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Past studies mainly focused on the effects of the lack of a pastoral land tenure security system. There is scarcity of evidence regarding the effects of pastoral land tenure insecurity in the context of cross-border environmental resource governance and sustainability that the present study attempted to contribute. The main objective of this study is therefore to assess how far the state land tenure system has impacted environmental resource governance and sustainability along the Ethiopia–Kenya border. The study employed a qualitative method in which key informant interviews, in-depth interviews, and focus group discussions were utilized as the primary data collection methods; moreover, the legal documents of the two states, journal articles, official reports of governmental, and nongovernmental organizations report and other relevant secondary sources were assessed in the review of the literature. Data were collected from various respondents from the pastoralists, nongovernmental organizations, and government bodies from local, national, regional, and international organization representatives. The findings of the study showed that in both states, the government laws and policies adopted have not taken into account the pastoral way of life. In addition, the lack of tenure security for the pastoralists has endangered cross-border environmental resource governance and sustainability. The pastoral landholding system is communally influenced mainly by states' interests and human encroachments. It is vital that pastoral policies should accommodate pastoral felt needs and interests in which the voices of pastoralists are heard in the policy-making process; hence, there should be a special representation for the pastoral people in the regional and federal legislature (in Ethiopia) and central government parliament (in Kenya), and there should be a cross-border pastoralists forum to ensure better environmental resource governance in the borderland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on case files from a Canadian provincial review board tasked with determining the disposition of persons found 'not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder', we explore the role of the forensic hospital report in the production of medico-legal risk knowledges. Through a detailed case study, we show how the report's content and particular material form allow the Board to produce the 'significantly threatening individual' – the very thing the Board (and report) are meant to presuppose. We therefore call on scholars to document their documents, and, in the spirit of actor-network theory (ANT), to analytically treat socio-legal objects as active participants in knowledge's creation. By accounting for the 'knowledge moves' the hospital report might allow, encourage, or prohibit human actors to make, we hope even ANT sceptics can use these tools to better understand various legal decision-making processes and their effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the role the law has played in the construction of the US–Mexico border wall. It explores two episodes of wall-building in American history: the first surrounding the adoption of the Act of August 19, 1935, and the second the adoption of the Secure Fence Act of 2006, both authorizing the erection of a fence at the U.S.-Mexico border. The article observes that for each episode, the law provided the sites for the deployment of narratives that constructed Mexicans as "others," instituting legal precedents that informed increasingly explicit and ambitious legal provisions for the construction of a border wall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethiopia is the most prominent example of the late 20th-century adoption of federalism to accommodate diversity and complete state-building. This article explores the implementation of federalism and accommodation of ethnonational diversity in dominant party regimes by using Ethiopia as a case. Drawing on legal documents, literature, news sources and government reports, the article argues that federalism enabled distinctive groups to promote their culture, use their languages and exercise self-rule in their territory. However, ethnonationalities' constitutionally proclaimed self-determination rights and the practice rarely correspond. Although all ethnonationalities have the same constitutional rights, some are still subjugated, and self-rule remains their dream. The dominant party regime in Ethiopia met demands for self-rule and accommodation with suppression and violence. The constitution grants regions to use their legislative powers to accommodate region-specific demands; nevertheless, regions cannot operate out of the narrow framework of the federal ruling party. Thus, regions became repressive agents of the centre rather than genuine self-rule agents. Insights from Ethiopia have broader implications for states embracing federalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proposal for a regulation on the European Health Data Space (EHDS) is a much-awaited project. It aspires to create a harmonised framework – a common European data space – for the administration of health data (primary use) across Member States and the promotion of healthcare research and innovation (by establishing rules for the secondary use of health data). As such, although the EHDS proposal is a legal document, in its essence, it includes provisions that introduce not only legal, but also institutional, and technical-infrastructural changes. Overall, together with the Regulation 2017/745 on medical devices, the Data Governance Act (DGA), the Data Act, the AI Act, and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the EHDS