Russia,NATO, and the "Color Revolutions"

On 12 July, while addressing people he trusted who had helped him in the elections, President Yeltsin finally said something that many people had long wanted to hear from him: Russia needed a new national idea. It may "already be needed in the next presidential elections in the year 2000," the head of state predicted, and hence its development should begin promptly, with the first results visible within a year.     

"Interdependence": The Reality,the Concept,and the Policy

During the entire postwar period, the term "interdependence" has figured repeatedly in statements by American governmental figures and in the writings of bourgeois political scientists. In the past two or three years, it has acquired a new ring. Whereas previously American expressions regarding "interdependence" applied to relationships within the framework of NATO, today they have to do with a considerably broader sphere of foreign policy relationships of the United States, including those involving the entire capitalist world and the developing countries. In a number of cases, American writers working on the "interdependence" problem have also included certain aspects of the relation between capitalist and socialist states. They undertake to analyze, from the standpoint of bourgeois political science, various aspects of "interdependence" — economic, physical-geographical (deriving from mankind's ever more intensive joint utilization of the atmosphere, the waters and floor of the world ocean, near outer space, solar and subsurface energy, etc.), military-political (having to do with the threat of destruction of world civilization should a nuclear war occur), cultural, and so on.     

Queers and Provocateurs: Hegemony, Ideology, and the "Homosexual Advance" Defense

This exploratory article relies upon a historical-interpretive approach to understanding the relationship between legal narrative and popular consciousness in particular historical moments, focusing especially on "troubled times," in which the legitimacy of a hegemonic worldview embodied in law comes under challenge from a newly ascendant ideology in the popular domain. To discern the nature of that relationship and its implications, I offer a three-pronged analysis, drawing on two original data sets. Initially, each data set is analyzed individually to elaborate the nature of, and changes in, (1) representations of homosexuals circulating in popular culture, and (2) constructions of homosexuals in defendants' narratives in "homosexual advance" homicide cases between 1946 and 2003. Findings from these two analyses are thereafter combined to explore the relationship between the two constructions of homosexuals across that time period. In combination, these three analyses provide empirical evidence that, rather than mirroring changes in popular discourse about homosexuality, the changes revealed in the defense narratives actually opposed them. I use these findings to argue that, in what Swidler (1986) has called "unsettled times," ideological pluralism is pronounced and may be discerned in the complex and sometimes counterintuitive relationships that exist within and between legal narrative and popular discourse.     

Imperialism, race, and therapeutics: the legacy of medicalizing the "colonial body"

The era of high colonialism in South Asia coincided with the period when eugenics came to dominate much of the scientific discourse in Europe and America. Such attitudes were naturally transplanted into the colonial world where medical researchers helped to establish a pathological "difference" between Europeans in India and the colonial "Other," thus creating a medical discourse dominated by racial segregated treatment regimes. With the growth of trans-national transfer of scientific knowledge, this colonial "research" began to underpin racially constructed medical practices wherever they occurred.     

Law, Religion, and "Public Health" in the Republic of Brazil

The essay evaluates the general problem that, while most modern republican constitutions follow the U.S. and French models in declaring religious freedom, absolute religious freedom is impossible and undesirable. How are religious freedoms constrained, and how much should they be? The essay evaluates the strategies by which limitations on freedoms of religion are constructed and imposed, especially the powerful isomorphism of law and science described by Boaventura de Sousa Santos. Taking the example of Afro‐Brazilian religions in relation to the Brazilian state since 1890, post‐emancipation, the essay argues that pseudo‐scientific discourses of “public health” constrained the religious practice of former slaves, thus allowing the trompel'oeil of religious freedom to continue in the new republic, even as freedoms were in fact constrained by the state.     

"Special treatment": BiDil, Tuskegee, and the logic of race

BiDil, a drug approved in 2005 by the FDA only for African Americans, was seen by many as almost reparations for the horrors of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (1932-72) where treatment for black men was denied. The logic of race, however, rather than racism, links BiDil to the past many thought it was escaping.     

