Teaching and assessing leadership courses at the John F. Kennedy school of government

The development of leadership courses aimed at usefulness in practice requires new theory and pedagogy, as well as a hard look at assessing course effectiveness: How useful do students find the course materials for analyzing their past professional experience? How relevant and effective do students find the courses for understanding and intervening into politics and organizations after rejoining professional life? A summary is provided of the setting, theory, and methods for these courses, as well as the results of a survey of students after they had resumed their careers. The authors conclude with a brief discussion of the risks involved in teaching leadership.     

Counter-terrorism in Europe: the elusive search for order

Many experts underscore a firm difference between (US) American and European approaches to combating terrorism. Other scholars contend that, since 11 September 2001, European governments have emulated the USA by “securitising” immigration and trampling on the civil and human rights of immigrants of Muslim heritage. Still other analysts discern within Europe distinct national styles of counterterrorism such as French assimilation and deportation versus British multiculturalism and conciliation. This article finds neither a coherent policy strategy nor an unmistakable political consensus in Europe regarding counterterrorism. Instead, a comparative analysis reveals a jumble of ethically inconsistent and practically contradictory measures.     

“Hand-to-mouth” citizenship: decision time for the UK Supreme Court on the substance of Zambrano rights,EU citizenship and equal treatment

UK benefit rules strip Zambrano residence rights, for UK national children and their third country national primary carers, of equal treatment entitlement. These rules are challenged in a case pending before the UK Supreme Court. This piece argues that Zambrano creates an EU-citizenship-based right to reside which necessarily entails equal treatment. UK national children in Zambrano families fall within the scope of EU law so are not prevented by the wholly internal rule from claiming equal treatment with EU national children in Teixeira families. And they are protected by equal treatment as a general principle of EU law, which requires equal treatment with other UK national children. The justifications for automatic unequal treatment put forward before, and accepted with alacrity by, the Court of Appeal, are poorly reasoned and ill-matched with the rules in question – most notably because Zambrano families may have strong connections with the UK. A CJEU reference is likely; a Zambrano right is the right to reside in the Union – it is the right to have EU rights. The substance of EU citizenship is at stake.     

The impact of pre-treatment responsivity and treatment participation on violent recidivism in a violent offender sample

This study assessed whether pre-treatment responsivity (psychopathy, motivation to attend treatment, denial and minimisation of offending behaviour, and feelings of guilt or shame) predicted violent recidivism and/or moderated the effectiveness of a violence intervention programme. Participants were 114 male violent offenders who were referred to a structured violent offender group treatment programme; 84 offenders commenced the programme. Results showed that treatment completion did not have a significant main effect on recidivism but that psychopathy scores moderated the effects of treatment. Offenders with high scores on the Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version (PCL:SV) who were rated as having good engagement with treatment, or who completed treatment, had similar violent recidivism rates compared to offenders with low PCL:SV scores. In contrast, offenders with high PCL:SV scores who dropped out of treatment or were poorly engaged had significantly higher rates of violent recidivism. These findings indicate that treatment effectiveness could be enhanced, and greater reductions in recidivism achieved, if programmes find ways to engage and maintain psychopathic offenders in treatment.     

Architectures of intergenerational justice: Human dignity,international law,and duties to future generations

This article draws attention to the constitutive requirements of intergenerational justice and exposes the limitations of regulative arguments based on international human rights law. Intergenerational justice demands constraining the regulative freedom of the international community, and it is tempting to assume that adequate constraints are already contained within existing treaties including international human rights treaties. In fact, intergenerational justice demands bespoke constitutional norms at the international level, and it demands entrenching constitutional norms. International human rights law per se implies neither of these constitutive propositions and both are problematic in light of the present structure of international law. Nevertheless, a combination of arguments concerning intergenerational justice and the systemic implications of human dignity yield a more constitutive account of human rights and therefore an internal critique of the overall architecture of international law.