A comparison of student legal issues perceptions held by chief student and chief legal affairs officers: a study of metropolitan universities in the US

This study explored the similarities and differences of the perceptions held by chief legal and chief student affairs officers with regard to student legal issues. The study follows an earlier project published by Education and the Law (9(1), pp. 41‐49) which solely examined the perceptions of chief legal affairs officers. In the present study, there was a significant difference in the perceptions of chief student affairs and chief legal affairs officers with regard to which student legal issues will be litigated in the next 10 years. Chief student affairs and chief legal affairs officers prepare for student legal issues in a very similar fashion. Both officers make use of legal conferences, student affairs conferences, continuing education, and professional literature. There appears to be many chief student affairs officers who attend legal conferences and chief legal affairs officers who attend student affairs conferences in order to better prepare for future student legal issues.     

Perceptions of Police Among Hispanic Immigrants of Mexican Origin in the Southeast United States

Studies have repeatedly shown that members of minority groups are likely to hold less favorable perceptions of the police than their white counterparts. Relying on a unique sample of nearly 70 Hispanic immigrants, this study expands current knowledge on correlates of Hispanics’ perceptions of police. Overall, findings of this study indicate Hispanic immigrants of Mexican descent generally hold favorable views of the police. Results also suggest, however, that those who came to the US through illegal channels are significantly less likely to hold positive perceptions of police than those who relocated through legal channels. Furthermore, a preliminary analysis to assess the level of understanding that Hispanic immigrants have of police, including their role and function in American society, was conducted. Findings indicate there is a high level of misunderstanding concerning police services among this population. Based on our results, we discuss policy implications and future directions for research.     

An arresting experiment: domestic violence victim experiences and perceptions

This study looks at the experiences and perceptions that domestic violence victims reported with Mills's power model. The victims' partners were the primary research participants in an arrest experiment. The following were empirically examined: the occurrence of violence following suspect arrest, victim perceptions of personal and legal power, victim satisfaction with the police, and victim perceptions of safety following legal intervention. Race and two victim resource measures (i.e., employment status and income advantage) explained variance in perceptions of independence. A police empowerment scale was used to measure legal power. It was found that arrest affected the probability of re-occurring domestic violence. Suspect arrest and the victim's perceptions of legal power were related to perceptions of safety following police intervention. The study concludes with some implications for domestic violence research, programs, and perspectives.     

Predicting perceptions of crime seriousness among Native American Indians: a research note

Strongly held cultural values may lead to development of pro-social behaviors and subsequently values against committing crime among people belonging to targeted racial or ethnic groups. In this study, the author examines measures of Native American Indian cultural values and measures of collective efficacy to determine which set of values best predict perceptions of crime seriousness from within a population of Native American Indians. The author uses data collected from 312 Indians and 355 non-Indians during the Southern Ute Indian Community Safety Survey to determine which set of values are more closely aligned with perceptions of crime seriousness. This study found that those who held stronger Native American Indian cultural values also had stronger perceptions of crime seriousness. In the past, little scientific work has been done to associate specific cultural values to those held by cultural groups other than Euro-Americans. Findings from this work suggest that strengthening cultural values specific to a targeted group may be a promising method in the effort to reduce victimization among minority group members if said members view crime as serious and report it as such.     

Citizens’ perceptions of the courts: The impact of race, gender, and recent experience

This study examined the influences of race, gender, and recent court experience on citizens’ perceptions of the courts in their communities. Using national survey data collected in 2000, this research assessed variation in perceptions of the courts along four dimensions: differential treatment, fair procedure and outcome, concern and respect, and overall evaluation. The results showed that racial minorities, including Blacks and Latinos, were more likely than Whites to have negative attitudes toward the courts. While race is generally a better predictor than gender, the interaction between gender and race is important in understanding citizen’s perceptions of the courts. Citizens who have recent personal contact with the courts tend to rate the courts less favorable than those who have no recent contact. Citizens’ opinions of the police and equal opportunity are also significantly related to their perceptions of the courts. Implications for policy and future research are discussed.     

