Legal Studies Commons^™

The Legitimacy Of Global Legal Governance: Institutional Power And Human Rights Bias In International Criminal Justice, Martin J. Burke

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As global legal governance institutions exercise increasing coercive power, including through the prosecution and incarceration of individuals, such institutions require greater legitimacy. An essential but often overlooked source is the right of the accused in mass-atrocity trials to effective legal protection, which constitutes a “legal legitimacy” based on liberal norms of criminal justice. The two most important sources of legal legitimacy are: “legality,” that is, the non-retroactive enforcement of crimes and punishment; and “defense parity,” institutional and procedural guarantees of substantive equality between the defense and prosecution before and during trial. The dissertation argues that the implementation of defendant rights …

Capitalism And Unfreedom: Louis D. Brandeis And A Liberty Of The Left, Eric L. Apar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The American Right features a well-developed—and well-heeled—infrastructure for promoting a conception of freedom as inextricable from capitalism. The American Left, by contrast, has seemed content to cede the territory, abandoning the ground of freedom for the terrain of “equality,” “justice,” “fairness,” and “prosperity.” This paper is an effort to address this asymmetry in the public discourse over the meaning of freedom. Its principal objective is to capture the vision of freedom embodied in the political and economic thought of Louis D. Brandeis, one of the American Left’s ablest expositors of freedom.

In addition, the paper has three subsidiary objectives. The …

Social Justice In Social-Ecological Systems: Resilience Through Stakeholder Engagement, Frederick I. Lauer

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Successful management of social-ecological systems (SES) is predicated on quality collaborative exchanges between project stakeholders and management. The Southwest Crown of the Continent Collaborative (SWCC) Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP) provided an opportunity to explore landscape scale collaborative management and SES outcomes. Global change and future uncertainty of landscapes prompted the SWCC to employ restoration treatment alternatives throughout 1.4 million acres of forests, most of which are publicly held. The SWCC currently monitors environmental and economic variables, with plans to monitor social variables. This thesis formalizes a proposed framework to investigate SES resilience, and explores public engagement as an …

Politics Below The Surface: A Political Ecology Of Mineral Rights And Land Tenure Struggles In Appalachia And The Andes, Lindsay Shade

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This dissertation examines how confusion and lack of access to information about subsurface property rights facilitates the rapid acquisition of mineral rights by mining interests, leaving those who live 'above the surface' to contend with complicated corporate and bureaucratic apparatuses. The research focuses on the first proposed state-run large scale mining project in Ecuador, believed to contain copper ores, and on the natural gas hydrofracking industry in three counties in north central West Virginia. Qualitative and visual methods, including mapping, are employed to determine (i.) how the geography of subsurface ownership patterns is changing, (ii.) links between changes in subsurface …

A Case For Empathy: Immigration In Spanish Contemporary Media, Music, Film, And Novels, Constantin C. Icleanu

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation analyzes the representations of immigrants from North Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe in Spain. As engaged scholarship, it seeks to better the portrayal of immigrants in the mass media through the study of literature, film, and music about immigration spanning from the year 2000 to 2016. Because misconceptions continue to propagate in the media, this dissertation works to counteract anti-immigrant, xenophobic representations as well as balance out overly positive and orientalized portrayal of immigrants with a call to recognize immigrants as human beings who deserve the same respect, dignity, and rights as any other citizen.

Chapter 1 …

A Critical Race Theory Intervention Into The Cultural Defense Debate, Phoebe Shen

Scripps Senior Theses

The cultural defense is an informal term that describes the use of cultural information to mitigate criminal responsibility, often used in conjunction with traditional defense strategies such as provocation or insanity. Arguments for the cultural defense include respecting cultural practices under the liberal narrative that frames the United States as a multicultural and pluralistic society. Advocates of the cultural defense recognize the harmful effects of the false universalism of the law. However, the cultural defense has been criticized as essentialist and harmful as it has been used in high profile cases to justify violence against women of color. The cultural …

Tradition And Culture In Africa: Practices That Facilitate Trafficking Of Women And Children, Norah Hashim Msuya

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Many states in Africa have adopted legislative, administrative and institutional measures to combat trafficking in human beings. These measures include, among other things, the formulation and implementation of both national and regional action plans by African states to provide for comprehensive and coordinated interventions. Many African countries have also enacted an anti-trafficking legislation at the country level. Despite these measures, African women and children have been trafficked annually worldwide for purposes of forced labor, sexual exploitation, and domestic servitude. Additionally, women and children are trafficked within their countries from rural to urban areas. Misconception and abuse of African tradition and …

