Critical Legal Theory’s Turn to Schmitt: Not Waving but Drowning?

I examine the current enthusiasm among some academics, whom I shall broadly refer to as critical legal theorists (CLT), for the work of Carl Schmitt which has at times been accompanied by disenchantment with Emmanuel Levinas’s ethical insights. I examine the reasons for this turn to Schmitt which I attribute to the sensitivity of CL theorists to the complaint that an over-reliance on Levinas leads to a disengaged and irrelevant discourse. I contrast their antithetical approaches through their conceptions of the Other (which in Schmitt’s case is developed through his friend and enemy distinction) and explain how, together with state of exception theory; it has appeared to some CL theorists to offer a platform for exposing the liberal democratic attempt to export human rights as a violent imperialising mission. I argue that Schmitt’s thinking represents an intellectual cul-de-sac and that Levinas continues to offer a more rewarding model of critique.     

A comparison of the neuropsychological profiles of adult male sex offenders and non-offenders with a learning disability

Abstract

The present study compared the neumpsychologlcal pmfiles of a group of adult male sex offenden with a laming disability (n-42) with a group of adult male non-offenders with a learning disability (n-42) using the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale - Revised (1986). The groups wen matched for full-scale IQ. Thc study found that the non-offender group had significantly higher Verbal 1Q scorn than the sex offender group. No significant differences wen found for Performance IQ. The non-ofinder group was also found to have significantly hlgher scores on the Vocabulary sub-test than the sex offender group and the sex offender group was found to have significantly higher scores on the ObJecr Assembly subtest than the non-ofinder group. Finally. the sex offender group was found to have a significantly lower Verbal IQ than Performance IQ. No significant Verbal-Performance discrepancy was found for the non-offender group. Possible implications of these findings are dlscusscd.     

The Physiology of Political Participation

Political involvement varies markedly across people. Traditional explanations for this variation tend to rely on demographic variables and self-reported, overtly political concepts. In this article, we expand the range of possible explanatory variables by hypothesizing that a correlation exists between political involvement and physiological predispositions. We measure physiology by computing the degree to which electrodermal activity changes on average when a participant sequentially views a full range of differentially valenced stimuli. Our findings indicate that individuals with higher electrodermal responsiveness are also more likely to participate actively in politics. This relationship holds even after the effects of traditional demographic variables are taken into account, suggesting that physiological responsiveness independently contributes to a fuller understanding of the underlying sources of variation in political involvement.