L'herméneutique juridique entre hermétisme et dogmatisme. Le jeu de l'interprétation en droit

Sans résumé     

New Media and the Polarization of American Political Discourse

Scholars of political communication have long examined newsworthiness by focusing on the news choices of media organizations (Lewin, 1947 Lewin, K. 1947. Frontiers and group dynamics. Human Relations, 1: 143–153. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; White, 1950 White, D. M. 1950. The “gate keeper”: A case study in the selection of news. Journalism Quarterly, 27: 383–390. [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Sigal, 1973 Sigal, L. V. 1973. Reporters and officials, Lexington, MA: Heath.  [Google Scholar]; Gans, 1979 Gans, H. J. 1979. Deciding what's news, New York: Vintage Books.  [Google Scholar]). However, in recent years these traditional arbiters of the news have increasingly been joined or even supplanted in affecting the public agenda by “new media” competitors, including cable news, talk radio, and even amateur bloggers. The standards by which this new class of decision makers evaluates news are at best only partially explained by prior studies focused on professional journalists and organizations. In this study, we seek to correct this oversight by content analyzing five online news sources—including wire services, cable news, and political blog sites—in order to compare their news judgments in the months prior to, and immediately following, the 2006 midterm election. We collected all stories from Reuters' and AP's “top political news” sections. We then investigated whether a given story was also chosen to appear on each wire's top news page (indicating greater perceived newsworthiness than those that were not chosen) and compared the wires' editorial choices to those of more partisan blogs (from the left: DailyKos.com; from the right: FreeRepublic.com) and cable outlets (FoxNews.com). We find evidence of greater partisan filtering for the latter three Web sources, and relatively greater reliance on traditional newsworthiness criteria for the news wires.     

Who Suffers the Penalty?: A Panel Data Analysis of Earnings Gaps in Vietnam

In spite of its predominant economic weight in developing countries, little is known about the informal sector earnings structure compared to that of the formal sector. Taking advantage of the rich VHLSS dataset in Vietnam, in particular its three wave panel data (2002, 2004, 2006), we assess the magnitude of various formal–informal earnings gaps while addressing heterogeneity at three different levels: the worker, the job (wage employment vs. self-employment) and the earnings distribution. We estimate fixed effects and quantile regressions to control for unobserved individual characteristics. Our results suggest that the informal sector earnings gap highly depends on the workers’ job status and on their relative position in the earnings distribution. Penalties may in some cases turn into premiums. By comparing our results with studies in other developing countries, we draw conclusions highlighting Vietnam’s labour market specificity.     

Deterritorialised territories,borderless borders: the new geography of international medical assistance

This article examines the phenomenon of international medical assistance to populations in distress from the perspective of the new spatial strategies deployed by medical humanitarian organisations. Taking seriously the ‘borderlessness’ of movements such as Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders, or MSF), the article argues that transnational medical organisations participate in the practice of deterritorialisation. Deterritorialisation means that certain transnational actors now have the ability to intervene below, across and beyond state boundaries. In the case of MSF, going beyond state boundaries is creative of new territorial structures. One such structure is what may be called the ‘space of victimhood’. Under the guise of reaching ‘victims’ the world over, MSF constructs new spaces—humanitarian zones—inside which individuals in distress are identified as ‘victims’, are sorted out, and become recognisable as generalised examples of human drama. This construction of a space of victimhood opens up the possibility for re-appropriations and manipulations by other non-humanitarian actors. Among such actors, one finds global media networks which avidly search for images of victims. By pointing out the potentially non-humanitarian effects of the new spatial arrangements deployed by transnational medical organisations (a phenomenon referred to as ‘transversality’), this article urges international scholars and practitioners to keep a close eye on questions of space and, specifically, on the sociopolitical processes of inclusion and exclusion that such territorial delineations often produce.     

