Empathy and Fairness: Psychological Mechanisms for Eliciting and Maintaining Prosociality and Cooperation in Primates

In the past, prosociality has been considered a hallmark of humans; however, recently, accumulating data have empirically revealed that non-human animals also show prosocial behavior. In situations in which animals cannot predict return benefits, prosocial behavior is probably driven by other-regarding motivation. A sense of fairness and empathy continue to draw attention as the most plausible candidates for the psychological mechanisms underlying such prosocial behavior. In this article, we first introduce comparative studies on prosocial behavior in non-human primates and discuss similarities and differences between humans and non-human primates. Then, we discuss the role of a sense of fairness and empathy. In this paper, we hypothesize that empathy may promote prosocial behavior, whereas a sense of fairness may play a role as a stabilizer, but not as a promoter of prosocial behavior in non-human animals. We further hypothesize that prosocial behavior motivated by sympathetic concerns can survive only with a sense of fairness, the inhibitory system for unnecessarily excessive expression of prosocial behavior. Without a sense of fairness, empathic animals might be exploited by free-riders, which might lead to the extinction of cooperation. Therefore, the interplay of a sense of fairness and empathy are both important to maintaining prosocial behavior and cooperation. This hypothesis seems to be supported by comparative studies with non-human primates and also by neural studies with humans.     

Male and female reasoning biases and offending behavior

Although the majority of the general population decides not to offend, a significant proportion decides otherwise. The research presented in this article explores whether offenders reason in manners that are comparable with a non-offender population, or if their decision to offend may be a consequence of inappropriate reasoning strategies. Psychologists have observed systematic deviations from logical predictions of reasoning behavior on a variety of tasks and that content specific information can have marked effects on reasoning behavior. Established reasoning tasks were adapted for use in a crime specific context to examine whether such biases were apparent in an offender population. Moreover, given a paucity of research into gender differences, the research conducted balanced for gender in a methodologically rigorous design. Data suggested that reasoning biases found with non-offender populations extended to an offender population and some interactions by gender and by offender group were noted. Implications of the results are discussed with suggestions on how the research may be extended and implications for policy.     

Unmarried Cohabitation and Parenthood in Britain and Europe

This paper focuses on cohabitation and unmarried parenthood across a range of European nations. It includes a brief outline of the history of cohabitation, reviews recent trends in cohabitation and unmarried parenthood, compares the stability of marital and cohabiting unions, examines the extent to which cohabiting couples are regarded as families, and the final sections include a review of the policy responses to date, as well as a discussion of the impetuses that may lie behind the rise in cohabitation and unmarried parenthood.     

Commercial and company law and sustainable development

This paper reviews key areas of commercial and company law that are relevant to sustainable development. It includes an overview of international and regional frameworks, and examines good practice in national laws in the specific areas of company law, securities law and corporate insolvency. It does so with a view to providing conclusions and recommendations that represent a starting point for Commonwealth member countries when engaging with law reform and strengthening in the area of commercial law. The recommendations aim, in particular, at supporting law reform that enables commercial law frameworks to make a clear contribution to attainment of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.     

Derrida and the Philosophy of Law and Justice

Readings of Derrida’s work on law and justice have tended to stress the distinction between them. This stress is complicated by Derrida’s own claim that it is not ‘a true distinction’. In this essay I argue that ordinary experiences of the inadequacy of existing laws do indeed imply a claim about what would be more just, but that this claim only makes sense insofar as one can appeal to another more adequate law (whether the projection of a new law or an existing ‘higher’ law). Exploring how Derrida negotiates a subtle path between classical Platonism and classical conventionalism about justice, the attempt is made to take seriously Derrida’s aim to affirm the idea of a ‘mystical’ foundation of the authority of laws by taking ‘the use of the word “mystical” in what I venture to call a rather Wittgensteinian direction’.     