Brazilian Adolescents’ Just World Beliefs and Its Relationships with School Fairness,Student Conduct,and Legal Authorities

Prior research has demonstrated that adolescence is a sensitive period to develop their belief in a just world (BJW), both general and personal. Research has found significant relationships between BJW, perceptions of school fairness, student conduct, and perceptions of legal authorities. However, no research has combined these constructs in one model to get a broader picture of how adolescents construct their worldview of fairness and how this influences their compliance with authorities. This study analyzed 475 Brazilian adolescents across three schools. A partially mediated and a mediated model were tested to determine if students’ BJW relate directly or indirectly to student conduct and perceptions of legal authorities through school fairness. The partially mediated model best fit the data. Personal BJW predicted students’ perceptions of the school fairness, which predicted student conduct. General BJW and school fairness predicted adolescents’ perceptions of legal authorities. Perceptions of school fairness are influenced by Personal BJW and are predictive of students’ conduct and opinions of legal authorities. By analyzing multiple constructs simultaneously, this study provides a picture of how these overlapping conceptualizations of justice interact. Students who do not believe their school is fair are less likely to respect and abide by the rules and are more likely to also expect unfair treatment from law enforcement and judicial officials. This study points to the importance of students’ perceptions of justice at school and highlights the far-reaching implications of students who do not perceive or expect justice in their lives.     

Sanctioning corporate crime: How do business executives and the public compare?

Previous literature on attitudes toward the punishment or seriousness of criminal behavior has largely neglected to focus systematically upon five issues: (1) public perceptions of corporate illegality rather than perceptions of street crime or other forms of white-collar lawlessness; (2) how evaluations are conditioned by the degree of culpability and harm an offense involves; (3) the circumstances under which citizens will support the use of legal sanctions against an individual executive as opposed to a corporate entity; (4) the public's willingness to support criminal as opposed to civil intervention into various kinds of illegal corporate activities; and (5) how business executives' attitudes toward corporate legal sanctioning compare to those held by the general public. Through a survey of residents and business executives in a midwestern metropolitan area, an attempt was made to shed light on these issues. The analysis revealed a pervasive willingness among the sample to embrace the use of civil sanctions against corporations regardless of the circumstances surrounding the conduct being rated. By contrast, advocacy of civil remedies against executives and criminal penalties against either the corporation or its executives was found to vary considerably according to the culpability and harm manifested by a given illegal act. Also, public support for sanctioning corporate behavior was consistently higher than the support evidenced by executives, especially where the sanctions were directed at individual corporate managers.     

Fatal accidents and blood ethanol levels in adolescents and adults. The Wayne County experience, 1978-1988

The files of 874 fatal traumatic accident victims, aged 12-25 years, examined at the Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office during the period 1978-1988 were reviewed. Postmortem blood alcohol results of individuals who died after less than 15 min of hospitalization were utilized to approximate alcohol levels at the time of the fatal injury. Relationships between types of accidents, sex, age, race, and time of accident were examined. White victims were far more likely to have been drinking than blacks, and the data indicated that underaged drinkers were involved in fatal accidents at lower levels of blood alcohol than their counterparts of legal drinking age. Consistent racial differences in average alcohol levels were not observed, however. Unlike female and black victims, who much less frequently tested positive for alcohol when underage, white male victims 16-21 years of age were just as likely to have been drinking as those aged 21-25. The results of the study show that postmortem blood alcohol level can be used to identify differences in alcohol consumption among groups of accident victims in a major metropolitan area.     

