Prior Police Contact and Subsequent Victim Reporting: Results from the NCVS

This study investigated the association between victim reporting and the police response to past victimizations with data from the National Crime Victimization Survey from 1998–2000. The findings include: (1) investigatory effort by police when an individual had been victimized in the past increased the likelihood that the individual would report an ensuing victimization to the police; (2) however, this relationship only held when the victim, rather than someone else, reported the prior victimization to the police; (3) whether the police made an arrest after an individual was victimized in the past had no effect on whether the individual reported an ensuing victimization to the police; (4) the probability of victim reporting was unaffected by investigatory effort or whether an arrest was made after a prior victimization of a member of the victim’s household.     

The Orwellian Military Commissions Act of 2006

In three decisions in 2004 and 2006, the Supreme Court of theUnited States rejected the sweeping claims by President Bushthat his role as Commander in Chief entitled him to detain personsindefinitely and, if he chose, to subject them to war crimestrials before military commissions that did not have all ofthe procedural protections of courts martial. The Court's rulings,however, left open the possibility that, notwithstanding thetreaty obligations of the United States under the Geneva Conventions,Congress could authorize the President to take the steps thathe could not take unilaterally. In the Military CommissionsAct (MCA) of 2006, Congress did just that. However, despiteits title, the MCA does far more than authorize military commissions.Most significantly, it eliminates the statutory right of aliensdeclared by the government to be ‘unlawful enemy combatants’and detained indefinitely on that basis, to seek a writ of habeascorpus from a federal court. To be sure, the MCA provides someright of access to federal court for persons convicted of warcrimes by military commissions or found to be unlawful enemycombatants by a military ‘combatant status review tribunal’or equivalent body, but even then, it severely curtails opportunitiesfor judicial relief. In this and other respects, the MCA purportsto confer rights that, upon close inspection, prove illusory.For example, it uses the language of the Geneva Conventions,even while forbidding courts to look to international and foreignsources to construe that language. The MCA is, more broadly,an exercise in misdirection. It is, in a word, ‘Orwellian’.     

Reducing the legal consequences of a felony conviction: A national survey of state statutes ten years later

This study surveys all state and federal statutes in an effort to determine the current legal procedures available for restoring a convicted felon's civil rights, and then compares the findings with those of Burton et al. (1988). The findings report virtually no changes in legal codes over the past ten years by states to increase pardons, expungement, or automatic restoration of rights opportunities for former offenders. Southern states continue to be most restrictive of civil and legal rights, given the few existing legal mechanisms to remove the effects of a felony conviction. Explanations for this apparent legislative inactivity of legal remedies are discussed.     

贸仲委上海、华南两分会与贸仲委之争的，法律问题研究（一）——贸仲委上海、华南两分会不是独立的仲裁委员会

贸仲委上海分会、华南分会是1988年经国务院批准由中国贸促会成立的贸仲委的分会，不是地方政府批准成立的独立的涉外仲裁委员会；与《仲裁法》第10条规定国内新设仲裁委员会必须进行司法登记不同，《仲裁法》第七章确认并规定了中国贸促会设立涉外仲裁委员会和制定涉外仲裁规则的职权，但并未规定已设立近半个世纪的中国涉外仲裁委员会需要进行新设立司法登记，据此，两分会所进行的司法登记应予撤销或由登记部门撤回；两分会违法宣称为独立涉外仲裁委员会的行为因违法自始起无效，不得再受理贸仲委上海分会、华南分会仲裁条款案件，而应由贸仲委秘书局受理以维护当事人仲裁权利的正当行使。     

