Law and Society Commons^™

Religiosity In Constitutions And The Status Of Minority Rights, Brandy G. Robinson

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

Minority rights and religion have never been topics that are simultaneously considered. However, arguably, the two have relevance, especially when combined with the topic and theory of constitutionalism. Historically and traditionally, minorities have been granted certain rights and have been denied certain rights under various constitutions. These grants and denials relate to cultural differences and values, arguably relating to a culture’s understanding and interpretation of religion.

This article explores the relationship and status of minority rights as it relates to religiosity and constitutionalism. Essentially, there is a correlation between these topics and research shows where certain nations have used religion …

A New Agenda For The Cultural Study Of Law: Taking On The Technicalities, Annelise Riles

Annelise Riles

This article urges humanistic legal studies to take the technical dimensions of law as a central focus of inquiry. Using archival and ethnographic investigations into developments in American Conflict of Laws doctrines as an example, and building on insights in the anthropology of knowledge and in science and technology studies that focus on technical practices in scientific and engineering domains, it aims to show that the technologies of law - an ideology that law is a tool and an accompanying technical aesthetic of legal knowledge - are far more central and far more interesting dimensions of legal practice than humanists …

An Ethnography Of Abstractions?, Annelise Riles

Annelise Riles

No abstract provided.

Is Evolutionary Analysis Of Law Science Or Storytelling?, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

In recent years, some legal scholars have argued that legal scholarship could benefit from a greater reliance on theories of human behavior that arise from biological evolution. These scholars contend that reliance on biological evolution would successfully combine the rigor of economics with the scientific aspects of psychology. Complex legal systems, however, are uniquely human. Law has always been the product of cognitive processes that are unique to humans and that developed as a response to an environment that no longer exists. Consequently, the evolutionary development of the cognitive mechanisms upon which law depends cannot be rigorously modeled or studied …

A Positive Psychological Theory Of Judging In Hindsight, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

No abstract provided.

Heuristics And Biases In The Court: Ignorance Or Adaptation?, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

No abstract provided.

The Uncertain Psychological Case For Paternalism, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

No abstract provided.

Taking Distribution Seriously, Robert C. Hockett

Robert C. Hockett

It is common for legal theorists and policy analysts to think and communicate mainly in maximizing terms. What is less common is for them to notice that each time we speak explicitly of socially maximizing one thing, we speak implicitly of distributing another thing and equalizing yet another thing. We also, moreover, effectively define ourselves and our fellow citizens by reference to that which we equalize; for it is in virtue of the latter that our social welfare formulations treat us as “counting” for purposes of socially aggregating and maximizing. To attend systematically to the inter-translatability of maximization language on …

Minding The Gaps: Fairness, Welfare, And The Constitutive Structure Of Distributive Assessment, Robert C. Hockett

Robert C. Hockett

Despite over a century’s disputation and attendant opportunity for clarification, the field of inquiry now loosely labeled “welfare economics” (WE) remains surprisingly prone to foundational confusions. The same holds of work done by many practitioners of WE’s influential offshoot, normative “law and economics” (LE). A conspicuous contemporary case of confusion turns up in recent discussion concerning “fairness versus welfare.” The very naming of this putative dispute signals a crude category error. “Welfare” denotes a proposed object of distribution. “Fairness” describes and appropriate pattern of distribution. Welfare itself is distributed fairly or unfairly. “Fairness versus welfare” is analytically on all fours …

What Men?: The Essentialist Error Of The End Of Men, Nancy E. Dowd

Nancy Dowd

Many aspects of The End of Men are debatable. Among them is the critical issue of essentialism: do Rosin's claims about women withstand scrutiny when we ask, “Is this representative of all women?” While women as a group may have progressed in some domains, they have remained the same or worse in others, and some women have not progressed at all. An even more significant shortcoming of The End of Men, however, is its essentialism about men. Rosin assumes a beginning, namely, men's prior place of power and privilege in the domains she addresses. To assume that is true of …

Interest Groups In The Teaching Of Legal History, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

One reason legal history is more interesting than it was several decades ago is the increased role of interest groups in our accounts of legal change. Diverse movements including law and society, critical legal theory, comparative law, and public choice theory have promoted this development, even among writers who are not predominantly historians. Nonetheless, in my own survey course in American legal history I often push back. Taken too far, interest group theorizing becomes an easy shortcut for assessing legal movements and developments without fully understanding the ideas behind them.

