Out of Time: The Moral Temporality of Sex, Crime and Taboo

This paper discusses the relationship between law and morality. Morality does not necessarily coincide with the law, but it contributes to it. An act may be legal but nevertheless considered to be immoral in a particular society. For example, the use of pornography may be considered by many to be immoral. Nevertheless, the sale and distribution of non-violent, non-child related, sexually explicit material is legal (or regulated) in many jurisdictions. Many laws are informed by, and even created by, morality. This paper examines the historical influence of morality on the law and on society in general. It aims to develop a theoretical framework for examining legal moralism and the social construction of morality and crime as well as the relationship between sex, desire and taboo. Here, we refer to the moral temporality of sex and taboo, which examines the way in which moral judgments about sex and what is considered taboo change over time, and the kinds of justifications that are employed in support of changing moralities. It unpacks the way in which abstract and highly tenuous concepts such as “desire”, “art” and “entertainment” may be “out of time” with morality, and how morality shapes laws over time, fabricating justifications from within socially constructed communities of practice. This theoretical framework maps the way in which these concepts have become temporally dominated by heteronormative structures such as the family, marriage, reproduction, and longevity. It is argued that the logic of these structures is inexorably tied to the heterosexual life-path, charting individual lives and relationships through explicit phases of childhood, adolescence and adulthood that, in the twenty-first century, delimit the boundaries of taboo surrounding sex more than any other time in history.     

The development and diffusion of financial reporting practices in the public sector

A prevailing economic crisis in the State of New York contributed to an erosion of previous institutional patterns, instigating a problem and political process of finding a mechanism wherein economic order could be produced. One strategic response to this economic crisis which is the focal point of this paper is the development and diffusion of financial reporting practices which guide the manner with which this state reports to its important constituencies including the citizenry, the media, and the capital markets. The main findings of this paper reflect the manner in which the relative power of organized interests and actors are mobilized through the use of rules such as financial reporting practices that establish meaning in public administration.     

The Effect of Requiring Private Employers to Extend Health Benefit Eligibility to Same‐Sex Partners of Employees: Evidence from California

Health disparities related to sexual orientation are well documented and may be due to unequal access to a partner's employer‐sponsored insurance (ESI). We provide the literature's first evaluation of legislation enacted by California in 2005 that required private employers within the state to treat employees in committed same‐sex relationships in the same way as employees in different‐sex marriages with respect to ESI. Our analysis uses data on sexual orientation, partnership, and health insurance from the 2001 to 2007 California Health Interview Surveys (CHIS). Prior to the reform, partnered gay men and lesbians were significantly less likely to have ESI in someone else's name than partnered heterosexuals. Pooling data from 2001 to 2007, we find that the reform had no effects on differences in insurance outcomes between gay and straight men. We find some evidence that the reform increased partnership, reduced full‐time employment, and increased health insurance coverage among lesbians relative to heterosexual women. The increases in insurance coverage for lesbians are consistent with a role for expanded dependent ESI, suggesting that such policies may reduce sexual orientation‐based insurance disparities among women.     

Did Ontario's Zero Tolerance & Graduated Licensing Law reduce youth drunk driving?

On April 1, 1994, Ontario, Canada, instituted a new graduated driver license (GDL) system that effectively set the legal blood alcohol content (BAC) threshold at zero for the first few years of a youth's driving eligibility. I use data from the 1983–2001 Ontario Student Drug Use Surveys (OSDUS) to examine whether the Zero Tolerance (ZT) policy reduced self‐reported drinking and alcohol‐involved driving among youth. I find that rates of drunk driving reported by 16‐ to 17‐year‐olds—who faced new, lower legal limits after adoption of the ZT policy—were about 5 percentage points lower after the law was implemented. Visual inspection of the data, however, shows that the estimated reduction is an artifact of a pre‐existing trend: Drunk driving rates in this age group were falling steadily throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s. Estimates that account for this pre‐existing trend or that consider shorter windows around the 1994 implementation date return effects on alcohol‐involved driving that are either small and statistically insignificant or large and implausibly signed (positive). These null findings are robust to using the associated change in outcomes for slightly younger (14–15) or slightly older (19–20) youths as controls in a difference‐in‐differences framework. I similarly find no robust effect on drinking participation. This suggests that Ontario's age‐targeted drunk driving law—despite being harsher than similar policies in the United States—was not responsible for reductions in Canadian youth road fatalities over the past two decades. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Issues surrounding a reduction in the use of internal autopsy in the coronial system

In 2003 it was estimated that 2,700 full internal coronial autopsies were performed in Queensland at a cost of approximately A$5.3 million. This large number of internal coronial autopsies (almost 95% of all matters referred to the coroner) is of concern not only due to the economic cost but also because of the public heath risks, availability of specialist staff and significant religious and cultural sensitivities surrounding internal autopsies. In 2005 the authors began research funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) to determine if unnecessary internal autopsies are being performed in Queensland and to establish guidelines for when an internal autopsy is required. This article highlights areas of potential concern when the issue of autopsy is reviewed within the coronial system through an examination of international literature on the issue of autopsy diagnosis and error rates more generally, and through preliminary discussion of the data obtained. The article considers the role and purpose of the autopsy generally as well as within the coronial system specifically; compares diagnostic error rates in hospital autopsies with those in the coronial system; the current situation internationally with regard to internal autopsies; and finally the specific circumstances existing in Queensland.     

The disparate labor market impacts of monetary policy

Employing two widely used approaches to identify the effects of monetary policy, this paper explores the differential impact of policy on the labor market outcomes of teenagers, minorities, out‐of‐school youth, and less‐skilled individuals. Evidence from recursive vector autoregressions and autoregressive distributed lag models that use information on the Federal Reserve's contractionary initiatives indicate that the employment‐population ratio of minorities is more sensitive to contractionary monetary policy than that of whites. The ratio falls primarily because of an increase in unemployment and not because of a decline in labor force participation. Monetary policy appears to have a disproportionate effect on the unemployment rate of teenagers, particularly African American teenagers. Their employment‐population ratios fall because of increased difficulty in obtaining employment. The larger responses are not caused by their higher likelihood of having been employed in industries and occupations that are more sensitive to contractionary monetary policy. © 2004 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Heavy alcohol use and youth suicide: Evidence from tougher drunk driving laws

This paper uses the widespread variation across states in the timing of adoption of tougher drunk driving laws that set very low legal blood alcohol limits for drivers under age 21—“zero tolerance” (ZT) laws—to provide new evidence on the causal effect of alcohol use on youth suicide. ZT laws reduced heavy episodic drinking by underage men, with no effect for slightly older males. I estimate the reduced form effect of ZT policy adoption on suicide deaths among 15–17‐, 18–20‐, 21–24‐, and 25–29‐year‐old males and females for the period 1981–1998. The models control for macroeconomic conditions, demographic changes, other alcohol control policies, state and year fixed effects, and smooth state trends. Results indicate statistically significant reductions in suicide among young males aged 15–17 and 18–20 associated with adoption of ZT laws on the order of 7 to 10 percent. I find no effects for slightly older males who were unaffected by the tougher drunk driving laws, and no consistent effects for females. These results provide new and compelling evidence that heavy alcohol use causes young male suicide. © 2004 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.