Performing Regulation: Transcending Regulatory Ritualism in HIV Clinics

Sociolegal scholars suggest that regulatory encounters often are occasions for displaying a surface compliance decoupled from day‐to‐day practice. Yet ethnographic data from five highly regulated HIV clinics show that regulatory encounters open opportunities both for ritualism and—surprisingly—for transcending ritualism. Using a theatrical analogy, we argue that improv performance is the technology that enables regulatory inspectors and clinic staff to transcend ritualism. As regulatory encounters unfold, clinics' carefully prepared performances sometimes change into more cooperative interactions where inspectors and regulatees hash out details about how rules will be applied and even work together on reports for the regulators' supervisors. By “performing together,” regulatory inspectors gain access to the clinic's backstage where they can assess clinic workers' deeper conformity to ethical and scientific norms. But such joint performances are less likely where cultural divides and material scarcity make it difficult for clinic staff to gain inspectors' trust.     

Radical Transactionalism: Legal Consciousness,Diverse Economies,and the Sharing Economy

This article proposes an original theoretical approach to the analysis of community‐level action for sustainability, focusing on its troubled relationship to the sharing economy. Through a conversation between scholarship on legal consciousness and diverse economies, it shows how struggles over transactional legality are a neglected site of activism for sustainability. Recognizing the diversity of economic life and forms of law illuminates what we call ‘radical transactionalism': the creative redeployment of legal techniques and practices relating to risk management, organizational form, and the allocation of contractual and property rights in order to further the purpose of internalizing social and ecological values into the heart of economic exchange. By viewing sharing‐economy initiatives ‘beyond Airbnb and Uber’ as sites of radical transactionalism, legal building blocks of property and capital can be reimagined and reconfigured, helping to construct a shared infrastructure for the exercise of collective agency in response to disadvantage sustained by law.     

Either or? Reconciling Findings on Mental Health and Extremism using a Dimensional Rather than Categorical Paradigm

The background for this paper is the debate over what role mental illness plays in radicalization to violent extremism. While one camp points to cases of abnormal functioning of perpetrators, another argues that normal psychological mechanisms are central. Through a review of these perspectives, it becomes clear that mental illness cannot be ruled out as an epi‐phenomenon, but is not a necessary condition either. The paper draws on work in psychiatric nosology on dimensional and categorical conceptions of illness and argues that the perspectives in this literature reflect a categorical approach to normal and abnormal functioning. Under a dimensional perspective, findings converge. The paper concludes by showing how this new dimensional approach to the role of mental illness in radicalization has implications for the design of risk assessment tools and leads to the recommendation for stronger inter‐agency cooperation between mental health professionals, social services, and police and intelligence services.     

Anatomy of Judicial Backlash: Southern Leaders,Massive Resistance,and the Supreme Court, 1954–1958

Exploiting a range of archival materials, we argue that state‐level variation in judicial backlash to Brown was as much the result of strategic choices by southern political elites as it was the ingrained prejudices of the region's white voters. Presenting case studies of massive resistance in Mississippi, Louisiana, Virginia, and Arkansas, we show that elite agency profoundly shaped the patchwork development of grassroots resistance to integration across the South. These findings challenge the prevailing view that backlash to Brown signaled the unequivocal triumph of racial conservatives. Rather, we argue that the region's response offered individual members of the southern elite significant autonomy to direct massive resistance in their home states. We also argue that southern lawmakers were responsible for the South's embrace of popular constitutionalism post‐Brown, and thus that it may not have been “popular” at all. We conclude that studies of judicial backlash would do well to reevaluate the assumption that backlash is necessarily a grassroots phenomenon.     

Differential Treatment and Communicative Interactions: Why the Character of Social Interaction is Important

Regulatory studies have traditionally focused on external political and administrative factors when explaining the behavior of regulatory inspectors. This is, however, only one part of the story about regulatory behavior. To understand the behavior of street-level bureaucrats such as regulatory inspectors, it is essential to look not only at external political and administrative factors but also at the very interaction between the bureaucrat and the client. By focusing on differential treatment of regulated firms by inspectors and the explanatory power of the interaction between inspector and firm, the article shows that variation in the level of communication between inspector and regulatee helps to explain variation in regulatory leniency. The higher the level of communication, the more lenient is the inspector.     

