Gender Based Violence: Correlates of Physical and Sexual Wife Abuse in Kenya

This study explored factors associated with physical and sexual wife abuse on a sample of 4,876 married women aged 15–49 years in the 2003 Kenya Demographic Health Survey. Results indicate that 40% of married women reported at least one type of violence; 36% were physical and 13% were sexual. Multivariate analysis showed that living in poorer households, being Christian, being in a polygamous marriage, having a husband who drinks alcohol, and being in sales, agricultural, or unskilled jobs significantly increased the wife’s risk of physical and sexual abuse. Wife’s education had significant effect on both physical and sexual abuse, but the relationships were not linear. Wife’s age and number of children were significantly associated only with physical abuse; husband’s education had a marginal but significant effect only on sexual abuse. Research implications are discussed.     

论董事问责的诚信路径

The mode of deferential review on directors’ management decisions coincides with the requirements of adaptive efficiency, being conducive to encouraging directors’ tentative experiments. However, under the rule of business judgment, directors’ accountability requires for onerous burden of proof on the plaintiff, and the formal review of directors’ decisions and the uncertainty of the standard of care have rendered the duty of care almost an empty shell, and consequently the unfaithful conducts of directors between gross negligence and malice are always at large. The good faith path is not only a mechanism to fill the gap of accountability but an important mechanism to overcome the information asymmetry between shareholders and directors. The judicial practice of directors’ accountability in the 1990s produced a good faith path, and the good faith concept has been rejuvenated with creative changes, the standards of conducts become clear with the increasing operability of judicial reviews. In China, the standards on fiduciary conducts can be defined by the judicial interpretation of the Company Law, so as to incorporate such misconducts as intentionally causing the violation of law by company, failure to disclose candidly, abuse of power and gross disregard of responsibilities, hence inducing the good faith path to accountability. Zhu Yikun got his Ph.D in economics at Management School of Jinan University (1999) and LL.M at Southwest University of Politics and Law (1991). He is the executive dean and doctoral tutor of the Law School of Jinan University, and a legislative counselor of the standing committee of Guangdong Provincial People’s Congress, and a monitor of Guangdong Provincial Procuratorate. His research focuses on company law and corporate governance. He has twelve monographs published, including five law books in English language, esp. the book “China’s Business Contracts: Forms and Precedents” was published by Butterworth in 1997. Moreover, he has released over 100 papers in academic journals including China Legal Science and Chinese Industrial Economy. At present, he is leading a national bilingual course program on American and British commercial law (2008).     

Insecure Attachment Mediates Effects of Partners’ Emotional Abuse and Violence on Women’s Relationship Quality

Men’s emotional abuse and violence have a broad and pervasive impact on women that may include long-term effects on women’s attachment and relationship quality. In this longitudinal study, women’s Wave 6 ratings of their insecure attachment were hypothesized to mediate the relationship between partners’ Wave 5 abuse (emotional and physical) and Wave 6 relationship quality, with differences in associations by women’s Wave 5 self-classification as secure or insecure. Mediation was tested with data from a sample of 574 African American, Euro-American, and Mexican American community women who had completed at least three waves of a six wave study. Differences occurred in the final structural equation models by women’s Wave 5 attachment style, with direct paths from emotional abuse to insecure attachment and from violence to relationship quality for both groups, but direct effects of violence on relationship quality only for insecurely attached women.     

The Impact of Extreme Emotional Distance in the Mother-Child Relationship on the Offspring’s Future Risk of Maltreatment Perpetration

Emotional qualities of the parent-child relationship are thought to influence the offspring’s risk for perpetrating child maltreatment in adulthood. The current study examined whether having grown up in an enmeshed or disengaged mother-child relationship, hence a relationship characterized by extremes on the continuum of emotional distance, increased the offspring’s risk of child maltreatment perpetration in a sample of 178 undergraduate students attending a large rural public university. A history of extreme emotional distance experienced with mothers significantly increased the grown offspring’s risk of maltreatment perpetration, as measured by two risk indicators. Emotional reactivity, but not empathy, mediated this effect for the offspring’s child abuse potential. Extreme amounts of emotional distance within the mother-child relationship also predicted the offspring’s child abuse potential over and above maltreatment occurring in that relationship, whereas maltreatment rather than emotional distance predicted the offspring’s unrealistic expectations of children. Clinical implications are discussed.     

