Search

Quantitative research into the effectiveness of the UN human rights treaty bodies (UNTBs) in eliciting remedial responses from states is impeded by a lack of usable data on how states respond to their decisions. The new Treaty Body Views Dataset (TBVD) aims to fill this gap. It comprises details on all published decisions in individual complaints cases issued by the UNTBs between 1979 and 2019 and matches these with information on their state of compliance. The TBVD can be used for research on the activities of the treaty bodies, the nature of the decisions themselves, or state behavior following a decision. An empirical application illustrates how the TBVD can advance knowledge about the factors that correlate with compliance with adverse UNTB decisions. Results show that the likelihood of implementation hinges critically on decision-level characteristics, and reveal differences and similarities between compliance with UNTB decisions and regional human rights court judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent US supreme court decision in the matter of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization will have a tremendous effect on medical practice in upcoming years. Currently, there are many new therapeutic IBD treatments in the pipeline and most of them are presently under clinical trials.[7] Clinical trials are usually offered to patients who have severe disease, after failure of previous treatments. Current medical practice is to inform patients about the potential risk and emphasize the importance of strict birth control.[5] However, things can go wrong, and patients might experience unplanned pregnancies. [Extracted from the article]

Judicial intervention is often required to define the boundaries of executive power. Although many separation of powers analyses examine the interaction of courts and legislatures, few examine how the design of executive and judicial institutions affect judicial decision making in cases involving challenges to executive power in the U.S. context. I argue that the degree of judicial institutional vulnerability to executive retaliation will have a significant impact on judicial making. Using an original dataset of cases involving executive power challenges in the American states between 1980 and 2010, I find that courts are more likely to uphold executive power in environments where the threat of institutional retaliation from the executive is high. The results of this analysis indicate that the strength of judicial checks against executive power depends on broader relations of institutional authority, not just on constitutional doctrine or culture. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Does the identity of a majority opinion writer affect the level of agreement a Supreme Court decision receives from the public? Using a survey experiment, we manipulate majority opinion authors to investigate whether individuals are willing to agree with Supreme Court opinions authored by ideologically similar justices even though the decisions cut against their self-identified ideological policy preferences. Our study provides insight into the extent to which policy cues—represented by a political institution’s policy messenger—affect agreement with a given policy. We find that a messenger effect indeed augments the level of agreement a given Supreme Court case receives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Iowa Supreme Court adopted an unpopular but unanimous ruling in Varnum v. Brien, which established same-sex marriage. Using a unique panel study conducted immediately before and after the court decision, we evaluate the impact of policy adoption on changing opinions on minority rights. The signaling of new social norms pressured some respondents to modify their expressed attitudes. We find that respondents whose demographic characteristics would predict support for marriage equality, but previously did not, were more likely to shift their opinions to be consistent with the new state law. A policy feedback mechanism may be responsible for the rapid diffusion of laws legalizing same-sex in the states. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In June 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a landmark decision in United States v. Windsor (570 U.S. -- 2013). The ruling advanced gay rights by striking down Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and instating federal benefits to same-sex married couples. The ruling has widespread economic benefits for legally married same-sex couples including health insurance, flexspending accounts, Social Security benefits, federal taxes, and veterans'benefits. Framed within a global context, this article analyzes the economic implications of United States v. Windsor and the subsequent implementation of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Rule 17 (Rev. Rul. 2013-17) by conducting a cost-benefit analysis of a state with marriage equality compared to a state prohibiting same-sex marriage. Findings indicate, despite the Supreme Court ruling, there is an unequal distribution of costs and benefits across states based on same-sex marriage. If all Americans are to receive equal treatment under the law, then all 50 states and Washington D.C. must comport with federal law and legalize same-sex marriage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions have upheld and expanded gay rights, but the question of how these decisions will impact the wideranging diversity among sexual minorities has yet to be determined. This paper focuses on the impact of these decisions on the State of Gay in the U.S., including those from an array of demographic, ethnic, socioeconomic, and cultural affiliations. The United States v. Windsor (570 U.S. 2013) and Hollingsworth, et al., v. Kristin M. Perry (570 U.S. 2013) decisions are also considered within the context of the global community, both how they were influenced by and how these court findings will in turn broadly impact these cultures. How these decisions were rooted within the context of marriage reform legislation in the 1970s, and how heterosexuals may well be significant beneficiaries of the rulings, is also discussed. The paper concludes with a dialogue on the paths toward continued legal, societal, and political reform within a global context, and how congruence between the State of Gay and Human Rights can be more fully realized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the U.S. court case Hollingsworth, et al., v. Kristin M. Perry which refers to the legalization of same-sex marriage in California. It mentions that the case was related to the Proposition 8 in the State of California which is created by opponents of same-sex marriage. It notes the importance of social movements to the LGBT community as Proposition 8 would not have been defeated if these movements were not involved.

