MANDATORY VISITATION

The term visitation rights connotes that noncutodial parents have the discretion, not the responsibility, to visit their children. This article examines the assertion that visitation rights should instead be viewed as an obligation owed by noncustodial parents to their children. Excluding circumstances in which visitation would be injurious to a child, the expectation of visitation should be enforced by the courts.     

Kaiser Permanente: Using Interest-Based Negotiations to Craft a New Collective Bargaining Agreement

Building on a new labor–management partnership, Kaiser Permanente and its nearly seventy thousand union employees negotiated a five-year contract agreement in 2000 based on the principles of "interest-based negotiations." The people who made this remarkable achievement happen as well as the historic background of the case are described and analyzed. A key element to the success of this initiative was the back-and-forth work of many different groups, including joint labor–management committee, coalitions of unions, bargaining task groups focused on particular subject areas, and local and national leaders of the company and its unions. Using illustrative comments from actual participants in this complex, nearly year-long negotiation process, the authors explore how the parties crafted their agreement.     

Prevalence and patterns of substance use among early adolescents

Prevalence and patterns of substance use are described for a sample of 105 San Francisco East Bay adolescents (age 14). Data are compared with national statistics on substance use among high school seniors. While alcohol use appeared comparable to the national statistics, tobacco use was less prevalent among this younger western sample. Despite the differences in ages, use of marijuana, cocaine, and hallucinogens was similar to national high school prevalence; use of other harder drugs was more extensive among the older, national sample. Contrary to typical findings, males and females were not found to differ in frequency or extent of substance use; females appeared somewhat more involved in substance use at this early age. Initiation of substance use occurred at early grade levels, suggesting that intervention efforts should begin prior to junior high, perhaps as early as fourth or fifth grade.This study was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grant MH 16080 to Jack Block and Jeanne H. Block.Received her Ph.D. from Harvard University. Main interest is cognitive development and development in adolescence.Received his Ph.D. from Stanford University. Main interest is personality development.     

To Pay Suspicious Attention: Following the Weave of ‘Mixed Logics’ in Women’s Ethical Decision Making

This article explores areas of law loosely within English equity and trusts law that have not conventionally been subject to feminist debate, and within the context of a discussion about feminist method. The particular areas examined are whistleblowing and trustees’ powers of investment, each of which calls for consideration of decision-making processes which have an ethical content. These sites are chosen because they take debate outside the all too familiar locations of woman or ‘the body of woman’, including the family home, where feminist analysis in relation to equity and trusts tends to stray. In exploring these chosen fields, Hobby’s (Feminist Perspectives on Equity and Trusts, Cavendish Publishing, 2001, pp. 219–255) critique of gender dimensions in relation to whistleblowing and Dunn’s (Feminist Perspectives on Equity and Trusts, Cavendish Publishing, 2001, pp. 179–196) account of women trustees’ investment decisions are evaluated and developed. The debate within feminist legal criticism of the possibility of integrating an ‘ethics of care’ and an ‘ethics of rights’ is acknowledged. Whilst acknowledging of the difficulty of adopting an approach that recognises ‘mixed logics’, it is concluded that women (and men) do integrate the ethics of care and the ethics of rights in their decision-making. It is argued that the effort should be made to trace the specific weave in particular circumstances, thereby paying suspicious attention to the values that underlie courts’ analyses of ethical choices.     

Special Issue: Gender,Sexuality and Human Rights

This brief article introduces a special issue of Feminist Legal Studies addressing gender, sexuality and human rights, and comprising papers drawn from an E.S.R.C.-funded workshop held at the University of Kent in June 2004 on the theme of “Gender-Auditing the Human Rights Act”. The article begins by situating the themes of the special issue within the broader context of feminist engagement with rights discourse. It goes on to consider the introduction of the Human Rights Act 1998 into the U.K. with a view to assessing its implications in terms of engendering a positive legal and political culture for equality-seeking initiatives. The article concludes with a survey of the contributions to the special issue, highlighting the possibilities for feminist theory and strategy posed by a wider intersectional engagement with rights issues.