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This is the framing paper for a special journal issue on this topic. The paper and issue interrogate transnational legal orders and their impacts (material, institutional and normative) on domestic law and practice. The paper provides a framework for assessing the interrelation of the international, transnational and national levels, with international and transnational initiatives taking from state models which reflect interests and institutional and normative legacies, and with these initiatives confronting national contexts which generate responses which, in turn, feed back into the international and transnational levels in a recurrent manner. The method used is to build from case studies which start with an issue and a regulatory space that involve either more than one country or more than one legal regime, interrogate the impact of transnationalism and its limits and its effects within states, and then draw inductively from these studies. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will analyze the debate about neutrality of electronic communication networks (net neutrality) in the context of proposed telecom reform in the European Union. The new "telecom package" integrates net neutrality principles not solely in the context of network management in order to ensure minimum quality of service but also in provisions concerning backward integration and attempts to secure rights of Internet users. Given the presence of similar vested interests as in the American debate on the net neutrality in 2006, this paper explores why large telecom companies as network operators and content providers such as Google and E-Bay were both supportive of the final version of the telecom package. Standard political economy and the experience of American net neutrality debate suggest that these two groups have interests that are diametrically opposed to each other. The analysis finds that different institutional structure and uncertainty over potential outcomes in the future constrained the interest groups. The new law's contribution is minimal to the existing institutional equilibrium in the EU. The existing regulatory framework provides sufficient tools protecting consumer rights. European telecom markets are more competitive that those in the United States and the abuse of market power can be tackled on the basis of competition law. European telecom companies were concerned about the regulatory uncertainty as the new European Parliament elections took place in June 2009 and new telecom commissioner will be appointed by the end of 2009. Hence, telecom companies preferred the current version of the telecom package to potentially more interventionist legislation in the future. The current compromise between the EU's Council of Ministers, Parliament and Commission foresees relatively minimal net neutrality provisions. The analysis is based on both primary and secondary sources. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper concentrates on the empirical study of participation of Non-Governmental Organizations as Amicus Curiae in the proceedings of the European Court of Human Rights, the most developed supranational human rights protection institution. Academic discussion on globalization has contributed to a proliferation of literature on Transnational Advocacy Networks (TAN). However, TAN scholars rarely pay attention to the role of international legal institutions and litigation in the formation and success of TANs. Scholarly literature on legal mobilization might be helpful in this regard. However scholarly research on legal mobilization mainly focuses on mobilization of resources and cause lawyering in a particular country, especially the United States. Moreover, those authors who have written about NGO participation before international courts and tribunals often take a legalistic approach, examining the impact of decisions made by international courts and tribunals, and ignoring the possible contribution of sociology and social movements' literature to the subject. The paper aims to remedy this gap by examining the phenomenon of Transnational Legal Mobilization, where actors based in different countries mobilize resources to initiate, assist and impact litigation before an international tribunal. The paper focuses on the European Court of Human Rights, the oldest human rights court in the world and the one with the most well developed case law in the area of human rights. By empirically studying the jurisprudence of the Court (almost 100 volumes of Court reports)it traces development of transnational linkages for the litigation before the court and explores whether and how processes of globalization have increased transnational linkages in litigation before the Court. If such increases have occurred, what issues and processes have trigger them? Such a study is unique for different reasons. First of all, publications solely devoted to NGO participation before the European Court of Human Rights are dated (written before 2000). Secondly, they do not examine the Court's case law in its entirety but rather qualitatively examine several cases where NGOs have participated. Neither do they analyze the development of NGO participation over time nor has the Court's case law never been examined in its entirety from this perspective. And lastly, they do not examine NGO mobilization from the point of contributing to the literature on transnational advocacy movements and legal mobilization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars overwhelmingly agree that race is a sociopolitical construct, yet much of the discourse surrounding race and subsequent racial categorizations continue to treat it as biological in nature. In the United States, a significant percentage of individuals born after the Supreme Court's 1968 Loving v. Virginia decision identified themselves on the 2000 Census as more than one race. This change is the product of the conservative Multiracial Category Movement "MCM", which seeks to create a separate multiracial classification on all private and public data collection forms and promote a color-blind agenda. This opened a Pandora's Box regarding self-identity and social location within the American racial hierarchy, particularly for those Black-other mixed race individuals who self-identify as multiracial. The choice to self-identify as multiracial has raised the question of whether or not they should be considered Black for legal and political purposes. Historically, and under the current census definition, these individuals would be classified as singularly Black. In an effort to explore the globalization of race and racial hierarchies with a focus on the African Diaspora, this paper will examine the construction of Black racial categorizations for those of African descent not only in the United States, but also in three other countries: Brazil, France and South Africa. These countries were chosen because they are located on separate continents and both hemispheres, as well as their varied systems of racial categorization. Specifically, this paper will focus on those individuals that push the margins of racial categorization: Black-other mixed race individuals. Through an examination of the legal definitions of Blackness in Brazil, France, South Africa and the United States it will analyze how these definitions play into the paradigms of color and race discrimination and how each country's systems of racial categorization are, ultimately, used to subjugate people of African descent. This will include an examination of the relationship between phenotype on the construction of an individual's race and how the categorizations in these countries impact intra- and inter-group solidarity, coalition building, and litigation for social justice causes. Finally, it will conclude with an argument for the concept of "political blackness", which highlights the need for a reexamination of racial categorizations in each of these countries in order to reflect the sociopolitical reality of race widely accepted amongst scholars, rather than debunked biological notions of race. