Chaos in The Courtroom Reconsidered: Emotional Bias and Juror Nullification

A widespread presumption in the law is that giving jurors nullification instructions would result in "chaos"-jurors guided not by law but by their emotions and personal biases. We propose a model of juror nullification that posits an interaction between the nature of the trial (viz. whether the fairness of the law is at issue), nullification instructions, and emotional biases on juror decision-making. Mock jurors considered a trial online which varied the presence a nullification instructions, whether the trial raised issues of the law's fairness (murder for profit vs. euthanasia), and emotionally biasing information (that affected jurors' liking for the victim). Only when jurors were in receipt of nullification instructions in a nullification-relevant trial were they sensitive to emotionally biasing information. Emotional biases did not affect evidence processing but did affect emotional reactions and verdicts, providing the strongest support to date for the chaos theory.     

The judicial response to crime and the criminal: A utilitarian perspective

This paper examines the hypothesis that the sentencing decision of the criminal court is consistent with utilitarian principles and that the judiciary uses the length of incarceration as an instrument for the maximization of societal well-being. A theoretical model is developed, whose principal arguments are offender and offense attributes, resource costs, the availability of alternative sanctions, and the general crime rate. Four questions are considered: (i) How does a utilitarian court respond to a general increase in crime? (ii) How does the availability of alternative sanctions affect the length of incarceration ? (iii) How does a utilitarian court respond to offenders who are more likely to recidivate? (iv) How does the court respond to offenders who commit more serious offenses? The model is empirically evaluated, using cross-sectional data for the state of Georgia for individuals sentenced to prison in 1978 for a UCR index offense. The theoretical model provides few specific behavioral rules for the court to follow. Answers to the foregoing four questions are shown to depend upon both the efficacy of sanctions and the cost of the administration of those sanctions. It is not possible to predict, for example, how a utilitarian court should respond to a rise in crime or how it should respond to offenders who are likely to commit more serious offenses. The empirical analysis shows that, in fact, the sentence length varied inversely with the general offense rate, with the likelihood of imprisonment, and with the length of postprison probation. The evidence also indicates that sentences vary with the individual's original record but not with the offender's age or race. With the exception of possible gender bias, the court's sentencing behavior was consistent with utilitarian principles.     

关于“试点”的法律话题——相对集中行政处罚权的理论与实践

相对集中行政处罚权是适时而生的"试点",但这项改革使得法的统一性受到挑战,存在在机构设置上遭遇疑惑等问题.鉴于"试点"的特殊性,需要在制度上予以合法性的调整,包括权限争议解决主体的安排、理解和遵循"一事不再罚"以及努力形成行政执法的制衡合作格局,尽量以"可接受性原则"为优的执法形象出现.当然,在现实操作中既要"容忍试点"但也要注意"减少代价".     

论社会歧视的社会心理根源及其消除方式--社会心理学视野下的社会歧视

社会歧视是指针对某一特殊社会群体的不公平、不合理、排斥性的社会行为或制度安排.从社会心理学看,这是由社会偏见这样一种不公正的、具有否定性和排斥性倾向的社会态度所导致的,属于一种刻板印象.但社会偏见并不一定导致社会歧视,实现这种转变与被歧视者自身力量相对弱小、"谈判力"不足相关.要减少或消除社会歧视,一方面必须壮大被歧视者的力量,增强其"谈判力",阻止已有的偏见向歧视的转化;另一方面通过被歧视者的努力,加强沟通来改变固有的刻板印象并防止新的刻板印象的产生.     

Intimate Partner Violence Victims’ Accuracy in Assessing their Risk of Re-abuse

Using four categories of accuracy (true positive, false positive, true negative, false negative), this study explored (1) how accurately intimate partner violence (IPV) victims are able to assess their risk of re-abuse; and (2) potential predictors of accuracy. Women seeking help for IPV (N = 246) rated the likelihood that they would experience physical re-abuse in the coming year and then reported 18 months later whether those risks had been realized. Victim assessments were more likely to be right than wrong, and were subject to neither a pessimistic nor optimistic bias. In the multivariate analysis, significant/marginally significant predictors of the accuracy categories were the history of violence from this and former partners, level of substance use, PTSD symptoms, and the recency of the violence. Among the more robust findings were the connection between level of stalking and true positives, and between substance use and false negatives. This study suggests that victim assessments have significant potential to inform practice, and deserve further exploration.

中国特色社会主义政治发展道路的概念内容及历史考察

中国特色社会主义政治发展道路是中国特色社会主义道路的重要组成部分。2002年江泽民第一次提出了“政治发展道路”命题,党的十七大第一次提出“中国特色社会主义政治发展道路”科学的新概念,标志着中国特色社会主义政治发展道路概念的形成。中国共产党对中国特色社会主义政治发展道路实践的探索,经过了历史起点、探索形成和发展创新三个阶段。中国特色社会主义政治发展道路的确立,标志着社会主义民主政治建设进入一个新阶段,政治文明建设提升到一个新境界。     

我国民众对公共文化服务体系建设的主观评价——基于四个地区的实证调研

2011年8月,笔者在北京市海淀区、江苏省常熟市、山西省朔州市和甘肃省平凉市这四个地区实施了公共文化服务体系的实地调研。结果表明,尽管现有的公共文化服务已能初步满足人民群众的需求,但是仍存在诸多需改进之处。未来的公共文化体系建设应坚持政府主导,加大财政投入,同时积极鼓励社会力量参与,并在法制化的基础上因地制宜,切实满足人民群众不断变化的文化需求。     

Does social capital increase public support for economic globalisation?

The dominant explanation of public attitudes vis‐à‐vis economic globalisation focuses on re‐distributional implications, with an emphasis on factor endowments and government‐sponsored safety nets (the compensation hypothesis). The empirical implication of these theoretical arguments is that in advanced economies, on which this article focuses, individuals endowed with less human and financial capital will be more likely to experience income losses. Hence they will oppose economic openness unless they are compensated by the government. It is argued here that including social capital in the analysis can fill two gaps in explanations relying on factor endowments and the compensation hypothesis. First, generalised trust – one key aspect of social capital – constitutes a personal endowment alongside human and financial capital. Second, structural social capital – another key aspect of social capital – can be regarded as a nongovernmental social safety net that can compensate for endowment‐related disadvantages of individuals. Both aspects of social capital are expected to contribute, for distinct reasons, to more positive views on economic openness. The empirical testing relies on survey data for two countries: Switzerland and the United States. For both countries, the results indicate that generalised trust has a strong, positive effect on public opinion of economic globalisation, whereas structural social capital has no effect.     

We’ve got them on the list: contacting,canvassing and voting in a British general election campaign

Many voters are canvassed by British political parties in the months and weeks immediately preceding a general election – but many are not. The parties are selective in whom they make contact with, and where. They focus on those in marginal constituencies who are likely to vote for them – and having identified them early in the process they contact them again, seeking to sustain that support in the seats where the contest overall will be either won or lost. A large panel survey conducted immediately before and after the 2010 general election allows detailed insight into that pattern of canvassing, identifying who the parties contacted, and where, in the six months prior to the election being called, and then who were contacted during the month immediately preceding polling day, and in how many different ways. Each party focused on its own supporters in the marginal constituencies, and in the middle-class neighbourhoods within those constituencies, but whereas the Conservatives, expecting to win the election, campaigned most intensively in the seats they lost by relatively small margins at the previous contest, Labour and the Liberal Democrats fought defensive campaigns in the seats that they won then. Such tactics were successful; the more ways in which respondents were contacted by a party, the more likely they were to vote for it.