“Who made the code in the first place?”: Delinquency and justice in an American Indian community

This paper examines the emergence of official categories of delinquency and a formal system for the legal processing of youth on one American Indian reservation. The creation of the legal code, Children's Court and Juvenile Detention Center, and the ongoing activities of these agencies are placed in the context of the larger social system of the reservation and the history of federal policies toward Indian peoples. Through in-depth interviews, participant observation, case file review, and the analysis of existing statistics, perceptions of delinquency and justice and trends in the legal processing of adolescents in this community are explored. The implications of this imposed system of law and justice for this community are discussed.     

Under Two Flags: Symbolic Voting in the State of Mississippi

Participants in a specialelection held in the State of Mississippion April 17, 2001, voted overwhelminglyagainst changing the design of the state'sflag, which incorporates a symbol of theConfederacy. The determinants of voting onthe flag are analyzed and turnout rates inApril 2001 are compared with those forrecent gubernatorial and presidentialelections. We find that the flag votedivided Mississippians sharply along linesof race, class and political ideology. Akey empirical implication is that voterpositions in issue space tend to be morepolarized when political choices haveexpressive as opposed to instrumentalconsequences.     

Book reviews

Journal of Chinese Political Science -     

Narratives of Irishness and the Problem of Abortion: The X Case 1992

This paper considers the ways in which discourses of abortion and discourses of national identity were constructed and reproduced through the events of the X case in the Republic of Ireland in 1992. This case involved a state injunction against a 14-year-old rape victim and her parents, to prevent them from obtaining an abortion in Britain. By examining the controversy the case gave rise to in the national press, I will argue that the terms of abortion politics in Ireland shifted from arguments based on rights to arguments centred on national identity, through the questions the X case raised about women's citizenship status, and women's position in relation to the nation and the state. Discourses of national identity and discourses of abortion shifted away from entrenched traditional positions, towards more liberal articulations.     

Corporate governance in Germany: The changing role of the banks

The article analyses the different channels ‐ industrial stakes, supervisory board mandates, proxy voting ‐ by which German banks can exert influence on industrial companies. The central thesis is that even where the banks have such influence they do not dominate the companies. A recent empirical study on the effects of the alleged bank dominance over industrial companies with detrimental effects on their performance is shown to contain major methodological mistakes. The relationship between banks and industry is undergoing some distinct changes. Banks have substantially reduced their industrial stakes as well as their representation on supervisory boards, which underlines that they are not striving for industrial leadership. Despite a clear trend in the German corporate sector to pay increasing attention to shareholder value and to provide more transparency in accounting, it seems premature to expect the German capital market, including the corporate governance system, to incorporate fully the Anglo‐Saxon model in the immediate future.     

Schranken des Rechts zur Pflichtteilsminderung nach § 773a Abs 3 ABGB

Das Recht auf Pflichtteilsminderung steht nach § 773a Abs 3 ABGB nicht zu, wenn der Erblasser die Ausübung des Rechts auf pers?nlichen Verkehr mit dem Pflichtteilsberechtigten grundlos abgelehnt hat. Im Rahmen dieser Bestimmung sind minderj?hrige und erwachsene Kinder gleich zu behandeln. § 773a Abs 3 ABGB ist auch auf solche Testamente anzuwenden, die vor dem 1. 7. 2001 (Inkrafttreten dieser Bestimmung) verfasst worden sind. Zum Entfall des Minderungsrechts führt aber nur ein Verhalten, das der Erblasser nach dem 1. 7. 2001 gesetzt hat. Für Dauersachverhalte (hier: das Verh?ltnis Eltern und Kind) gelten die Rechtsfolgen eines neuen Gesetzes ab seinem Inkrafttreten; mangels abweichender übergangsregelung ist der Teil des Dauertatbestands, der in den zeitlichen Geltungsbereich des neuen Gesetzes reicht, nach der neuen Rechtslage zu beurteilen.