In recent decades, the American jury has increasingly come under attack by critics who maintain that jurors are too often uninformed, irresponsible, biased, unable or unwilling to follow instructions, and incapable of understanding scientific and expert evidence. In American Juries, Neil Vidmar and Valerie Hans, two of the nationʼs foremost experts on jury trials, consider, evaluate, and largely reject these criticisms.
Can terrorism, defined to mean “the direct attack on innocents for political purposes,” ever be justified? Uwe Steinhoff, a political philosopher at Oxford University, argues that there are indeed some circumstances in which the answer may be yes. Much of his analysis focuses on traditional just-war theoryʼs prohibition of attacks on noncombatants, and what he considers to be its unconvincing equation of noncombatants with “innocents,” who by virtue of their innocence must be immune from attack, even in a defensive just war. In essence, his argument is that adult civilians who support an aggressive and unjust war carried out by their democratically elected government are not truly innocent. He has in mind Israelis and Americans, and I shall argue that this creates real problems in his argument
Modern adherents of a “Third Way” in American public administration and politics such as the Democratic Leadership Council say they move beyond “left-right debates” and have argued for innovative bottom-up public management instead of what they describe as inflexible and traditional top-down bureaucracies. One key approach to implementing this includes encouraging community nonprofits to play a pivotal role in providing societal services. Contrary to this assertion, Colleen M. Grogan and Michael K. Gusmanoʼs new book finds a lack of a vigorousness of nonprofit public voice for administrative innovation and increased health care services for the poor with Connecticutʼs Medicaid Managed Care Council advisory board from 1995 to 1997. Connecticutʼs proposed program reforms included cost controls, program quality improvements, and greater health care access. Proponents also argued that competitive bidding for service contracts was the best approach to implementing these goals.
This book focuses its thoughtful, deeply researched coverage on a momentous half decade, the years 1941 – 1946, encompassing the transition out of World War II, through Bretton Woods and planning of a new international economic order, the conceiving and founding of the United Nations (UN), and the Nuremburg Charter and trials as an attempt at transitional justice which would affirm principles of humanitarian law, even before the UN's passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) on 10 December 1948.