The European parliament and co‐decision: A rejoinder to Tsebelis and Garrett

The primary aim of this article is to analyse the question ‘How do the longest serving Swedish parliamentarians view change in the Riksdag?’ The article is in three parts: the first sets out a framework for analysing parliamentary change comprising six main ‘dimensions of change’ which are then briefly applied to the Swedish case. The second section presents an academic perspective on parliamentary change in Sweden by reference to the analytical framework set out in part one. The final section concentrates on the Riksdag veterans’ perceptions of parliamentary change.     

The ‘Perils’ of an Identity Politics Approach to the Legal Recognition of Harm

In the past, and it still remains the case, people with learning difficulties who are victims of violence have been cast as being in need of protection rather than rights and justice. Such an approach belies an institutionalised perspective of harm that does not readily engage with criminal justice structures or solutions. At the same time, Sect. 146 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 gives the court the power to pass enhanced sentences where it can be proven that a crime was motivated by hostility towards someone because s/he is disabled. However, this provision may simply remain a symbolic pledge to equality that fails to tackle the complex and deep rooted causes of violence and oppression in modern society. The consequences of automatically turning to hate crime ‘solutions’ have yet to be explored. This article will draw from the ideas of a number of thinkers in the context of diverse activism to construct a bridge between current debates about how to theorise and tackle violence and oppression in the modern world and the campaigns fought by people with learning difficulties and their supporters. The hope is that this exercise will not only help people with learning difficulties to access the current debate but will further develop current thinking about how to understand and tackle violence in the modern world.

“It is not my intention to be a killjoy…”: Objecting to a Licence Application—The Complainers

This paper explores the constructed nature of legal complaints through the adoption of a socio-linguistic model with an emphasis upon pragmatics and elements of conversation analysis. When making a legal complaint, we posit that there is a conflict between effective communication and the uptake of politeness strategies. Furthermore, how complaints are ??worked up?? in situ is a product of the arena in which such complaints are made. Through a textual analysis of the methods of complaining adopted by those who make representations to the licensing authority, for the purposes of objecting to a licence application, we show the tension between making oneself clear and being polite, and how complaints in different settings take different forms. We conclude by exploring the implications of our findings for legal processes??is it reasonable, for instance, to talk of ??consistency?? in testimony if each complaint is worked up in situ??and for pragmatic theory more generally, i.e the applicability of Brown and Levinson??s politeness model for legal processes.     

Can Labelling Policies Do More Harm Than Good? An Analysis Applied to Environmental Labelling Schemes

In certain plausible circumstances, the introduction of labelling schemes can lead to adverse effects. In the case of ecolabelling, the adverse effects are an environmental degradation rather than an environmental improvement. To take into account the environmental sensitiveness or responsiveness of consumers, we introduce the concept of environmental elasticity which enables us to classify goods. In a basic analytical model, we describe the conditions under which different outcomes—overall impacts of change in environmental quality due to environmental labelling—arise after the introduction of an ecolabelling scheme. We show that an ecolabelling scheme can lead to an increase in purchases of environmentally sustainable products. The net effect on the environment can be worse than the initial situation without ecolabelling, because the environmental unit improvement is compensated by an over-consumption. We suggest several tests to detect this potential perverse effect, some policy implications to avoid it and stress the need for further research.JEL Classification: D11, L15, Q28     

What is the Harm Principle For?

In their excellent monograph, Crimes, Harms and Wrongs, Andrew Simester and Andreas von Hirsch argue for an account of legitimate criminalisation based on wrongfulness, the Harm Principle and the Offence Principle, while they reject an independent anti-paternalism principle. To put it at its simplest my aim in the present paper is to examine the relationship between ‘the harms’ and ‘the wrongs’ of the authors’ title. I begin by comparing the authors’ version of the Harm and Offence Principle with some other influential accounts. After examining the (considerable) role wrongfulness plays in their work, I ask what there is left for their Harm and Offence Principles to do. In the light of the understanding and foundations of the Harm and Offence Principles proposed by the authors, I suggest that the answer is little or nothing. The wrongfulness constraint the authors place on their Offence Principle comes close to swallowing it up entirely. Furthermore the part of their Offence Principle that is not thus swallowed by wrongfulness leaves the account with a commitment that is probably best dropped. As far as their Harm Principle is concerned I suggest that the authors’ account of ‘harm’ is so broad that it lacks the resources to distinguish harm-based reasons from wrongfulness- or immorality-based reasons in any principled way. Among other things, I ask in this context, first, whether one can be harmed as one’s character deteriorates and, secondly, whether one is harmed by virtue of the serious wrong one does to another. What really drives the authors’ account of legitimate criminalisation, I believe, is wrongfulness together with an important, amorphous set of potential defeating conditions. They themselves accept such a picture so far as paternalism is concerned. I conclude that their account, which I think has considerable force, would lose little of any significance were their Harm and Offence Principles simply excised. More generally I suspect that a strong role for wrongfulness in an account of legitimate criminalisation is likely to put into serious question the plausibility of an independent principled role for harm and offence.     

Universities and the teaching of forensic sciences to lawyers—a note *

This article presents the findings of the survey conducted among business and accountancy students of the Nanyang Business School, Singapore, on the teaching of business law. The article is organised in three main sections. Section 1 formulates the framework for the research by outlining the three basic approaches adopted across many jurisdictions for the legal education of business students—the traditionalist ("black‐letter law"), the environmentalist and mixed approaches. Section 2 briefly describes the survey questions drawn up in the light of four principal objectives that, according to legal educators, the teaching of business law should achieve. Section 3 presents and examines the findings. The article concludes that law teaching at the Nanyang Business School conforms to the traditional approach. The author accordingly makes recommendations for the transformation of current teaching and assessment medthods: an injection of a great deal of “environmental” content and context‐based education; more use of actual and current cases, practical examples and a link to the business environment.     

Can order of general and specific memory prompts help children to recall an instance of a repeated event that was different from the others?

Does asking about the general event before asking about a specific instance help children to report details of a particular instance of a repeated event that was different from the others? Six- to eight-year-old children either experienced or heard stories about a magic show. An equal number of children had one, four, or six similar experiences. One week later, half of the children were asked to describe what happens during the magic shows and then what happened during the target experience and half were asked what happened followed by what happens. Following free recall, all children were asked cued recall questions about the target instance. Memory reports were more complete when the general prompt was administered first than when it was administered second. Implications for the forensic interviewing of children who allege repeated abuse are discussed.     

Is it to the advantage of a defendant to infer a greater number of contributors to a questioned sample than is necessary to explain the observed DNA profile?

When a forensic scientist presents the results of a comparison between a DNA profile from a questioned sample with that of a defendant the interpretation will be based on the premise of a given number of contributors. It is quite common practice for defence counsel to ask how consideration of a greater number of putative contributors to the profile would affect the interpretation. This note discusses the response to such a request.     

A rejoinder to Vaughn and Smith's “Practicing penal harm medicine in the United States: Prisoners' voices from jail”

Correctional health care has improved tremendously over the past 25 years. This rejoinder is a response to an article published in Justice Quarterly by Michael Vaughn and Linda Smith, in which they assert that the quality of correctional health care is suspect in correctional settings, and that an examination of one jail's problems with health care delivery revealed a “penal harm medicine” movement. We call into question such an assertion, claim that the penal harm medicine hypothesis cannot be proven by the data presented by Vaughn and Smith, and state that many of their conclusions are tenuous and harmful to correctional health professionals. We offer an analysis of their claims and suggest a more balanced view of correctional health care.