proposal will complete the regulatory canvas for the use of health data in the European Union. Although we are supportive of the EHDS initiative, there are aspects of the proposal that require further debate, reconsideration, and amendments. Following previous work on potential power asymmetries encapsulated in the Proposal, in this commentary, we focus on the provisions of/for interoperability of the Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems (Ar. 14–32) as well as the provisions on the structure of Health Data Access bodies and their cross-border organisation (section 3). We recommend a series of amendments to orientate the EHDS project better to its constitutive goals: the promotion of public health research and respect for the rights of the individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Despite widespread acceptance that their emissions accelerate climate change and its disastrous ecological effects, new fossil fuel extraction projects continue apace, further entrenching fossil fuel dependence, and thereby enacting particular climate futures. In this article, we examine how this is occurring in the case of a proposed onshore shale gas "fracking" industry in the remote Northern Territory of Australia, drawing on policy and legal documents and interviews with an enunciatory community of scientists, lawyers, activists, and policy makers to illustrate what we call "divisible governance." Divisible governance—enacted through technical maneuvers of temporal and jurisdictional risk fragmentation—not only facilitates the piecemeal entrenchment of unsustainable extraction but also sustains ignorance on the part of this enunciatory community and the wider public about the impacts of such extraction and the manner in which it is both facilitated and regulated. Such governance regimes, we suggest, create felicitous conditions for governments to defer, forestall, or eliminate their accountability while regulating their way further and further into catastrophic climate change. Countering divisible governance begins, we suggest, by mapping the connections that it fragments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Patient autonomy is the most important of the core values of medical ethics, yet the process of obtaining surgical consent remains a lesser scrutinized area of modern surgical practice. Informed consent implies a patient's understanding of nature of the operation, indications, risks, benefits, and alternatives. Surgical consent has traditionally been obtained through verbal communication and formalized by signing a legal document. This process oftentimes leaves patients unequipped with adequate knowledge about the procedure they just consented to. In most cases, it is simply impossible for the non-medically trained layperson to fully understand the nuances of surgery in a conversation. Some may argue a degree of paternalism may be inevitable; we believe there is room for improvement. Methods: We chose to examine English-speaking adult patients undergoing common procedures (laparoscopic cholecystectomy, open inguinal hernia repair, and skin mass/soft tissue excision). We asked 71 patients to complete a free response survey on the risks, benefits, and alternatives to the operation they had just consented to. The patients were administered the survey either in the outpatient clinic or in the preoperative area. Results: Our analysis showed that most of our patients understand the inherent risks, benefits, and alternatives when being consented but that less than 50% of those consented were considered to have adequate understanding of the procedures they were consented for. Discussion: This study highlights key deficits and potential areas of improvement in the informed consent process. Based on the results, we have significant room for improvement and the responsibility to do so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the wider backdrop of a global acceleration of Right of Nature (RoN) legal provisions, this article focuses on recent Indian court cases that created legal personhood for the Ganges and Yamuna rivers, to explore why and how this form of legality was created. Based on anthropological fieldwork, the article then critiques contemporary assertions that simply present the Indian judgments as infiltrations of Hindu cosmology into the legal framework, basically 'saffronisation' of Indian environmentalism. Deeper analysis reveals the need for interdisciplinary, historically grounded study of processes of law-making and pertinent court rulings produced in Indian environmental jurisprudence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firms can use legal and spatial scaling to increase their control and capacity to exploit assets. Here we examine how platform firms, like AirBnB, Uber, and Bird, scale their operations through global wealth chains. Their use of law is to maximize wealth creation and protection, while their services use local spaces to extract value from established property, labor, and public thoroughfares. We examine how such 'networked accumulation' platform firms use legal and spatial scaling through legal affordances. This includes opportunities for absences, ambiguities and arbitrage that are realized via multi and inter-scalar strategies and produce variegation. Our analysis draws on legal documents, as well as interviews, from Barcelona and San Francisco. The article contributes with a model of how platform firms use legal and spatial scaling, as well as how activists can challenge their operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review and Shaun Pattinson's book are focused on how we should apply the PGC to I the governance of i various biomedical technologies. If the best argument to the PGC is agent-centric rather than human agent-centric, then how far can we rely on PGC-guided governance to protect our distinctively human-centric interests? First, I take the point that, in many contexts, it would not be smart for judges to reason "from explicit recognition of the PGC".[25] Nevertheless, I do not think that we should be shy in making explicit the intuitively compelling shape of the PGC and its practical implications. Unless the best reading of the PGC is that governance by technology is off limits, or a community (in an Amish-like way) signs up to a code that rejects technological governance, what guidance does the PGC give us as we grapple with automated forms of governance that reduce our reliance on rules and humans?. [Extracted from the article]

