Megan's Law: Crime and Democracy in Late Modern America

To an unprecedented degree American society at the turn of the twentieth century is governed through crime. Nearly three percent of adults are in the custody of the correctional system. Crime and fear of crime enter into a large part of the fundamental decisions in life: where to live, how to raise your family, where to locate your business, where and when to shop, and so on. The crime victim has become the veritable outline of a new form of political subjectivity. This essay explores the complex entanglements of democracy and governing through crime. The effort to build democratic governance after the American Revolution was carried out in part through the problem of crime and punishment. Today, however, the enormous expansion of governing through crime endangers the effort to reinvent democracy for the twenty-first century.     

Clustering of adolescent dating violence, peer violence, and suicidal behavior

To understand the co-occurrence of multiple types of violence, the authors developed a behavioral typology based on self-reports of suicidal behaviors, physical violence, and psychological abuse. Using a sample of dating adolescents from a high-risk school district, they identified five clusters of behaviors among the 1,653 students who reported being abusive or violent in the past year. Victimization and perpetration with same-sex peers and dating partners clustered together among the students who reported the highest levels of abusive (n = 357) or violent behavior (n = 146). These students also reported high levels of suicidal behavior. There were few significant demographic differences across clusters. The implications of the results for the need to design and evaluate efforts to prevent multiple types of violence are discussed.     

Measuring sex differences in violence victimization and perpetration within date and same-sex peer relationships

This study examines sex differences in the patterns of repeated perpetration and victimization of physical violence and psychological aggression within dating relationships and same-sex peer relationships. Data were obtained from the Youth Violence Survey: Linkages among Different Forms of Violence, conducted in 2004, and administered to all public school students enrolled in grades 7, 9, 11 and 12 (N = 4,131) in a high-risk school district. Analyses of adolescents who dated in the past year (n = 2,888) show that girls are significantly more likely than boys to report physical violence and psychological aggression perpetration within dating relationships. However, boys are significantly more likely than girls to report physically injuring a date. Boys are also significantly more likely than girls to report physical violence victimization and perpetration within same-sex peer relationships. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Dismay for directors in (yet another) baby bottle case

This complex multi-issue, multi-defendant case highlights theliability problems faced by company directors with regard tojoint tortfeasance, in particular the liability of a director.     

The European Council and The Council of the European Union: Shapers of a European Confederation

The European Council and the Council of the European Union playkey roles in the European Union. The European Council is largelyconcerned with system-steering, while the Council of the EUundertakes sectoral policymaking. What is common to these rolesis the balancing act carried out by both institutions. Bothhave to mediate the centripetal dynamics of integration, termedcooperative confederalism here, and the centrifugal dynamicswhich are found in the strongly entrenched territorial natureof power, centered on the member states. Using new institutionalistanalysis, the article illuminates different facets of the twoinstitutions1 functioning in mediating the two dynamics.