法律行为与公序良俗

法律行为的原因、内容、条件、负担以及当事人的动机等因素违反公序良俗时,不仅各自的表现样态存在区别,对法律行为无效性的影响也不相同。法律行为的原因或内容违反公序良俗的,法律行为全部或部分无效。停止条件违反公序良俗的,法律行为全部无效;解除条件违反公序良俗的,原则上仅解除条件无效。慷慨行为中的负担违反公序良俗的,仅负担本身无效。多方法律行为当事人的共同动机或者单方法律行为当事人的动机违反公序良俗的,法律行为全部无效。我国在编纂民法典时,应当就法律行为的内容、条件、负担和当事人的动机违反公序良俗的情况及其相应的法律效果分别加以规定。     

Crime Volume and Law and Order Culture

The literature on public opinion about crime and justice has neglected the exploration of macro‐ or community‐level influences on individual‐level attitudes. A key macrofactor that may be related to individual level attitudes is the volume of violent crime. High crime rates can facilitate the development of a culture of “law and order,” a response that may be a practical or instrumental attempt to control crime. The present paper tests the hypothesis that persons residing in nations marked by a high volume of crime will be more likely to adhere to elements of a law and order culture. It employs data from the International Social Science Program (N = 15,024). Controls are taken from major theoretical perspectives on public opinion about crime as well as demographic factors. The results from a hierarchical linear model support the hypothesis that individuals residing in nations with high crime rates are more likely than others to support law and order ideologies. The findings extend the support for this relationship from research based on the US alone to other industrialized societies.     

Implementing and evaluating crime prevention and control programs and policies

The history of crime prevention and control efforts in the United States has demonstrated little progressive improvement in our ability to deter crime. The major obstacles to implementing effective interventions and policies have been a weak scientific knowledge base about how to prevent crime, the research community's inability to effectively disseminate what is known about the causes of crime and to translate this knowledge into operational programs and policies, and a resistance on the part of practitioners and policy makers to evaluate programs and policies and to use this information in the development of new programs and policies. In the last decade, there have been major advances in our understanding about the causes of crime and we have now demonstrated the effectiveness of selected prevention programs. But there is little evidence that this scientific knowledge is informing current practice or policy. Problems in the dissemination of this information and the resistance to utilizing it remain. These problems are discussed and suggestions are made for addressing them. Our knowledge base remains modest, but it is now sufficient to inform policy and practice. The research community must work to do a better job of disseminating this information and overcoming the resistance to utilizing it before we will be successful in implementing effective crime prevention programs and policies. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Jurisprudence and Communication: Secular and Religious

In considering Van Schooten’s study of the Eric O. case (s.1), I ask whether the different approaches taken by the two different “legal institutions”—the prosecuting authorities on the one hand, the courts on the other—are reflective of different images of warfare (a semantic difference) or of the different images each group holds of its own role (a pragmatic difference). If we consider these two “legal institutions” as distinct semiotic groups (s.2), is there an inevitable “communication deficit” (Van Schooten) between them (and the public) and how does this relate to the Hartian account of such a “crisis in communication” (s.3)? I agree with Van Schooten about the role of underlying images in the construction of legal sense, and relate this to the issue of intuitional judgment, both in and outside the law (s.4). I then turn to comparable issues which arise in my other research area, Jewish law, which reflects quite different ideological premises (s.5), reviewing the original (biblical) conception of the (intuitive) role and functions of judges (s.5A), decision-making, justification and consequentialist ethics in postbiblical Jewish law (s.5B), and the conclusions drawn, not least for the pragmatics of communication, in a recent research study on the wife’s rights in divorce. Paradoxically, I argue (s.5C), that the system rests at base on trust rather than objective truth. But trust, too, is a form of meaning, and susceptible to semiotic analysis. I suggest, in conclusion (s.6), that this is an issue which should be treated more seriously in the theory of secular law and legal communication.     

