Attitude and the normativity of law

Though legal positivism remains popular, HLA Hart’s version has fallen somewhat by the wayside. This is because, according to many, the central task of a theory of law is to explain the so-called ‘normativity of law’. Hart’s theory, it is thought, is not up to the task. Some have suggested modifying the theory accordingly. This paper argues that both Hart’s theory and the normativity of law have been misunderstood. First, a popular modification of Hart’s theory is considered and rejected. It stems from a misunderstanding of Hart and his project. Second, a new understanding of the mysterious but often-mentioned ‘normativity of law’ is presented. Once we have dispelled some misunderstandings of Hart’s view and clarified the sense in which law is supposed to be normative, we see that Hart’s view, unmodified, is well suited to the task of explaining law’s normativity.     

This urgent need to publish

These remarks were prepared for the twenty-fifth anniversary of Transaction/SOCIETY and delivered on November 10, 1987, at Brower Commons, Rutgers—The State University of New Jersey.     

Practical Issues in Implementing and Understanding Bayesian Ideal Point Estimation

Andrew Gelman Department of Statistics and Department of Political Science, Columbia University, New York, NY e-mail: gelman{at}stat.columbia.edu, www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/ David K. Park Department of Political Science, Washington University, St. Louis, MO e-mail: dpark{at}artsci.wustl.edu Noah Kaplan Department of Political Science, University of Houston, Houston, TX e-mail: nkaplan{at}uh.edu Logistic regression models have been used in political sciencefor estimating ideal points of legislators and Supreme Courtjustices. These models present estimation and identifiabilitychallenges, such as improper variance estimates, scale and translationinvariance, reflection invariance, and issues with outliers.We address these issues using Bayesian hierarchical modeling,linear transformations, informative regression predictors, andexplicit modeling for outliers. In addition, we explore newways to usefully display inferences and check model fit.     

Characteristics of parents of adolescent incest perpetrators: Preliminary findings

Twenty-seven parents of adolescent incest perpetrators were interviewed regarding demographic characteristics, prior victimization and abuse, and attitudes about their sons engaging in incestuous behavior. Results indicated that these parents: (a) under-reported physical and sexual abuse of their sons, (b) had a high incidence of being abused themselves, and (c) demonstrate a high level of denial regarding their sons' incestuous behaviors as reflected by the finding that only 50% of the parents totally admitted to their son's incestuous behavior(s).