Basis For Relief Research Articles

The influence of the race of defendant and the race of victim on capital charging and sentencing in California

AbstractThe California Racial Justice Act of 2020 recognized racial and ethnic discrimination as a basis for relief in capital cases, expressly permitting several types of statistical evidence to be introduced. This statewide study of the influence of race and ethnicity on the application of capital punishment contributes to this evidence. We draw on data from over 27,000 murder and manslaughter convictions in California state courts between 1978 and 2002. Using multiple methods, we found significant racial and ethnic disparities in charging and sentencing decisions. Controlling for defendant culpability and specific statutory aggravators, we show that Black and Latinx defendants and all defendants convicted of killing at least one white victim are substantially more likely to be sentenced to death. We further examined the role that race and ethnicity have in decision‐making at various points in the criminal justice system. We found that prosecutors were significantly more likely to seek death against defendants who kill white victims, and that juries were significantly more likely to sentence those defendants to death. The magnitude of the race of the defendant and race of the victim effects is substantially higher than in prior studies in other states and in single‐jurisdiction research. The results show an entrenched pattern of racial disparities in charging and sentencing that privileges white victim cases, as well as patterns of racial disparities in who is charged and sentenced to death in California courts that are the natural result of California's capacious statutory definition of death eligibility, which permits virtually unlimited discretion for charging and sentencing decisions. This pattern of racial preferences illustrates the social costs of California's failure to follow the Supreme Court's directive in Furman v Georgia to narrow the application of capital punishment over 50 years ago.

The Magnificent Seven: Exemption, Relief, Equivalence, Recognition, Substitution, Deference, Trust – Reducing Regulatory Duplication and Frictions in the Cross-Border Supply of Financial Services

AbstractA financial services supplier authorised in its home state that wishes to supply services cross-border into another state will, absent any relief, have in addition to meet the regulatory requirements of that host state to trade in it. Regulatory frictions including duplicative regulatory requirements are barriers to cross-border trade. This article considers certain techniques deployed to reduce such barriers, noting that trust plays a part in many of them. These techniques grant relief to incoming firms from obligations to comply with the regulatory requirements of a host state. They may take the form of unilateral arrangements, with or without any conditions. There may be assessments of equivalence as a basis for relief from compliance with the host state’s rules: deference to the home state’s regime, a basis for recognition, whether unilateral or mutual. Recognition may be given effect through a party’s domestic laws or in international law under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) Article VII. A GATS Article VII agreement can relieve regulatory frictions in the financial services sector alone as there is no requirement for “substantial sectoral coverage” as required for regional trade agreements under GATS Article V. Mutual recognition agreements for financial services in international law are, however, few in number.

Review on Sustained Relief of Osteoarthritis Symptoms with a Proprietary Extract from Pine Bark, Pycnogenol.

This review summarizes the effects of the standardized proprietary bark extract of the French maritime pine (Pycnogenol®) in mild osteoarthritis (OA), stage 1 and 2. The extract exerts antioxidative, anti-inflammatory, and chondroprotective effects in vitro and in vivo. Its phenolic acids as well as catechin and taxifolin are quickly absorbed. Active metabolites, produced by gut microbiota in the intestinal tract from oligomeric procyanidins, appear in blood 6 h following ingestion and remain for at least 14 h, providing a long-lasting flow of anti-inflammatory substances for relief of OA symptoms. These constituents of Pycnogenol could be detected in serum, blood cells, and synovial fluid of OA patients. The resulting inhibition of cartilage-destructing proteases and pain-producing cyclo-oxygenases provides the basis for relief from pain, improvement of stiffness, enhanced mobility, and well-being in three clinical studies with the pine bark extract as an adjunct supplement. Sparing the use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, supplementation with the pine bark extract reduced gastric complications and hospital admissions of OA patients. Because of its favorable safety profile and sustained anti-inflammatory action, Pycnogenol represents an option as an add-on supplement for OA patients.

Genetics - And Genetic Legal Problems: Can the Legal System Cope With Novel Bioethical Challenges?