The Darfur Commission as a Model for Future Responses to Crisis Situations

The various special procedures so far set up by the Commissionon Human Rights (CHR) to investigate serious violations of humanrights are very different from what can be achieved by a commissionof inquiry. There is almost no comparison in terms of the scaleof resources, the expertise mobilized, the amount of detailcontained in the Commission's Report, the precision and weightof the legal analysis, and the consequent power of the finalproduct to galvanize both public opinion and inter-governmentalaction. The Darfur Commission may also serve to expand the bridgebeing built between the Commission of Human Rights and the SecurityCouncil (SC). The practice of appointing commissions of inquiryhas immense potential in that it can provide the type of specialistinput necessary if the human rights machinery and the SC areto form part of a continuum. Commissions of inquiry reportsmay contribute to promoting transparency and accountabilityin the work of the SC, since the Council, when determining whetheror not to take action in a human rights situation, has to respondto a carefully documented and a well argued analytical report.Finally, the establishment of such commissions to evaluate whetheror not a situation warrants referral to the ICC provides anappropriate filtering mechanism before the Council takes a decision.     

Barcelona 2002: law, ethics, and human rights. Juggling individual and collective concerns with respect to HIV/AIDS policies

Efforts to prevent the spread of HIV infection sometimes give rise to tensions between individual and collective rights. This article, based on a presentation by Nelson Varas-Díaz (abstract TuOrG1171), explores these tensions in the context of the laws and policies of eight Latin American countries: Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and Puerto Rico. The article describes five elements of the response to HIV/AIDS in which tensions between individual and collective rights have surfaced: the participation of people living with HIV/AIDS on national commissions; the ability of HIV-positive persons to access antiretroviral medications; HIV-antibody testing practices; the confidentiality of health information; and the rights and duties of people living with HIV/AIDS. The article concludes that the success of programs designed to prevent the spread of HIV infection depends on the ability of societies and governments to balance the tensions between individual and collective rights.     

Ironic Animals: Bestiaries,Moral Harmonies,and the ‘Ridiculous’ Source of Natural Rights

The Bible recounts that in Eden, Adam gives names to all the animals. But those names are not only representations of the animals’ nature, rather they shape and constitute it. The naming by Adam contains in itself the divide between the human and non-human. Then, there is the Fall: Adam falls and forgets Being. Though he may still remember the names he gave to the animals in Eden, he is no longer sure about their meaning. Adam will have to try to remember his own intentions. Through this effort he can also become aware of how he thinks, who he is, and what was the natural order he knew before the Fall. Medieval bestiaries tell us this story. Bestiaries are works of word play populated by animal figures. They depend on back-and-forth anthropomorphization, or circular metaphor. Animal figures are portrayed as both a mirror of human nature and a window on it. Bestiaries served as means for the moral education of human beings and, at the same time, a way to criticize the current state of humanity, including political and ethical habits. Within the moral irony of medieval bestiaries we can find the origin of the invented nature that modernity will try, subsequently, to insert into natural rights discourse through the teleological oxymoron of their naturalized and naturalizing counter-factuality (natural rights will be simultaneously “being” and “ought,” nature and values/ends). I will propose a historical-semiotic journey through the ironic representations of the human-beasts from the ancient world to contemporaneity. The proposal resulting from this cultural excursion is that the words included in the many national and international Rights declarations operate much like the names Adam gave to the animals and still more as they were re-read in medieval bestiaries, both textual and musical. So, can the words of Rights still serve as musical scores, open to an infinite play of re-signification? If we were able to overcome the modern culture/nature and human being/animal dualisms, we could cast, today as in the past, a zoological gaze on human rights by means of contemporary bestiaries and, in this way, perhaps find the gist of rights’ names and our ever regained and ever lost again humanity.     