The Psychology of Routine Discretion: Accident Screening by British Factory Inspectors*

It is well recognized that discretion over the day to day enforcement of law is often exercised routinely by “repeat players.” However, the psychology of repetitive, routine decision making has not received particular attention. An empirical study of factory inspectors' discretion in screening accidents for investigation was conducted, using interviews with inspectors and analysis of records. The paper analyzes the selection decision as a process of categorization that attends simultaneously to characteristics of the accident, the legal and organizational context, and normal responses within the agency, in a way that maximizes cognitive economy. The paper suggests that, with experience, skill at routine decision making comes to be exercised towards the “automatic” end of a continuum from ‘automatic’ (non-conscious) to (consciously) “controlled” processing of information. Since data are available on accidents not selected as well as those selected, the implications of inspectors' decision strategies can be examined.     

Integrity,culture, and scale: an empirical test of the big bad police agency

Building on Klockars et. al. (2000) analysis of survey data on police agency integrity, this analysis develops an economic model of police corruption within police agencies. Empirical estimates of the economic model are consistent with Klockars et. al. (2000) in that there is no evidence to support the traditional theory that police agency corruption is attributable to the “individual bad-apple.” Independent of other factors, the present analysis shows that police culture fosters corruption. Furthermore, the present analysis shows that incentive structures within police agencies increase the problem of corruption as the scale of police agency operation increases. Policies that would promote higher levels of integrity are considered.     

Delegation Dilemmas: Coalition Size,Electoral Risk,and Regulatory Governance in New Democracies

This article addresses the determinants of regulatory agency design in multiparty‐coalition governments. Previous research has mainly focused on U.S. institutions, producing context‐specific findings. We found electoral uncertainty, government turnover, and coalition size to be key factors explaining the bureaucratic autonomy of 31 state regulatory agencies recently created at the subnational level in Brazil. The legislative support that chief executives enjoy only acquires explanatory power when it is interacted with government turnover. Because Brazilian governors have great ability to build oversized majority coalitions, coalition strength influences the governor's strategy when the governor faces credible threats from rival elite groups.     

The Good,the Bad,and the Klutzy: Criminal Negligence and Moral Concern

One proposed way of preserving the link between criminal negligence and blameworthiness is to define criminal negligence in moral terms. On this view, a person can be held criminally responsible for a negligent act if her negligence reflects a deficit of moral concern. Some theorists are convinced that this definition restores the link between negligence and blameworthiness, while others insist that criminal negligence remains suspect. This article contributes to the discussion by applying the work of ethicist Nomy Arpaly to criminal negligence. Although not interested in legal issues herself, Arpaly has a well-developed theory of moral agency that explains moral concern in terms of responsiveness to moral reasons. Introducing her work to the ongoing scholarly debate will be helpful for two reasons. First, while a definition of negligence in terms of moral concern is recognized as one proposed solution to the negligence–blameworthiness problem, authors promoting it have yet to give a systematic account of moral concern and its relation to blame. Borrowing Arpaly's account will help clarify the idea of moral concern so that both proponents and critics of a concern approach to negligence can have a better-defined debate. Second, her theory of blameworthiness is especially suited to defending the blameworthiness of negligent actions, because it does not have recourse to a special quality of choice or self-control that must be active to render conduct blameworthy. To make this second advantage clear, the article argues that reliance on choice or self-control problematizes blameworthiness for negligence. Those who wish to defend blameworthiness for negligent acts should base their work on an account of moral agency that does not rely on either choice or self-control to explain when an action is blameworthy.     