Is Supreme Court legitimacy affected by the way justices explain their decisions to the public? Existing work shows a link between legitimacy and case outcomes but often overlooks the impact of opinion content. Using a novel experimental design, the author measures the effect of three different types of judicial arguments on public support for the Court. The results suggest that the rationales used by justices in their opinions can affect institutional legitimacy, but to a lesser degree than conventional wisdom suggests. Taken together with other recent legitimacy research, these findings have important implications and set the stage for follow-up research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay offers an interpretation of Kant’s republicanism in light of the problem of political judgment. Kant is sometimes thought to base his conception of law on an idea of sovereignty drawn from Hobbes and Rousseau, which would leave little room for popular contestation of the state. In this essay, I reconstruct Kant’s account of the rule of law by bringing out the importance of his theory of judgment. I argue that for Kant the civil condition is ultimately characterized by a contest between the judgment of the sovereign and the judgment of the people, which corresponds to the determinative and reflective employments of political judgment, respectively. On this view, popular sovereignty is ultimately located in the people’s power to judge politically and contest publicly the state. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article proposes a new cross-national thesis for judicial decision making. The judicial politicization theory posits that judges on highly politicized high courts will be more likely to decide cases using ideological and attitudinal factors than judges at less politicized courts. The theory holds that informal norms regarding judicial appointment by the executive are more important than the formal selection mechanism in determining whether a judiciary is highly or less politicized. The results show significant attitudinal judicial voting at each high court and strong support for the contention that judges on highly politicized courts are more likely to decide cases ideologically. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent research suggests that the use of monetary sanctions as a supplementary penalty in state and federal criminal courts is expanding, and that their imposition creates substantial and deleterious legal debt. Little is known, however, about the factors that influence the discretionary imposition of these penalties. This study offers a comprehensive account of the role socio-cultural factors, especially race and ethnicity, have in this institutional sanctioning process. We rely on multilevel statistical analysis of the imposition of monetary sanctions in Washington State courts to test our theory. The theoretical framework emphasizes the need to treat race and ethnicity as complex cultural categories, the meaning and institutional effects of which may vary across time and space. Findings indicate that racialized crime scripts, such as the association of Latinos with drugs, affect defendants whose wrong-doing is stereotype congruent. Moreover, all individuals accused of committing racially and ethnically stigmatized offenses in racialized contexts may experience the courtesy stigma that flows from racialization. We find that race and ethnicity are not just individual attributes but cultural categories that shape the distribution of stigma and the institutional consequences that flow from it. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When individuals make decisions, they tend to prefer information that is consistent with their choices over information that is inconsistent with their choices. This phenomenon is known as selective exposure to confirmatory information, and it has been shown to detrimentally affect the quality of decision outcomes. In this article, we review the most important recent findings on the determinants of this phenomenon, highlight its potential real-life consequences for decision makers and their judgments, and propose a theoretical model that is able to integrate a variety of inconsistent findings in selective exposure research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Judicial decisions focusing on equal educational opportunity involve significant issues of educational governance and often involve explicit questions about the extent to which authority to make educational decisions should be centralized or decentralized across various institutions and entities. This review aims at clarifying scholars’ understanding of court-driven reform of educational governance to leverage equal educational opportunities across the major fields of school desegregation, school finance reform, and school choice. Issues of centralization and decentralization have particularly emerged in courts’ approaches to these fields with respect to both the judicial process and the substance of the policies themselves. An examination of these issues reveals a movement toward the decentralization of authority away from the courts that, at times, has reflected a growing judicial awareness of the courts’ strengths and weaknesses. Based on this examination, a more effective role for the courts in reforms aimed at promoting equal educational opportunity is considered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Four studies show that the abstract concept of importance is grounded in bodily experiences of weight. Participants provided judgments of importance while they held either a heavy or a light clipboard. Holding a heavy clipboard increased judgments of monetary value (Study 1) and made participants consider fair decision-making procedures to be more important (Study 2). It also caused more elaborate thinking, as indicated by higher consistency between related judgments (Study 3) and by greater polarization of agreement ratings for strong versus weak arguments (Study 4). In line with an embodied perspective on cognition, these findings suggest that, much as weight makes people invest more physical effort in dealing with concrete objects, it also makes people invest more cognitive effort in dealing with abstract issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this analysis is whether a strategic perspective provides a useful approach that enhances an understanding of broad patterns of judicial decision making on the U.S. Courts of Appeals. The authors examine whether it is reasonable in the majority of cases for appeals court judges to modify their behavior when necessary to avoid reversal by the Supreme Court. This assessment utilizes statistical analyses and interviews from twenty-eight judges on the U.S. Courts of Appeals. Based on a three-part argument, the authors conclude that a strategic perspective is not helpful in understanding the decision calculus of appeals court judges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors investigated the impact of perceived danger on judged likelihood of restoration. Participants imagined that they