Foucault, Law, and Power: A Reassessment

After raising doubts about Foucault's approach to law-power, in the light of various acts of religion-inspired violence on and after 11 September 2001, a case is made against this approach, based on the charge that Foucault ties law far too tightly to what he calls negative power. He makes law part of juridico-sovereignty power, a form of power he regards as outmoded, with an outmoded commitment to sovereignty and the state. It is argued that in attempting to separate law from what he sees as the positive power of modern governmentality, Foucault never understands law's role as a part of a crucial balance - between political power, military power, the social, the cultural, the legal, and the economic - a balance that tries to achieve both individual freedom and the security to enjoy that freedom. An alternative way of understanding law, and of understanding sovereignty and the state - the state under the rule of law - is presented as a much better route to an appreciation of law's part in the balance.     

The Lawyer's Amoral Ethical Role: A Defense, A Problem, and Some Possibilities

This essay presents a moral justification for the current generally accepted amoral ethical role of the lawyer. The justification is premised primarily upon the values of individual autonomy, equality, and diversity. Based upon these values, the author argues that the amoral role is the correct moral stance for the lawyer as a professional, is a "good" role. The essay then responds to two of the most frequent criticisms of that moral stance: the first based upon economic inequality and the fact that lawyers'services must be purchased; the second based upon the absence of the "adversary system" context for most lawyer work. The author then elaborates a serious problem created by the conjunction of the amoral role and the dominant legal philosophy of American lawyers, "legal realism." If the limit on a lawyer's conduct under the traditional amoral role is the law, then the realist emphasis on the indeterminacy and manipulability of "law" leave the lawyer in a difficult moral position. Finally, a series of possibilities are presented to deal with this problem, the most promising of which is the "moral dialogue" between lawyer and client as an adjunct to the amoral role.     

THE FORM OF REFORM: REVISITING THE CHOICE AMONG A CREED,A CODE,AND A CATALOGUE

In the past, international Evidence law reformers have focused primarily on substantive evidentiary doctrines. However, for reforms to be effective, the courts and legislatures must state the revised doctrines in a form that promotes the overall objectives of the legal system. The basic choice facing reformers is among a creed identifying broad goals, a code stating flexible principles, and a catalogue prescribing detailed rules. In the past, especially in the United States, there was a consensus among Evidence scholars that the code format is preferable. However, if a key objective of a national legal system is to encourage pretrial disposition of cases, the courts and legislatures should give serious thought to utilizing a catalogue format. That format is especially attractive in the doctrinal areas such as privilege in which evidentiary rules are intended to affect primary behavior outside the courtroom.     

Race,female headship,and delinquency: A longitudinal analysis

Two recent studies support the hypothesis of a positive association between the “broken family” and crime; one repeats an earlier finding that this relationship is stronger for blacks than for whites. The alarm over the upsurge in female family headship in the United States led to a test of the hypothesis with previously neglected longitudinal data. For the years 1971 to 1986, despite tremendous increases in female family headship among blacks, only one of eight index offenses (arrests) showed an increase among black juveniles. Among white juveniles, increases in three of eight index offenses accompanied the increase in female headship. More important, multiple regression analysis yielded no significant relationship between female headship and any of the eight index offenses or total index offenses for black or white juveniles. The findings may be explained in part by changing attitudes toward birth outside marriage, divorce, and women's competence to rear children by themselves. Also, proposed explanations of the broken family/crime association, such as ineffective supervision by single parents and weakened attachment to single parents, are rendered irrelevant by our findings.     

Objectivity,Interpretation, and Rights: A Critique of Dworkin

Law and Philosophy -     

Employment,age, race,and crime: A labor theoretic investigation

The fundamental objective of this paper has been to reinvestigate the relationship between employment and crime, while taking account of deterrence, age and race effects. The data, a sample of Brooklyn arrestees, was collected by the Vera Institute of Justice simply to explore, with individual data, the relationship between employment and crime. In this research, a labor theoretic formulation is used incorporating a model that views the problem as one of rational choice between legitimate work and participation in crime. Factors affecting the diminution of crime participation with age are investigated. Changes at age 18 in economic opportunities and in deterrence effects from moving from juvenile to adult status are found to have a significant impact on crime participation. The results are important because they tend to confirm with official crime report data, results found in earlier studies using self-report data, i.e., (1) when the process is appropriately modeled, previous contacts with police are found to cause some experimenters with crime to become desisters, (2) prior work experience and economic opportunities tend to reinforce this tendency to desist, (3) even though blacks are found to have a greater prevalence of involvement in crime, when the data are standardized for all of the aforementioned factors and educational attainment, there is no significant difference between blacks and whites in their tendency to recidivate.     

