scholarly journals Socio-legal studies and the humanities – law, interdisciplinarity and integrity

2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 243-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie L. Williams

This paper was delivered as a plenary lecture, designed to respond to the one-day special conference focus upon links between socio-legal studies and the humanities.1 The paper focuses in particular upon the relationship between law and the humanities. It may be argued that the role of empirically sourced socio-legal research is well accepted, given its tangible utility in terms of producing hard data which can inform and transform policy perspectives. However, scholarly speculation about the relationship between law and the humanities ranges from the indulgent to the hostile. In particular, legal scholars aligning themselves as ‘black letter’ commentators express strong opinions about such links, suggesting that scholarship purporting to establish links between the two fields is essentially spurious, bearing in mind the purposive role of law as a problem-solving mechanism. The paper sets out to challenge such assertions, indicating the natural connections between the two fields and the philosophical necessity of continued interaction, given the fact that certain aspects of human experience and nature cannot be plumbed by doctrine or empiricism or even by combinations of the two. Law must be understood to stand at the nexus of human experience, in a relationship of integrity, where the word is understood to mean both morally principled and culturally integrated. In particular, the development of human qualities, of character and moral sensibility informing normative values – and, ultimately, engagement with the world of law – is a process of subtle cultural as well as psychological significance, and may benefit from interrogation deriving from the wider fields of human discourse.

Author(s):  
Cem Özatalay ◽  
Gözde Aytemur Nüfusçu ◽  
Gülistan Zeren

The use of blood money by powerful people during the judicial process following different kinds of homicides (workplace homicides, state homicides, gun homicides and so on) has become commonplace within the neoliberal context. Based on data obtained from five cases in Turkey, this chapter shows, on the one hand, how the use of blood money serves as an effective tool in the hands of powerful people to consolidate power relations, particularly necropower, as well as the relationship of domination, which rests upon class and identity-based inequalities. The analysis indicates that the blood money offers made by powerful people allows them to minimize potential penalties within penal courts and also to keep their privileged positions in the social hierarchy by purchasing the ‘right to kill’. On the other hand, the resistance of the oppressed and aggrieved people to the subjugation of life to the power of death is analysed with a particular focus on the role of power asymmetries between perpetrators and victims and their unequal positions in the social hierarchy. This conflictual relationship, which we qualify as an expression of necrodomination, offers novel insights into Turkey’s historically shaped system of domination.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Liu

Due to the rapid development of teaching and learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL), on the one hand, and the arrival of positive psychology (PP) in the process of language education, on the other hand, student engagement has been burgeoned and got a noteworthy role in the academic field. The present review attempts to investigate the relationship of grit with students’ L2 engagement, by examining both backgrounds and consequences of grit. Consequently, the effectiveness of findings for policymakers and academic experts is discussed, along with the prominence of strengthening grit in the scholastic contexts in order to cultivate character in learners and improve their prospects.


1985 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-93
Author(s):  
Melvin L. Perlman

Jane Collier has stated that “the long preoccupation in legal studies with explaining the gap between law and behaviour has precluded the search for a more complex model of relations between law and society that accepts the gap as given”. The purpose of this paper is to further document the need for a more complex model of the relations between law and society. One question now gaining currency is: what is the relationship of law to social change? Some observers claim that “the question is no longer whether law is a significant vehicle of social change but ratherhowit so functions and what special problems arise”. Others regard law as a potential cause of social problems. A serious debate has thus emerged over whether law works at all to effect change and, if so, for whose benefit. This is a complex question. Legal impact studies for example, have revealed some unintended consequences of law-in-action. Moreover, it is often difficult to isolate the main effect of a legal policy, and in any case, social scientists and policymakers alike are interested in longer-range, indirect effects. It is useful, therefore, to distinguish between the direct and indirect aspects of the role of law. Given this complexity, we may usefully rephrase the question as follows: what conditions or factors affect the relationship between law and society, including social change?


Author(s):  
Ayman Shabana

This article offers a survey of modern scholarship on the role of custom in the Islamic legal tradition. It begins with a definition of the concept of custom and also the relationship between the two Arabic terms used for custom, ‘urf and ‘ada. The relationship of custom to other terms such as sunna, ‘amal, and istihsan is also explored. The second, and main, part of the article traces the different approaches to the study of custom in Islamic legal studies and examines the development of these approaches. Four themes or debates are identified as the main contexts within which custom has been discussed: the origins of the Sunna of the Prophet and the early development of Islamic law; relationship between theory and practice; sources of Islamic law; and legal change. The article concludes with a summary and suggestions for future research.


