The Place of Local Power

What is the reform of local self-government? How will its conduct affect the life of the country? How will the tax and social policies of the state change? The main author of the reform, deputy head of the President's Administration Dmitry Kozak, participating in the "Business Breakfast" at Rossiiskaia gazeta, talks about this on the eve of the second reading in the Duma of the packet of draft laws on the reform of federative relationships and of local self-government.     

The Place for Custody Evaluations in Family Peacemaking

Custody evaluations can serve the dual purpose of providing neutral, objective information to the court while also contributing to the possibility of earlier settlement, which coincides with the therapeutic jurisprudence goal of more positive outcomes for children and families. Research suggests that most cases settle after custody evaluations. However, most of the literature is focused on the use of custody evaluations for litigation. Evaluators, attorneys, and mental health consultants can influence parents to focus more on children's needs and less on their conflict as they go through the evaluation process. This article urges family courts to develop processes and require professionals to learn skills needed for an interdisciplinary process to utilize evaluations in peacemaking.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:
• All custody evaluation processes should aim to reduce and/or shorten children's exposure to parental conflict.
• Evaluators, attorneys, and mental health professional consultants should use the evaluation process to influence parents to be more aware of their children's needs and less invested in their adversarial positions.
• Evaluators should learn to write and orally present information and state opinions with consideration of the parents themselves as consumers of the custody evaluation as well as the court.
• Attorneys and mental health professional consultants should help clients review the report, process their emotional reactions, and consider their options for settlement versus litigation in terms of emotional and financial costs to the family.
• Court processes should be developed to contain the time and cost of custody evaluations and provide dispute resolution after custody evaluations.

     

The Place of Religious Arguments in Civic Discussion

I shall consider whether morality requires citizens of democratic societies to advance secular reasons in public debates on political questions. Is it wrong to give purely religious reasons in political discussion? I shall argue that the moral acceptability of public religious arguments that are not supported with secular reasons depends on the political context we are discussing, and that often there is nothing wrong with using religious considerations. I shall also discuss the so‐called shared premises requirement in political argumentation. The overall aim of the paper is to clarify intuitions concerning the ideals of public reason on the one hand, and the commitment to religious liberty on the other.     

The Place of Form in the Fundamentals of Law

The author explains that there is scope for a general theory about the nature and place of form in the fundamentals of law. Form organizes the institutions, rules and other varieties of law, and the system as a whole. All such constructs have non‐formal elements, too, but form unifies each construct and provides its criteria of identity. Appropriate form makes a system of law possible. It also tends to beget good content in the law. It is indispensable to the basic needs of a legal system, and when such an end is organizational, as with democracy, liberty, and the rule of law, form is end as well as means.     

The Place of Legal Positivism in Contemporary Constitutional States

The aim of the paper is that of discussing some recent antipositivist theses, with specific reference to the arguments that focus on the alleged incapability of legal positivism to understand and explain the complex normative structure of constitutional states. One of the central tenets of legal positivism (in its guise of methodological or conceptual positivism) is the theory of the separation between law and morality. On the assumption that in contemporary legal systems, constitutional law represents a point of intersection between law and basic moral values, antipositivists contrast legal positivism with two main arguments. First, on a more general level, the positivist theory of the separation between law and morality is questioned; then, and consequently, the neutrality thesis in the juristic study of law is rejected. The author discusses both these antipositivist arguments, and offers a brief defence of methodological positivism.     

试论工伤认定中“工作场所”的涵义

《工伤保险条例》规定,在工作时间和工作场所内受到伤害的应该认定为工伤。但在具体工伤认定案件中,因为《条例》对工作场所的含义没有做出具体的解释,所以执法人员、劳动者和企业负责人容易产生争议。事实上,该问题的解决必须把握正确的方向,即应该以劳动者利益优先保护原则作为出发点,同时兼顾用人单位的利益。在总结有关法律规定和各种不同观点的基础上,可以认定工伤是因工而伤,凡是与劳动者的工作存在直接的或者间接的联系的处所都可界定为工作场所。     

Place and Punishment: The Spatial Context of Mass Incarceration

Objectives

Research on race and urban poverty views incarceration as a new and important aspect of social disadvantage in inner-city neighborhoods. However, in quantitative studies of the spatial distribution of imprisonment across neighborhoods, the pattern outside urban areas has not been examined. This paper offers a unique analysis of disaggregated prison admissions and investigates the spatial concentrations and levels of admissions for the entire state of Massachusetts.

