What Is Polygraph Testing

What Is Polygraph Testing A polygraph machine is used to attempt to detect physiological changes that are thought to occur when a person tells a lie. These measures include the blood pressure, the amount of sweating on the palms and the heart rate. Polygraph testing is currently being used to investigate crime in a number of countries around the world, including the USA, Japan, South Korea and Israel (Raskin, 1990). At present there is a wide-ranging literature evaluating the use of the polygraph machine and associated techniques, largely based on laboratory experimentation. Like any psychometric test, the use of a polygraph machine in the detection of deception has been questioned on the basis of its reliability and its validity. Reliability refers to the ability of a test to be consistent, no matter who is carrying it out. The question of validity asks whether the test is actually measuring what it claims to measure. The answer to both of these questions is vital in answering whether the polygraph should be introduced into British policing. The polygraph machine has been used in a number of different ways to elicit useful information from suspects. Bull, Gudjonsson, Hampson, Baron, Rippon, Vrij (2004) identify four main techniques: the Relevant/Irrelevant Technique, the Directed Lie Test, the Control Question Test, and the Guilty Knowledge Test. Of these, the majority of research has addressed the last two and so the discussion will concentrate on these. The Control Question Test The theory behind the Control Question Test (CQT) is that the physiological responses of a suspect to control questions are compared with those which are directly relevant to the crime. Control questions are specifically chosen to be vague in nature and to relate only indirectly to the crime under investigation (Iacono Patrick, 1997). This means that they should provoke high levels of physiological arousal in innocent suspects as they are designed to elicit guilty memories but those that are not under investigation. By contrast, to an innocent interviewee, the specific questions about the crime should evoke lower physiological arousal as they can be categorically denied. To the guilty interviewee, however, the reverse pattern should be seen with higher physiological response seen to the more specific questions. The basic paradigm for assessing the polygraph test used in laboratory investigations involves a mock crime with participants randomly told to act either innocent or guilty. Raskin (1982), for example, explains that the guilty participants enact the mock crime, while the innocent participants simply have the facts relayed to them. Both groups are given a cash incentive to pass the test, and this goes some way towards giving them the required motivation to pass the test. Many of the earlier studies used the CQT test and found some encouraging results. Carroll (1988) summarises some of these studies, referring first to the Office of Technology Assessment of the United States Congress (1983) which rounded up 14 studies which found an overall accuracy level of 88.6% in the guilty participants, and 82.6 in the innocent participants. However, Carroll (1988) criticises this assessment as some of these studies had flawed methodologies. Instead, using stricter criteria, the figures of 85.4% for guilty and 76.9% for the innocent were found. Carroll (1988) makes two important points about most of these studies. Firstly, there was a fairly high rate of false positives of around 20-25% instances where the participant was innocent but pronounced guilty. Secondly, the polygraph operators also have their own visual information to go on when carrying out the test, they are not simply relying on the physiological data. This means that the results cannot be fully attributable to the polygraph as the human operator could be partly acting as a lie detector. The most obvious criticism of these kind of studies is that of ecological validity. The test itself relies on the emotional reactions of the participants how likely is it that monetary inducements are equivalent in motivational terms to the chance of being convicted of a crime? For this reason, MacLaren (2001) points out that the participants have little reason to be worried about the important questions and are unmotivated to try and beat the test unlike a real guilty suspect. Field studies, then, have attempted to fill this gap, but immediately the problem arises of how it is possible to measure whether a person is really guilty or innocent. In reviewing the data on field studies, Carroll (1988) found that generally the accuracy rates were low at 69.6% comparing to the 50% obtainable by chance this does not seem high. In addition, there was a very high rate of false positives 43%. More recent field studies have been reviewed by Bull et al. (2004), who find better average figures for those guilty suspects at between 80% and 90% accuracy, but still poor results for innocent suspects, with false positives ranging from 12% to 47% accuracy. The theoretical problems with the CQT have been pointed out by Ben-Shakhar (2002), amongst others. The whole design of the test is such that the