A Cultural Anthropologist as Expert Witness: A Lesson in Asking and Answering the Right Questions

2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 6-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leila Rodriguez
Keyword(s):  
Expert Witness ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Public ◽  
Bed Sharing ◽  
Cultural Anthropologist ◽  
Abuse Case ◽  
Mexican Culture ◽  
Sexual Abuse Case ◽  
The Right ◽  
Sharing Behavior

A few years ago, a Mexican man in the United States allegedly abused his young stepdaughter by fondling her breasts. Last summer, his ex-wife formally accused him of this crime, and the public defender hired me to serve as an expert witness in the sexual abuse case. The defendant argued that he had not intentionally fondled the girl, and that when this occurred a younger boy—his biological son—was also present in the bed. His lawyer believed that some of his ideas and behaviors concerning bed-sharing behavior were cultural, and that is why she contacted me.1 My task was to establish whether, in fact, in "Mexican culture" such bed-sharing behavior is considered appropriate. As I prepared myself for this endeavor I found that there is a dearth of information about the practical, scholarly, and ethical dilemmas I encountered along the process of serving as an expert witness. The case never made it to trial, as the defendant was eventually offered a plea deal in large part because of my testimony. Nonetheless, I learned valuable lessons throughout the process that will undoubtedly be useful for any cultural anthropologist facing this role.

scholarly journals Allegiance Bias in Statement Reliability Evaluations Is Not Eliminated by Falsification Instructions

2020 ◽  
Vol 228 (3) ◽  
pp. 210-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie Sauerland ◽  
Henry Otgaar ◽  
Enide Maegherman ◽  
Anna Sagana
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Child Sexual Abuse ◽  
Expert Witness ◽  
Expert Witnesses ◽  
Case File ◽  
Abuse Case ◽  
Sexual Abuse Case ◽  
The Given

Abstract. Are expert witnesses biased by the side (defense vs. prosecution) that hires them? We examined this issue by having students act as expert witnesses in evaluating interviews in a child sexual abuse case (Experiment 1, N = 143) and tested the value of an instruction to counteract such allegiance effects. The intervention concerned an instruction to consider arguments both for and against the given hypothesis (i.e., two-sided instructions; Experiment 2, N = 139). In Experiment 3 ( N = 123), we additionally provided participants with three different scenarios. Participants received a case file regarding a case of alleged sexual abuse. With the file, participants received an appointment letter emphasizing elements of the file that questioned (defense) or supported (prosecution) the veracity of the accusation. Participants displayed allegiance bias (Experiments 1–3), but two-sided instructions were not successful in eliminating allegiance bias (Experiments 2 and 3). The findings underscore the importance of legal safeguards in expert witness work.

Privatization—Chipping Away at Government

2020 ◽  
pp. 106-128
Author(s):  
Donald Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Common Good ◽  
Public Services ◽  
The United States ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Policy Debates ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right

This chapter focuses on the right wing's astonishingly successful efforts to privatize public goods and services. Privatization has been one of the highest priorities of the right wing for many years, and the chapter shows how it threatens both labor and democracy. Intentionally blurring the lines between public and private institutions, private companies and market forces undermine the common good. This chapter documents the history of privatization in the United States, from President Reagan's early efforts to Clinton and Gore's belief in private markets. Showing how privatization undermines democratic government, the chapter describes complex contracts that are difficult to understand, poorly negotiated “public–private partnership” deals, and contracts that provide incentives to deny public services. With huge amounts of money at stake, privateers are increasingly weighing in on policy debates—not based on the public interest but rather in pursuit of avenues that increase their revenues, profits, and market share. Privatization not only destroys union jobs but also aims to cripple union political involvement so that the corporate agenda can spread unfettered. Nevertheless, community-based battles against privatization have succeeded in many localities, demonstrating the power of fighting back to defend public services, public jobs, and democratic processes.