were in a state of directed attention fatigue and then that they were taking a walk in a potentially restorative setting. The authors varied two properties of the setting in a factorial design. The setting was either a nature trail or a busy urban street, and it contained either no obvious source of danger or an ominous stalker. Measures of perceived danger and of judged likelihood of restoration were obtained. For both types of measures, in the low-danger condition the two setting categories differed, with the natural setting seen as less dangerous and more likely to be restorative. In the highdanger condition, the difference between the setting categories was eliminated. The authors conclude that the presence of a serious and potentially uncontrollable source of danger can damage the perceived restorative potential of a setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do parties' briefs influence the content of Supreme Court opinions? The author contends that the parties, through the briefs submitted on the merits, have the ability to influence the content of opinions and, consequently, have the ability to influence the law. Utilizing plagiarism software, the author compares the parties' briefs with the majority opinion of the Court. The results indicate that there is a connection between the language of the parties' briefs and the language of the opinions, which means that parties have the potential to influence the law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While theoretical justifications predict that a judge's gender and race may influence judicial decisions, empirical support for these arguments has been mixed. However, recent increases in judicial diversity necessitate a reexamination of these earlier studies. Rather than examining individual judges on a single characteristic, such as gender or race alone, this research note argues that the intersection of individual characteristics may provide an alternative approach for evaluating the effects of diversity on the federal appellate bench. The results of cohort models examining the joint effects of race and gender suggest that minority female judges are more likely to support criminal defendants' claims when compared to their colleagues on the bench, even after controlling for other important factors. This suggests that our understanding of judicial behaviors may be assisted by the inclusion of how individual characteristics overlap rather than examining those characteristics alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Judgments concerning features of environments do not always correspond accurately with objective measures of those same features. Moreover, perceived and objectively assessed environmental attributes, including proximity of destinations, may influence walking behavior in different ways. This study compares perceived and objectively assessed distance to several different destinations and examines whether correspondence between objective and perceived distance is influenced by age, gender, neighborhood walkability, and walking behavior. Distances to most destinations close to home are overestimated, whereas distances to those farther away are underestimated. Perceived and objective distances to certain types of destinations are differentially associated with walking behavior. Perceived environmental attributes do not consistently reflect objectively assessed attributes, and both appear to have differential effects on physical activity behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reminders of death tend to produce strong cognitive and behavioral responses, but little or no emotional response. In three experiments, mortality salience produced an automatic coping response that involved tuning to positive emotional information. Subjects showed increased accessibility of positive emotional information (Experiments 1 and 3) and gave more weight to positive emotion in their judgments of word similarity (Experiment 2) after contemplating death than after thinking about dental pain. This automatic coping response was found both after a delay (Experiments 1 and 2) and directly after the mortality-salience manipulation (Experiment 3), which suggests that the coping process begins immediately. Tuning to positive emotional information in response to mortality salience was unconscious and counterintuitive (Experiment 3). These findings shed light on the coping process that ensues immediately following mortality salience and help to explain why a delay is often necessary to produce effects in line with terror management theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article asks two questions stemming from a conflict in the literature on the U.S. Supreme Court's attention to issues: (1) Are levels of legal mobilization explained by salient Court decisions? (2)Is the Court's level of attention explained by levels of legal mobilization? To answer them, the author tests hypotheses from the public policy and public law literature on data from seven specific issue areas. The author finds that levels of legal mobilization cannot be explained by past salient decisions of the Court but finds some evidence that changes in the Court's levels of attention are explained by levels of mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gender differences in perceptions of sexual intent and commitment have been the subject of formal and informal inquiry for considerable time. One evolutionary theory, Error Management Theory (EMT), predicts that opposite-sex perceptions of female sexual intent and male commitment intent reflect intrinsic biases that minimize gender-specific evolutionary costs. The results supporting these hypotheses were obtained from subjects regardless of mood. We hypothesized that mood would influence ratings of sexual and commitment intent. Sixty participants (30 males, 30 females) were recruited and exposed to a positive and negative mood condition in counterbalanced groups using video stimuli. Preliminary analyses found an unexpected effect of order of mood induction, necessitating separate analyses of the Positive-Negative (PN) and Negative-Positive (NP) groups. Contrary to the original study, there were no gender effects. Positive moods led to increased ratings of both sexual and commitment intent across genders. Further, negative to positive mood-change was associated with significantly increased ratings. Both males and females attributed significantly higher sexual intent to same-sex rivals than themselves, but only males assessed themselves as having significantly higher commitment intent than same-sex rivals. The EMT model may require adaptation to acknowledge effects of variables such as mood on its predictions of gender-specific biases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the U.S. Supreme Court case Rapanos v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Army Corps filed a civil and criminal case against real estate developer John Rapanos for failing to comply with the federal permit requirements in his development projects. The decision of Judge John Paul Stevens in the case is discussed.

