The Shadows of the Law: Contemporary Approaches to Regulation and the Problem of Regulatory Conflict

Regulatory analyses often assume that compliance is desirable, with literature focusing on strategies to encourage "excellence" in adherence to regulatory goals. Yet, it is not unusual for disparate regulatory goals to exist that are based on competing values of what constitutes the "good society." It is this conflict that forms the substance of this paper. In cases of competing regulatory goals, techniques that encourage exemplary compliance in one area can create incentives to breach regulatory provisions of a competing regime. In such cases, generic regulatory techniques are unable to provide a useful means for resolving regulatory conflict but do allow a political delegation of conflict resolution to the "scientific" strategies of the regulator. In turn, the regulator places responsibility on companies for resolving competing regulatory demands. Successive delegation leads to juridification as well as regulators vying to retain primacy for their regime. This problem is examined through analysis of responsibilities for subcontractor safety under Australian health and safety law and sections of the Australian Trade Practices Act 1974 aimed at protecting competition.     

Cutting Public Expenditures in Advanced Industrial Democracies: The Importance of Avoiding Blame

This article examines three conditions for cutting public expenditures across a sample of 16 advanced industrial democracies: intent, ability, and need during the 1970s and 1980s. Unlike spending increases, cuts require purposeful action. A first condition, therefore, for cutting expenditures is that leaders intend to curb spending. Surprisingly, the results indicate that leftist parties are considerably more effective at cutting expenditures than parties of the right. Indeed, leaders appear to have most latitude when a feared course of action is considered least likely. A second condition is that of ability. Institutions constrain and facilitate leadership. The degree to which decision-making must be shared within the executive both helps and hinders budget-cutting across exogenous conditions. While oversized coalitions may impede losses, they may also facilitate them by sharing responsibility for unpopular measures and thus reducing electoral repercussions. Indeed, both party and institutional results point to the centrality of avoiding blame in the loss‐inducing process. A third condition for cutting public expenditures involves need. While objective economic indicators are not irrelevant, the issue of need is largely politically defined.     

Separated Children: A Comparison of the Treatment of Separated Child Refugees Entering Australia and Canada

Separated children are in a uniquely vulnerable situation. Notonly are they in fear of persecution but they have been separatedfrom their families. They are seeking multifaceted protections.Such children need a country to protect them from further persecution,a caregiver to nurture them and fulfil the family role and asociety that will foster their social and intellectual growth.This article analyses the treatment of separated child refugeesin the context of international human rights law as it relatesto children and from the viewpoint of domestic immigration law.The article bases this analysis on a comparison of the treatmentof separated child refugees in Australia and Canada. The fundamentalprinciple of the International Convention on the Rights of theChild is that member states should act in the child's best interests.This principle has two important aspects, firstly, that detentionof children should only be used as a last resort and, secondly,that child refugees should enjoy the right to seek asylum. Thearticle examines the domestic law of both Australia and Canadawith a view to determining how these two aspects are appliedto unaccompanied children.     

The Fitness to stand trial Interview Test: how four professions rate videotaped fitness interviews

The results of this study provide some preliminary support for the use of the FIT as a method for providing structure to interviewers. The FIT may be particularly useful as a guide for making initial decisions about fitness. It was suggested that a screening evaluation based on the FIT could be completed by any properly trained individual with some professional background. The more difficult cases can be referred for lengthier evaluations. Of course, further research on the use of the FIT with actual defendants in real assessments will need to occur before such a procedure can be used as a matter of routine. Finally, the FIT promises to be an effective research tool for isolating professional group differences in definitions of fitness and the importance of different aspects of it, from both a legal and a mental health perspective.     

Potential through paradox: indigenous rights as human rights

This paper takes the ratification of the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as its departure point. Reactions to the Declaration have thus far been mixed. According to advocates, these events signal ‘a new consensus’ that brings ‘to an end the nation states’ history of oppression of indigenous peoples’. According to critics, however, we have uncritically assumed an alliance between human rights and Aboriginal rights initiatives. This paper draws on these conflicting accounts, the theories of Rancière, and a discussion of a current Canadian court case to offer an assessment of the political possibilities of the UN declaration. Overall we argue that the value of the Declaration rests on our interpretation of the political process by which these rights are enacted. The possibilities of rights-based politics are always contextually dependent. In some instances a human rights frame can represent radical repositionings and rearticulations while at the same time always risking the possibility of co-optation. The acts of politics, in particular acts of dissensus, are the key factors that will impact whether the Rights of Indigenous Peoples lead to transformation or to the reinforcement of the status quo.     

Undermining Gender Equality: Female Attrition from Private Law Practice

The number of women in the legal profession has grown tremendously over the last 40 years, with women now representing about half of all law school graduates. Despite the decades‐long pipeline of women into the profession, women's representation among law firm partnerships remains dismally low. One key reason identified for women's minority presence among law firm partners is the high level of attrition of women associates from law firms. This high rate of female attrition undermines efforts to achieve gender equality in the legal profession. Using a survey of 1,270 law graduates, we employ piecewise constant exponential hazard regression models to explore gendered career paths from private law practice. Our analysis reveals that, for both men and women, the time leading up to partnership decisions sees many lawyers exit private practice, but women continue to leave private practice long after partnership decisions are made. Gender differences in leaving private practice also surface with reference to cohorts, areas of law, billable hours, firm sizes, and career gaps. Notably, working in criminal law augmented women's risk of leaving private practice, but not for men, while taking time away from practice for reasons other than parental leaves, hastens both men's and women's exits from private practice.     

The measurement and influence of child sexual abuse supportive beliefs

Abstract

The identification of offence-related cognition is a major target of most cognitive–behavioural treatment programmes for sexual offenders, and a number of measures are available for this purpose. This study assessed the psychometric properties of a brief measure of beliefs that support and justify child sexual abuse: the Sex With Children (SWCH) scale. Factor analysis revealed two distinct types of belief: that sex with children is harmless, and that children actively provoke adults into having sex with them. The SWCH was also found to have good internal consistency, test–retest reliability and concurrent validity. Child molesters scored significantly more highly on the SWCH than did rapists or non-offenders, and high-risk child molesters reported more entrenched offence-supportive beliefs than lower risk child molesters. A relationship was also observed between general offence-supportive beliefs as measured by SWCH and offence-specific cognitions ascribing responsibility or enjoyment to the offender's victim. The SWCH subscales appeared to closely match two of the implicit theories hypothesized by Ward and Keenan (1999 Ward, T. and Keenan, T. 1999. Child molesters’ implicit theories. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 14: 821–838. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) to be related to child molestation. Sex offender treatment providers need to be aware of the relationship between underlying implicit theories and offence-specific distorted cognitions about the victim's experience.     

Who reads Navajo poetry and what are they reading? Exploring the semiotic functions of contemporary written Navajo

This paper analyzes contemporary written Navajo in public signs, newspapers, and poetry. While the number of public space displays of written Navajo has increased in recent years, this has not met with an increase in either Navajo literacy or in the number of Navajo speakers. This paper argues that much written Navajo is read not for semantico-referential content, but either as icons and indexes of Navajo spaces and identity or as icons and indexes of fidelity to an orthographic norm. Contemporary written Navajo poetry is not normally read as poetry but as a success or failure to align with the orthographic norm. This mirrors nothing so much as how many Navajos were taught English literacy in the boarding schools.