The correlates of spouses' incongruent reports of marital aggression

Husbands' and wives' reports (n=97 couples) of engaging in or experiencing marital aggression were compared to determine congruence. Congruence was defined as spousal agreement on whether either spouse had been nonviolent, mildly violent, or severely maritally violent within the past year. Whereas approximately equal numbers of clinic couples were incongruent for husband and for wife violence (32% vs. 31%), only incongruence for husband violence (H W) was found to correlate with reports of affective and relationship functioning. Incongruent H W wives were more likely to be depressed and angry. H W incongruent wives were also more negative about the inter-spousal communication and rated the relationship as more unsatisfactory for them than did congruent wives. Incongruent H W husbands also perceived the relationship more negatively, but their levels of depression and anger did not differ from congruent H W husbands. These findings were not replicated for spouses who were incongruent for wife violence. Our results support the conclusion that spousal disagreement about H W violence has a more negative impact than does disagreement about wives' level of aggression.     

The evidencer's eye: Representations of truth in the laws of evidence

University of Lancaster, Department of Law. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Costas Douzinas, Peter Goodrich, Shaun McVeigh and particularly Peter Rush for advice and inspiration while writing this paper. Any remaining proven faults are my own.     

Beyond the Law?: The Justice of Deconstruction

This paper offers a close reading of Derridas essay Force of Law that emphasises the twin strengths of a deconstructive approach to questions of law and justice -- textual analysis and political context. Derridas interest is in limit or test cases, and so he engages with the fraying edges of the law, its borders, the frontiers that are most heavily policed because they are most fragile, for example capital punishment, genocide, general strikes and terrorism. Derrida undertakes an exploration of violence through a reinterpretation of Walter Benjamins Critique of Violence. At the heart of Derridas difficult argument is a demand for justice that goes beyond the cataloguing of specific injustices, and beyond the terms of Benjamins critique. The utopian impulse that underpins Force of Law is carried over into Specters of Marx, Derridas recent explicit grappling with the legacy of Marxism. The links between these two texts by Derrida implies a sustained politics of radical commitment on the part of deconstruction, a commitment to future forms of legality and egalitarianism, a theory of justice posited upon prescience rather than precedent.     

Human and fundamental rights: What are they about?

Conclusion Human rights, distrusted by Bentham, through emergence ofGesellshaft, have sometimes been identified with rights of market men and gradually on an ad hoc basis and so have been given a relational or relativist character for that reason. Such a view ignores the test of humanness or the tele of human rights surviving any political association and the need for full development of human personality as an autonomous being inherent in full respect for all as moral persons. This disposes of the view of human rights in terms of rules of a game, or of connection between human rights and human action, or of the standard of the prudent man or, finally, of the ideology of the rising bourgeoisie. Equally, that very test of humanness disposes of criticisms of the human rights theory based on a concern for implementation of rights, on concentric circles based on the specific and concrete, on the impossibility of liking the billions, on the distinction between negative, positive and administrative rights, on the condition of being able to make valid claims and thereby denying human rights to the deprived millions in poor countries, on the social justice model, on the potential for violence and conflict and, finally, on the vagueness or subjectivity of human rights. An eclectic synthesis not between good and evil nor between right and wrong but between the extremes of the views presented in such critical explanations e.g. between the New Right and the New Left and between Hobbes and Rousseau) is what is needed in order to present a workable theory of human rights in the modern-day world.     

‘Women’ Detectives and Perceptions of ‘Oppressive’ Experiences: Exploring Experiential Essentialism and Phenomenology

The purpose of this paper is toexplore whether female Detectives perceptionsof their own work experiences include oppressive experiences because of their sex. It attempts to evaluate these perceptions ofoppressive work experiences or lack thereofvia a feminist viewpoint that embraces variousaspects of phenomenology with regards towomens experiences. More importantly, itrecognizes that experiential essentialistarguments cannot be ignored. The word womanis in quotes because it has been used,historically and presently, as a category toposition females according to mainstreamsocietys standards. The word oppressive isin quotes because even though the researcherdescribed oppressive instances in specificways, there were times, where some subjects didnot identify those experiences asoppressive. The majority of 60 female CanadianDetectives identified oppressive experiences,and an important task of this paper is toexamine experiences that fit the researchersdefinition but were not considered oppressiveby the subjects.     

The Criminological Enterprise in Europe and the United States: A Contextual Exploration

European criminology obviously means more than simply the collaborative efforts (on drugs, restorative justice, youth gangs) between researchers and scholars from Europe. In this essay, the author compares and contrasts American criminology with criminology in Europe (as it exists in individual countries), without aiming for the essence of European criminology. She points to differences between the US and Europe with regard to the criminological enterprise (such as history, scale, degree of institutionalisation, accessibility, diversity in theory and method, the critical and self-reflexive stance, and focal research questions), and to the differences in doing science, doing justice, and doing crime. American criminology is a powerful influence in Europe, although there may be a tendency to overestimate the importance of American criminology, because of the dominance of English-language publications. American criminology has made many positive contributions to the field of the study of law, crime and social control, and it continues to do so. However, if one defines the essence of American criminology as being policy-oriented, methodologically-driven, and lacking theoretical lustre, diversity, and critical edge, then the fear of Americanisation of European criminology is well-placed. It is not the criminological enterprise of the US per se, but rather the notion of Americanisation which is really at issue here.     

Formal Legal Truth and Substantive Truth in Judicial Fact-Finding -- Their Justified Divergence in some Particular Cases

Truth is a fundamental objective of adjudicative processes; ideally, substantive as distinct from formal legal truth. But problems of evidence, for example, may frustrate finding of substantive truth; other values may lead to exclusions of probative evidence, e.g., for the sake of fairness. Jury nullification and jury equity. Limits of time, and definitiveness of decision, require allocation of burden of proof. Degree of truth-formality is variable within a system and across systems.     