Genetic testing has become more frequent and necessary, both for medical diagnosis and treatment, and now for prosecution of legal claims in establishing causality. But what happens to unrelated information gleaned from these tests? What onus does such knowledge confer on the recipient? In the recent (and ongoing) case of Chadam v. Palo Alto School District, the Chadam’s learned of a genetic mutation possibly predisposing in their son for cystic fibrosis (CF) in an unrelated incident (both in time and subject matter). Thereafter, on registering their son in a new school they divulged the condition, believing it to be confidential. CF, a genetic disease, is not contagious, but in active form it may pose a risk to others suffering the disease. Because the genetic predisposition was misunderstood as posing an actual threat to two already sick children previously enrolled, the parents of these children (Mr and Mrs X) were advised of the Chadam boy’s condition. They promptly demanded the Chadam boy be expelled – and he was – publically and in front of his classmates.The Chadams sued; their complaint was dismissed for failure to state a cognizable claim. It is now on appeal. The case raises legal, medical and bioethical issues including privacy, misunderstanding of genetic transmission by the school board which prompted their decision, lack of concern for the sensitivities of the Chadam boy and applicability of the American Disabilities Act. Conspicuous by its absence is the failure to plead the California Genetic NonDiscrimination Act (CalGina) as a basis for relief. The case highlights the novel legal challenges that accompany advances in medicine (and especially genetics). Are lawyers and judges up to it, both in terms of understanding the medicine and in structuring complaints to best protect and advance their clients’s rights?

Intellectual-Human Rights Defenders and Claims for Academic Freedom under Human Rights Law

Human rights claims arising out of attacks on intellectual-human rights defenders (hrds), if brought, typically do not include claims for violations of academic freedom. As a result the standards are underdeveloped relative to other human rights claims and the scope of academic freedom violations globally. This may be in part due to a negatively reinforcing lack of familiarity with issues of academic freedom and the available standards for protection among human rights advocates, and in part to the fact that attacks on academic freedom often manifest as violations of other rights under which claims are brought (e.g. wrongful detention or torture). This article argues that existing human rights law would sustain claims for violations of academic freedom as independently and interdependently derived from the rights to freedom of opinion and expression and the right to education. The article argues that including academic freedom claims in such cases has the benefit of providing an additional basis for relief while strengthening the claim for relief on a manifested violation by providing evidence of motive and intent. Including academic freedom claims also has the independent value of addressing the wider harms to the claimant-victim and society that result from attacks on intellectual expression and are not reached by relief on the manifested violation alone, including harms to a claimant-victim’s creative, intellectual or expressive work, and widespread chilling effects on creativity, teaching, publication and the free exchange of ideas in society.

Intellectual-HRDs and claims for academic freedom under human rights law

Many human rights defenders operate from within higher education institutions, research institutes, academies, societies and ‘think-tanks'. Many of these academics, researchers and lecturers would recognise themselves as human rights defenders because their academic work is consciously paired with rights-promoting education and advocacy. Others may not set out to be human rights defenders, but are cast in the role after being targeted for attack. Human rights claims arising out of such attacks on intellectual-HRDs, if brought, typically do not include claims for violations of academic freedom. As a result the standards are underdeveloped relative to other human rights claims and the scope of academic freedom violations globally. This may be in part due to a negatively reinforcing lack of familiarity with issues of academic freedom and the available standards for protection among human rights advocates, and in part to the fact that attacks on academic freedom often manifest as violations of other rights under which claims are brought (e.g. wrongful detention or torture). This article argues that existing human rights law would sustain claims for violations of academic freedom as independently and interdependently derived from the rights to freedom of opinion and expression and the right to education. This article argues that including academic freedom claims in such cases has the benefit of providing an additional basis for relief while strengthening the claim for relief on a manifested violation by providing evidence of motive and intent. Including academic freedom claims also has the independent value of addressing the wider harms to the claimant-victim and society that result from attacks on intellectual expression and are not reached by relief on the manifested violation alone, including harms to a claimant-victim's creative, intellectual or expressive work, and widespread chilling effects on creativity, teaching, publication and the free exchange of ideas in society.