2018 ◽  
Vol 73 ◽  
pp. 09015
Author(s):  
Lismawati ◽  
Rohman Abdul ◽  
Chariri Anis

Inadequate implementation of the role of assurance and consulting internal auditor performance in making local governments has not been optimal.The study aims to verify the comfortness of auditors is able to mediate the relationship of the increase of the independence and the performance of the internal auditorsof local governments in Indonesia.The empirical evidencesare collected by the online and offline survey (through the postal services) to the internal auditors of local governments.By employing the one of structural equation model, namely the partial lease squares, the study finds that the comfortness of the auditors is able to mediate the relationship between the independence and the performance of the auditors.The findings of the study is expected to provide the idea of the development of local government auditors studies in Indonesia.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Azanjac Arsic

Gliomas are one of the most common primary brain tumors and the etiology of gliomas remains unknown in most cases. The aim of this case–control study was to investigate possible association between incidence in relation to glioma and certain blood groups. This study included 100 histopathologically verified cases of glioma and 200 age and sex-matched controls without malignant diseases that were admitted to the same hospital. The results revealed that the patients with group AB were at 3.5-fold increased risk of developing glioma compared to the patients with other ABO blood groups. In this particular study, there was more male patients with glioma with the blood group AB. However, mechanisms that explain the relationship between the blood groups ABO and a cancer risk are unclear. Several hypotheses have been proposed, including the one with a modulatory role of blood group ABO antigens. In addition, the blood group ABO system regulates the level of circulating proinflammatory and adhesion molecules which play a significant role in the tumorigenesis process. Additionally, the recent discovery that includes the von Willebrand factor (vWF) as an important modulator of angiogenesis and apoptosis provides one plausible explanation as regards the role of the blood group ABO in the tumorigenesis process. To our knowledge, this is the first study that examined the relationship of blood group in patients diagnosed with glioma among the Serbian population. Moreover, for the first time our study results suggested that blood group AB increased the risk of glioma. The results of this study suggested that the blood group AB could be one of hereditary factors which had an influence on the occurrence of glioma. The further research is needed on a larger sample, to confirm these findings and the possible mechanisms by which the ABO system contributes to the pathology of glioma.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (6) ◽  
pp. 76-91
Author(s):  
E. D. Solozhentsev

The scientific problem of economics “Managing the quality of human life” is formulated on the basis of artificial intelligence, algebra of logic and logical-probabilistic calculus. Managing the quality of human life is represented by managing the processes of his treatment, training and decision making. Events in these processes and the corresponding logical variables relate to the behavior of a person, other persons and infrastructure. The processes of the quality of human life are modeled, analyzed and managed with the participation of the person himself. Scenarios and structural, logical and probabilistic models of managing the quality of human life are given. Special software for quality management is described. The relationship of human quality of life and the digital economy is examined. We consider the role of public opinion in the management of the “bottom” based on the synthesis of many studies on the management of the economics and the state. The bottom management is also feedback from the top management.


2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.


Author(s):  
Pavel Agapov ◽  
Kirill Stepkin

The article considers the general theoretical foundations of the relationship of sectarianism and religious extremism in the Russian Federation. Practical examples of the role of destructive sects in modern religious extremism in the Russian Federation are given.


2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 115-131
Author(s):  
Maria M. Kuznetsova

The article examines the philosophy of Henri Bergson and William James as independent doctrines aimed at rational comprehension of spiritual reality. The doctrines imply the paramount importance of consciousness, the need for continuous spiritual development, the expansion of experience and perception. The study highlights the fundamental role of spiritual energy for individual and universal evolution, which likens these doctrines to the ancient Eastern teaching as well as to Platonism in Western philosophy. The term “spiritual energy” is used by Bergson and James all the way through their creative career, and therefore this concept should considered in the examination of their solution to the most important philosophical and scientific issues, such as the relationship of matter and spirit, consciousness and brain, cognition, free will, etc. The “radical empiricism” of William James and the “creative evolution” of Henry Bergson should be viewed as conceptions that based on peacemaking goals, because they are aimed at reconciling faith and facts, science and religion through the organic synthesis of sensory and spiritual levels of experience. Although there is a number of modern scientific discoveries that were foreseen by philosophical ideas of Bergson and James, both philosophers advocate for the artificial limitation of the sphere of experimental methods in science. They call not to limit ourselves to the usual intellectual schemes of reality comprehension, but attempt to touch the “living” reality, which presupposes an increase in the intensity of attention and will, but finally brings us closer to freedom.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document