Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

[Introduction To] Debating Sex Work, Lori Watson, Jessica Flanigan

Bookshelf

In this 'for and against' work, ethicists Lori Watson and Jessica Flanigan debate the criminalization of sex work. Watson argues for a sex equality approach to prostitution in which buyers are criminalized and sellers are decriminalized, known as the Nordic Model. Flanigan argues that sex work should be fully decriminalized because decriminalization ensures respect for sex workers' and clients' rights, and is more effective than alternative policies.

Putting these two views on sex work into conversation with one another, and opening up space for readers to weigh both approaches, the book provides a thorough, accessible exploration of the issues surrounding …

[Introduction To] Rap On Trial: Race, Lyrics, And Guilt In America, Erik Nielson, Andrea L. Dennis, Killer Mike

Bookshelf

A groundbreaking exposé about the alarming use of rap lyrics as criminal evidence to convict and incarcerate young men of color

“If you believe that I’m a cop killer, you believe David Bowie is an astronaut.” —Rapper Ice-T, on the persona he adopted in the song “Cop Killer”

Should Johnny Cash have been charged with murder after he sang, “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die”? Few would seriously subscribe to this notion of justice. Yet in 2001, a rapper named Mac whose music had gained national recognition was convicted of manslaughter after the prosecutor quoted …

Authority, Legitimacy, And The Obligation To Obey The Law, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

According to the standard or traditional account, those who hold political authority legitimately have a right to rule that entails an obligation of obedience on the part of those who are subject to their authority. In recent decades, however, and in part in response to philosophical anarchism, a number of philosophers have challenged the standard account by reconceiving authority in ways that break or weaken the connection between political authority and obligation. This paper argues against these revisionist accounts in two ways: first, by pointing to defects in their conceptions of authority; and second, by sketching a fair-play approach to …

Protecting Future Rights For Future Citizens: Children’S Property Rights In Fragile Environments, Sandra F. Joireman

Political Science Faculty Publications

The property rights of children is an understudied area that straddles the development/humanitarian divide. Access to assets is important to the livelihood choices and economic well-being of adults. Yet, adults’ ability to claim property can be significantly impaired by humanitarian emergencies that occurred in their youth. We typically do not think of children as economic actors because of their age; their property rights are future rights not yet realized. This paper addresses the future rights to property held by children and examines how fragile environments, characterized by conflict, displacement and disease, can undermine their ability to claim those rights when …

From Intent To Effect: Richmond, Virginia, And The Protracted Struggle For Voting Rights, 1965–1977, Julian Maxwell Hayter

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Twelve years after the ratification of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 [VRA], Richmond, Virginia elected a historic majority black city council. The 5-4 majority quickly appointed an African American lawyer named Henry Marsh, III to the mayoralty. Marsh, a nationally celebrated civil rights litigator, was not only the city’s first black mayor, but the council election of 1977 was also Richmond’s first since 1970. In 1972, a federal district court used the VRA’s preclearance clause in Section 5 to place a moratorium on council contests. This moratorium lasted until the Supreme Court and the Department of Justice determined whether …

"It Could Have Been Me": The 1983 Death Of A Nyc Graffiti Artist, Erik Nielson

School of Professional and Continuing Studies Faculty Publications

"It could have been me. It could have been me."
These were the words uttered by painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, who was deeply shaken after he heard the story of a black graffiti artist who was beaten to death by New York City police. Seeing his own life reflected in the death of a fellow artist, Basquiat went on to create Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart), not only to commemorate the young man's death, but also to challenge the state-sanctioned brutality that men of color could face for pursuing their art in public spaces.