A Duty To Document, Marc Kosciejew

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Access to information is a bedrock principle of contemporary democratic governments and their public agencies and entities. Access to information depends upon these public institutions to document their activities and decisions. When public institutions do not document their activities and decisions, citizens’ right of access is ultimately denied. Public accountability and trust, in addition to institutional memory and the historical record, are undermined without the creation of appropriate records. Establishing and enforcing a duty to document helps promote accountability, openness, transparency, good governance, and public trust in public institutions. A duty to document should therefore be a fundamental component of …

Effective Social Media Use By Law Enforcement Agencies: A Case Study Approach To Quantifying And Improving Efficacy And Developing Agency Best Practices, David T. Snively

Master of Public Administration Practicums

In the wake of protests against law enforcement for an array of reasons, law enforcement officers and agencies have a responsibility to recognize and utilize the available mediums of communication with which they may best develop a connection to the communities they serve. Furthermore, law enforcement agencies must be informed that established, traditional methods of news dissemination – such as press conferences and printed articles – are now both ineffective and under-utilized, replaced in large part by social media live-time reports. For that reason, law enforcement agency executives must address both the responsibility to provide appropriately timed updates to critical …

Unsettled: How Climate Change Challenges A Foundation Of Our Legal System, And Adapting The Legal State, Victor B. Flatt

BYU Law Review

One of the fundamental goals of law is to end disputes. This push to “settlement” is foundational and has historically worked to increase societal efficiency and justice by engendering legitimate expectations among the citizenry. However, the efficient nature of much legal finality, settlement and repose only exists against a background of evolution of the physical environment that is predictable and slowpaced. That background no longer exists. The alteration of the physical world, and thus, the background for our societal structure and decisions, is accelerating rapidly due to human-caused climate change. This creates a mismatch between the law’s tendency to finality …

The School-To-Prison Pipeline: How Roles Of School-Based Law Enforcement Officers May Impact Disciplinary Actions, Kathy Martinez-Prather, Joseph M. Mckenna, Scott W. Bowman

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"The presence of law enforcement officers in schools has generated an overwhelming amount of concern among educators, parents, researchers, and policy-makers. It is believed their mere presence in schools is associated with the school-to-prison pipeline (STPP), which suggests that the use of police criminalizes minor student behavior and pushes them into the juvenile and criminal justice systems. However, it remains unclear as to what impact law enforcement officers truly have on this phenomenon. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of law enforcement officers on the STPP in relation to the roles they are assigned. We argue …

The Emergence Of Contemporary Bestiality Law: Applying The Integrative Conflict Model To The Enumclaw Case, Jason S. Ulsperger, Kristen L. Ulsperger, Cole Smith

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"This article examines the social construction of bestiality law in the United States using the Integrative Conflict Model of law formation. With qualitative findings from a media content study including newspaper articles, a documentary transcript, and a variety of online data sources, it explores the dynamics behind the formation of bestiality law in the state of Washington. The research specifically uses the circumstances surrounding the death of Kenneth Pinyan, and the subsequent Enumclaw horse sex scandal that took place in the summer of 2005, to support the idea that bestiality law can emerge due to specific factors: structural foundations, perceptions …

Lois Presser And Sveinung Sandberg (Eds), Narrative Criminology: Understanding Stories Of Crime, Adam Veitch

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Over the last two decades there has been an epistemological push in the social sciences to bring narrative into the methodological fold. Narrative social science is steeped in theories of humans as story tellers. The foreword to Narrative Criminology argues that this theoretical line of thought originates in Jean-Paul Sartre’s belief that people are fundamentally storytelling creatures, or “homo narrativus.” The guiding thought here is that stories are central to understanding how and why we act in society. We are all storytellers, and we enjoy sharing tales with an audience. Furthermore, the way that we construct stories of our social …

Fugitive Safe Surrender: A Qualitative Analysis Of Participants’ Reasons For Surrender And Anticipated Outcomes To Inform Program Evaluation, Joseph D. Galanek, Janelle Duda, Daniel J. Flannery, Jeff Kretschmar, Frederick Butcher

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"The Fugitive Safe Surrender (FSS) program is a means for individuals with outstanding warrants to turn themselves in at a non-law-enforcement setting. Challenges remain in evaluating FSS program outcomes. Based on n = 211 participants’ demographic data and qualitative, open-ended written responses collected during an FSS event in a mid-sized Midwestern city, we analyze participants’ reasons for surrendering and anticipated outcomes of surrendering. Utilizing inductive thematic analysis of participants’ responses, we identify individual-level program outcomes that can be used for evaluating FSS. We additionally identify the intersection of codes amongst participant responses to demonstrate the inter-connectedness of FSS participants’ reasons …

