ACTIVIST CRIMINOLOGY: CRIMINOLOGISTS’ RESPONSIBILITY TO ADVOCATE FOR SOCIAL AND LEGAL JUSTICE

Similar to many criminologists, my interest in pursuing this career was driven by a desire to improve responses to injustices, on both small and large scales. I believe that among criminologists, this dedication to effect changes in social and legal justice disproportionately drives those of us historically kept out of the academy due to our race, gender, class, sexual identity, and/or other marginalizations. Fortunately, there is a growing diversity among criminologists and this has had a powerful impact on expanding the scope and depth of the field. At the same time, I am concerned that academic training and university climates frequently work against our commitment to advancing social and legal justice changes, what I refer to as “criminology activism.” This address is a call to action, stressing criminologists’ responsibility to advocate for social and legal justice on small and large scales. Numerous types of criminology activism are identified (e.g., in research, service, and teaching), including the requisite to continue diversifying the representation of criminologists.     

Law-making functions of the Chinese courts: Judicial activism in a country of rapid social changes

The judicial production of law and the legislative production of law make a striking distinction between the two legal traditions. Despite of these differences, judges in both legal traditions in adjudicating cases have a common task, which is the application of legal rules to the facts of cases pending for judgments. The tension between the certainty and the “discretion” is universal for any legal system and, to a certain extent, it poses a hard dilemma for the rhetoric of rule of law. In the transitional countries such as China where rapid social changes and transformations take place, the judiciary and judges can not escape from taking more active roles in interpreting or even law making process. It arouses much controversy, particularly in continental legal traditions, for the judiciary is deemed to perform a mechanical role in adjudicating cases. This article intends to analyze the needs for judicial law-making function in China and its reasons. It reveals that judicial interpretation constitutes an important source of law despite its ambiguous legislative position. The article argues that judicial activism is inevitable against the transitional nature of current Chinese society.     

The emotional motivation of righteous behavior

A distinction is made between two types of prosocial behavior: personal-helping and righteous behavior. Past studies suggest that sympathy may motivate personal helping but not righteous behavior. The latter may be better predicted by feelings of moral outrage and existential guilt. An experiment was designed to motivate a piece of righteous behavior, the writing of a political letter to stop the testing of nuclear weapons. A series of premeasures ascertained strength of attitude, sense of efficacy, acceptance of responsibility, and prior antinuclear behavior. Subjects who supported a nuclear freeze were exposed to material advocating a nuclear test ban, a video of a congressional aide who argued for the efficacy of writing letters to congressional representatives, and emotionally arousing material on the bombing of Hiroshima. After answering a questionnaire that included items to measure emotional state, subjects were individually given the opportunity to write a letter as they were waiting to be interviewed. Social pressure was deliberately minimized. Extent of moral outrage predicted both previous behavior and letter-writing behavior during the experiment. It combined with previous behavior and sense of efficacy to predict 56% of the variance in experimental behavior: Neither sympathy nor existential guilt were significantly related to this righteous behavior.     

Struggles over the rights of foreign domestic workers in Malaysia: the possibilities and limitations of ‘rights talk’

Abstract

The publication of Max Weber's early lecture notes on economic theory as Volume III/1 of the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe (MWG) reveals for the first time how much his teaching in Freiburg and Heidelberg from 1894 to 1898 was influenced by the ‘modern economics’ of Carl Menger and his students, Friedrich von Wieser and Eugen Böhm-Bawerk. This review essay examines the significance of this volume, and also presents a brief history and assessment of the ongoing Gesamtausgabe project.     

Book reviews

This paper analyzes practices of counter-surveillance—particularly against closed-circuit television systems in urban areas—and theorizes their political implications. Counter-surveillance is defined as intentional, tactical uses, or disruptions of surveillance technologies to challenge institutional power asymmetries. Such activities can include disabling or destroying surveillance cameras, mapping paths of least surveillance and disseminating that information over the Internet, employing video cameras to monitor sanctioned surveillance systems and their personnel, or staging public plays to draw attention to the prevalence of surveillance in society. The main argument is that current modes of activism tend to individualize surveillance problems and methods of resistance, leaving the institutions, policies, and cultural assumptions that support public surveillance relatively insulated from attack.     

Cursing the Cloud (or) Controlling the Cloud?

Inspired by the cloud computing hypes, this paper responds to some of the hypes, but not to all. The hype in this paper refers to the level of the adequacy of data protection and privacy in a cloud computing (the Cloud) environment. Paradoxically, this paper proffers observational insights that surround the Cloud from the perspectives of data protection and privacy. It examines briefly the efforts of January 2010 led by Microsoft and anticipating “liability” scenarios. The liability rhetorically refers to the illegal access in the Cloud. This paper does not focus entirely on the technology sophistication; however, it analyses two scenarios of illegal access. To mitigate the liability, it suggests a “Cloud Compliant Strategy (CCS)” being a proposed model to control the Cloud. The observational insights of this paper have also intertwined with the adequacy of data protection from the lenses of the European Union (EU) Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC (DPD) and Safe Harbor provisions (SH).     

能动与协同:社区法官制度的东莞模式

社区法官制度是人民法庭在辖区内的社区(村或居委会)设立法官工作室,指定法官驻点社区、就地化解纠纷的制度。社区法官解决的主要是民生纠纷、群体性纠纷和简单经济纠纷;社区法官主动处理非诉纠纷,法官与社区调解人协同解决诉讼纠纷。社区法官制度有利于提高纠纷解决效率、增强司法的的权威性和有效性。社区法官制度的发展进路是:建立社区法官助理"网格化"制度,以社区法官助理为平台整合基层解纷资源,完善联动机制,建立社区法官助理系统激励制度。     

论法院处理环境纠纷案件中的司法能动

司法能动是法院在案件审理中,不因循先例和遵从成文法的字面含义进行司法解释的一种司法理念以及基于此理念的行动。我国法院在发挥司法能动性,处理环境纠纷案件方面作出了大量努力,为经济社会发展提供了司法保障。但法院在发挥司法能动性处理环境纠纷案件中仍然存在较大的问题。解决这些问题,必须把握法院在环境纠纷案件处理中司法能动的向度,落实司法独立,引导法官正确行使自由裁量权,努力培养环境司法专业人才,发挥法官适用法律的能动性。     

中国式司法能动主义的实用主义分析及评价——以陕西陇县“能动主义八四司法模式”为样本

以陕西陇县"能动主义八四司法模式"为代表的中国式司法能动主义在问题意识、主体、性质以及最高法院的功能定位上都与典型的英美式司法能动主义不同,其是一系列的理念、体制、机制和司法技术裹挟下的一种法律实用主义的反映,并且面临着高昂的运作成本,也很容易流变为政治话语乃至意识形态。     

A British Gender Gap? Gender and Political Participation

The Electoral Commission's recently published report Gender and Political Participation captures in a clear and accessible fashion the ways in which gender determines the nature of women and men's political participation in the UK. Analysing existing academic survey research it establishes that there is an overall gender gap in political activism with men more active than women. However, it also finds that there is no gender gap in voter turnout at national, regional, or local elections and that in some political activities, such as signing petitions or boycotting products, women are more likely than men to be active. The report also raises important questions about the consequences - substantive and in terms of legitimacy - of women's lower levels of participation in party politics, and suggests that political parties should ensure that greater numbers of women are elected to our political institutions.