The Role of Perceived Justice,Political Ideology,and Individual or Collective Framing in Support for Environmental Policies

Effectively addressing environmental challenges such as climate change will require adopting policy measures that have some impact on collective human behavior. The present research examined attitudes toward different environmental policies, specifically focusing on the role of perceived justice. Justice was measured in two ways: as an assessment of the fairness of a particular policy and as a general tendency to endorse statements related to environmental justice. Because justice judgments can be context specific, policies were presented in four conditions, in a 2 × 2 design manipulating the type of impact described, ecological or societal, and the level of focus, individual or collective. The roles of political ideology and environmentalism were also investigated. Results from an online sample of 162 US residents showed that non-coercive policies, overall, were rated as more acceptable. Environmental justice statements were strongly endorsed, and justice in both its specific and general forms was a determinant of policy acceptance. In particular, ratings of the fairness of specific policies were a stronger determinant of acceptability than perceived effectiveness of the policy. Type of impact had little effect, but policies tended to be rated as more acceptable when they were framed in terms of the collective rather than the individual. Although a liberal ideology was associated with acceptance of environmental policies in general and with endorsement of environmental justice, controlling for endorsement of environmental justice eliminated the effect of political ideology in most, but not all, cases. Implications for policy support are discussed.     

Restoring the Victim: Emotional Reactions, Justice Beliefs, and Support for Reparation and Punishment

Psychological responses to criminal wrongdoing have primarily focused on the offender, particularly on how (and why) offender punishment satisfies people’s need for justice. However, the restoration of the victim presents another way in which the “psychological itch” that injustice creates can be addressed. In the present article, I discuss two lay theories of how crime victims can be restored: a belief that the harm caused to crime victims should be directly repaired (a restorative justice approach) versus a belief that victim harm should be addressed via the punishment of the offender (a retributive justice approach). These two lay theories are discussed with regard to their emotional and ideological determinants, as well as situational and chronic factors that can affect whether people adopt a reparative or punitive “justice mindset” in dealing with victim concerns (and crime in general).     

In Search of the Responsible Subject: History, Philosophy and Social Sciences in Criminal Law Theory

This paper examines the way in which English criminal law's conception of responsibility has changed since the eighteenth century, and explores the relationship between changes in legal framework, changes in processes of criminalisation and punishment, and broader social, political and economic changes. It argues that the development of ideas of individual responsibility for crime are responses to problems of co-ordination and legitimation faced by systems of criminal law, and that these problems can be expected to change according to the environment in which the system operates, with important factors including the distribution of political interests and economic power; the prevailing cultural and intellectual environment; the organisation and status of relevant professional groups and the vigour of alternative means of social ordering. Substantively, the paper explores the hypothesis that criminal responsibility has shifted from a conception founded in ideas of character to a capacity-based conception over the relevant period. Methodologically, the aim is to historicise the structure as well as the content of criminal law within a socio-theoretic framework, constructing a dialogue between criminal law theory of a doctrinal and philosophical temper and socio-historical studies of criminal justice.     

Ecological Belief in a Just World

To date, there is considerable evidence that the perception of injustice influences environmental behavior in a positive way. Nevertheless, some people do not take action, even if the injustice seems obvious. Concerning this matter, approaches like the belief in a just world theory or system justification theory provide an explanation. However, so far, there is no scientific research on whether the perception of ecological justice, which is taken for granted, concerning an ecological belief in a just world (EBJW) may lead to differences in people’s environmental behavior. This paper investigates a newly conceived construct of the EBJW, regarding its occurrence as well as its disposition in the context of other constructs. Therefore, a new scale has been developed for the purpose of this study by means of a questionnaire with German citizens (n = 312) examining motives for energy-relevant behavior. The scale analyses confirm the validity of the new scale. Even though the EBJW did not score high in the total sample, possibly due to significant differences between the participants (particularly socio-demographic variables and different group memberships) it can be stated that there is definitely a relationship between the EBJW and justification arguments and, ultimately, a lack of responsibility for energy saving. Regression analyses reveal that the EBJW, together with cognitive and affective appraisals of justice, can explain energy-relevant commitment, such as engagement in behavior that has negative impact on the climate. Based on these findings, it is suggested that the EBJW is measurable and that it seems to warrant further research.     