Framing Legitimacy: A Qualitative Analysis Examining Local Print-Media Portrayals Of An Immigrant Family Detention Center In Texas, Layne Dittmann, Jurg Gerber

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Research suggests that media portrayals can impact the opinions of adults (Dizard, 2000). However, media reports on aspects of our criminal justice system, such as corrections, are an understudied topic (Marsh, 1989), especially regarding the use of private prisons. The current study examines a sample of 12 local Texas newspapers that reported on the T. Don Hutto Facility in Taylor, Texas, between January 1, 2000, and December 31, 2013. This facility was once a state prison for males and local jail inmates before being converted into an undocumented immigrant family detention facility and later into a detention center for undocumented …

“Explaining Similarities And Variations In Program Structures And Professional Roles In Midwestern Mental Health Courts” By Monte D. Staton And Arthur J. Lurigio, Monte D. Staton, Arthur J. Lurigio

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"For nearly twenty years, legal and mental health professionals have created mental health courts (MHCs) for responding to the increasing numbers of criminally involved people with severe mental illnesses (PSMI) who are entering the criminal justice system. This article presents findings from qualitative analysis of survey and ethnographic data collected at nine MHCs established in a Midwestern state between 2004 and 2008, exploring how professionals who operated the MHCs organized the programs and conducted roles at the work sites. Findings revealed that professionals established very similar models of mental health court organization at each of the nine sites. The data …

Andrea S. Boyles, Race, Place, And Suburban Policing: Too Close For Comfort, Brian P. Schaefer

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"The struggles of African Americans with police in urban environments are well documented in criminological and sociological research. Andrea Boyles in Race, Place, and Suburban Policing offers new perspectives by introducing readers to the relationship between African Americans and the police in Meacham Park, a suburban enclave of affluent Kirkwood, Missouri. The focus on suburbia depicts how race and place shapes interactions and sheds doubt that African Americans can escape the harms associated with living in low-income urban environments by relocating to the suburbs. Boyles spent two years conducting fieldwork and interviewed over thirty adults at length. Her findings provide …

Susan J. Terrio, Whose Child Am I? Unaccompanied, Undocumented Children In U.S. Immigration Custody, Francisco J. Alatorre

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Whose Child Am I? is by Susan Terrio, Professor of Anthropology at Georgetown and author of two other books about issues of juvenile delinquency. Focusing on the wretched and dangerous experiences of Latino youth desperately traveling to and reaching El Norte, and then experiencing detention and incarceration, Terrio interrogates the American dream and American ideals of inclusion, as both are seriously abused in this international transborder tragedy. Terrio conducts her inquiry into how undocumented children are sent north, how they survive, and what happens to them by relating the process chronologically. She describes the children finding their way “home” …

Introduction: Imagining Post-Neoliberal Regulatory Subjectivities, Mika Viljanen Dr, Mikko Rajavuori, Tal Kastner

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

To explore these tentative diagnoses and conceptualizations we called for papers engaging different aspects of law's subjectivity turn. A selection of papers that map the possible genealogies for the emergence of post-neoliberal law, address the implications of anthropomorphic corporate regulation, or analyze transformations in sovereign subjectivities is now published in this symposium issue. The papers take up and make salient an array of the big questions of our day.

While overlapping, the papers can be broadly divided into two categories. The first category consists of papers that explore the internal make-up of legal and regulatory subjectivities. Drawing on history, queer …

Puzzling Out Law's Person, David A. Wishart

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

How is the person to be conceptualized in law? Is it subject or object, what is its ontology and teleology? These are old questions, but ones newly raised by changing ideas of the province of the state, technology, and the extension of legality. Examples include the protection of the fetus in utero; contractualization of relationships, including those of welfare; the regulation of intimacy; the idea of government business; interventions in the business of the firm; and challenges to legal entitihood as constructing personhood. Much discussion of these is incommensurable in terms of place, culture, and discipline. This article ventures a …

The Elements Of Law, John C. H. Wu

The Catholic Lawyer

No abstract provided.

The One Exhibition The Roots Of The Lgbt Equality Movement One Magazine & The First Gay Supreme Court Case In U.S. History 1943-1958, Joshua R. Edmundson

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The ONE Exhibition explores an era in American history marked by intense government sponsored anti-gay persecution and the genesis of the LGBT equality movement. The study begins during World War II, continues through the McCarthy era and the founding of the nation’s first gay magazine, and ends in 1958 with the first gay Supreme Court case in U.S. history.