Law,psychology, and the "new sciences": rethinking mental illness and dangerousness

Clinical and legal research on the meaning of mental illness and on definitions (and predictions) of dangerousness continue to offer the mental health law arena mostly disappointing results. In this article, the authors argue that much of this failure is linked to the prevailing Newtonian paradigm of cause-effect relationships, linear logic, and absolute order. In its place, the authors draw attention to the "new sciences"; that is, advances generated from quantum physics and chaos theory. To situate the analysis, the authors explore how psycholegal decision making unfolds. Specifically, the authors examine what contributions the new sciences offer society on the nature and meaning of psychiatric disorder and on the forecasting of violence. Along the way, the authors suggest how the new sciences advance the regard for citizen justice within the domain of mental health law.     

"It's the little things": women, trauma, and strategies for healing

Women recover and heal from traumatic violent experiences in many different ways. This study, which is part of the Franklin County Women and Violence Project, explores the healing experiences of 18 women who have histories of violence, substance abuse, and involvement in the mental health and/or substance abuse treatment system. Ethnographic interviews suggest that while professional intervention can be beneficial, it may not be adequate. In fact, it can be retruamatizing. The means of service delivery and treatment by individuals, service providers and others, may be more important than the actual service. Often women find that caring individuals and a safe environment yield the greatest benefit. It is not so much what people do to help, but how they do it.     

认真学习宣传贯彻新修订的律师法

新修订的《中华人民共和国律师法》已于10月28日经十届全国人大常委会第三十次会议审议通过,将于2008年6月1日起正式实施。认真做好修订后的律师法的学习、宣传、贯彻工作,是当前司法行政工作的一件大事。司法部已下发《关于学习宣传贯彻修订后的〈中华人民共和国律师法〉的意见》,要求各地组织律师管理干部和广大律师认真学习修订后的律师法,大力推进律师工作的改革和建设,实现律师事业又好又快地发展。新修订的律师法适应新时期我国律师工作改革和发展的需要,对原律师法作了较大调整、补充和修改,新增、修订条款40余条,从律师执业许可、律…     

"Business Unionism" versus "Responsible Unionism": Common Law Confusion, the American State, and the Formation of Pre-New Deal Labor Policy

The emergence of the American Federation of Labor in the 1880s and its ideology of voluntarism or "business unionism" transformed the mainstream American labor movement. Voluntarism, however, had little impact on the formation of the pre-New Deal labor policy. I suggest that members of the progressive movement developed "responsible unionism" as an alternative to "business unionism" and that it was the progressives' alternative that shaped later developments in labor policy. (1) Progressive state and federal court judges relied on the principles of agency, a fiduciary term, to make unions competent contracting parties and enforce collective trade agreements. (2) Although the AFL had long lobbied for anti-injunction legislation sup ported by an underlying ideology of voluntarism, the progressive Republican-Democratic coalition that engineered passage of the Norris-LaGuardia Anti-Injunction Act of 1932 based the legislation on their notion of "responsible unionism." These progressives interwove the principles of agency into the act. As a result, rather than withdrawing the American state from labor-management relations, the act caused unions to begin to lose their status as private, voluntary associations, thus creating the foundation for the construction of the statist regulatory apparatus, the National Labor Relations Board, during the New Deal.     

Pierre Bayle, the Rights of the Conscience, the "Remedy" of Toleration

Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) is often considered one of the staunchest defenders of toleration, especially in the domain of religion. His Commentaire philosophique , published in 1686, one year after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, argued for a broad idea of toleration, to be extended with no exceptions to all sects and religions. However, his thought can hardly be reduced to an exaltation of the "rights of the conscience," for he realized very soon that such an exaltation risks bringing forth religious fanatism, which in turn is the cause of religious wars and acts of violence. Toleration, in these conditions, is only a political remedy for the sickness of the human mind.     

Morality, Identity and "Constitutional Patriotism"

In a modern, plural society, there can be no settled agreement on the concrete legal content of a country's constitution. The idea of the constitution is nonetheless pivotal in contemporary, liberal-minded theories of political justification, such as the ones advanced by Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls. Justification in these theories depends finally on "constitutional patriotism," a consciously shared sentiment arising from an ethical assessment of their country by the country's people, according to which the country credibly pursues a certain regulative political ideal for which the constitution stands.