Recent legal developments

Abstract

THE CASE of R (Pretty) v. Director of Public Prosecutions, gave the House of Lords the opportunity to comment on the issues surrounding the application of the European Convention on Human Rights to the crime of assisted suicide in the case of the terminally ill. A conservative approach was taken in relation to both this issue and indeed in relation to the possibilities of judicial control of the Law Officers of the Crown.     

Incarcerated Parents and Health: Investigating Role Inoccupancy Strains by Gender

This article elaborates research on parenthood, gender, and health by considering the context of incarceration using the stress process paradigm. The chronic strain of non-participation in a desired role, or “role inoccupancy,” in the form of non-resident parenthood on arrest is associated with psychological distress at time of lockup among women but not men, indicating a gendered strain. However, for both incarcerated men and women, anticipated resident parent role inoccupancy upon release (or expectations not to live with their minor children) is generically associated with current subjective mental health problems net of distress prior to lockup. Role inoccupancy strains are further associated with subjective physical health problems among women but not men, indicating more pervasive associations among the former.     

Exports,growth and threshold effects in Africa

Abstract

The relationship between openness and growth remains a controversial issue in development economics with many studies focusing on the export–growth relationship. This paper examines whether the relationship between exports and growth found in large cross-section studies also holds in the context of African economies. The paper employs threshold regression techniques to examine whether African countries benefit more from exports when they reach a certain level of development or openness. Our results suggest that there is indeed a positive relationship between exports and growth in Africa. The threshold regression analysis also suggests that it is not necessary for a country to reach a certain level of development or to have an existing export base for this relationship to hold, though it is found that the relationship is stronger for countries that experience higher rates of export growth.     

Cabinet Government in the Twentieth Century

This paper examines the main features of the cabinet system as it had emerged during the twentieth century, and which Jennings did so much to crystallize in his pioneering study on Cabinet Government. It then assesses the main changes that have occurred over successive administrations since the late 1970s, and concludes that even if cabinet government seemed to return in 1990 and 2003, it was without the cabinet system that had underpinned and made it effective in the past.     

Profiles of punishment and privilege: secret and disputed deviance during the racialized transition to American adulthood

This paper combines Glenn Loury’s (The anatomy of racial inequality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002) thought experiments about racial inequality with Howard Becker’s (Outsiders: Studies in the sociology of deviance. New York, NY: Free, 1963) typology of deviance to guide the analysis of three waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. The results reveal the racial anatomy of punishment and privilege during the transition to American adulthood. Our analysis points to a substantial pool of white American youth and emerging adults whose partying behavior is a prevalent form of unsanctioned secret deviance. These disproportionately white and economically advantaged secret deviants contrast with a smaller but significant number of African-American youth and emerging adults who dispute their designations by the juvenile and criminal courts as official deviants. While the privileged position of a party subculture may in social–psychological terms be enabling and even empowering for youthful and affluent white Americans, the selective punishment of other forms of drug activity and delinquency is disabling for African-Americans in profound and less recognized ways. The importance of the data presented in this paper is to expose the comparative probabilities of black and white punishment and privilege. The results reveal concealed racial conventions involved in the construction of the American collective conscience, which Loury identifies as a source of our cognitive imprisonment.