Race and Determinations of Discrimination: Vigilance,Cynicism, Skepticism,and Attitudes about Legal Mobilization in Employment Civil Rights

What factors affect whether ordinary citizens believe that workplace decisions involving African‐American employees rise to the level of discrimination? When do observers believe targets of possible race discrimination should consider mobilizing the law? We use a factorial design vignette study administered to a nationally representative sample of 2,087 ordinary people to address these questions. The “vigilance hypothesis” predicts that minorities will be more likely to perceive discrimination than whites. Our analysis partially confirms this: African Americans perceive anti‐Black discrimination at higher rates than do whites and Latinos, while Latinos do not show a significant difference from whites. Where respondents believe discrimination occurred, we analyze what influences whether respondents might recommend legal mobilization. The “cynicism hypothesis” suggests that people of color may be less likely to favor using law. We find, however, that African‐American and Latino respondents express more confidence in civil litigation, compared to whites. Further, African Americans express the strongest support for legal mobilization (recommending that a “friend” contact an attorney), while whites and Latinos do not differ in mobilization recommendations.     

Constructive “Consent”: A Problematic Fiction

The law and society occasionally impute consent to an agent despite a clear lack of actual consent. A common type of such ‘fictitious consent’ is constructive consent. In this practice, we treat an agent as if she consented to Φ because she did Ψ. By examining how constructive consent operates in law (monitoring inmate phone calls and blood alcohol concentration testing on unconscious drivers) and daily life (physical contact in public spaces), I show that our treatment of agents in these cases bears no normatively relevant resemblance to consent because it is grounded in values and concerns other than autonomy. Thus, the practice may diminish the very autonomy consent proper seeks to promote. Hiding this potential for conflict creates the risk moral concerns will not be appropriately balanced when deciding on the permissibility of an action. We thus ought to be explicit that such cases don’t involve consent and its common justification.     

Privacy and research involving humans

Human research ethics committees in Australia are required to consider compliance with privacy law as an element of the ethics of research. Recent legislation has introduced federal private sector privacy protection, as well as privacy protection at State and Territory levels. In Victoria, which is used as an example in this article, State privacy legislation covers public sector information and health records. This article considers the implications for research involving human participants and for ethics committees of the new privacy regimes. Although privacy law is a potential barrier to research about humans, the need for exceptions has been dealt with effectively in the context of medical or health research. However, privacy law and its chilling effect could potentially be a serious impediment to some forms of non-health-related research, such as social and socio-legal research.     

Working Well with Others: The Evolution of Teamwork and Ethics

In non-hierarchical environments such as teams and honor codes, effective self-management requires members to simultaneously address their dual roles as worker (agent) and monitor (principal). We employ an evolutionary analysis of teamwork where ethical behavior is voluntary, repetitive and related to an established norm. The explicit recognition of monitor–worker duality results in a unique and intuitive social contract that specifies the punishment must fit the crime. Our results are consistent with examples of successful team production, unraveling honor codes at colleges and teamwork and ethics as part of the MBA curriculum.     

Analyzing Rural Local Governments' Financial Condition: An Exploratory Application of Three Tools

Rural local governments frequently lack the capacity to analyze and monitor their financial condition. This article presents three tools that were used in a pilot project to analyze the fiscal health of a rural Minnesota county. The article compares and contrasts these methodologies by pointing out the strengths and weaknesses, the usefulness of the results, and the ease or difficulty of use of the tools.     

Energy Insecurity with Chinese and American Characteristics: implications for Sino–American relations

This paper reviews Chinese and American energy futures, focusing in particular on long-term oil supply and demand, policy deliberations in China and (to a lesser extent) the United States on energy strategy and its implications for national-level decision making, and the implications of Sino–American energy futures for bilateral relations. There is far more commonality in the energy requirements of both countries than is often acknowledged, but this overlap is often obscured by domestic political agendas, corporate and bureaucratic interests, and the increasing tendency to view energy as a defense planning issue, in particular with reference to future Chinese and US maritime strategies. The conditions for heightened Sino–American energy collaboration exist, and some important initial steps have been undertaken toward this end. But sustained and far more vigorous governmental and institutional interactions will be needed to forestall the potential for heightened antagonism in the longer-term energy futures of both countries.     

Introducing a dynamic framework to jointly address policy impacts on environmental and human health in a regional produce recovery and redistribution system

Regular consumption of fruits and vegetables is associated with a decreased risk of cardiovascular disease and all‐cause mortality. Access to fresh produce is limited for individuals and families experiencing food insecurity. Emergency food programs, including food pantries, are important institutions for assuring access to nutritional foods for this population, including fresh produce. Produce availability at such institutions is on the rise thanks to donation, gleaning, food bank purchases, recovery programs multiscale policy interventions. These efforts also have coupled economic and environmental benefits for producers and retailers as surplus food is redirected from the waste stream, where it would otherwise produce greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. Although varied surplus produce recovery programs have been implemented around the country and the world, little modeling of potentially synergistic impacts has accompanied their implementation. Thus, there remains sparse understanding of system‐wide joint implications economically, environmentally, nutritionally, and epidemiologically. The goal of this paper is to offer a novel dynamic modeling framework capable of assessing environmental, nutritional, and health impacts of policies and programs in the food recovery and redistribution system. This unique framework serves as a scientific basis for implementing best management practices and policies to improve the sustainability of U.S. food systems.     

Dangerous Places: Gang Members and Neighborhood Levels of Gun Assault

Despite attention to the role of gangs in urban gun violence, much remains to be learned about the spatial distribution and consequences of residential gang membership. This study uses data from St. Louis to examine the effects of resident gang membership on rates of gun assault. We also consider whether gun violence is conditioned by the level of gang membership in surrounding communities. As anticipated, communities with the highest number of gang members also have the highest rates of gun assault. However, much of the impact of gang membership on gun assaults extends outside of the boundaries of gang neighborhoods, especially those neighborhoods with few or no gang members. The number of gang members in surrounding neighborhoods has no discernible effect on gun assaults in communities with higher rates of gang membership. Finally, controlling for the spatial proximity of residential gang membership helps to account for some of the association between neighborhood disadvantage and gun assaults.     

The gender gap in death penalty support: An exploratory study

One of the more enduring observations in the study of death penalty support within the United States is the strong divide between males and females. Men have consistently shown significantly higher levels of support for capital punishment than women. This divide between males and females has appeared in nearly every survey, over time, and across a variety of methodological designs. Using data from the cumulative (1972-2002) data file for the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) General Social Surveys, this study attempted to understand the basis for this gender gap. It examined gender differences in socioeconomic status, gender inequality, gender socialization, religion/religiosity, political ideology, positions on right-to-life and other social issues, fear of crime and victimization experience, experience with the criminal justice system, philosophies of punishment, and attribution styles. The findings revealed that the effect of gender on capital punishment support continued to be robust despite controlling for the effects of all of these explanations.