Guilty Plea Decisions: Moving Beyond the Autonomy Myth

When a defendant pleads guilty to a criminal charge against them their conviction may be justified on the basis of autonomy rather than accuracy. In this context, autonomy can make the difference between a legitimate conviction and the breach of fundamental rights. However, autonomy in this context is not clearly defined. This article argues, based on philosophical conceptions of autonomy and empirical realities, that true autonomy is an ideal rather than a practical reality. It considers the level of autonomy necessary to legitimise a criminal conviction via plea, and suggests that current conceptions of autonomy are inadequate since they rely on a formalistic autonomy ‘myth’, presuming autonomy in the absence of threats. An analysis drawing on original empirical data from two studies demonstrates how autonomy may be being depleted to unacceptable levels in the current system. The article concludes by presenting reform proposals.     

Economic vulnerability and economic voting in 14 OECD countries

The economic voting literature shows that good economic performance bolsters the electoral prospects of incumbents. However, disagreement persists as to whether voters in vulnerable economic conditions are more likely to engage in economic voting. It is argued in this article that a crucial factor in explaining individual‐level variation in economic voting is the degree of exposure to economic risks, because risk exposure affects the saliency of the economy in voting decisions. In particular, the focus is on job insecurity and employability as key determinants of economic voting patterns. The article hypothesises that the extent of economic voting is greater in voters who are more vulnerable to unemployment and less employable in case of job loss. Support for these hypotheses is found in a test with a dataset that combines survey data on incumbent support with occupational unemployment rates and other measures of exposure to economic risks.     

The Commonwealth,Apartheid, and the Role of Micro-states

In the 1980s, the debate surrounding South Africa apartheid consumed the Commonwealth. While superficially this discussion might appear to have had little relevance to the interests of micro and small state members of the Commonwealth, the behemothic nature of apartheid presented significant challenges to such states. This article attempts to assess the varied ways in which South African apartheid affected the diplomatic strategies of micro-states within the political landscape of the Commonwealth, and how it could be perceived as both a hindrance to their agendas, as well a potential tool in the fight to amplify their voices. Micro-states used the egalitarian structure of the Commonwealth and combined it with the prominence of apartheid in international debate to both elevate their status and even to garner support for their own personal concerns. Apartheid’s reframing of the international conversation had broad reverberations which affected Commonwealth responses to a variety of seemingly disparate issues. This culminated in the ejection of Fiji from the Commonwealth in the aftermath of the 1987 coup due to concerns over racial discrimination, emblematising the all-pervasive nature of the apartheid debate within the Commonwealth.     

Tackling consumer vulnerability in energy and banking: towards a new approach

This article examines the new approach to vulnerability developed by Ofgem and the Financial Conduct Authority to see whether it has been implemented at company level and had an impact on the ombudsman. It sets out the context within which this approach has been developed and then looks at its implementation through two case studies. The main lesson from these case studies is that establishing a broad concept of vulnerability, as has been argued for in the academic literature, is just a first step. Operationalising the concept presents major challenges especially in the context of systems dealing with large numbers of consumers.     

Representations of reproductive citizenship and vulnerability in media reports of offshore surrogacy

In his elaboration of the concept of ‘reproductive citizenship’, Turner (Turner B.S., 2001. The erosion of citizenship. The British journal of sociology, 52 (2), 189–209) suggested something of a homogeneous accumulation of cultural capital to those who make a reproductive contribution to contemporary western societies. The present article takes up this suggestion and proposes that whilst reproduction is indeed a hallmark of contemporary citizenship, the cultural capital arising from this is still differentiated by mode of reproduction, with reproductive heterosex remaining the norm against which other modes are compared. This norm, it is suggested, produces what is termed here ‘reproductive vulnerability’, namely vulnerability arising from being located outside of the norm. Through an analysis of media representations of Australian people who have undertaken offshore surrogacy arrangements in India, this article demonstrates how reproductive vulnerability is highlighted only to be dismissed through recourse to the construction of those who undertake reproductive travel as agentic citizens. The article concludes by considering what it would take for an ethics of reproductive travel to exist; one in which multiple, incommensurable vulnerabilities are taken into account, and the representation of which encourages, rather than inhibits, careful thought about the reproductive desires of all people.     

