Examining legal authoritarianism in the impact of punishment severity on juror decisions

Recent Supreme Court decisions point to an increased reliance on juries to determine a defendant's sentence. Evidence is mixed on whether jurors are more likely to convict when the potential punishment is mild. The current study examined this issue, as well as the impact of legal authoritarianism (LA) (Kravitz, D. A., Cutler, B. L., & Brock, P. 1993. Reliability and validity of the original and revised legal attitudes questionnaire. Law and Human Behavior, 17, 661–677. doi: 10.1007/BF01044688), on jurors’ decisions. An ethnically diverse sample of participants completed the individual difference measure prior to viewing a videotaped, reenacted criminal trial. We manipulated the severity of the punishment the defendant would receive if convicted. Results indicated LA moderated the effect of punishment severity on verdict. Specifically, at higher levels of punishment severity, civil libertarians convicted less, while legal authoritarians convicted more. That is, the severity-leniency effect held for civil libertarians, but not for legal authoritarians. As juries become more responsible for determining a defendant's sentence, attorneys should be aware of the defendant's potential sentence and use voir dire to identify jurors who are higher on LA.     

犯罪新闻报道的双向效果与少年犯罪

犯罪新闻报道作为向受众提供犯罪有关信息以及价值评判的一种文化传播方式,其对未成年人而言具有双向的效果,既能提供一种校正的模板,成为一种强力的社会控制器;但是,由于某些犯罪新闻报道基于经济效益的冲动,热衷于提供一些犯罪的暴力、色情等不良信息,又会成为刺激、诱导未成年人犯罪的因素,因此,应当通过加强国家监管、规范新闻从业人的报道行为以及提升未成年人媒介素养等方式使之达到一种有机的平衡,这一点先进国家的经验和教训可资参考。     

One voter and two choices: The impact of electoral context on the 2011 UK referendum

There is a debate in the literature on referendum voting as to whether these occasions are opportunities for voters to express issue preferences in the absence of partisan politics or whether they simply serve as referendums on the current government. In part, this latter, second order account is assumed to be driven by the amount and content of media coverage, and hence information about the referendum, that is available to voters. In this paper, we address the second order question and demonstrate that holding elections concurrently both reduces the amount of media attention to the second order contest—the AV referendum in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland where national elections were held—and moderates media priming, thereby affecting the salient cues in the decision making of voters in those contexts.     

辽宁沿海经济带中心城镇的辐射带动作用

城镇化是指农村人口向城镇人口转化的过程,同时具有人口持续集聚的特性,是中国在工业化过程中必然经历的历史阶段。在发展辽宁沿海经济带城镇化进程中,出现顶层设计的缺失、中心城镇的示范作用不明显、有城无业导致人口集聚难等不和谐音符,该文从中心城镇的设计与建设角度,多角度论述了中心城镇打造成要素集聚区,实现对周边卫星城镇的辐射带动作用。     

Agenda-Setting and Priming in Prime Time Television: Crime Dramas as Political Cues

The effects of agenda-setting and priming are well established in regard to the news media. Considerably less attention has been paid to these phenomena in entertainment media, in spite of the fact that entertainment media enjoy larger audiences than do news media and often address political topics. This article argues that the psychological mechanism hypothesized to lead to agenda-setting and priming effectsthat is, changes in construct accessibilityapplies as equally to entertainment media as it does to news media. Moreover, we contend that the frequency, consistency, and duration of entertainment media treatments of political issues encourage chronic accessibility of those issues. We test these hypotheses looking at television crime dramas as a source of political information. Using data from two controlled laboratory experiments and the 1995 National Election Study Pilot Study, we demonstrate that viewing crime dramas significantly increases concerns about crime and that these concerns significantly affect viewers' opinions of the president. The NES Pilot Study data suggest that these effects are restricted to frequent viewers of crime dramas, supporting a chronic accessibility model of agenda-setting and priming. These findings extend our growing understanding of how non-news sources of political information contribute to the construction of political attitudes.     

Special Emphasis: Agenda‐Setting Research—20 Year Birthday

“Special Emphasis: Agenda‐Setting Research—20 Year Birthday,” Journalism Quarterly, 69, 4 (Winter 1992), 813–920.     

A Very Unusual Accidental Mechanical Asphyxia of Choking with a Whole Solea Solea

The case here reported involves a schizophrenic 19‐year‐old girl under treatment with clotiapine, which was well tolerated except for a moderate dry mouth. The woman ingested a whole sole (Solea solea), which caused a very rapid death by choking. A complete autopsy was performed 24 h later, as well as histological and toxicological analysis. At autopsy, the sole was wedged in the esophagus causing a choking ab extrinseco. The fish had a length of 18 cm and a maximum width of 6 cm, weighing 188.7 g. Toxicological analysis detected 0.57 mg/L of clotiapine in blood, which falls within the therapeutic range. The peculiarity of this case is represented by two factors: one is the choking by fish and the second was the adverse affect caused by clotiapine, which induced a condition of dry mouth making the act of swallowing even more difficult, thereby contributing to a very rapid mechanical asphyxia and the death of the young woman.     

站在一种妥协的立场上——析法律效果与社会效果的统一

妥协是变革与保守之间的中间立场,而"法律效果与社会效果的统一"正是基于妥协的立场而提出的。实际上,法律效果可视为是一种保守立场,社会效果可视为是一种变革立场。因此,法律效果与社会效果相统一这一理念也有着妥协立场拥有的同样优点,法律的稳定性仍是法律的核心价值,因此我们主张一种在法律效果基础之上的社会效果。妥协立场这一模式不但保留了法律的核心价值——稳定性,也对正义、秩序、效益等价值进行了考量,实现了审判的"合法又合理"的宏伟目标。     

“司法能动”在中国的展开

原教旨意义上的“司法能动”的核心指的是司法裁判过程中的“立法性”司法。中国法学界对于什么是司法能动在理解上是极不一致的,大多数人根据自己的理解进行了阐发,其中不乏添附、歪曲之界说,甚至以讹传讹之谬误。能动司法在中国的展开,既存在理论根基不足之缺陷,又面临着司法职业化和司法能动化相冲突的尖锐矛盾。但转型社会的现实,又要求中国必须同时完成司法职业化和“中国式”的司法能动化的双重任务。虽然存在诸多不足,司法能动的倡导者提出的问题依然是值得人们认真对待的。     

法律效果与社会效果的统一——中国法院角色定位的失误

本文通过对“法律效果与社会效果的统一”相关概念的辨析,通过探讨这一提法的本意,引用者的目的以及受束的理解,笔者将“法律效果”界定为法律本身对法律行为合法性的评判,将“社会效果”界定为社会各阶层从其自身利益出发对法律及其实施的合理性评判,认为法律效果与社会效果相统一的载体不应该只是法院的司法行为,而包括普遍的法律行为。法律行为的法律效果和社会效果相统一是法治社会、和谐社会的一种状态：这种状态的实现是一个渐进的过程,是整个社会走向真正法治,趋向和谐的漫长过程,不是某一个机构在短时间内能够实现的。因此,实现法律效果和社会效果相统一,是权力机关、行政机关、司法机关乃至每个公民的共同任务。法院将其作为自身独自完成的目标是其角色定位的失误。