Personality, antisocial behavior, and aggression: A meta-analytic review

Purpose

Although the relationship between personality and antisocial behaviors has been widely examined and empirically supported in the psychological literature, relatively few efforts to study this relationship have appeared in mainstream criminology.

Materials and methods

The current study focuses on the domains and facets from the Five-Factor Model of personality, and how they are related to antisocial and aggressive behaviors.

Results

The meta-analytic findings indicate that the higher-order traits of Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Neuroticism demonstrate the most consistent relationships with these outcomes. At the lower-order trait level, straightforwardness, compliance, and altruism from Agreeableness, deliberation from Conscientiousness, angry hostility from Neuroticism, and warmth from Extraversion were among the strongest correlates.

Conclusion

The findings are consistent with previous meta-analytic studies, thus providing compelling support for their utility in understanding antisocial and aggressive behavior. As such, they should be afforded greater theoretical and empirical attention within criminology.     

UNEMPLOYMENT,CRIME, AND IMPRISONMENT: A PANEL APPROACH*

Despite the widespreach acceptance of the notion that during periods of economic downturn, higher levels of unemployment lead to higher levels of crime and imprisonment, the research literature reveals very little consistent support for the existence of such a relationship. Studies that do suggest unemployment causes crime and imprisonment have used methodological techniques which, especially in over-time studies, could lead to the acceptance of spurious effects caused by trend and lag as evidence of a true relationship. Using data over a six-year period for the United States, a panel model is specified in which appropriate controls for intra-series trend and cross-series lagged effects are included. Although bivariate correlations are strongly suggestive of a relationship between unemployment and crime, results of the panel approach suggest that most of the apparent relationship is due to common trend effects. Little evidence is found for the existence of a relationship between crime/imprisonment and unemployment, regardless of the type of effect considered. In addition, results from stability tests indicate that the crime-unemployment relationship has been unstable. while the unemployment-imprisonment relationship has been relatively invariant.     

A Vigilante Model of Justice: Revenge,Reconciliation, Forgiveness,and Avoidance

Once a working relationship is damaged through an act of injustice, how do the victim and offender repair their relationship? What causes the victim to let go of the anger and resentment and then reconcile with the offender? We propose a theory that the likelihood of forgiveness and reconciliation is greatly enhanced, and revenge and avoidance greatly decreased, if justice is first served. That is, forgiveness follows justice; without justice, forgiveness is much less likely. Justice may be served one of three ways: (1) by the victim evening the score; (2) by the organization punishing the offender; or (3) by the offender repenting. We recommend that managers establish a procedurally just climate so that victims of offense seek distributive justice through formal channels rather than seeking it themselves through revenge.     

Simultaneous,Sequential, Elimination,and Wildcard: A Comparison of Lineup Procedures

This study compared four lineup procedures: the simultaneous, sequential, elimination, and wildcard. Two hundred and sixty-nine university students (M = 20.17 years) watched a mock, videotaped crime. Then, following a brief delay, they viewed a 6-person target-present or -absent lineup using one of the four lineup procedures. For target-present lineups, correct identification rates for the four lineup procedures were comparable. In contrast, for target-absent lineups, the correct rejection rate was higher using the elimination lineup procedure compared to the wildcard and simultaneous lineup procedures. Remaining comparisons between lineup procedures found no significant differences. Also diagnosticity ratios were similar across the four procedures.     

Crime,detection rate,and the police: A macro approach

Dutch criminality and its relation to the performance of police and justice have only recently been analyzed at the macro level (e.g., at the level of municipalities or the whole country). This type of approach is a useful supplement to analyses at the micro level (that of individuals), which are more common in Dutch empirical criminological research. The main results of such a macro approach are presented in this article. We conclude that the per capita numbers of youth, divorced people, and unemployed contribute significantly to the crime rate. The police strength and solving rates are important factors as well. Analysis of the production process of the police reveals that detecting one more case of driving under the influence is far more expensive than solving one more other crime or handling one more traffic accident. The results are combined to sketch a cost-benefit approach of different strategies in allocating more resources to the police. Allocating extra resources to solving more cases of vandalism gives the best cost-benefit ratio.     

Social support, ethnic heterogeneity, and homicide: A cross-national approach

This study examined the manner that social support theory accounts for the dynamic between social support, ethnic heterogeneity, and homicide at the cross-national level. Using five alternative measures of social support, the findings indicated that social support influences homicide, but these effects are somewhat contingent on the type or dimension of social support provided. Additionally, the analyses performed here revealed that social support and ethnic heterogeneity interact to influence rates of homicide. Taken together, these findings revealed that social support theory provides a useful foundation for exploring the factors that influence homicide at the cross-national level.