The Future and Legal Education: Are Law Schools Failing and,If So,How?

In Failing Law Schools (2010), Brian Tamanaha recommends that law schools respond to the current economic crisis in the legal profession by reducing support for faculty research and developing two‐year degree programs. But these ideas respond only to a short‐term problem that will probably be solved by the closure of marginal institutions. The real challenge lies in the powerful long‐term trends that animate social change, particularly the shift to a knowledge‐based economy and the demand for social justice through expanded public services. These trends demand that law schools transform their educational programs to reflect the regulatory, transactional, and interdisciplinary nature of modern legal practice.     

Green-Building and Renewable-Energy Insurance Claims: Where Are We Now?

What kind of insurance claims might arise out of clean-energy initiatives and the associated risks? This article examines these issues, including those associated with construction or conversion of so-called green buildings, e-waste, carbon sequestration, alternative fuels, and other environmental matters that continue to raise a host of novel issues. In addition to more traditional risks, e.g., changing and potentially contradictory energy-efficiency rules have become a litigation issue in Albuquerque and elsewhere. There are simple, practical ways to manage these various environmental risks and many insurance companies are responding with new coverage products. The elements and structure of these programs also provide insight into what kind of claims (and disputes) may arise.     

Why Are There So Many Lawyers in Congress?

Scholars have long sought to explain the overrepresentation of lawyers in Congress. This article draws on a wealth of data to explore the causes and consequences of this representational imbalance. While lawyers enter politics at higher rates, self-selection at best provides a partial explanation. Conditional on running, lawyers win at twice the rate of candidates from other backgrounds. Contrary to prevailing theories in the literature, voters do not reward candidates with backgrounds in law. Rather, lawyers win because of a sizable competitive advantage in early fundraising, owing in large part to their professional networks. This study has important implications for who runs for office, who wins, and the demographic composition of Congress. It also identifies an underexplored mechanism by which the US system of campaign finance sustains deep representational imbalances.     

The Error in “Error Rate”: Why Error Rates Are So Needed,Yet So Elusive

Establishing error rates is crucial for knowing how well one is performing, determining whether improvement is needed, measuring whether interventions are effective, as well as for providing transparency. However, the flurry of activities in establishing error rates for the forensic sciences has largely overlooked some fundamental issues that make error rates a problematic construct and limit the ability to obtain a meaningful error rate. These include knowing the ground truth, establishing appropriate databases, determining what counts as an error, characterizing what is an acceptable error rate, ecological validity, and transparency within the adversarial legal system. Without addressing these practical and theoretical challenges, the very notion of a meaningful error rate is limited.     

The construction of ‘So What?’ criminology: a realist analysis

From a realist perspective there is a growing body of criminology that can be classified as ‘So What?’ criminology in that it involves a low level of theorisation, thin, inconsistent or vague concepts and categories, embodies a dubious methodology or has little or no policy relevance. The production of ‘So What?’ criminology is, of course, no accident but the outcome of a number of lines of force that have served to shape the nature of mainstream academic criminology in recent years. The aim of this article is to identify some of these lines of force and to assess their impact.     

Permeability and Burglary Risk: Are Cul-de-Sacs Safer?

That crime is concentrated in space is now accepted as commonplace. Explanations for why it clusters at particular locations are various reflecting the range of factors which are held to influence crime placement. In this article, we focus on the role of the permeability of the street network on the location of crime. We first review the research conducted hitherto, summarising the different approaches to analysis and the findings that have so far emerged. Then we present original analyses conducted at the street segment level to examine the issues at hand. In contrast to much of the prior research, in this study we examine the patterns for a large study area in which there is considerable variation in street network configuration. Moreover, and in contrast to all of the previous research, the approach to analysis takes into account the multi-level structure of the data analysed. The findings demonstrate that increased permeability is associated with elevated burglary risk, that burglary risk is lower on cul-de-sacs (particularly those that are sinuous in nature), and that the risk of burglary is higher on more major roads and those street segments that are connected to them. In the conclusion of the paper we outline an agenda for future research.     