The concept of femicide was created within the feminist theoretical field of studies influencing Law reform in Latin America. Eighteen countries throughout the region have criminalized femicide based on different legal provisions, in intimate and nonintimate relations. This article aims to provide a comparison of legal definitions of femicide as adopted in Latin American legal frameworks and to analyze the challenges of using law to give a name to the gender-based killings of women. The transition of the concept to law may partially impact its potential since other forms of gender-based violence may be hidden in a general clause of 'gender prejudice'. It may also lead to restricted recognition in the legal system since traditionally this system operates in a conservative way wherein individual criminal liability has limitations in addressing institutional discrimination. Despite regional challenges, criminalization has contributed to raising social awareness on gendered killings. It has induced improvements in statistics and pushed for more attention on prevention policies and support for survivors and relatives. Nevertheless, current conservative movements tend to stress only the punitive approach and entail backlash on gender equality policies. This comparative study aims to contribute to a better understanding of the concept in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The June 2024 issue of Medical Law International features a range of articles on health law. One article examines the legal regimes that allow law enforcement agencies to access third-party databases for criminal investigations, arguing for a tiered access regime based on the severity of the crime. Another article discusses a European Court of Human Rights case on assisted dying, concluding that a legal regime with adequate safeguards can comply with the right to life. The issue also includes book reviews on regulatory approaches for new forms of life and a monograph on health inequity among Black Americans. [Extracted from the article]

This article analyzes how a formerly mocked policy idea became a widespread solution. Through content analysis of newspaper articles and legal documents, I develop a framework that extends timelines of social movement influence, expands the range of actors and locations of mobilization, and traces how activists frame policy ideas over time: the policy relay. This framework allows for an analysis of how opponents unintentionally advanced the reform process in 1993 by turning its originators into laughingstocks. Anti-rape advocates eventually reformulated the policy in 2014. This time, the origin was removed from the story, presenting a concise narrative that credited politicians and college administrators, rather than activists, for the reform. By tracing the ideas of a movement, rather than focusing on organizations or public protests, I uncover a complicated process of social change, where consequential actors work across different settings to ignite reforms and strategically remove controversial aspects from narratives of social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prison writing in India has not been adequately engaged with, either in its literary bounds or its implications on prison conditions and administration. With the majority of incarcerations consisting of those yet to be found guilty of a crime, the absence of uniform policies or legal provisions concerning these 'undertrials' affects in a consequential way the prisoner's ability to exercise certain rights, even if limited, especially with regard to personal expression. This article explores this aspect through the decade-long incarceration reflected upon by Kobad Ghandy's Fractured Freedom: A Prison Memoir (2021). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present tensions in Belgrade-Pristina relations highlight the relevance of consensus regarding the question of Kosovo. This article argues that unilateral decisions produce anti-debates by introducing the thesis that Kosovo is a unique case and impose various legal dilemmas that engender discrepancies between legal documents and practice. Drawing from the indisputable achievements of the EU, the article argues that there is a "silent" consensus among the actors (Kosovo, Kosovo Serbs, and Serbia) on the status of Kosovo as a European protectorate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the growing evidence of inequalities related to the presence, promotion and labor conditions of women in the cultural sector, as well as the factors that cause these inequalities, there is still a lack of research and consensus on the key measures that should be applied to reduce the effect of these inequalities. The aim of this study was to identify intervention measures, from both the public and private sectors, that will help promote gender equality in the Catalan context. In a three-round survey using the Delphi technique, cultural professionals were asked about the most appropriate