Dignity and its discontents: Towards an abolitionist rethinking of dignity

2020 ◽  
pp. 147737082097657
Author(s):  
Jonathan Simon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
The United States ◽  
Good Time ◽  
Court System ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
Criminal Legal System ◽  
Prison Systems

As we approach the decade anniversary of the US Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Plata (2011), it is perhaps a good time to take stock of some of the optimism expressed by this author (Simon, 2014) that the landmark prisoners’ rights decision, with its stark condemnation of the toxic combination of chronic illness, medical neglect, and overcrowding so typical of American prison systems in the era of mass incarceration, and its rhetorical invigoration of ‘dignity’ as a constitutional value, could play a role in taming mass incarceration in the United States. In doing so, part of the inquiry is juridical and jurisprudential. Did the opinion move the court system towards more protection of human rights for prisoners? The second aspect of the question is cultural and political. At a time of unprecedented public interest in reforming the criminal legal system in the United States, has the language or rhetoric of ‘human dignity,’ along with the problems of illness and overcrowding that the Plata case called national attention to, played a role in the foment? The Black Lives Matter movement, a major force in the street protests against policing in the summer of 2020, emerged just two years after Plata and, completely independently, has revitalized abolition discourse in the United States, leading to popular calls to ‘defund’ the police. To what extent should abolition and other goals of the movement for racial justice, supplant human dignity, with its liberal legal genealogy, as a meaningful lodestar for legal and political efforts to end mass incarceration? As an essay in normative sociological jurisprudence, my answers will be both descriptive and prescriptive.

A Survey of Christian Religious Education in the United States

2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Jerald F. Dirks
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Religious Education ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
The United States ◽  
Youth Groups ◽  
Religious Educators ◽  
Contemporary Status ◽  
Children's Sermons ◽  
Private Christian Schools

Prior to the landmark Supreme Court decision of June 1963, which banned public prayer from the public schools, Christian religious education was often a routine part of the overt instruction provided by the American public school system. However, in the wake of that legal milestone, even though instruction in the Judeo-Christian interpretation of religious history continued to be taught covertly, American churches began relying more heavily on providing Christian religious education. This article briefly presents Christianity’s contemporary status in the United States and reviews such religious education methods as Sunday school, vacation Bible school, Christian youth groups, catechism, private Christian schools, Youth Sunday, and children’s sermons. The survey concludes with a look at the growing interface between such education and the lessons of psychology as well as training and certifying Christian religious educators.

ОСОБЕННОСТИ ПОДГОТОВКИ КАДРОВ ДЛЯ ПЕНИТЕНЦИАРНОЙ СИСТЕМЫ В США

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Unterov ◽  
Elizaveta Eremeeva
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Training System ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Foreign Experience ◽  
Foreign Countries ◽  
Personal Qualities ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Prison Systems ◽  
Correction System

Статья посвящена изучению зарубежного опыта подготовки кадров для пенитенциарных систем. Его анализ и рассмотрение возможности внедрения отдельных элементов направлены на совершенствование системы подготовки сотрудников для уголовно-исполнительной системы России, повышение их профессионального уровня, что в конечном счете будет способствовать достижению главной цели УИС - исправлению осужденных. Авторы особое внимание уделяют изучению специально-профессиональных и личностных качеств, необходимых сотрудникам пенитенциарных учреждений. В статье рассматриваются особенности подготовки сотрудников пенитенциарной системы в Соединенных Штатах Америки. Важнейшей задачей образовательных учреждений и центров по подготовке кадров для пенитенциарной системы США является обеспечение будущих сотрудников знаниями, необходимыми для выполнения профессиональных обязанностей в рамках предстоящей деятельности. Также авторы подчеркивают важность развития при подготовке будущих сотрудников не только профессиональных, но и личностных качеств.The article is devoted to the study of foreign experience in order to improve the training system for the Russian penal correction system. In particular, the training of prison officials in the United States of America is considered as one of the most developed States in the modern world. The improvement of the training process for the Russian penal correction system implies the development of international cooperation with the prison systems of foreign countries. The study of foreign experience of penitentiary education contributes to the improvement of the professional level of the staff of the Penal Correction Service and, ultimately, to the achievement of the main goal - correction of convicts. The authors pay particular attention to the study of specific professional and personal qualities required by potential prison staff. Since there have been significant positive changes in the formation of professional qualities of the future employee of the Russian penal correction system over the past decade, the main focus of the work is on the formation of personal (universal) qualities of the employee of the Federal Penal Correction Service of the Russian Federation, for which the positive experience of the United States is analyzed.

Winning the Argument and Moving the Fight: The Legacy of a Grassroots Humanitarian

Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 115
Author(s):  
Mary Coleman
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
United States ◽  
Winning Strategy ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
The United States ◽  
Colleges And Universities ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Trade Offs

The author of this article argues that the two-decades-long litigation struggle was necessary to push the political actors in Mississippi into a more virtuous than vicious legal/political negotiation. The second and related argument, however, is that neither the 1992 United States Supreme Court decision in Fordice nor the negotiation provided an adequate riposte to plaintiffs’ claims. The author shows that their chief counsel for the first phase of the litigation wanted equality of opportunity for historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), as did the plaintiffs. In the course of explicating the role of a legal grass-roots humanitarian, Coleman suggests lessons learned and trade-offs from that case/negotiation, describing the tradeoffs as part of the political vestiges of legal racism in black public higher education and the need to move HBCUs to a higher level of opportunity at a critical juncture in the life of tuition-dependent colleges and universities in the United States. Throughout the essay the following questions pose themselves: In thinking about the Road to Fordice and to political settlement, would the Justice Department lawyers and the plaintiffs’ lawyers connect at the point of their shared strength? Would the timing of the settlement benefit the plaintiffs and/or the State? Could plaintiffs’ lawyers hold together for the length of the case and move each piece of the case forward in a winning strategy? Who were plaintiffs’ opponents and what was their strategy? With these questions in mind, the author offers an analysis of how the campaign— political/legal arguments and political/legal remedies to remove the vestiges of de jure segregation in higher education—unfolded in Mississippi, with special emphasis on the initiating lawyer in Ayers v. Waller and Fordice, Isaiah Madison

