Terrorism and the law: Historical contexts, contemporary dilemmas, and the end(s) of democracy

Recent proposals by the G7 (and Russia) to clamp down on terrorists and terrorism do not define that which is prohibited. Instead, a threat is communicated which in turn allows, among other things, greater attention to be paid officially to camouflage charities and terrorist use of the Internet. Nevertheless, it is somewhat of a truism to note that terrorist violence is ultimately defined or characterized, for purposes of legal prohibition, within a highly politicized atmosphere. Starting with a short summary of anti-terrorist codification efforts made this century, this article examines some of the security interests cited by governments today in their respective struggles against terrorism. More specifically, it is argued that individual perceptions of personal and societal threat are heightened unnecessarily not only by a constant stream of governmental anti-terrorist rhetoric, but further, by an awareness of official and unofficial methods of anti-terrorist surveillance, and the use to which the information so obtained can be put.     

Social justice and legal justice

The main aim of this paper is to challenge the validity of the distinction between legal justice and social justice. It is argued that what we usually call legal justice is either an application of the more fundamental notion of social justice to legal rules and decisions or is not a matter of justice at all. In other words, the only correct uses of the notion of legal justice are derivative from the notion of social justice and, hence, the alleged conflicts between criteria of social and legal justice result from the confusion about the proper relationship between these two concepts. Two views about the social justice/legal justice dichotomy are of particular importance and will provide the focus for the argument: this dichotomy is sometimes identified with a classical distinction between distributive and commutative justice and sometimes with the distinction between substantive and procedural justice.     

Comparing the Social Service Utilization, Exposure to Violence, and Trauma Symptomology of Domestic Violence Female “Victims” and Female “Batterers”

Although some authors have suggested that women batterers may really be self-defending victims, to date, no research has been initiated to empirically support this assertion. This paper describes the design and outcomes of a research project that investigated the similarities and differences between women adjudicated as domestic violence batterers and women identified as domestic violence victims. Findings indicated group similarities in the areas of exposure to violence and social service utilization. Although both groups reported high levels of trauma symptomology, victim scores were significantly higher.     

“Staatswirtschaftslehre”—A Component of “Staatswissenschaften” Today and Tomorrow

The paper starts from problems of reorganization of the Welfare State. The second paragraph contains definitions and materials. The third paragraph turns to the development of Staatswissenschaften, especially to cameralistic views, public choice and deregulation. The fourth section deals with present Staatswirtschaftslehre as a component of Staatswissenschaften. The fifth paragraph is focussed on deregulation and reorganization of the state.The paper demonstrates: Staatswissenschaften and Staatswirtschaftslehre will be important academic disciplines also tomorrow, though the State will be reorganized by privatization, non-government-organizations and rearrangements of private and public sector activities under the conditions of new technologies and open markets.     

European Editors of Economics Journals—A General Discussion

In a final inquiry at the end of the Conference on Editorial Policies the three editors, Bruno S. Frey (Kyklos), Manfred J. Holler (Homo oeconomicus), and Jürgen G. Backhaus (European Journal of Law and Economics), were asked to comment on their editorial policies. They answered by explaining the challenges they were or still are confronted with, which strategies they have already developed to go on and of course what they have learnt from the deliberations at this conference. In their statements they referred to their preceding paper presentations, and the contributions by Wolfgang Bergsdorf, who is the chief editor of Die Politische Meinung, and Peter Senn.     

How Large Should the Strike Zone Be in “Three Strikes and You're Out” Sentencing Laws?

So-called three strikes and you're out sentencing laws for criminal offenders have proliferated in the United States. The laws vary considerably in their definitions of what constitutes a strike. This paper adapts the classic Poisson process model of criminal offending to investigate how varying sentence lengths and definitions of what constitutes a strike affect the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of these sentencing laws. In particular, it asks whether, by using different definitions for the first, second, and third strikes or different sentence lengths, one can make the resulting incarceration more efficient in the sense of incapacitating more crimes per cell-year served.     

