In the Fair Hearing Room: Resistance and Confrontation in the Welfare Bureaucracy

This article explores how welfare clients use and experience the fair hearing system, the administrative mechanism for challenging denials or reductions of aid in public welfare bureaucracies. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews with clients, it explores how old-style procedural protections like fair hearings are being used to challenge new-style welfare reforms. This research found that clients use fair hearings as a form of resistance and self-assertion, hoping that it will protect them from a bureaucracy perceived as arbitrary and capricious. Like many citizens, they are as concerned with being heard by their governmental institutions as they are with the outcome of their case and want to find within the machinery of government a forum where they can obtain recompense and respect. However, the legalistic and rule-bound nature of hearings makes it difficult for clients to present their claims, and meaningful participation is often denied them.     

The impact of international human rights norms—a “law undergoing evolution”

Abstract

In this paper, the author outlines the history of, and reasons for, the growing impact of international human rights jurisprudence upon the work of judges in New Zealand, Australia, England and elsewhere in the Commonwealth of Nations. Formerly, international and domestic law were virtually entirely separate. But now, there is increasing legal authority to support the use of international human rights jurisprudence in domestic judicial decision‐making. It can be done in the application of constitutional or statutory provisions reflecting universal principles stated in international treaties. But, according to the Bangalore Principles, it can also be done where there is a gap in the common law or where a local statute is ambiguous. The judge may then fill the gap or resolve the ambiguity by reference to international human rights jurisprudence which will ensure that domestic law conforms, as far as possible, to such principles.

In its decision in Tavita, the New Zealand Court of Appeal declared this to be “a law … undergoing evolution”. The author outlines some of the impediments and problems for the evolution. But he also collects the reasons why it is a natural and inevitable phase of the common law in the current age. He suggests that judges should be aware of the developments. In appropriate cases, they should inform their decisions with relevant international human rights jurisprudence. That will at least ensure that they develop domestic human rights law in a principled way, consistently with international law, and not in an idiosyncratic fashion “discovering” new fundamental rights which may otherwise be criticised as mere judicial invention.     

Arsenic Poisoning Caused by Intentional Contamination of Coffee at a Church Gathering—An Epidemiological Approach to a Forensic Investigation

Abstract: An outbreak of apparent food‐borne illness following a church gathering was promptly reported to the Maine Bureau of Health. Gastrointestinal symptoms among church attendees were initially attributed to consumption of leftover sandwiches that had been served the previous day. However, a rapid epidemiological and laboratory assessment revealed the etiology of illness, including the death of an elderly gentleman, was not food‐borne in origin. A criminal investigation determined that deliberate arsenic contamination of the brewed coffee by one of the church members was the source of the outbreak. Public health officials and criminal investigators must be aware that intentional biologic aggression can initially present as typical unintentional disease outbreaks. Practitioners must also consider the need to properly maintain and preserve potential forensic evidence. This case demonstrates the key role public health practitioners may play in criminal investigations.     

The Service Conception: Just One Simple Question

It is crystal clear that the Service Conception includes at least three conditions, what I shall call: the ‘normal justification condition’, the ‘independence condition’ and the ‘dependence condition’. The overarching rationale of these conditions is that they ensure that authority is only justified when it provides the best means for the subject to conform to the reasons for action that she actually has. However, it is difficult to clarify whether Raz implicitly presupposes a fourth necessary condition. This condition might be called a ‘reliable belief condition’, that is, that the putative subject must reliably believe that the putative authority-agent satisfies the Service Conception (or more precisely, its other three conditions). In sum, the purpose of this paper is to pose Joseph Raz one simple question: is it a necessary condition of your Service Conception, that the subject believes that the authority-agent satisfies the Service Conception? As a matter of interpretation, different parts of Raz’s work appear to lead in entirely opposite directions: some parts clearly support the reliable belief condition, others do not. Regardless of Raz’s ultimate answer, however, the question reveals a broader inconsistency. Only if the Service Conception does include the belief condition will it support Raz’s claim that authority is consistent with one’s rational ‘self-reliance’, that is, acting upon one’s own judgement (including, as to who has authority). Only if the Service Conception does not include the belief condition will it support Raz’s perfectionist account of government. It seems Raz must choose between one or other.     

Judging the Other: The Intersection of Race,Gender, and Class in Family Court

This critical ethnographic study of family court child maltreatment proceedings describes and illuminates the ways in which racial, gender, and class disadvantages can manifest on the ground as judges, attorneys, social service workers, and parents—joined often by gender but split by race and class—adjudicate cases. The findings suggest that intersectionality worked in ways that exponentially marginalized poor mothers of color in the courtroom. They were marginalized both through the rules of the adversarial process (which silenced their voices) and through the construction of narratives (which emphasized individual weakness) over structural obstacles as well as personal irresponsibility over expressions of maternal care and concern. Standard due process courtroom practices also communicated bias or social exclusion, especially in a courtroom split by race and class.     

Innovation in the Australian legal profession

Over the next decades, advances in technology and new business practices will challenge a traditionally conservative legal profession. With a focus on the Australian legal profession, this article explores the nature of the challenges and, in particular, considers whether the challenges pose a threat of disruptive innovation. The article aims to add to understanding of how Australian law firms are responding to the challenges by drawing on empirical data that examines the drivers and inhibitors of innovation in Australian law firms, the areas where Australian legal firms are innovating, and the outcomes of their innovation. The article concludes that there is limited evidence of incumbent displacement and that, gradually, the profession is rising to the challenges.     

WHAT IF ALL THE MONEY CAME HOME?

Since its inception, the public child support program has functioned primarily as a welfare cost recovery mechanism: $2.1 billion of child support collected annually for current and former welfare families is kept by the government to repay welfare costs. However, Wisconsin research findings suggest that low-income fathers pay more support and are less likely to work in the underground economy when support payments are passed through to their children. Regular support reduces poverty and welfare use, and increases child well-being. A consensus has emerged to reform distribution rules so that more child support is paid to the families, not to the government.