That Was Then, This Is Now, What About Tomorrow? Future Directions in State Crime Studies

Research and theorizing on state crime has come to play an important role in the fields of criminology and criminal justice for understanding the worst of crimes: those of powerful state agencies and agents. Since William Chambliss’ (1989) ASC presidential address, scholars of state crime have made advances in theoretical modeling and analyzing core enactment and etiological factors of crimes of the state (e.g., Barak 1991; Friedrichs 1998; Grabosky 1989; Kauzlarich and Kramer 1998; Kramer and Michalowski 2005; Kramer et al. 2005; Michalowski and Kramer 2006; Mullins and Rothe 2008a, b; Pearce 1976; Ross 1995, 2000; Rothe 2009; Rothe and Mullins 2006, 2008). Nonetheless, the study of state crime still has a long way to go before it ever reaches the magnitude or legitimacy afforded to the study of traditional street crime. It is with this in mind that several leading scholars of state criminality have come together and reevaluated the state of state crime and the ways in which the field must move forward. This kind of inventory, where scholars examine the past, present and future of the field, is not without precedent. For example, almost a decade ago (Ross et al. 1999) explored the difficulty of conducting state crime research and made a series of recommendations on how it could be improved. Nearly 7 years later (Rothe and Friedrichs 2006) re-evaluated the state of state crime and called for more attention to those beyond US crimes of the state and include crimes of globalization and also international controls such as the International Criminal Court (Friedrichs and Friedrichs 2007; Rothe and Mullins 2006; Rothe et al. 2006, 2008). Since that time, there has been substantial movement by scholars of state crime in these other areas, yet, as we note, there still remains key issues that need to be addressed and overcome: it is with this that we again revisit the field of state crime. We wish to thank all of those that contributed to our discussions and thoughts during the American Society of Criminology Roundtable on State Crime I and II, November 2007.

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What Are the Obstacles to Defense Counsel?

Many years ago, at a session of the USSR Supreme Soviet, Deputy I. A. Kairov uttered these words of bitter truth: "A kind of strange attitude still persists toward defense lawyers as if in some way they were impediments rather than contributors to the administration of justice."     

The Comparison Question Test: Does It Work and If So How?

In a mock crime study of the comparison question test (CQT), 35 subjects decided to participate as guilty and 30 as innocent. Two conditions were varied: Explaining the comparison questions in the pretest interview and re-discussing comparison questions between charts. Higher identification rates (approximately 90% for guilty and innocent participants) were achieved in groups with explanation of comparison questions than in groups without explanation. Re-discussing comparison questions had no effect on identification rates. Ratings of subjective stress due to relevant and comparison questions were also obtained and can be seen as indicators of the significance of the questions. The significance of comparison questions was hardly affected by the different testing conditions. When effects are detectable at all, they contradict theoretical expectations in their direction. Results are discussed in terms of the significance of comparison questions used in polygraph testing.     

Intimate Partner Homicide in Portugal: What Are the (As)Symmetries Between Men and Women?

European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research - There is consensus that intimate partner homicide (IPH) is a gender crime and that it is one of the most extreme forms of violence. This study...     

University mission and academic freedom: Are they irreconcilable?

Educational freedom, rightly understood, depends upon the freedom to shape - and (for individuals) to choose to study in or teach in - distinctive educational institutions. This implies an obligation upon faculty who have chosen to commit themselves to such an institution to teach in a way that engages positively with its educational project. Policies which provide scope and encouragement for schools and universities to represent distinctive and coherent viewpoints are an essential condition of educational freedom in a pluralistic society. These issues are discussed with reference to the ‘values project‘ of Free University in Amsterdam and to debates, in the Netherlands and the United States, over the distinctive character of schools. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Human and fundamental rights: What are they about?

Conclusion Human rights, distrusted by Bentham, through emergence ofGesellshaft, have sometimes been identified with rights of market men and gradually on an ad hoc basis and so have been given a relational or relativist character for that reason. Such a view ignores the test of humanness or the tele of human rights surviving any political association and the need for full development of human personality as an autonomous being inherent in full respect for all as moral persons. This disposes of the view of human rights in terms of rules of a game, or of connection between human rights and human action, or of the standard of the prudent man or, finally, of the ideology of the rising bourgeoisie. Equally, that very test of humanness disposes of criticisms of the human rights theory based on a concern for implementation of rights, on concentric circles based on the specific and concrete, on the impossibility of liking the billions, on the distinction between negative, positive and administrative rights, on the condition of being able to make valid claims and thereby denying human rights to the deprived millions in poor countries, on the social justice model, on the potential for violence and conflict and, finally, on the vagueness or subjectivity of human rights. An eclectic synthesis not between good and evil nor between right and wrong but between the extremes of the views presented in such critical explanations e.g. between the New Right and the New Left and between Hobbes and Rousseau) is what is needed in order to present a workable theory of human rights in the modern-day world.