The Right to Anonymity in Political Activities

2013 ◽  
pp. 202-220
Author(s):  
Knut Fournier
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Right To Privacy ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Right To Privacy ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Value

The complexity of the right to privacy is particularly striking when the issues at stake are, ultimately, other political rights and freedoms such as the right to free speech and the right of association. The surveillance of individuals and groups by the state has strong political consequences: the surveillance of political activities re-defines what the private sphere is, and displaces its limits, in a context in which more information is becoming available to the public. Multiple recent developments, exemplified by the role of the right to privacy in movies, exacerbated the tensions between Europe and the United States over the notion of privacy. The future EU data protection laws will create a right to be forgotten, whose political value is still unknown.

Driving under the influence of opioids: What prescribers should know

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 415-427 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph V. Pergolizzi, Jr, MD ◽  
Robert Taylor, Jr, PhD ◽  
John Bisney, MA ◽  
Jo Ann LeQuang, BA ◽  
Robert B. Raffa, PhD ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
The United States ◽  
Driving Under The Influence ◽  
Pain Patient ◽  
Prescription Medications ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Central Nervous System ◽  
The Right

Opioids affect the central nervous system and are known to produce dizziness, sleepiness, mood changes, and other actions that in some people have a negative impact on psychomotor or mental performance. The negative effects can be exacerbated in persons who are taking other prescription medications or illegal substances. Opioid-abusing drivers clearly represent an unnecessary danger to the public; although the vast majority of patients taking prescription opioids for pain safely drive to work and other activities, a subset may be impaired, but not be aware of or recognize the problem. The majority of pain patients would likely be surprised to learn that the legal systems in most parts of the world, including most states in the United States, do not differentiate between a pain patient taking a prescribed opioid at the right dose and frequency, and an abuser taking an illegal drug. For example, in some parts of the United States, a driver may be initially stopped for a relatively minor offense and, if the officer notices that the driver is wearing a fentanyl patch, charged with driving under the influence of drugs (DUID). The present narrative review attempts to highlight the existing problem, the different legal thresholds for arrest and prosecution for DUID, and the challenge of trying to have zero-tolerance for driving under the influence of a drug used illegally, while at the same time not arresting legitimate patients who are taking pain medication as prescribed. There is a clear and present need for an integrated assessment and addressing of the current confounding situation.

Cookery and Copyright: A History of One Cookbook in Three Acts

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carrie Helms Tippen ◽  
Heidi S. Hakimi-Hood ◽  
Amanda Milian
Keyword(s):  
Book History ◽  
Domestic Workers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Copyright Law ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
The Right ◽  
Training Institute ◽  
The U.S

This article examines the history and movements of one collection of recipes in three “acts” or iterations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Maria Eliza Ketelby Rundell's A New System of Domestic Cookery is published in London in 1806, and almost immediately, the book is pirated and printed in the United States. More than 100 years later, the same collection of recipes is reprinted by S. Thomas Bivins under the title The Southern Cookbook. The authors discuss the implications of the text's movements through the lens of book history and copyright law. Rundell sues her publisher, John Murray, for the right to control the publication of her recipes. Meanwhile, in the U.S., her book is continuously in print for decades, but Rundell receives no remuneration for it. Bivins, an African American merchant and principal of a training institute for black domestic workers, takes the recipes attributed to Rundell from the public domain for The Southern Cookbook. The authors conclude that this cookbook in three acts demonstrates how a history of the cookbook in general can challenge received understandings of authorship and textual ownership.

A Triad of Crisis Communication in the United States

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mahmoud Eid ◽  
Jenna Bresolin Slade
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Change ◽  
National Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
White House ◽  
The Public ◽  
System Collapse ◽  
Right To Communicate ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Right

The United States experienced a core-shaking tumble from their pedestal of superpower at the beginning of the 21st century, facing three intertwined crises which revealed a need for change: the financial system collapse, lack of proper healthcare and government turmoil, and growing impatience with the War on Terror. This paper explores the American governments’ and citizens’ use of social network sites (SNS), namely Facebook and YouTube, to conceptualize and debate about national crises, in order to bring about social change, a notion that is synonymous with societal improvement on a national level. Drawing on democratic theories of communication, the public sphere, and emerging scholarship on the Right to Communicate, this study reveals the advantageous nature of SNS for political means: from citizen to citizen, government to citizen, and citizen to government. Furthermore, SNS promote government transparency, and provide citizens with a forum to pose questions to the White House, exchange ideas, and generate goals and strategies necessary for social change. While it remains the government’s responsibility to promote such exchanges, the onus remains with citizens to extend their participation to active engagement outside of SNS if social change is to occur. The Obama Administration’s unique affinity to SNS usage is explored to extrapolate knowledge of SNS in a political context during times of crises.

