PROFILE: CHILD CUSTODY MEDIATION SERVICES IN CALIFORNIA SUPERIOR COURTS

California is now in its 11th year of mandatory child custody mediation, with a current yearly case volume statewide estimated at 65,494. This article profiles the variations in programs and mediation styles in 56 of the state's 58 Superior Courts. Two research studies provide the basis for the information on program structures, case activity, procedures, agreement formats, recommendations, facilities, security, and fees.     

The division of labour between academia and industry for the generation of radical inventions

The Journal of Technology Transfer - The paper investigates the relationship between public research and radical technological development. This study draws on the theory of recombinant innovation...     

IMPLEMENTING A LEGISLATIVE MANDATE FOR SERVICES AND COORDINATION TO CALIFORNIA'S COURT-CONNECTED FAMILY MEDIATION AND CONCILIATION COURTS

This article describes the implementation of landmark legislation in California that provided for services and statewide coordination of family mediation and conciliation courts in California. The article describes the overall management design and its underlying principles, projects, and the five major statewide areas of services.     

A new experimental approach to computer-aided face/skull identification in forensic anthropology

The present study introduces a new approach to computer-assisted face/skull matching used for personal identification purposes in forensic anthropology.In this experiment, the authors formulated an algorithm able to identify the face of a person suspected to have disappeared, by comparing the respective person's facial image with the skull radiograph. A total of 14 subjects were selected for the study, from which a facial photograph and skull radiograph were taken and ultimately compiled into a database, saved to the hard drive of a computer. The photographs of the faces and corresponding skull radiographs were then drafted using common photographic software, taking caution not to alter the informational content of the images. Once computer generated, the facial images and menu were displayed on a color monitor. In the first phase, a few anatomic points of each photograph were selected and marked with a cross to facilitate and more accurately match the face with its corresponding skull. In the second phase, the above mentioned cross grid was superimposed on the radiographic image of the skull and brought to scale. In the third phase, the crosses were transferred to the cranial points of the radiograph. In the fourth phase, the algorithm calculated the distance of each transferred cross and the corresponding average. The smaller the mean value, the greater the index of similarity between the face and skull.A total of 196 cross-comparisons were conducted, with positive identification resulting in each case. Hence, the algorithm matched a facial photograph to the correct skull in 100% of the cases.     

Who is the Author of Halakhah?

The Jewish Law (Halakahh) is probably the older legal system working in our time. It is established on a hierarchy of different texts. The oldest and more authoritative is the Torah (the five books of Moshe), then come the Mishnah, the Talmud, the compilation as Maimonide’s Mishne Torah and Caro’s Shulchan Arukh, then the responsa of the rabbis. While the authorship of the later texts is more or less clear, the one of the Torah is highly problematic, also in the self-understanding of Jewish hermeneutics. This question is discussed in the present paper not from a philological-historical point of view, but from a semiotic one, trying to understand what devices and regimes of enunciation are enacted by the text in order to establish its semiotic-juridical effects. A special double enunciation frame is proposed as the mark of the legislative power in the text, in correlation with another textual device, a sort of divine “signature”. The further evolution of the authorship of the Jewish Law is discussed in its relation with the question of the autonomy in the interpretation of the sacred text.     

Y-chromosomal STR haplotypes in an Albanian population sample

Eight Y-chromosomal short tandem repeats (STRs), DYS19, DYS389-I, DYS389-II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392, DYS393 and DYS385, were typed in a population sample (n=101) of first-generation Albanian immigrants living in Italy.     

Y-chromosomal STR haplotype in Toscany (central Italy)

Here we show the Y-haplotype database consisting in the loci DYS19, DYS388, DYS389I, DYS389II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392, DYS393, DYS385, YCAII and DXYS156Y of 107 males living in Toscany (central Italy).     

Allele sharing in first-degree and unrelated pairs of individuals in the Ge F I AmpFlSTR Profiler Plus database

Eleven Italian forensic laboratories participated in a population study based on the AB Profiler Plus loci with proficiency testing. The validated database, including 1340 individuals, is available on-line. Tests for Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, gametic unbalance, and heterogeneity of gene frequency were generally not significant. Gene frequencies at each locus were consistent with those of two previously published Italian studies, but different from a third. Individuals of each subsample were paired, and the total number of alleles shared across the nine loci was determined in each pair. The analysis was replicated over the total sample. In addition, two samples of mother-child pairs (N=315) and full-sib pairs (N=91) were subjected to allele sharing analysis. The resulting distributions were sufficiently distinct from the sample of unrelated pairs as to be of practical usefulness.     

Public markets, private orderings and corporate governance

In the New Property Rights approach the degree of incompleteness of markets is taken independently of the cost of the public ordering and of their efficiency relatively to private orderings. In this approach “public markets,” similarly to a Swiss cheese, are either assumed to be nonexistent empty holes (because of infinite third party verification costs) or assumed to be smooth and efficient (because of zero third party verification costs). When we allow for positive but not infinite third party verification costs we are necessarily pushed back to the insights of Commons, Coase, Fuller and Williamson. The degree of (in)completeness of public markets becomes an endogenous economic problem and managers can be seen as agents that make “second order” specific investments to run specific relations that cannot be efficiently handled by public markets. Managers and the public authorities build respectively private and public “legal equilibria” that set the working rules within which transactions can take place. Private and public legal equilibria are not only substitutes but also complements. This complementarity is an important source of the path dependency that characterizes the development of different legal systems. The framework is applied to GM’s acquisition of Fisher Body. We suggest that, contrary to the claims of the New property Rights approach, the advantages of the acquisition were not due to the superior incentives of the new private owners but should be rather related to the replacement of public markets by the new private ordering set up by Alfred Sloan.     

Reasonable,Ruled, Responsible

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique - The paper begins by posing the theoretical problem of the foundation of reasonable...