The Legal Context of School Violence: The Effectiveness of Federal, State, and Local Law Enforcement Efforts to Reduce Gun Violence in Schools

In the wake of recent school shootings, communities and legislatures are searching for law enforcement solutions to the perceived epidemic of school violence. A variety of legal measures have been debated and proposed. These include: the enactment of tougher gun control laws and more vigorous federal and local enforcement of existing gun control laws; the enactment of laws imposing civil or criminal liability on parents for their children's violent behavior; the establishment of specialized courts and prosecution strategies for handling juveniles who are charged with weapons offenses; stricter enforcement of school disciplinary codes; reform of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to make it easier to expel students for weapons violations; and greater use of alternative schools as placements for students who are charged with weapons violations.
  This article provides a legal and empirical analysis of proposed legislation in these areas as informed by social science research on the patterns of school violence, gun acquisition by juveniles, and the effectiveness of various laws and law enforcement measures. It proposes and discusses recommendations for legal reform. While efforts to reduce school violence will be most effective at the state and local levels, the United States federal government has an important role to play, particularly in federal‐state partnerships aimed at disrupting illegal gun markets, and through the formulation of national standards and guidelines. These standards and guidelines are for the enforcement of existing laws; inter‐agency law enforcement cooperation and information‐sharing (particularly using computer‐based analysis); effective school discipline and alternative educational settings for disruptive youth; and psycho‐educational interventions designed to detect and prevent school violence in the first place.     

论依法执政与政治文明

依法执政从产生的那一天起 ,就与政治文明结下了不解之缘 ,它是人类政治文明进步的产物 ,是现代政治文明的重要标志 ,是现代政治文明建设的客观要求。中国共产党与时俱进 ,在社会主义政治文明建设中实行依法执政。共产党依法执政实质上是人民当家作主 ,它以最广大人民的根本利益为依归 ,坚持“党总揽全局、协调各方”原则 ,因而是现代政治文明的高级形态     

国家治理体系现代化与行政法——中国行政法学研究会2014年年会综述

<正>2014年8月22—24日,由中国行政法学研究会主办、郑州大学法学院承办的中国行政法学研究会2014年年会在河南郑州召开。本届年会共收到180余篇参会论文,来自全国人大法工委、国务院法制办、最高人民法院、北京大学、中国政法大学等单位的300余位专家学者参加了此次盛会。本次年会的主题是"国家治理体系现代化与行政法",为期两天的会议分为开幕式、大会主旨报告、会议研讨、专题评述、闭幕式五个阶段,与会代表就行政体制改革与行政组织法的完善、行政审     

The (Heterosexual) Regendering of a Modern State: Criminalizing and Implementing Domestic Violence Law in Trinidad

This paper investigates one example of a process with global implications that I describe as the "regendering" of the state. Regendering refers to the process of bringing to public and legal attention categories and activities that were formerly without name but that constituted harm to women, denied them rights, silenced them, or limited their capacity to engage in actions available to men. I examine the regendering of the Trinidadian state by focusing on one of its most salient examples, the Domestic Violence Act. I identify first the coalition of forces and events that brought the subject of violence against women to lawmakers' attention and made possible the first Domestic Violence Act in the English-speaking Caribbean. I then investigate the interplay between the global discourse about domestic violence law-the passage of which has become an important symbol of the "modern" state-and local concerns about justice, gender, and family. Finally, I consider problems in the implementation of domestic violence law.     

Taking the Law Into Our Own Hands: Structured Sentencing, Fear of Violence, and Citizen Initiatives in Washington State

This paper examines the impact of citizen initiatives on Washington State's system of structured sentencing. Criminal justice sentencing guidelines were implemented in Washington's juvenile court system in 1978 and in its adult felony courts in 1984. In the twenty years since, both systems have experienced significant changes, many of which impact judicial and administrative discretion. Early modifications to the guidelines were driven by legislative and administrative concerns (budgeting, prison population management). More recent changes have been driven by citizen initiatives fostered as a response to public fear of crime and violence. Increasingly, the public has rejected the advice and management of adult sentencing guidelines by criminal justice professionals, and taken a direct hand through the initiative process in setting the limits of judicial and administrative discretion. As a result, structured sentencing has become more complicated and less internally consistent. It remains unclear whether this is the inevitable price of growth in single issue politics and more direct public involvement in the determination of sentencing policy     

社会、国家与法——从法的视角思考国家回归社会问题

社会与国家在经历了曲折的合一与分离的往返运动之后 ,国家最终要溶于社会之中而实现向社会的回归。本文讨论了在具有长期专制主义传统的中国 ,法在促进国家不断回归社会中的作用 ,指出法是国家回归社会的桥梁 ,法必须也能够成为制约国家、特别是政府 (行政 )权力的重要力量。通过对权力的制约 ,使国家权力逐渐向社会回归 ,最终实现国家溶于社会的伟大目标。     

The Oppressed, the Suspect, and the Citizen: Subjectivity in Competing Accounts of Political Violence

By juxtaposing religious, legal, and victims'accounts of political violence, this essay identifies and critiques assumptions about agency, the individual, and the smte that derive from liberal theory and that underlie U.S. asylum taw. In the United States, asylum is available to aliens whose gooernments fail to protect them from persecution on the basis of their race, religion, political opinion, nationality, or social group membership. Salvadoran and Guatemalan immigrants have challenged this definition of persecution with their two-decade-long struggle for asylum in the United States. During the 1980s, U.S. religious advocates and solidarity workers took legal action on behalf of what they characterized as victims of oppression in Central America. The asylum claims narrated by the beneficiaries of these legal efforts suggest that repessiwe pactices rendered entire populations politically suspect. To prevail in immigration court, however, victims had to prove that they were individually targeted because of being somehow "different" from the population at large. In other words, to obtain asylum, persecution victims had to explain how and why their actions had placed them at risk, even though persecution obscured the reasons that particular individuals were targeted and thus rendered all politically suspect.     