The Insidious Momentum of American Mass Incarceration

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franklin E. Zimring
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Next Generation ◽  
Single Generation ◽  
American Life ◽  
Peak Rate ◽  
Or Practice

The phenomenal growth of penal confinement in the United States in the last quarter of the twentieth century is still a public policy mystery. Why did it happen when it happened? What explains the unprecedented magnitude of prison and jail expansion? Why are the current levels of penal confinement so very close to the all-time peak rate reached in 2007? What is the likely course of levels of penal confinement in the next generation of American life? Are there changes in government or policy that can avoid the prospect of mass incarceration as a chronic element of governance in the United States? This study is organized around four major concerns: What happened in the 33 years after 1973? Why did these extraordinary changes happen in that single generation? What is likely to happen to levels of penal confinement in the next three decades? What changes in law or practice might reduce this likely penal future?

American Defence Legal Systems in Germany

1981 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-15
Author(s):  
E. J. Bellen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Military ◽  
Court System ◽  
Legal Systems

The purpose of this paper is to give a brief sketch of the United States military court system and present a working example of it.

scholarly journals The Magnitude of the Impact of HIV on the Human Beings in the World’s Richest Country, America: The Misery of African Americans

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muse Abdi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Hiv Infection ◽  
Risk Behaviors ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Prevention Programs ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Related Risk ◽  
The Impact

Disproportionate rates of HIV infection among African Americans is an increasing concern in the United States. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of HIV prevention programs on African Americans and social determinants fueling HIV-related risk behaviors. Using literature, this study analyzed the incidences of HIV infection among African Americans in the United States and the effectiveness of the prevention programs. African Americans struggle with mass incarceration, drugs, stigma, criminalization, and lack of economic opportunities, which contribute to the HIV-related risk behaviors. The existing traditional prevention programs in place are not working for African Americans. Tailored and culturally relevant programs should be designed and implemented. Further studies are needed to establish the causal relationships and develop preventive measures.

scholarly journals The Forensic Engineer in State and Federal Court

2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard M. Ziernicki
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Expert Witness ◽  
Federal Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Court System ◽  
Civil Lawsuits ◽  
Forensic Engineering ◽  
And Function

This paper outlines the legal system in the United States, the different types of courts, the differences between criminal and civil law, and the role of forensic engineering experts involved in civil lawsuits. After providing a summary of relevant procedures employed by civil and criminal courts, the paper describes the basic principles and requirements for the selection and work of a forensic engineering expert in both the state and federal court system. This paper outlines the role and function of forensic experts (specifically forensic engineers), in the United States court system. It is not a treatise on the legal system but on the role of experts. The paper presents the requirements typically used in today’s legal system to qualify a forensic engineer as an expert witness and to accept his or her work and opinions. Furthermore, this paper discusses who can be an expert witness, the expert’s report, applicable standards, conducted research, engineering opinions, and final testimony in court — and how those elements fit into the legal system. Lastly, the paper describes the concept of spoliation of evidence.

scholarly journals The Route to the USMLE: The Shibboleth of Modern Medical Licensure

2014 ◽  
Vol 100 (4) ◽  
pp. 21-28
Author(s):  
Howard Wainer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Reliability And Validity ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
The United States ◽  
British Raj ◽  
Medical Licensing ◽  
History Of ◽  
Licensing Examination ◽  
Multiple Choice Exam ◽  
The Cost

ABSTRACT The formal licensing of physicians in the United States began with the 1889 Supreme Court Decision Dent v. West Virginia. From that time forward, tests, in one form or another, have played a crucial role in medical licensing. In this essay we trace the history of testing from its beginnings in Xia dynasty China, 4000 years ago, though its adoption for the Indian civil service system by the British Raj, and finally ending with the 1992 introduction of the modern United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE). The focus here is on the most important development in testing since the Jesuits introduced written exams to the West in 1599 — the substitution of a large number of objectively scored multiple choice exam questions for a relatively small number of essays or interview questions. This approach provided increased reliability and validity of score, broadened the number of topics that could be addressed, diminished the cost of the exam, allowed results to be calculated almost instantly, and, through the use of computerized test administration, provided the opportunity for tests to be individually tailored for each examinee while maintaining comparability of scores across all examinees.

scholarly journals Riding Circuit: Bringing the Law to Those Who Need It

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Drisko Zago
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Early Treatment ◽  
The United States ◽  
Working Poor ◽  
Legal Issues ◽  
Access To Justice ◽  
Court System ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Societal Problems

This article surveys the Access to Justice movement in the United States and proposes including more types of professionals to develop longer term solutions that will alleviate barriers to the court system. This article discusses the need to expand the access to justice concept to reach beyond the courthouse to address civil legal issues before they blossom into litigation. Mobile outreach providing preventive lawyering and early treatment of societal problems can prevent delays and the bottleneck that many courts are seeing with the vast numbers of Self-Represented Litigants. A team of professionals including lawyers, social workers, nurses, counselors, translators and law librarians, working with a network of public librarians, can make a significant impact into the everyday lives of the working poor and folk of modest means in underserved areas.

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