operator of the polygraph is trying to deceive the suspect something that may be perceived as unethical. It is still possible to imagine good reasons for why an innocent suspect would show arousal to the specific questions these are still anxiety provoking questions. There is little evidence that this test is standardised, in that the control questions that are asked in each interview are different. This means that much variability in the accuracy of test is probably due to the operator this reduces the theoretical reliability of the test. The Guilty Knowledge Test False positives, then, are one of the major problems with the CQT. The Guilty Knowledge Test (GKT) has been shown to meet this challenge. The GKT is designed to try and uncover whether the interviewee is withholding information about a crime under investigation. This involves asking the suspect a number of specific questions about the crime, each question having a number of alternatives, only one of which is correct. The operator then looks for a pattern of physiological responses to the correct option across the whole test. This test is much more difficult to apply, mainly because it requires the test operator to know a number of facts about the crime that she must be reasonably sure that the guilty suspect would also know these would tend to be details, although does not exclude major facts. A range of reviews have been carried out on the GKT in laboratory conditions. Ben-Shakhar and Furedy (1990) found accuracy rates of 84% for guilty participants and 94% for innocent participants. Elaad (1998) found rates of 81% for guilty and 96% for innocent. While these are encouraging, again it is the field studies that are more convincing because of ecological validity. Only two of these have been carried out. Elaad (1990) found rates of only 42% for guilty participants but 98% for the innocent. Similarly Elaad, Ginton Jungman (1992) found 76% for guilty and 94% for innocent. Ben-Shakhar, Bar-Hillel, Kremnitzer, (2002) defend the low results for guilty suspects, claiming that they were carried out under sub-optimal conditions, being just after a CQT had been carried out and only involving an average of 1.8 questions. Overall though, levels of false positives are much lower for the GKT than the CQT. Perhaps the biggest criticism of the GKT relates to how useful it is in a practical sense. The nature of the test requires that the interviewer has been able to amass half a dozen items of knowledge that the guilty person would be aware of that would not be recognised by an innocent person. In addition, it is not always possible to be confident that the suspect will have remembered or even noticed the particular details which the operator refers to. Bull et al. (2004) makes the point that, in high profile cases, details are often released to the public to aid the solving of the crime, which will make the interviewing of the suspect even harder using a GKT, as innocent suspects will know many more details of the crime, making the choice of details for interview more obscure. The advantage of the GKT is that in evaluating its theoretical underpinnings, some researchers have made much stronger claims for it than the CQT (The Committee to Review the Scientific Evidence on the Polygraph, National Research Council, 2003). The reason for this is that the GKT relies on the response being greater to a particular subset of the questions relative to whatever the physiological response is to the other questions (Carmel, Dayan, Naveh, Raveh Ben-Shakhar, 2003). This is unlike the CQT where variations in the physiological response of the suspect will tend to disrupt the test. In addition, the GKT does not rely on duping the suspect. The GKT does also have practical advantages. Ben-Shakhar et al. (2002) point out that a problem for the admissibility of polygraph tests in court is that they can become contaminated. In practice, a polygraph operator has the evidence of his eyes as well as the polygraph machine to go on. This may mean that the operator does not entirely base his decision on the physiological data. The advantage of the GKT is that it is much more easy to carry out blind, or for another polygraph tester to simply look at the physiological evidence. Counter measures and Base Rates Two other criticisms that apply more generally to all the different types of polygraph tests, are the effects of countermeasures and of base rates. Countermeasures refers to attempts to beat the polygraph test, these Gudjonsson (1988) classifies in three ways: reducing reactivity, suppressing physiological reactions and augmenting physiological reactions. According to Ford (1995) a man named Floyd Fay was able to successfully train 23 of 27 fellow inmates to beat the polygraph test in 20 minutes despite their admission of guilt to crimes for which they had been incarcerated. On the problem of base rates, Bull et al. (2004) point out that the kinds of situations in which polygraph tests are used may mean that there are a large number of suspects to test. This will exacerbate the problems of false positives, although, perhaps, is not such a problem in forensic situations as numbers are more likely to be limited.