Cultural Policy in American Music History: Sammy Davis, Jr., vs. Juvenile Delinquency

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-58
Author(s):  
ANNA NEKOLA ◽  
BILL KIRKPATRICK
Keyword(s):  
Juvenile Delinquency ◽  
Cultural Policy ◽  
Music History ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Music ◽  
Recording Industry ◽  
The Public ◽  
Specific Factors ◽  
Cultural Tensions ◽  
The Right

AbstractIn 1956 entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr., attempted to organize the music industry in a campaign against juvenile delinquency, using musical public service announcements to encourage teens to stay on the right side of the law. Although popular with the public and some industry insiders, Davis's idea failed, officially because of opposition from the Recording Industry Association of America. Although Davis's campaign went nowhere, we argue that this episode provides an important illustration of the need to broaden our understanding of cultural policy studies in the context of American music history. Specifically, we argue for an approach to policy analysis that draws on poststructuralist historiography to capture the forms that cultural policy takes in the United States, including the specific factors of race, intra-industry struggles, and the persona of Sammy Davis, Jr., himself, a pivotal figure who has been largely neglected by music historians despite embodying many of the key cultural tensions of postwar U.S. society. By examining the case of Sammy Davis, Jr., vs. Juvenile Delinquency, we can achieve a better understanding of how U.S. music, U.S. culture, and cultural policy intersect.

German Antifascist Refugees in America and the Public Debate on “What Should be Done with Germany after Hitler,” 1941–1945

2007 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 279-305 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marjorie Lamberti
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
United States Government ◽  
Postwar Germany ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Right ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

The debate over “what should be done with Germany after Hitler” became so intense in America in 1943–44 that competitive organizations were created to influence public opinion and official postwar planning. German refugees fought on both sides in the crossfire of opinion. Recent historical scholarship has discussed the failure of the German political emigration to gain formal political recognition from the United States government and the right to participate in Allied planning for postwar Germany. Though correct, this contention should not obscure the significant role that some of the anti-Nazi exiles played in framing the public debate on the treatment of Germany. They swam against the tide of extreme anti-German sentiments at the height of the Second World War, and their views found considerable resonance among American intellectuals. The public debate on the Allied policy for postwar Germany was more extensive than many historical accounts suggest in focusing on the proposals of Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau and the infighting within President Roosevelt's administration. German antifascist emigrants in America devised the arguments and rhetorical tools against the movement for a draconian peace long before the political controversy over the Morgenthau Plan in September 1944. Their contribution to the wartime debate on Germany's future helped to prepare Americans to accept the modification of Washington's tough policy for occupied Germany before the Cold War turned a onetime enemy into an ally. By the terms in which they cast this debate, they contributed also to the marginalization of the Holocaust in the wartime discourse on Germany more than historians have hitherto recognized.

scholarly journals China – Anti-Dumping and Countervailing Duty Measures on Broiler Products from the United States: How the chickens came home to roost

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
THOMAS J. PRUSA ◽  
EDWIN VERMULST
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Panel Report ◽  
The Public ◽  
Price Effects ◽  
The Right

AbstractThe WTO Panel report on China – Anti-dumping and Countervailing Duty Measures on Broiler Products from the United States was circulated to Members on 2 August 2013. In the report, the Panel examined a variety of issues challenged by the United States under various provisions of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994, the Anti-dumping Agreement and the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures. The Panel upheld the United States' claims on the majority of the issues, which covered certain procedural aspects of the anti-dumping and countervailing investigations such as the right to disclosure of ‘essential facts', as well as the substantive determinations including costing issues, the imposition of the ‘all others' rate on the basis of ‘facts available’, the price effects' analyses, the sufficiency of the public notices, and others. Notably the costing issues that came up in the case, although decided mostly on procedural grounds, provide food for thought, and are likely to feature again in future disputes.

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