Beyond labeling: The case of the mentally retarded

This paper provides a review of the sociological literature on the mentally retarded. It attempts to analyze the reasons why the mentally retarded have been so thoroughly de-valued in our society that even social scientists ignore them as an object of study. The literature that does exist is primarily confined to the mildly retarded and generally applies labeling theory to understand the processes by which individuals unable to succeed in institutions such as schools are diagnosed as retarded. Studies employing labeling theory either ignore the severely retarded or allow the medical model as the only appropriate framework for understanding these populations.The failure to include the severely retarded in the general analysis of the problems of the handicapped by labeling theorists indicates a deficiency in the theory rather than the group excluded. A more critical perspective on the handicapped is required which ties the analysis to the study of other surplus populations such as the poor, the illiterate and other disposessed groups. The treatment of the severely retarded provides a looking-glass into the way our society can so de-value a dependent population that its very survival can be questioned.A version of this paper was presented to the Southern Sociological Society Meetings, Memphis, Tennessee, 1982.     

Precedent Externality, Network Effect, and the Possible Inefficiency of the Evolution of Laws

Using the traditional scenario of tort conflict as an example, I argue that the marginal precautionary costs of injurers and victims are not constant, as was assumed by most previous researchers. The precedent of a liability rule has some natural externality on the precaution technology, and hence marginal cost, faced by future agents involved in torts. The adoption of legal rules therefore has a network effect, meaning that the present prevalent adoption of one rule increases the probability of its future adoption. Treating the dynamic evolution of legal rules as a random process, we are able to apply an established result in the literature of network economies to conclude the path-dependence, non-predictability, and potential inefficiency concerning the final legal rule to which the dynamics converge.     

The language of deceit: An investigation of the verbal clues to deception in the interrogation context

We examined the hypothesis that reliable verbal indicators of deception exist in the interrogation context. Participants were recruited for a study addressing security effectiveness and either committed a theft to test the effectiveness of a new security guard or carried out a similar but innocuous task. They then provided either (1) a truthful alibi, (2) a partially deceptive account, (3) a completely false alibi, or (4) a truthful confession regarding the theft to an interrogator hired for the purpose of investigating thefts with a monetary incentive for convincing the interrogator of their truthfulness. Results indicated that only 3 out of the 18 (16.7%) clues tested significantly differentiated the truthful and deceptive accounts. All 3 clues were derived from the Statement Validity Analysis (SVA) technique (amount of detail reported, coherence, and admissions of lack of memory). Implications for credibility assessment in forensic interrogations are discussed.     

Narcotics trafficking and the American mafia: The myth of internal prohibition

Numerous books assert that the Mafia long had a prohibition against engaging in narcotics trafficking, either for reasons of morality, or else because of the public stigma attached to drugs. In reality, there are many problems with the belief in voluntary abstention. The mythical nature of internal prohibition, and the far different reality, will be illustrated from the case of Philadelphia, supposedly the base for one of the most powerful and traditional-minded of all the American Mafia groups, the family headed from 1959 to 1980 by don Angelo Bruno. We will attempt to explain the roots of the prohibition myth, both for writers and for the wider public that appears so endlessly enthusiastic about sagas of organized crime. Finally, the paper examines the implications of this myth for policy makers in successive wars on crime.     

Self-interested aid: Belated modernization and interwoven interests between East and West

The paper starts with an explanation of the term self-interested aid. Next it presents a sequence of constellations of problems between East and West, in order to analyze interwoven interest, focussing on problems arising from international environmental pollution. Finally the consequences which arise from divergences between the interests in solving the problems of Eastern reform states on the one hand and the interests of the reform states in their own problems on the other are analyzed. Within international relations which are ruled by the logic of self-interested aid donors act rationally, if they organize support in such a way that the improvement of the situation in the recipients' country becomes a means for improvement of the situation in the donors' country. The recipients act rationally, if they try to use international aid to solve their purely internal problems, but try to preserve such problems that radiate over their borders, thus evoking international support.     

