The Investigative Study Role of Canada's House Committees: Expectations Met?

Canada's House of Commons committee system, established to enhance the effectiveness of parliament, has operated in approximately its present form since 1986. However, information about what it accomplishes remains limited. This article focuses on the investigative/policy studies of committees. A questionnaire given to former cabinet ministers and analysis of previously unexplored committee data support the view that these studies have achieved a modest influence on governments, well short of expectations held in the mid-1980s. Furthermore, their influence is as a source of political intelligence more than the collaborative policy work and technical expertise given central importance by creators of the system. This supports scepticism about the influence achieved by the all-party agreement that continues to be reflected in about 70 per cent of committee reports, and may also be reflected in the written responses to committee reports by governments, an estimated 50 per cent of which are ambiguous. Nevertheless, the original vision reflected in the committees persists among many Canadian advocates of parliamentary reform.     

The Relationship Between Traumatization and Pain: What is the Role of Emotion?

The role of emotion in the relationship between traumatic experiences and physical pain was examined via path modeling by using a sample of hospital outpatients (N = 138). Most of the participants reported being traumatized (77%) and experiencing chronic pain (69%). Trauma survivors and nontraumatized individuals did not differ significantly on mean symptom scale scores (i.e., depression, anxiety, anger, dissociation, somatization and pain). However, a moderate effect size was found for dissociation. There were also significant associations found between trauma levels and levels of adult symptomatology. Interestingly, sexual abuse was less highly correlated with symptomatology than other types of traumatization, such as neglect. None of the three proposed path models describing the relationship between trauma, pain, and emotion fit the data successfully. Implications are discussed.     

Incitement to Religious Hatred: All Talk and No Substance?

The Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 has a frenetic history. It is the culmination of six attempts in Parliament in the last twelve years to make incitement to religious hatred unlawful. ¹ 1 Lord Lester proposed two amendments to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill, June 1994 and the (Lord) Bishop of Oxford moved an amendment in July 1994. Lord Avebury introduced a Religious Offences Bill in 2001. The government has tried three times: in the Anti‐Terrorism, Crime and Security Bill in 2001; in the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill, introduced in November 2004 and (successfully) in the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill, introduced June 2005.
Each attempt has met with intense criticism. But now that the legislation is here, what may it achieve?     

Only a Matter of Time? The Role of Criminal Competence in Avoiding Arrest

While prior research has shown that the probability of detection plays a role in the decision-making of many offenders, much less is known on offenders’ relative success in avoiding arrest. In this study, we draw from detailed criminal career data on 172 offenders involved in lucrative criminal activities to examine the role of criminal competence in the probability of being arrested in a given month. We examine a particular aspect of competence, criminal efficiency, which is defined as the ability to earn a relatively large amount of money for each crime committed. Our research design allows us to disentangle the effect of criminal efficiency as a static trait of offenders from the dynamic variations in efficiency that offenders experience over time. Results show that efficiency is a strong, negative predictor of arrest, both at the static and dynamic levels.     

Better Left Unsaid? The Role of Agency in Queer Criminological Research

In this article, I review the scant literature on gay men’s involvement in violence, gangs, and crime, which characterizes gay men as having little opportunity for agency. In discussing the popular culture, academic, and political reasons why this population has been neglected from study, I identify existing stereotypes that have shaped representations of gay men. I challenge our societal and disciplinary assumptions by presenting examples from my interview-based and partially ethnographic study of 53 gay gang- and crime-involved men, who both respond to and actively resist stereotypes about them. I also critically reflect on whether a continued lack of attention to queer populations in the criminological and related literatures is desirable today, but conclude the article by providing suggestions for scholars looking to conduct research with LGBT populations, especially within criminology and criminal justice.     

Non-Disputing Party Participation in ICSID Disputes: Faux Amici?

Netherlands International Law Review - This article employs a mixed methodological approach to evaluate non-disputing party (NDP) participation by means of amici curiae submissions in investment...     

