The Paradoxes of Race, Class, Identity, and "Passing": Enforcing the Chinese Exclusion Acts, 1882-1910

In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring the entry into the United States of all Chinese laborers. This article explores the dilemmas and contradictions associated with the enforcement of this legislation, focusing on the early years during which the most glaring dilemmas were exposed. Drawing from congressional documents, as well as unpublished letters, memoranda, and circulars of immigration officials, I argue that the difficulties encountered by enforcement personnel, and the sometimes chaotic and inconsistent nature of enforcement, were related to paradoxes associated with prevailing assumptions about the nature of race, class, and identity more generally. I then document how these same paradoxes, and the techniques employed by inspectors to deal with them, ironically facilitated aspiring immigrants'resistance to the full force of the law. This case study, with its emphasis on the contradictions implicit in the law and the dialectical quality of enforcement and resistance, may contribute to OUR understanding of the law's fundamental indeterminacy. Finally, I suggest that the focus on the everyday dilemmas faced by frontline officials may tell us more about the ordinary life of the law and its indeterminacy than the heavily scrutinized landmark cases that constitute much of the literature.     

Ignorance in Bliss: Modeling Knowledge of Rights in Marriage and Cohabitation

We live our lives against an extensive backdrop of legal rights and responsibilities, yet a growing number of studies indicates low levels of public legal literacy. In the context of opposite‐sex cohabitation and marriage law, this study employs new survey data from the United Kingdom to explore, in detail, how many and which people are ignorant of the law, and what are the nature and origins of erroneous beliefs. We find that people's beliefs about both cohabitation and marriage law are frequently wrong. They are also strikingly similar, and reflect the divergence of social attitudes from the law. Our findings are consistent with the notion that legal literacy links to salience of issue. They are also consistent with recent public legal education initiatives that affected public understanding of cohabitation law, but we argue that social attitudes and the intransigence of erroneous beliefs generally present significant challenges to such initiatives.     

Racial and Ethnic Differences in the Likelihood of Marriage: The Effect of Incarceration

Researchers have highlighted the importance of marriage when studying variation in deviance over the life course, but few studies have examined the effect that incarceration has on marriage or have considered variation by race and ethnicity. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), this study contrasts the effect of incarceration on the likelihood of marriage for White, Black, and Hispanic males. Incarceration reduced the chances of marriage for all men, but had a significantly stronger effect on the marital outcomes for Whites. Although Whites were most likely to be married overall, incarceration was associated with a 59 percent decline in the odds of marriage for Whites, and the odds of marriage decreased 30 percent for Blacks and 41 percent for Hispanics. The association was maintained even after controlling for time‐varying life‐course events and static individual‐level factors. This research has important implications for the study of the incarceration and the consequences it can have for spouses, families, and communities.     

Reentry and the Ties that Bind: An Examination of Social Ties,Employment, and Recidivism

Scholars consistently find that reentering offenders who obtain steady work and maintain social ties to family are less likely to recidivate. Some theorize that familial ties may operate through employment to influence recidivism and that such ties may also serve a moderating role. The current study employs an integrated conceptual framework in order to test hypotheses about the link between familial ties, post‐release employment, and recidivism. The findings suggest that family ties have implications for both recidivism and job attainment. In fact, the results suggest that good quality social ties may be particularly important for men with histories of frequent unemployment. The implications of these findings are discussed with regard to theory and future research on prisoner reentry and recidivism.     

Marriage change in rural India, 1921-1981.

"In the early twentieth century, marriage age of both sexes in India was unusually low, even by the standards of other Asian societies of the era. Although early marriage in the form of child marriage occurred throughout the Indian subcontinent, there were regional differences in the extent of the practice. The article examines influences on the marriage market from the early through the late twentieth century and the changes that have occurred within that time frame. Early on, the peasant marriage regime was regulated more by social and demographic factors, while subsequent changes reflected the growing importance of economics and considerable regional diversity."     

Collisions at the Intersection of Gender, Race, and Class: Enforcing the Chinese Exclusion Laws

This article explores the ramifications of the intersections of gender, race, and class ideologies for the enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Laws in the years immediately following their passage. Drawing from government documents and archival data, I argue that the notions of gender, race, and class that permeated the legislative debate contained significant incoherences and self-contradictions, and that many of the dilemmas surrounding the enforcement of the exclusion laws against Chinese women resulted from these collisions. Faced with conflicting mandates derived from, for example, racism and patriarchy, enforcement officers had to choose between equally powerful discourses. Their ad hoc and often pragmatic approach to such dilemmas contrasted sharply with a policy process that otherwise appeared to be driven by unquestioned—and unquestionable—moral mandates. In concluding, I note the implications for our understanding of the contingencies and instabilities of ideology and the legal practices of which it is part.     