Marxism and the criminal question

The question considered is whether it is possible to trace a theoretical strategy for a criminal policy on the basis of Marx's work. The answer offered is that Marxian political and economic analysis does not supply any general theory of criminality and that any attempt to formulate such a theory (as in Lenin, Paukanis or Gramsci) necessarily leads to authoritarian and regressive conceptions of crime and punishment. Nevertheless the authors maintain that it is possible to trace three theoretical suggestions within Marxian thought which allow of a fruitful approach to the criminal question. The first suggestion relates to the economic roots of many aspects of modern criminality; the second regards the Christian and bourgeois superstition of moral liberty and individual culpability; the third suggestion deals with the lack of a guaranteed social space as the prime root of crime. These theoretical suggestions permit clarification of the social character of penal responsibility and this character points to the need for the socialization (but not deregulation) of criminal treatment.This essay grew out of a reply to a questionnaire drawn up by La questione criminale, an Italian review which tries to approach the criminal question from a Marxist standpoint.     

Women on the edge of crime: Crack cocaine and the changing contexts of street-level sex work in New York City

In this paper, we attempt to examine, engender and contextualize the theses that (i) women's emancipation escalates [women's] crime and violence and (ii) women's drug use escalates [women's] crime and violence, by drawing on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork in relation to women crack smokers and the changing contexts of street-level sex work in New York City. The paper attempts to illustrate how the position of women crack smokers can only be understood by locating their lives, their illicit drug use and their income-generating activities within the context of a specific set of localized socio-economic and cultural developments. We suggest that observations from our research refute the theses that women are becoming more criminal and/or violent in the context of either their consumption of crack cocaine or their alleged emancipation.An earlier version of this paper was presented by the first author at the Joint Meetings, Law and Society Association and Research Committee on the Sociology of Law of the International Sociological Association, Amsterdam, 26–29 June 1991.     

Interviewing Preschoolers: Comparisons Of Yes/No and Wh- Questions

This study investigated the influence of question format on preschool-aged children's errors, their response accuracy, and their tendency to say I don't know when given non-misleading questions in a neutral, unbiased context. Children (3 to 5 years old) participated in a craft-making session that included a staged accident with two experimenters differing in gender and appearance; the environment also had several distinctive features. One week later children were interviewed about actions, participants, and environment; questions were yes/no format with the veridical response yes (yes questions), yes/no format with the veridical response no (no questions), and specific wh- format questions. Question format substantially influenced children's responses: they were most likely to make errors if asked no questions, and were unlikely to answer either yes/no question with I don't know. In contrast, children spontaneously and frequently said I don't know to wh- questions about content they did not recall (environment), but not about content that was well recalled (actions). Implications of question format for reliability of eyewitness testimony by preschoolers are discussed.     

Economics of discriminatory sentencing

The legal and social professions have long been concerned with the problem of whether the fact that those incarcerated in prison tend to be drawn from the ranks of the poor unemployed and low social status is indicative of willful discrimination against the underprivileged. In this paper we apply the traditional analytical tools of economics to develop the conditions required for an efficient tradeoff between the probability of conviction and the length of prison sentence for both rich and poor. We show that the generally accepted approach of equal punishment for equal crimes tends to overdeter the rich and underdeter the poor, which results in a gross overrepresentation of the poor in the prison population. In order to eliminate this overrepresentation, the poor must receive a more severe sentence than the rich for an equivalent crime. This appears to contradict normal definitions of equity and we address this issue. We also show that an increase in the total crime budget when used efficiently must always result in longer sentences but can, under appropriate conditions, require a lower probability of apprehension.     

Juror decision making in the capital penalty trial

Two factors thought to influence jurors' penalty decisions in capital trials—the nature of the crime committed and the defense's portrayal of the convicted offender's character—were examined. Mock jurors were death-qualified and exposed to one of twelve simulated penalty trials. Each trial was comprised of one of three capital crimes and one of four defense strategies. Jurors were least punitive in robbery-murder conditions and most punitive in multiple murder conditions. A conceptual argument against capital punishment was the most effective defense; a mental illness defense was the least effective. Penalty decisions were mediated by three attributional variables: (a) juror perceptions of the defendant's volition, (b) juror perceptions of the defendant's future dangerousness, and (c) juror perceptions of the relative competency of the opposing attorneys.This article is based on the author's dissertation which received an Honorable Mention in the 1985 SPSSI Dissertation Prize competition. The research was made possible by grants from the University of California, Santa Cruz and Division 41 of the American Psychological Association. The author is indebted to Craig Haney, Elliot Aronson, and Dane Archer for their valuable suggestions and support.     

