A Final Delivery

Implementation of the Lisbon Treaty will make for more simple and easier communication between European governments After years of debate, disagreements and false starts, the European Union (EU) gave birth to the Lisbon Treaty, at long last, on December 1. First conceived on December 15, 2001 under the Laeken Declaration, it was followed by     

NATIONAL STANDARDS AND GOALS ON CORRECTIONS

The article seeks to highlight some potential barriers to the implementation of the recently promulgated Standards and Goals on Corrections. Basing the analysis on concepts pertaining to the diffusion of innovations, it is pointed out that implementation may be seriously impeded due to the dissonance of the Standards with the realities of the corrections community as a bureaucracy, lack of concrete guidelines for the implementation of the goals proposed, and the absence of any relationship of the proposed goals to considerations of cost and the availability of public revenues.     

THE INTERACTIONIST PERSPECTIVE Some Things Hagan Didn't Tell Us

This paper is concerned with the implications of Hagan's negative assessment of the contributions of symbolic interactionism to the study of deviance. The logic of evaluating selected seminal works without reference to recent contributions of the symbolic interactionists in deviance and other areas is challenged.     

An Empowerment Theory of Legal Norms*

Abstract. Traditionally legal theorists, whenever engaged in controversy, have agreed on one point: legal norms are par excellence rules which impose obligations. The author examines this assumption, which from another perspective (that of constitutional law, for instance) appears less obvious. In fact, constitutional rules are commoniy empowering norms, norms which do not create duties but powers. To this objection many theorists would reply that empowering rules are incomplete and that they are to be understood as parts of duty-creating rules. A different position from this traditional stance is that defended in Kelsen's later writings, according to which the fundamental type of norm is the empowering norm. The author discusses Kelsen's three theories on the “ideal form” or structure of the legal norm, with special attention to the third of these, the empowerment theory.