This commentary takes up a challenge posed by Franklin Miller in a 2022 essay in Bioethics Forum. Dr. Miller queried whether bioethicists could be useful in public health policy contexts and while he refrained from issuing an ultimate opinion, did identify several challenges to such utility. The current piece responds to the challenges Dr. Miller identifies and argues that with appropriate training, public health ethicists can be of service in virtually any context in which public health policies are deliberated and decided.

Forensic science is undergoing an unprecedented period of reform. Wrongful convictions and errors of impunity have been attributed largely to forensic evidence, and concerns over the scientific foundations of many forensic disciplines have been raised in key official reports. In these turbulent times, it becomes particularly interesting to understand how forensic evidence is understood by the general public. Is it idealized? Are its inherent limitations recognized? The present study seeks to contribute to this growing body of work by addressing two main questions: (1) How does the general public perceive forensic science?; (2) How correct are individuals in their evaluations of specific types of forensic evidence? A survey of the Israeli public reveals considerable trust in the ability of forensics to reliably identify the perpetrator of a crime, although less trust is expressed when questions lead respondents to consider specific stages in the forensic process. Furthermore, respondents were often incorrect in their evaluations of the reliability of specific types of forensic evidence. The implications of these findings for police legitimacy, the practice of the criminal justice system, and the future study of attitudes toward forensic evidence, are discussed.

Thousands of soldiers swept onto the campus of the University of El Salvador with tanks and planes, ransacking buildings and arresting more than eight hundred students, professors, and staff. It was July 19, 1972, and the university had “fallen into the hands of the Communist Party of El Salvador and a minuscule group of opportunists of the most disgraceful immorality,” said the recently inaugurated president Army Colonel Arturo Armando Molina.1 Troops handcuffed the rector, Fabio Castillo, and the dean of the medical school and sent them into exile in Nicaragua.2 Early in the invasion, the troops sealed off and occupied the university's printing press, where workers produced a magazine of arts and politics called La Pájara Pinta that essayist Italo López Vallecillos and novelist Manlio Argueta had founded in 1966, and of which Argueta was still the editor.3 The campus occupation lasted two years and proved a milestone in El Salvador's long march to civil war. The closing of La Pájara Pinta that day silenced the most important forum for Salvadoran dissident writers and marked, for many of them, the end of their literary careers and the start of their lives as fugitives and, eventually, guerrillas.

The article examines Tomasz Różycki’s 2004 mock epic Twelve Stations. The poem recounts an oneiric tale about a community of expatriates from Poland’s Eastern Borderlands who send their grandson on a mission to assemble a scattered family and guide it to their lost homeland in today’s Ukraine. Revolving around the issues of memory, post-memory, and nostalgia, Twelve Stations draws heavily from the adventure tradition to present a fresh perspective on modern Poland’s founding myths: the loss of Borderlands and settling the post-German territories in the West. Reading the poem in the context of cultural memory studies and focusing on the author’s deployment of adventure tropes and patterns, the article argues that Różycki’s poetic tale de-politicizes the existing narratives affixed to forced resettlements by weaving them with various strands of popular romance. In doing so, the poem imagines a collective act of “working through” the trans-generational trauma resulting from physical and cultural uprooting. Różycki’s inventive use of the form demonstrates that adventure narratives can be effective vessels of cultural memory, capable of repurposing elements of official narratives and nostalgic imagination to initiate more constructive and future-oriented identity-building processes.

This article by Emily Allbon introduces readers to the discipline of legal design, offering an insight into its application, its methodology, and the contexts in which it appears. There is coverage of why legal design is so pivotal for ensuring access to the law and an exploration of where it is being used: in legal practice, in academia, in public legal education and in the courts. There is also a close look at one element; that of visual contracts, and some consideration of where the legal information profession might position itself.

Cet article apporte une contribution à l’histoire des savoirs fondée sur l’analyse de relations de pouvoir à la croisée des champs académique et politique. Il prend pour objet les métamorphoses de la science administrative (SA) italienne, de son imposition dans le cursus juridique (1875) à sa disparition provisoire des facultés de droit (1935). Il esquisse d’abord les grandes lignes du modèle universitaire italien naissant et ses influences étrangères. Il analyse ensuite la controverse sur les fondements épistémologiques et les frontières d’une SA émergente et contestée, ces débats étant liés à des enjeux politiques sur la souveraineté de l’État et la légitimité de son intervention sociale. Si l’enseignement de la SA connaît un essor jusque dans les années 1880, des transformations réglementaires affectent les rapports de force dans le recrutement professoral et amorcent son déclin. C’est ce qu’objective la reconstitution de la structure des liens de coparticipation aux jurys de recrutement, grâce aux outils de l’analyse de réseaux. Combinant l’exploitation de ces résultats et de données biographiques, l’article montre comment les défenseurs d’une méthode juridique des plus formalistes imposent leurs principes de définition et de classement des disciplines administratives. L’étude de trajectoires exemplaires oppose enfin la perpétuation de la marginalité des promoteurs d’une SA interventionniste à la consécration de ses contempteurs, qui légitiment l’État libéral, mais adoptent des postures contrastées face à l’avènement du fascisme.