China and Korea: The godfather,part three

This article challenges the conventional wisdom that the People’s Republic of China, in dealing with the situation on the Korean peninsula, rules out North Korea’s imminent collapse and continues to stabilize the Kim Chong-il regime as a buffer against U.S. and South Korean advances. It suggests that Beijing has started to view short- or medium-term reunification on Seoul’s terms as a realist scenario and has been trying to influence the accompanying shift in the Northeast Asian power equation to its advantage. If this strategy succeeds, reunification would be brought about under Chinese auspices, with anti-Japanese or anti-American sentiments in both Koreas being purposely or automatically activated so as to promote a sense of national identity.     

Early Care and Education for Children in the Child Welfare System: Evaluations of Two Training Programs

Despite evidence that early care and education services benefit at-risk children, they remain underutilized by families in the child welfare system. This article describes two training programs developed to educate child welfare and childcare/preschool staff about the importance of early care and education for maltreated children and how to access these services. A combined total of 274 trainees completed knowledge tests about this topic and significant pre- to post-training improvements indicate that both training programs effectively increased participants' knowledge about this important topic. In addition, improvement in self-assessed competency was observed for participants in one program, and positive changes in attitudes and anticipated practice behavior regarding childcare for foster children were observed among participants in the other.     

Lawyers and Embedded Legal Activity in the Southern Civil Rights Movement

We introduce the concept of embedded legal activity to capture the ways in which lawyers and legal organizations can become intertwined in the ongoing activities of social movements. Embedded legal activity is characterized by diverse issues and venues and comprises legal activities that help support movement infrastructure, close coordination between movement lawyers and other activists, and responsiveness to constituent needs. Investigating a comprehensive data set on legal activity during the southern civil rights movement, we identify forms of legal activity beyond the typical focus of legal mobilization, including defense for movement participants charged with misdemeanors and other crimes, movement assistance on organization‐level legal matters, and general legal aid to movement constituents. These were by far the more common types of legal activity and emerged from the embeddedness of lawyers in a mass movement. We argue that embedded legal activity is likely where movements prioritize grassroots leadership and community organizing and face significant countermobilization, hostile legal and political opportunity structures, and substantial social and economic inequality.     

Public Action for Public Science: Re-imagining the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture

ABSTRACT

In Iowa, the heart of the United States Corn Belt, a small, publicly funded research center has championed alternative agricultural practices and fostered the creation of a sustainable agricultural community over the past 30 years, but its future is now uncertain due to funding cuts and increased corporatization of the university. We share our engagement in a grassroots campaign to restore and, ultimately, to re-imagine the future for the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture as an act of ecofeminist praxis. This process documents the beginnings of a transformative moment. We find opportunities to begin a new dialogue about the place of a sustainable agricultural center, the role of science created by and for the public, and a new relationality among scientists, farmers, animals, and the Earth.     

Intraprofessional Competition and Earnings Inequalities Across a Professional Chasm: The Case of the Legal Profession in Québec,Canada

Intraprofessional rivalry has a long history. This article examines earnings disparities as a dimension of intraprofessional competition among avocats and notaires in the civil law system of Québec, Canada. Drawing on two large‐scale surveys and in‐depth interviews with legal professionals, I examine three competing perspectives of earnings inequalities: human capital, social‐symbolic capital, and organizational‐structural explanations. Through this analysis I seek to examine whether similar causal processes shape earnings across the two spheres of legal practice in Québec. The findings of this study clearly demonstrate that these two professional groups are equipped with differential stocks of capital, and conversion rates differ drastically. Avocats receive greater exchange on their investments in human and social‐symbolic capitals. These disparities are most pronounced in sectors of the profession where jurisdictional frictions abound: among notaires and avocats working as solo practitioners and in small firms within competitive urban contexts. The article concludes with a discussion of theoretical extensions and future directions for the study of legal professionals in civil law systems and blended jurisdictions.     

Third molar development according to chronological age in populations from Spanish and Magrebian origin

Spain is frequently the entrance country into the European Union for undocumented immigrants, especially those from the Magreb (Northern Africa). Forensic age estimates for these persons are difficult because systematic studies of dental maturity are lacking. Three different populations were analyzed to determine the pattern of development of third molars as a tool for age estimation in people of different ethnic and geographic origin. Orthopantomograms from two different populations of Spanish origin (Galicia in northwestern continental Spain, and Ceuta, a Spanish province in Northern Africa) were compared to radiographs of molars from a Magrebian population (Northern Africa) resident in Ceuta. Orthopantomograms were obtained from a private dental clinic (n=344) in Galicia and from the Public Oral Health Services (n=228) in Ceuta. We looked for differences in third molar mineralization (determined with the Demirjian scale) that might serve as age indicators (older versus younger than 18 years). Differences in maturation patterns were found between sexes and populations of origin. Mineralization of tooth 38 was more advanced in males than females among subjects 18 years of age and older in all three populations. Moreover, mineralization of tooth 38 in subjects aged 18 years and older was significantly slower in the Spanish-Galicia population than in the Magrebian-Ceuta population. We found no significant differences between Magrebian and Spanish individuals from Ceuta. We conclude that differences in tooth 38 mineralization may be related more with socio-geographical than ethnic origin (ancestry), and thus constitute evidence of the relevance of socio-geographic rather than genetic factors in third molar development. We used ROC analysis to determine the accuracy of the examiner's ability to correctly estimate age as younger or older than 18 years. The results suggest that Demirjian stage for tooth 38 can be considered a good indicator of age in all three populations.     

Senthorun Sunil Raj: Feeling Queer Jurisprudence: Injury,Intimacy, Identity

Feminist Legal Studies -