Immigrants into Citizens

This paper examines the citizenship test which is part of the UK naturalisation process. The test is based on the government publication Life in the United Kingdom: A Journey to Citizenship. A detailed analysis of its two editions (2004 and 2007) reveals that the conception of the citizen, and the picture of British government and society underlying each are very different. There is, additionally, a mismatch between the rationale offered for the Life in the United Kingdom test and what the latter can in fact test: the attitudes and civic virtues mentioned in the rationale are untestable on-line. A society which aspires to be a democracy, it is argued, needs to scrutinise carefully the fairness and democratic appropriateness of its procedures for admitting new citizens.     

PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY LAWS REVIEWED

Imposing legal responsibility on parents for the antisocial behavior of their children has long been tempting to legislators. The serious problems inherent in such laws are presented in the following appraisal, excerpted with permission from the Pittsburgh Law Review, Volume 30 No. 3.     

Assaults Against Inspectors: The Dangers in Enforcing Corporate Crime

This survey of regulatory inspectors reveals a surprising number of threats and assaults being made against inspectors in the course of enforcing regulatory provisions. Contrary to conventional images of regulatory enforcement, inspectors in some agencies face violent resistance from regulatory offenders that is similar to the violent resistance encountered by police officers. These findings provide support for the contention that regulatory enforcement and policing should be conceptualized as overlapping forms of law enforcement rather than as distinct governmental activities.