Expectancy violation and perceptions of rape victim credibility

Purpose. Rape victims have been found to have a heightened risk of secondary victimization in the legal system through biased perceptions of their credibility. In this study, participants observed a video of a rape victim reporting the crime and evaluated her credibility, to establish the influence of victim emotional expressiveness on evaluations of victim credibility. Methods. The nonverbal (eye‐contact, crying) and paralinguistic (tone of voice) behaviour of the rape victim was manipulated such that the emotional presentation viewed by observers was either expressive, or not expressive. One hundred and thirty seven participants were randomly allocated to observe a videotape of either an expressive or a non‐expressive victim. Participants’ specific expectations about the emotional expressiveness of rape victims in general were also measured. Results. Results revealed no significant main effect of emotional expressiveness on perceptions of credibility. However, among participants with a strong expectation of emotional expressiveness, a rape victim who was emotionally expressive was perceived to be significantly more credible than a victim who was not emotionally expressive. Conclusions. It appears to be expectancy violation rather than emotional expressiveness per se that biases observers’ perceptions of rape victim credibility.     

News media reporting on civil litigation and its influence on civil justice decision making

The news media have the potential to act as a powerful influence on the civil litigation system, influencing decision making in particular cases and on the system more generally as media reports influence the decision making of various participants in the system. This paper reviews the research that has examined the relationship between news media reporting and civil litigation and proposes a framework that integrates this work and provides guidance for future research efforts. Specifically, we discuss the nature of media reporting on civil litigation, perceptions of the civil litigation system held by the public and legal actors, and the potential influence of news reporting about civil litigation on the decision making of jurors, judges, civil litigants, and policymakers. Overall, the research suggests that news reporting of civil litigation presents a systematically distorted picture of civil litigation and that this reporting can influence perceptions and outcomes of civil litigation in various ways. However, there are many gaps in the existing research that need to be filled. The proposed organizational scheme helps to identify ways that future research can provide links between the findings of existing research and to identify ways in which this research can be extended to new areas.     

CYNICAL STREETS: NEIGHBORHOOD SOCIAL PROCESSES AND PERCEPTIONS OF CRIMINAL INJUSTICE*

Studies have found that African Americans are more likely to perceive racial biases in the criminal justice system than are those from other racial groups. There is a limited understanding of how neighborhood social processes affect variation in these perceptions. This study formulates a series of hypotheses focused on whether perceived racial biases in the criminal justice system or perceptions of injustice vary as a function of levels of moral and legal cynicism as well as of adverse police–citizen encounters. These hypotheses are tested with multilevel regression models applied to data from a sample of 689 African Americans located in 39 neighborhoods. Findings from the regression models indicate that the positive association between structural disadvantage and perceptions of injustice is accounted for by moral and legal cynicism. Furthermore, adverse police encounters significantly increase perceptions of injustice; controlling for these encounters reduces the strength of the association between cynicism and injustice perceptions. Finally, the findings reveal that cynicism intensifies the association between adverse police encounters and perceptions of criminal injustice. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for research regarding perceived biases in the criminal justice system and neighborhood social processes.     

When Both Sides are Mistaken: Layperson and Legal Professionals’ Misconceptions of Canadian Suspects’ Legal Rights Upon Arrest

Canadian criminal suspects have notably limited access to legal counsel upon arrest compared to suspects in the U.S. Additionally, prior research has shown significant misunderstanding of police warnings informing suspects of their rights upon arrest. This paper presents three studies on Canadians’ comprehension of criminal suspects’ rights upon arrest, with a focus on the right to counsel. Study 1 (N=80) and Study 2 (N=377) examined Canadian layperson’s comprehension, knowledge, and perceptions of legal rights upon arrest. In turn, Study 3 (N=78) investigated Canadian legal professionals’ perceptions of laypersons’ knowledge of those rights. Results from these three studies indicated there is substantial confusion about the right to counsel for Canadian criminal suspects. These results also support previous research demonstrating problems with comprehension of Canadian police cautions. Taken together, the findings of the present research pose significant concern for an increased risk of false confessions from Canadian suspects who enter an interrogation with limited knowledge and understanding of their legal right to counsel.     

中国民法典的三个创新

新中国第一部以法典命名的法律终于颁布施行了.建国70多年以来,民法典先后经历了五次的起草编纂,这一次我们终于把我国这么多年来现行的民商事法律法规编纂成一部法典.民法典在编纂上既没有采取德国五编制或法国三编制,而是采取了中国特色的七编制,单独设立了人格权编、侵权责任编,摈弃债法总则.民法典内容上的创新也不少.民事主体采用...     

