Relativistic Justifications

Law and Philosophy -     

Third world neutralism and British Cold War strategy, 1960–62

European decolonization appeared to the Western powers to open up fresh areas of the globe to Cold War competition. Concerned by the coincidence of Afro-Asian and Sovier pressure on the European colonial powers, and preoccupied with the redefinition of Britain's global role in the wake of decolonization, the British Foreign Office was convinced, despite much evidence to the contrary, that the West needed to champion ‘neutralism’ in order to prevent the Afro-Asian states from orienting towards the Soviet sphere. This article argues that this policy was determined more by their anxieties about Anglo-American relations in the wake of decolonization than by a deeply held conviction of the imminence of the extension of the communist world.     

From Participatory Reform to Social Capital: Micro‐Motives and the Macro‐Structure of Civil Society Networks

Although a wide‐ranging literature explores the favorable effects of social capital, it is only relatively recently that systematic attention has been directed to the manner in which social networks emerge and the consequent implications for civic engagement and collaborative governance. This article employs advanced social network statistical models to examine civic network emergence following a participatory reform in Los Angeles. Findings suggest that the reform fostered a number of favorable network attributes supportive of democratic participation. At the same time, subtle but ubiquitous effects of socioeconomic sorting had the unintended and undesirable effect of elevating higher‐status actors within the emergent civic network. These findings suggest that macro‐level policy interventions are required to foster the development of ties that promote cross‐talk among socioeconomically distinct community groups.     

Interdisciplinarity and the Discipline of Law

This article concerns the effects of interdisciplinary research conducted by academic lawyers on the legal discipline itself. It discusses the intellectual tension between the modes of legal analysis traditionally used by academic lawyers and the approach taken by interdisciplinary scholars, and how this tension is rooted in the challenges interdisciplinarity poses to widely-accepted notions about the purposes of legal scholarship and the relationship between academic lawyers and the legal profession. The article considers the implications of legal interdisciplinarity in light of the cultural context from which legal interdisciplinarians emerge and how the relationship between legal scholarship and legal practice ultimately guarantees the continued existence of a distinct and coherent disciplinary identity for law.     

Issues in Higher Education Quality Assurance

This article examines a range of policy issues which concern the quality assurance of higher education by regulatory bodies. There is a widespread consensus that the benefits of at least some forms of external quality assurance of higher education exceed the costs. This is probably a matter of faith more than the outcome of a considered analysis, but public policy in several countries has accepted it nevertheless.
There are important questions regarding the manner in which such quality assurance should be conducted. Issues to do with self-regulation, the use of independent ratings agencies, the role of the courts, the establishment of a government agency, and the public funding of private quality assurance bodies all deserve consideration.
Process matters become important once structural issues have been decided. These include quality assurance principles, internationalisation and national jurisdiction; the role of a quality assurance system in qualifications' design and development; what precisely is to be 'quality assured' in higher education; the standards to be used in quality assurance; linkages between quality assurance and public funding of higher education; compliance costs; and the utility of a National Qualifications Framework (NQF).
This article places considerable emphasis on a discussion of the deficiencies of the NQF approach. It argues that the emphasis placed on the development of an NQF in several systems of educational quality assurance is misplaced: an NQF cannot embrace the complexity of contemporary qualifications systems.
Claims to the effect that an NQF is a valuable addition to the sources of information available to national and international labour markets must be treated with scepticism. There are logical and practical issues to be considered in this regard. An NQF is arguably likely to mislead labour markets seriously under existing circumstances.     

" 'These Boots Are Made for Walking' ": A Reply

Erik Craft's comment on our 2000 article takes up a minor point,the impact of no-fault divorce on the gender of the spouse filingfor divorce. In the original article, we related the genderof the filing to rent exploitation during marriage, rent appropriationthrough divorce, and particularly child custody. We tested thehypotheses we generated using a sample of more than 46,000 divorcedecrees from the only four states collecting all the informationwe needed. The type of divorce ground was only a control variable,and not a strong one. We argue that Craft's comment misses ouressential point.