Intellectual history in the United States went into decline because …

A First Look At The Plea Deal Experiences Of Juveniles Tried In Adult Court, Tarika Daftary-Kapur, Tina Zottoli

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

While there is a large body of research on the legal capacities of adolescents, this research largely has neglected the plea-deal context. To learn about adolescents’ understanding of the plea process and their appreciation of the short- and long-term consequences of accepting a plea deal, we conducted interviews with 40 juveniles who were offered plea deals in adult criminal court. Participants displayed a limited understanding of the plea process were not fully aware of their legal options and appeared to be overly influenced by the short-term benefits associated with accepting their plea deals. Limited contact with attorneys may have contributed …

On Patenting Human Organisms Or How The Abortion Wars Feed Into The Ownership Fallacy, Yaniv Heled

Yaniv Heled

The idea of ominous technologies that put human individuals or parts of their bodies under someone else's control has been stirring emotions and terrifying people for centuries. It was a recent offshoot of this idea--the notion of “patenting humans”--that mobilized certain members of Congress to pass legislation prohibiting the issuance of patent claims “directed to or encompassing a human organism.” The values underlying this legislation may well have been agreeable, even admirable. Yet, the actual motivation for it was misguided; its execution, deeply flawed; its potential outcomes, hazardous

This Article reviews the history and background of this prohibition. It fleshes …

Por Una Antropología Del Derecho Más Allá De Los Márgenes., Daniel Quiñonez

Daniel Quiñonez Oré

El presente artículo tiene por finalidad plantear un estudio antropológico del Derecho más allá de los márgenes; esto es, más allá de los temas tradicionales que se han venido desarrollando en la Antropología del Derecho Peruana, a efectos de que mediante la antropología y su método se cuestionen las instituciones jurídicas que se presentan como cotidianas y normalizadas en nuestro contexto.

Climate Change Survey Measures: Exploring Perceived Bias And Question Interpretation, Tarik Abdel-Monem, Lisa M. Pytlikzillig, Tonya K. Bernadt, Nicole Wall

Lisa PytlikZillig Publications

Climate change has become an important yet politically divisive topic in recent years. Further complicating the issue are assertions that climate change– related public opinion surveys used by social scientists are biased or otherwise problematic. We conducted a pilot study to explore questions concerning bias and interpretation of climate change surveys. Our study sample was composed of adult residents of Nebraska (n = 115). We augmented our survey findings with cognitive interviews of a subsample of respondents (n = 20). We assessed study participants’ attitudes about climate change, and perceptions of bias and interpretation of survey questions drawn from previously …

Documenting Mass Rape: Medical Evidence Collection Techniques As Humanitarian Technology, Jaimie Morse

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Aim: Emerging global networks of human rights activists, doctors, and nurses have advocated for increased collection of medical evidence in conflict-affected countries to corroborate allegations of sexual violence and facilitate prosecution in international and domestic courts. Such initiatives are part of broader shifts in human rights advocacy to document human rights violations using rigorous, standardized methodologies. In this paper, I consider three principal forms of medical evidence to document sexual violence and their use in these settings: the patient medical record, the medical certificate, and the sexual assault medical forensic exam (commonly known as the “rape kit”).

