Sexual harassment in higher education: a victim's remedies and a private university's liability

Sexual harassment is a pervasive problem in education. With victims of harassment pursuing administrative and judicial redress, an awareness of and a program for response to the sexual harassment issue are good risk management strategies for a private university and its staff, employees, and students. This article examines, first, the two types of sexual harassment recognized by law; second, the situations in which harassment in the educational context may occur; and, third, avenues of recourse for the victim of sexual harassment and the responsibility and liability of the private university when the harassment is reported or discovered. It is designed to inform and educate the faculty and administrators of private universities about the legal implications of their response to notice of sexual harassment.     

Sexual harassment and abuse in sport: The research context

Abstract

This publication draws on the contributions to a Symposium on ‘Sexual Harassment in Sport - Challenges for Sport Psychology in the New Millennium’, held at the Xth Congress of the International Society for Sport Psychology, Skiathos, Greece from May 28th to June 2nd 2001. The symposium was intended to move forward the international research agenda on sexual harassment and abuse in sport and, in particular, to examine professional practice issues for sport psychologists. It was clear from the attendance of over 60 delegates at that symposium that international interest in this subject is growing. Further evidence of this came from the attendance of 26 members states - from Azerbaijan to Sweden - at a Council of Europe seminar on The Protection of Children, Young People and Women in Sport, held in Helsinki in September 2001. It seemed appropriate, therefore, to take the work on sport-based sex abuse research to a wider audience, both to increase awareness of sexual abuse in extra-familial settings and to attract critical interest in the sharing of research perspectives between those working inside and outside sport. One of the co-organisers of the Skiathos Symposium (Celia Brackenridge) is a NOTA member and serves on its Research Sub-Committee so it seemed particularly appropriate to approach the Journal of Sexual Aggression with a proposal for this publication. We are delighted that Marcus Erooga and Helen Masson were enthusiastic about the idea and we thank them and the publishers for investing in this issue on sport. We sincerely hope that this marks the start of a long and fruitful exchange of research ideas and expertise between sports researchers and readers of the Journal.     

Sexual harassment of women in athletics vs academia

Abstract

Sexual harassment at institutions of higher learning is not a new phenomenon but discussions of this problem in the sporting arena are still scarce. Many studies have focused on student-teacher relationships, few investigations have researched athlete-coach relationships, and hardly any have conducted comparative analyses. This study compares the perceptions and the experiences of sexual harassment of athletes and students. It is not a surprise that most harassing behaviors are extended from men towards women. Thus, this investigation analyses and compares female student/male teacher interactions with female athlete/male coach relations. The findings indicate that sexual harassment is slightly more prevalent in academia than in athletics. However, in order to guarantee a safe learning environment for all participants in both domains, it is necessary to formulate clear guidelines, to set up educational workshops and to implement intervention programs.     

职场性骚扰雇主责任的法经济学分析

职场性骚扰雇主责任就是雇主要为其雇员的性骚扰行为负责任。通过法经济学的分析,对于监督管理者雇员实施的交换型性骚扰雇主承担严格责任;对于敌意环境型性骚扰雇主承担过错责任。这对预防与抑制职场性骚扰更有效率,同时,可以使社会成本降到最低。     

Sexual harassment in student residences: A response to DeKeseredy and Kelly's study

Research data from a recent study of sexual harassment in single student residences are provided as confirmation of DeKeseredy and Kelly's national study. The implications of data confirming the consistency of gender differences in attitudes towards and perceptions of unwanted sexual experiences are discussed. Future research in sexual harassment should focus on evaluating preventive education programmes and on operationalizing contextual factors that support sexual harassment.     

中国行政执法困境的个案解读

Due to lack of effective, and adequate communication on the standpoint of the government and the attitudes of civil society in legislative process, this has led to tension between the government and the general public. Within the context of law enforcement, the government sticks to “problem-based strategies” and “campaign-based enforcement”, who believe in the power of coercive force. As a way out of the dilemma in law enforcement, it is required that in the process of rule-making, the government should communicate effectively with the civil society in the institutionalized system, focusing on learning, reflection, and strategic adjustment. Wang Xixin, Professor at Law School of Peking University. Since 1999, Prof. Wang is a working member of China Administrative Legislative Research Group an academic team advising China’s Legal Affairs Working Commission on administrative law reforms. Since 2001, he is a major drafter for China’s Administrative Procedure Act. Since 2002, he is a research consultant for the NPC Standing Committee General Office. Since 2003, he is a research fellow of the China Law Center of Yale Law School. Since 2005, he is a Vice-chairman of Beijing Administrative Law Society. In academia, Prof. Wang is focused on administrative procedure, public participation, rulemaking and comparative administrative studies, whose publications include books, such as “Administrative Procedure: A Theoretic and Institutional Inquiry” (Beijing, 2007) and “Public Participation and Administrative Process” (Beijing, 2007) and some 30 articles for journals published in China and America. Moreover, Prof. Wang often submits papers and gives lectures in academic forums, including Columbia Law School, Yale Law School, the Woodrow Wilson Center for Int’l Scholarship, and Carnige Endowment for Int’l Peace.     

