The influence of perpetrator and victim intoxication on perceivers' ratings of a sexual perpetrator's own awareness of wrongdoing for his sexually aggressive behaviour

Rape-perception studies have examined the influence of alcohol intoxication on perpetrator blame attributions: However, no studies have examined how intoxication affects perceptions of a sexual perpetrator’s awareness of the wrongfulness of his behaviour despite its relevance to the conceptualisation of responsibility and blame. This experiment investigated the impact of perpetrator and victim intoxication on perceptions of a perpetrator’s own awareness of wrongdoing for acquaintance rape. Undergraduate students (N = 314) read one of four rape-scenarios in which intoxication was manipulated and rated the perpetrator’s awareness of the consequences and wrongfulness of his sexual aggression. Findings supported the hypothesis that participants would assign less awareness of wrongdoing to an intoxicated, compared to sober, perpetrator. Further, males ascribed more awareness of wrongdoing to the perpetrator of an intoxicated, compared to sober, victim. Findings indicate that intoxicated sexual perpetrators are seen as not fully aware of the nature and consequences of their crime.

Moral emotions and the envisioning of mitigating circumstances for wrongdoing

Anger may be more responsive than disgust to mitigating circumstances in judgments of wrongdoing. We tested this hypothesis in two studies where we had participants envision circumstances that could serve to mitigate an otherwise wrongful act. In Study 1, participants provided moral judgments, and ratings of anger and disgust, to a number of transgressions involving either harm or bodily purity. They were then asked to imagine and report whether there might be any circumstances that would make it all right to perform the act. Across transgression type, and controlling for covariance between anger and disgust, levels of anger were found to negatively predict the envisioning of mitigating circumstances for wrongdoing, while disgust was unrelated. Study 2 replicated and extended these findings to less serious transgressions, using a continuous measure of mitigating circumstances, and demonstrated the impact of
anger independent of deontological commitments. These findings highlight the differential relationship that anger and disgust have with the ability to envision mitigating factors.

Negligence and the wrongdoing plaintiff: a corrective justice analysis

 The thesis demonstrates that the only legitimate basis for denying a claim in negligence arising out of an unlawful act by the plaintiff is the need to preserve the coherence of the legal system.

Mysteries of police and crime : a general survey of wrongdoing and its pursuit /

Includes index.

Misunderstanding or Misdirection?: Whistleblower Protection in Queensland

In his report into corruption in Queensland, Fitzgerald listed whistleblower protection as a necessary part of a strong governance regime. "What is required is an accessible, independent body to which disclosures can be made, confidentially (at least in the first instance) and in any event free from fear of reprisals." It was one of the reforms studied by the Electoral and Administrative Review Committee, the report of which resulted in the Whistleblowers Protection Act 1994 (WPA). The need for whistleblower protection was supported by all sides of Parliament. The Premier, Wayne Goss, in his Second Reading Speech on the Public Sector Ethics Bill , said that that Act and the WPA would form a package with the former outlining required behaviour and the WPA encouraging staff to report wrongdoing. The WPA was subsequently passed and has remained virtually unamended for over a decade. Such consistency is either an indication of skilled drafting and effectiveness or the fact that the Act has been neglected. It is the hypothesis of this paper that the latter is the case. This hypothesis will be tested by examining the sincerity and diligence with which the Act has been treated during, and following, its passage.

Global Lessons from Fitzgerald : From State and National to Global Integrity Systems

Tony Fitzgerald’s visionary leap was to see beyond localised, individual wrongdoing. He suggested remedies that were systemic, institutionalised, and directed at underlying structural problems that led to corruption. His report said ‘the problems with which this Inquiry is concerned are not merely associated with individuals, but are institutionalized and related to attitudes which have become entrenched’ (Fitzgerald Report 1989, 13). His response was to suggest an enmeshed system of measures to not only respond reactively to future corruption, but also to prevent its recurrence through improved integrity systems. In the two decades since that report the primary focus of corruption studies and anti-corruption activism has remained on corruption at the local level or within sovereign states. International activism was largely directed at co-ordinating national campaigns and to use international instruments to make these campaigns more effective domestically. This reflects the broader fact that, since the rise of the nation state, states have comprised the majority of the largest institutional actors and have been the most significant institution in the lives of most individuals. This made states the ‘main game in town’ for the ‘governance disciplines’ of ethics, law, political science and economics.