Cultures in Orbit,or Justi-fying Differences in Cosmic Space: On Categorization,Territorialization and Rights Recognition

The many constraints of outer space experience challenge the human ability to coexist. Paradoxically, astronauts assert that on the international space station there are no conflicts or, at least, that they are able to manage their differences, behavioral as well as cognitive, in full respect of human rights and the imperatives of cooperative living. The question is: Why? Why in those difficult, a-terrestrial, and therefore almost unnatural conditions do human beings seem to be able to peacefully and collaboratively live together? What is there beyond terrestrial boundary conditions that allows for such a result? And what can we learn from the astronauts’ experience about the (lack of) effectiveness of human rights on Earth? My proposal is that the a-terrestrial dimension deeply alters the mind/body indexical framework and, in this way, disentangles the human inclination to semiosis from the cognitive and behavioral habits of categorization and territorialization inherent in the experience on Earth. If analyzed through the spectrum of an interdisciplinary approach involving anthropology, semiology, law, and human geography, I think that outer space enterprises can offer many insights into the cognitive and ethical/political hindrances to the effectiveness of human rights and their intercultural uses. Meanwhile the compulsive greed for a possessive territorialization of outer space and celestial bodies is growing by leaps and bounds. It haunts and imbues both astropolitics and space law. The astronauts’ semio-anthropological experience of human rights and cooperative coexistence seems to have been left in orbit. The future requires awareness and action by anthropologists, semioticians, cognitive scientists, geographers and lawyers, working all together in an interdisciplinary effort to move beyond approaching the experiential with a territorial mindset. The hope is that the “dark dream” of human exploitation/colonization of outer space will not turn from a political and legal speculation into a future reality.     

Sentencing Commissions as Centers for Policy Analysis and Research: Illustrations from the Budget Process

Sentencing commissions have become centers for policy analysis and research, studying the problems of prison crowding and resource limits (Reitz 1997). However, more information is needed regarding how commissions perform this function. This paper focuses on the role of sentencing commissions as centers of policy analysis during state budget processes. Also discussed is an important stage for policy research, the evaluation of alternative policies by means of computer simulation, a modeling tool frequently employed by sentencing commissions. Following a discussion of computer simulation principles, several prominent simulation models used by sentencing commissions are reviewed. Finally, the activities of Virginia's sentencing commission demonstrate how commissions serve as policy research centers.     

The Commission for Equality and Human Rights:A New Institution for New and Uncertain Times

The establishment of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights(CEHR) has generated a mixture of praise, controversy and heightenedexpectations. The new Commission has more extensive enforcementpowers than did the previous equality commissions. In addition,the ongoing expansion of anti-discrimination law means thatthe CEHR has new terrain on which to press for change. However,its troubled birth, the pressure of expectation, the ever-increasingcomplexity of enforcing anti-discrimination legislation andthe tensions that lurk within its broad remit present substantialchallenges for the new Commission. It will have to be flexible,creative, strategic and tough-minded where required if it isto win credibility and ensure respect for anti-discriminationand human rights values.     

Protecting the Right to Housing in the Aftermath of Natural Disaster: Standards in International Human Rights Law

In 2006, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reportedthat an average of 211 million people each year were directlyaffected by the accumulated impact of natural disasters.¹ Thisis approximately five times the number of people thought tohave been affected by conflict over the past decade.² It iscommonly expected that, as a result of climate change, populationgrowth and inappropriate urbanisation, the incidence, severityand impact of natural disasters will continue to rise. And yetwhile the obligations of states in situations of armed conflicthave been extensively debated, the applicability of human rightslaw in the aftermath of natural disaster has not been so widelyexamined by regional or international human rights bodies. Thispaper considers the obligations of governments in the aftermathof natural disasters, with a particular focus on the right tohousing. The applicability of human rights law (and specificallyeconomic, social and cultural rights) in the aftermath of naturaldisaster is considered in a general sense, followed by a discussionof the content of the right to housing, and the obligationsof governments to respect, protect and fulfil this right inthe course of responding to disaster. The question of whetherstates have an obligation to provide restitution, compensationor other form of reparation to those who have lost homes, landand property by reason of natural disaster is also discussed.The paper draws on examples from the Indian Ocean tsunami (2004),the Pakistan earthquake (2005) and the South Asian floods (2007),and identifies specific elements of government obligations thatare of particular importance in ensuring the right to adequatehousing in the aftermath of natural disaster.     