Objective: To determine whose naive judgments of consumer product usability are more accurate--those of younger or older adults. Accuracy is here defined as judgments compatible with results from performance-based usability tests.Background: Older adults may be better able to predict usability problems than younger adults, making them particularly good participants in studies contributing to the user-centered design of products. This advantage, if present, may stem from older adults' motivation for more usable products or from their experience adapting their own environments to meet their changing physical, cognitive, and sensory needs.Method: Sixty older participants (ages 65-75 years) and 60 younger ones (ages 18-22 years) evaluated illustrations of consumer products on specific criteria (e.g., readability, learnability, or error rates). They either rated a single design for each product or ranked six alternative designs. They also explained their choices, indicated which features were most critical for usability, and selected usability-enhancing modifications.Results: Although there was no reliable age difference in the amount of usability information provided in the open-ended explanations, older adults were more accurate at ranking alternative designs, selecting the most usability-critical features, and selecting usability-enhancing modifications (all ps < .05).Conclusion: The usability judgments of older adults are more accurate than those of younger adults when these judgments are solicited in a fixed-alternative, but not open-ended, format.Application: Because older adults are more discerning about potential product usability problems, they may be particularly valuable as research participants in early-stage design research (prior to the availability of working prototypes). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theoretical and empirical debate over the ability of the U.S. Supreme Court to influence public opinion through its decisions is far from settled. Scholars have examined the question using a variety of theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence, but there is no theoretical consensus, nor are the empirical studies without methodological weaknesses. We enter this debate in an attempt to bring some clarity to the theoretical approaches, overcome some of the methodological shortcomings, and bring a yet unstudied issue area, Court decisions on gay civil rights, under scrutiny We argue that the ability of Court decisions to influence public opinion is a function of the salience of the issue, the political context, and case specific factors at the aggregate level. At the individual level these factors are also relevant, but citizen characteristics must also be taken into consideration. Our analysis of aggregate level and individual level opinion does indeed suggest that Court decisions can influence public opinion. However, the ability of Court decisions to influence public opinion is conditional. Our findings lend support to the legitimation hypothesis and the structural effects model. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings and suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars of the Supreme Court and many justices assert the importance of the Federalist Papers. They provide important evidence of original meaning and interpretation of the Constitution, and there is evidence that there is an increase in citations to the Federalist Papers in Supreme Court opinions. While some may view this increased citation use as a positive development because it demonstrates reliance on legal authority in judicial decisions, we provide evidence that in a period marked by dissensus and controversy, the use of the Federalist Papers represents externally and internally oriented strategic attempts by the justices to add legitimacy to constitutional interpretation, and to sway colleagues. We use a combination of descriptive and multivariate techniques to examine Federalist citations from 1953 to 1995 to demonstrate our interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do newly appointed justices experience acclimation effects upon their ascent to the Supreme Court? We contend that acclimation is a process, as justices' conformation to the doctrine of stare decisis is partly a function of tenure length. We find that precedent conformance is inversely related to tenure, with newcomers following legal precedents at rates significantly greater than more tenured colleagues; however, justices slowly but surely surrender to relatively unfettered judicial power at the Supreme Court, as attitudes increasingly dominate decisionmaking. While votes adhering to precedent are more prevalent for newcomers, all justices are overwhelmingly influenced by their own ideologies, confirming the inability of the legal model to influence or explain this aspect of judicial behavior. Our results also indicate that the proclivity of prior research to specify an express period of acclimation may be flawed. Instead, acclimation is a dynamic process, ever evolving over justices' entire duration of service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some of the Supreme Court's most famous cases—from Roe v. Wade (1973) to Brown v. Board of Education (1954)—have been decided only after being held over and argued a second time. While few cases take this path, scholars have offered no systematic account for why the Court would ever take such a tack. We develop hypotheses about when reargument is most likely to occur, and test them on all formally decided cases between 1946 and 1985. More specifically, we focus on how justices' uncertainty about case outcomes affects the Court's decision to seek reargument. Our findings demonstrate that reargument is most likely to occur when multiple levels of uncertainty are present, even when we control for other factors that have been raised as explanations for this phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a study that examined Afro-American and mainstream presses' coverage of the 1995 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court on the affirmative action case of Adarand Constructors Inc. versus Federico Pena. Review of related literature; Data and methods used; Results.

