Improving Lawyers’ Health by Addressing the Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences

Although the legal profession has recognized the importance of improving attorneys’ mental health, it has largely ignored recent social and scientific research on how adverse childhood experiences (“ACEs”) can harm attorneys’ long-term well-being. This article reviews the science of ACEs and argues that law schools and the legal profession should educate law students and attorneys about the impact of prior trauma on behavioral health. Without such education, law schools and the legal system are missing a crucial opportunity to help lawyers prevent and alleviate the maladaptive coping mechanisms that are associated with ACEs. Until such knowledge is widespread, many lawyers will be plagued by their own trauma histories—to the detriment of individuals, families, communities, and the legal system

Bayesian Analysis of Evidence from Studies of Warfarin v Aspirin for Symptomatic Intracranial Stenosis

Bayesian analyses of symptomatic intracranial stenosis studies were conducted to compare the benefits of long-term therapy with warfarin to aspirin. The synthesis of evidence of effect from previous nonrandomized studies in monitoring a randomized clinical trial was of particular interest. Sequential Bayesian learning analysis was conducted and Bayesian hierarchical random effects models were used to incorporate variability between studies. The posterior point estimates for the risk rate ratio (RRR) were similar between analyses, although the interval estimates resulting from the hierarchical analyses are larger than the corresponding Bayesian learning analyses. This demonstrated the difference between these methods in accounting for between-study variability. This study suggests that Bayesian synthesis can be a useful supplement to futility analysis in the process of monitoring randomized clinical trials

Curriculum Wars and Cold War Politics: The Struggle for Academic Freedom in Higher Education

During the early 1960s, in the formative years of Florida\u27s newest university, the University of South Florida located in Tampa, the Florida Investigative Committee in true McCarthy-era style, set up its Star Chamber interviews with students and others at local motels near the University. The purpose of these interviews was to ferret out information about university administrators and instructors which would point to either their innocence or their guilt in terms of communist party membership, homosexuality, or the teaching of atheism. After an exhaustive process which left the intellectual community on Florida\u27s West Coast shaken and dismayed at what it collectively believed was a misguided mission and waste of taxpayer dollars, academic communities in other university towns throughout Florida responded with outrage over the intrusion of politicians and perceived anti-intellectuals into the business of higher education. Some had already run the investigative committee\u27s gauntlet, others likely feared they would follow. In what could have resulted in the sudden demise of the infant university, its leaders and faculty emerged from the experience, not as victors, but rather as survivors of a bitter battle over academic freedom. This study serves to fill the growing body of research on the McCarthy era and its influence on education. It will cover as a case study the entire struggle of the university over the issue of academic freedom and the attempts of well-meaning citizens to control what is taught and in what way it is taught at the most sacred of investigative places—the university