Juveniles Are Not So Different

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 278-284
Author(s):  
Mugambi Jouet

The “juveniles are different” doctrine is gaining ground in the United States. It holds that children, unlike adults, should not receive merciless punishments like life without parole, given their immaturity, impulsivity, and limited brain development. The doctrine’s impact has been both significant and modest because it operates in an exceptionally repressive context considering the advent of mass incarceration. Unless construed more broadly, it may help rationalize draconian sentences for adults and cement the status quo. This Article offers a wider historical and comparative perspective. Over time, age has recurrently served to legitimize punitiveness toward children or adults. America has oscillated between deeming that juveniles deserve fewer rights than adults, that they deserve more rights, or that they should essentially be treated the same. After diverse paradigm shifts, mass incarceration led to a downward-leveling process whereby juveniles were punished just as ruthlessly as adults. “Juveniles are different” was a reaction to this trend, although punitive assumptions undergird its rigid age carve-outs. This Article calls for a new phase: an upward-leveling process under which juveniles’ emerging right to be free from merciless punishments would apply to everyone. This is the norm in other Western democracies, which have gravitated toward universal human rights and moderate punishment. A broader outlook may spell the difference between a conception of “juveniles are different” that casts adults as irredeemable and a stepping-stone toward meaningful systemic reform.

Author(s):  
Charles M. Cameron ◽  
Lewis A. Kornhauser

We summarize the formal theoretical literature on Supreme Court decision-making. We focus on two core questions: What does the Supreme Court of the United States do, and how can one model those actions; and, what do the justices of the Supreme Court want, and how can one model those preferences? Given the current state of play in judicial studies, these questions then direct this survey mostly to so-called separation of powers (SOP) models, and to studies of a multi-member (“collegial”) court employing the Supreme Court’s very distinctive and highly unusual voting rule.The survey makes four main points. First, it sets out a new taxonomy that unifies much of the literature by linking judicial actions, modeling conventions, and the treatment of the status quo. In addition, the taxonomy identifies some models that employ inconsistent assumptions about Supreme Court actions and consequences. Second, the discussion of judicial preferences clarifies the links between judicial actions and judicial preferences. It highlights the relationships between preferences over dispositions, preferences over rules, and preferences over social outcomes. And, it explicates the difference between consequential and expressive preferences. Third, the survey delineates the separate strands of SOP models. It suggests new possibilities for this seemingly well-explored line of inquiry. Fourth, the discussion of voting emphasizes the peculiar characteristics of the Supreme Court’s voting rule. The survey maps the movement from early models that ignored the special features of this rule, to more recent ones that embrace its features and explore the resulting (and unusual) incentive effects.


1988 ◽  
Vol 44 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 83-99
Author(s):  
S. C. Saha

The United States had an inbuilt constituency in India, a constituency that had its origins in the pre-independent period. Although the British were under fire, they enjoyed a certain amount of respect for their commitment to justice and law. The Indian elites were the products of English education. All these resulted in a love-hate relationship between the Indians and the Anglo-Saxon groups in general. Besides, the amount of importance the Indian nationalist leaders gave to the mediatory role of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the liberal American Press in bringing about India's independence bears testimony to this formulation. Thus in 1941 when India won independence, the United States enjoyed considerable goodwill in India. The United States was willing and far abler than Stalin's Soviet Union to help in the economic betterment of India. The US launched the Point Four Programme, a politico-humanitarian package.1 Jawaharlal Nehru, the Prime Minister of India, was consciously warm towards it because, apart from other reasons, he found it good tactics to use against domestic communism, and the collapse of the Telengana rebellion in Southern India proved him right. During his first visit to the United States in 1949, Nehru and President Truman seemed to have achieved a reasonable desire of mutual sympathy in genera! outlook on. world affairs. What alienated India's diplomacy from that of the United States most was the difference in their views of the nature of Chinese Communist threat and what approaches could be made about it. The United States had not yet given in to Dulles's pactomania, nor had the dreadful McCarthy era started. Yet guided by their different experiences, the two countries began to choose their different paths which did not converge until the Communist Chinese massive invasion of India's north-eastern border in October 1962. So conflicting were the approaches of India and the United States that they found themselves ranged on opposite sides on many issues regarding China. This worked clearly to the disadvantage of both. The differences discouraged economic assistance to India while the United States lost the sympathy of the emerging Asian nations. My paper examines the various aspects of these Indo-American differences over Communist China in order to define the impact on their political relations. It establishes that the ‘China Question’—the non-recognition by the United States, non-admission to the United Nations, the status of Formosa, etc., created bitter differences between India and the United States till the China War of 1962. This provided cause for an unparalleled deepening of the Indo-US involvement.


Law and World ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 7-13
Author(s):  
William Watkins

Who is to decide? This is the fundamental question facing a democratic republic. A separation of powers is widely accepted in western democracies with legislatures making laws, executives implementing the law, and judges interpreting and applying laws to actual cases and controversies brought before them. But when does the judicial role depart from judging and impermissibly lurch into the realm of policymaking which most people agree is a legislative function? This article examines such questions in reference to recent experience in the Republic of Georgia and the United States regarding the legal status of marijuana. In both countries courts and legislatures have taken decisive and controversial actions regarding the status of cannabis in society. But in so doing, have the judicial and legislative branches respected separation-of powers-principles, or have the lines been the two branches become blurred?