The development of fair and impartial criteria for judging those accused of international crimes is one of the most critical issues facing the international community and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Are the resources, experience, and moral force so weighted in favor of the international community that the accused cannot obtain a fair contest? Are international criminal trials legalistic exercises that cloak a victor's justice, or do such courts premise their decisions on fair criteria? Data on ICTY verdicts and punishment of convicted war criminals show that the ICTY judges follow a "legal" model and that punishment is based primarily on the gravity of the crimes committed and the defendant's level of responsibility in the political and military chain of command. Political factors largely do not explain verdicts or sentences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney lawsuit against the FBI and Oakland police. Earth First! members Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney and the explosion of a nail-filled bomb that nearly killed both of them; Arrest of the two by the FBI and Oakland police department and accusing them of blowing themselves up while preparing to carry out a terrorist attack; Propaganda campaign by the FBI that portrayed Earth First! as a terrorist organization; Civil lawsuit Bari and Cherney filed against the FBI; Verdict in favor of Bari and Cherney, which proved that the FBI framed Bari and Cherney in order to break Earth First!.

Presents the rulings of courts in the U.S. on two cases related to the legal responsibilities of school counselors in academic advising and abortion counseling. Background on negligence; Facts of the court cases; Recommendations for school counselors when counseling students in the area of sexuality and abortion.

Assesses the attitudinal dimension that dominates judicial decision- making in Canadian context. Examination of the voting behavior of Canadian Supreme Court Justices in non-unanimous post-Charter cases; Disclosure of principal dimensions underlying the voting behavior; Observation of cases scoring.

Focuses on the manner in which attitudes regarding specific Supreme Court decisions influence subsequent levels of confidence in the court. Analysis of the impact of the 1989 `Webster' abortion decisions and `Texas v. Johnson,' the flag-burning edict released immediately prior to `Webster'; Information on the estimation of confidence in the Supreme Court; Comments about court decisions.