Eulogy for Mother :: Eulogies Eulogy

Eulogy for Mother There is an old Yiddish proverb, when the heart is full, the eyes overflow. And so it is the case when we try to sum up and honor my mother’s life. My mother was a difficult, unusual and complex woman. She loved her daughters, Barbara, Wendy and myself, her sons-in law, Marty, John and David, her grandchildren Kenny, Cory and her stepgrandchildren, Mandy and Taryn, But if she loved her children, she absolutely adored her husband, my father. My Father was the truly abiding center and great passion of my mother’s life, as she was his, and knowing that they were coming up on their sixtieth anniversary only just barely gives you a glimpse at the strength of their love. My mother was not big on verbal or physical expressions of her love, but rather she showed us with her actions. And she often used food as a way of showing her love. She was a very good cook at many foods but she was an extraordinary cook when it came to particular dishes. Like her spaghetti sauce. Most of you here might have met my mother after she retired from spaghetti sauce making, but she used to cook sauce for three days in a 20 quart army pot. Then she would freeze it into quart containers for her children and her own use. Whenever we came to visit her, we would go home on the plane with a shopping bag filled with frozen containers. We felt sorry for those who were not so fortunate as to have the spaghetti sauce queen for a mother. Her Jello pie was famous in our household- whenever we came down we could always count on one there. God have mercy on us when all three of us were there with only one jello pie. And my Aunt Harriet, my mother’s sister, who loved my mother very much, was never jealous in spite of the fact that my mother could so deftly make this pie, while my Aunt’s could never stay put. My Aunt understood my mother’s talents. Years ago, when I was 16 I got mono. It was a whole thing. My sister came over, I was taken by ambulance to the hospital and when they brought me home, I didn’t seem to have an appetite. During the nights of fever she would come in to my bedroom, change the sweat soaked sheets, and put me back to bed.

Slaughterhouse Five Essay -- essays research papers

Thesis: Because he was unable to find comfort from human cruelty in common human institutions, Billy Pilgrim turns to the Tralfalmadorian concept of time.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Billy Pilgrim has been through many cruelties in his life. As a child his own father was cruel to him. They had gone to the Y.M.C.A. to teach Billy how to swim. A horrible, traumatic, event that would stay with Billy for the rest of his life. â€Å"Little Billy was terrified, because his father had said Billy was going to learn to swim by the method of sink-or –swim. His father was going to throw Billy into the deep end, and Billy was going to damn well swim†(43). Roland Wear was a very cruel man as well. He even to it as far as to try and kill Billy by kicking him in the spine. The only reason he had to kick Billy in the spine was because some organization Roland had in his mind about he, and the other two scouts being the â€Å"Three Musketeers†. In Roland’s mind, Billy had broken them up, he had severed the connection between the greatest fighting force in the army. â€Å"Weary drew back his right boot aimed a kick at the spine, at the tube which had so many of Billy’s important wires in it. Weary was going to break that tube†(51). A horrible and saddening event that even the U.S. A. would hide for twenty-three years from the people of its own nation. The bombing of Dresden was the major cruelty for the simple reason that it killed so many innocent people with there being no military around. One of the most beautiful cities in the world to see devastated by war. â€Å"There were hundreds of corpse mines operating by and by. They didn’t even smell bad at first, were wax museums. But then the bodies rotted and liquefied, and the stink was like roses and mustard gas†(214). Such horrible tragedies how could Billy ever even come close to being able to cope with them all? Something must keep Billy sane.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The failure to comfort Billy through human institutions, is how humanity has failed to try and comfort those less fortunate. Billy’s daughter, who is trying to comfort him constantly, does not do a very good job for the fact that she puts down every single thing that Billy will say about Tralfalmadoriane. If family should help comfort humans then why would Billy’s daughter yell at him so often? Family is supposed to be understanding and sensitive to each other’s proble... ...madorian concept of time and has finally achieved the peace he has so long needed. â€Å"It was all right, said Billy. Everything is all right and everybody has to do exactly what he does. I learned that on Tralfalmadore†(198). As he was giving his speech in Chicago, Billy knew he would die that day by the end of his speech. This showed how much he had accepted what the Tralfalmadorian’s had taught to him. â€Å"It is time for your to go home to your wives and children, and it is time for me to be dead for a little while-and then live again.†(142). Billy’s belief in the Tralfalmadorian concept of time not only gives him peace of mind, but a courage that he will not fear death because he will still live in memories therefore not being dead at all.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The only way Billy could keep from going insane from the nagging question of â€Å"why†, was to turn to the Tralfalmadorian concept of time. Billy now has the answers to any of the â€Å"why† questions he has ever asked. This makes life more free and comforting to many people since they may now have a guilt free mind. â€Å"Now he closes his speech as he closes every speech- with these words: farewell, hello, farewell, hello†(142).