城管执法的权威与困惑

当前,我国城管执法问题凸显。加强并完善城管立法,合理配置城管执法的职责权限,回归城管机构的行政机关性质,明确城管执法人员的公务员身份,既是合理有效回避城管执法现实尴尬的题中应有之意,也是积极、正确应对城管执法难题的当务之急。     

The Reconstitution of Law in Local Settings: Agency Discretion, Ambiguity, and a Surplus of Law in the Policing of Hate Crime

An important yet poorly understood function of law enforcement organizations is the role they play in distilling and transmitting the meaning of legal rules to frontline law enforcement officers and their local communities. In this study, we examine how police and sheriff's agencies in California collectively make sense of state hate crime laws. To do so, we gathered formal policy documents called “hate crime general orders” from all 397 police and sheriff's departments in the state and conducted interviews with law enforcement officials to determine the aggregate patterns of local agencies' responses to higher law. We also construct a “genealogy of law” to locate the sources of the definitions of hate crime used in agency policies. Despite a common set of state criminal laws, we find significant variation in how hate crime is defined in these documents, which we attribute to the discretion local law enforcement agencies possess, the ambiguity of law, and the surplus of legal definitions of hate crime available in the larger environment to which law enforcement must respond. Some law enforcement agencies take their cue from other agencies, some follow statewide guidelines, and others are oriented toward gaining legitimacy from national professional bodies or groups within their own community. The social mechanisms that produce the observed clustering patterns in terms of approach to hate crime law are mimetic (copying another department), normative (driven by professional standards about training and community social movement pressure), and actuarial (affected by the demands of the crime data collection system). Together these findings paint a picture of policing organizations as mediators between law‐on‐the‐books and law‐in‐action that are embedded in interorganizational networks with other departments, state and federal agencies, professional bodies, national social movement organizations, and local community groups. The implications of an interorganizational field perspective on law enforcement and implementation are discussed in relation to existing sociolegal research on policing, regulation, and recent neo‐institutional scholarship on law.     

Rule‐Making by the European Financial Supervisory Authorities: Walking a Tight Rope

The new European Financial Supervisory Authorities have received much attention in the literature, particularly due to their exceptional emergency decision‐making powers. By contrast, this article explicitly chooses to focus on these agencies' less explored yet equally crucial role: their (quasi‐)rule‐making responsibilities. While being less striking at first sight than their emergency counterparts, these rule‐making powers are considerable, carry significant consequences, and raise some interesting dilemmas and concerns. This article complements the previous contribution by going at a lower level of specification and zooming in on a crucial case for studying rule‐making by agencies as the Authorities constitute a culmination of agency rule‐making powers, as well as agency powers, more broadly. The article will analyse the Authorities' main (quasi‐)rule‐making powers and the relevant procedures. It will specifically investigate their role with respect to the adoption of regulatory and implementing technical standards, as well as guidelines and recommendations. The article also identifies and highlights a set of problematic issues that arise, threatening to jeopardise the legitimacy and credibility of their rule‐making.     

Traditional Local Justice,Women’s Rights,and the Rule of Law: A Pluralistic Framework

The paper focuses on the application of a particular conception of the rule of law to situations characterized by traditional local justice and legal pluralism. While in the twentieth century international rule‐of‐law programmes were directed almost exclusively at state legal system, they have recently begun to take into account traditional local justice, namely, those institutions which in many world regions represent the main form of effective justice. Starting with a review of the positive and negative aspects of traditional local justice from a rule‐of‐law perspective, the paper underlines the widespread lack of protection of human rights, particularly of women’s rights. Discussing vertical rule‐of‐law functions in contexts of legal pluralism the paper stresses the advantages of an approach to the promotion of the rule of law based on mutual recognition and influence between different legal authorities and sources. It is argued that this “interactive” approach appears best suited to the complex frameworks of relations that characterize present‐day systems of deep legal pluralism. Finally, the paper underlines the correspondence between this approach and a conception of the rule of law as an ideal framework of plural interactions characterized by the limits imposed on the law by the law itself, and it discusses its advantages from the perspective of human rights and women’s rights promotion.     

隐名代理探微

隐名代理是一种客观存在的社会现象,但我国立法却对此放弃了必要的规范,使其处于一种无序状态。认识隐名代理与显名代理不同的运行机理,审视隐名代理与行纪关系不同的法律构成,并在此基础上提出隐名代理的法律规范,是本文研究的三个重点问题。     