Drug and violence prevention: Rediscovering the critical rational dimension of evaluation research

Following criticism of government-funded drug prevention activities of the early 1990s, a spate of best practice or science-based lists of alcohol, drug and violence prevention programs have been produced by federal agencies in recent years. The writings of Donald T. Campbell on validity have had a profound influence on the development of the methodological quality scales that have been utilized in the review processes used to generate these lists. Implicit in this approach to the identification of science-based prevention programs is the idea that science is equivalent to research methodology and study design. Following Karl Popper and Campbell, I contend that, while certain designs are clearly better than others in dealing with threats to internal validity and allow for better generalization of results beyond the study population, utilization of these designs in and of itself is not sufficient to designate an evaluation study as scientific. Nor can the accumulation of data from such studies be used to proclaim an entire area of research a science, as has occurred with the field of so-called prevention science. Rather, the fundamental criterion by which to judge the scientific status of a theory is falsifiability. If the field of drug and violence prevention is truly a science, then it should be subjecting its predictions about the effects of intervention programs to genuinely critical tests and not attempting to verify these hypotheses. It is argued that it has failed to do this, and two specific examples of prevention programs that appear on a number of science-based lists of prevention programs are discussed.     

What Is Forensic Psychology,Anyway?

The issue of how forensic psychology is defined has taken on a new urgency in the context of an application to have forensic psychology designated a specialty by the American Psychological Association. To provide a historical perspective, I briefly review early attempts to apply psychological concepts to legal issues, beginning with the McNaughten trial in England in 1843. I then review current conceptualizations of forensic psychology, which have either a broad focus on all psychology–law interactions or focus more narrowly on clinical applications to the legal system. Potential advantages and disadvantages of each conceptualization are briefly discussed. After touching upon the major differences in the cultures of psychology and of law, I discuss three law-related areas of contemporary controversy: use of clinically based evidence in the courtroom, recovered memories of child abuse, and the use of the criteria-based content analysis technique to evaluate children's claims of sexual abuse. Issues concerning the education and training of psychology–law scholars and practitioners are briefly surveyed. I conclude that a broad conceptualization of forensic psychology is important in terms of relevant ethical standards, but that a more narrow distinction that differentiates between clinicians and researchers or legal scholars also is useful.     

Statistical tests of discrimination in punishment

A method, adopted from the labor econometrics literature, is proposed for detecting discrimination in punishment. The method requires the separate estimation of time served and punishment probability equations for, say, whites and blacks. The coefficients from the white equation are used to predict the punishment blacks would receive if treated like whites. A test of no discrimination against blacks is a test that the black punishment predicted by the black equation is equal to the punishment predicted by the equation using the white coefficients but the black endowments or characteristics. A further test is proposed that evaluates the economic efficiency of disparities in punishment. The test is restricted to measuring the recidivism effect of equality of treatment in punishment. The discrimination test and the efficiency test are illustrated using the U.S. Board of Parole data for 1972. Statistically significant racial disparities in punishment are uncovered and are found to be economically inefficient.     

“Who made the code in the first place?”: Delinquency and justice in an American Indian community

This paper examines the emergence of official categories of delinquency and a formal system for the legal processing of youth on one American Indian reservation. The creation of the legal code, Children's Court and Juvenile Detention Center, and the ongoing activities of these agencies are placed in the context of the larger social system of the reservation and the history of federal policies toward Indian peoples. Through in-depth interviews, participant observation, case file review, and the analysis of existing statistics, perceptions of delinquency and justice and trends in the legal processing of adolescents in this community are explored. The implications of this imposed system of law and justice for this community are discussed.