Methods

Spatial regressions estimate census tract-level prison admission rates in relation to racial demographics, social and economic disadvantage, arrest rates, and violent crime; an analysis of outlier neighborhoods examines the surprisingly high admission rates in small cities.

Findings

Regression analysis yields three findings. First, incarceration is highly spatially concentrated: census tracts covering 15% of the state’s population account for half of all prison admissions. Second, across urban and non-urban areas, incarceration is strongly related to concentrated disadvantage and the share of the black population, even after controlling for arrest and crime rates. Third, the analysis shows admission rates in small urban satellite cities and suburbs comprise the highest rates in the sample and far exceed model predictions.

Conclusion

Mass incarceration emerged not just to manage distinctively urban social problems but was characteristic of a broader mode of governance evident in communities often far-removed from deep inner-city poverty. These notably high levels and concentrations in small cities should be accounted for when developing theories of concentrated disadvantage or policies designed to ameliorate the impacts of mass incarceration on communities.

     

论童年在人生中的位置

童年是人生的根本,这是"儿童本位"得以支撑的基础。童年拥有丰富的天性资源。成人是童年资源的继承人、受益人。从个体发展来看,长大成人是儿童成长的目的。但从老子等人"复归于婴儿"的主张看,人生的目的是童年的复归,童年依然是人生的最终目的。从种系进化来看,童年是一种自然目的。童年资源是人的全部生活和整个文明大厦的根基。不只是儿童教育应当坚守"儿童本位",文明的进步和提升也需要坚守"儿童本位"。人类社会和文化只有坚守"儿童本位",才有可能实现马克思之"人性复归"的理想社会。     

No Place in the Law: The Ignominy of Criminal Libel in American Jurisprudence

The application of the Sullivan standard to the crime of libel was a mistake. There is no common law affiliation with or legal justification for the existence of criminal libel in a democracy. Its existence is antithetical to the First Amendment's guarantees of equality of speech, as well as to the broader constitutional guarantees of equality of speaker. The crime has become almost completely indistinguishable from the tort of libel, both in form and function, as a result of its evolution in America-from the importance of truth as a defense to the audience's responsibility for its own reaction to the speech, violent or not. And the American experience demonstrates clearly and ignominiously that the abuse of prosecutorial discretion, and even the mere threat of prosecution, results in the suppression of constitutionally protected speech.     

陆机籍贯与行迹考论

陆机籍贯、家世、生平、行迹等问题,存在诸多疑难.通过钩沉史料、稽考二陆诗文,可知陆机籍贯是吴郡吴县(今苏州),出生于吴郡横山(今昆山),与上海松江无涉.陆机于太康十年春入洛,永熙元年三月后任太傅祭酒.陆机有姊二人;妹一人,早夭;有兄三人:晏、景、玄,玄早夭,没有分领父兵,<三国志·陆抗传>记载有误;弟二人:云、耽,与机同年被杀.陆抗卒后,机分领抗兵,任牙门将,然旋即举家迁居建康秦淮之侧;吴亡后,退居华亭旧里,闭门勤学,并无"被俘入洛"或"举家迁徙寿春"之事.     

论后现代心理学的定位与理论存疑

后现代心理学冲击着现代心理学，并试图实现对它的超越。只要我们考察后现代心理学与现代心理学的关系，就会发现从现代心理学到后现代心理学并非一种库恩意义上的范式转换，两者之间的连贯性超过它们之间的断层性，后现代心理学要求我们寻求包括技术理性和价值理性在内的更多理性内涵。后现代心理学挑战了实证方法的霸权，批驳了价值中立的神话，强调了理论的实用价值。在看到积极意义的同时，也使我们保留着理论上的疑问。