Unexplainable on Grounds of Race: Doubts about <em>Yick Wo</em>

Yick Wo v. Hopkins is simultaneously celebrated as a classic equal protection case, establishing the rule against discriminatory prosecution, and lamented as both the first and last case in which the Supreme Court invalidated a prosecution as racially motivated. This essay explores why Yick Wo proved to be a dead end. It proposes that the traditional view of Yick Wo is mistaken: Yick Wo was about neither race discrimination nor prosecution. Yick Wo turned on the Court's treatment of the conduct at issue, operating a laundry, as a constitutionally protected property right. Therefore, a forgotten but large body of cases from the Jim Crow-era holds Yick Wo categorically inapplicable to prosecutions for conduct the state has the power to criminalize. In addition, because the property interest at stake was constitutionally protected, Yick Wo's race was irrelevant to the decision; a white person or corporation deprived of property would have had precisely the same claim. In fact Yick Wo's race was a barrier to rather than a basis for relief: He could raise a property claim only because he had a treaty right to operate a laundry on the basis of equality with others. When the treaty was inapplicable, the Supreme Court upheld race-based economic discrimination against Chinese and other Asians. Yick Wo is famous because it apparently foreshadows the anti-racist jurisprudence of the post-Brown era. Read in the context of the jurisprudence of its own time, it is completely consistent with Plessy v. Ferguson, and stands for only the mundane point that a valid treaty trumps inconsistent state law.

Occlusion of DH Domain Inhibits Vav

The Dbl homology (DH)-containing protein Vav acts as a guanine nucleotide exchange factor (GEF) for the Rho family of guanine triphosphatases (GTPases), and, in vitro, Vav exhibits specific GEF activity toward Rac protein. Phosphorylation of Vav in response to B cell receptor or T cell receptor stimulation precedes Rac activation. Expression of NH 2 -terminal deletion (residues 1-182) mutants of Vav leads to chronically activated Vav and increased Rac activity. Phosphorylation of Tyr 174 is important for activation of Vav, but until now, the mechanism by which Vav is activated has remained elusive. Aghazadeh et al. have used nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to solve the structure of the Vav DH domain in solution. By comparing the structure of the DH domain in the presence or absence of phosphate at Tyr 174 , the authors identified that, in the inactive state, Tyr 174 resides in the Vav DH domain where it occludes Vav's ability to bind and to exchange nucleotides on Rac. Upon phosphorylation of Tyr 174 , an α helix that contains Tyr 174 shifts away from the DH domain, allowing Vav to bind Rac and to exchange GDP for GTP, thus activating Rac. Within the context of the whole protein, it is suggested that the Vav pleckstrin homology (PH) domain lies juxtaposed to the Tyr 174 -occluded DH domain. Upon lipid binding by the Vav PH domain at the surface of a membrane, the Tyr 174 residue becomes available for phosphorylation, leading to Vav activation. Thus, activation of Vav occurs in a multistep process whereby proper membrane localization of Vav leads to its activation. Aghazadeh, B., Lowry, W.E., Huang, X.-Y., and Rosen, M.K. (2000) Structural basis for relief of autoinhibition of the Dbl homology domain of proto-oncogene Vav by tyrosine phosphorylation. Cell 102 : 625-633. [Online Journal]

The Largest Amount of Good: Quaker Relief in Ireland, 1654-1921.

The Largest Amount of Good is the first full account of Quaker relief operations in Ireland and of the evolution of the Quakers' thinking on the purposes and limitations of philanthropy and the responsibility of the state in disaster. Helen Hatton describes how the Quakers rejected orthodox economic and philanthropic theory and, without seeking profit for themselves, provided grants and unguaranteed loans to develop and revitalize Irish agriculture, fisheries, and industry. They also used publicity and political pressure to push for reform of the land-holding system. Although the power of the landowners was too entrenched to be overcome entirely, the Quakers' contribution to Ireland, Hatton demonstrates, is unquestionable. The growth of the Quaker relief service, from mutual help in the seventeenth century to an institution of international standing, has been accompanied by the gradual embodiment of their principles in the direction of the Society. Their work in the Great Irish Famine marked a turning point at which the procedures they had evolved inchoately over two centuries were formulated into a methodology that is accepted today as the basis for relief and Third World development.

Immigration: The Criterion of "Otherwise Admissible" as a Basis for Relief from Deportation because of Fraud or Misrepresentation

Immigration: The Criterion of "Otherwise Admissible" as a Basis for Relief from Deportation because of Fraud or Misrepresentation

Judgments: Fraud as a Basis for Relief in Federal Courts from Final State Court Judgments

Judgments: Fraud as a Basis for Relief in Federal Courts from Final State Court Judgments

Limitation of Action. Operation and Effect. Barred Claim as a Basis for Relief

Limitation of Action. Operation and Effect. Barred Claim as a Basis for Relief