Who is the Author of Halakhah?

The Jewish Law (Halakahh) is probably the older legal system working in our time. It is established on a hierarchy of different texts. The oldest and more authoritative is the Torah (the five books of Moshe), then come the Mishnah, the Talmud, the compilation as Maimonide’s Mishne Torah and Caro’s Shulchan Arukh, then the responsa of the rabbis. While the authorship of the later texts is more or less clear, the one of the Torah is highly problematic, also in the self-understanding of Jewish hermeneutics. This question is discussed in the present paper not from a philological-historical point of view, but from a semiotic one, trying to understand what devices and regimes of enunciation are enacted by the text in order to establish its semiotic-juridical effects. A special double enunciation frame is proposed as the mark of the legislative power in the text, in correlation with another textual device, a sort of divine “signature”. The further evolution of the authorship of the Jewish Law is discussed in its relation with the question of the autonomy in the interpretation of the sacred text.     

Where Did All of the Fields Go?

The loss of farmland each year due to development in New York State is astounding. Yet, agriculture remains an important part of the local economy and is essential in providing local food to New York residents. Many land-use protective measures that have been put in place such as large minimal lot-size zoning and agricultural districts have failed to slow down the rate of farmland lost each year. Conservation easements are a vital protective tool, but they require lots of private and public funding. This funding is necessary in order to ensure farmland for future generations. Before it is too late, New York needs to follow the lead of states such as Pennsylvania, which has shown an overwhelming commitment to protecting vital farmland.     

The Paradigm of the War on Crime: Legitimating Inhuman Treatment?

Since 11 September 2001, a new paradigm has developed in criminallaw. Parallel to the idea of the ‘war on terror’,a paradigm based around ‘war on crime’ has emerged.Inevitably, however, a paradigm of war leads to abandoning scientificapproaches based on a legal-moral vision (crime, guilt and punishment)in favour of a merely pragmatic vision, which associates nationalsecurity with social defence. Based on an unclear concept ofdangerousness, presumed by simple membership in a group labelled‘enemy’, the goal is to neutralize, or even eliminate,the criminal/deviant. When combined with a denial of internationalprotections, deconstructing national criminal law thus runsthe risk of pushing a black hole through the rule of law. Manyhave criticized such a paradigm; however, the author pointsout that the paradigm of the war on crime (and more generallythe war on terror), provided that it respects internationallaw, can be useful, because it shows the need to overcome thebinary opposition between war and peace, as well as betweenwar crimes and ordinary crimes. Nonetheless, it must be clearthat this paradigm can only be one of transition. To overcomethe war–peace dichotomy in a global community and to reconstructthe relationship between terrorism and torture, neither a ‘warcrimes’ nor a ‘war on crime’ paradigm is trulysufficient. Only through the amplification of a paradigm of‘crime against humanity’ (itself unstable and evolvingbut free from the war metaphor) can we reconstruct humanityas a value and make it the cornerstone of any legal system.     

Can the Body Change the Score? Application of Sensory Modulation Principles in the Treatment of Traumatized Adolescents in Residential Settings

There is a compelling need for varied “trauma specific” treatment models for children and adolescents with complex trauma in residential treatment whose affect and behavioral dysregulation disrupts daily living and impedes treatment engagement. This conceptual paper introduces exploratory applications of sensory motor approaches to the treatment of affect and behavioral dysregulation. Sensory Integration, a specialization within occupational therapy (Ayres 1972, 2004) provides knowledge of the sensory motor systems and strategies for sensory modulation that addresses arousal regulation, which underlies this dysregulation. The article describes three clinically supported approaches to the use of sensory modulation in residential treatment sites: use of sensory rooms; use of sensory integration occupational therapists at residential treatment sites; and a trauma psychotherapy that utilizes sensory motor strategies to improve regulation and support trauma processing.     

What’s the Party Like? The Status of the Political Party in Anti-Defection Jurisdictions

Law and Philosophy - This paper explores how political parties should be regulated in jurisdictions with anti-defection laws, which constitutionalise parties’ control over the legislative...     