Reflections of the Past Essay -- French Revolution, French Politics, B

Edmund Burke is considered one of the most influential intellectuals, best known for criticising the French revolution in his 1790 publication, â€Å"Reflections on the Revolution in France.† It is a book that has been the topic of a variety of debates and disagreements, but has always had the distinction of being able to influence a number of different groups, including the classic liberal. The text criticizes the French revolution on a number of different principles. One of Burkes main problems with the revolution is that the revolutionary leaders attempted to change the entirety of Frances political system overnight rather than take it gradually and change things one by one. He claims that the New France has little chance of succeeding (230) because of what he sees as impulsive. He also states that, innovation is not reform, which also requires reflection (119). He compares this to the view the philosophers, where the approach lacked realism during a time when abstractness could be fatal. The complete abolition of the entire political system in 1789 ended with an immense amount of confusion during transformation. The prior political system, Feudalism, was declared void and so the entirety of the governmental institutions was dissolved. This includes the army, the local government, the judicial system and the clergy. This all relates to the political ideology of the philosophers, which held that a revolution was good at destruction, but not so good at the rebuilding process. Though it is debateable if Burkes critique of the revolution was right or wrong, the even did stimulate him to devise his political ideology. His ability to insinuate logical points of politics makes this a rather important book. The main idea behind this ... ...ore spectacle rather then substance (283), which isn’t what France needs. Instead there is a national assembly that Burke states isn’t qualified to form a government and which will eventually become more extreme (374). In Burkes opinion, France made a lot of mistakes when they revolted against their king and country. For society to be liberty it requires wisdom, which then requires virtue (373), both which Burke believes the France are missing. He ends his book commending Britian â€Å"on the basis of longstanding existence and reforms† (375) or the ability to gradually change the country for the better, much more so because many of the past reforms were an attempt to recover past privileges and traditions, which are positive. Regardless of how one feels about the French Revolution, â€Å"Reflections on the Revolution in France† is a book that is still an important read.

