Kahler v. Kansas and the Constitutionality of the Mens Rea Approach to Insanity.

In 1995, the Kansas legislature adopted what is referred to as the "mens rea approach" and abolished the affirmative insanity defense. This approach allows a defendant to be acquitted who lacks the requisite mental state for the crime, without consideration of the defendant's understanding of wrongfulness. In Kahler v. Kansas, the U.S. Supreme Court recently held that this restrictive approach does not violate due process and that a state is not required to adopt an insanity test which considers a defendant's moral capacity at the time of the crime. Four other states currently follow the mens rea approach, or some form of it. In this article, we first discuss a brief history of insanity defense laws in the United States. We then outline relevant legislative history and precedent in Kansas and other states that have adopted the mens rea approach. We next discuss the Supreme Court's reasoning in Kahler The significance of this test is further discussed, including Eighth Amendment considerations. We advocate for continued education of the public, legislators, and the judiciary regarding the use, application, and necessity of an affirmative insanity defense.

Guns, germs, and public history: A conversation with Jennifer Tucker.

In this wide-ranging conversation, historians David Serlin (UC San Diego) and Jennifer Tucker (Wesleyan University) discuss the role of material culture and visual media in shaping how museums communicate histories of science and technology. Tucker describes recent a public history project focused on 19th-century histories of firearms and gun regulation in light of contemporary debates about the Second Amendment "right to bear arms." Serlin and Tucker conclude by speculating about possible curatorial directions for a future public history exhibit focused on the social and cultural impact of the COVID-19 pandemic during 2020.

Historic tobacco legislation in Israel: a moment to celebrate.

BACKGROUND: Israel was once a leader in tobacco control, but fell behind other countries, particularly during the past decade, as smoking rates stagnated. TEXT: Landmark tobacco control legislation, which banned advertising (with the exception of the print press) and limited marketing, was passed in Israel on Dec. 31rst, 2018. The changes occurred following years of attempts which culminated in successful last-minute efforts to promote the legislation just before the early disbanding of the 20th Knesset (Israeli Parliament). Regulations concerning marketing and advertising were substantially strengthened to address all tobacco, nicotine and smoking products. Digital media was included for the first time. Electronic cigarettes, which were previously largely unregulated, now fall under existing tobacco legislation. The changes overcame intense opposition from the tobacco lobby, and occurred despite the fact that the basic elements for prevention policy postulated by the Richmond model were not in place. CONCLUSIONS: This legislation represents an important and long-awaited change in Israeli tobacco control policy. Many deficiencies in existing tobacco control regulation were overcome, and some measures went beyond current international regulations. The cohesive partnership between legislators, public health organizations and professionals, advocacy groups, academia, and leading journalists was critical to this success. The progress was lauded by the World Health Organization with its highest award for tobacco control, which was presented to Smoke Free Israel. This case study provides important lessons for up-to-date tobacco control policy, in the age of rapid global changes in the tobacco, vaping and nicotine landscape.

Republication of The Technology-Related Assistance to Individuals with Disabilities Act: Relevance to Individuals with Learning Disabilities and Their Advocates.

Assistive technology (AT) was recognized by Congress as a viable need for people with disabilities when it passed the Tech Act in 1988. The legislation, which was reauthorized in 1994, has resulted in numerous programs and services that have helped people with disabilities access and use AT devices. The Tech Act's implications for people with learning disabilities is discussed in this article.

Douglas MacKay, ND: Defining the Regulatory Landscape for Hemp-based Supplements.

No Abstract Available.

The Roman Catholic Church: A Centuries Old History of Awareness of Clerical Child Sexual Abuse (from the First to the 19th Century).

Debates in international forums and in mainstream media on the role, responsibility, liability, and response of ecclesiastical authorities of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) toward clerical child sexual abuse (cCSA) fail to take into account the historical roots and awareness of the problem. Reports also fail to mention the historic organizational laws RCC developed over centuries. In contrast, RCC documents evidence that the Catholic Church not only carried century's old history of cCSA, but also repeatedly condemned cCSA by successive papal authorities, organizational laws, and institutional management mechanisms. During the first millennium, however, church laws remained confined to the bookshelves and were not converted into appropriate management policies and infrastructural models. This was largely due to the absence of a central administrative organizational structure, which developed later in the 12th century, following the Second Council of Lateran (1139) when the Papacy asserted its authority to establish administrative control over the organizational church. It was only then that management policies started to be framed and institutional structures enacted to deal more appropriately with cCSA from the 14th to 20th centuries. Despite this, RCC developed a culture of secrecy using clandestine organizational management models and institutional laws prescribed in 1568, 1622, 1741, 1866, 1922, and 1962 which aimed to manage cCSA. The current study traces reported cCSA as far back as the first century and critically examines the organizational laws, and institutional policies developed by RCC to address clerical sexual misconduct up to the end of the 19th century.