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd R. Clear

Incarceration rates in the United States are far higher than the world's other Western democracies, so high that they are referred to as mass incarceration. After nearly 40 years of sustained growth in US incarceration rates, a broad consensus exists to bring them down. The Iron Law of Prison Populations directs attention to the fact that 51 different jurisdictional-level penal policies, rather than crime, drive incarceration rates, making systematic policy reform difficult. However, the fact that prison populations have already begun to decline, combined with the emerging public will to reduce incarceration and dropping age-specific incarceration rates, promotes optimism in the decarceration agenda. Three issues remain to be resolved: the eventual target rate of incarceration, what to do with people convicted of violent crimes, and how to avoid the distracting focus on reentry programming. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Criminology, Volume 4 is January 13, 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.


1998 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard H. Dana

This paper describes the status of multicultural assessment training, research, and practice in the United States. Racism, politicization of issues, and demands for equity in assessment of psychopathology and personality description have created a climate of controversy. Some sources of bias provide an introduction to major assessment issues including service delivery, moderator variables, modifications of standard tests, development of culture-specific tests, personality theory and cultural/racial identity description, cultural formulations for psychiatric diagnosis, and use of findings, particularly in therapeutic assessment. An assessment-intervention model summarizes this paper and suggests dimensions that compel practitioners to ask questions meriting research attention and providing avenues for developments of culturally competent practice.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 111
Author(s):  
Aswindar Adhi Gumilang ◽  
Tri Pitara Mahanggoro ◽  
Qurrotul Aini

The public demand for health service professionalism and transparent financial management made some Puskesmas in Semarang regency changed the status of public health center to BLUD. The implementation of Puskesmas BLUD and non-BLUD requires resources that it can work well in order to meet the expectations of the community. The aim of this study is to know the difference of work motivation and job satisfaction of employees in Puskesmas BLUD and non-BLUD. Method of this research is a comparative descriptive with a quantitative approach. The object of this research are work motivation and job satisfaction of employees in Puskesmas BLUD and non-BLUD Semarang regency. This Research showed that Sig value. (P-value) work motivation variable was 0.019 smaller than α value (0.05). It showed that there was a difference of work motivation of employees in Puskemas BLUD and non-BLUD. Sig value (P-value) variable of job satisfaction was 0.020 smaller than α value (0.05). It showed that there was a difference of job satisfaction of BLUD and non-BLUD. The average of non-BLUD employees motivation were 76.59 smaller than the average of BLUD employees were 78.25. The average of job satisfaction of BLUD employees were 129.20 bigger than the average of non-BLUD employee were 124.26. Job satisfaction of employees in Puskesmas BLUD was higher than non-BLUD employees.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Sarmistha R. Majumdar

Fracking has helped to usher in an era of energy abundance in the United States. This advanced drilling procedure has helped the nation to attain the status of the largest producer of crude oil and natural gas in the world, but some of its negative externalities, such as human-induced seismicity, can no longer be ignored. The occurrence of earthquakes in communities located at proximity to disposal wells with no prior history of seismicity has shocked residents and have caused damages to properties. It has evoked individuals’ resentment against the practice of injection of fracking’s wastewater under pressure into underground disposal wells. Though the oil and gas companies have denied the existence of a link between such a practice and earthquakes and the local and state governments have delayed their responses to the unforeseen seismic events, the issue has gained in prominence among researchers, affected community residents, and the media. This case study has offered a glimpse into the varied responses of stakeholders to human-induced seismicity in a small city in the state of Texas. It is evident from this case study that although individuals’ complaints and protests from a small community may not be successful in bringing about statewide changes in regulatory policies on disposal of fracking’s wastewater, they can add to the public pressure on the state government to do something to address the problem in a state that supports fracking.


Author(s):  
Pierre Rosanvallon

It's a commonplace occurrence that citizens in Western democracies are disaffected with their political leaders and traditional democratic institutions. But this book argues that this crisis of confidence is partly a crisis of understanding. The book makes the case that the sources of democratic legitimacy have shifted and multiplied over the past thirty years and that we need to comprehend and make better use of these new sources of legitimacy in order to strengthen our political self-belief and commitment to democracy. Drawing on examples from France and the United States, the book notes that there has been a major expansion of independent commissions, NGOs, regulatory authorities, and watchdogs in recent decades. At the same time, constitutional courts have become more willing and able to challenge legislatures. These institutional developments, which serve the democratic values of impartiality and reflexivity, have been accompanied by a new attentiveness to what the book calls the value of proximity, as governing structures have sought to find new spaces for minorities, the particular, and the local. To improve our democracies, we need to use these new sources of legitimacy more effectively and we need to incorporate them into our accounts of democratic government. This book is an original contribution to the vigorous international debate about democratic authority and legitimacy.


Author(s):  
Detlef Liebs

Abstract Four kinds of Romans in the Frankish kingdoms in the 6th to 8th centuries. Roman law texts from Merowingian Gaul make a difference between cives Romani, Latini and dediticii, all considered as Romans. This difference mattered only to slaves who had been freed. The status of Latin and dediticius was hereditary, whereas the descendants of one who had been freed as civis Romanus were free born Romans, who should be classified as a proper, a fourth kind of beeing Roman; it was the standard kind. The difference was important in civil law, procedural law and criminal law, especially in wergeld, the sum to be payed for expiation when somebody had been killed: Who had killed a Roman, had to pay different sums according to the status of the killed.


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