论中国《反垄断法》实施中的相关市场界定

Defining relevant markets is the foundation of establishing main antimonopoly regimes and the key issue in enforcing antimonopoly law, which often reflects the leniency or strictness of enforcement. In the process of defining relevant product market, the main factors to be considered include physical function and use purpose of product, product price, consumers’ preference and substitutable possibility of product supply. In defining relevant geographic market, the main consideration involves transportation cost and product characteristics, product price, consumers’ preference and barriers to market access. On the occasion of forthcoming enforcement of the Antimonopoly Law of China, the enforcement authorities should draw up a specific rule of the definition of relevant markets. Wang Xianlin got his Ph.D from Law School of Renmin University of China (2001) and is a Fulbright visiting scholar at Law School of George Washington University (2007–2008). Prof. Wang is a director of Economic Law Institute and a doctoral tutor in Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Law. He was once a member of the advisory committee of antimonopoly legislation of the Legal Affairs Office of the State Council of P.R.C. and is a standing director of the Economic Law Academy affiliated with China Law Society. His research focuses on competition law and intellectual property law. He has ten books published individually or cooperatively, including the monograph, such as the Intellectual Property and Antimonopoly Law—Studies on antimonopoly issues of abuse of intellectual property rights and WTO competition policy and Chinese antimonopoly legislation and abuse of intellectual property rights and its regulation. Moreover, he has released over 100 papers in academic journals. In recent years, his research is focused on China’s antimonopoly legislation and the abuse of IPRs of multinational companies in China.     

His master’s voice: H.L.A. Hart and Lacanian discourse theory

H.L.A. Hart’s jurisprudence seems antithetical to Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalysis. Professor Schroeder argues that, in fact, Hart’s concept of law has surprising similarities to Lacan’s ‘discourse of the Master’. Both reject a command theory of law: subjects do not obey law out of fear. Moreover, both insist that the authority of law is completely independent from its content. Anyone seeking to develop a psychoanalytically sophisticated critical legal theory should reconsider Hart. As insightful as his concept of the symbolic is, Lacan has no expertise in legal systems and does not discuss positive law per se. Although he posited a theory of ethics in his Seventh Seminar and the seeds of a jurisprudence are implicit within his theory, he offers no account of legal right, justice or what Hart misleadingly calls ‘morality’. A Lacanian jurisprudence must, therefore, be supplemented by other sources. Moreover, legal positivists should not dismiss psychoanalysis. As insightful as Hart’s jurisprudence is, his theories of legal subjectivity and linguistics are simplistic and his concept of law too narrow. He describes only one aspect of legal experience: obedience to law. He ignores what most legal actors do: Hart’s concept of law excludes the practice of law. Although Lacan’s ‘master’s discourse’ surprisingly parallels Hart’s jurisprudence, Lacan does not restrict the symbolic to the master’s discourse. It requires three other ‘discourses’. Lacan, therefore, supplements Hart. Specifically, Lacan’s fourth discourse describes the excluded practice of law and provides the mechanism by which ‘morality’ can critique law.

Leiter on the Legal Realists

In this essay reviewing Brian Leiter’s recent book Naturalizing Jurisprudence, I focus on two positions that distinguish Leiter’s reading of the American legal realists from those offered in the past. The first is his claim that the realists thought the law is only locally indeterminate – primarily in cases that are appealed. The second is his claim that they did not offer a prediction theory of law, but were instead committed to a standard positivist theory. Leiter’s reading is vulnerable, because he fails to discuss in detail those passages from the realists that inspired past interpretations. My goal is to see how Leiter’s reading fares when these passages are considered. I argue that Leiter is right that the realists’ indeterminacy thesis has only a local scope. Those passages that appear to claim that the law is globally indeterminate actually address three other topics: judicial supremacy, judges’ roles as finders of fact, and the moral obligation to adjudicate as the law commands. With respect to the prediction theory, however, I conclude that Leiter’s position cannot be defended. Indeed the realists offered two ‘prediction’ theories of law. According to the first, which is best described as a decision theory, the law concerning an event is whatever concrete judgment a court will issue when the event is litigated. According to the second, the law is reduced, not to concrete judgments, but to regularities of judicial (and other official) behavior in a jurisdiction. I end this essay with the suggestion that the realists’ advocacy of the second prediction theory indirectly vindicates Leiter’s reading of the realists as prescient jurisprudential naturalists.     