Methods: Combining archival …

The Little India Riot: Domestic And International Law Perspectives, Siyuan Chen

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

A riot involving hundreds of foreign labourers broke out in Little India, Singapore, on 8 December 2013. Only the second riot to occur in more than 40 years in fairly tranquil Singapore, the damage was extensive as rioters destroyed police and emergency vehicles and even injured dozens of police and civil defence personnel. The authorities only needed a few days to complete the investigations and shortly after, some of the alleged rioters were arrested and charged, while some of them were repatriated. The swiftness of the entire process prompted harsh criticism from international and local human rights groups, who claimed …

Actavis And Error Costs: A Reply To Critics, Aaron S. Edlin, C. Scott Hemphill, Herbert J. Hovenkamp, Carl Shapiro

All Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court’s opinion in Federal Trade Commission v. Actavis, Inc. provided fundamental guidance about how courts should handle antitrust challenges to reverse payment patent settlements. In our previous article, Activating Actavis, we identified and operationalized the essential features of the Court’s analysis. Our analysis has been challenged by four economists, who argue that our approach might condemn procompetitive settlements.

As we explain in this reply, such settlements are feasible, however, only under special circumstances. Moreover, even where feasible, the parties would not actually choose such a settlement in equilibrium. These considerations, and others discussed in the reply, serve to …

The Protection From Harassment Act 2014: Legislative Comment, Yihan Goh, Man Yip

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The Protection from Harassment Act 2014 (“Act”) was passed by Parliament on 13 March 2014 following its Second Reading. The Act is a culmination of a concerted ministerial effort to bring about legislative change to the laws governing harassment. Bringing together the background to the Act, its general structure and its specific provisions, this article aims to add to the undoubted long list of commentaries on the Act and, it is hoped, contribute to the understanding and enforcement of the Act.

Troublesome Women And The Nanny State: Drawing Boundaries And Legislating Bifurcated Belonging In Patriarchal Singapore, Eugene K. B. Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Singapore was and remains an immigrant society. The immigration of newcitizens and temporary workers has become the primary means by which thepopulation is replenished and right-sized for its economic and demographicrequirements. More than one in three persons (or 38.6 percent) living inSingapore are foreigners (non-citizens, including permanent residents) in2013.[2] Of the 3.45 million working population in Singapore, about 38 percent(or about 1,296,800 persons are foreigners.[3] The vast majority of theseforeigners are transient workers (migrant workers) on short-term work permits.Of these, about 211,000—all women—are employed as domestic help (or ‘maids’ inlocal parlance) as of June 2013.

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

The Origins Of Affirmative Fiscal Action, Mirit Eyal-Cohen

Mirit Eyal-Cohen

This article highlights an anomaly. It shows that two tax rules aimed to achieve a similar goal were introduced at the same time. Both meant to be temporary and bring economic stimuli, but received a dramatically different treatment. The less efficient or economically inferior survived. Its superior counterpart did not. The article reviews the reasons for this paradox. It shows that the reason is both political and an agency problem. The article not only enriches an important and ongoing debate that has received much attention in recent years, but also provides important lessons to policymakers.

The Rise And Rise Of The One Percent: Getting To Thomas Piketty's Wealth Dystopia, Shi-Ling Hsu

Shi-Ling Hsu

Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-first Century, which is surely one of the very few economics treatises ever to be a best-seller, has parachuted into an intensely emotional and deeply divisive American debate: the problem of inequality in the United States. Piketty's core argument is that throughout history, the rate of return on private capital has usually exceeded the rate of economic growth, expressed by Piketty as the relation r > g. If true, this relation means that the wealthy class – who are the predominant owners of capital – will grow their wealth faster than economies grow, which …

The Structure And Evolution Of The Academic Discipline Of Law In The United States: Generation And Validation Of Course-Subject Co-Occurrence (Csco) Maps, Peter A. Hook

School of Information Sciences Faculty Research Publications

This dissertation proposes, exemplifies, and validates the usage of course-subject co-occurrence (CSCO) data to generate topic maps of an academic discipline. CSCO is defined as course-subjects taught in the same academic year by the same teacher. This work is premised on the assumption that in the aggregate and for reasons of efficiency, faculty members teach course-subjects that are topically similar to one another. To exemplify and validate CSCO, more than 112,000 CSCO events were extracted from the annual directories of the American Association of Law Schools covering nearly eighty years of law school teaching in the United States. The CSCO …

Public Health Regulation: Convergence, Divergence, And Regulatory Tension: An Asian Perspective, Locknie Hsu

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Regulatory issues relating to public health, including regulation of access to medicines and tobacco control have increasingly been the source of tension in recent trade and investment negotiations, treaties and disputes. The ongoing Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, which include a number of developing Asian states, are an example that brings some of these issues to the fore and show a divergence of negotiating views.