Rebecca Notes Essay

– Gothic: terror, mystery, supernatural, ghosts, haunted houses and Gothic architecture, castles, darkness, death, decay, doubles, madness, secrets and hereditary curses. – Physiological thriller: characters are reliant on their mental resources, whether it is by battling wits with a formidable opponent or by battling of equilibrium in the character’s own mind. – Subversion of romance: sets up the conventions of a romantic genre then slowly subvert or undercut/demolishes our expectations. – Crime: crimes, their detection, criminals, and their motives. The novel is written first person by the narrator, who is never named within the book, and can be considered an ‘unreliable narrator,’ because everything is shown through her ‘unreliable narrative’ ? ‘she’ is persecuted, ‘she’ is inadequate, ‘she’ has an inferiority complex and ‘she’ is haunted by Rebecca. The narrator dreams twice, once in the beginning and once in the end, which conveys the truth that her conscious mind cannot. In the beginning of the novel the most evident genres are Gothic and anti-romance, but as the novel progresses the genres crime and physiological thriller appear more often. There is the continuity of reference back to gothic, but in the last 7 chapters, it is it dominated by more of the crime genre. Rebecca is dominated by the Gothic genre throughout the whole novel because of the continuous presence of Rebecca and the overshadowing Manderley. Even in the end, seems to have risen from the dead to have her final revenge ? through Mrs Danvers and the burning of Manderley. †¢In the very beginning of the book, the narrator introduces us to Manderley as an empty â€Å"inviolate, untouched†, cold â€Å"no smoke came from the chimney†, mysterious place â€Å"desolate shell, soulless at last, unhaunted† †¢Whenever Rebecca’s name is mentioned Maxim de Winter seems to become excessively emotional †¢The rhododendrons, â€Å"blood-red and luscious† – symbolic of Rebecca †¢Mrs. Danvers seems very mysterious, â€Å"deathly cold,† â€Å"skeleton† and â€Å"lifeless† †¢The constant references back to Rebecca â€Å"I was sitting in Rebecca’s chair, I was leaning against Rebecca’s cushion. Even though the Gothic genre is the most dominant genre there are also the secondary genres: Physiological thriller – mystery and ‘crime of the death of Rebecca, the continuous haunting of Rebecca on the narrators mind, also the continuous irony of how right after the Manderley dress ball Rebecca’s body is found Crime – the formal inquest is held and Maxim’s committed murder and his motives are shown †¢The past in opening chapters is itself a mystery – why is Manderley a ruin? †¢Unclear as yet but Rebecca’s death a mystery, which seems to affect everyone at Manderley†¦ who was she? †¢Narrator feels like she doesn’t belong â€Å"This was their routine†¦long custom† ? caught in an alien world of tradition. †¢Rebecca’s presence in the household still evident ? makes the narrator feel like an intruder †¢Keeping alive the spirit of Rebecca â€Å"the room was filled with them† ? people keep putting more flowers into the room like Rebecca used to †¢The irony of how Rebecca who had died a year ago is discovered again right after the Manderley ball â€Å"Rebecca, whom they describes as beautiful, talented†¦ having drowned a year ago, and then Maxim marrying again the following spring, bringing is bride straight to Manderley and giving a big fancy dress ball in her honour.. the following morning the body of his first wife being found trapped in the cabin of her sailing boat, at the bottom of the bay. † â€Å"Both papers used the same word, ‘ironic’ . Yes, I suppose it was ironic. It made a good story. † Subversion of romance – the narrator expects to be whisked away to a grand big house ‘Manderley’ and be loved and grow old with Maxim for the rest of her life, but everything doesn’t go as she expected or what we expected. †¢She expects to grow old and live happily with Maxim for the rest of her life and she will always be loved by Maxim â€Å"We should grow old here together, we should sit like this to our tea as old people, Maxim and I, with other dogs† †¢She thinks Maxim asked her to marry her because he loved her, but in fact he just need a ‘companion’ and Mrs Van Hopper seems to know exactly what would happen â€Å"you know why he is marrying you, don’t you? You haven’t flattered yourself he’s in love with you? † Themes: The themes are ambiguous but some can be identified Marriage – the 1st marriage was fake ? controlled ? ‘arragont’ – the 2nd marriage was submissive ? better then the 1st Obssesion of Rebecca †¢Narrator †¢Maxim †¢Mrs Danvers †¢Favell Control/insecurity Death – the effect on the living and the consequences of causing death.