Derrida,Semiotics and Justice

In this essay, one of Derrida’s early texts, Plato’s pharmacy, is analysed in detail, more specifically in relation to its reflections on writing and its relation to law. This analysis takes place with reference to a number of Derrida’s other texts, in particular those on Freud. It is especially Freud’s texts on dream interpretation and on the dream-work which are of assistance in understanding the background to Derrida’s analysis of writing in Plato’s pharmacy. The essay shows the close relation between Derrida’s analysis of Plato’s texts and Freud’s study of the dream-work. The forces at work in dreams, it appears, are at play in all texts, which in turn explains Derrida’s contentions in relation to the pharmakon as providing the condition of possibility of Plato’s texts. The essay furthermore points to the continuity between this ‘early’ text of Derrida and his ‘later’, seemingly more politico-legal texts of the 1990s. A close reading of Plato’s pharmacy, with its investigation via ‘writing’ of the foundations of metaphysics, and thus also of the Western concept of law, is obligatory should one wish to comprehend how Derrida attempts to exceed the restricted economy of metaphysics through his analysis of concepts such as justice and hospitality.     

Corruption among narcotic officers: A study of innocence and integrity

This study focuses on the influencing components producing corruption among narcotic law enforcement officers, and it is the second article of a three part series among 255 officers. It was postulated that income and stress among of narcotic officers gives rise to corruption. Although, corruption was defined as police brutality, personal use of contraband, and abuse of due process rights, the data was insufficient to support the hypothesis. It was revealed, however, that corruption did exist among narcotic officers, but its causal factors were related to an officer’s lack of experience, innocence, and integrity. Recommendations are that narcotic officers be selected based on their experiences especially military service. Further research should be conducted examining the link between military training and quality narcotic law enforcement service. Author Note: Dennis J. Stevens, Ph.D. is an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. In addition to teaching traditional and nontraditional students, he teaches and counsels law enforcement officers in police academies such as at the North Carolina Justice Academy and felons at maximum custody penitentiaries such as Attica in New York, Eastern and Women’s Institute in North Carolina, Stateville and Joliet near Chicago, and CCI in Columbia, South Carolina. He is a former group facilitator for an organization that specializes in court ordered abuse counseling. He can be reached at dennis.stevens@umb.edu     

Alcohol Use,Drinking Venue Utilization,and Child Physical Abuse: Results from a Pilot Study

A positive relationship between parents’ drinking and child physical abuse has been established by previous research. This paper examines how a parent’s use of drinking locations is related to physical abuse. A convenience sample of 103 parents answered questions on physical abuse with the Conflict Tactics Scale-Parent Child version (CTS-PC), current drinking behavior, and the frequency with which they drank at different venues, including bars and parties. Ordered probit models were used to assess relationships between parent demographics, drinking patterns, places of drinking, and CTS-PC scores. Frequent drinking, frequently going to bars, frequently going to parties in a parent’s own home, and frequently going to parties in friends’ homes were positively related to child physical abuse. The number of drinking locations was positively related to child physical abuse such that parents who report attending and drinking at more of these venues were more likely to be perpetrators of physical abuse. This suggests that time spent in these venues provides opportunities to mix with individuals that may share the same attitudes and norms towards acting violently.     

Naturalism in Epistemology and the Philosophy of Law

In this paper, I challenge an influential understanding of naturalization according to which work on traditional problems in the philosophy of law should be replaced with sociological or psychological explanations of how judges decide cases. W.V. Quine famously proposed the ‘naturalization of epistemology’. In a prominent series of papers and a book, Brian Leiter has raised the intriguing idea that Quine’s naturalization of epistemology is a useful model for philosophy of law. I examine Quine’s naturalization of epistemology and Leiter’s suggested parallel and argue that the parallel does not hold up. Even granting Leiter’s substantive assumption that the law is indeterminate, there is no philosophical confusion or overreaching in the legal case that is parallel to the philosophical overreaching of Cartesian foundationalism in epistemology. Moreover, if we take seriously Leiter’s analogy, the upshot is almost the opposite of what Leiter suggests. The closest parallel in the legal case to Quine’s position would be the rejection of the philosophical positions that lead to the indeterminacy thesis.     