General and maladaptive traits and anger in a combined forensic psychiatric and general population sample

The present study examines the associations between anger and general and maladaptive traits in a combined forensic psychiatric and community sample of men. Thirty-four male forensic psychiatric patients and 219 men from the general population completed the Novaco Anger Scale (NAS; Novaco, 1994), the NEO-PI-R (Costa & McCrae, 1992), the ADP-IV (Schotte & De Doncker, 1994) and the VKP (Duijsens, Haringsma, & EurelingsBontekoe, 1999) at two measurement occasions with a one-year interval. The results of a series of multiple regression analyses showed that general and maladaptive traits accounted for a substantial amount of variance in anger scores. Neuroticism, Agreeableness and Externalizing traits were most prominent in the prediction of anger, while Conscientiousness was acting as a suppressor variable in the regression models. Strengths and limitations of the present study and implications for further research and clinical practice are discussed.     

Sex and the sacred: sterilization and bodily integrity in English and Canadian law

Through an examination of cases of non-consensual sterilization for learning disabled persons in Canada and England, this article considers the role that law plays in framing the thoughts, beliefs, and norms that fashion the ways we think about bodies, sex, gender, and sexuality. The author asks how it is that Canadian and English law, while both claiming to protect bodily integrity, have reached opposing conclusions about whether non-therapeutic sterilization can be in a person's best interests. She hypothesizes that the answer could lie in the manner in which courts have constructed the bodies of learning disabled men and women in the sphere of sexuality and reproduction. Where the overriding concern in the sterilization cases is the containment of the sexuality of a learning disabled person perceived as "out of control" or "vulnerable to seduction", sterilization is cast as a just and humane solution that will advance the welfare of the individual concerned. Conversely, where the overriding concern is the preservation of the integrity of a law committed to the principle of equality, sterilization is thought to be a violation of the bodily integrity of the person. The author shows that these two views engender very different legal and cultural discourses about best interests and bodily integrity. The debate highlighted by the sterilization cases and the commentary surrounding them reflect larger tension within legal discourse between the commitment to liberal values and the maintenance of a particular social order.     

IT and Law,and Law Schools

If 'computing and law' as a discipline is to push forward and develop, it will do so best within the context of the law school rather than as a joint enterprise between law and other disciplines. It is in the law school that the understanding of the nature of law is at its height. Yet there are problems here-law schools have a strained relationship with technology and their concept of the breadth of 'legal scholarship' can be limited by conventional (or ideologically-biased) views of law and an undergraduate-oriented view of the law school's purpose. There are also problems arising from the nature of communications between lawyers and computer scientists. In this article, I highlight these problems and also argue for a more developed and extended view of legal scholarship which will be able to incorporate study and research of the impact of the computer upon legal society as well as the legal control of the unwanted elements arising from these new technologies. Most writings on IT and the law school concentrate upon its use as an educational tool. My interest here is not so much in this side of things, but in the research culture of the law school. Whilst there is sometimes a view that the linkage of law school and IT is purely related to the use of technology in legal education, the remit is wider and includes the understanding of the link between substantive law and the context of the new computerized world and also the impact of the computer in the practice of law. This latter aspect is becoming increasingly important with the Woolf reforms and computerization of the procedural elements of law, but also in substantive law: for example, administrative systems are becoming more and more mediated by technology, and administrative law must be reviewed and re-worked in this context.     

Law and Speed: Asylum Appeals and the Techniques and Consequences of Legal Quickening

This article examines how a politics of speed is manifest in a legal context via a detailed ethnography of the French National Court of Asylum (CNDA). It identifies the temporal, spatial, and organizational ordering techniques that characterize asylum appeals in France and discusses the consequences of these techniques for the way in which the appeal process is experienced by legal decision makers and subjects. It reveals adverse impacts of legal quickening on legal quality, in particular through identifying: ‘cracks’ in the performance of legal roles like lawyer and judge that begin to appear when law is executed rapidly and repetitively; dwindling opportunities to demonstrate and experience respect between parties; and the ‘thinning-out’ of legal process, as heuristics rather than deliberation come to dominate legal reasoning. The article contributes to a burgeoning body of socio-legal literature on law and time by establishing the negative impact of excessive legal quickening on role performance, respect, and legal quality.     