Sentencing Councils and Victims

This article explores the place victims have, and should have, in bodies that formulate sentencing guidelines, with particular reference to sentencing guidelines in England and Wales and the Sentencing Council's obligation under the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 to have regard to ‘the impact of sentencing decisions on victims of offences’ when devising guidelines. The issues are situated in political and penological contexts; the place of victims in sentencing commissions or advisory bodies in the USA, England and Australia is analysed and the meaning and significance of the Sentencing Council's obligation towards victims is considered, relating the specific obligation to broader issues concerning the place of victims within bodies that formulate sentencing guidelines. While incorporating victims within sentencing commissions might undermine commissions’ aims, it can play an important role in helping to boost public confidence in criminal justice, a touchstone for all western governments’ criminal justice policies.     

Hearing Voice: A Theoretical Framework for Truth Commission Testimony

The article proposes a new way of thinking through truth commissions by discerning the manner in which they usher in new political configurations through voices and vocalizations. It contributes to our understanding of truth commissions by way of proposing a pragmatic ontology of bonds between the body, voice, and testimony by elucidating the central features that make them vocal assemblages, composed of five sub-institutional capacities: (1) they affect and are affected by bodies in a complex topological relation; (2) they are driven by an apology, which itself proffers a non-human body of transformation; (3) they potentiate reconciliation through spontaneous vocalizations; (4) they are ontogenetic openings that reassemble national pasts, presents, and futures; and (5) they are temporally experiential predecessors to political action. While victim testimony is taken as a historical crowning of the edifice for nations seeking to mend their past injustices, I contend that public reparation flourishes only if the state is open to the alternative orientations the voice proffers—that is, following recent observations of transitional justice, truth commissions have the potential to seek out alternative context-specific forms of justice in place of a universal law of reconciliation. By way of a brief discussion of Aboriginal artist K.C. Adams’ diptych series, Perception, the article proposes that voices pose a nuanced figuration of auto-affection as a communicative possibility towards the (re)presentation and (re)invention of the (survivor) self.     

部门联合立法的规范化问题研究

两个或两个以上国务院部门联合立法,已经成为我国行政立法实践中的一种惯常立法形式,在实现法律、行政法规的精细化和可操作性方面发挥了重大作用。与单个部门立法相比,部门联合立法的功能主要体现为实现部门“条条”之间的立法权责整合、防止多部门职责交叉领域立法的碎片化和部门本位主义、提升部门立法的公正性与效率性、节约行政立法成本和减少部门立法冲突、为制定行政法规进行先行制度实验等诸多方面。在部门联合立法的过程中,难免会出现各种部门权限冲突与利益协调的难题。为推进部门联合立法的规范化治理,应当对部门联合立法的时机选择、事项范围、效力等级、立法主体关系以及备案审查等方面进行充分的制度分析与研究。     

The last acceptable prejudice: an overview of LGBT social and criminal injustice issues within the USA

The intolerance of, and discrimination against, gays and lesbians is not a new concept. Yet, as many parts of the world have begun to socially and legally recognize gay rights, in many ways, the USA has lagged behind. An overview of past and present lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender social and criminal justice within the USA are presented. Also, specific recommendations are made for the future in an effort to put an end to this last acceptable prejudice.     

Three Strikes Legislation and Sentencing Commission Objectives

Between 1993 and 1997, state legislatures across the country passed legislation popularly known as "three strikes and you're out" laws. These laws appeared at a time when sentencing commissions existed in many states, and the commissions were involved in the legislative debates leading to the votes on three strikes laws. Thus, the passage of three strikes laws can shed light on one type of interaction between sentencing commissions and legislatures. This article posits a variety of objectives for sentencing commissions during three strikes debates, each a response to the recurring "pathologies" that appear when legislative, judicial, and executive branch officials create sentencing policy. A survey of states that have passed three strikes laws indicates that sentencing commissions have not made any systematic difference in the legislative debates on these statutes. Commissions have little reason to oppose these laws absolutely, and could lose political credibility by doing so. Commissions have incentives instead to argue for limiting the scope of these statutes. Where commissions have been involved in the debates about habitual felon legislation, they have emphasized limits on judicial discretion, focused on the quality of legislative deliberations rather than on legislative outcomes, and devoted little attention to prosecutorial charging decisions.     