Criminalizing the State

In this article, I ask whether the state, as opposed to its individual members, can intelligibly and legitimately be criminalized, with a focus on the possibility of its domestic criminalization. I proceed by identifying what I take to be the core objections to such criminalization, and then investigate ways in which they can be challenged. First, I address the claim that the state is not a kind of entity that can intelligibly perpetrate domestic criminal wrongs. I argue against it by building upon an account of the modern state as a moral agent proper, capable of both culpable moral and legal wrongdoing. I then consider objections to the intelligibility and legitimacy of subjecting states to domestic criminal processes, which primarily find their source in the assumption that such subjection would necessarily involve the state prosecuting, judging, and punishing itself. I argue that whether this (questionable) assumption is sound or not, it does not create the kinds of unsolvable quandaries its exponents think it does. I then move on to reject the distinct, yet related, objection that, at least in aspiring liberal jurisdictions, treating the state as a criminal objectionably involves extending to it various substantive and procedural guarantees that, given its nature and raison d’être, it should not have. Finally, I discuss three central objections to punishing the state. First, that organizations like states do not have the phenomenal consciousness required to suffer punishment. Second, that the constant possibility of dispersion of state punishment amongst individual members stands in the way of its justification. Lastly, that whatever justification there may be for making things harder for the state in response to its culpable wrongdoing, such treatment need not be understood as punishment. While partially conceding the strength of these objections, I strive to loosen their grip in ways that show that justified punishment of the state, meaningfully understood as such, remains a distinct possibility. I conclude by contrasting supposed alternatives to the criminalization of states, and by contending that my analysis leaves us with enough to keep the possibility of state criminalization on the table as a justifiable response to state wrongdoing.     

Keep Them in the Dark: Australian Government Strategy to Weaken Activism against Australia's new Nuclear Reactor

Martin O'Connor, editor: Is Capitalism Sustainable? Political Economy and the Politics of Ecology. New York: Guilford Publications, 1994.

Kate Soper: What is Nature? Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.

Jim Schwab: Deeper Shades of Green: The Rise of Blue‐Collar and Minority Environmentalism in America. San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books, 1994.

Michael E. Zimmerman: Contesting Earth's Future: Radical Ecology and Postmodernity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

Michael Hough: Cities and Natural Process. New York: Routledge, 1995.

Wayne Roberts and Susan Brandum: GET A LIFE! How to make a good buck, Dance around the dinosaurs, and Save the world while you're at it. Get A Life Publishing, Toronto, 1995.

Sara Berry: No Condition is Permanent: The Social Dynamics of Agrarian Change in Sub‐Saharan Africa. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993.     

A transformation in the French model of shareholding and management

This article explores the French model of shareholding and management, identifying a significant transformation in the pattern of shareholding in the largest companies. In earlier configurations of ownership, first the State and then the system of cross shareholdings were at the centre of French capitalism; the new pattern of shareholding operates under a different logic and motivation. In effect, France has undergone rapid change from a 'financial network economy' to a 'financial market economy'. This new pattern of shareholding has not only broken the traditional system of cross shareholding, but it has also facilitated the arrival of foreign institutional investors who bring with them new techniques and demands on corporate management.     

Foucault,epistemology and history

This paper explores the way in which Michel Foucault utilized, re-worked and applied, in the field of the analysis of epistemological transformations, certain concepts from the history of the sciences that had been deployed the Bachelard and Canguilhem. More particularly, the paper focuses attention, on the one hand, upon the distinction between the present and the actual, from which derives the question of ‘recurrence’, and, on the other, on the idea of games of the true and the false.     

Is Multiculturalism Bad for Social Cohesion and Redistribution?

Multiculturalism as an official policy strategy has recently come in for significant criticism in a number of Western European countries. A key criticism is that multicultural policies undermine redistribution policies, since they would erode the social cohesion upon which redistribution measures are built. However, empirical research does not univocally confirm this critique. This article explains why this is the case. The first argument is called the integration‐recognition paradox. Policies that focus on recognising minority groups may lead to a greater social acceptance of those minorities, and in turn may lead to their feeling more appreciated as participants in society. In a second argument, the authors discuss how multicultural policies could easily be combined with policies that invest in national unity and social cohesion.     

The Iraq Coalition of the Willing and (Politically) Able: Party Systems,the Press,and Public Influence on Foreign Policy

Media outlets in multiparty electoral systems tend to report on a wider range of policy issues than media in two‐party systems. They thus make more competing policy frames available to citizens. This suggests that a “free press” is insufficient to hold governments accountable. Rather, we should observe more challenges to the governments’ preferred frames and more politically aware citizens in multiparty democracies. Such citizens should thus be better equipped to hold their leaders accountable, relative to their counterparts in two‐party democracies. I propose a mechanism through which democratic publics can sometimes constrain their leaders in foreign policy. I test hypotheses derived from my theory with cross‐national data on the content of news coverage of Iraq, on public support for the war, and on decisions to contribute troops to the Iraq “Coalition of the Willing.” I find that citizens in countries with larger numbers of parties confronted more critical and diverse coverage of Iraq, while those with more widespread access to mass media were more likely to oppose the war and their nations likely to contribute fewer troops to the Coalition.