Social Contracts, Fair Play, And The Justification Of Punishment, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

In recent years, the counterintuitive claim that criminals consent to their own punishment has been revived by philosophers who attempt to ground the justification of punishment in some version of the social contract. In this paper, I examine three such attempts—“contractarian” essays by Christopher Morris and Claire Finkelstein and an essay by Corey Brettschneider from the rival “contractualist” camp—and I find all three unconvincing. Each attempt is plausible, I argue, but its plausibility derives not from the appeal to a social contract but from considerations of fair play. Rather than look to the social contract for a justification of punishment, …

The Duty To Obey The Law, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Under what conditions, if any, do those the law addresses have a moral duty or obligation to obey it simply because it is the law? In this essay, I identify five general approaches to carrying out this task, and offer a somewhat detailed discussion of one or two examples of each approach. The approaches studied are: relational-role approaches that appeal to the fact that an agent occupies the role of member in the political community; attempts to ground the duty to obey the law in individual consent or fair play; natural duty approaches; instrumental approaches; and philosophical anarchism, an approach …

On Moral Arguments Against A Legal Right To Unilateral Humanitarian Intervention, David Lefkowitz

Philosophy Faculty Publications

As the international response to recent events in Darfur demonstrates, the restriction of authority to intervene to the United Nations poses the greater legal barrier to intervention. From a practical perspective, then, the more pressing question may be whether international law ought to be modified to permit states, or multi-state organizations, to carry out unilateral humanitarian interventions; that is, interventions that are not authorized by the United Nations. The issue here is essentially a moral one: would the incorporation of a right to unilateral humanitarian intervention entail a moral improvement to international law – for example, a decrease in the …

Columbine School Massacre, Eric S. Yellin

History Faculty Publications

On 20 April 1999, in one of the deadliest school shootings in national history, two students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Jefferson County, Colorado, killed twelve fellow students and a teacher and injured twenty-three others before committing suicide. Eric Harris, age eighteen, and Dylan Klebold, age seventeen, used homemade bombs, two sawed-off twelve-gauge shotguns, a nine-millimeter semiautomatic rifle, and a nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol in a siege that began shortly after 11 A.M.

Operation Rescue, Eric S. Yellin

History Faculty Publications

Operation Rescue, founded in 1986, became known as one of the most militant groups opposing a woman’s right to abortion as established in the 1973 Supreme Court case Roe vs. Wade.

Sacco & Vanzetti Case, Eric S. Yellin, Louis Foughin

History Faculty Publications

Nicola Sacco, a skilled shoeworker born in 1891, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a fish peddler born in 1888, were arrested on 5 May 1920, for a payroll holdup and murder in South Braintree, Massachusetts. A jury, sitting under Judge Webster Thayer, found the men guilty on 14 July 1921. Sacco and Vanzetti were executed on 23 August 1927 after several appeals and the recommendation of a special advisory commission serving the Massachusetts governor. The execution sparked worldwide protests against repression of Italian Americans, immigrants, labor militancy, and radical political beliefs.

Teapot Dome Oil Scandal, Eric S. Yellin

History Faculty Publications

In October 1929, Albert B. Fall, the former Secretary of the Interior under President Warren G. Harding, was convicted of accepting bribes in the leasing of U.S. Naval Oil Reserves in Elk Hills, California, and Teapot Dome, Wyoming.

Uncharted Leadership : A Study Of Leadership In The Judicial Branch, Kevin Donnelly

Honors Theses

This paper is the final product of a research oriented project in which I studied leadership within the federal judicial system, specifically the Supreme Court of the United States. This project was an in depth study of the amount, style, and effect of Leadership in the Judicial branch. Through this study I hoped to explore a major component of government which has somehow been ignored when studying leadership at the national level.

Self-Overcoming In Foucault's Discipline And Punish, Ladelle Mcwhorter

Philosophy Faculty Publications

Prisons are veritable universities of crime. Within them young offenders learn both the values and the techniques of hardened criminals. In addition to these lessons in professional ethics and theory, aspiring criminals also get hands-on experience within prison walls, for prisons are also centers of criminal activity: drug and arms trafficking, rape, gang warfare, and murder. And, like all good universities, prisons help their proteges make the contacts they need to further their budding careers.

Play Fair With Punishment, Richard Dagger

Political Science Faculty Publications

If we want to provide a justification for legal punishment, then, we must answer two distinct questions: (1) What justifies punishment as a social practice? and (2) What justifies punishing particular persons? The principle of fair play is an especially attractive theory of punishment, I shall agree, because it offers plausible and compelling answers to both these questions. I shall also suggest that there is a third question - How should we punish those who commit crimes? - that fair play cannot answer without help from other sources.