Are There Cross-Cultural Legal Principles? Modal Reasoning Uncovers Procedural Constraints on Law

Despite pervasive variation in the content of laws, legal theorists and anthropologists have argued that laws share certain abstract features and even speculated that law may be a human universal. In the present report, we evaluate this thesis through an experiment administered in 11 different countries. Are there cross-cultural principles of law? In a between-subjects design, participants (N = 3,054) were asked whether there could be laws that violate certain procedural principles (e.g., laws applied retrospectively or unintelligible laws), and also whether there are any such laws. Confirming our preregistered prediction, people reported that such laws cannot exist, but also (paradoxically) that there are such laws. These results document cross-culturally and –linguistically robust beliefs about the concept of law which defy people's grasp of how legal systems function in practice

Coordination and expertise foster legal textualism

Funding Information: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. This research was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2020-119791RA-I00; RTI2018-098882-B-I00), the Polish National Science Centre (2020/36/C/HS5/00111; 2017/25/N/HS5/00944), the Swiss National Science Foundation (PZ00P1_179912), and the European Research Council (805498). Publisher Copyright: Copyright © 2022 the Author(s).A cross-cultural survey experiment revealed a dominant tendency to rely on a rule’s letter over its spirit when deciding which behaviors violate the rule. This tendency varied markedly across (k = 15) countries, owing to variation in the impact of moral appraisals on judgments of rule violation. Compared with laypeople, legal experts were more inclined to disregard their moral evaluations of the acts altogether and consequently exhibited stronger textualist tendencies. Finally, we evaluated a plausible mechanism for the emergence of textualism: in a two-player coordination game, incentives to coordinate in the absence of communication reinforced participants’ adherence to rules’ literal meaning. Together, these studies (total n = 5,794) help clarify the origins and allure of textualism, especially in the law. Within heterogeneous communities in which members diverge in their moral appraisals involving a rule’s purpose, the rule’s literal meaning provides a clear focal point—an identifiable point of agreement enabling coordinated interpretation among citizens, lawmakers, and judges.Peer reviewe

THE RISK FACTORS IN RELAPSE OF FEBRILE CONVULSIONS

The factors of risk in relapse of febrile convulsions have been studied: age, sex, perinatal anamnesis, heredity on febrile attacks, epilepsies, neurological status, the results in analysis (EEG, MRI of the head brain), the temperature, the type of the illness, frequency of the illness, the character of febrile paroxysm. 109 children have been investigated aged from three months to five years suffering from febrile attacks. There has been held the comparison of the groups of children with different quantity of episodes of febrile bouts (with one, two, three and more). The results of the observations testify to high degree of credibility the influence of relapsing course of febrile attacks of the following factors: hereditary burden on febrile attacks, the presence of perinatal pathology, frequent acute respiratory diseases

Risk factors for transition of febrile convulsions to epilepsy

Object: to assess a relationship between febrile convulsions (FC) and epilepsy. Patients and methods. The role of perinatal hereditary diseases, a family history of FC and epilepsy, as well as clinical findings and the results of supplementary studies (electroencephalography and brain magnetic resonance imaging) were analyzed in children with a history of FC. One hundred and sixty-three children with a history of FC were followed up for 8 to 12 years. Two groups of children with transition of febrile convulsions to epilepsy (n=24) and with a good outcome (n=139) were compared. Results and discussion. The findings suggest that factors, such as a family history of epilepsy, the focal pattern of FC, and neurologic changes, highly significantly affect the transformation of FC to epilepsy. Changes in epileptiform EEG activity and abnormal structural neuroimaging are markers for the high probability of transition of febrile convulsions to epilepsy

HEMICONVULSION-HEMIPLEGIA-EPILEPSY SYNDROME (HHE SYNDROME) (A LECTURE)

Hemiconvulsion-hemiplegia-epilepsy syndrome (HHE syndrome) — polyetiologic disease, with onset in childhood, characterized by the triad of symptoms: 1) prolonged convulsive seizures (usually on background of fever), involving one half of the body (hemiconvulsions); 2) acute hemiparesis occurring immediately after seizures (on the side of convul­sions); 3) symptomatic focal epilepsy, occurring in the sequel. The authors discuss in detail different aspects of the disease, including etiology, pathogenesis, diagnostic approaches, differential diagnosis, and approaches to treatment (including prevention and therapy of the disease) and outcome

CLINICAL AND ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHIC SEMIOLOGY OF MYOCLONIC-ATONIC SEIZURES

Abstract: myoclonic-atonic seizures (MAS) – short epileptic generalized seizures in the form of sudden falling spells (or drop attacks). Inour study were vealed MAS in 1.3% of all cases of epilepsy with onset of seizures before 18 years old (n=1261). Predominance of man among the patients was revealed (76.5% men versus 23.5% woman). The most often in the patients with MAS myoclonic-astatic epilepsy (MAE) was diagnosed – 41,2% of cases. Symptomatic and cryptogenic forms of focal epilepsy were diagnosed in 35.2% of the patients. Lennox-Gastaut syndrome was revealed in 23.6% of cases. Onset of epilepsy with MAS varied widely – from 9 month to 6 year soflife; middle age of onset was 3.4 years±1.28 years. In all the cases MAS occurred in combination with other types of seizures: there can be any of 9 differenttypes of seizures. The most often myoclonic seizures (70.6% of cases), generalized convulsive seizures (47.1%) and absences (47.1%) were registered. Remission was achieved in 64.7% cases of epilepsy, associated with MAS. Reduction of seizure frequency ≥50% on antiepileptic treatment was achieved in 29.4% of the patients. Only in one patient (5.9%) the therapy was not effective. Our study demonstrated different efficacyof antiepileptic drugs in the treatment of different epileptic syndromes, associated with MAS

ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHIC CHANGES WITH DRAVET SYNDROME

Dravet syndrome (DS, severe myoclonic epilepsy of early infancy) is epileptic encephalopathy with onset in the first year of life, manifested with febrile and afebrile generalized and focal seizures, with the presence of myoclonic paroxysms in typical cases, mental retardation, and resistance to antiepileptic therapy. The disease was for the first time described by Ch. Dravet in 1978 in France, then, in details, by Сh. Dravet et al. in 1982. In the classification of 1989, DS held a particular place being attributed to the forms of epilepsy that have both generalized and focal clinical manifestations. According to Proposed diagnostic scheme for people with epileptic seizures and with epilepsy (2001), this disease is attributed to epileptic encephalopathies of early infancy. The main reason of DS development is a mutation in the SCN1A gene revealed with most (but not all) patients. It is assumed that there are certain other mutations that determine DS development, in particular, the GABRG2 mutation. Polymorphism of epileptic seizures is typical of the DS: febrile seizures, focal motor (including hemiclonic and secondarily generalized), generalized tonic and clonic, alternating hemiconvulsions, myoclonic, atypical absences, focal dialeptic seizures, as well as epileptic status. The prognosis of the disease is severe. In most cases, seizures continue to occur in adult life but with lower frequency than in childhood. The authors review the issues of etiology and pathogenesis in details, as well as clinical manifestations, diagnostics, and treatment of the DS. A particular emphasis is given to pathological changes on electroencephalogram (EEG) of patients with DS. Distinct slowing of background activity, prevalence of multiregional epileptiform activity, regional slowing, and severe photosensitivity (pattern sensitivity) are the most prognostically unfavorable EEG patterns of the DS