This paper examines relationships between religion and two forms of homonegativity across 43 European countries using a bivariate response binary logistic multilevel model. The model analyzes effects of religious believing, belonging and practice on two response variables: a) a moral rejection of homosexuality as a practice and b) intolerance toward homosexuals as a group. The findings indicate...

Women's empowerment can be defined as a change in the circumstances of a woman's life, which enables her to raise her capacity to manage more enriched and rewarding life. Improvement in women's empowerment is a salient issue to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. National laws are influential factors in promoting women's empowerment. Lack of awareness of legal and constitutional provision...

In February 2012 a rabid puppy dog was imported into Amsterdam, the Netherlands from Morocco via Spain. In a joint action between the Netherlands’ Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority, the Public Health Service of Amsterdam and the Centre for Infectious Disease Control all exposed human and animal contacts were traced and, when necessary, provided with post-exposure prophylaxis. During th...

In this paper we will present a method for mining information within legal texts, in particular in regards to corpora of statutes. Text mining, or more in general Information Extraction, can provide a valuable help to people involved in research about the linguistic structure of statutes, and, as a side effect can be the seed for a new generation of applications for the validation and conversio...

The decision of the Supreme Court in Atlas Roofing Co. v. Occupational Safety & Health Review Commission 1 has seriously weakened the protection afforded by the seventh amendment to the United States Constitution.2 In Atlas the Court considered the constitudonality of the enforcement procedure established by the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA).3 This was the first time the Court had c...

Nineteen states and the federal government have statutes for the civil commitment of sexually violent predators (SVP). The American Psychiatric Association has vigorously opposed SVP laws, citing the abuse of both individual civil rights and of psychiatry in forwarding preventive detention. Those who support the laws underscore that the statutes target highly dangerous sex offenders. There are ...

An article entitled “Combating Sale of Counterfeit and Falsified Medicines Online: A Losing Battle”, authored by Kah Seng Lee and colleagues, presented the cases of some countries, including China’s fight against counterfeit and falsified medicines (CFMs). Regarding to the formulation and enforcement of legislations in this aspect in China, we comment on the article by providing further informa...

This commentary reflects my 35 years of working with civil commitment statutes, first in Alaska, then in Oregon, and on various committees on the national level. Coming from a background in community and public psychiatry, I have always considered civil commitment to be the most important forensic mental health statute, as the commitment process in any state greatly influences the lives of many...