Is the Treatment of Economic Loss by the Australian Courts in Torts Cases Anomalous?

The well developed economic theory of tort liability has never been able to comfortably accommodate negligence cases causing pure economic loss as opposed to physical damage or injury. In fact, contrary to received opinion, Australian Courts at least, are increasingly allocating pure economic losses to achieve predominantly an efficiency objective, with corrective justice notions relegated into the background. Consequently, it is difficult to classify these cases as anomalous in the sense of falling outside the efficiency paradigm.JEL Classification: K13     

A Refugee from Justice? Disparate Treatment in the Federal Court of Canada

This article paints a troubling picture of disparate treatment in the Federal Court of Canada. Examining more than 600 immigration and refugee claims, the results link judicial action to litigants' representation, their demographics and national region, and the background and ideology of the judges involved. When compared with prior research in Canada and similar studies from the United States, the findings suggest that an applicant in search of a just result would do as well to hire an experienced lawyer and hope for a sympathetic judge as to prepare an excellent appeal. Canada's immigration process requires greater attention so that the reality of its operation matches the promise of the nation's intentions.     

Sex Disaggregated Trajectories of Status Offenders: Does CINS/FINS Status Prevent Male and Female Youth From Becoming Labeled Delinquent?

This study sought to provide a more recent and longitudinal examination of the effect of formal processing on status offenders’ subsequent delinquency using data from a large sample of first-time referral status offenders in the state of Florida. Results from semi-parametric group-based trajectory models suggested that roughly half of the status offenders subsequently accumulated delinquent arrests in adolescence following their initial referral for a status offense. Furthermore, the number and type of trajectory groups were more similar than different across sex. Study limitations and policy implications are also discussed.     

The Threat of the Thief: Who Has Normative Influence in Georgian Society?

This piece gives an account of the Georgian government's recent attempts to crackdown on the institution of thieves-in-law [vory-v-zakone] within Georgian society. The events surrounding the problematisation of the thieves-in-law are examined and different answers are offered to the underlying question of the article: what threat does this subversive group pose to the government? It is argued that the vory do not represent a potential criminal revolution but are victims of a resurgent state producing a politics of law that seeks to stamp out subverting influences within society. The thieves' world represents an alternative moral order which is attractive in a country which suffers from acute alienated statehood. Thus the fight against the vory should be understood as a battle to win back the hearts of the Georgian people for the state and for the law.     

What Did the Janitor Do? Suggestive Interviewing and the Accuracy of Children's Accounts

Examined the influence of suggestive interviews on 5- to 6-year-old children's reports and recollections of an adult's behavior. Children (29 girls, 27 boys) witnessed a confederate, acting as a janitor, either clean or play with toys. An hour later they were interviewed in succession by the janitor's boss, by an experimenter, and by their own parent. Parents interviewed their child again 1 week later. The boss and experimenter interviewed the child in one of three ways: neutral (nonleading), incriminating (suggesting the janitor was bad and playing on the job), or exculpating (suggesting the janitor was good and doing his job of cleaning). When these interviews were neutral, children consistently gave accurate accounts of the janitor's behavior. When these interviews were suggestive, children's accounts shifted strongly in the direction of suggestion as the interviews progressed. By the end of the suggestive interviews, children's accounts uniformly corresponded to the interviewers' suggestions, even when the suggestions were inconsistent with what actually happened. These effects of suggestion persisted during the two nonleading parent interviews.     

The Origins of ‘Alien Status’ in the English Common Law

In his 2001 monograph on Aliens in Medieval Law: The Origins of Modern Citizenship, Dr Keechang Kim suggested that there was no evidence before the late fourteenth century that birth beyond the sea made a person an alien. This article discusses a series of cases heard from the mid-thirteenth century onwards in which tenants pleaded the claimant's birth overseas by way of bar to hereditary claims to land and in which it seems to have been treated as a bar in itself, though one to which the king might grant special exemption. This seems to have remained the position until legislation of 1351 (triggered by doubts about the eligibility of two sons of Edward III born overseas to succeed to the throne) which not only confirmed their eligibility but also made the first general extension of the right to inherit to children born overseas to parents in the king's allegiance.     

