Driving While Black

Abstract

The phenomenon of “driving while black” has ignited a heated debate: Do the police use race to target drivers? Most research on the topic compares the number of police stops and searches for a racial group to that group's distribution in the population. This approach ignores sociological theories of law, the driver's social status, the combined influence of race and sex, and whether the driver carries drugs in the car. In addition, the police are aware of being observed. To address these limitations, we surveyed undergraduates (N = 1,192) at one of the most diverse universities in the nation about their experiences with the police and their personal criminal behavior. Drawing on Black's (1976) theory of law, we examine whether a driver's race, sex, and social status influence police behavior (stop, exit, frisk, search, ticket/arrest). We also examine which drivers are most likely to have drugs in the car. The results suggest that a driver's race, sex, and social status all shape police behavior: African American men and Hispanic men experience more social control than white men; all men experience more social control than women; and low status drivers experience more social control than high status drivers. But despite the police focus on minority males, white males were the most likely to report carrying drugs in the car.     

Legal History and the Problem of the Long Civil Rights Movement

This essay offers a critical examination of use of the term “long civil rights movement” as a framework for understanding the legal history of the battle against racial inequality in twentieth‐century America. Proponents of the long movement argue that expanding the chronological boundaries of the movement beyond the 1950s and 1960s allows scholars to better capture the diverse social mobilization efforts and ideas that fueled the black freedom struggle. While not questioning the long framework's usefulness for studying the social movement dynamics of racial justice activism, I suggest that the long framework is of more limited value for those who seek to understand the development of civil rights, as a legal claim, particularly in the first half of the twentieth century. The tendency of long movement scholars to treat civil rights as a pliable category into which they can put any and all racial justice claims is in tension with historical understandings of the term. Susan Carle's Defining the Struggle: National Organizing for Racial Justice, 1880–1915 suggests an alternative approach. Her detailed and nuanced account of a period in American history when racial justice activists understood civil rights as a relatively narrow subset of legal remedies within a much broader struggle for racial equality indicates the need for an alternate history of civil rights—one that places the evolving, contested, and historically particularized concept of civil rights at the center of inquiry.     

论权力的本质及其发展规律

本文认为 ,人类在生存和发展这个根本利益基础上 ,必然形成人与人之间的既相互依存和合作 ,又相互对立和斗争的矛盾。权力是人类社会生存和发展需要的产物 ,本质上是社会公共意志的集中体现。     

FILM REVIEW ESSAY

This work analyzes three so‐called anti‐racist films of the 1990s; American History X, A Time to Kill, and Higher Learning. Although each film discusses why racial hatred is problematic, a variety of underlying themes contradict the message of racial tolerance. Racial hatred is depicted as largely a group phenomenon perpetrated by individuals who elect or learn to hate. Each film portrays white characters as the heroes in the struggle for racial equality, while showing black characters in stereotypical fashion. Additionally, white supremacists are allowed verbally to present their position much more frequently and more passionately than are those who are already racially tolerant. This research analyzes these and other examples of white supremacist hegemony in these three films, and discusses implications for viewers.     

Without Peers

Abstract

This writing will, in two parts, trace the development of Anglo-American law in regard to women and jury service from the early Anglo-Norman jury to the present American system. In this long history, women were largely excluded from the public world of the legal system. As criminal defendants, they did not face a jury of their peers. The first part, contained in this edition, examines the limited participation of women in the legal system in medieval and early modern England, colonial America, and the new American nation ending with their entry into the public world and the victory of women's suffrage in the United States. Within this setting, this first section traces the evolution of trial by jury. The second part, to follow, will examine the twentieth century legal, and political, struggle for women's full participation in the American jury system.     

The Totemic Authority of the Court

This article examines the place of the court within civil religion. It is argued that every civil religion is rooted in a magical anchor that in contemporary democratic civil religions is provided by the court. While in most institutions of civil religion totemic authority is represented, in court it is present. Therefore, court proceedings are occurrences of magic: they are performances (rituals and ceremonies) during which the sacred Thing is present. In court, the law itself and the clerical community to which it was entrusted assume the characteristics of the sacred Thing. The law appears under two facets: on the one hand, it is a norm and a word while, on the other hand, it is a Thing devoid of meaning and reason. Formalism is a magical mode of thinking that treats law as a timeless and meaningless Thing. In the course of the argument, the distinctions between ceremony and ritual, between social structure and communitas, and between religion and magic are reformulated, and the concepts of zone of familiarity and clerical community are laid out in a nutshell. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Cultural Policy in Denmark

ABSTRACT

Do cultural producers know each other? Do their relations influence the cultural field? This article analyzes the impact of the social structure on the art festivals' field in Piedmont, Italy. Cultural production is described through the perspective of the relations among the producers. Festivals' organizations observe each other, exchange information and artists, co-produce events, and share performing spaces. These actions generate relations that constitute the field. Analytical tools from social network analysis and QAP regression for network data are applied to describe the field through the relational perspective and assess the impact of the social structure on the cultural system.     