The intersection between public health regulation and trade and investment treaties has given some Asian states significant pause for thought; it has further led the international system to a critical need to confront the overlap of legal …

Introduction To The Structure And Limits Of Criminal Law, Paul H. Robinson, Joshua Samuel Barton

All Faculty Scholarship

The book The Structure and Limits of Criminal Law (Ashgate) collects and reprints classic articles on three topics: the conceptual structure of criminal law doctrine, the conduct necessary and that sufficient for criminal liability, and the offender culpability and blameworthiness necessary and that sufficient for criminal liability. The collection includes articles by H.L.A. Hart, Sanford Kadish, George Fletcher, Herbert Packer, Norval Morris, Gordon Hawkins, Andrew von Hirsch, Bernard Harcourt, Richard Wasserstrom, Andrew Simester, John Darley, Kent Greenawalt, and Paul Robinson. This essay serves as an introduction to the collection, explaining how each article fits into the larger debate and giving …

Ineffective Assistance Of Counsel Before Powell V. Alabama: Lessons From History For The Future Of The Right To Counsel, Sara Mayeux

All Faculty Scholarship

The doctrinal literature on ineffective assistance of counsel typically begins with the 1932 Supreme Court case of Powell v. Alabama. This symposium contribution goes back farther, locating the IAC doctrine’s origins in a series of state cases from the 1880s through the 1920s. At common law, the traditional agency rule held that counsel incompetence was never grounds for a new trial. Between the 1880s and the 1920s, state appellate judges chipped away at that rule, developing a more flexible doctrine that allowed appellate courts to reverse criminal convictions in cases where, because of egregious attorney ineptitude, there was reason …

Incarceration And Reintegration: How It Impacts Mental Health, April M. Marier, Alex Alfredo Reyes

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Background: Previous criminal justice policies have been non-effective leading to overpopulated prisons and unsuccessful reintegration. There is a lack of effective supportive and/or rehabilitative services resulting in high rates of recidivism and mental health implications. Objective: This study investigated the perceived impact that incarceration and reintegration with little to no supportive and/or rehabilitative services has on the mental health status of an individual. The emphasis was on participant perception and not on professional reports because of underreporting and lack of attention to mental health in the criminal justice system. Methods: Focus groups in the Inland Empire and Coachella Valley …

The Fashion Lottery: Cooperative Innovation In Stochastic Markets, Jonathan Barnett, Gilles Grolleau, Sana El Harbi

Jonathan M Barnett

The fashion market is an anomaly: innovation is vigorous but original producers are substantially unprotected against imitation, which proliferates under an incomplete property regime consisting of strong trademark protections and weak design protections. We account for this anomaly through a “cooperative innovation” model where producers prefer an incomplete property regime that permits some imitation to alternative regimes that permit no imitation or all imitation, independent of budget constraints. A property regime that permits positive but limited levels of imitation operates as a form of group insurance that alleviates the risk of recoupment failure in a market characterized by demand uncertainty, …

Adam Smith's Lectures On Jurisprudence-Justice, Law, And The Moral Economy, Walter J. Kendall Lll

Walter J. Kendall lll

Adam Smith, a leading thinker of the British Enlightenment, is universally known as the author of the Wealth of Nations and an economic theorist. He is less well known as the author of a Theory of Moral Sentiments and an ethicist. And known almost not at all for his Lectures on Jurisprudence or as a legal theorist. This essay looks at Smith’s thought through the lens of his Lectures on Jurisprudence. It highlights the almost paradoxical positions Smith had on self-interest, markets, government, and economic expansion. Obscured by his reputation and these paradoxes are his views on justice, equality, and …