T his paper is one of four interrelated papers resulting from the National Summit on Legal Preparedness for Obesity Prevention and Control (Summit) convened in June 2008 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the American Society of Law, Medicine, & Ethics. Each of the papers deals with one of the four core elements of legal preparedness...

A survey was conducted of a sample of AAPL members to determine their opinions on the inclusion of controversial ethical guidelines for forensic psychiatry. Members appear to appreciate the need to consider traditional Hippocratic values as at least one consideration in their functioning as forensic psychiatrists. They appear to balance their duties to an evaluee with duties to society and the ...

In this article I discuss the nature of crimes against humanity. The various definitions that have been used, or alluded to, in the legal literature are outlined, and it is suggested that they fall neatly into two camps by interpreting ‘humanity’ differently. It is proposed that any theory which adequately captures the nature of this crime must distinguish it qualitatively from other ‘lower’ cr...

The rule of law rests on the quality of legal reasoning. The rule of law requires that similar cases should be decided similarly, that each case should be decided on its merits, and that decision-making processes should comply with applicable rules of procedure and evidence. Making the reasoning behind such decision-making transparent and open to scrutiny shifts the decisions away from mere sub...

Interpreting the world through a social lens is a central characteristic of human cognition. Humans ascribe intentions to the behaviors of other individuals and groups. Humans also make inferences about others' emotional and mental states. This capacity for social attribution underlies many of the concepts at the core of legal and political systems. The developing scientific understanding of th...

In a common law system, cases play a vital role in interpreting statutes, building arguments, organizing analyses, and crafting specific points of view. Legal research often begins with statutes or regulations, the primary law passed by the legislature or regulatory agency in the relevant jurisdiction. Cases in turn interpret those statutes and regulations. Cases may be the sole source of the l...

Ethics is a crucial issue in the different dimensions of human life; hence, there seems to be a dire need for research to be conducted on ethics in different domains including translation studies and interpreting. This qualitative-exploratory research aimed at investigating the attitudes and strategies of applying ethics in in- terpreting through employing a triangulation method. Twenty interpr...