Sexual harassment stories: testing a story-mediated model of juror decision-making in civil litigation

The story model of juror decision-making proposes that jurors use personal experience and information presented at trial to create stories that guide their verdicts. This model has received strong empirical support in studies using criminal cases. The research presented here extends the story model to civil litigation and tests a story-mediated model against an unmediated model of jury decision-making. In Phase 1, content analysis of mock juror responses to 4 realistic sexual harassment cases revealed prototypic plaintiff and defense stories. In Phase 2, these prototypic stories were included as mediators in a model predicting verdicts in 4 additional sexual harassment cases. Mock juror attitudes, experiences, and demographics were assessed, then attorneys presented abbreviated versions of 4 actual sexual harassment cases. Path analyses provided support for the story-mediated model, which added significantly to the amount of variance accounted for in the outcome measures of verdict, commitment to verdict, and confidence times verdict. Implications for sexual harassment and other types of civil cases are discussed.     

Sexual harassment of girls in elementary school: a concealed phenomenon within a heterosexual romantic discourse

The aim of this study was to enhance the understanding of young girls' experiences of peer sexual harassment in elementary school and of normalizing processes of school-related sexualized violence. Six focus group interviews with girls in Grade 1 through 6 were carried out in an elementary school in the northern part of Sweden. A content analyses showed that young girls experienced verbal, nonverbal, and sexual assault behaviors at school. Sexual harassment as a concealed phenomenon and manifest within a romantic discourse were themes found in the analysis. A conclusion is that schools have to acknowledge behaviors related to sexual harassment as a potential problem even in young ages and develop methods to approach the subject also for this age group.     

“He said,she said”: Sexual harassment in the fractured criminal justice work place

This article addresses the critical problem of sexual harassment in criminal justice agencies. The authors assess empirically the incidents of sexual harassment in criminal justice organizations, and discuss why sexual harassment is more prevalent in criminal justice agencies than in other public agencies.     

论行政合同中的行政主体特权

行政合同中的行政主体特权源于行政合同的行政性与公益性,本质在于实现行政管理目标。本文从探求行政合同特权产生的根源——天然性与必然性入手,对德、法的行政合同特权理论模式进行考量,对我国的行政特权制度与控权制度进行设计;同时,强调加强行政人员的伦理、道德建设的重要意义。     

Employment discrimination: age discrimination and sexual harassment

This is the era of deregulation—and yet in U.S. labor markets, at least, the legal regulation of the employment relation has been expanding in recent decades. The laws have been stiffened and their enforcement, mainly through private lawsuits, has been beefed up. Currently the two most important areas, in terms of impact on employers, are age discrimination and sexual harassment, and these will be my focus.     

Scope of liability: the vanishing distinction between negligence and strict liability

The duty-of-care requirement cannot be used anymore as the touchstone to differentiate negligence from strict liability because it can be found in many forms of the latter. Duty of care is smuggled into strict liability hidden under the scope of liability requirement (traditionally called “proximate causation”). As far as the scope of liability requirement is common to negligence and to many forms of strict liability, there is a fairly large common ground to both liability rules, and consequently the marginal Hand formula is applied to both rules. Indeed, under a negligence rule, the marginal Hand formula is applied twice: first to assess whether or not the defendant did breach his or her duty of care, and, second, to delimit whether or not the defendant’s behavior was a proximate cause of the harm suffered by the victim. However, under a strict liability rule, the Hand formula is applied only once when the proximate causation question is raised. Traditional law and economics analysis has almost always taken the normative question raised by the causation requirement as given, which is a potential major problem due to the importance of scope of liability or proximate causation in legal practice. Defining the scope of liability, that is to say, the boundaries of the pool of potential defendants, is the basic legal policy decision for each and every liability rule. In the normative model presented in this paper, the government first chooses efficient scope of liability, and given the scope of liability, the government then decides the liability rule and damages that guarantee efficient precaution. In the article, most known scope of liability rationales developed by both common law and civil law systems are discussed in order to show the substantial common ground between negligence and strict liability.     

专家契约责任的经济分析

本文是运用经济分析法学的方法,通过引入信息经济学中的信息不对称理论和新制度经济学中的交易成本理论以及利用新古典经济学中的成本———收益分析方法,对专家契约责任问题进行了探讨。本文认为,专家承担有限的告知义务是为了解决专家与顾客之间信息不对称的状况,而面临专家与顾客之间交易成本过高的难题,专家契约责任领域的契约法不得不走向了与侵权法的融合。     

我国行政司法运行情况的实证评估

行政司法程序对于审查行政执法行为合法性、保障行政行对人的合法权益具有重要意义。我国的行政诉讼实践能够在多大程度上实现行政司法程序的制度价值,可以通过实证评估的方法进行测量。中国司法文明指数报告项目的调研数据,反映了我国行政诉讼在及时受理起诉、符合程序公正、有效执行裁判、提供有效诉讼救济等方面的情况。通过对调研数据进行挖掘可以发现,行政司法程序的运行情况与法官形象之间存在正关联,对于这种关联可以进行多种解释。对于行政司法程序的评估,不同职业群体之间存在差异,这可以解释为视角偏差、社会信息供给负面化等原因。