measures to achieve gender equality in cultural employment. In this regard, this article presents an innovative data-gathering methodology for cultural studies, involving diverse stakeholders from the public, private and civil society sectors and contributing to informed decision-making processes. The highest priority measure identified in both the public and private sectors was related to compliance with legal provisions regarding the recognition of equal pay for work of equal value between women and men. The adoption of and compliance with laws and regulations aimed at advancing gender equality and the establishment of measures related to the reconciliation of work with family and social life was also prioritized highly by most professionals. The full set of measures proposed by cultural experts and affected groups can help to effectively address gender inequalities in the Catalan context and provide ideas for other local and national settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study is an endeavor to contribute to the impact developing social circumstances regarding land ownership among women and its relation to gender equality. The purpose of this research debunks the factors effecting women land ownership and their impact on socio-economic equality. A survey was done among 100 women of a remote village, in southern Lalitpur regarding land ownership, with relation to variables such as level of education of women, ethnicity, age, presence of legal documents, knowledge of government policies, and family structure. Factors such as occupation of women, role in household decision making, and involvement in social and political spheres were also studied in relation to their land ownership. The survey was done with purposive and proportional stratified sampling among ethnic communities of Brahmin/Chhetri and Janajati. A questionnaire survey, key informant survey, focus group discussion and in-depth case study were done. Twenty-one percent of the females interviewed had land on their own and this data also had a variation with ethnic communities. It was found that women with land feel confident in the social and economic sphere of society. Brahmin community was found to be more aware of the government policies encouraging female land ownership than the Janajati community. This study aims to add knowledge on the conversation in gender equality and its relation to land and property ownership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eelectroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is an important biological therapy used in psychiatry. Unmodified ECT Unmodified ECT refers to ECT administration without the use of any anesthetic agents and prior administration of any muscle relaxants. The section specifically prohibits the use of ECT, as its subsection (3) states that "Nothing in this section shall allow any medical officer or psychiatrist to use electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) as a form of treatment." Prohibiting the use of ECT as an emergency procedure gives the ECT a negative connotation and adds to the widely prevalent stigma attached to the use of ECT as a treatment mode. [Extracted from the article]

This article shows how dissidents in the latter half of the 1970s "played the law" in the Polish People's Republic. Laws established by an undemocratic government, and thus theoretically lacking democratic legitimacy, were used by the opposition to delegitimize the government. The author describes the goals of the opposition and the lines of argument it employed, and how the Communist party—the other player in this peculiar game—made reciprocal efforts to exploit the law in order to weaken the opposition. The article discusses the specific international and Polish legal documents referenced by both sides of this game—the opposition and the government. The law was an important resource for both sides. This analysis nuances and demythologizes popular claims about the "Helsinki effect" by illustrating the role and legal context of the Helsinki Accords against the backdrop of local laws and the strategies undertaken by both actors. Furthermore, it describes the important institutional setting that influenced the types of actions undertaken by the protest movement in communist Poland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Open data gained considerable traction in government, nonprofit, and profit organizations in the last several years. Open judicial data increase transparency of the judiciary and are an integral part of open justice. This article identifies relevant judicial data set types, reviews widely used open government data evaluation methodologies, selects a methodology for evaluating judicial data sets, uses the methodology to evaluate openness of judicial data sets in chosen countries, and suggests actions to improve efficiency and effectiveness of open data initiatives. Our findings show that judicial data sets should at least include court decisions, case registers, filed document records, and statistical data. The Global Open Data Index methodology is the most suitable for the task. We suggest considering actions to enable more effective and efficient opening of judicial data sets, including publishing legal documents and legal data in standardized machine-readable formats, assigning standardized metadata to the published documents and data sets, providing both programmable and bulk access to documents and data, explicitly publishing licenses which apply to them in a machine-readable format, and introducing a centralized portal enabling retrieval and browsing of open data sets from a single source. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Italian Law no. 219/2017 established the advance care directives ("Disposizioni anticipate di trattamento" - DAT), a legal document specifying the person's wishes in relation to health, drawn up in case of the possible future incapacity to make informed decisions. DAT are an important instrument of empowerment for a person who is not necessarily a "patient" and enable the dialogue between healthcare providers and patient to continue when the latter is no longer able to take part consciously. DAT can only be implemented by guaranteeing the fundamental rights of the person, i.e. by ensuring the "non-complicated" use of this instrument and easy access to the DAT whenever it may be necessary. Furthermore, on the one hand, the requirement of adequate prior medical information has to contend with the fact that the wishes expressed in the document may have been formed outside of the therapeutic relationship; on the other hand, institutions must ensure that DAT are collected and recorded in such a way as to ensure their availability whenever and wherever necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims: Research has shown that the EU's politico-legal influence over member states is contained through two political strategies: contained compliance and anticipatory obedience. Previous studies on gambling policies in the EU have quite uncritically presumed that the EU is capable of inducing changes, or even forcing changes, in national gambling policies. In this article, the objective was to investigate whether member states have adopted the two strategies allowing a containment of the EU's influence on their national gambling policies. Design: The politico-legal influence of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the European Commission on national gambling policy is analysed in the case of Finnish monopoly-based gambling policy. The analysis is based on case law and policy documents. Results: The results indicate that Finland has adopted both anticipatory obedience and contained compliance when striving to safeguard its gambling monopoly system. Contained compliance was adopted during the early period of Finland's accession (1995–2001). Anticipatory obedience was exercised between the years 2004 and 2013, a period characterised by several critical legal cases and the infringement procedure commenced by the European Commission against Finland. During the third period (2014-2017), when the merger of three monopoly operators into a single state-owned company was on the agenda, neither strategy was adopted, indicating little EU influence (despite public justifications of the same). Conclusion: The EU's opportunities to induce changes in the gambling policies of member states should not be overemphasised because member states are able to contain the EU's politico-legal influence. Future analyses of national gambling policies in the EU would benefit from taking the interaction between member states and the EU into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the spatial and political dimensions of an unrecognized Arab village in Israel, which is a subject of houses demolition during the last decade, taking part in parallel to a legal struggle for recognition. This case is part of a wide political act in Israel, where Palestinians are rendered ‘criminal’ and their spaces illegitimate. We will suggest that the unrecognized villages cannot be seen solely as a product of planning policies, but are essential to the understanding of the ways in which Israeli sovereignty is embodied. We will discuss the case using legal documents regarding the latest petition made to the High Court of Justice. Through those documents, we will try to analyse the ways in which Israeli sovereignty is being embodied using theoretical tools by Carl Schmitt and his debate with Hans Kelsen. At the conclusions, we will suggest some thoughts regarding the possibilities of resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work presents Knowlex, a web application designed for visualization, exploration, and analysis of legal documents coming from different sources. Understanding the legal framework relating to a given issue often requires the analysis of complex legal corpora. When a legal professional or a citizen tries to understand how a given phenomenon is disciplined, his attention cannot be limited to a single source of law but has to be directed on the bigger picture resulting from all the legal sources related to the theme under investigation. Knowlex exploits data visualization to support this activity by means of interactive maps making sense out of heterogeneous documents (norms, case law, legal literature, etc.). Starting from a legislative measure (what we define as Root) given as input by the user, the application implements two visual analytics functionalities aiming to offer new insights on the legal corpus under investigation. The first one is an interactive node graph depicting relations and properties of the documents. The second one is a zoomable treemap showing the topics, the evolution, and the dimension of the legal literature settled over the years around the norm of interest. The article gives an overview of the research so far conducted presenting the results of a preliminary evaluation study aiming at evaluating the effectiveness of visualization in supporting legal activities as well as the effectiveness of Knowlex, the usability of the proposed system, and the overall user satisfaction when interacting with its applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers case commentary of the Malaysia High Court civil suit Yeo Ing King v Melawangi Sdn Hdf which deals with evidential status of documents placed in Part A of the Bundle of Documents (BOD) which the parties rely on or refer to in the course of the trial.