‘I Would Prefer Not To’: Giorgio Agamben, Bartleby and the Potentiality of the Law

In Homo Sacer, Giorgio Agamben suggests that Herman’s Melville’s ‘Bartleby the Scrivener’ offers the ‘strongest objection against the principle of sovereignty’. Bartleby, a legal scribe who does not write, is best known for the formula with which he responds to all his employer’s requests, ‘I would prefer not to.’ This paper examines this formula, asking what it would mean to ‘prefer not to’ when the law is in question. By reading Melville’s story alongside Aristotle’s theory of potentiality and Walter Benjamin’s theses on history, it suggests that Bartleby’s interest, for Agamben, lies in his challenge to dominant conceptions of the relation between potentiality and actuality, which, he believes, are rendered indistinct in sovereignty. By reflecting critically on Agamben’s depiction of Bartleby as a ‘new Messiah’, this paper examines Agamben’s understanding of what it would mean to fulfil the law, and what form of political task this would entail.     

A Path Analysis on Elder Abuse by Family Caregivers: Applying the ABCX Model

The purpose of this study was to investigate Hill’s ABCX model as an explanation for the caregiving stress process to elder abuse. However, due to ethical concerns on elder abuse studies, caregivers’ impulsive feelings to commit elder abuse were employed as an index to address elder abuse. The sample included 279 family caregivers for older adults with physical or cognitive impairments in South Korea. A path analysis was conducted to test the ABCX model. The results of path analysis did not statistically support the ABCX model as an explanation for caregivers’ impulsive feelings to commit elder abuse. Based on the findings of this study, the revised ABCX model was suggested for practitioners and researchers to better understand caregiving stress process to impulses of elder abuse.     

Face to Face with Child Abuse: Towards an Ethics of Listening

This paper is concerned with faces. It is concerned with the face of a sexually abused seven years old child -- with my face -- and with the marginalisation and violation of children’s own subjective experiences of abuse by the law. Drawing upon my own subjective experience of sexual abuse as a young child, silenced for twenty-five years, I interpret my own sexual abuse as a profound experience of ‘homelessness’. To be homeless is to lack a primal place in the world, to be in a permanent state of disorientation, to be displaced. To be homeless is not necessarily to be emotionally insecure, but to be voiceless. Accordingly, the subject of sexual abuse is an emotionally dislocated subject and I interpret my own abuse in terms of an enduring experience of the violation of place. In other words, I would argue that the physical act of sexual abuse is less important than the site or place of abuse. The significance of sexual abuse is that it reveals the homelessness of our own sojourn and the poverty of our own subjectivity. Given this interpretation, I find the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child problematic and I attempt to think child sexual abuse in ethical terms. Following Emmanuel Levinas, I present sexual abuse in terms of the ethical significance of the face-to-face relationship and I argue that rights-based advocacy must listen to what children say. It must think through what listening to that voice entails in ethical terms. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Crime, Freedom and Civic Bonds: Arthur Ripstein’s Force and Freedom: Kant’s Legal and Political Philosophy

There is no question Arthur Ripstein’s Force and Freedom is an engaging and powerful book which will inform legal philosophy, particularly Kantian theories, for years to come. The text explores with care Kant’s legal and political philosophy, distinguishing it from his better known moral theory. Nor is Ripstein’s book simply a recounting of Kant’s legal and political theory. Ripstein develops Kant’s views in his own unique vision illustrating fresh ways of viewing the entire Kantian project. But the same strength and coherence which ties the book to Kant’s important values of independence blinds the work to our shared moral ties grounded in other political values. Ripstein’s thoughts on punishment are novel in that he embeds criminal law, both in its retributivist and consequentialist facets, into Kant’s overarching political philosophy to show how criminal law can be seen as one aspect of the supremacy of public law. But a criminal law solely focused on the preservation of freedom takes little notice of the ways criminal law need expand its view to account for how a polity can restore the victim of a crime back to civic equality, reincorporate offenders after they have been punished and cannot leave past offenders isolated and likely to reoffend, resulting in the rotating door prison system and communities of innocents who remain preyed upon by career criminals. Lastly, a political theory that does not prize our civic bonds will ignore the startling balkanization of our criminal punishment practices, where policing, arresting and imprisonment become tools of racial and social oppression. In illustrating the benefits in viewing criminal law as a coherent part of Kant’s political theory of freedom, Ripstein also highlights what is absent. It then becomes clear that though Kant presents one important facet of punishment, only a republican political theory can meet the most pressing moral demands of punishment by reminding us that criminal law must be used to preserve and strengthen civic society.     