Can there be Costless War? Violent Exposures and (In)Vulnerable Selves in Benjamin Percy's "Refresh,Refresh"

Abstract

The technological transformation of the conduct of war, exemplified by the American employment of drones in Afghanistan and in Iraq, calls for a critical reflection about the fantasies that underpin, and are in turn animated by, the robotic revolution of the military. At play here is a fantasy of a "costless war" or a "sterile war", that is such act of military state violence against the other that is inconsequential for the self. In other words, the seductive appeal of the "costless war" fantasy rests on the desire to develop a self that is invulnerable in the face of violence. Importantly, it is a desire explicitly projected towards a particular American future (of an imagined warfare, or of a super-power status), but also one that is connected to a lacking critical reflection about the intersubjective aspects of violence in the debates about America's post-9/11 military involvements. This article reflects critically about the fantasy of the "costless war" and about its underpinning politics of invulnerability from a perhaps unlikely angle of literature. In a close reading of a short story by Benjamin Percy called "Refresh, Refresh" (2008), it explores its narrative insights into how acts of violence, which are undertaken far from home, inevitably return to affect and damage, perhaps beyond repair, the subject at home. Importantly, the return of violence in Percy's story occurs within the domain of the everyday and the mundane, not of the exceptional, and testifies to the despair experienced by young males "abandoned' by their military fathers. My interpretation draws also on theoretical explorations of the connection between violence, intersubjectivity and vulnerability, based on the ideas of Emmanuel Levinas on the subject's ethical captivity by the suffering of the other, and on Judith Butler's recent "uses" of the Levinasian ethical project in her writing about the post-9/11 America.     

Vulnerability,context, and fear of victimization: Exploring race and ethnicity

The importance of individual- and structural-level factors in predicting fear of victimization has been a source of many empirical evaluations. Theoretical predictors that influence these associations such as those outlined in the vulnerability thesis on fear of crime regularly find that age, race, and gender are predictors of fear. We explore whether adolescent populations, not yet having internalized vulnerability, are more influenced by contextual factors. To explore this hypothesis, we employ the National Crime Victimization Survey: School Crime Supplement to examine the role of vulnerability on fear of victimization at school. Logistic regression suggests that contextual school-level factors may mediate the relationship between fear of victimization at school and individual characteristics such as age, race, and gender.     

The social dynamics of revictimization and intimate partner violence: an embodied,gendered, institutional and life course perspective

This article offers a qualitative, institutional analysis of the dynamics of revictimization as the accumulation of disadvantages over time and across different institutional contexts, and its multiple gender dimensions. It draws on 37 qualitative interviews with victims of intimate partner violence, detailing the institutional causal pathways to victimization and revictimization over the life course, through the in-depth analysis of one case. Drawing on the vulnerability approach, developed by Martha Albertson Fineman, the analysis demonstrates how victimization and revictimization have been facilitated, tolerated, and even produced by particular institutional contexts, illustrating how the risk of revictimization is not a characteristic of the individual, nor is it destiny. The article contributes to a constructive social science, elucidating how victimization is contingent on social and institutional contexts, and how at several critical points, better institutions and better institutional responses to particular events might have prevented or interrupted the dynamics of accumulating victimization. Focusing on embodied, gendered subjects and the role of institutions in producing as well as remedying inequalities has far-reaching implications for research and prevention of violence. In contrast to a risk-factor approach targeting particular groups and individuals, a vulnerability analysis calls for a responsive state and universal institutional solutions.     

我国刑法应增设研发、生产、销售危害人体健康添加剂罪

"蛋白粉"、瘦肉精等危害人体健康的添加剂不属于食品,生产销售上述添加剂不能定性为生产销售有毒有害食品罪。研发、生产、销售危害人体健康的添加剂必须介入他人的有责行为才会发生危害社会结果,不宜定性为以危险方法危害公共安全罪。无相应合格产品存在或不属质量不合格的不能定性为生产销售伪劣产品罪。生产销售绝对不允许买卖产品不宜定性为非法经营罪,即使属于非法经营或生产销售伪劣产品也要达5万元以上才能入罪,无法规制会危害人体健康但数额未达5万元以上的行为。《刑法》规定的漏洞导致司法机关选择最相类似罪名定处有破坏罪刑法定原则的危险,故我国《刑法》应增设研发、生产、销售危害人体健康添加剂罪。     

Precarious Work and its Complicit Network: Migrant Labour in Singapore

ABSTRACT

How does precarious work entail social vulnerabilities and moral complicities? Theorists of precarity pose two challenges for analysing labour conditions in Asia. Their first challenge is to distinguish the new kinds of social vulnerability which constitute precarious work. The second is to assign moral responsibility in the social network that produces vulnerability in depoliticised and morally detached ways. In this article, the social and normative dimensions of precarious work are connected through a conceptual investigation into how Singapore allocates responsibility for managing temporary migrant labour. First, it analyses how various management strategies, driven by globalisation and government deregulation, increase worker vulnerabilities. These strategies intensify relations of dependence, disempowerment and discrimination, which the workers may accommodate or resist in limited ways. Second, it assesses why the strategies leave the state, employers, agents and others complicit in producing the vulnerabilities. These actors enable, collaborate with, or condone the production of precarity. Their complicity is complicated by varying support or resistance to reforms. The result is a novel conceptual scheme for analysing the complicit network behind precarious work, which can be used in other sites of precarity where some are complicit in the vulnerability of others.