UK archaeologists forced to reinter human remains within 2 years of excavation

In 2007, the Ministry of Justice (rather than the Home Office) became responsible for regulations concerning exhuming human remains from ancient graves. The Guardian reports that the Ministry of Justice introduced a law in 2008 which declared that all human remains found in British digs must be reburied within two years. This makes sense if you have contractors and construction teams who are shoving deceased ancestors of living people out of the ground and then leaving them there without proper reburial. This does not make sense when you are an archaeologist digging up someone two thousand years old. Why?

It completely ignores the damage to the human remains themselves in the process of excavation and reinterment. For example, many of Harvard's human skeletons (the ones that haven't been repatriated through NAGPRA) are stored in boxes in climate controlled rooms, forever preserved and protected from the diagenetic processes of soil and sand and clay.

If we were to reinter many of these ancient human remains, we would completely lose:

1. Preservation. We cannot guarantee the preservation of reinterred ancient human remains. The conditions of the reinterment site may not be protected, and the bones might be destroyed.
2. Future Research. We are always inventing new research methods and technologies. Reinterring the bones for further decomposition means closing off new avenues of research in the future that would yield valuable evidence.
3. Education. We would be unable to educate the public by using actual human remains to demonstrate the pathology of a human skeleton. Students would be unable to examine and work with real samples of these remains as a way to gain experience on identifying future excavated remains.

This is different from NAGPRA, which is a very narrowly defined piece of legislation that targets native groups who can reasonably prove a genetic or ancestral link with those to be reinterred or studied respectfully per tribal/Nation traditions and beliefs. What the UK has here is an overbroad rule that needs to be tailored to the needs of archaeology.

Judges jail youths for profit (NYTimes)

A recent federal hearing revealed that Judges Ciavarella and Conahan took more than $2.6m in kickbacks for sending teenagers to youth detention centres run by private parties. That's about 5000 juveniles who may have been sentenced wrongly, including

Hillary Transue was sentenced to three months in juvenile detention for a spoof Web page mocking an assistant principal...[Susan Mishanski's] son, Kevin, now 18, was sentenced to 90 days in a detention facility last year in a simple assault case that everyone had told her would result in probation..

This case hits close to home because I was assigned to represent the government in my moot court oral argument in my first year of law school. My task was to defend the constitutionality of juvenile court orders, so that they could be counted as part of the number of prior convictions required in order to reach an enhanced sentencing for a repeat violent crimes and possession offender who was now of age.

Juvenile courts are an interesting constitutional conundrum. The system keeps these proceedings private to the general public to not only protect the privacy of juveniles, but also to lock the records after they have become adults (I'm not sure if this happens in all states). Hidden from public scrutiny, the welfare of these juveniles is purely in the hands of officers of justice. Juveniles have the right to counsel, the right to proof beyond a reasonable doubt (in the eyes of the judge presiding), and other rights which can be waived. In this recent case, all the officrs of justice who might have intervened were too 'intimidated', according to the Marsha Levick of the Juvenile Law Center, to object. 

It extends, I surmise, beyond mere intimidation. There is little incentive not merely on the part of judges, but on the part of these officers (parole officers, public defenders, etc.), to act in such a situation. They are commonly inadequately paid for dealing with heavy workloads and a wide range of bewildered (joke Web sites) to problematic (violent) offenders. It is not merely monetary incentive they are lacking. They are working in a system that lacks the capacity to handle juveniles with the full moral and legal probity that we owe to all minors.

The NYTimes raised the question of requiring counsel (instead of allowing it to be waived) at juvenile proceedings. It may be a step in the right direction, but I fear it would not be enough.

via NYTimes (link)

Apple settles, to make SF store accessible

In law school, I learned about some pretty ugly human behaviour through the criminal and torts cases our class read. Sometimes I couldn't understand what could bring people to the level of a torts suit, and often I could only shake my head, because as my professor said, "in a lawsuit, the only people who win are the lawyers." So when I learned of the settlement terms of the August 2007 lawsuit against Apple by two plaintiffs, I was pleasantly surprised. The plaintiffs, using wheelchairs, had trouble accessing the San Francisco Apple retail store. Instead of seeking monetary compensation, the plaintiffs asked for something that would actually fix the problem.

As a result of the settlement, Apple will improve the accessibility features of the store and train employees in serving people in wheelchairs. It is nice to see that sometimes there are proactive solutions to lawsuits.

Full details: Consent Decree and (Proposed Order) (PDF), (via Ars Technica)