Trampling Human Rights in the War on Terror: Implications to the Sociology of Denial

Critical criminology has greatly benefited fromthe concept of moral panic, which is a helpfulframework for understanding immigrationreform and the treatment of immigrants –especially in relation to concerns aboutterrorism. In response to the events ofSeptember 11, 2001, the United Statesgovernment swiftly produced legislationintended to protect homeland security,culminating in the USA Patriot Act. Whilemainstream political leaders supported the newlaw, many legal experts expressed concernsabout its expansive powers as serious dangersto immigrants rights and civil liberties.Among those concerns are controversial tacticsinvolving ethnic profiling, detentions, andgovernment secrecy. This article examinescritically the nature of those forms of humanrights violations while elaborating on thecontradictions in the war on terror. ApplyingCohens sociology of denial – how literal,interpretive, and implicatory denial perpetuatelong-term social problems – developments areinterpreted conceptually, contributing to adeeper understanding of growing threats tohuman rights.     

Governmentality and the War on Terror: FBI Project Carnivore and the Diffusion of Disciplinary Power

Social control capabilities have increased significantly over the past several decades, particularly because of an increased utilization of technologically advanced surveillance methods. Following the tragic events of September 11,2001, U.S. Congress and the present Administration have granted law enforcement considerable new powers in the enforcement and prevention of terrorism-related crime. Collectively labeled under the heading of the so-called war on terror , the scope of such laws, policies and directives are challenged by civil rights organizations and numerous legislators for lack of definitional precision, arbitrary application of sanctions, and violation of privacy laws. One of federal law enforcements surveillance tools is Project Carnivore, a Justice Department Internet surveillance program that is administered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to access information flowing to and from a central processing unit on a network connection. While, theoretically relying on Michel Foucaults theory of discipline and governmentality, as well as related insights in the social control literature, this paper examines Project Carnivore relative to the larger context of state rationality and related privacy issues.     

Sex @ the End of the Twentieth Century: Some Re-marks on a Minor Jurisprudence

This article offers a re-reading of Goodrichs essay, Law in the Courts of Love. My contention here is that the idiom of love that Goodrich provides us with in this essay cannot address the complexity of sexuality and sexual politics that inhabit our contemporary technoscientific culture. In so doing, I will juxtapose his essay with Laven Berlant and Michael Warners essay, Public Sex. This article will be divided into three sections. In the first section, I will evaluate and review Goodrichs genealogical approach to law and the image of justice that arises out of his approach. The second section will be a re-reading of Goodrichs Law in the Courts of Love through feminist and technoscientific discourses. Its aim is to problematise and re-think not only the idiom of feminine justice that Goodrich offers, but also to question the presuppositions upon which his work is based, primary presuppositions surrounding issues of privacy, sexuality and sexuated rights. Finally, in the third section I will conclude by suggesting that the re-figuration of justice necessitates a re-figuration of the relationship that law has with time and space.     

Navajo Women and Abuse: The Context for Their Troubled Relationships

In this article, on the basis of interviews with seven Navajo women, the author discusses the Navajo womans perspective on domestic violence. These discussions reveal several factors that distinguish the Navajo womans experience of abuse from that of the Anglo³ woman. These factors are examined in light of historical and contemporary understandings of the Navajo world. Three cultural elements can help us understand the Navajo womans experience of abuse: the cultural concept of hózhó, the searing tale (in the Creation Story) of the quarrel between First Man and First Woman, a quarrel that brought great tragedy to the people; and the Kinaáldá, the female puberty rite. It is the authors argument that these facets of the Navajo culture, in addition to Western explanations for womens staying with abusive partners, are powerful contributors to the Navajo womans understanding of abuse in her life and if we are to develop successful techniques for intervention, we must consider these elements as well as those of the dominant culture.     

Between hermeneutics and semiotics

Translated by David Pellauer from the French, Entre herméneutique et sémiotique,Nouveaux Actes Sémiotiques (Vol.II, 1990, forthcoming).     

Reflections of the Evolving Concept of 'Private Policing'

Once popular state-centred political frameworks, while declining in popularity on many normative agendas, nevertheless continue to guide how we think about and examine policing. Early studies into the private policing phenomenon have thereby focused upon the formal paid private security sector, a set of agencies which do not depart too radically in appearance from traditional public police services. More recent empirical studies have yielded data inconsistent with the established conceptual frameworks. Theorists have been assembling these data into alternate ways of thinking about collective life, which may have profound implications for the ways in which to choose to govern in the future. Further research addressing developments in networked nodal governance may be suggestive of progressive alternatives.     

Truth and veridiction in law

Translated from French by F. Ringham, B. Martin and E. Pinner (Vérité et véridiction en droit,Droit et Société 8 (1988), 45–59).     

External Finance,Firm Growth and the Benefits of Information Disclosure: Evidence from Finland

In this paper we study the relation between firm-level disclosure quality and the availability of external finance to firms. Using data on Finnish firms that are mostly private and small, we first estimate excess growth made possible by external finance. We then show that the excess growth is associated with the quality of disclosure, and that at least a part of the association arises because firms with excess growth self-select. The association seems to be strongest for a priori financially constrained firms. Taken together, the results of our empirical analysis identify a specific mechanism through which firms in need for external finance voluntarily look for good disclosure quality. They look for it, because it reduces barriers to external finance. These empirical findings have implications for policy-makers who consider whether firms should be forced to talkJEL Classification: E50, G21, G24, G32     

Social hysteria and social psychoanalysis: A response to Brion'sThe Hidden Persistence of Witchcraft

See Denis J. Brion, The Hidden Persistence of Witchcraft,Law and Critique 4/2 (1993), 227.