SKEPTICISM BORDERING ON DISTRUST: FAMILY LAW IN THE HOLLYWOOD CINEMA

This article critiques Hollywood films from the last last 20–30 years that relate to family law. More specifically, this article considers films involving marriage, divorce, child custody, and adoption and focuses on the portrayal of law in those films. While the films are not tightly connected to one another and surely do not share a unified theme, the films do share a surprising skepticism bordering on distrust regarding law, legal procedures, and legal institutions. Hollywood appears to have picked up a general sentiment that family should be a private, intimate sanctuary and is better off without state intrusion through law. The films incorporate this sentiment and also reinforce it by teaching viewers to be leery of law in family matters. Key Points for the Family Court Community:

• 1 Recent Hollywood films include not only abundant portrayals of family life but also numerous examples of family law.
• 2 As a result, these Hollywood films have the potential to educate viewers about family law and to prompt certain normative attitudes about family law.
• 3 In general, Hollywood films invite viewers to be skeptical and even disdainful of family law.

     

Political Liberalism, Marriage and the Family

Can and should political liberals recognize and otherwise support legal marriage as a matter of basic justice? In this article, we offer a general account of how political liberals should evaluate the issue of whether the legal recognition of marriage is a matter of basic justice. And, we develop and examine some public reason arguments that, given the fundamental interests of citizens, could justify various forms of legal marriage in some contexts. In particular, in certain conditions, the recognition of some form of legal marriage may be the best way to protect the fundamental interests of women as citizens in freely chosen associations. Or, it may be that, in certain conditions, to secure the social conditions necessary for gays, lesbians and bisexuals to be free and equal citizens, some form of legal marriage can or should be recognized.     

Hyperbolic Time Discounting, Offender Time Preferences and Deterrence

Objectives

This study examines the phenomena of intertemporal decision making??decisions involving costs and benefits that occur at different points in time. Two models of intertemporal time discounting are the exponential and hyperbolic models. Previous work in behavioral economics and psychology is relied on to make the case that the discounting of delayed outcomes (both gains and losses) may be hyperbolic rather than exponential.

Methods

Data were collected from 478 university undergraduate students who responded to a hypothetical scenario involving drunk driving. The potential gains and losses of drunk driving were delayed at five different intervals from ??tonight?? to ??10?years from now??, respondents were also asked to provide estimates of both the risk they would get caught if they did drink and drive and the probability that they would drink and drive under the conditions described in the scenario.

Results

Our results imply that individuals have hyperbolic time preferences for both rewards and gains, and that??unlike severity, the effect of which may be muted by risk??these discount functions appear to be operating independently of changes in the risk certainty of detection. Consistent with hyperbolic discounting, for example, when the benefit of drinking and driving was delayed by 1?week the self-reported intention to drink and drive increased by nearly 10%, however, when the gain was delayed by one month, intentions to drink and drive increased by only 4%. A smaller effect was found for delayed costs.

Conclusions

Avenues for additional research include the possibility of negative discount rates and the implications of persons?? awareness of their discount rates.     

Examining Rapport in Investigative Interviews with Suspects: Does its Building and Maintenance Work?

Rapport is an important part of the interviewing of suspects, enabling them to supply information more freely. This study examined 142 actual interviews with suspects, focussing on key tasks that aid rapport. Using an established framework to examine rapport building skills in the early stages of interviews, the study also measured how skilled attempts at sustaining rapport were when interviewers attempted to gather information from suspects and probe accounts for their reliability. It was found that opportunities were often missed to build rapport in the initial stages as several tasks were overlooked. Also, where any rapport had been initially built, it was not always maintained as tasks undertaken later in the interview which may well have assisted rapport maintenance were often conducted unsatisfactorily. Thus, initial rapport building of itself, therefore, is not sufficient in influencing overall interview quality and outcomes, since rapport also has to be maintained throughout the interview.     

Traumatic Brain Injury among Indiana State Prisoners

Research on traumatic brain injury among inmates has focused on comparing the rate of traumatic brain injury among offenders to the general population, but also how best to screen for traumatic brain injury among this population. This study administered the short version of the Ohio State University Traumatic Brain Injury Identification Method to all male inmates admitted into Indiana state prisons were screened for a month (N = 831). Results indicate that 35.7% of the inmates reported experiencing a traumatic brain injury during their lifetime and that these inmates were more likely to have a psychiatric disorder and a prior period of incarceration than those without. Logistic regression analysis finds that a traumatic brain injury predicts the likelihood of prior incarceration net of age, race, education, and psychiatric disorder. This study suggests that brief instruments can be successfully implemented into prison screenings to help divert inmates into needed treatment.     

Light as an Analogy for Cognition in Buddhist Idealism (Vijñānavāda)

In Sect. 1 an argument for Yogācāra Buddhist Idealism, here understood as the view that everything in the universe is of the nature of consciousness / cognition, is laid out. The prior history of the argument is also recounted. In Sect. 2 the role played in this argument by light as an analogy for cognition is analyzed. Four separate aspects of the light analogy are discerned. In Sect. 3, I argue that although light is in some ways a helpful analogy for the Buddhist Idealist, in other ways it is thoroughly inappropriate. At the end of the article I ask whether the lack of fit between light and cognition is unavoidable, or whether the Buddhist Idealists could have chosen a better analogy.     

‘No toques mi pelo’ (don’t touch my hair): decoding Afro-Cuban identity politics through hair

ABSTRACT

People across the African Diaspora have developed a complex socio-visual-language system of hair as a means of self-expression; however, the decades of economic sanctions in Cuba generated a unique political dynamic that has shaped concepts of self-image and cultural expressions. Sixteen Afro-Cuban women were interviewed about the cultural significance of their hair using The Guided Hair Autobiography methodology. Participant themes included aesthetic pride and confidence, hair bullying and embarrassment, and hair damage and distress. A Cuban cultural critique underlines how Afro-Cuban women have been socialized to have a bias towards straightened long hair over tightly coiled hair textures. These findings suggest that despite the ‘raceless’ political revolutionary spirit infused into Cuban cultural ideology, people of African descent process racial politics and identity through hair.