Size,Power, and Electoral Systems: Exogenous Determinants of Legislative Procedural Choice

I tested hypotheses about the relationship between exogenous institutions and legislative procedural choice using a unique cross‐sectional approach and a dataset gleaned from 55 legislative bodies from around the world. I focused on three entrenched characteristics of legislative bodies that we have theoretical reason to think will shape procedures: size, the relative power of the chamber, and the method by which its members are selected. Relatively small and powerful bodies generally have decentralized procedures. To a lesser extent, we can say the same of chambers that have electoral systems that incentivize the personal vote.     

Green Building Risks: It's Not Easy Being Green

Building “green” and seeking certification are becoming necessary considerations for any construction project or construction improvement. The benefits and risks associated with building green will be explored in this article, and insurance solutions are offered. Certified green structures should provide healthier environments to work and live. Productivity should increase and sickness and absenteeism should decrease. The popularity, importance, and number of green building projects will continue to increase. However, green building also involves increased litigation risks associated with design, construction, ownership, and operation. This article will explore those risks, and insurability of such claim exposures. Many of those risks are insurable; some are currently uninsurable.     

He Loves Me; He Loves Me Not: Attachment and Separation Resolution of Abused Women

Working within an attachment perspective, we examined women's success at emotional separation from abusive partners. The attachment patterns of 63 abused women were assessed shortly after having left their abusive relationships. Six months later, their perceptions, feelings, and behaviors regarding the separation were assessed, to determine an overall level of separation resolution. As expected, attachment patterns associated with a negative self model were overrepresented (88% of the sample had a predominant pattern of fearful or preoccupied attachment). Further, preoccupation was associated with shorter relationship length, more frequent previous separations from the abusive relationship, continuing emotional involvement with partners after separation, and more frequent sexual contact with partners. These findings suggest that preoccupation may be a risk factor in successful separation resolution from abusive relationships.     

“我与你”的心理学心理学的三种话语形态

在心理学的研究中存在着三种话语形态,即"我的"心理学,"你的"心理学,"我与你的"心理学.不同的话语形态蕴含了不同的研究模式,研究者与研究对象的关系是"我"、"你"的关系."我"、"你"长期各自为阵,成为两极.话语上的割裂最终导致了心理学的科学性与现实性的割裂.只有在"我与你"的话语形态中,通过对话,才能将心理学研究的科学性与现实性有机地统一起来.     

Woe Unto You, Judges: or How Reading Frankfurter and Greene, The Labor Injunction, Ruined Me as a Labour Lawyer and Made Me as an Academic

This article is a contribution to the occasional series dealing with a major book that influenced the author. Previous contributors include Stewart Macaulay, John Griffith, William Twining, Carol Harlow, and Geoffrey Bindman.     

'And You Can't Find Me Nowhere': Relocating Identity and Structure within Equality Jurisprudence

This paper explores key tensions in conceptualizing equality. It begins by arguing for the equality of lives lived and then goes on to link this to equality based on power. Yet, although equality of power seems to offer a more radical model than approaches to equality based on resources, satisfaction, and recognition, it nevertheless is not entirely suitable, since it too centres equality's subject. After addressing some of the analytical problems a subject-centred framework raises, including how to deal with reactionary identities and practices, the paper considers instead a structural approach to equality. This focuses on targeting social organizing principles, while recognizing the complex relationship between inequalities of gender, race, sexuality, and class and inequalities associated with unpopular viewpoints or beliefs. Finally, using lesbian and gay sexuality as an example, the paper considers the ways in which normative-epistemological organizing principles — proper place and the public/private — naturalize, legitimize but also hold the possibility of undercutting asymmetries of power.     

Arbitration of Environmental Insurance Claims: It's Not All Bad News for Policyholders

Most environmental insurance policies contain provisions calling for arbitration of claim disputes. Arbitration generally is confidential; it prevents development of the common law and is geared toward compromise. Standard policy arbitration provisions also are often used to curtail traditional policyholder protections. For these and other reasons, arbitration is generally not favorable to policyholders and should often be avoided. About a dozen states recognize this and bar coverage arbitration. There are other ways to avoid arbitration depending on the circumstances. However, if arbitration ultimately is required, there are several practical ways to make it fairer.     