This essay examines the proliferation of colonial bureaucratic documents in Leonard Woolf’s The Village in the Jungle (1913). With these ranging from account-books to gun permits and legal notices, the essay argues that documents play a fundamental yet mundane role in the lives of the novel’s characters. In the varied responses to these documents, from the confusion of the illiterate peasants to the sly manipulations of the village headman, it is their materiality that is highlighted, revealing them to be objects that are modified, circulated, handled and left unread. The essay goes on to argue that the novel also presents us with examples of documents and colonial spaces that simply cannot be read, thus exposing the limits of any colonial bureaucracy’s efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Children are often-overlooked receivers of medical information, and little research addresses their information needs. However, young children are capable of understanding medical concepts, and they express the desire to be informed. This study addresses the quality of medical research information forms for children in the Netherlands, by assessing text readability and the role of visuals. Children’s reading books, nonfiction books, and textbooks were used as comparison. Seven focus groups were conducted to identify children’s preferences and needs for text and supporting visuals. We argue that the use of visuals is a powerful, but neglected, tool to improve medical information for minors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

IRBS HAVE BEEN CRITICIZED FOR long and complicated consent forms, but how IRBs make decisions about these issues hasn't been examined. I contacted leaders of 60 IRBs, and interviewed IRB leaders from 34 (response rate = 55%), and 13 members and administrators. IRBs confront challenges and dilemmas regarding these documents: what and how much these forms should include (e.g., how "perfect" forms should be). While IRBs generally seek to decrease the length and complexity, institutions and industry funders often want these forms to be legal documents. IRBs may also "nitpick" these documents without realizing the costs. This study, the first to explore how IRBs view and make decisions about consent forms, suggests underlying tensions, ambiguities, and subjectivities that have important implications for future policy, practice, education, and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an examination of a case from Port Said, Egypt, this article is concerned with betrothal as a perilous social and legal status in contemporary Egypt and with women’s strategies for counteracting the risks it poses. Analysis of the way litigants mobilize specific legal documents (a commercial receipt, a police report, and a marriage contract) suggests that although Egyptian women use legal action to protect their interests their claims may be embedded in complex strategies that marshal both legal and moral power. By redirecting law’s gaze, women reconfigure their rights and obligations and leverage outcomes that are traditionally non-enforceable. This article draws on theoretical engagements with legal documents and documentation as social practice to contribute to debates on gendered legal subjectivity, citizenship, and marriage politics in the Middle East. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article provides an examination of how adoption files, or expedientes, have “fissured” the legality of transnational adoption processes in Guatemala. By focusing on declarations and disclaimers as an entry point to explore controversies over adoption files, the article argues that files point to the “prior” histories of adoption that are intimately connected to local histories of violence in the country. Through the analysis of the politics inherent in these legal documents, and the legal frameworks regulating the production of adoption paperwork, the article offers a critical insight into the extra-judicial processes and forms of “exceptionalism” that made transnational adoptions possible in the thirty-year period between 1977 and 2007. At the same time, the analysis of declarations and disclaimers brings to light how the technologies of their production allow the emergence of “anti-social affects” that saturate, and internally disrupt, transnational adoption files. The article proposes a critical, “anti-social” analysis of international adoption, by illuminating the problems that come from taking for granted the values of futurity and reproduction in adoption studies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, I examine the documentary practices of forensic intervention into sexual assault as they reveal a larger set of imaginaries about kinship, gender, violence and healing. In the course of the forensic encounter, sexual assault victims frequently disclose victimization by intimates or relatives. The reading practices and audit mechanisms to which forensic documents are subjected reveal tensions between the real-life experiences of sexual assault victims and their families on the one hand, and institutional imaginaries of care and victimization on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including the distinction between relational kinship and substantive kinship, the different traditions of legal ethnography, and the documentary inscription of slippages and mis-translations during divorce and marriage proceedings.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics related to the case of Kolkata and Dhaka family including the language translation gaps, the analysis of the recorded assault narratives, and the studies on the use of surety devices in Egypt.