Central to the story is ONE The Homosexual Magazine, and its founders, as they embarked on a quest for LGBT equality by establishing the first ongoing nationwide forum for gay people in the U.S., and challenged the government’s right to engage …

John M. Hagedorn, The Insane Chicago Way: The Daring Plan By Chicago Gangs To Create A Spanish Mafia, Thomas Barker

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"In The Insane Chicago Way, Professor Hagedorn opines that the super street gangs in Chicago have fundamentally changed since the 1990s. He provides an “institutionalized history” of the rise and fall of the Spanish Growth and Development (SGD) alliance to document the fundamental changes in Chicago. He rightly concludes that the SGD is “almost completely unknown to the public, the police, the professors and even most gang members” (p. 1). This powerful SGD case study is supported by the author’s long history of gang study and his interviews with gang leaders and street gang members, and with organized crime—Chicago …

Editorial, Tom Holt

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Welcome to the first issue of the fourth volume of the Journal of Qualitative Criminal Justice & Criminology. This is my first issue as editor, and I am pleased to continue along the path established by Will Oliver. It has been both exciting and challenging to take the reins and transition into this role. Thankfully Will already had a great crop of articles prepared for this issue. In a way, you could argue this issue is a result of both of our efforts. To that end, this issue highlights the journal’s continued emphasis on high-quality qualitative scholarship. The first …

Mass Murder And The Mass Media: Understanding The Construction Of The Social Problem Of Mass Shootings In The Us, Jaclyn Schildkraut

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Nearly as soon as the first shot is fired in a mass shooting, the news media already are rushing to break coverage, the likes of which typically last days or, in the more extreme cases, weeks. Though mass shootings are rare in occurrence, the disproportionate amount of coverage they receive in the media leads the public to believe that they occur at a much more regular frequency than they do. In order to understand how the public comes to understand mass shooting events, however, one first must understand how the stories are constructed by the media. The present study takes …

Old Message In A New Bottle: Taking Gang Rivalries Online Through Rap Battle Music Videos On Youtube, Joseph D. Johnson, Natalie Schell-Busey

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"The Internet is changing society, including criminal behavior. It has been shown that gangs are active online, but it is unclear how gangs are using the Internet. Most studies seem to conclude that gang members are not using the Internet instrumentally to commit or promote criminal behavior, but these same studies show that gang members use social media for flame wars— to insult and threaten one another. We argue that using social media in this way is actually an instrumental use of the Internet because it promotes violence. According to the code of the street, a diss requires a response, …

Jody Miller And Wilson R. Palacios, Editors, Qualitative Research In Criminology, Carl Root

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"Qualitative Research in Criminology is Volume 20 in the series titled Advances in Criminological Theory edited by William S. Laufer and Freda Adler. The title of Miller and Palacios’ contribution brings to mind the saying “one of these things is not like the others.” In fact, they acknowledge as much on page three of the introduction, as they state, “For some readers, our strategy may beg the question, why does a volume oriented around methodology belong in a theoretical series?” Miller and Palacios give a brief answer to this question, but allow the seventeen chapters that comprise their volume …

Homeland Security In The Post-9/11 Era: Forced Compliance Along The Northern Border, Nancy E. Marion, Ronald Gelleny

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"The border relationship between the U.S. and Canada has traditionally been very trusting, allowing for an ease of trade and travel. However, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 altered this comfortable association. Now, U.S. policy is geared toward protecting the homeland from illegal immigration and potential terrorist actions. In other words, for Americans, security concerns trump trade. At the same time, Canada remains concerned with maintaining an ease of trade and travel with the U.S. To do this, Canada has been forced to establish and implement increased security measures as outlined by U.S. officials, even though there is strong opposition from …

When The Watchers Are Watched: An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis Of Body-Worn Cameras, David A. Makin

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

"This research explores the individual construction of the bodyworn camera (BWC) within what would be labeled as an average size police agency. Using a pre- and post-implementation qualitative design and leveraging interpretive phenomenological analysis as the analytical strategy, this research explores the nuanced reaction to this technological diffusion within the agency. Results reveal global themes spanning a continuum of negative and positive reactions to the diffusion, with an overwhelming acceptance of the device and individual construction of how best to use the device. While providing an initial lens of analysis for future researchers, the research includes considerable unanswered questions concerning …

Ab 109 And Its Impact On Prison Overcrowding And Recidivism: A Policy Analysis, Angie Wootton

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

California experienced escalating issues with prison overcrowding from the late 1970s to 2010, as the prison population skyrocketed to unprecedented highs. This article will discuss the problem of prison overcrowding, and one recent policy intervention implemented to decrease overcrowding and offender recidivism rates, the Public Safety Realignment Act (AB 109). After providing background on the Public Safety Realignment Act, this article will analyze the effectiveness of the policy and make recommendations.