Animal abuse and criminology: introduction to a special issue

I wish I had a penny or a cent or a peso for each of the many times in the past few years that I have listened in on a conversation or read something about human rights and animal rights and then been forced to think through to the variety of its possible conclusions what for three shipwrecked and hungry survivors in a lifeboat on the high seas is the proper thing to do about their thirst and imminent starvation. Suppose that the three survivors of this shipwreck are an adult human, the ship’s cabin boy and a dog. Suppose also that they are several days away from rescue and without hope of acquiring food or potable water from their salt-water environment. For purposes of survival in this dire situation, may one of the two humans kill and eat one of the other two survivors? If so, which one? To these two questions almost certainly the response by two of the shipwrecked survivors themselves, by would-be in-contact-radio-rescuers, by medical consultants, by theological experts and by the general public would be: “it’s alright to eat the dog”.     

(Re)constructing the Head Teacher: Legal Narratives and the Politics of School Exclusions

School exclusions are a site of political and social contestation and in recent years statutory reforms and popular demands have focused on increasing the autonomy of head teachers. This article explores this trend and questions why, in a culture of human and children's rights, head teachers have such extensive powers within their schools and why law has, to a large extent, failed to provide a check on these powers. It does so not by doctrinal analysis of domestic and human rights law but, rather, by enquiring into how legal narratives construct the role of the head teacher and by locating the practice of exclusions within a broader social and political context. It suggests that demanding that the head teacher be unfettered in his or her decisions relating to exclusions ought not to be understood as a policy of 'non-intervention' or a return to a 'reassuring' past but, rather, as a contemporary policy that reinforces the construction of excluded pupils as marginalized non-citizens.     

The Difference Law Makes: Domestic Atrocity Laws and Human Rights Prosecutions

This article offers the first systematic analysis of the effects of domestic atrocity laws on human rights prosecutions. Scholars have identified various political and sociological factors to explain the striking rise in human rights prosecutions over the past 30 years, yet the role of domestic criminal law in enabling such prosecutions has largely been unexamined. That is surprising given that international legal prohibitions against human rights atrocities are designed to be enforced by domestic courts applying domestic criminal law. We argue that domestic criminal laws against genocide and crimes against humanity facilitate human rights prosecutions in post‐authoritarian states by helping to overcome formal legal roadblocks to prosecution, such as retroactivity, amnesties, immunities, and statutes of limitations. Using original data on domestic atrocity laws and human rights prosecutions in new democracies, we find that atrocity laws increase the speed with which new democracies pursue prosecutions, as well as the overall numbers of trials they initiate and complete.     

Litigating Corporate Human Rights Information

This article analyzes trends in litigation brought against corporate actors regarding human rights information. Such information includes, but is not limited to, statements on packaging claiming that products are “ethically sourced” and investor-facing disclosures representing that an issuer's operations are environmentally friendly. It proceeds by outlining the sources of human rights-related disclosures as they arise under both legal and voluntary regimes. The article then addresses the case law. Recent years have seen an increase in lawsuits involving human rights information, or lack thereof, imparted by companies. Consumer protection or consumer fraud cases are being filed, alleging that companies have either provided false and misleading information or omitted information about corporate human rights impacts and mitigation efforts. Investors are filing similar claims. The article examines the trend and considers the role of this litigation both in holding companies to their word and in providing corporate accountability for the underlying human rights abuses that false or misleading human rights information may mask. It ultimately argues that, although success at trial in such cases remains elusive, litigation is a useful and potentially growing tool for holding companies to their word regarding human rights claims. It contextualizes this litigation, arguing that other means by which companies can be held to their word should be strengthened, including public enforcement and—potentially—new disclosure and due diligence laws.