Burn Injuries: Prevention, Advocacy, and Legislation.

Each year in the United States and Canada, thousands of individuals seek medical care for a burn injury. Some individuals are burned significantly enough they require treatment at specialized burn care facilities. Most of these injuries are preventable. This article presents an historical perspective related to burn prevention and elements of successful burn prevention programs and explores ways in which the plastic surgeon can promote burn prevention through education, advocacy, and the legislative process. Prevention efforts undertaken by the surgeon can increase awareness, ensure a safe environment, and reduce burn injuries.

Where do we stand?

This president's column provides the current position of the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association (CFHA) in reference to the law passed in North Carolina on March 23, 2016, limiting the civil rights of LGBTQ people. This law troubles the CFHA deeply. This is an organization that promotes collaborative patient- and family-centered care. It currently celebrates diversity and rejects discrimination in any form. After considerable thought and review of alternative actions, the Board of CFHA determined that our best course is to proceed with plans for an annual conference in Charlotte, a city that has attempted to strengthen legal protection of the rights of its LGBTQ citizens. CFHA will use this opportunity to demonstrate our support for inclusion and cultural competence by convening a robust and timely conversation about the underlying issues raised by House Bill 2 and our role as collaborative care professionals. (PsycINFO Database Record

A Policy Analysis of Smoke-Free Legislation in Kentucky.

This article presents a policy analysis of proposed smoke-free legislation in Kentucky during the 2015 General Assembly. Kingdon's three streams model of agenda setting is used to analyze the failure to pass HB145. Secondhand smoke exposure and related deaths are a significant public health problem in Kentucky, a state with one of the highest smoking rates in the U.S. HB145, a comprehensive smoke-free bill, was designed to protect workers and the general public from secondhand smoke and e-cigarette aerosol in enclosed workplaces and public places, with few exemptions. The bill faced intense criticism from opponents who were concerned about violation of personal and business rights and the belief that the decision should be addressed on a local level. HB145 passed the House with amendments but failed to receive a hearing in the Senate. Failure of the smoke-free legislation was due to partisanship, fragmentation of advocacy groups, lack of political bargaining, and conflict of values. As in past years, the policy window did not open for state smoke-free legislation in 2015.

Homosexuality and the Law: The Construction of Wolfenden Homonormativity in 1950s England.

This article analyses a television broadcast in England in 1957 in response to the Wolfenden Report (Wolfenden, 1957) into homosexuality and prostitution. Here I argue that those participants in the broadcast who are sympathetic with liberal reforms of the legislation on homosexuality utilize discourses related to normality and the public/private domains to discursively construct the Wolfenden homonormative male. In addition, I also show how, particularly through the trope of homonormativity, both the heterosexual and homosexual audiences are interpellated by the discourses exploited within the broadcast as publics whose subjectivities are reconfigured toward Wolfenden homonormativity.

Adjudicating non-knowledge in the Omnibus Autism Proceedings.

After 5600 families of children diagnosed with autism filed claims with the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program in the United States, the court selected 'test' cases consolidated into the Omnibus Autism Proceedings, held from 2007 to 2008, to examine claims that vaccines caused the development of autism. The court found all of the causation theories presented to be untenable and did not award damages to any parents. We analyze the Omnibus Autism Proceedings as a struggle within the scientific field between the scientific orthodoxy of the respondents and the heterodox position taken by the plaintiffs, suggesting that the ruling in these cases helped to shore up hegemony on autism causation. Drawing on the literature on non-knowledge, we suggest that only the respondents had enough scientific capital to strategically direct non-knowledge toward genetic research, thereby foreclosing the possibility of environmental causation of autism. The plaintiffs, who promote a non-standard ontology of autism, suggest that the science on autism remains undone and should not be circumscribed. In analyzing the Omnibus Autism Proceedings with field theory, we highlight the way in which scientific consensus-building and the setting of research agendas are the result of struggle, and we show that the strategic deployment of non-knowledge becomes a major stake in battles for scientific legitimacy and the settling of scientific controversies.