It's War, Jim, But Not As We Know It: A ``Reality-Check' for International Laws of War?

International Humanitarian Laws of Armed Conflict effectively prohibit the use of terror-violence as a means or method of warfare in all circumstances of armed conflict. However, as new ``terrorist' enemies do not appear to share this humanitarian consensus, it becomes crucial to contextualise accurately any characterisation of the recent ``war' on ``global terror' as a ``war' to which International Humanitarian Law can attach. What needs to be remembered, first, is that technological innovation can destabilise accepted frameworks for waging war. Thus, any laws intended to curtail the use of particular means and methods of warfare will reflect the contemporaneous environment within which such laws were formulated. Secondly, modern laws of war evolved from nineteenth century reciprocal pacts designed to ensure minimal levels of restraint between ``civilised' peoples. While any strict contractual approach to mutuality-in-restraint has been superceded in the post-1945 era by more universalised obligations, the interests reflected in this original mutuality of interest warrant examination when distinguishing today between ``justifiable' and ``unjustifiable', or ``licit' and ``illicit', uses of violence.     

Just 'Cause You're Smarter than Me Doesn't Give You a Right to Tell Me What to Do: Legitimate Authority and the Normal Justification Thesis

Joseph Raz's famous theory of authority is grounded in threeclaims about the nature and justification of authority. Accordingto the Preemption Thesis, authoritative directives purport toreplace the subject's judgments about what she should do. Accordingto the Dependence Thesis, authoritative directives should bebased on reasons that actually apply to the subjects of thedirective. According to the Normal Justification Thesis (NJT),authority is justified to the extent that subjects are morelikely to comply with right reason by following the authority'sdirectives than by following their own judgments about whatright reason requires.¹ In this article, I consider a number of ways in which NJT mightbe construed as a justification for authority. First, I evaluateNJT construed as a principle that would provide a practicaljustification for an individual to accept or recognize a particularperson or persons as a preemptive authority. Second, I evaluateNJT construed as a principle that describes the conditions underwhich a state or legal system is morally legitimate. I arguethat NJT is true under none of these interpretations.²     

"Won't You Please Help Me Get My Son Home": Peonage, Patronage, and Protest in the World War II Urban South

During World War II, young African Americans from southern cities left their homes for what appeared to be patriotic job opportunities harvesting sugar cane in Florida. When returning workers described peonage and slavery instead, parents worried about their children's safety. After attempting to contact their children directly, the parents appealed to the federal government. Their decision to mobilize the federal government and the strategies they used to do so reveal important aspects of wartime African American protest that historians have previously overlooked. This article focuses on families instead of atomized individuals, revealing the importance of families, neighborhoods, and communities to the emergence of rights consciousness. It also complicates the historiographical dichotomy between rights consciousness and patronage relationships. Patrons sewed as liaisons with law enforcement agencies and provided links to a law-centered rights consciousness. For many historians, until protest exits the realm of patronage ties, it is not really protest, and once interactions with government themselves become bureaucratized they cease to be protest any longer. The efforts of the peons' families challenge both ends of this narrow category of protest; they both used patronage relations to lodge their protests and also forged rights consciousness within the legal process itself.     

How to Define Legislative Turnover? The Incidence of Measures of Renewal and Levels of Analysis

This article analyses different standard measures of legislative turnover. Two main concerns are discussed: (1) the very definition of turnover: incoming MPs versus first-term MPs; and (2) the level of analysis: the whole chamber versus political groups. To illustrate this discussion, turnover in the French lower chamber, the Assemblée Nationale, is studied. It is shown that the choice of a particular measure is not trivial since empirical results are affected by the definition adopted. If the distinction between incoming and first-term MPs does not greatly modify results, the choice of the level of analysis leads to contradictory results. It is shown that the very logic of electoral contests leads to renewal mostly among those who lost previous elections, while incumbent majorities that lose elections hardly experience renewal. As both these phenomena coexist for every single election, aggregate measures of turnover do not account for these contradictory tendencies and tend to concentrate on alternation rather than turnover.