Human Rights, Development, and the WTO: The Cases of Intellectual Property and Competition Policy

The World Trade Organization (WTO) has sometimes been portrayedas being at odds with the protection of human rights. This articletakes issue with this perception, both generally and with specificreference to WTO agreements/activities in the areas of intellectualproperty (IP) and competition policy. The rules and proceduresof the WTO are directly supportive of civil rights in the senseof freedom to participate in markets and freedom from arbitrarygovernmental procedures. In addition, the system contributesto development and to the realization of broader economic, social,and cultural rights, by stimulating economic growth and therebyhelping to generate the resources that are needed for the fulfilmentof such rights. The article examines various human rights andpublic interest rationales for the protection of intellectualproperty rights (IPRs). The recent amendment to the Agreementon Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)to facilitate access to medicines in the event of public healthemergencies is outlined. With respect to competition policy,such policy constitutes an important aspect of governance insuccessful market-based economies. There is a clear need forcooperative approaches to the implementation of national competitionpolicies. The appropriate scope and venue for such cooperationare a matter for further deliberation.     

非法证据:前提、认定机制及排除

分析非法证据之界定、证据非法的制度成因以及排除非法证据的相关协调机制和规范。     

Friendship, Identity, and Solidarity. An Approach to Rights in Plant Closing Cases

Abstract. My focus is on the problem of plant closings, which have become increasingly common as the deindustrialization of America has proceeded since the early 1980s. In a well‐known article, Joseph William Singer proposed that workers who sued to keep a plant open in the face of a planned closure might appropriately be regarded as possessing a reliance‐based interest in the plant that merited some protection. I seek to extend this sort of argument in two ways. In the first half of the paper, I point to the way in which “tacit obligation” emerges in friendship between persons in the absence of explicit commitments. Employers and employees are of course not as such friends. But I argue that the development of tacit obligations binding friends provides a useful analogy for understanding the growth of similar tacit obligations binding plant owners to workers and local communities. In the second half, I draw on Margaret Radin's work on property and identity to ground a related argument. I suggest that the potential contribution of plants—and the traditions and networks of relationships they help to create and sustain—to the identities of workers and communities provides reason for at least some legal protection of employee and community interests.     

Victims' Rights, Victims' Expectations, and Law Enforcement Workers' Constraints in Cases of Murder

Research on crime victims and their experiences with the criminal justice system suggests that victims' rights (e.g., victim impact statements) and victims' services (e.g., crime victims' compensation, counseling) have not significantly improved victims' satisfaction with the criminal justice system or their recovery from the crime. Thus, we appear to know little about how to satisfy and assist victims of crime. This study uses the symbolic interactionist perspective to examine victims' experiences with law enforcement workers (e.g., detectives, counselors) with a focus on people who have lost a loved one to murder ("bereaved victims"). The data come from in-depth interviews with thirty-two bereaved victims, seven law enforcement workers, and three crime victims' advocates in Union County (pseudonym). Bereaved victims define the victim role differently from law enforcement workers, creating two main points of conflict with workers: (1) a conflict over their deceased loved one's body, and (2) a conflict over the flow of information in the case. Bereaved victims' frustrations over these conflicts created problems for their recovery. Bereaved victims' efforts to see their deceased loved one's body, guide detectives' investigation, and learn information about the murder and the investigation took a back seat to detectives' interests in protecting the integrity of the investigation and building a strong case for the prosecution. Policy implications are discussed.     

Against Exclusion: Teaching Transsystemically,Learning in Community

Law and Critique - In September 2018 the University of Victoria Faculty of Law on Vancouver Island, Canada welcomed its first cohort of students to its cutting edge and innovative joint degree...     

Reproducing a Fit Citizenry: Dependency, Eugenics, and the Law of Marriage in the United States, 1860-1920

Between the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, American state legislatures enacted a series of new laws that delineated a class of citizens who were deemed ineligible to participate in the institution of marriage. Scholars have characterized this development as evidence that lawmakers had lost faith in a laissez-faire approach to nuptial governance, and thus transformed marriage into an object of public regulation. This essay argues that behind the ostensible nuptial privatism of the mid-nineteenth century lay a self-conscious policy of judicial governance. Judges invoked the language of nuptial privacy and the common law of contract strategically to advance their vision of moral and economic discipline. The new marital prohibitions thus represented, the essay argues, not the expansion of the state's police power into the previously private realm of domestic relations, but rather a critical transformation in how nuptial reformers and lawmakers understood the relationship between marriage and the well-being of the polity.
Fueled by growing concerns about pauperism, the racial character of the urban proletariat, and the collapse of the economically independent single-male-breadwinner household, the changing form of nuptial governance signaled a thoroughgoing intellectual and strategic reorientation from an understanding of marriage as forming economically and morally viable households – the fundamental units of society – to an understanding of marriage as a largely procreative institution, as the literal source of the citizenry. This reconceptualization of marriage underwrote a strategy of nuptial governance that mobilized marriage as a strategy in the state's regulation of social reproduction.     

Equal Rights vs. Special Rights: Rights Discourses,Framing, and Lesbian and Gay Antidiscrimination Policy in Washington State

This study argues that rights discourse influences heterosexual public opinion in Washington State. We tested this through a survey experiment conducted in the 2011 Washington Poll. We broke interviewees into three groups, with each group exposed to a different frame: a pro–lesbian and gay equal rights frame, an anti–lesbian and gay special rights frame, and a control or no frame. Immediately following the treatment, we asked interviewees if they agreed with a pro–lesbian and gay policy: changing state antidiscrimination law to encompass those who identify as lesbian and gay. Overall, this study concludes that a special rights frame dampens support among some while an equal rights frame has no effect. Respondents who indicated that they were against same‐sex marriage even more strongly opposed altering antidiscrimination policy to include sexual orientation when confronted with an equal rights frame than when confronted with the special rights frame or no frame at all.     

