America First? Trump,Crime, and Justice Internationally

ABSTRACT

“America First,” as presented by President Trump, argues for an international strategy that persistently places America’s interests above those of anyone or anything else. Consequently, Trump has reshaped the international perceptions of the United States and has created more difficulties for the U.S. in coordinating of global leaders in resolving complex issues in the world. This essay reflects on how Trump and the United States are viewed internationally, the impacts of Trump’s anti-immigrant and pro-White nationalist rhetoric, Trump’s responses to humanitarian crises around the globe, and the potential impact of Trump’s stance on global climate change. Given these considerations, it is questionable whether “America First” policy has made “America Great Again” in the eyes of the world.     

Welfare and Freedom: Towards a Semi-Kantian Theory of Private Law

The Kantian theory of private law, as Ernest Weinrib and Arthur Ripstein have developed it over the last two decades, is based on a fundamental normative truth, viz., no person is subordinate or superior to another person. Kantians construe any attempt to understand and justify the distribution of the rights-claims and rights-liberties that constitute private law in terms of aggregate welfare and/or distributive justice, as a deep category mistake. This essay outlines a ‘semi-Kantian’ theory of private law, which is like Kant’s in that it understands private law as a means of instituting and protecting private freedom. Yet, semi-Kantians insist that the choice between different private law programs, which respect private freedom equally well, can at times be justified by considerations of aggregate welfare and distributive justice, as well as other considerations that concern the impact on society as a whole.

     

Between reform and Islam: The Arab spring in Jordan 2011–2014

This article discusses the Arab Spring in Jordan and the reasons the Hashemite regime was able to survive it. Liberals, retired military officers, young people, members of tribes, and members of the Muslim Brotherhood all participated in the demonstrations against the regime, which began in January 2011. In the beginning, it seemed that diversified demonstrations would bring about the regime’s collapse, as happened in other Arab countries. But in the end, it turned out that each group acted in its own interests. Tribal leaders worried about economic concerns, liberals sought to promote political reform, and the Muslim Brotherhood demanded the establishment of an Islamic caliphate. The lack of a common goal combined with Jordan’s policy of allowing demonstrations free from the fear of violent repression, sapped protesters’ motivation and minimized the number of participants. The fear of the type of anarchy and terror seen in Syria and Egypt also frightened the protesters and led them to the conclusion that it is better to live in an undemocratic but stable regime than pursue a fight for democracy that might end badly. Ultimately, it was King Abdullah’s astute political strategy in combination with international contingencies that enabled Jordan’s Hashemite regime to survive the Arab Spring.     

Reduced punishment in Israel in the case of murder: bridging the medico-legal gap

The psychiatrist's assessment of criminal responsibility of an accused in court for an act of crime has always been a matter of great difficulty. In 1997, clause 300a was incorporated into the Penal Code of Israel, thereby permitting a more lenient punishment for murder than mandatory life imprisonment. The clause includes the definition of what is meant by "severe mental disorder" and "significantly restricted capacity" by the defendant to understand the criminal nature of his or her act and to refrain from committing it. Usage of the concepts "disorder" and "significantly restricted capacity" in addressing the issue of diminished responsibility of the mentally ill is new to the Israeli legal code. The emergence and evolvement of the above concepts are presented through a historical review of the Israeli encoded law concerning mental illness, analyzed from a psychiatric perspective.     

Incomplete Contracts with Asymmetric Information: Exclusive Versus Optional Remedies

Scholars have been debating for years the comparative advantageof damages and specific performance. Yet, most work has compareda single remedy contract to another single remedy contract.But contract law provides the non-breaching party with a varietyof optional remedies to choose from in case of a breach, andparties themselves regularly write contracts which provide suchoptions. In this article, we start filling this gap by studyingmulti-remedy contracts. Specifically, we compare a contractthat grants the non-breaching party an option to choose betweenliquidated damages and specific performance with an exclusiveremedy contract, which restricts the non-breaching party’sremedy to liquidated damages only.     

Social Networks and Protest Participation: Evidence from 130 Million Twitter Users

Pinning down the role of social ties in the decision to protest has been notoriously elusive, largely due to data limitations. Social media and their global use by protesters offer an unprecedented opportunity to observe real‐time social ties and online behavior, though often without an attendant measure of real‐world behavior. We collect data on Twitter activity during the 2015 Charlie Hebdo protest in Paris, which, unusually, record real‐world protest attendance and network structure measured beyond egocentric networks. We devise a test of social theories of protest that hold that participation depends on exposure to others' intentions and network position determines exposure. Our findings are strongly consistent with these theories, showing that protesters are significantly more connected to one another via direct, indirect, triadic, and reciprocated ties than comparable nonprotesters. These results offer the first large‐scale empirical support for the claim that social network structure has consequences for protest participation.