Lessons Learned: Acting as Guardian/Special Master in the Bad Newz Kennels Case

The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia appointed Rebecca Huss as the guardian/special master of the pit bulls that were the subject of the case against Michael Vick relating to dog fighting. In April of 2007, the Surry County Sheriff\u27s Department seized fifty-three pit bulls from Vick\u27s home in Virginia. According to the facts set forth in the plea agreement, dogs on the property were killed and subjected to violent dog fights. Similar to human victims of abuse, the dogs needed someone to represent their best interests during litigation. Huss was in charge of determining whether each dog should be euthanized due to its inability to interact safely with humans or other animals or given a second chance at life in a new home. Huss explains her role as guardian/special master and how she made her determinations about each dog\u27s destiny

Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements: MAPPA in Scotland: What do the numbers tell us?

This briefing paper collates for the first time statistics about Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) across Scotland. The statistics presented here were originally published in individual MAPPA annual reports, which each report on a different geographic area of Scotland. The paper begins by outlining the MAPPA arrangements in Scotland and compares information about offenders managed through MAPPA in Scotland with those in England and Wales. The paper then focuses on a detailed examination of the data available about MAPPA in Scotland. The figures outlined in the paper are presented in the appendix, where all tables referred to in the paper can be found

Baby M and the Cassandra Problem

Part I of this essay outlines the facts of the Baby M case and traces the reasoning the New Jersey Supreme Court used to justify the legal conclusions that it reached. Part II then identifies the three common analytical techniques or modes of argument on which the state supreme court relied in conducting its analysis and suggests that each is itself too dependent upon unprincipled policy preferences to have excluded such preferences from the decisionmaking process. Finally, Part III suggests that no matter how strong an argument one might offer to demonstrate the systemic vulnerability of principle to preference, the demonstration could never be convincing. Such arguments are paradoxically self-defeating