Addressing Infant and Toddler Issues in the Juvenile Court: Challenges for the 21st Century

To achieve the goal of permanency for children in the child welfare system, it is critical that different disciplines work together, improve communication, and understand each other's role and expertise in the process. Through a case study, this article attempts to show the problems, conflicts, and solutions in working to ensure a child's best interests from three points of view: a children's attorney from New York City, a judge from Miami, Florida, and an infant mental health specialist and interdisciplinary trainer from Los Angeles. First, we propose that emotional caregiving is a fundamental right of all children and includes a stable, nurturing, and permanent long‐term relationship. Conflicts between the timing of children's needs, parents' needs, and the judge's legal duties are discussed as a tension with which we all must struggle to resolve if we are to successfully address children's “irreducible needs” (Brazelton & Greenspan, 2000). If the provision of custodial care shifts toward including emotional care as a goal for the growing number of infants entering the foster care system, the ensuing conflicts will provide opportunities for all parts of the foster care system—including the courts—to rethink how infants' needs are evaluated and factored into decision making.     

The philosopher’s courtly love? Leo strauss, eros, and the law

This essay poses a critical response to Strauss’ political philosophy that takes as its primary object Strauss’ philosophy of Law. It does this by drawing on recent theoretical work in psychoanalytic theory, conceived after Jacques Lacan as another, avowedly non-historicist theory of Law and its relation to eros. The paper has four parts. Part I, ‘The Philosopher’s Desire: Making an Exception, or “The Thing Is...’’’, recounts Strauss’ central account of the complex relationship between philosophy and ‘the city’. Strauss’ Platonic conception of philosophy as the highest species of eros is stressed, which is that aspect of his work which brings it into striking proximity with the Lacanian-psychoanalytic account of the dialectic of desire and the Law. Part II, ‘Of Prophecy and Law’, examines Strauss’ analysis of Law as first presented in his 1935 book, Philosophy and Law, and central to his later ‘rebirth of classical political philosophy’. Part III, ‘Primordial Repression and Primitive Platonism’, is the central part of the paper. Lacan’s psychoanalytic understanding of Law is brought critically to bear upon Strauss’ philosophy of Law. The stake of the position is ultimately how, for Lacanian psychoanalysis, the Law is transcendental to subjectivity, and has a founding symbolic force, which mitigates against speaking of it solely or primarily in terms of more or less inequitable ‘rules of thumb’, as Plato did. Part IV, ‘Is the Law the Thing?’ then asks the question of what eros might underlie Strauss’ paradoxical defense of esoteric writing in the age of ‘permissive’ modern liberalism – that is, outside of the ‘closed’ social conditions which he, above all, alerts us to as the decisive justification for this ancient practice.     

the death penalty: An American history

Stuart Banner's thoughtful book, The Death Penalty: An American History (2002), serves as the basis of this review essay which explores the forces shaping the nation's experiences with capital punishment. The essay traces Banner's account of important death penalty developments throughout American history and examines justifications traditionally offered in support of capital punishment, issues of administration, and execution protocols. It concludes by projecting that, consistent with historical trends and nagged by serious and recurring administrative problems, the death penalty in America will in due course become a thing of the past.     

Addressing individual and community needs in the aftermath of campus sexual misconduct: restorative justice as a way forward in the re-entry process

ABSTRACT

Restorative justice is an approach to incidents of harm involving a high level of support and accountability for people who cause harm. To date, there is neither federal regulation nor commonly applied standard of care for re-entry to campus by a student who has been found responsible for sexual misconduct. Restorative justice re-entry circles represent a promising approach to the reintegration of students, taking into account the needs of the individual survivor, the student who violated policy, and the safety concerns of the campus community. Using a case study, this article outlines an example of a re-entry circle at a university in the United States and discusses the lessons learned with regard to concerns about the student’s mental health status, issues of race and racism on campus, and the role of a trauma-informed approach to circle practice in incidents involving a complex interplay of mental health, social status, and race on campus.     

I have a Facebook account,therefore I am – authentication with social networks

ABSTRACT

Social login is the use of a social network account to get access to other services. Since the internet in its architecture does not have the possibility to identify the internet user, for many services, social logins are the solution to authenticate users without the need to set up individual identity management systems. Social logins are not useful for all types of services, however, and the potential lock-in and lock-out of users needs to be considered.     