Caroline O’Kane Essay

Social class is often judged upon by the following criteria; money, possessions, and ranking. In our society today, so much of our life is focused on social ranking. There are those who actively try to climb the social ladder while there are others simply who seem to be at the highest status. In Westport, it seems that most people are privileged in some way. I’ve grown up being on the soccer team, traveling on vacations to Arizona, the Caribbean, and London, never giving much thought to social class. These activities and gifts are just part of my life. However, over the last few years, I have come to realize that there are people who do not have these privileges. That is when I began noticing different social classes. I am part of the National Charity League, a Mother / Daughter organization formed to do charity work throughout Fairfield County to benefit others who don’t have as much as we do. We make dinner for the Gillespie Center, babysit at Bacharach Houses, homes owned by the town to help educate women with children, and so much more. However, out of all the philanthropies that I have been a part of throughout the years, the most influential experience for me has been tutoring children at the Caroline House in Bridgeport. After traveling a mere 7 exits on I-95 from Westport, one finds Bridgeport, Connecticut, a town so vastly different from Westport yet so close. Houses are packed elbow to elbow, each only spanning one room wide. There are no bright colors painting the houses, if there is any paint at all. A few blocks off the highway is a â€Å"home† called the Caroline House. Children and adults come daily to learn, play, and have a safe haven. With the National Charity League we are given the opportunity to help teach elementary and middle school students. Over the summer I chose to tutor at the Caroline House. Seeing the kids show up at 9 o’clock each and every day ready to learn made me very proud to see young students with such a desire to learn, willing to give up their summer days to read, write, and practice math facts. After a few hours of learning in the morning, there would be snack and a recess break. As Sister Anne, a nun who runs the house, would give goldfish out, all the kids would take them eagerly and eat them as if they hadn’t had a similar bag just the day before. The protection they showed for what was given to them stood out to me after seeing the kids in both the Coleytown and Staples Cafeterias. Westport kids often buy a bag of goldfish  to then leave it on the table, let others take a few, and when they feel satisfied throw away the remains. At Caroline House the kids ate every last fish, knowing their next snack might not be until the same time the next day. During the same snack break, we opened the doors to go outside. The boys run ran around laughing and playing wallwith a ball as the girls played with chalk, making fancy creations of butterflies on the pavement. I clearly remember one girl sitting on the Little Tikes slide she had outgrown. She wore a homemade tie-dye shirt with jean shorts that were one size too big, with her skinny legs hanging out over the side of the slide. Blue, green, and yellow friendship bracelets ran up the length of her arm. Her big brown eyes were burrowed into the crease of her Magic Tree House book, glancing left and right though the words. , â€Å"reading† a Magic Tree House book. Upon walking over and asking what her book was about she replied saying she did not know, but she really wished she knew how to read the text.. This It especially touched me to see seeing a little girl holding a book, that inside of which existed its pages held an entire world that she wanted to join. Throughout my entire elementary school education, I dreaded my 30 minutes of reading each night because I would much rather have been able to gogone outside and to bounce on the trampoline. I am glad my mMom made me stick with reading, often reading with me to help encourage me. RAs reading soon became almost second nature since we, after learn iting at such a young age as we do in the Westport school system., Wwe have fortunately never had to known what it is like not being able to explore the various worlds that books have to offertake us to. I am happy to try and instill the same in the children of Caroline House. After that conversation, I made it my project to teach this girl how to read. I felt compassion for her when she got frustrated, and I also felt proud of her for wanting to learn, especially in an environment where learning is not as much of a priority as it is here. Looking back, today and everyday I am thankful for the strong education values and system along with the unconditional support from my family and teachers. I look back and see a younger version of myself and I don’t think at the time I understood the gift of reading that I was trying to give back to this little girl at the Caroline House. I try to remember each day to be appreciative of everything I have; I now know there is always someone that needs more than I ever will. It makes me realize that the  children at the Caroline House are even lucky compared to others in America, and the world as a whole. This experience has taught me to try my hardest to be as nonjudgmental as I have come to realize that no matter who we are, some of us have more and some of us have less but should that define us as people? The Caroline House in Bridgeport introduced me into a whole new life, that of children, some close to my own age, who lived a life so different than mine and anyone that I know, just 10 short miles up the road. I personally try to remember each day all the privileges we have and often take for granted. The most basic routines in our day to day in life are the things that can change peoples lives in ways that you would never understand unless you stepped into their lives. Despite my fortunate reality that I have grown so used to, I was brought into a world where I was surrounded by different people showing me a different class, making me vigilant to help even in the smallest ways to improve their future. I am grateful for this opportunity because as much as I teach the children of Caroline house, they teach me.

