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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™

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2018

Law

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Institution
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Articles 1 - 14 of 14

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Peacebuilding Through Food Recovery, Angela Hackstadt Nov 2018

Peacebuilding Through Food Recovery, Angela Hackstadt

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

The United States wastes approximately 133 billion pounds of food annually while 15 million American households are food insecure. Current and proposed U.S. legislation attempts to encourage food recovery efforts to address both of these problems by incentivizing donation of surplus foods by businesses to charitable organizations, yet legislation has failed to deliver. Food insecure individuals who use food banks or other safety net programs are often required to provide personal information and are subject to scrutiny in the process of acquiring food. Information can be leveraged in different ways to stigmatize or marginalize those in need. This presentation discusses …

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Fall 2018 Newsletter: The Docket, Emma M. Wood Oct 2018

Fall 2018 Newsletter: The Docket, Emma M. Wood

Law Library Newsletter

Copy of the Fall 2018 issue of the UMass Law Library Newsletter, The Docket.

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Reducing Vulnerabilities Among Female Migrants In The United States And Spain, Rachel Newcomb, Sarajane Renfroe Oct 2018

Reducing Vulnerabilities Among Female Migrants In The United States And Spain, Rachel Newcomb, Sarajane Renfroe

Faculty Publications

Migrants who establish connections in the host culture, particularly through nonprofit organizations, are more likely to integrate successfully into host societies (Martinez Garcia and Jariego 2002). Yet, anthropologist Maria Olivia Salcido and sociologist Cecilia Menjívar have noted, “gender hierarchies are embedded in the formulation, interpretation, and implementation of immigration laws, as experienced by immigrants” (2013:336). Our research, which compares two field sites in Apopka, Florida and Barcelona, Catalonia, demonstrates that despite the presence of vibrant organizations in both places, legal barriers in the U.S. hamper social integration by preventing women from accessing basic services necessary for survival. The criminalization of …

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Judicious Imprisonment, Gregory Jay Hall Sep 2018

Judicious Imprisonment, Gregory Jay Hall

All Faculty Scholarship

Starting August 21, 2018, Americans incarcerated across the United States have been striking back — non-violently. Inmates with jobs are protesting slave-like wages through worker strikes and sit-ins. Inmates also call for an end to racial disparities and an increase in rehabilitation programs. Even more surprisingly, many inmates have begun hunger strikes. Inmates are protesting the numerous ills of prisons: overcrowding, inadequate health care, abysmal mental health care contributing to inmate suicide, violence, disenfranchisement of inmates, and more. While recent reforms have slightly decreased mass incarceration, the current White House administration could likely reverse this trend. President Donald Trump’s and …

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Law And Family Formation Among Lgbq-Parent Families, Emily Kazyak, Brandi Woodell, Kristin S. Scherrer, Emma Finken Jul 2018

Law And Family Formation Among Lgbq-Parent Families, Emily Kazyak, Brandi Woodell, Kristin S. Scherrer, Emma Finken

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

This article addresses how the law affects family formation among families with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBQ) parents in the United States. Our discussion draws on a socio-legal approach to law that focuses not only on the law on the books (what we refer to as “legal barriers”) but also on issues like how the law is practiced, how people experience the law in everyday life, and how the law serves as an interpretive framework through which people understand themselves and their families (what we refer to as “social barriers”). In our review, we highlight how attorneys can play …

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Authority, Legitimacy, And The Obligation To Obey The Law, Richard Dagger Jun 2018

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 …

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Testing A Social Schematic Model Of Police Procedural Justice, Justin T. Pickett, Justin Nix May 2018

Testing A Social Schematic Model Of Police Procedural Justice, Justin T. Pickett, Justin Nix

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Procedural justice theory increasingly guides policing reforms in the United States and abroad. Yet the primary sources of perceived police procedural justice are still unclear. Building on social schema research, we posit civilians’ perceptions of police procedural justice only partly reflect their personal and vicarious experiences with officers. We theorize perceptions of the police are anchored in a broader “relational justice schema,” composed of views about how respectful, fair, and unbiased most people are in their dealings with others. Individuals’ experiences with certain nonlegal actors and neighborhood environments should directly affect their relational justice schema and indirectly affect their evaluation …

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Causes And Consequences Of Child Marriage Among Syrian Refugee Populations In Jordan: An Investigation Of Perceptions., Alex Buckman Apr 2018

Causes And Consequences Of Child Marriage Among Syrian Refugee Populations In Jordan: An Investigation Of Perceptions., Alex Buckman

