Lost on the Way Home? The Right to Life in Northern Ireland

This article starts from the premise that, through the Belfast Agreement, the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) was invested with a 'transitional justice' function in Northern Ireland, unlike in the rest of the United Kingdom. The article evaluates how far the HRA has met this challenge by examining a case study of the right to life. The European Court's development of a procedural aspect to the right to life in the form of a right to an effective investigation, has implicated both institutional reform for the future, and also a need to revisit past state killings with their 'transitional justice' implications. There have been some positive developments, but, despite this, domestic institutions and courts have largely failed to deliver on Article 2's procedural aspect. The article concludes by questioning whether the very design of the HRA has limited the possibilities for a 'transformational constitutionalism' capable of incorporating Article 2's procedural right.     

Crime That Pays: The Global Spread of the Russian Mafia

Books reviewed in this article:
Robert I. Friedman, Red Mafia: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America
Paul Klebnikov, Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia
James O. Finckenauer and Elin J. Waring, Russian Mafia in America: Immigration, Culture, and Crime
Chrystia Freeland, Sale of the Century: Russia's Wild Ride from Communism to Capitalism
Jeffrey Robinson, The Merger: The Conglomeration of International Organized Crime     

The Development of Future Orientation is Associated with Faster Decline in Hopelessness during Adolescence

Hopelessness is implicated in multiple psychological disorders. Little is known, however, about the trajectory of hopelessness during adolescence or how emergent future orientation may influence its trajectory. Parallel process latent growth curve modelling tested whether (i) trajectories of future orientation and hopelessness and (ii) within-individual change in future orientation and hopelessness were related. The study was comprised of 472 adolescents [52% female, 47% Caucasian, 47% received free lunch] recruited at ages 12–13 who completed measures of future orientation and hopelessness at five annual assessments. The results indicate that a general decline in hopelessness across adolescence occurs quicker for those experiencing faster development of future orientation, when controlling for age, sex, low socio-economic status in addition to stressful life events in childhood and adolescence. Stressful childhood life events were associated with worse future orientation at baseline and negative life events experienced during adolescence were associated with both an increase in the trajectory of hopelessness as well as a decrease in the trajectory of future orientation. This study provides compelling evidence that the development of future orientation during adolescence is associated with a faster decline in hopelessness.     

Up Against the Property Logic of Equality Law: Conservative Christian Accommodation Claims and Gay Rights

This paper explores conservative Christian demands that religious-based objections to providing services to lesbians and gay men should be accommodated by employers and public bodies. Focusing on a series of court judgments, alongside commentators’ critical accounts, the paper explores the dominant interpretation of the conflict as one involving two groups with deeply held, competing interests, and suggests this interpretation can be understood through a social property framework. The paper explores how religious beliefs and sexual orientation are attachments whose power has been unsettled by equality law. But entangled with this property is another—that held in workers’ labour and public bodies’ resources. Arguing against the drive to balance competing interests, the paper uses social property to illuminate the agonistic character of the stakes. At the same time, it questions property as a normative framework for sexual orientation and religious beliefs.     

“In the shadows of hierarchy”: Intergovernmental governance in Canada and the European Union

The articles in this issue suggest that intergovernmental governance takes a different form in Canada and the EU, raising questions about the transference of practices and institutions from one to the other. In both systems, non‐hierarchical modes of governance provide coordination in social policy. Hierarchy also plays a role, though not in a manner that one might expect. In the EU, hierarchy is tempered by members' direct participation in policy formulation. In Canada, hierarchy is important, but within rather than between governments, resulting in executive dominance of the intergovernmental process at the expense of devolving power to civil society and sub‐provincial governments.     

protagonists and victims: women leading the fight for a democratic Colombia

This paper offers an account of the relationship between gender, class and notions of happiness. It draws on recent research conducted into the experiences of working class women who play the UK National Lottery. In particular, it explores the notion that gambling offers working class women the opportunity to dream of the ‘good life’ – of enhancing their lives and of making ‘improvements’ to their own and their families’ well-being. In this paper, the discourse of happiness will be examined, and the tacit assumption that working class women in particular are prone to turning to gambling as a last ditch attempt to personal and emotional fulfilment will be challenged. The paper argues that developing understandings of culture and consumption practices is imperative for producing a more complex understanding of the subjective realities of working class women's everyday lives. By engaging with feminist accounts of respectability, daydream and fantasy, the paper will present a thorough exploration of National Lottery play in working class women's everyday experiences of happiness.