‘Them’ and ‘us’: demonising politicians by moral double standards

The distance between politicians and those they are supposed to represent is substantial. Almost invariably, it is politicians themselves who are made to shoulder the responsibility for this ‘gap’, their actions being demonised. This paper assesses some ‘ordinary’ ethical lapses that politicians are often accused of: lying, breaking promises and being self-serving. It is argued that the public tend to apply double standards when it comes to the moral expectations that they have of their representatives, inasmuch as they far more readily accept ethically dubious actions when they apply to other social and public roles. The moral singularity of the political sphere is called into question, with the effect of helping to narrow the gap between the two categories, and encourage more empathy on the part of the public.     

A 'cyanoacrylate case' for developing fingerprints in cars.

A portable case has been developed by which cyanoacrylate (super glue) fuming can be used inside a vehicle suspected of being involved in serious crime. The car itself serves as a fumigation chamber and the cyanoacrylate vapours are fed into the car via a hose. Connected to the hose and suspended inside the car is a vapour diffuser. The cyanoacrylate originates from a portable case where there is a sealed heater and also a command panel with hygrometer and thermometer for a technician to control the process. There is also space inside the case for other necessary equipment.     

The American Revolution and Christine Desan's New History of Money

This essay argues that Christine Desan's Making Money: Coin, Currency and the Coming of Capitalism intervenes decisively in debates over the origin of money, while making a fundamental contribution to the legal history of money, the philosophy of money, and the history of capitalism. Desan shows money to be a mode of governance, created by rulers to extend their power, and maintained and managed by their successors. She argues that British politicians reinvented money at the end of the seventeenth century, creating the essential institutional basis for contemporary capitalism. The essay builds on Desan's analysis, showing how the tools she develops to understand the origins and development of British money can help us explain the expansion of capitalism, and the transition to capitalism associated with the American Revolution.     

Judicial Politics on the Ground

This symposium focuses on judicial politics at the micro level. Its aim is to shed light on justice in action, drawing on an ethnographic approach to explore the routine decision‐making practices of judges and other legal actors, and to study their interactions with citizens and politicians. Each article is based on close observation of the interactions between legal professionals and administrative actors who are at the frontline in local and lower courts. By examining a variety of jurisdictions around the globe, the articles in this symposium offer fresh insight into “judicial politics on the ground.”     

Bringing the battlefield into the classroom: using video games to teach and assess international humanitarian law

The graphic and widespread atrocities committed during conflicts around the world and broadcast across 24/7 news and social media have made war never feel so close and the powerlessness of law seem so real. This raises difficulties in engaging students in real-life decision-making quandaries where military necessity meets legalism, as well as fundamental ethical questions about the use of realistic, yet explicit, imagery in the classroom. The School of Law at Queen’s University Belfast has developed a series of innovative computer scenarios based on the Arma 3 open world tactical war simulator. A variety of formative scenarios (addressing issues such as cluster munitions and landmines) were developed to familiarise the students with the factual scenario and the computer technology. Subsequently, students engaged in a summative assessment to test their legal understanding in the face of increasingly challenging conflict situations, in particular grey zones where legal argument can justify seemingly morally wrongful acts during war. This paper examines both the learning objectives of this project, and the project development cycle – from the initial proposal to its implementation in class, as well as positing the benefits and drawbacks in integrating technology and games into the legal teaching environment, reflecting on the emerging and traditional pedagogy in this area.     

The quality of democracy: Mass‐elite linkages in the Czech republic

This article argues for the importance of more focused scholarly attention on the development of mass‐elite linkages ‐ and in particular those linkages that transcend the electoral connection ‐ for understanding democratic consolidation, drawing on the post‐communist experience of the Czech Republic as a case study. Starting with the government's loss of its majority in the 1996 Czech elections amidst favourable economic conditions, we argue that this electoral result goes beyond the response to policy priorities to point to larger deficits in the development of channels of access and communication in the policy‐making process. Such deficits, characteristic of the post‐communist experience regionally, are not merely legacies of the stunted civil societies of the communist period, but also reflect a post‐communist style of governance that may itself discourage regularized citizen and associational input. As the episodic electoral connection alone cannot bear the weight of democratic consolidation, the risk is a pattern of mass‐elite linkages that creates a punctuated politics of elections and street demonstrations.