法治国家进程中的政党法制

2013年中共“党内立法法”①的颁布回应了“打造制度之笼”的法治建设要求,更加明确了依法治党原则在法治国家体系内的地位.中共十八届四中全会亦指出依法治党是法治中国的有机组成部分.缺乏与国法体系相协调一致的党法体系,不仅党的自身治理无法规范化和程序化,国法体系在既定宪法架构下亦不可能自足而有效发展.党内立法自建党之初即已开始,但依法治党主要是伴随依法治国而产生,是整个国家法治转型发展到一定程度的必然要求.“党内立法法”对2000年《立法法》的原理与制度多有模仿,但也具有自身个性,在局部制度建构上尚存欠缺.“党内立法法”从“立法”和“备案审查”两端实施法规体系质量管理,具有顶层设计上的科学性.党在新时期的规范治理要充分理解并发挥“党内立法法”中的新原则,同时注重通过关键领域制度进取空间的先行先试积累治理经验,规范党的自身权力并反哺国家治理体系与治理能力的现代化.     

Violence in Fascist Criminal Law Discourse: War, Repression and Anti-Democracy

This article constructs a critical historical, political and theoretical analysis of the essence of Fascist criminal law discourse in terms of the violence that shaped and characterised it. The article examines the significance of violence in key declarations about the role and purpose of criminal law by Alfredo Rocco, Fascist Minister of Justice and leading ideologue, in his principal speech on the final draft of the 1930 Italian Penal Code. It is grounded on the premise that criminal law is particularly significant for understanding the relationship between State power and individuals, and so what was distinctive about Fascist thinking in this regard. The article analyses Rocco’s declarations as a discourse in order to highlight their contextual foundations, construction and ideological connections. It argues that the core theme of that discourse is violence, which has three principal dimensions: a close historical and rhetorical connection with war, a focus on repressive and intimidatory force, and a paramount concern with subordinating individuals to State interests. The article then uses this analysis to develop a theoretical reading of the nexus between criminal law and violence in Fascism, in terms of its foundations and reversal of ends and means. The article thus provides an original perspective on Fascism and criminal law, which it argues is important for critical engagement with criminal law discourse in our democracies today.     

Law,the State,and the Dialectics of State Crime

Drawing on material from a study of civil society and state crime in six countries, this article reflects on two themes from Chambliss’s work: the debate between state-centred and more pluralistic views of law, and the “dialectical” approach to the analysis of state crime. It argues for a more pluralistic approach to law than Chambliss and Seidman adopted in Law Order and Power, along with a broader approach to the definition of state crime as a form of deviant behaviour. Case studies from the civil society research illustrate how the strategies adopted by organizations challenging state practices can be understood in terms of an interplay between different forms of law. With some qualifications, we support Chambliss’s dialectical approach, and attempt to clarify just what the term “dialectical” means. Finally we bring together the two strands of the argument to propose an approach to state crime founded on “dialectical legal pluralism”.     

Law and Its Rhetoric of Violence

This article explores the manner in which politico-legal language makes use of metaphors of violence and destruction in order to describe state/legal functions and actions. It argues that although such use of a militaristic hyperbole is generally regarded as normal and appropriate, it is in fact harmful in the way that it presents complex and specific problems as being simple and abstract. From a semiotic point of view, and using the work of Roland Barthes, law is regarded as a system of signs and ‘combative’ legal language can be seen as ideological manipulation through the technique of so-called second-level signification (myth). Although it is conceded that law, similar to all other interpretive systems, cannot avoid the use of metaphoric language, it is argued that we should resist regarding legal language as neutral and ‘natural’ and that we should rather retain the memory of legal concepts and categories as historical, man-made, and therefore always open to revision.     

Contradictions, Law, and State Socialism

The relationship of law to antagonisms and contradictions within state socialism is explored from a Weberian and a Marxian perspective. Examining legislation, court decision making, legal control of economic behavior, and law enforcement reveals contradictions between (I) a radical participatory ideology versus muted or extinct civil society; (2) the ideology of comprehensive planning versus the impotence of law; (3) strategies aiming at total control of public life versus the emergence of a niche society outside the reach of the state; (4) regulatory norms versus the functional necessity of norm-breaking behavior; (5) reliance on a revolutionary sense of justice versus the cultivation of "doublethought"; (6) a program of total control of economic behavior versus the emergence of deviant, even criminal, forms of organization to fulfill functionally necessary but ideologically unapproved economic tasks; and finally, (7) two distinct practices of law, responsive or postliberal versus repressive. Yet, contradictions typically did not lead through conflict to subsequent reform during the state socialist era, as conflicts were repressed. When reforms were attempted, they furthered conflict and system breakdown.