Procedural Justice Concerns and Technologically Mediated Interactions with Legal Authorities

The use of surveillance technologies by legal authorities has intensified in recent years. As new data collection technologies expand into law enforcement spaces previously dominated by interpersonal interactions, questions emerge about whether the public will evaluate interpersonal and technologically mediated interactions with legal authorities in the same ways. In an analysis guided by procedural justice theory, we examine whether and how legal authorities’ use of decision-making technology affects public evaluations of an authority-subordinate interaction and its outcome in the context of airport border crossings. Using an experimental vignette design (N = 278), we varied whether an encounter between a traveller and border security “agent” that produced a secondary search was described as interpersonal (conducted by a human agent) or technologically mediated (conducted by a machine agent). We also varied the traveller’s group membership relative to the nation-state, describing the traveller as either born in the country in question and a member of the nation’s most common racial group (in-group) or not born in the country and a racial minority (out-group). Both encounter type and group membership independently affected perceptions of the interaction (procedural justice judgements) and its outcome (distributive justice judgments). Technologically mediated encounters improved perceptions of procedural and distributive justice. Further, procedural justice judgments mediated the relationship between encounter type and distributive justice, demonstrating how perceptions of interactions influence perceptions of the outcomes of those interactions. Out-group members were evaluated as having worse experiences across all measures. The findings underscore the importance of extending tests of procedural justice theory beyond interpersonal interactions to technologically mediated interactions.

Towards a Marxist Biocentric Climate Justice Theory of African Cinema

African cinema after colonialism examined issues on politics, polemics of gender, morality, historical reconstruction, resuscitation of cultural values and so on. All of the above were the pivot on which postcolonial African films were hinged. The rise of environmental consciousness in the 1980s through the 1990s championed by William Rueckert, Cheryll Glotfelty, Harold Fromm and Adrian Ivakhiv’s Bio- centrism created spaces for the African filmmaker’s search for climate justice with the medium of his art. It is pertinent to note that traditional African societies were ecocentric precursory to their encounter with the West. This Biocentric nature of indigenous Africa, the dislocation of the continent by capital- ism and the effect of climate change on the continent made it easy for the African creative artist and filmmaker to venture into the ecological film enterprise. Laden in some of these films are the socio- economic, political and environmental thoughts of Karl Marx, Ali Mazrui, Omafume Onoge and William Ruekert. Despite the above, there abounds a dearth of holistic environmental theories that bridges the economic, political and environmental Humanities. To this end, I propound a Marxist Biocentric Climate Justice theory which encapsulates political, economic and environmental processes. I adopt content analysis method to situate Christoffer Guldbrandsen’s Why Poverty? Stealing Africa (2012) and Orlando Von Einsiedel’s Virunga (2014) in the context of the theory being propounded.

Researching Social Justice Aspects of Intellectual Property

This chapter provides a brief introduction to intellectual property (IP) social justice theory and guidance on how to research social justice issues in IP. Included are tips for finding social justice issues in IP law and administration; a toolkit for addressing such issues; and examples of the process in use. IP social justice examines IP law and administration to determine rules and processes that adversely affect equality with particular focus on access to IP; inclusion in the benefits that flow from IP creation, use, and exploitation; and empowerment of marginalized groups within society who are not fully benefiting from both IP they have generated and use of IP created by others. This chapter provides tips on spotting and addressing IP social justice issues both with respect to implementation and with respect to normative aspects.

Influence of an individual’s unethical behaviour on peers’ vicarious learning in organisations: the role of moral anger

Purpose Because unethical behaviour pervades in organisations, how to inhibit the interpersonal influence of unethical behaviour has become increasingly important. This study aims to integrate the deontic justice theory and affective events theory to examine the relationship between an individual’s unethical behaviour and his or her peers’ vicarious learning by highlighting the mediating effect of peers’ moral anger and the moderating effect of task interdependence on this relationship. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected in two waves from 254 employees of a large manufacturing company in the People’s Republic of China. Findings The hypothesised moderated mediation model was supported. Specifically, as expected, peers’ moral anger mediated the negative relationship between an individual’s unethical behaviour and peers’ vicarious learning. Task interdependence moderated the direct relationship between the individual’s unethical behaviour and his or her peers’ moral anger and the indirect relationship between an individual’s unethical behaviour and his or her peers’ vicarious learning via the peers’ moral anger such that these relationships were stronger when the level of task interdependence was higher. Originality/value This study argues that the deontic justice theory is a supplement for the social learning theory in explaining the interpersonal influence of unethical behaviour. Drawing on the deontic justice theory, this study demonstrates that an individual’s unethical behaviours are unlikely to be rewarded or accepted, and by integrating the theories of deontic justice and affective events, offers a rationale for the emotional mechanism that underlies the interpersonal influence of unethical behaviour.

Postmigrant Spatial Justice? The Case of ‘Berlin Develops New Neighbourhoods’ (BENN)

This article discusses the introduction of a new urban policy in Berlin, Germany, in the frame of postmigrant spatial justice. In 2017, Berlin established so-called ‘integration management programs’ in 20 different neighbourhoods around large refugee shelters as a response to the growing challenges local authorities faced after the administrative collapse in 2015/16. A new policy agenda provides the opportunity to learn from previous policies and programs—especially when it is addressed to the local dimension of integration, a widely and controversially discussed issue. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Berlin in 2018 and 2019, this article discusses how migration is framed in urban social policy against both postmigrant and spatial justice theory.

COVID-19 as Eco-Pandemic Injustice: Opportunities for Collective and Antiracist Approaches to Environmental Health

The COVID-19 pandemic has coincided with a powerful upsurge in antiracist activism in the United States, linking many forms and consequences of racism to public and environmental health. This commentary develops the concept of eco-pandemic injustice to explain interrelationships between the pandemic and socioecological systems, demonstrating how COVID-19 both reveals and deepens structural inequalities that form along lines of environmental health. Using Pellow’s critical environmental justice theory, we examine how the crisis has made more visible and exacerbated links between racism, poverty, and health while providing opportunities to enact change through collective embodied health movements. We describe new collaborations and the potential for meaningful opportunities at the intersections between health, antiracist, environmental, and political movements that are advocating for the types of transformational change described by critical environmental justice.

Centering race in procedural justice theory: Systemic racism and the under-policing and over-policing of Black communities

Objectives. Bring people’s perceptions of systemic racism into procedural justice theory. Test an expanded model of police legitimacy that includes people’s perceptions of the under-policing and over-policing of Black communities. Methods. A cross-sectional survey based on a quota sample of 1,500 US residents designed to resemble the general population on the bases of race, gender, and age. Key measures are procedural justice, distributive justice, bounded authority, police legitimacy, perceptions of under-policing of Black communities, perceptions of over-policing of Black communities, and perceptions of systemic racism in the police. Structural equation modelling examines conditional correlations between latent constructs.Results. People’s perceptions of systemic under-policing and over-policing of Black communities are strongly associated with perceived police racism. Perceptions of under-policing and over-policing predict perceptions of the fairness and legitimacy of the police. These findings holds for both white and Black respondents.Conclusions. We provide ‘proof of concept’ in this particular approach to centering race in procedural justice theory. Findings also point to a pressing need to address the paradoxical law enforcement practices that have kept American police forces in service to structural racism and left Black communities both unprotected and over-regulated.