This study examines the structure of social justice judgments (SJJ) on the basis of a conceptual mapping of two major facets of SJJ: distributive rules and social resources. We distinguish irreducible classes of rules (e.g., arithmetic equality, effort) and resources (e.g., money, prestige) and examine their affinities and contrasts in an effort to unveil the patterns of relations among them. A similarity space analysis (SSA) reveals that the predicted distinctions and relations among SJJ correspond to actual judgments made by adolescents regarding the relative importance of distributive rules in allocating different social resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent interpretations of Weber's theory of concept formation have concluded that it is seriously defective and therefore of questionable use in social science. Oakes and Burger have argued that Weber's ideas depend upon Rickert's epistemology, whose arguments Oakes finds to be invalid; by implication, Weber's theory fails. An attempt is made to reconstruct Weber's theory on the basis of his 1904 essay on objectivity. Pivotal to Weber's theory is his distinction between concept and judgment (hypothesis), where the former is the interpretive means to the formation of explanatory accounts (judgments). His theory includes criteria of abstraction and synthesis in the construction of ideal-type concepts as well as criteria for their evaluation. Weber provides a reasonably coherent. If incomplete, theory of concept formation which does not depend on Rickert's epistemological arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluates the judgments of jury about damage awards. Types of damage awards; Compliance with legal rules governing decisions in civil tort cases; Information about the distribution of awards in comparable cases. INSET: Recommended Reading.

Timing of relatively short durations is an essential cognitive function that influences many aspects of humans' daily behavior. Human duration judgments often show large influences of content and context, as well as individual variability, such as age and sex-related differences. At first glance, many findings seem contradictory. The key to navigating in the stormy sea of research findings is to realize that a complete understanding of any kind of temporal experience occurs only if one considers complex interactions among contextual factors.

Questions the common view that John Marshall, United States chief justice, during his first years on the federal bench `firmly established the Court's authority to review and strike down government actions that were incompatible with the constitution, by examining the case of the United States versus Schooner Peggy. Circumstances surrounding the case; Decision in the case; Reference made to some chief justices of the American courts.

This study tested the hypothesis that partisanship influences judgments of fairness and trustworthiness in the mediation of social conflict. Subjects evaluated third patty proposals for resolving the conflict in Jerusalem. A 2 x 2 x 4 factorial design examined (1) partisanship of the subject, either partisan (pro-Israeli) or nonpartisan (neutral); (2) content bias of third party proposals, where the substance of the proposal was either (a) pro-Israeli or (b) evenhanded; and (3) source bias, where the third party was labeled as being (a) pro-Israeli, (b) pro-Palestinian, (c) neutral, or (d) of unknown persuasion. Analyses of judgments of fairness and third patty trustworthiness indicated differences between partisan and nonpartisan subjects in self-serving bias and underlying dynamics in judgments, Partisans used favorableness of the proposals to judge the trustworthiness of the third party, independent of evenhandedness of the proposal, whereas evenhandedness was the criterion for nonpartisans. Nonpartisans trusted the neutral third party and partisans trusted the pro-Israeli third party regardless of proposal fairness, Partisans showed a cushioning effect of third party characteristics: a pro-Israeli third patty who made an evenhanded proposal (relatively unpalatable to the pro-Israeli subjects) was trusted more than a pro-Palestinian third party who made the same proposal. The results highlight practical problems in mediation where the third party may need the mist not only of the disputing parties but also the trust of nonpartisan others. Evenhanded third party behavior that may impress nonpartisans is likely to he seen as biased mediation by disputants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how judicial recognition of rights to land and cultural difference is limited by legal and political requirements to sovereignty. It also discusses the case "Mabo v. Queensland", a landmark case in the highcourt of Australia. The decision is considered very significant because it recognized lands previously owned by indigenous people before the colonization of Australia by Great Britain. It is also considered contradictory because it didn't clarify the extent and nature of the indigenous title it recognized.

The article focuses on the issues concerning the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the District of Columbia (D.C.) v. Dick Anthony Heller case regarding individual's right to bear firearms for private use in 2009. It states that in 2006, six residents including Heller challenged the Firearms Control Regulation Act, which was passed in 1975, as a violation to the Second Amendment. It cites that the appellate court dismissed five of the complainants except for Heller.

The article discusses a study on the naive personality judgments from photographs of chief executive officers (CEO) of companies of the Fortune 1,000, and examines whether these judgments related to measures of the companies' financial success. In this study, 25 highest and 25 lowest ranked companies from the listing on the Fortune 500 Web site in 2006 are selected. Results show that trait and leadership ratings were averaged across participants for each CEO. It is concluded that naive inferences from facial appearance may provide information both subjective preference and objective performance.