The Parade of Sovereignties: Establishing the Vocabulary of the New Russian Federalism

On the basis of extensive on-site interviews and documentary sources, the author interprets the dynamics of the collapse of the Soviet Union by analyzing the cascade of sovereignty declarations issued by republics of the USSR as well as by autonomous republics and other subunits of the Russian republic, in 1990-1991. Interrelationships among the declarations, and other putative causes of their content and timing, are explored. A case study of Tatarstan is provided. The study also analyzes the impact of the process on subsequent Russian approaches to federalism.     

Edward Bell and his Zimmermann telegram memoranda

Edward Bell (1882–1924), the American diplomat who dealt with British intelligence in the matter of the Zimmermann telegram, which pushed the United States into World War I, has been unknown in all but his name. This note offers a brief biography and photograph. It prints two unpublished memoranda that Bell wrote giving his inside story of the telegram, written to explain why an author should not reveal its solution. Also appended are a memo about that solution and its disclosure to the Americans by the telegram's main British cryptanalyst and a note revealing the ignorance of the German minister in Mexico about how the telegram came to Allied knowledge.     

Representations of Law and the Nonfiction Novel: Capote’s In Cold Blood Revisited

The article describes the way in which law-related events are represented in Truman Capote??s In Cold Blood. Based on a narrative analysis, the paper will posit that In Cold Blood played a particular role in originating and shaping an innovative mode of representing law-related events, a mode that was widely employed since, in various artistic mediums and in popular culture. As the paper further elaborates, Capote??s work paved new ways for challenging the conventional boundaries between ??reality?? and ??fiction?? with regard to the representation of law-related events. The paper will also maintain that in addition to its contribution to the law and literature discourse, In Cold Blood can be also seen as an early prototype to the digital legal spectacles that are now common. Revisiting In Cold Blood reveals not only its standing as originating model of many present-day cultural representations of the legal system in action, but also the essential difference between the almost unrestrainedly produced digital law-related content, to a artistic enterprise, characterized by poetic distinctiveness.     

Law enforcement response to mental health crises: citizen risk factors and preferences for social policy*

Despite having the potential to affect cooperation and support for law enforcement, community preferences for police training are generally unstudied. This paper seeks to understand (1) general community preferences for police training for responding to mental health crises, (2) where the public prioritizes this mental health crisis training relative to racial bias training, and (3) whether these preferences vary depending on respondent demographics and risk factors for police contact. Survey data from a general sample of Portland, Oregon residents (N = 259) shows public support for police training on responding to mental health crises, but the public as a whole is split over whether mental health, or racial bias training, should be prioritized as the best use of police training time. Logistic regression analyses demonstrate three main findings regarding the impact of respondent characteristics on preferences for police training: (1) black respondents appear concerned that, by drawing attention to mental health crises, police will be more limited in their responses to racial bias; (2) respondents facing the greatest, and those with the least, amount of risk in police/citizen encounters are most supportive of mental health crisis training; and (3) mental illness itself does not appear to affect support for police mental health crisis training. These differences in support for training need to be understood before law enforcement can cultivate community support for police officers and their training practices.     

“Legality with a Vengeance”: Reclaiming Distribution for Sociolegal Studies

The law and society community has argued for decades for an expansive understanding of what counts as “law.” But a content analysis of articles published in the Law & Society Review from its 1966 founding to the present finds that since the 1970s, the law and society community has focused its attention on laws in which the state regulates behavior, and largely ignored laws in which the state distributes resources, goods, and services. Why did socio‐legal scholars avoid studying how laws determine access to such things as health, wealth, housing, education, and food? We find that socio‐legal scholarship has always used “law on the books” as a starting point for analyses (often to identify departures in “law in action”) without ever offering a programmatic vision for how law might ameliorate economic inequality. As a result, when social welfare laws on the books began disappearing, socio‐legal scholarship drifted away from studying law's role in creating, sustaining, and reinforcing economic inequality. We argue that socio‐legal scholarship offers a wide range of analytical tools that could make important contributions to our understanding of social welfare provision.