Law

University at Buffalo researcher John Violanti, Ph.D., a specialist in suicide among police officers, is preparing to conduct a study on suicide risk among returning veterans. The U.S. Army yesterday reported a "stunning spike" in the number of soldiers taking their own lives.

Local governments are reeling from the current recession, but not far off is another fiscal crisis of potentially catastrophic proportions. Over the next 30 years, nine of the region's largest local governments will have to come up with nearly $4 billion to cover their retirees' non-pension benefits, according to the latest UB Regional Institute policy brief, "The End of Local Government as We Know It?"

Stuart Lazar, an associate professor in the University at Buffalo Law School concentrating in tax law, has expertise and insight into the new American nightmare: losing your home.

Six University at Buffalo law students and their professor will study how national law can help stabilize the chaos in countries struggling from war and civil strife during a four-week educational seminar to Bosnia, Kosovo and Serbia.

A shoeprint etched in blood or dust can make a crucial difference in a criminal case, but it all depends on the ability of human examiners to identify a matching shoeprint pattern from thousands in their databases. It's a laborious, inefficient task. That's why University at Buffalo computer scientists are developing tools to make the search-and-match process more like a Google search and less like hunting for a needle in a haystack.

University at Buffalo sociologist Ellen Berrey, Ph.D., and two scholars from Northwestern University, say the excessive emphasis in U.S. law on overt acts of employment discrimination ignores the unintentional bias that permeates workplaces and the organizational practices responsible for much discrimination.

For the second year in a row, the University at Buffalo's Regional Institute has received national recognition for its work from the Association for University Business and Economic Research (AUBER), a professional association of research units at public and private universities.

A quarter of female police officers and nearly as many male officers assigned to shift work had thought about taking their own lives, a new study of police work patterns and stress headed by a University at Buffalo researcher has shown.

Think of University at Buffalo Law School Professor Charles Patrick Ewing's newest book this way: Imagine a front-row seat to some of the country's most intriguing court cases, courtesy of Ewing, one of the country's leading experts on the criminal mind, who draws on up-close-and-personal details from his 30 years of experience.

How severely retirees will be affected by the continuing financial crisis and subsequent "credit crunch" depends to a considerable extent on the kinds of retirement plans they rely on for retirement income, according to a University at Buffalo Law School professor who specializes in the regulation of retirement plans and other employee-benefit plans.