BEHIND MORE LITIGATION: POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE IMPACTS

Since the reform and the opening up to the world of China, there has been increasingly more litigation in China, which has stimulated further development of the legal profession and greater public and private expenditure on the legal practice. Accordingly, legal reform has become an important component of the national scheme of social transformation. On the other hand, the rapid increase in litigation has unexpectedly eroded the traditional means to resolve disputes of both mediation and judicial mediation. More alarming is that judicial credibility is seriously challenged by judicial corruption and poor enforcement of judicial decisions. The increasing number of litigation-related complaints by the public, and the large number of vetoes against the working reports of the Supreme People’s Court and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate by the National People’s Congress, are two indicators of the crisis of judicial credibility. This paper is to analyze the data of litigation, legal profession, mediation, and the phenomena of judicial corruption. Based on this analysis, it suggests that, to overcome the current quandary of judicial development, further reform should not only focus on courts, but also on all functional departments that could collaborate one way or another with the judiciary, should not depend only on governmental organizations but also on NGOs in resolving disputes and social issues, and should explore and develop innovative ways of social management.     

EQUITY MEASUREMENT AND SCHOOL FINANCE LITIGATION

This article examines issues in the presentation of factual evidence in school finance litigation. It focuses specifically on statistical measures of dispersion which have been included in Berne and Steifel's framework for analyzing distributional equity. It identifies the methodological issues that must be recognized when these measures are used in litigation, and the properties/characteristics of individual measures that may lead courts to different determinations about "equity" in school finance.     

ISSUES AND MISCONCEPTIONS IN PRISONER LITIGATION: A CRITICAL VIEW*

In the past quarter-century, the number of suits filed by prisoners in federal courts has substantially increased. Critics have borrowed metaphors from ballistics or pathologv to describe this increase as an “epidemic” of “legal pollution” or an “explosion.” The causes of this “hyperlexis,” or excessive litigation, are often attributed to prisoners' attempts to retry their cases once they have lost, or to some psychological attribute of plaintiffs who view litigation as a means of striking back at their keepers. This paper examines several common conceptions of prisoner litigation. National ling data from federal district courts are used to assess the merits of each. The data provide little support for many of the conceptions of and explanations for prisoner suits. It is suggested that prisoners' use of courts may be a form of social resistance to conditions for which there is no other legitimate avenue for relief:     

LITIGATION, JUDICIAL DEFERENCE, AND POLICY CHANGE

Social scientists have reported extensively on the impact of Supreme Court decisions overturning public policy, but not on those sustaining it. This article stresses the need to study the impact of litigation, including the impact of losing lawsuits. Presenting data on the impact of San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, the article demonstrates how a losing lawsuit can produce positive policy change from the consumer's perspective. After comparing the policy aftermath of Rodriguez with that of two winning school-finance cases, I suggest that the final judicial decision may not be the most significant event in litigation stimulating policy change.     

INCOME INEQUALITY AND HOMICIDE RATES: CROSS-NATIONAL DATA AND CRIMINOLOGICAL THEORIES

Previous studies have identified but failed to explain satisfactorily the positive relationship between income inequality and homicide rates. This paper proposes an explanation based on the concept of relative deprivation, but also reviews the criminological literature in a search for other theoretically relevant variables. After assessing problems of sampling and measurement, and using a considerably larger sample than used in previous studies, multiple regression analyses reveal positive net effects of both inequality and population growth (reflecting a higher proportion of young people) on homicide rates. Further analyses show that the effects of inequality on homicide are more pronounced in more democratic nations, a finding supporting the relative deprivation explanation. Income inequality also has stronger effects in more densely populated countries, in wealthier nations, and in countries with larger internal security forces.     

FEMALE AND MALE HOMICIDE VICTIMIZATION RATES: COMPARING TRENDS AND REGRESSORS*

This study compares national female and male homicide victimization rates (HVRs) during 1930–1995. The trends are almost the same, even when separated by race, in spite of large gender differences in HVR levels. When regressing female and male HVRs on demographic, economic, social control, and other variables, the coefficients differ between the sexes only to the extent expected by chance. The important predictors relate to offenders and are independent of the type of victim; the incapacitation impact of prison populations is especially strong for all HVRs. This is consistent with others' findings that men who murder women, and even those who commit sexual and partner assaults, have criminal records nearly as bad as offenders generally. These findings have implications for several broader topics: the usefulness of data dis-aggregation, the usefulness of crime situation theories, the reasons for declining homicide rates, and strategies for reducing violence against women.     

