“Ought to” as a Chinese Legal Performative?

The article discusses the legal performatives as used in Chinese legislative language consisting of bixu (shall), yingdang (should or ought to), keyi (may) and bude (shall not) with the illocutionary force of imposing obligations, conferring rights and permission, and prohibition (bude). It postulates that the use of bixu and yingdang is traceable to the influence of the ancient Chinese cultural and legal philosophy of li and fa. It argues that Chinese language is a carrier of messages with built-in Chinese cultural codes and to be able to understand Chinese law, the wider cultural and linguistic contexts must be considered. It also proposes that speech act theory needs to address the interlingual and intercultural variables in the construction of meaning.     

Editorial

Liverpool Law Review -     

The prevalence of violence and relation to depression and illicit drug use among incarcerated women in Recife, Brazil

PurposeTo assess the prevalence and different types of violence experienced by women prisoners in Brazil and the effects of violence on women's depression and illicit drug use.MethodsParticipants (N = 377) were incarcerated women from a state prison in a northeastern city of Brazil. Multivariate logistic regression models (adjusted for age, education, partner status, prison history, drug related offense, and sentencing status) were used to assess associations between each type of violence (physical abuse, sexual abuse, and life threats) and each outcome variable: recent depression and illicit drug use.ResultsThe majority of participants (87%) reported experiencing some type of violence in their lifetime, including physical violence (83%), sexual victimization (36%), and threats on their life (29%.) Sexual violence was significantly related to both recent depression (Odds Ratio (OR) = 2.8; 95% Confidence Interval (CI) = 1.4–5.3) and recent substance use (OR = 2.7; 95% CI = 1.6–4.4) in adjusted models. Experiences of life threats were also significantly associated with illicit drug use (OR = 2.2; 95% CI: 1.3–3.7), as was physical violence (OR = 2.4; 95% CI: 1.2–4.9); however, neither of these latter two violence variables were significantly associated with depression.ConclusionReports of lifetime violence victimization among this incarcerated sample of women were extremely prevalent and relevant to women's depression and illicit drug use. Prison efforts to address women's depression and illicit drug use may be most effective by incorporating aspects related to women's history of victimization, especially given the high rates of violence experienced by women in this sample.     

Too Bad for the Women or Does It Have to Be? Gender and Negotiation Research over the Past Twenty‐Five Years

One overriding question that scholars have addressed over the past twenty‐five years is: are women the same or different from men when it comes to negotiating and what might explain these differences? The inquiry has shifted and has become more nuanced over time, but in its essence the issue of individual difference still dominates much of our thinking and research on the topic. The purpose of this article is to provide a structured overview of this considerable literature on gender and negotiation as it has evolved over the past twenty‐five years. In doing this, the article highlights how the social construction of gender has generally changed the discourse from essentialist concepts of differences between men and women to seeing gender as a more complex and shifting dimension of individual identity that is shaped by the contexts in which negotiation occurs. The second purpose of this article is to consider how recent feminist perspectives on gender, which have shifted from viewing gender as a property of individuals to considering the role of institutionalized social practices that sustain gender differences and inequities, can be incorporated into our understanding of gender relations in negotiation theory, practice, and research.