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This study examined the perceived causes of child marriage among Syrian refugee populations in Jordan and investigated its perceived consequences. Further, perceptions of mothers with school-aged children were compared to the opinions of children themselves. Through interviews with both target populations, along with an analysis of the responses of humanitarian activists and organizations to Jordan’s marriage law, the reality of child marriage within the country was ascertained. In conducting interviews, the data showed that many believed child marriage to be a normal occurrence in Syria, at least since the beginning of the war, with only two interviewees believing child marriage …

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Tribal Law At The Crossroads Of Modernity: A Study On Jordanian Attitudes Towards Jalwa, Danielle Sutton Apr 2018

Tribal Law At The Crossroads Of Modernity: A Study On Jordanian Attitudes Towards Jalwa, Danielle Sutton

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This research aims to examine Jordanian attitudes towards the tribal law practice of Jalwa and its recent reform. The study specifically focuses on the role of modernization in shaping these attitudes. Historical literature and social constructivist theories are used to inform and contextualize this approach. To measure modernization’s impact, a two-dimensional framework was developed that compares opinions across generations (isolating change over time) and across region of upbringing (change over space). Subsequently, there are two hypotheses guiding this research. The first argues that youth see jalwa less favorably than the older generation and thus lend greater support to the …

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Law’S Facilitating Role In The Field Of Social Enterprise., Evelyn Brody Mar 2018

Law’S Facilitating Role In The Field Of Social Enterprise., Evelyn Brody

All Faculty Scholarship

A Review of Dana Brakman Reiser and Steven A. Dean. Social Enterprise Law: Trust, Public Benefit, and Capital Markets. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017, 216 pp., $44.95 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-19-024978-6To appreciate the contribution of Professors Dana Brakman Reiser and Steven A. Dean in their pathbreaking volume on social enterprise law, we must begin by recognizing what we are not discussing. As the authors declare: “social enterprises are not charities” (p. 165). By definition, social enterprises are businesses, and thus not subject to the nondistribution constraint so familiar to nonprofit scholars and practitioners. An impact investor seeks profit, perhaps limited …

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Backlash Or A Positive Response? Public Opinion Of Lgb Issues After Obergefell V. Hodges., Emily Kazyak, Mathew Stange Jan 2018

Backlash Or A Positive Response? Public Opinion Of Lgb Issues After Obergefell V. Hodges., Emily Kazyak, Mathew Stange

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Following Obergefell v. Hodges, same-sex marriage remains controversial and anti-LGBT state legislation has been passed, which raises questions about whether the Supreme Court’s ruling may have created a backlash. We use data from two waves of a general population survey of Nebraskans conducted before and after the decision to answer three questions. First, we test three theories of how the Court decision influenced public opinion. We find that support for same-sex marriage was significantly higher following the ruling, suggesting that there was not a backlash to it. Second, we assess whether people perceive that the court accurately reflects the public’s …

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Managing Ambiguous Amphibians: Feral Cows, People, And Place In Ukraine’S Danube Delta, Tanya Richardson Jan 2018

Managing Ambiguous Amphibians: Feral Cows, People, And Place In Ukraine’S Danube Delta, Tanya Richardson

Anthropology Faculty Publications

This paper analyzes how a herd of feral cattle emerged in the core zone of Ukraine’s Danube Biosphere Reserve and why it still exists despite numerous challenges to the legality of its presence there. Answering these questions requires an analytical approach that begins from the premise that animals, plants, substances, documents, and technologies are active participants in making social and political worlds rather than passive objects of human intervention and manipulation. Drawing together insights from multispecies ethnography, animal geography, amphibious anthropology, and studies of nature protection in former Soviet republics, the author argues that the feral cattle exist because they …

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Spring 2018 Newsletter: The Docket, Emma Wood Jan 2018

Spring 2018 Newsletter: The Docket, Emma Wood

Law Library Newsletter

Copy of the Spring 2018 issue of the UMass Law Library Newsletter, The Docket.

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The Systems Fallacy: A Genealogy And Critique Of Public Policy And Cost-Benefit Analysis, Bernard Harcourt Jan 2018

The Systems Fallacy: A Genealogy And Critique Of Public Policy And Cost-Benefit Analysis, Bernard Harcourt

Faculty Scholarship

This essay identifies the systems fallacy: the mistaken belief that systems-analytic decision-making techniques, such as cost-benefit or public policy analysis, are neutral and objective, when in fact they normatively shape political outcomes. The systems fallacy is the mistaken belief that there could be a nonnormative or scientific way to analyze and implement public policy that would not affect political values. That pretense is mistaken because the very act of conceptualizing and defining a metaphorical system, and the accompanying choice-of-scope decisions, constitute inherently normative decisions that are value laden and political in nature. The ambition of decision theorists to render policy …

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