Environmental Justice Imperatives for an Era of Climate Change

This paper is about intra- and inter-generational equity, connecting environmental justice discourse with necessary responses to climate change. It offers a review of the role of globalization in this pervasive context, contrasting the disaggregated nature of localized impacts, and seeks to address the potential for adjusting law-policy frameworks as a key part of the search for solutions. It argues that environmental justice approaches can incorporate values into law-policy processes based upon vital aspects of the integrity and functioning of communities, distributional fairness, and capacities for wider engagement and participation in the search for necessary behavioural change. The conclusion is that the ultimate success of the urgent process of addressing climate-related threats, through a meaningful degree of mitigation and adaptation, and multiple levels of decision-making and response, must be informed by the precepts of environmental justice.     

Economic justice,political behavior,and American political values

Although theories of political economy state that citizens' concerns about economic outcomes are important determinants of their political responses, an alternative perspective states that concerns about economic justice influence political responses. Survey data were examined to determine the relative influence of each of these factors on political evaluations and behaviors. Concerns about the justice of the procedures used by the government to make decisions about the distribution of benefits and services strongly predicted evaluations of President Reagan and participation in policy-related political behavior, and were weakly related to general political activism. Concerns about the justice of the distributions of economic benefits were related to evaluations of President Reagan but not to political activism. Judgments about personal economic gain or loss relative to the past predicted evaluations of President Reagan while global subjective judgments of present economic outcomes weakly predicted policy-related political activism. The effect of justice is explained by considering the relationship between citizens' concerns about economic justice and values associated with the American political culture.     

Climate justice and bargaining coalitions: a discourse analysis

This article adopts a perspective of climate justice as an object of discourse and takes the bargaining coalitions at the Conference of the Parties as the relevant units to map the heterogeneous discourse on climate justice at the Cancun COP16. Based on the statements of nine coalitions, the analysis identifies three discourses on climate justice. The conflict discourse articulates the North–South duality over issues of historical responsibility for climate change. The transition discourse points to solving the problem of sharing the cost of mitigating climate change through a process of global low-carbon growth. The vulnerability discourse focuses on the urgency of ambitious actions by all parties. These three discourses, and their appropriation by the bargaining coalitions, are inherent of new alignments among developed and developing countries alliances and blocs that simultaneously reproduce and surpass the North–South ideological divide.     

Examining Self-Advantage in the Suffering of Others: Cross-Cultural Differences in Beneficiary and Observer Justice Sensitivity Among Chinese,Germans, and Russians

Other-related concerns for justice are fundamental components of morality and interpersonal behaviors. In this paper, we investigated macro/cultural and micro/individual differences in justice concerns for others. More specifically, beneficiary sensitivity (BS) and observer sensitivity (OS) were compared across China as a typical collectivist society, and Germany and Russia as two individualistic societies. Individualism–collectivism was assumed to mediate the cultural variance of BS and OS. In Study 1, Chinese participants exhibited more BS but less OS compared to German participants. In Study 2, the Chinese participants exhibited more BS but not significantly different OS compared to Russian participants. Moreover, collectivism mediated this cultural difference in BS but not OS. In Study 3, collectivist participants identified according to their proposals in social value games exhibited more BS than did individualistic participants, while the two groups revealed no significant difference in OS. Taken together, our studies consistently show that higher collectivism both on the cultural and individual levels is related to BS but not to OS, suggesting that collectivist values make people sensitive to self-advantage in comparison to the suffering of others.     