How Did Things Get So Bad So Quickly? An Assessment of the Initial Conditions of the War Against Organized Crime in Mexico

Objectives: This study explores the initial conditions of the current war against organized crime in Mexico. The theoretical framework is institutional anomie theory (IAT). Composite measures were used to summarize local initial conditions for the occurrence of organized crime deaths by gang execution, confrontation, and aggressions to authority. Spatial and temporal elements were included to assess the validity of the initial conditions approach. Evidence presented here suggests that Mexican states significantly differed in their initial conditions for organized crime deaths to have occurred. Also, although trends in gang executions and confrontations have been slowing down, aggressions to authority are speeding up considerably. The evidence presented corroborates IAT. However, the significance and direction of the relationships among institutional anomie correlates and initial conditions of the war against organized crime depended upon the type of death.     

Taking Care of Strasbourg: The Status of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Case-Law of the European Court of Human Rights in Kosovo’s Domestic Legal System

This paper addresses the position of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) case-law in Kosovo’s domestic legal order. To begin with, it reviews the background of the issue of human rights in Kosovo highlighting its distinct position and perspective. This article then analyses the position held by the European Convention on Human Rights and its protocols in Kosovo’s legal order while also addressing the ECHR’s constitutionalization, its direct effect and the constitutional review on basis of it. The paper then examines whether the case-law of the ECtHR is binding in Kosovo, whether it is directly effective, and whether Kosovo’s Constitutional Court can use it as a ground in the conduct of constitutional reviews. This paper argues that the ECHR and the case-law of the ECtHR both hold a privileged status under Kosovo’s constitutional law, despite Kosovo not being a party to the ECHR and, therefore, having no international liability to implement the ECHR. In addition, the paper offers certain arguments regarding the relative positions of the ECHR and the case-law of the ECtHR within the current practice of Kosovo’s judicial system. This paper concludes with the argument that the ECHR and the case-law of the ECtHR hold a privileged status in the context of Kosovo’s domestic legal order—one which could serve as a precedent in respecting human rights and freedoms.     

Female serial killers in the early modern age? Recurrent infanticide in Finland 1750–1896

This article examines multiple infanticide in early modern Finland in which the same woman killed several newborns after repeated hidden pregnancies and childbirths. A well-documented case in Lohja, Nummi and Pusula Court of Assizes in 1874 is compared with nine other recurrent infanticides in Finland in the period 1750–1896. The context of the series of crimes and the reasons why it took so long to apprehend the murderers differed from the majority of reported infanticides, which were quite unplanned and the perpetrators of which were apprehended within days of the act. These offenders were serial killers who experienced a need to kill even if they were not literally serial killers according to modern conceptions of male-oriented serial killing. They did not deliberately get themselves pregnant with men in order to obtain psychological gratification from killing newborn babies. Rather, they resorted to killing several of their illegitimate babies as a solution of birth control because their first such crime went unreported or unprosecuted, probably as a result of the complicity of others. Such a perpetrator in the early modern age is labeled a ‘love-child murderess’ or a ‘burker of newborns’, depending on her relationship with the father or fathers of the victims. Serial killings of newborn babies as a solution of birth control continue to exist in modern times as serial neonaticide. It is suggested that a perpetrator of this category of crime in all ages be labeled a ‘birth controller’.     

A War on Cops? The Effects of Ferguson on the Number of U.S. Police Officers Murdered in the Line of Duty

Police agencies in the U.S. are currently facing a major legitimacy crisis resulting from a spate of high-profile use of force incidents, many involving minority citizens. Recent headlines emphasize that there is now a “war on cops” and that police officers are facing increasing levels of hostility and violence fueled by a growing anti-police sentiment. In the aftermath of events in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014, some commentators claim that the number of police officers feloniously assaulted and killed in the line of duty has increased sharply. Using time series analysis of data from the Officer Down Memorial Page, we test whether events in Ferguson were associated with an increase in the number of police officers murdered in the line of duty. Our results provide no evidence for a “Ferguson Effect” on the number of U.S. police officers murdered in the line of duty as of March 2016.