Law Centres, Citizenship, and Participation

It's difficult to redirect things once we'd started up as a casework agency. It's difficult to keep casework under control. Cases can only be related to one another; if you justify taking on one case, it's difficult to avoid taking on similar cases. There is still not sufficient priority given to educational and community work. This is so because of the demands of [individual] casework … It's difficult to change approach from casework to educational and community work. (Lawyer at the Urban Community Law Centre)
From the beginning we have attempted to do work with people rather than for them. This has meant that wherever possible we have brought people with similar problems together so that they learn how to cope with different establishment bodies … more important, they realize they can exercise control over their own lives. Whether we help an individual deal with his or her own personal problem, or help a group of people get to grips with whatever is oppressing them, our main aim is to inculcate a practical philosophy of self-reliance. (Statement of aims of the Northern Neighbourhood Law Centre¹)     

REASSESSING THE BREADTH OF THE PROTECTIVE BENEFIT OF IMMIGRANT NEIGHBORHOODS: A MULTILEVEL ANALYSIS OF VIOLENCE RISK BY RACE,ETHNICITY, AND LABOR MARKET STRATIFICATION*

Researchers in the United States have increasingly recognized that immigration reduces crime, but it remains unresolved whether this applies to people of different racial–ethnic and economic backgrounds. By using the 2008–2012 area‐identified National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), we evaluate the effect of neighborhood immigrant concentration on individual violence risk across race/ethnicity and labor market stratification factors in areas with different histories of immigration. The results of our analysis reveal three key patterns. First, we find a consistent protective role of immigrant concentration that is not weakened by low education, low income, unemployment, or labor market competition. Therefore, even economically disadvantaged people enjoy the crime‐reduction benefit of immigration. Second, we find support for threshold models that predict a nonlinear, stronger protective role of immigrant concentration on violence at higher levels of immigrant concentration. The protective function of immigration also is higher in areas of longer histories of immigration. Third, compared with Blacks and Whites, Latinos receive a greater violence‐reduction benefit of immigrant concentration possibly because they live in closer proximity with immigrants and share common sociocultural features. Nevertheless, immigrant concentration yields a diminishing return in reducing Latino victimization as immigrants approach a near‐majority of neighborhood residents. The implications of these results are discussed.     

Locating,Identifying, and Comparing Sub‐visible Paint Particles

Forensic paint comparisons are generally conducted on samples which, while small relative to their source, are still visible to the unaided eye and are thus located and analyzed without great difficulty. Here we demonstrate that a more detailed examination of candidate transfer surfaces can capture materials (questioned samples), even when such traces are invisible to the unaided eye. While certain analytical details (such as layer sequence or a pure FTIR spectrum) may not be obtainable from such traces due to their size and condition, a detailed analysis of the sample characteristics that are analytically accessible may still provide sufficient analytical data to arrive at a probative result. Here we present the application of this approach to a suspected paint transfer case, involving particles of paint as small as 40 μm in size. Using a combination of stereomicroscopy, polarized light microscopy, infrared microspectroscopy, Raman microspectroscopy, and SEM/EDS, all performed on a single, subsample of the original minute particle, it was possible to demonstrate evidence of a two‐way transfer between the suspected sources. Furthermore, the transferred paint particle in one direction could be classified as automotive in nature based on a combination of polymer composition, microscopic texture, and pigment package (which included three specifically identified pigments). This work demonstrates (i) the potential for improving detection limits when searching for a questioned sample, (ii) the potential benefits of higher resolution analyses on samples that would be traditionally labeled as “sample‐size limited,” and (iii) the value of case‐specific interpretation over standardized, one‐size fits all report templates.     

Implementing Global Nature Protection Agreements in Russia

The article discusses Russian implementation of the Ramsar Convention, the World Heritage Convention, CITES and the Convention on Biological Diversity. The country's international obligations are part of Russian law, but little has been done by Russian authorities to implement the agreements on the ground. Compliance with the international agreements is the result of Russian protection measures that exist independently of the conventions. Environmental concerns have been given reduced priority since the early 1990s. An independent environmental protection agency no longer exists, and the number of inspectors has been drastically reduced. Implementation activities are undertaken primarily by international NGOs, and partly by regional authorities.     

浅析表见代理制度

表见代理制度在我国新《合同法》上的确立,反映了我国市场经济体制运行过程中对交易安全保护的重视。法律设立表见代理制度旨在保护善意相对人的合法权益,维护交易安全,建立安全、高效的经济运行机制。本文阐述了表见代理的概念、表见代理的构成要件及表见代理的法律后果,对如何完善我国表见代理制度进行了思考。