The Crime of Animal Abuse in Two Nonwestern Cities: Prevalence,Perpetrators, and Pathways

Estimates the prevalence of animal abuse in Nizhni Novgorod, Russia, and Lviv, Ukraine, assesses the sociodemographic characteristics of animal abusers in these cities, and provides the first empirical test of Agnew’s (Theor Criminol 2(2):177–209, 1998) theory of the causes of animal abuse. Logistic regression and generalized structural equation models are estimated using interview data from 1435 randomly-sampled adults in 41 neighborhoods in Lviv and Nizhni Novgorod. Animal abuse was quite rare among respondents and committed mostly by males and younger individuals. Consistent with Agnew’s theory, low self-control, animal-abusing peers, justifying beliefs, and perceived benefits all were associated with statistically significantly increased likelihood of animal abuse. In addition, justifying beliefs and perceived benefits mediated a significant and substantial share of the effects of self-control and animal-abusing peers on animal abuse. Contrary to theoretical expectations, perceived costs appeared unrelated to animal abuse net of the effects of other predictors. People who abuse animals appear to do so partly because, due to low self-control and exposure to animal-abusing peers, they hold beliefs justifying the behavior and perceive greater benefits associated with it.     

Criticism on the urbanized trend of Chinese law research

By referring to the phenomena of the ever intensifying consummation of anti-fake laws resulting in ever increasing inundation of faking cases, this article describes the correlation between the consumers’ rights and the research on Chinese law. It is further pointed out that the relationship between the study of Chinese law and the protection of consumers’ rights typically interprets the difficult situation of Chinese law research: On the one hand, Chinese law does not give the required attention to the protection of consumers’ rights concerning people’s health and life safety. Worse, all the discussions about the issues of consumers’ rights are all oriented on serious urbanization tendency and departmental law science tendency, judging or measuring the concrete realities of consumers’ rights in China based on the concepts of western laws. The specific time-and-space element of China endowing essential meanings in the research of consumers’ rights in Chinese law as the base and evidence of research is eliminated, leaving the research of Chinese law in a distorted position in China. __________ Translated from China Reform, No. 9, 2005     

Madness and the Law: The Derrida/Foucault Debate Revisited

In this article the Derrida/Foucault debate is scrutinised with two closely related aims in mind: (1) reconsidering the way in which Foucault’s texts, and especially the more recently published lectures, should be read; and (2) establishing the relation between law and madness. The article firstly calls for a reading of Foucault which exceeds metaphysics with the security it offers, by taking account of Derrida’s reading of Foucault as well as of the heterogeneity of Foucault’s texts. The article reflects in detail on a text of Derrida on Foucault (‘Cogito and the History of Madness’) as well as a text of Foucault on Blanchot (‘Maurice Blanchot: The Thought from Outside’). The latter text shows that Foucault was at times acutely aware of the difficulty involved in exceeding metaphysics and that he realised the importance in this regard of a reflection on literature. These reflections tie in closely with Foucault’s History of Madness as well as with Derrida’s reflections on literature and on madness. Both Derrida and Foucault contend that law has much to learn from literature in understanding the relation between itself and madness. Literature more specifically points to law’s ‘origin’ in madness. The article contends that a failure to take seriously this origin, also in the reading of Foucault’s lectures, would amount to a denial by law of itself.     

A Political Theory of Blackmail: A Reply to Professor Dripps

This essay was originally presented at the Rutgers Institute for Law and Philosophy as part of the Symposium on The Evolution of Criminal Law Theory. It is a Reply to Professor Donald Dripps’ politically-based justification for blackmail’s prohibition. Under Dripps’ account, by exacting payment from the victim blackmail is an impermissible form of private punishment that usurps the state’s public monopoly on law enforcement. This essay demonstrates that Dripps’ account is either under-inclusive or over-inclusive or both. Dripps’ account is applied to a number of the standard blackmail scenarios by which theories of blackmail are typically assessed. Dripps’ account is under-inclusive by failing to treat as blackmail Victim-Welcomed Blackmail, Non-Monetary Blackmail, Rebuffed Blackmail, and Non-Informational Blackmail which the law considers as blackmail. And it is over-inclusive by treating as blackmail Victim-Initiated Exchange and Unconditional Disclosure which the law does not recognize as blackmail.