Can a witness report hearsay evidence unintentionally? The effects of discussion on eyewitness memory

Abstract

When eyewitnesses are exposed to misinformation about an event from a co-witness, they often incorporate this misinformation in their recall of the event. The current research aimed to investigate whether this memory conformity phenomenon is due to change in the witness's memory for the event, or to social pressures to conform to the co-witness's account. Participants were shown a crime video and then asked to discuss the video in groups, with some receiving misinformation about the event from their discussion partners. After a one-week delay some participants were warned about possible misinformation before all participants provided their own account of the event. In Study 1, participants made remember/know judgments about the items recalled, and in Study 2 they indicated the source of their memories. Co-witness information was incorporated into participants’ testimonies, and this effect was not reduced by warnings or source monitoring instructions, suggesting memory change may have occurred. However, there was some indication that remember/know judgments may help distinguish between ‘real’ memories and co-witness information.     

构建和谐物业小区的理论和制度前提

物业小区,是住宅市场化私人购买后新出现的一个要素和形态较为完备的新型社区,其内部的各种组织之间呈现复杂多样的关系。当前,多数物业小区内部的各组织之间处于功能离散、结构失调状态,导致物业纠纷日渐凸现。本文从物业小区各类组织的功能视角,分析彼此的关系,探索整合各类组织功能的理论和制度前提。     

Clashing conceptions of press duties: Public journalists and the courts

This article bridges the growing, but controversial, public journalism movement with First Amendment jurisprudence and libel law. It examines whether the movement finds support in laws that affect the press and, in particular, in court‐created defenses and privileges that protect journalists in modern defamation law. Do defenses that safeguard journalists in their traditional routines as fact gatherers and reporters also protect them in the kinds of roles and duties envisioned by public journalism advocates? Furthermore, has the United States Supreme Court, in non‐defamation cases involving the First Amendment, expressed concern for protecting what might be called the “public journalism functions” of the press? Does the Court create a different image for the press than the one envisioned by public journalism advocates? This article addresses these questions. It ultimately concludes that public journalists and courts have two very different conceptions about the role that journalists play in a democracy.     

Incitement of Racial Hatred

Legislation on incitement of racial hatred is an essential instrument for counteracting racist and anti-Semitic spoken or written communications. In Sweden, the various provisions, which are not only to be found in the Penal Code but also in the Ordinance on Freedom of Expression and in constitutional law on the freedom of expression, are fundamental elements of the legislation against racism, anti-Semitism and similar forms of agitation. In these provisions the legislator has set limits to the freedom of expression as far as racism, anti-Semitism, etc., are concerned. This is true regardless of whether the communication is expressed orally, as printed matter, through other media or in other ways. It is not necessary for the communication to have been disseminated publicly for punishment to be incurred; it suffices that dissemination has taken place within a limited circle. The provision appeared in its initial form in 1948. With the advent of the 1965 Penal Code it was transferred from the former Punishment Law to the new Code and has subsequently been modified in 1970, 1982 and 1988. It should be noted, however, that there is no provision for prior censorship. Each text, each symbol, each slogan, and so forth, must be adjudged by a court. The law in its basic form was sanctioned in 1956. The present article touches on trends concerning reported offences, trials and convictions during the 1990s. Unfortunately, it is not possible here to present statistics going further back in time, since the offence of incitement of racial hatred was not coded specifically in the crime statistics before that time. In the opening passages of the article, the advent of the law and important cases during the post-war period are discussed. The aim here is to describe how and why legislation has been used as well as the changes that have taken place over the past ten years.     

论我国物权登记机构的法律构造——以不动产物权登记为中心

根因于我国历史传统和计划经济体制下对财产尤其是不动产的分类管理,我国现行关于物权登记的法律法规极不统一,并由此导致了物权登记机关的极不统一。随着我国市场化进程的延伸与加快以及作为WTO的成员国,值物权法草案讨论和修订之际,把对财产的行政管理和物权登记职能严格分开,建立独立、统一、采实质审查主义和对登记机构工作人员实行职业责任保险为支撑的过错赔偿责任为基础的物权登记机构,对物权保护、维护交易安全并进而促进交易迅捷具有重要的理论和现实意义。     

The Defense Lawyer,the Accused,and the Procurator

As the matter is generally conceived, it is the accused who needs a defense attorney. Of course, it is he who needs a lawyer above all. But lawyers for the defense are no less essential to the Soviet state in its administration of justice. The administration of justice, the prosecution, and the defense are three functions, clearly differentiated from each other, that are implemented respectively by the court, the procuracy, and the institution of advocates. Together, they are called upon to assure the smooth functioning of the mechanism of struggle against crime.