The ‘Reasonable Man’, his Nineteenth‐century ‘Siblings’, and their Legacy

The reasonable man is the best known, but not the only, legal construct to be born into the nineteenth‐century common law. This article introduces the man's siblings – including those from the areas of trust law, criminal law, contract law, and intellectual property law (both patents and trademarks). The fact that some of these ‘men’ changed the law is not controversial; this research further highlights that while several of these came to life in that century, only some had a significant role into the twentieth century. Those that did are tied to the foundations of our society through their role in facilitating innovation and consumer protection. The argument is that it was the constructs’ nature and their capacity to accommodate public policy issues that enabled the vitality of the ‘reasonable person ‘ (negligence) and the ‘person skilled in the art’ (patents).     

Dyadic Representation in a Westminster System

Is policy representation in contemporary Westminster systems solely a function of programmatic national parties, or does the election of legislators via single‐member districts result in MPs whose policy positions are individually responsive to public opinion in their constituencies? We generate new measures of constituency opinion in Britain and show that, in three different policy domains and controlling for MP party, the observed legislative behavior of MPs is indeed responsive to constituency opinion. The level of responsiveness is moderate, but our results do suggest a constituency‐MP policy bond that operates in addition to the well‐known bond between voters and parties.     

Russia's Artificial Intelligence Strategy: The Role of State-Owned Firms

In 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that whichever country becomes the leader in artificial intelligence (AI) “will become the ruler of the world.” Yet Russia lags competitors like China and the United States substantially in AI capabilities. What is Russia's strategy for boosting development of AI technologies, and what role do groups within the Russian elite play in shaping this strategy? Russia's AI development strategy is unique in that it is led not by the government, nor by the private sector, but by state-owned firms. The government's distrust of Russia's largest tech firm, Yandex, has sidelined the company from national AI planning. Meanwhile, Russia's defense conglomerate Rostec publicly appears to focus less on artificial intelligence than on other high-tech priorities. As a result, Russia's AI development has been left to a state-owned bank, Sberbank, which has taken the lead in devising plans for government-backed investment in AI.     

Iraq and the case for Australian war crimes trials

This article presents the case for Australian war crimes trials, following Australian participation in the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent deaths of as many as a million Iraqi civilians. It focuses on jus in bello (war crimes) rather than jus ad bellum (just war). The article sets out the argument and rationale that Australian war crimes trials are needed. Having established the necessity, the article identifies two of the principal alleged atrocities for which Australian officials should be held criminally accountable. It details Australian military support for the use of cluster bombs against civilians during the 2003 invasion, and senior Australian military commanders’ responsibility for planning and carrying out multiple purported war crimes during the attack on Fallujah in late 2004. The article recognises that, in order for Australian officials to be prosecuted under the International Criminal Court (ICC), all domestic remedies must be first exhausted. It therefore specifically addresses which Australian laws can be used, with particular emphasis on anti-terrorist legislation passed in 2002 under the Howard Government and the introduction into Australia’s domestic federal criminal legislation offences equivalent to the ICC Statute offences of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. These provide the most applicable legal tools for prosecuting senior Australian officials for war crimes in Iraq.     

Substance use among African American adolescents in the Midwest

The purpose of this article is to examine the attitudes and substance use behaviors of African American adolescents living in the Midwest. A baseline survey was administered to 463 African American teens between the ages of 11-19. The article examines the relationship between attitudes toward drugs and drug-using behavior in this African American sample. Drug use will be compared to national drug use norms established by the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey. Overall participants had fairly negative attitudes toward drugs. Sixty percent of the sample reported that they were committed to a drug-free life, 74% had made a decision to stay away from marijuana, 79% reported making a decision not to smoke cigarettes, and 71% reported they would not get drunk in the next year. Females were more likely to stay away from marijuana than males. In this current study there is cause for alarm; participants reported higher percentages of ever smoking cigarettes and marijuana than the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey. This study shows there is a need to provide substance abuse prevention programs for African American adolescents. Limitations and future directions are also discussed.     