Climate Change and Global Citizenship

The international climate change regime has failed. Even the most optimistic assessment of action to limit greenhouse pollution in the coming few decades will not prevent calamitous changes in Earth's climate. Arguments for international—that is, interstate—justice that have permeated international negotiations on climate change have been insufficient in fostering robust action by states. Indeed, by diverting all responsibility to states, focusing on international justice has not addressed consumption and pollution by hundreds of millions of affluent people around the world, including many millions living within developing states that have no treaty obligations to limit nationwide pollution. Increasingly, however, it is these individuals that matter: more and more of them who are not now subject to any climate‐related legal obligations are able to afford lifestyles that lead to greenhouse gas emissions and more climate change. This is especially true given the very rapid increase in the numbers of affluent people in the developing world. Bearing this in mind, this article goes beyond the still important questions of international climate justice to explore cosmopolitan or global climate justice. Global justice demands that affluent individuals in both affluent and poor states do much more to limit their pollution of the atmosphere. By being good global citizens, capable persons can help states start the world on a path to reducing the severity of climate change.     

Gender,disasters and climate: Case of internal displacement in Assam,India

Social vulnerabilities are exacerbated as a result of human mobilities in the face of climate-related disasters. Framing these mobilities as a response to disasters masks the underlying systemic issues but helps to explore and understand the connections between climate change, disasters, and displacement, and particularly helps to identify which internal displacement patterns emerge as either adaptive or maladaptive strategies.

Using a case study approach, this article juxtaposes Assam’s history with floods, erosion, and extreme rainfall since 2012–2013 with people’s mobility as an emerging form of adaptive capacity. It contextualises key concepts of gender justice, using them to understand gendered recovery processes following disasters. This article advances the concepts of justice and migration by looking at the role and impact various patterns of mobilities have on vulnerable groups, particularly women.

While there is an increasing body of research examining the climate change–migration nexus, what is needed is a focus on understanding internal displacement using an environmental and gender justice lens. This approach must include debate and further research on internal displacement, and strengthening policy approaches to make them both climate resilient and migrant inclusive.

     

社会正义观理论下的警察权职能分析

社会正义是指在一个社会内分担责任、安排社会地位、及社会资源分配上符合正义的原则。社会正义观理论要求政府公平对待每一位社会成员。新型的社会正义观要求政府职能由过去注重政治统治职能向社会管理职能转变。警察权的职能也必然随着政府的职能转变而转变，弱化政治镇压职能、强化社会管理职能和公共服务职能，由监管者走向服务者。这种职能的转变将对警察维护社会秩序，进行公共管理，提供公共服务并最终保障公民个人的合法权益起到有效的促进作用。     

The violence of silence: some reflections on access to information, public participation in decision-making, and access to justice in matters concerning the environment

The proposition put forth in this paper is that whether—and the extent to which—harm or potential harm to the environment (its natural resources, living beings, and their ecosystems) is identified, resisted, mitigated, or prevented is linked to the nature and scope of public access to information, participation in governmental decision-making, and access to justice—which are often referred to as “environmental due process” or “procedural environmental rights.” Using examples in the United States of attacks on law school clinics and denial of standing in court, this paper argues that restrictions on public access to information, participation in decision-making, and access to justice create legacies and “cultures of silence” that reduce the likelihood that future generations will be willing and able to contest environmental harm.     

Punishment and Beyond: Achieving Justice Through the Satisfaction of Multiple Goals

We investigated the hypothesis that people's need for punishment does not preclude a desire for restorative sanctions that address the repairing of the harm to victims and communities caused by wrongdoing. Study 1 showed that although people felt it was important to punish the offender to achieve justice, they viewed additional justice goals as equally necessary. Study 2 revealed that people viewed sanctions as differentially able to fulfill various justice goals. Study 3 showed that the target on which respondents focused—the offender, victim, or community—determined which sanctions they selected to achieve justice; and that people did tend, by default, to focus on punishing the offender when responding to crime. These findings, taken together, suggest that people view the satisfaction of multiple justice goals as an appropriate and just response to wrongdoing, which allows for a possible reconciliation between the "conflicting" goals of restorative and retributive justice.     