“走婚”与“女性丈夫”——中国摩梭人与尼日利亚伊博人性别关系的比较

婚姻是涉及人类两性关系的头等大事。在许多社会中,所谓婚姻,即意味着一个男人将一个女人娶到自己家里。然而,从中国摩梭人的"走婚"和尼日利亚伊博人的"女性丈夫"来看,情况却并非如此。比较这二者的性别关系,可以发现:在摩梭人和伊博人的婚姻家庭中,所嫁娶的对象完全或部分颠倒,男性仅仅是"亲生父亲",而妇女是真正的"社会父亲",体现了传统习俗的影响。     

Justice Without Borders: Human Rights Cases in U.S. Courts

In 1980 the Second Circuit Court of Appeals broke with years of legal tradition and ruled that human rights victims could sue their oppressors in federal court—even if the alleged violations occurred outside the country. This court based the extension of its authority on a provision of the 1789 Judiciary Act now referred to as the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA). ATCA cases present a unique opportunity to study judicial behavior in the face of separation of powers interests, traditions of judicial restraint, sovereign immunity defenses, and an active internationalist movement to extend human rights guarantees worldwide. Combining legal analysis with quantitative methodology, I find that U.S. federal courts are slowly accepting an internationalist approach to human rights, and that interest groups are largely driving this transformation. Sovereignty concerns and judicial ideology are not conditioning case outcomes, but party resources and separation of powers issues are.     

Group Differences in Fairness Perceptions and Decision Making in Voting Rights Cases

Participants recruited from one Historically Black University (HBU) and two predominantly White higher-education institutions evaluated and decided simulated voting rights case summaries in which the plaintiff was either a racially-defined (African American) or a nonracially-defined (farmers) minority group. Contrary to social identity and social justice findings of an in-group bias, the present study showed greater support at all institutions for the voting rights of the African Americans than for the rural farmers, and the greatest support for both minority groups was found at the HBU. Perceived evidence strength was a better predictor of decisions than perceived unfairness, and both of these predictor variables completely mediated the effects of institution-type and involvement of a racially-defined group on decisions.     

Incarceration, Health, and Racial Disparities in Health

This article addresses two basic questions. First, it examines whether incarceration has a lasting impact on health functioning. Second, because blacks are more likely than whites to be exposed to the negative effects of the penal system—including fractured social bonds, reduced labor market prospects, and high levels of infectious disease—it considers whether the penal system contributes to racial health disparities. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and both regression and propensity matching estimators, the article empirically demonstrates a significant relationship between incarceration and later health status. More specifically, incarceration exerts lasting effects on midlife health functioning. In addition, this analysis finds that, due primarily to disproportionate rates of incarceration, the penal system plays a role in perpetuating racial differences in midlife physical health functioning.     

Spreading Influence Through Weak Ties: Cosponsorship,Legislative Networks,and Bill Success in Fragmented Congresses

Literature on legislative success tends to focus on independent variables of which lawmakers have scarce control. This article analyzes instead how legislators’ strategies affect their success in Congress. I posit that while weak ties between congresspeople are the most useful in increasing success in the chamber of origin under majoritarian settings, they do not raise the likelihood of bill approval in the second chamber or in plurality‐led legislatures. Building on a data set that contains all bills proposed to the Argentine Congress between 1983 and 2007, results support these context‐dependence hypotheses. I then use data from the Uruguayan Congress (1995–2010) to explore how the argument plays out in a Latin American legislature with weaker gatekeeping rules (i.e., an “open sky” legislature). Findings help gain insight into the strategies used in environments different from that of the widely studied U.S. Congress.     

Laws of Inclusion and Exclusion: Nomos,Nationalism and the Other

This article explores how and why contemporary nationalist ‘defence leagues’ in Australia and the UK invoke fantasies of law. I argue these fantasies articulate with Carl Schmitt’s theory of ‘nomos’, which holds that law functions as a spatial order of reason that both produces and is produced by land qua the territory of the nation. To elucidate the ideological function of law for defence leagues, I outline a theory of law as it relates to (political) subjectivity. Drawing on the work of Foucault, Agamben and Brown, I demonstrate how subjects form and are formed by historically contingent relationships to law in the contemporary neo-liberal moment. Turning to Lacan, I show how nationalistic invocations of law provide nationalists with a fantasy that the nation’s law represents them and holds them together (as the nation itself). Similarly, I argue that nationalists imagine that the other has their own law as well, which not only corresponds to the other, but functions as a legible index of the other’s otherness—a metonym for the threatening uncertainty and radical difference that the other represents. Drawing on Lacan’s concept of the big Other, I ultimately argue that nationalists aggressively (re)assert law not only to defend the nation, but to ensure their own symbolic and ontological security therein.