No More Negotiated Deals?: Settlement of Trade and Investment Disputes in East Asia

Many argue that East Asian countries have come to adopt ‘aggressivelegalism’ in trade and investment policy, in the sensethat they have come to settle their trade and investment disputesthrough the dispute settlement mechanism (DSM) of the WTO andthe other third-party procedures. Scrutiny of the dispute casesof these countries shows, however, that East Asian legalismis not so aggressive, that it varies country by country, andthat there still exists room for negotiated deals in settlingtrade and investment disputes among them. On the other hand,the recent move toward regional integration through free tradeagreements (FTAs), economic partnership agreements (EPAs), andbilateral investment treaties (BITs) in East Asia may lead tothe adoption of a more aggressive legalism in the region, inparticular in settling investment disputes, disputes relatingto intellectual property rights, and trade remedies.     

Agents of Change or Unchanging Agents? The Role of Lawyers within Russian Industrial Enterprises

The transition from state socialism toward market capitalism has led to an almost endless supply of new laws and legal institutions. Industrial enterprises need to adapt to this new institutional regime. In-house lawyers are well placed to be agents of change in facilitating this adjustment. Using survey data from 328 Russian enterprises, the article examines the role of company lawyers, asking whether they have fulfilled this potential. Legal expertise is not in short supply, but lawyers are marginalized within the enterprise. They focus on established, routine tasks, such as handling labor relations or drafting form contracts, rather than on shaping enterprise strategies in the newer areas created by the transition, such as corporate governance or securities law. The failure of in-house lawyers to emerge as agents of change in Russia reflects a continuation of their low status during the Soviet era and the lack of professional identity among these company lawyers.     

Seen or Unseen? The Role of Race in Police Contact among Homeless Youth

Homeless youth are at an increased risk of police contact—being stopped by police and arrested, yet it is less clear if this interaction is patterned by race. The current study draws on diverse scholarship to examine three possible effects of race on homeless youths’ interaction with police: that non-White homeless youth are more likely (disproportionate minority contact/symbolic assailants), less likely (out-of-place policing) or no different than White youth (master status) to experience police contact. Using the Midwest Longitudinal Study of Homeless Adolescents, we examine homeless youths’ odds of self-reported police harassment and arrest. Non-White homeless youth are more likely to report police harassment and arrest, but living on the street neutralizes these racial disparities. Further, prior police harassment is linked to subsequent arrest, operating similarly for White and non-White homeless youth. We discuss the implications of these findings for advancing scholarship on the challenges faced by homeless youth.     

Considering Destructive Interparental Conflict and Intimate Partner Abuse: Is there a Difference?

Building on existing evidence that destructive interparental conflict and intimate partner abuse (IPA) share research methodology and predict the same adjustment difficulties across numerous areas of child development, this article brings awareness to differences in terminology across disciplines and the impact these nuanced differences may have on families. We begin by identifying two main streams of scholarships followed by a discussion of research methodology similarities and differences. Important implications of differences in naming conventions for practitioners, legal and academic scholars, and victims are then discussed. Finally, we encourage professionals from both scholarships to consider referencing the other's terminology and using comprehensive assessments to better promote the well‐being of families.     

Governmental Rejections of Ombudsman Findings: What Role for the Courts?

This article discusses the recent Bradley litigation before the High Court and Court of Appeal, in which applicants sought judicial review of a Government Minister's decision to reject findings made by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration in her report, 'Trusting in the Pensions Promise'. The article critically analyses the Court of Appeal's approach to reviewing the Minister's decision, focusing on the standard of review applied and placing the Court's approach in the wider context of the Ombudsman process, which is inherently political.     

The Independence of Kosovo: A Unique Case of Secession?

The issuance of the Declaration of Independence by Kosovar authoritiesin February 2008 has been treated by the United Nations as notcapable of creating a precedent in international law. The questionremains as to whether the act was in conformity with internationallaw. In resolution A/RES/63/3, the United Nations General Assemblydecided to request the International Court of Justice to renderan advisory opinion on that question. The Kosovo case, consequently,raises issues that merit further consideration. A legal findingby the Court would be worth all this trouble if it clarifiedthe rules regarding post-colonial-age secessions, even thoughits conclusion on the situation of Kosovo will not be likelyto affect the matter of recognition to any great extent. Internationalintervention as a title to sovereignty is given some truth followingthese events concerning Kosovo. The conformity or not with internationallaw of a unilateral act always depends on the legality of boththe root for its initiation and the original rationale. Fromthis perspective, the independence of Kosovo is indeed a uniquecase of secession.     