Neither Fair nor Unchangeable But Part of the Natural Order: Orientations Towards Inequality in the Face of Criticism of the Economic System

The magnitude of climate change threats to life on the planet is not matched by the level of current mitigation strategies. To contribute to our understanding of inaction in the face of climate change, the reported study draws upon the pro status quo motivations encapsulated within System Justification Theory. In an online questionnaire study, participants (N = 136) initially completed a measure of General System Justification. Participants in a “System-critical” condition were then exposed to information linking environmental problems to the current economic system; participants in a Control condition were exposed to information unrelated to either environmental problems or the economic system. A measure of Economic System Justification was subsequently administered. Regressions of Economic System Justification revealed interactions between General System Justification and Information Type: higher general system justifiers in the System-critical condition rated the economic system as less fair than did their counterparts in the Control condition. However, they also indicated inequality as more natural than did their counterparts in the Control condition. The groups did not differ in terms of beliefs about the economic system being open to change. The results are discussed in terms of how reassurance about the maintenance of the status quo may be bolstered by recourse to beliefs in a natural order.     

Climate Change and a Just Transition to the Future of Work

Rapidly growing concerns about the adverse effects of climate change are prompting a re-thinking of how companies view their strategies and operations and spurring legal and regulatory responses around the world. The overarching objective of these efforts is to facilitate and accelerate the transition to a more sustainable economy. The green transition will have substantial distributional and structural implications for workers and the workplace across companies and economic sectors. Indeed, the future of work will be significantly shaped by climate change. However, relatively scant scholarly attention has been devoted to the forward-looking legal implications of climate change for work. Similarly, legal scholars writing on climate change have largely neglected the laws governing employment. This article seeks to help fill that gap. How can companies, workers, and society respond to the green transition in a manner that enables better jobs, a safe and stable workplace, and more resilient companies? To answer this question, this article draws on the theory of just transition, which is rooted in environmental justice and labor rights. We offer an interpretation and application of just transition that expands its scope to serve as a blueprint for ethical business conduct and legal reform to improve the world of work and the lives of workers.     

Revisiting Informal Justice: Restorative Justice and Democratic Professionalism

Restorative justice is a form of informal justice growing rapidly among criminal justice practitioners. It decenters the focus of criminal justice from the offender breaking a law of the state to the harm caused the victim and community. Resolution is said to come from offenders taking responsibility and making amends for the harm done and from communities supporting the victim and providing offenders with opportunities and skills to reintegrate as contributing members.
Restorative justice theory largely ignores the role of professionals in the criminal justice process, and yet professionals have played a dominant part in initiating many restorative justice programs. Several theoretical traditions recognize professionals as being important intermediaries between citizens and the state. The theory of democratic professionalism argues that professionals can play crucial roles in increasing and improving democratic participation in public affairs. This article examines two functioning restorative justice programs to flesh out what democratic professionalism might look like in operation—what tasks professionals perform and what citizen involvement means to the professionals. We argue that restorative justice cannot get along without professionals and that democratic professionalism may help restorative justice to avoid some of the problems associated with other approaches to informal justice by increasing true community participation but balancing it with concern for individuals' rights.     