This article examines how legal texts can be read to broaden our understanding of intimate-partner violence in the United States. Documents, as repositories of the way institutions remember for the public, can provide insight into how people, and in this case, female victims and state actors, define this particular type of violence against women. These documents demonstrate how kin, household and family are both involved and implicated in this highly gendered and targeted aggression. The data presented should factor into new definitions of intimate-partner abuse, because they illustrate how the surrounding network of family members, along with providing help to women that are victimized, may also be at risk of being harmed by men that batter their wives and girlfriends. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses a court case between Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and Cadbury Schweppes Pty Ltd. The main issue concerns with the 111 witness statements served by ACCC during the prosecution against Visy. The documents were accessed by Cadbury, to which ACCC claimed that legal privilege and the public interest immunity details, provided in the documents prevented Cadbury from inspecting certain statements made by Amcor Ltd.'s employees in Cadubry and Amcor case.

Psychiatric advance directives (PADs) are legal documents that allow competent individuals to express wishes for psychiatric care during a future crisis when they may no longer be able to do so. PADs are intended to enhance client autonomy at a time when clients are most vulnerable—when in psychiatric crisis and thus in need of treatment, yet unable to voice their wishes because of illness. Despite their potential utility, PADs are infrequently used. Using data from an exploratory survey (N = 193), we examined social workers' familiarity and experience with PADs and found surprisingly low levels of PAD awareness and experience. We discuss the implications of these findings for social work research, practice, and education, and we offer recommendations for future study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I examine and empirically test a central assumption of strategic models of Supreme Court behavior. Specifically, I consider whether the Court selects legal instruments used in the majority opinions of federal statutory cases to reduce the likelihood that Congress will overturn that opinion, in particular whether the Court invokes constitutional interpretation over statutory interpretation to avoid congressional "overrides" in cases involving federal statutes. Using decisions from the 1953 to 2000 Court terms, I find evidence that when the Court anticipates that Congress may overturn its opinion, the Court is more likely to employ constitutional interpretation in its opinion. These findings confirm that opportunities for the Court to behave strategically are not limited to voting behavior but instead extend to other areas such as choice of legal instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some pharmacists have used a power of attorney document for quite some time when submitting orders for controlled substances. This is authorized by Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) regulations. Increasingly, pharmacists are encountering power of attorney documents in another context -- durable powers of attorney authorizing an Agent to make health care decision for the Principal. Medicare requirements have greatly expanded use of such advance directives. Thus, pharmacists may encounter these documents with both professional and personal issues. Types of power of attorney documents are reviewed with the differences highlighted. A variety of legal requirements that may apply are discussed and situations where such documents may prove helpful are listed. Issues related to the Agent are discussed, because pharmacists may find themselves in this role or in the role of advising someone selecting an Agent. How to revoke such legal documents is described as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1980s, Janet Malcolm was sued for libel for allegedly fabricating direct quotations in a profile she wrote for the New Yorker. The suit lasted nine years and generated a wealth of legal documents as well as articles in newspapers, magazines and trade journals. In this article, I draw on work on the sociology of science to analyze how representations of journalism constructed in and around the Malcolm case were used to defend and challenge old boundary lines separating ‘subjective storytelling’ from ‘objective reporting’, and to affirm journalism's authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the meaning of a legal document in the United States called advance directives from both a biomedical and a nursing perspective. Law which legalized the execution of advance directives; Rationale behind the execution of advance directives; Reflections of a nurse on her experiences in making an advance directive.

The article describes an instructional exercise that uses a university's form titled, "Request for Complimentary Parking Permits," as a tool to help students explore the concept of effective control mechanisms. Each student in an introductory management course regarding the form for parking permits is asked what is wrong with the request form. Students found little fault with the form initially. When pressed to be more critical, they began to uncover faults including the disapproval signatures, justification for the request of waived fees, and the number of persons for event and event portions of the form.

The article narrates on the challenges the author, a foreign medical graduate, faced when he went to Great Britain to work in the National Health Service. He struggled in getting a visa, passing the Professional and Linguistic Assessment Board exams, doing paper works and formalities. He was surprised with the variety of taxes that he had to pay. The author expressed that he had a difficult time in adjusting to the life in Great Britain.