Legislatures, Agencies, Courts and Advocates: How Laws are Made, Interpreted and Modified

This chapter explains the nature and practice of lawmaking, legal advocacy, and legal research as they relate to the field of work and family. Through reference to the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 as a case study, the authors explain the dynamic processes by which laws are made, interpreted and modified by legislatures, administrative agencies and courts, with the help of legal advocates. Their goal is not to provide substantive analysis of laws related to work and family, but rather to enable researchers from a range of disciplines to understand and access the legal system, as it currently exists and as it is evolving. In addition, for those inclined to change the current system through legal advocacy, this chapter provides a window into how advocates may use the lawmaking process to promote their preferred work and family policies

The Resumed Fifth BTWC Review Conference: Maximizing the Benefits from the Final Declaration

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The US Rejection of the Composite Protocol: A Huge Mistake Based on Illogical Assessments

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Two Decades of Strengthening CBW Prohibitions: Priorities for the BTWC in the 21st Century

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The predictive ability of corporate narrative disclosures: Australian evidence

The mam objective of this study is to contribute to the academic literature by investigating the relationship between narrative disclosures and corporate performance based on Australian evidence. The research design takes as its starting from the content analysis of discretionary narrative disclosures conducted by Smith and Taffler (2000), and extends their research by combining thematic content analysis and syntactic content analysis. This study focuses on the discretionary disclosures (the Chairman\u27s Statement) of· · Australian manufacturing companies. Based on the Earnings per Share (EPS) movement between 2008 and 2009, 64 sample companies are classified into two groups: good performer and poor performer. This study is grounded on signalling theory and agency theory, and links with the impression management strategy. Based on two branches of impression management (rationalisation and enhancement), six groups of variables are collected to examine narrative disclosures from both quantity ( what to disclose ) and quality ( how to disclose ) perspectives. Manual coding and two computer-based software programs are employed in this study. This study finds that the word-based and theme-based variables based on discretionary disclosures are significantly correlated with corporate performance. Moreover, word-based variables can successfully classify companies between good performer and poor performer with an accuracy of 86%. However, there is no significant relationship between corporate performance and report size, use of long words (as a proxy for jargon), FLESCH readability score, or persuasive language. The main value of this study is to build a classification model based on Australian evidence for continuing companies, since most prior research focuses on UK, US and New Zealand companies and is based on a healthy/failed distinction

The Composite Protocol Text: An Effective Strengthening of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention

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