natural Resources in the World Economy. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1983, xix + 700 pp., £92.00.

Olympiad S. Ioffe and Peter B. Maggs, Soviet Law in Theory and Practice, London, Rome, New York: Oceana Publications, Inc., 1983, 237 pp., $35–00.

V. I. Smolyarchuk, Giganty i charodei slova. Russkie sudebnye oratory vtoroi poloviny XIX—nachala XX veka. Moscow, 1984, 272 pp., 65 kop.

Dina Kaminskaya, Final Judgement. My Life as a Soviet Defence Lawyer. London: Harvill Press, 1983, 364 pp., £12.95.

Dina Kaminskaya, Zapiski advokata. Vermont: Khronika Press, 1984, 345 pp., no price.

Gabriel Gorodetsky, Stafford Cripps’ Mission to Moscow 1940–42, Cambridge: the University Press, 1984, 377 pp., £25.00.

E. H. Carr (Edited by Tamara Deutscher), The Comintern and the Spanish Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1984, xx + 111pp., h/b £17–50, p/b £6.95.

David Mandel, The Petrograd Workers and the Fall of the Old Regime: From the February Revolution to the July Days 1917. London: Macmillan, (in association with the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham), 1983, xii + 210 + 10 pp., £25.00.

David Mandel, The Petrograd Workers and the Soviet Seizure of Power: From the July Days 1917 to July 1918. London: Macmillan, (in association with the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham), 1984, xv + 227 + 12 pp., £25.00.

Geoffrey Swain, Russian Social Democracy and the Legal Labour Movement, 1906–14. London: Macmillan, 1983, xiv + 239 pp., £25.00.

Benjamin Pinkus, The Soviet Government and the Jews 1948–1967. A Documented Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984, xvi + 612 pp., £35.00.

Jakub Blum and Vera Rich, The Image of the Jew in Soviet Literature: the Post‐Stalin Period. New York: Ktav Publishing House, Inc., 1984, 276 pp., No price quoted.

Yaacov Roi ed., The USSR and the Muslim World. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1984, xv + 298 pp., £25.00.

Michael Bruchis, Nations ‐ nationalities ‐ People: A Study of the nationalities policy of the Communist Party in Soviet Moldavia. Boulder Colorado: East European Monographs, distributed by Columbia University Press, New York, 1984, iv + 230 pp., No price quoted.

Michael J. Sodaro and Sharon L. Wolchik eds., Foreign and Domestic Policy in Eastern Europe in the 1980s: Trends and Prospects. London: Macmillan, 1983, x + 265 pp., £25.00.

Adam Zwass, The Economies of Eastern Europe in a time of change. London: Macmillan, 1984, ix + 170 pp., £20.00.

R. Dietz, Die Energiewirtschaft in Osteuropa und der UdSSR. Vienna and New York: Springer‐Verlag, 1984, 248 pp., $17.90, DM 49.—.

Ferenc Feher and Agnes Heller, Hungary 1956 Revisited. The Message of a Revolution—a Quarter of a Century After. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983, xviii + 174 pp., £15.00.

Ray Taras, Ideology in a Socialist State; Poland 1956–83. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1984, x + 299 pp., £25.00.

Fred Singleton, A Short History of the Yugoslav Peoples, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, xiii + 309 pp., h/b £22.50, p/b £7.50.

Martin McCauley, The German Democratic Republic since 1945. London: Macmillan, 1983, xiv + 282 pp., £25.00.

Raymond Bentley, Technological Change in the German Democratic Republic. Boulder, Colorado and London: Westview Press, 1984, xx + 296 pp., $25.00.

Paul‐Gunther Schmidt, Internationale Wahrungspolitik im sozialistischen Staat, Stuttgart, New York: Gustav Fischer Verlag, 1985, xii + 447 pp., DM 48.

R. H. Haigh, D. S. Morris, A. R. Peters, eds., German‐Soviet Relations in the Weimar Era. Aldershot: Gower, 1985, viii + 206 pp., £15.00.

Mireille Maqua, Rome‐Moscou, l'Ostpolitik du Vatican, Liège: Cabay publishers, 1985, 248 pp., 580 F.B.

Ian Nish, The Origins of the Russo‐Japanese War, (Origins of Modern Wars Series: General Editor, Harry Hearder), Longman, London and New York, 1985. xiii + 274 pp. £6.95 paper.     

Foreign Terrorist Fighters: managing a twenty-first century threat

In the aftermath of the Arab uprisings Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTFs) have emerged as a significant security challenge. Since the 1980s and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan the notion of a ‘foreign fighter’ has been closely linked, if not synonymous, with those ideologically or religiously motivated individuals who have travelled to join conflicts in Islamic lands. This article will explore the contemporary FTF movement, offering a comparison of Afghanistan in the 1980s and Syria in the contemporary period. It will explore the international community’s expansive responses to the challenge of FTFs, with special focus on the role of the United Nations.     

Examining Temporal Associations Between School Connectedness and Early Adolescent Adjustment

This study examined (a) the associations between school connectedness and early adolescent adjustment problems over a 1 year period and (b) the equivalence of these associations across gender. Five hundred middle school students (53.4% female), initially in the 6th and 7th grades, participated in the two-wave study. Results from two-group cross-lagged panel analyses were consistent across boys’ and girls’ data. After controlling for baseline levels of adjustment problems, school connectedness predicted lower levels of early adolescent conduct problems 1 year later. Regarding the opposite direction of associations, and even after baseline levels of school connectedness were taken into account, conduct problems predicted lower levels of subsequent school connectedness. There were no cross-lagged associations between depressive symptoms and school connectedness, although elevated levels of baseline depressive symptoms predicted higher levels of subsequent conduct problems. Findings elaborate previous research by demonstrating that early adolescents actively shape the middle school environment.

Evaluation of Raman spectroscopy for the analysis of colored fibers: a collaborative study

A collaborative study on Raman spectroscopy was carried out by members of the ENFSI (European Network of Forensic Science Institutes) European Fibres Group (EFG) on three dyed fibers: two red acrylics and one red wool. Raman instruments from six different manufacturers were tested as well as nine different laser wavelengths ranging from blue (lambda = 458 nm) to near infrared-NIR (lambda = 1064 nm). This represents the largest comparison study of Raman analytical parameters carried out on identical fiber samples. For the chosen fiber and dye samples, red lasers (lambda = 633 and 685 nm) gave the poorest spectral quality whereas blue (458 nm), green (514 nm) and near infrared lasers (785, 830 and 1064 nm) provided average results. Blue (488 nm) and green lasers (532 nm) globally gave the best quality spectra. Fluorescence problems were often encountered with some of the excitation wavelengths and therefore a flexible Raman instrument equipped with different lasers can be recommended to measure forensic fiber samples. The instrument should also be equipped with a Raman microscope in order to be able to focus on a single fiber. This study shows that Raman spectroscopy usually enables the identification of the main dye present in a colored fiber; however, minor dye components are much more difficult to detect. SERRS (Surface Enhanced Resonance Raman Scattering) techniques give an improvement of the dye's spectral intensity but no spectral improvement was observed for the two red acrylic and red wool fibers tested.