UNSTRUCTURED SOCIALIZING AND RATES OF DELINQUENCY

This article applies an individual-level routine activities perspective to explaining rates of delinquency. The theoretical analysis also links the opportunity processes of that perspective to key themes of social disorganization theory. Multilevel analyses of 4, 358 eighth-grade students from thirty-six schools in ten cities support the central hypothesis: Time spent in unstructured socializing with peers has both individual and contextual effects that explain a large share of the variation in rates of delinquency across groups of adolescents who attend different schools. In addition, parental monitoring has a very strong contextual effect on unstructured socializing, which supports the proposed integration of routine activity and social disorganization perspectives.     

PARTNERS IN THE PROCESS: HOW ATTORNEYS PREPARE THEIR CLIENTS FOR CUSTODY EVALUATIONS AND LITIGATION

We surveyed 113 family attorneys regarding what they did to prepare their clients for child custody evaluations and litigation. Findings revealed that participants saw child custody evaluations as useful on a variety of levels and effective in settling cases. In general, participants reported using professionally acceptable procedures, appropriately advocated for their clients, and dealt with complaints in a reasonable fashion. Referrals to mental health professionals in advance of a child custody evaluation were generally made to provide support rather than for evaluation or test preparation. Work product reviews by mental health consultants were infrequent, although such reviews were seen as highly useful by those who used them. Lastly, participants reported that allegations of parental alienation and domestic violence were often used to gain leverage in custody cases. Implications for practice are discussed for both attorneys and evaluators.     

POLICE PRODUCTIVITY AND CRIME RATES: 1973-1992*

According to the Uniform Crime Reports, violent crime rates increased dramatically over the past two decades. National Crime Victimization Survey data, on the other hand, indicate that the rates of violent crime remained relatively stable or dropped during this period. Which series provides a “correct” estimate of crime-rate trends is of more than academic interest. Highly publicized statistics on crime trends influence the public's concerns about crime and the decisions of policymakers both directly through their own perceptions of crime trends and indirectly through demands by the general public to control crime. This article compares these two major series on trends in violent crime rates in the United States for the period 1973–1992, with the goal of assessing the extent to which they measure the same underlying phenomenon: fluctuations in violent crime rates. The series are related (but not strongly). My conclusion, with some reservation, is that changes in law enforcement agencies rather than changes in the rates of violent crime incidents have created the upward trend in UCR violent crime rates during the past two decades.     

SEX RATIOS AND RAPE RATES: A POWERCONTROL THEORY*

Guttentag and Secord (1983) hypothesize that sex ratios (the number of men per 100 women) affect the roles of both men and women. They suggest that although high sex ratios decrease men 3 dyadic power, when sex ratios are high men use their structural power to control women. Their theory can be combined with the routine activities approach of Cohen and Felson (1979) or with a version of the power-threat/power-competition hypothesis of Blalock (1967) to develop a power-control theory dealing with the relationship between sex ratios and rape rates: i.e., when sex ratios are high, rape rates should be relatively low. Analyses of data from the United States for the years 1962, 1967, 1972, 1977, 1982, and 1987 support this hypothesis.     

RELATIVE COHORT SIZE AND AGE-SPECIFIC CRIME RATES: AN AGE-PERIOD-RELATIVE-COHORT-SIZE MODEL*

The compositional effects of relatively large young-adult cohorts on the total rate of serious crimes is well established. The more subtle effect of relative cohort size on age-specific crime rates, suggested by Richard Easterlin, is more controversial. The literature contains no adequate test of Easterlin's hypothesis as it relates to crime. To provide an adequate test of Easterlin's theory, this study includes age-specific rates and measures of relative cohort size and controls for age and period in an age-period-relative-cohort-size model. Using arrest data from the Uniform Crime Reports (Part I crimes) for the years 1960, 1965, 1970, 1975, 1980, and 1985, the analysis provides support for Easterlin's theory for property crimes, that is, for robbery, burglary, and larceny (but not for motor vehicle theft). Though these relationships were small in comparison to those between age or period and age-specific crime rates, they were generally statistically significant and were replicated with data from 1962, 1967, 1972, 1977, 1982, and 1987. The relationships between relative cohort size and assaultive crimes provided little consistent support for Easterlin's theory.