Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 363-372

The first applications of DNA technology in criminal cases took place in the United States and United Kingdom more than 30 years ago. What have we learned over the past three decades from the use of forensic DNA analysis in criminal and human rights investigations and humanitarian disasters? And what challenges, opportunities, and potential pitfalls lie ahead?...

1996 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
E Donald Shapiro ◽  
Stewart Reifler

All three branches of the United States Government are, directly or indirectly, promoting the use and judicial acceptance of forensic DNA analysis. In addition, the establishment of a US national DNA databank has been authorized. The US Congress has passed the ‘DNA Identification Act of 1994’, which provides, inter alia, funding to the states for developing and/or improving forensic laboratories capable of conducting DNA analysis, and also creates a framework for federal supervision of forensic DNA technology. Specifically, the Executive Branch, through the Department of Justice and particularly its Federal Bureau of Investigation, has been directed to develop standards and practices in order to speed the admissibility of forensic DNA analysis as scientifically acceptable evidence in US courts. Finally, the federal judiciary has been ordered by the US Supreme Court to abandon or modify the 70-year-old Frye standard, which the Federal courts previously used to determine whether scientific evidence is deemed admissible, a move that will directly impact the judicial acceptance of forensic DNA analysis in all federal courts and undoubtedly will affect the admissibility of DNA evidence in many American state courts.


Author(s):  
Andrew Valls

In regime transitions, a number of mechanisms are utilized to memorialize the past and to reject the ideas associated with human rights abused of the prior regime. This is often done through truth commissions, apologies, memorials, museums, changes in place names, national holidays, and other symbolic measures. In the United States, some efforts along these lines have been undertaken, but on the whole they have been very limited and inadequate. In addition, many symbols and memorials associated with the past, such as Confederate monuments and the Confederate Battle Flag, continue to be displayed. Hence while some progress has been made on these issues, much more needs to be done.


2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 901-910
Author(s):  
Robert E. Goodin ◽  
James Mahmud Rice

Judging from Gallup Polls in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, opinion often changes during an election campaign. Come election day itself, however, opinion often reverts back nearer to where it was before the campaign began. That that happens even in Australia, where voting is compulsory and turnout is near-universal, suggests that differential turnout among those who have and have not been influenced by the campaign is not the whole story. Inspection of individual-level panel data from 1987 and 2005 British General Elections confirms that between 3 and 5 percent of voters switch voting intentions during the campaign, only to switch back toward their original intentions on election day. One explanation, we suggest, is that people become more responsible when stepping into the poll booth: when voting they reflect back on the government's whole time in office, rather than just responding (as when talking to pollsters) to the noise of the past few days' campaigning. Inspection of Gallup Polls for UK snap elections suggests that this effect is even stronger in elections that were in that sense unanticipated.


Significance Russia on June 28 rejected as “lies” similar allegations by the United States, United Kingdom and France at the UN Security Council. The exchanges come against the backdrop of rising diplomatic tensions between Russia and France in CAR. Impacts Touadera’s ongoing offensive against rebel forces threatens to deliver a fatal blow to the peace deal he struck with them in 2019. Expanding Russian control over key mining sites could be a persistent source of frictions absent sophisticated local arrangements. Human rights concerns will deter some African leaders from engaging with Russia, but not all.


Author(s):  
Steven Gow Calabresi

This concluding chapter identifies the four major causes of the growth and origin of judicial review in the G-20 common law countries and in Israel. First, the need for a federalism umpire, and occasionally a separation of powers umpire, played a major role in the development of judicial review of the constitutionality of legislation in the United States, in Canada, in Australia, in India, and most recently in the United Kingdom. Second, there is a rights from wrongs phenomenon at work in the growth of judicial review in the United States, after the Civil War; in Canada, with the 1982 adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms; in India, after the Indira Gandhi State of Emergency led to a massive trampling on human rights; in Israel, after the Holocaust; in South Africa, after racist apartheid misrule; and in the United Kingdom, after that country accumulated an embarrassing record before the European Court of Human Rights prior to 1998. This proves that judicial review of the constitutionality of legislation often occurs in response to a deprivation of human rights. Third, the seven common law countries all borrowed a lot from one another, and from civil law countries, in writing their constitutions. Fourth, and finally, the common law countries all create multiple democratic institutions or political parties, which renders any political attempt to strike back at the Supreme Court impossible to maintain.


1871 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. B. Sprague

The past session of Parliament has witnessed the passing of an Act for the regulation of Life Assurance Companies in the United Kingdom, which, while introducing great changes in the law, still stops very far short of the system of legislation which has been for several years in operation in a few of the United States of America, and which is warmly approved of and urgently recommended for adoption by some persons in this country. The present may therefore be considered a fitting time for reviewing what has been done and considering whether any further legislation is desirable, and if any, of what nature it should be.


Author(s):  
Leighton Vaughan-Williams ◽  
David Paton

Over the past decade, U.K. gambling sector has experienced several regulatory shocks that have led to considerable debate and controversy within the industry and policy-making communities. Although there is a well-established literature on the economic impact of the growth of gambling facilities on local and regional economies in the United States and the United Kingdom, relatively little research has focused on optimal taxation of gambling machines within these facilities. This chapter seeks to address this gap by examining the theoretical arguments for taxing gambling machines by means of a levy on machine takings rather than by means of a license fee levied per machine. Recent tax debates in the United Kingdom provide an ideal context for such a discussion.


2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 390-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tania Simoncelli

Over the past fifteen years, the United States has witnessed an extraordinary expansion in the banking and mining of DNA for law enforcement purposes. While the earliest state laws governing forensic DNA limited collection and retention of DNA samples to sexual offenders – on the theory that these persons were especially prone to recidivism and most likely to leave behind biological evidence – today forty-three states collect DNA from all felons, twenty-eight from juvenile offenders, and thirty-eight from those who commit certain categories of misdemeanors.A few states have expanded their databases beyond convicted criminals. Virginia, Louisiana, Texas, and California have authorized DNA retention from persons merely arrested for various offenses, although to date only Virginia has implemented such a program. At the federal level, an ill-considered statute that allows for the seizure and storage of DNA from anyone arrested and from non-U.S. citizens detained under federal authorities was recently signed into law.


1983 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 587-603 ◽  
Author(s):  
Davidson Nicol

The past decade has seen an increase in the scope of relationships, both political and economic, between Africa and the United States. These vary with the complexion of the government in power, though some would say that this was more in emphasis than in substance, others definitely not. It is felt by many Africans, nevertheless, that the Carter Administration's emphasis on human rights has now been downgraded by the present Reagan Administration and that, instead, the geopolitics of U.S.–U.S.S.R. rivalry, and the economic importance of developing the private sector at the expense of bilateral or multilateral aid, have been moved to the fore.


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