Graceful remedies: understanding grace in the Catholic Church's treatment of clerical child sexual abuse

This article examines advocacy of Catholic restorative justice for clerical child sexual abuse from the standpoint of feminist criminological critiques of the use of restorative mediation in sexual offence cases. In particular, it questions the Catholic invocation of grace and forgiveness of survivors of abuse in light of critical feminist concerns about the exploitation of emotions in restorative practices, especially in regard to sexual and other gender-based offences. In the context of sexual abuse, the Catholic appeal to grace has the potential for turning into an extraordinary demand made of victims not only to rehabilitate offenders and the church in the eyes of the community, but also to work towards the spiritual absolution of the abuser. This unique feature of Catholic-oriented restorative justice raises important concerns in terms of feminist critiques of the risk of abuses of power within mediation, and is also incompatible with orthodox restorative justice theory, which, although it advocates a ‘spiritual’ response to crime, is concerned foremost with the rights, needs and experiences of victims.

Lesbian and gay parents and reproductive technologies: The 2008 Australian and UK reforms

This article analyses the laws that govern the allocation of parental responsibility for children conceived through non-coital reproduction by lesbians and gay men in England/Wales and Australia. In 2008 both jurisdictions introduced important reforms affecting this area of law, providing new options for the legal recognition of parent–child relationships in lesbian and gay households. However, the practical usefulness or effectiveness of the reforms may be limited by the excessive complexity or obscurity of the system of parental responsibility thus introduced. Furthermore, the reform Acts encourage the formation of some family structures—especially homonuclear families—while discouraging the emergence of more imaginative and cooperative parenting configurations at odds with heteronormative parenting scripts. Only through a clearer commitment to intentionality as a ground for the allocation of parental responsibility will future reform be likely to adequately protect the interests of lesbian and gay parents and their children.

The vulnerable subject of negligence law

The approach taken by English courts to the duty of care question in negligence has been subject to harsh criticism in recent years. This article examines this fundamental issue in tort law, drawing upon Canadian and Australian jurisprudence by way of comparison. From this analysis, the concept of vulnerability is developed as a productive means of understanding the duty of care. Vulnerability is of increasing interest in legal and political theory and it is of particular relevance to the law of negligence. In addition to aiding doctrinal coherence, vulnerability – with its focus on relationships and care – has the potential to broaden the way in which the subject of tort law is conceived because it challenges dominant assumptions about autonomy as being prior to the relationships on which it is dependent.

Aerosol impacts on drizzle properties in warm clouds from ARM Mobile Facility maritime and continental deployments

We have extensively evaluated the response of cloud-base drizzle rate (Rcb; mm day–1) in warm clouds to liquid water path (LWP; g m–2) and to cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) number concentration (NCCN; cm–3), an aerosol proxy. This evaluation is based on a 19-month long dataset of Doppler radar, lidar, microwave radiometers and aerosol observing systems from the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Mobile Facility deployments at the Azores and in Germany. Assuming 0.55% supersaturation to calculate NCCN, we found a power law , indicating that Rcb decreases by a factor of 2–3 as NCCN increases from 200 to 1000 cm–3 for fixed LWP. Additionally, the precipitation susceptibility to NCCN ranges between 0.5 and 0.9, in agreement with values from simulations and aircraft measurements. Surprisingly, the susceptibility of the probability of precipitation from our analysis is much higher than that from CloudSat estimates, but agrees well with simulations from a multi-scale high-resolution aerosol-climate model. Although scale issues are not completely resolved in the intercomparisons, our results are encouraging, suggesting that it is possible for multi-scale models to accurately simulate the response of LWP to aerosol perturbations.

Regulating non-international armed conflicts: a review essay of 'The Law of Non-International Armed Conflict' by Sandesh Sivakumaran

This review essay engages with Sandesh Sivakumaran’s book The Law of Non-International Armed Conflict, exploring its significance both in international humanitarian law and international law more generally.