Risk,Precaution, Responsibility,and Equal Concern

Systemic risks are risks produced through interconnected non‐wrongful actions of individuals, in the sense that an individual's action is a negligible cause of the risk. Due to scale effects of interaction, their consequences can be serious but they are also difficult to predict and assess via a risk assessment. Since we can have good reason to engage in the interconnected activities giving rise to systemic risk, we incur a concurrent collective responsibility to ensure that the risks are fairly distributed and well regulated. James argues that fairness in this context requires taking reasonably available precautions ensuring for each risk‐bearer a favourable ratio of expected benefits over expected losses. In sections 2 and 3 we argue that such a conception of fairness applies but only on the condition that the systemic risks created are irreversible risks and that the general background conditions of justice are imperfectly fair. When risks are reversible, compensatory justice can correct for unfairness in risk imposition. Where risks are irreversible, compensatory justice necessarily fails, giving rise to a collective responsibility to regulate fairly ex ante. Additionally, where background conditions of justice are fully fair and the systemic risk is well understood, risk bearers can be said to have consented to the systemic risk. If they are not fair, we argue that the primary political obligation should lie in fixing the fairness of the backgrounds of justice. A related reason for addressing the general background conditions of fairness is that James’ account of fairness in systemic risk imposition encounters a baseline problem. If expected risks and benefits are calculated again an unfair historic background condition, systemic risk imposition would not be fully fair. Section 4 shows why differences in evidentiary uncertainty as to probability and levels of harm and effective responses require a normatively appropriate response in the form of additional precautions. We show that the evidentiary standards set for risk‐based cost‐benefit analysis have a connection with deontology because they express a postulate of equal treatment in formal terms. Systemic risks can have different possible degrees of epistemological certainty due to factors of social and natural origin, such as more available research funding or higher degrees of complexity for some systemic risks but not others. These differences have to be mitigated by taking even greater precautions in difficult‐to‐research systemic risks.     

Advancing Accountability: Moving Toward Victim Restoration

One of the goals of Pennsylvania's juvenile justice system is the “imposition of accountability” for offenses committed. This White Paper, originally published in 2006, takes the position that true accountability requires juvenile offenders to repair the harm caused by their offending behavior and to understand and acknowledge the wrongfulness of their actions, their responsibility for causing harm, and the impact of the crime on the crime victim and community. It identifies system responsibilities, restorative practices, and outcomes relative to accountability. This White Paper was the result of debate among focus group participants under the auspices of the State Advisory Group.     

Access and allocation in climate change adaptation

As climate change impacts become increasingly apparent, adaptation becomes increasingly urgent. Accordingly, adaptation to climate change has shifted towards the centre of attention in both policy and research. In this article, we review the last 10 years of adaptation research (2008–2018), with a focus on work within the Earth System Governance network. We use the lens of access and allocation to structure our review and examine how adaptation affects, and is affected by, access to basic needs, basic rights, and decision-making on the one hand, as well as allocation of responsibilities, resources, and risks on the other. We find that questions of justice, equity, and fairness are fundamental to all dimensions of adaptation. The access perspective, for example, suggests that we need to assess vulnerability, understood broadly, while the allocation perspective focuses on questions of responsibility for being vulnerable, e.g. when people live, or move to, hazard-prone areas exposed to climate risk. This also relates to questions of who is responsible for selecting, implementing, and funding adaptation measures. Overall, we find that the framework of “access and allocation” and its subcategories offer a detailed approach to adaptation and adaptation research, but that it is not intuitive. The notion of “climate justice” seems to resonate more with both academic and policy debates.

     

Toward Understanding the Psychology of Reactions to Perceived Fairness: The Role of Affect Intensity

In social psychology it has been argued that the importance of justice cannot be overstated. In the present paper, we ask whether this indeed is the case and, more precisely, examine when fairness is an important determinant of human reactions and when it is less significant. To this end we explore what drives people's reactions to perceived fairness and argue that although social justice research has reported effects of fairness perceptions on people's affective feelings, a close examination of the literature shows that these reactions appear less frequently and less strong than one would expect. It is proposed here that this has to do with the neglect in the social psychology of justice of an important determinant of affective reactions: individuals' propensity to react strongly or mildly toward affect-related events. As hypothesized, findings of two empirical studies show that especially people high in affect intensity show strong affective reactions following the experience of outcome fairness (Study1) and procedural fairness (Study2). When affect intensity is low, however, weak or no fairness effects were found, suggesting that then fairness may not be an important issue. In the discussion it is thus argued that incorporating affect intensity into the justice literature may further insights into the psychology of reactions toward fairness.