American History Paper

There is near consensus that the polarization of the United States, into South and North, which eventually lead to the American Civil War was caused by slavery (Hutchison, 2003). The argument that has taken currency on this issue is that the Southerners were fighting for the perpetuation of slavery while the Northerners had taken the moral high ground of ending it. However, the two respective stands taken by these two groups smacks of self-centeredness (Hutchison, 2003).First, the Southern States were using the equality of all citizen in the United States as a scapegoat to support the continuation of slavery because their economic prosperity was dependent on slavery while their northern compatriots supported its abolition not because they did not benefit economically from it but because they never wanted the Southerners to share in those benefits emanating from slavery, that is why they used the excuse of criminalizing any expansion on slavery in the territories that had been acquire d from Mexico while not including their territory (North) in that abolition.Because of this discord between these two regions a number of compromises were brokered the most popular being the 1850 compromise. However, there reached a time when not even the 1850 compromise could hold on, that is when the union eventually broke asunder. Now that the 1850 compromise had failed to contain the South and the North territories from engaging in the debate on slavery, another solution had to be sort in order to reduce hostility between these two territories. This is how the Kansas-Nebraska bill came to being.Therefore the Kansas-Nebraska bill can be looked on as another compromise brokered after the failure of a previous compromise (1850 compromise). Why the Kansas-Nebraska bill succeeded for some time where the 1850 compromise failed was because while it kind of tried to end slavery in the Southern as was being propagated by the Northerners the Kansas-Nebraska bill gave the Southerners a say in making that decision which they exercised by voting for the continuation of slavery in their territory which was against the wishes of the northerners (WikiAnswers, 2009).By giving the Southerners the power to solely decide on this explosive matter of slavery, this bill declared the 1850 compromise null and void thereby watering down the advances that had been made by the 1850 compromise in ending slavery which even president Abraham Lincoln conceded was an evil enterprise. It should also be noted that the compromise of 1850 was reached by the representative of the Southern and Northern States while Kansas-Nebraska bill though passed by congress which is another representative assembly gave people from the respective regions the sovereign power to decide on the right to own slave.Another important point to note about the two is that they were both premised on the need to bring peaceful coexistence between the two territories in a larger union although both only succeeded in furt her dividing them (Hutchison, 2003). It can also be argued that by giving the two territories the power to vote separately on this issue of slavery, the Kansas-Nebraska bill made any effort at unity futile. That is why the Southerners found no fault in the bill while the Northerners were extremely outraged by it content.The 1850 compromise just like a number of compromises that had been struck prior to it had succeeded in maintaining a semblance of peaceful coexistence although there was inner rage which was building in each of the territories which is why eventually both territories decided enough is enough and maintenance of the status quo became untenable (Hutchison, 2003). First, the 1850 compromise was unable to address exhaustively the issue of slavery which was the explosive issue that was the subject of the discontentment from both sides.This was because it created an environment of suspicion on both territories each not sure whether their demand had been met by the compromi se. For instance, the Southerners after years of being treated as second class citizen by their Northern compatriot believed that the 1850 compromised was a perpetuation of that bigotry while the Northerners who all through had been used to dictating terms to their Southern compatriots did not see a reflection of that superiority in the 1850 compromise. The Kansas-Nebraska bill on the other hand might have made a mark in enhancing the equality of people from both territories.However it neither anticipated nor addressed the resistance that the Northerners would have most definitely put against any effort towards equalizing them with the southern compatriots whom they had all through considered inferior when it came to the enjoyment of rights. Being a product of legislation from a representative assembly, the Kansas-Nebraska bill was a democratic instrument unlike the 1850 compromise that was just a product of the deliberation of a skewed representation forum which is probably why it was viewed by the Southerners with suspicion.This bills also failed to the test of pragmatism in that it failed to appreciate the fact that the Southerner would obviously vote for slavery which was increasing being viewed as an infringement of the people’s right (slaves), this is one of the reason why it did not hold water for much longer despite the fact that it gave people from both territory a right to influence decisions at the national level.References Hutchison, E. Craig, (2003). The civil war: Why? – Compare and Contrast. Retrieved 23 July 2010 from