Young Australian adults' beliefs about alcohol's role in sexual aggression and victimisation

Beliefs and misconceptions about sex, gender, and rape have been explored extensively to explain people’s attributions concerning alcohol-involved sexual violence. However, less is known about the specific beliefs that people hold about how alcohol facilitates sexual aggression and victimisation. The present study aimed to identify these alcohol-related beliefs among young Australian adults. Six men and nine women (N = 15; 18-24 years) in focus groups (n = 13) and interviews (n = 2) were asked to discuss the role of alcohol in a hypothetical alcohol-involved rape. Using a consensual qualitative research methodology, the effects of alcohol that were seen to introduce, progress, and intensify risks for rape were: increased confidence; character transformation: impaired cognition; behavioural disinhibition; altered sexual negotiation; enhanced self-centredness; impaired awareness of wrongdoing; increased/decreased sexual assertiveness; and compromised self-protection. Some of the beliefs identified in this study are not currently captured in alcohol expectancy measures which assess people’s beliefs about alcohol’s effects on cognition, emotion, and behaviour. This study’s findings offer a conceptual basis for the development of a new alcohol expectancy measure that can be used in future rape-perception research.

Access to essential medicines: Public health and international law

Historically, there have been intense conflicts over the ownership and exploitation of pharmaceutical drugs and diagnostic tests dealing with infectious diseases. Throughout the 1980’s, there was much scientific, legal, and ethical debate about which scientific group should be credited with the discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus, and the invention of the blood test devised to detect antibodies to the virus. In May 1983, Luc Montagnier, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, and other French scientists from the Pasteur Institute in Paris, published a paper in Science, detailing the discovery of a virus called lymphadenopathy (LAV). A scientific rival, Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute, identified the AIDS virus and published his findings in the May 1984 issue of Science. In May 1985, the United States Patent and Trademark Office awarded the American patent for the AIDS blood test to Gallo and the Department of Health and Human Services. In December 1985, the Institut Pasteur sued the Department of Health and Human Services, contending that the French were the first to identify the AIDS virus and to invent the antibody test, and that the American test was dependent upon the French research. In March 1987, an agreement was brokered by President Ronald Reagan and French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, which resulted in the Department of Health and Human Services and the Institut Pasteur sharing the patent rights to the blood test for AIDS. In 1992, the Federal Office of Research Integrity found that Gallo had committed scientific misconduct, by falsely reporting facts in his 1984 scientific paper. A subsequent investigation by the National Institutes of Health, the United States Congress, and the US attorney-general cleared Gallo of any wrongdoing. In 1994, the United States government and French government renegotiated their agreement regarding the AIDS blood test patent, in order to make the distribution of royalties more equitable... The dispute between Luc Montagnier and Robert Gallo was not an isolated case of scientific rivalry and patent races. It foreshadowed further patent conflicts over research in respect of HIV/AIDS. Michael Kirby, former Justice of the High Court of Australia diagnosed a clash between two distinct schools of philosophy - ‘scientists of the old school... working by serendipity with free sharing of knowledge and research’, and ‘those of the new school who saw the hope of progress as lying in huge investments in scientific experimentation.’ Indeed, the patent race between Robert Gallo and Luc Montagnier has been a precursor to broader trade disputes over access to essential medicines in the 1990s and 2000s. The dispute between Robert Gallo and Luc Montagnier captures in microcosm a number of themes of this book: the fierce competition for intellectual property rights; the clash between sovereign states over access to medicines; the pressing need to defend human rights, particularly the right to health; and the need for new incentives for research and development to combat infectious diseases as both an international and domestic issue.

Desvalor da ação e desvalor do resultado como fundamentos do injusto penal: uma revisão a partir do modelo habermasiano de sociedade

A presente tese propõe um modelo de injusto penal rigorosamente dualista, assimentendido aquele que, ao lado do desvalor da ação, exija sempre e necessariamente a efetivaocorrência de um desvalor do resultado, consistente na afetação, danosa ou perigosa, da esferade existência de terceiros. A hipótese que conduz a investigação é a de que, mesmo diante dosmovimentos expansionistas do poder punitivo hoje verificados, é possível defender a viabilidade de tal concepção de injusto penal. Para a demonstração dessa hipótese, parte-se domodelo dual de sociedade proposto por Jürgen Habermas, que tem na teoria do agircomunicativo a chave para a proteção do mundo da vida frente aos influxos colonizatóriosprovenientes dos sistemas econômico e político administrativo. A partir desse marco teórico,propõe-se uma releitura de alguns dos conceitos fundamentais da teoria do delito, de modo aconferir-lhes interpretação compatível com a concepção dualista rigorosa de injusto adotada.Por fim, para verificar a plausibilidade da hipótese colocada, tais conceitos fundamentais sãopostos à prova diante de situações teóricas tradicionalmente classificadas como de difícilconciliação com uma concepção de injusto baseada na necessária ocorrência de desvalor doresultado, como é o caso dos crimes de perigo abstrato e dos crimes tentados.