Criminal Decision Making: The Development of Adolescent Judgment,Criminal Responsibility,and Culpability

Theories of judgment in decision making hypothesize that throughout adolescence, judgment is impaired because the development of several psychosocial factors that are presumed to influence decision making lags behind the development of the cognitive capacities that are required to make mature decisions. This study uses an innovative video technique to examine the role of several psychosocial factors—temporal perspective, peer influence, and risk perception—in adolescent criminal decision making. Results based on data collected from 56 adolescents between the ages of 13 and 18 years revealed that detained youth were more likely to think of future-oriented consequences of engaging in the depicted delinquent act and less likely to anticipate pressure from their friends than nondetained youth. Examination of the developmental functions of the psychosocial factors indicates age-based differences on standardized measures of temporal perspective and resistance to peer influence and on measures of the role of risk perception in criminal decision making. Assessments of criminal responsibility and culpability were predicted by age and ethnicity. Implications for punishment in the juvenile justice system are discussed.     

Application of Law to the Childhood Obesity Epidemic

Childhood obesity is in important respects a result of legal policies that influence both dietary intake and physical activity. The law must shift focus away from individual risk factors alone and seek instead to promote situational and environmental influences that create an atmosphere conducive to health. To attain this goal, advocates should embrace a population-wide model of public health, and policymakers must critically examine the fashionable rhetoric of consumer choice.     

Taking dictatorship seriously: a reply to Quesada

Antonio Quesada (Public Choice 130:395–400, 2007) argues that a dictator has no more than two to three times the ‘average power’ of a non-dictatorial voter. If Quesada is correct, then his argument has major consequences for social choice theory; for instance, it warrants reconsidering the significance of Arrow’s Theorem. If Quesada is incorrect, however, then his position is dangerously misleading. This paper argues that Quesada is wrong. His argument depends on his own formal account of power, an account that is implausible because it disregards a basic insight common to the standard characterisations of voting power: the idea that one has power over an outcome to the extent that one is able to change that outcome. Claims about power have a counterfactual component; to assert that an individual actually has determined an outcome is also to make an assertion about what would have been the case had that individual acted differently. We can employ David Lewis’s influential account of counterfactuals to show, contra Quesada, that in a dictatorship, non-dictatorial individuals and groups cannot possibly determine a social preference. In short, Quesada is fundamentally mistaken about power, and thus also about the distribution of power in a dictatorship.     

Brockdorff-Rantzau and the Struggle for a Just Peace

Weimar Germany’s first foreign minister, Count Brockdorff-Rantzau, presented the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 with a pamphlet of detailed German counterproposals to the peace terms. In a concise cover letter, which was translated into English by the author of the article, the experienced diplomat Brockdorff-Rantzau put forward his most convincing arguments for a fair settlement at Versailles. Though the counterproposals were ultimately rejected, this rare document represents one of the only direct attempts at negotiation that took place between Germany and the Allied powers. This article analyzes Brockdorff-Rantzau’s style of negotiation in order to discern whether the German government’s hopes for a balanced settlement were based on naiveté or cynicism. By outlining three coherent themes in his writings—anger/defensiveness, compromise, and the rule of law—this paper argues that Brockdorff-Rantzau’s words are indicative of a more cynical motivation behind his seemingly perspicuous arguments.