Longitudinal and cross-sectional data collection and analysis in the study of crime and delinquency

In response to recent debates about the utility of longitudinal as opposed to cross-sectional designs in the study of crime and delinquency, we examine empirical evidence on the extent to which longitudinal and cross-sectional data may be used interchangeably without altering substantive conclusions. We distinguish between longitudinal or cross-sectional methods of data collection and longitudinal or cross-sectional data, and acknowledge that longitudinal data may be collected by using a cross-sectional method. We examine the extent to which longitudinal data collected cross-sectionally are compatible with longitudinal data collected in a prospective longitudinal design. We then compare correlations and predictive models that use cross-sectional and longitudinal data to study the same substantive problem. We conclude with an examination of the issue of temporal order as a test of competing hypotheses. We find that longitudinal data collected in a cross-sectional design do not consistently produce the same results as longitudinal data collected in a prospective longitudinal design, and that longitudinal and cross-sectional data do not consistently yield the same substantive results in correlation and prediction models. Longitudinal data allow us to generate strong tests of competing hypotheses which would be impossible without longitudinal data. We conclude that cross-sectional data, or longitudinal data collected in cross-sectional designs, are inadequate substitutes for prospectively collected longitudinal data in the study of crime and delinquency.     

住所与国籍的冲突与调和

在国际私法领域,属人法是解决法律冲突,确定准据法的一个重要系属公式.但属人法的本国法和住所地法的理解,使得国籍与住所两个连结点产生矛盾和冲突,也产生了大陆法系本国法主义和英美法系住所地法主义的纷争.在当今国际社会中,国籍与住所的调和已成为一种趋势,而惯常居所连结点取代国籍和住所日益成为矛盾解决的积极措施.     

Freedom and innovation: a country and state level analysis

Research underlines the importance of socio-cultural factors when establishing a supportive environment for innovation and entrepreneurship growth. Scholars discuss different aspects, ranging from cultural attitudes and religious norms, to aspects of tolerance and social freedom. Following on research tradition, this paper analyzes the freedom-innovation relationship using a hand collected data set of 57 countries and the 50 U.S. states over a 3 year period. We argue and test whether the slope of the freedom-innovation link is shaped by and trades-off the costs and benefits of either weak or strong social ties within a country. Our empirical findings support a positive relationship between the freedom-innovativeness-slope, but not a negative or inverted U-shaped relationship.     

Bread and roses: Justice and the distribution of financial and socioemotional rewards in organizations

Two studies tested the hypothesis that organizational decision makers attempt to counterbalance contribution-based distributions of financial/material rewards (a “merit” system that creates monetary inequality) with need- and equality-based allocations of socioemotional rewards, in effect allocating “roses” in lieu of more “bread”. Experiment 1 had a two-factor design (Reward Type × Magnitude of Income Inequality); 67 subjects were given a managerial in-basket exercise in which they expressed their preferences for a variety of distributive justice rules for seven different types of rewards. Experiment 2 (N=39) had the same design, with a stronger manipulation of magnitude of inequality. Results of the two experiments were consistent with the counterbalancing hypothesis, irrespective of magnitude of income inequality; financially related rewards (e.g., profit sharing, office space, company cars) were distributed with more emphasis on contribution rules (i.e., performance, status), while more socioemotional rewards (e.g., help for an employee's spouse, friendliness) were allocated with more emphasis on equality among individuals, equality across groups, and personal need.     

Reliance and Obligation

Abstract.  The fact that A has relied on B to do something is often taken to be a relevant factor in judging that B has a moral or legal obligation to do that thing. This paper investigates the relation between reliance and obligation. Specifically, the question is whether reliance and moral obligation are connected by some relation of conditionality. I consider four such relations—necessary condition, sufficient condition, necessary part of a sufficient condition, and independent necessary part of a sufficient condition. I argue that only the third one connects reliance and moral obligation, and that it does so in a trivial way. There are nevertheless two justifications for the prominence given to reliance in morality and law. First, reliance appears to be a sufficient condition of states of affairs involving concepts related to obligation. Second, reliance is a fairly reliable indicator of obligation.