AN EVALUATION OF SUPERVISED ACCESS III

Although supervised access has become a more frequently used option within the custody and access domain over the last 10 years, no empirical literature has examined supervised access from the standpoint of its effect on the legal system. As part of a large-scale evaluation of Ontorio's Supervised Access Pilot Project, the present study sought the perceptions of the legal community and the courts regarding supervised access centers. A total of 14 lawyers and 13 judges participated in semistructured telephone interviews concerning supervised access cases in general, the function and impact of the supervised access program in their community, and their satisfaction with and recommendations regarding the center. Both lawyers and judges expressed high levels of satisfaction with the centers and believed that their availability resulted in savings to the legal system and reductions in hostility and conflict between parents. Implications and limitations of the study are discussed.     

Official standards versus actual criteria in bond dispositions

The setting of bond in a first appearance court in one southeastern judicial district was examined to determine its relationship with official standards based on the recommendations of the American Bar Association advisory committee on standards for criminal justice and the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals. Eighteen measures of five different recommended standards were considered. Only seriousness of charge showed apparent strength in its relationship with bond. The authors suggest a “facility hypothesis” (that court officials gravitated toward factors such as seriousness of charge) that may be readily processed and understood within constraints of time and organization. As added support for this hypothesis, defendants' demeanor in court is also shown to be significantly related to bond in the present study. These legal and personal criteria may be more identified as indicators of defendants' culpability than many other considerations recommended by the study commissions. Use of other official recommendations may require changes in the concepts of defendants held by court personnel or drastic changes in the organization of first appearance in court.     

Community Members’ Perceptions of the CSI Effect

The CSI Effect is the notion that crime show viewing influences jurors to have unrealistic expectations of forensic evidence, which then affects their trial decisions. Analyses of popular media shows that the media portrays the effect as a real problem, and research surveying the legal community indicates that they believe the CSI Effect exists and may change their investigation and trial strategies accordingly. The present study expanded on this research by surveying community members regarding their perceptions of the CSI Effect. Community members reported their general television and crime show viewing behaviors, and we examined this in relation to their knowledge construction of the CSI Effect. Findings indicate that overall, the majority of community members did not have knowledge of the CSI effect, but those who did perceive it as an unrealistic expectation of evidence. When provided with a definition of the CSI Effect, people generally believed it exists. Additionally, crime show viewing and participant’s race influenced people’s perceptions of the CSI effect. Limitations of this study and directions for future research are also discussed.     

Do a Law’s Policy Implications Affect Beliefs About Its Constitutionality? An Experimental Test

Although a substantial empirical literature has found associations between judges' political orientation and their judicial decisions, the nature of the relationship between policy preferences and constitutional reasoning remains unclear. In this experimental study, law students were asked to determine the constitutionality of a hypothetical law, where the policy implications of the law were manipulated while holding all legal evidence constant. The data indicate that, even with an incentive to select the ruling best supported by the legal evidence, liberal participants were more likely to overturn laws that decreased taxes than laws that increased taxes. The opposite pattern held for conservatives. The experimental manipulation significantly affected even those participants who believed their policy preferences had no influence on their constitutional decisions.     

Victims' perceptions of police response to domestic violence incidents

This study examined the nature of police response to domestic violence incidents with a focus on the identification of areas of police intervention that female victims of domestic abuse find “most” helpful and “least” helpful. The first part of the study was based on the analysis of a random sample of incident reports of domestic abuse cases recorded in 2000 and 2001. These reports were examined to obtain information about the characteristics of domestic abuse victims and summary information about the incidents of domestic abuse offenses. The second stage of the research study involved a telephone survey conducted with a random sample of fifty female domestic abuse victims who called the police. The study examined female victims' perceptions of how the police responded to the domestic abuse incidents, how helpful or not so helpful victims found the police to be when they responded to their calls, and how their cases were handled by the legal system.