How to Make Bad Law: Lessons from Cyberspace

There is a clear trend for law and regulation, particularly in cyberspace, to become increasingly precisely specified. The perceived benefit of this approach, increased certainty as to compliance, may be illusory. Over‐complex laws have serious disadvantages, particularly a greatly weakened normative effect, and problems of contradiction and too‐frequent amendment. The combined effect of these disadvantages can be to produce a ‘bad’ law system, assessed in terms of Fuller's internal morality of law. It may also result in a law‐system which substantially fails to achieve its intended aims. This article proposes that these defects can be cured by abandoning the search for precision and substituting a method of lawmaking which requires the law's subjects to make their own qualitative assessments of whether they are meeting the obligations imposed on them. This will make the law more easily understandable by those to whom it applies, and will also increase the normative effect of cyberspace law.     

Patterns of violence and self-harm in women prisoners: characteristics,co-incidence and clinical significance

Self-harm and violence in women’s prisons in England are common and occurring with increasing frequency. We aimed to describe the characteristics and patterns of violent and/or self-harming behaviours in women in prison by conducting a retrospective analysis of routine data about self-harm incidents and adjudications. Incidence rates of self-harm and violence were calculated and associated factors explored using logistic regression. We found that only 6.7% of 5486 women prisoners self-harmed and 7.9% had been violent. Eighty per cent of all self-harm incidents related to 70 women. Almost 4 in 10 women prisoners who self-harmed were also violent. Multiple incarcerations and court movements are associated with incidents of self-harm and violence. Women with high-frequency self-harm (≥6) began self-harming early in their custodial period. We conclude that women prisoners who are very behaviourally disturbed can and should be identified early. They warrant clinical formulation and multi-agency responses to risk. Those with high-frequency self-harm should be cared for by external health services.     

What Drives the Relationship Between Early Criminal Involvement and School Dropout?

Objective

We examine the relationship between early criminal involvement and school dropout, and analyze which factors underlie this relationship, making use of administrative data from the Netherlands.

Methods

We start by determining the unconditional correlation between early criminal involvement and school dropout, using a basic ordinary least squares model. As this association is likely to be driven by different factors, we proceed by including an extensive set of observable family and individual characteristics into the estimation model. We further proceed to models that account for the influence of unobservable heterogeneity by estimating school, class, sibling and twin fixed effects.

Results

Criminal involvement is associated with an 11 percentage point higher probability of school dropout. The magnitude of this relationship decreases gradually when we account for larger shares of observed and unobserved heterogeneity. The coefficient in the same-gender twin fixed effects model indicates a 3 percentage point higher probability of school dropout, which is statistically significant at a 10 % level. We also find that the association between criminal involvement and school dropout is stronger if juveniles are involved in severe criminal activities.

Conclusions

We conclude that the observable and unobservable factors for which we account explain around 73 % of the unconditional correlation between criminal involvement and school dropout. The remaining variation likely reflects individual-specific characteristics that are different between same-gender twins. A true treatment effect, if existing, is likely to be relatively small. At the same time, serious criminal behavior appears to causally affect school dropout.

     

Class or Citizenship? Debating Workplace Conflict in China

While a new working class is in the process of remaking itself in China, the latest trend in labour studies has rejected the Marxist tradition which sees the social relations of production as the point of departure for analysing workplace conflict. According to the new current, influenced by post-structuralism, class is only one of the identities articulated by workers, and it can be understood only with reference to their discourses. By critically evaluating an important book by Ching Kwan Lee (Against the Law: Labor Protests in China's Rustbelt and Sunbelt), this article suggests that her approach generalising workers' protests with the notion of citizenship cannot satisfactorily explain the changing pattern of labour protests in China since 2004. By using fieldwork data and connecting the analysis of the social relations of production with the changing patterns of workers' struggle, this paper argues that migrant workers protests are a significant part of the emerging class conflict in China.