Sex and Capacity: The Management of Monsters?

The first consideration by a civil court of the test of capacity to engage in sexual relations – X City Council v MB, NB and MAB – is as recent as 2005. This article places this and subsequent cases in the historical context of the way in which the law has constructed the sexuality of persons with intellectual impairment. The article argues that, beginning with a series of rape cases in the mid to late nineteenth century, which recognised the concept of consent given through the expression of animal instincts, the law has accepted and deployed a model of intellectual impairment which understands expressions of sexuality in terms of an increasingly unstable opposition between vulnerability and danger, understood as the presence or absence of instinct, and as indicating an underlying ‘monstrosity’. The article argues that the historical continuity apparent in the modern case law is unfortunate and should be rectified.     

The concept of exceptionality: a legal farce?

How do we decide which treatments should be offered by the National Health Service (NHS) when we cannot afford to fund them all? In the absence of a positive appraisal by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which mandates the provision of a treatment by the NHS, Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) are free to decide whether to provide a particular drug to some, or all, of their population. However, as public bodies, it is a well-established principle of Administrative Law that PCTs are not at liberty to fetter the exercise of their own discretion. They must recognise the possibility that some patients will have exceptional circumstances, and as a consequence, any general policy prohibiting the funding of a drug cannot be absolute. In the absence of statutory guidance on what might constitute exceptional, clinicians are left guessing as to whether their patients might be eligible for funding on the grounds of exceptionality. Using the context of expensive cancer drugs, I will examine the concept of exceptionality from clinical, moral, and legal perspectives, focussing particularly on the role of social factors in determining exceptionality. I will review the cases where PCTs' decisions not to fund cancer drugs were subject to legal action and argue that the courts have provided little guidance on interpreting the term exceptional, and that the concept has a limited role to play in the allocation of scarce health resources at a local level.     

Beyond the Law?: The Justice of Deconstruction

This paper offers a close reading of Derridas essay Force of Law that emphasises the twin strengths of a deconstructive approach to questions of law and justice -- textual analysis and political context. Derridas interest is in limit or test cases, and so he engages with the fraying edges of the law, its borders, the frontiers that are most heavily policed because they are most fragile, for example capital punishment, genocide, general strikes and terrorism. Derrida undertakes an exploration of violence through a reinterpretation of Walter Benjamins Critique of Violence. At the heart of Derridas difficult argument is a demand for justice that goes beyond the cataloguing of specific injustices, and beyond the terms of Benjamins critique. The utopian impulse that underpins Force of Law is carried over into Specters of Marx, Derridas recent explicit grappling with the legacy of Marxism. The links between these two texts by Derrida implies a sustained politics of radical commitment on the part of deconstruction, a commitment to future forms of legality and egalitarianism, a theory of justice posited upon prescience rather than precedent.     

The Consequences of Victim Physical Attractiveness on Reactions to Injustice: The Role of Observers’ Belief in a Just World

Two studies explored Dion and Dion’s (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 775–780, 1987) suggestion that the belief in a just world may contribute to the “beauty is good” stereotype. In Study 1, we found that participants rated the death of a woman as more tragic and unfair when she was physically attractive than less attractive. Participants were also more punitive towards agents of harm when the victim was physically attractive. In Study 2, we varied the extent to which a woman suffered from a house fire and asked participants to later recognize the woman’s picture among several choices varying in physical attractiveness. Participants who learned that the woman suffered a great deal remembered her to be less physically attractive than when her suffering was minimal. The results are discussed in terms of how the justice motive contributes to the evaluative and moral importance attached to physical attractiveness.

The Differential Role of Stress on Police Officers’ Perceptions of Misconduct

Asian Journal of Criminology - This study examines the influence of stress, by way of subdimensions of anxiety, and depression, on police officers’ perceptions of the seriousness of various...