The Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual – 2nd edition (PDM-2)

For decades many clinicians, especially psychodynamic and humanistic therapists, have resisted thinking about their patients in terms of categorical diagnoses. In the current era, they find themselves having to choose between reluctantly “accepting” the DSM diagnostic labels, “denying” them, or developing alternatives more consistent with the dimensional, inferential, contextual, biopsychosocial diagnostic formulations characteristic of psychoanalytic and humanistic approaches. The Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual (PDM) reflects an effort to articulate a psychodynamically oriented diagnosis that bridges the gap between clinical complexity and the need for empirical and methodological validity. In this paper the authors (the steering committee of the PDM-2) describe the process of construction of the PDM-1 and discuss changes proposed for implementation in PDM-2

Voter Information in the Digital Age: Grading State Election Websites

Voter Information in the Digital Age: Grading State Election Websites examines the extent to which state election websites provide voters with sufficient information to make informed choices. The report assesses the quantity and quality of candidate and ballot measure information offered by the 50 state and District of Columbia election websites and ranks them from one to 51. It recommends a number of best practices currently used by some state or local jurisdictions, as well as innovations on other websites that are used rarely or not at all on state election websites. The authors recommend that states follow new technologies and trends in information delivery and design, and offer voters a full range of candidate and ballot information in innovative formats and media

Away from Waiver: A Rationale for the Forfeiture of Constitutional Rights in Criminal Procedure

Ten years ago, when I was a student in law school, I learned that it was difficult for a criminal defendant to lose completely his right to assert constitutional defenses. The only way he could relinquish his constitutional defenses, I was told, was by actually waiving them. Moreover, in order to establish that a defendant had waived his defenses, the state faced a rigorous test: it had to show, in the famous phrase, that his waiver was knowing, intelligent, and voluntary. In other words, before the state could permanently prevent a defendant from asserting constitutional defenses, it had to show that he made a deliberate decision to forgo these defenses, that he made the decision after being fully apprised of the consequences and alternatives, and that the state itself had done nothing to make a decision to assert his rights more costly than a decision to relinquish them. Today things are different. Law students now learn that a defendant can lose his constitutional defenses not only by waiving them, but also by forfeiting them. The significant difference between waiver and forfeiture is that a defendant can forfeit his defenses without ever having made a deliberate, informed decision to relinquish them, and without ever having been in a position to make a cost-free decision to assert them. Unlike waiver, forfeiture occurs by operation of law without regard to the defendant\u27s state of mind. A good example is the loss of constitutional defenses that occurs by law when a defendant enters a plea of guilty; another is the loss of constitutional defenses that occurs by rule when a defendant fails to assert his defenses in a timely fashion before trial

Unwitting Justification

An assailant is on the verge of shooting a hated rival, Jones, when Jones, oblivious to the attack, decides in that instant to kill his assailant, thereby becoming what commentators call an “unknowing self-defender” or “unwittingly justified actor.” By its terms, Jones is guilty of an impossibility attempt under the Model Penal Code because he satisfies all the elements of attempted murder under the Code. The question, which has divided commentators since George Fletcher and Paul Robinson’s debate in the 1970s, is whether Jones is also guilty of the completed crime of murder and whether the latter is the more appropriate charge. Anthony Duff, for one, has said that the debate seems“irresoluble.” I agree that the debate is irresoluble but only so long as commentators continue to ignore the issue on which the answer must turn, namely, why resulting harms matter in criminal law -- that is, why criminal law distinguishes in name and penalty between impossibility attempts and complete crimes. Commentators differ regarding why resulting harm matters. I examine what I regard as the most promising account, one that originates with Plato. Based on Plato’s account, I argue that most, of not all, acts of unwitting justification should be punished as impossibility attempts rather than as completed crimes