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mental Health Courts and General Systems Theory It has been argued that the criminal justice system can be conceptualized as a system that processes cases, rather than people, with the goal of processing cases so that they remain closed. This view of the criminal justice system can also be applied to mental health courts which are a form of therapeutic courts designed to provide treatment to mentally ill clients, who have been diverted into the court from the regular criminal justice system. Using general systems theory, this paper will argue that mental health courts that are based on therapeutic jurisprudence can theoretically increase the rate of successfully processed cases in the criminal justice system. This can be accomplished by extending the time that a case remains within the criminal justice system while providing treatment. Mental health courts may also increase the successful processing of cases by expanding the physical boundaries of the criminal justice system, alleviating the overcrowding of the system and the pressure to dismiss cases before processing is complete. While this paper is based on the operation of mental health courts these findings may be generalizable to other problem solving courts also based on the concept of therapeutic jurisprudence. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I continue my exploration of the concept of "authorship" in copyright law, in the specific context of adaptations and derivative works. In an earlier paper, I had noted the vague yet lasting presence of the "author figure" in copyright law, and how the lack of clear distinction between this and the better-developed concept of "originality" can create problems in the case of user-generated content (UGC). The particular problem posed by UGC can be seen in the legal treatment of derivative works (or adaptations). The differences between a transformative fair use (which can excuse infringement) and a transformative derivative work (which may not) have yet to be clarified in US case law. In both cases, the defendant-user can be said to have exercised some form of "authorship" in either transforming an existing work into something different, or into a new work altogether. Unfortunately, these concepts are even less developed in other common law countries. This paper will endeavor to explore the implications of drawing the line between transformative fair uses and derivative works through reworking the concept of "authorship", such that certain forms of socially-valuable but derivative UGC can elude an allegation of infringement by the copyright owner of the initial underlying work. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

1215 Virginia's federal judiciary has a rich history of participation in the Commonwealth's constitutional conventions. Philip Pendleton Barbour was appointed to the United States District bench only months after presiding over the Convention of 1829-1830; a century later, Albert V. Bryan, Jr. served as second vice president of the 1956 convention 15 years before he joined the same court. John Young Mason, a future judge of the same Eastern District of Virginia, served in two Virginia Constitutional Conventions, chairing the 1850 iteration.But only Mason's successor John Curtiss Underwood, who chaired the Reconstruction convention as a sitting federal judge, gave his name to the document produced. The "Underwood Constitution," like the postwar revisions required of other southern states, enfranchised African Americans and limited the rights of former Confederates. This paper examines the instant and lasting notoriety of the "Underwood Constitution"â??also called the "Negro Constitution" and a variety of less decorous synonymsâ??and assesses its relevance for the work of the federal courts in Virginia in the years since.The Underwood Constitution inextricably linked a white official in the Commonwealth with African American rights. It also contributed to his thoroughgoing ignominy among white Virginians. This paper will trace those conflicting effects in the century that followed, especially noting their resonance in the Eastern District's desegregation decisions of the 1950s and 1960s. Among the questions to explore is whether persistent calls to "nullify" the Underwood Constitution laid groundwork for the revival of that response to the federal courts during Virginia's Massive Resistance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will explore the transformations in the role and legitimacy of the Colombian administrative state in the context of global economic pressures, internal development challenges, and persistent inequality of distribution in wealth and power.Conventional descriptions of the structure and evolution of the Colombian administrative state during the second half of the 20th century have generally focused on its French pedigree. Colombian administrative lawyers tend to refer back to French public law theories of solidarism (Duguit), and institutionalism (Hauriou) to describe the working of the administrative state, or to resolve conflicts and ambiguities in administrative law doctrines. In this paper, I would like to challenge this conventional view by emphasizing the centrality of modernization and economic development to the evolution of the administrative state. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes a critical look at proposals to remedy the tort system by using health courts. The paper analyzes whether health courts will remedy or rather exacerbate challenges in the current health care system. In particular, the paper is concerned with patient pursuit of justice and the availability of juries to hear claims. The presentation will take a particular focus on how health courts used to address crises after disaster. It argues that such attempts will be less equitable and frustrate social justice norms. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the legal consciousness literature and considers it in the context of Russia's exceptional transition in penal punishment, which has taken place over the last 16 years. Russian imprisonment remains a much neglected area of socio-legal scholarship and it is even more surprising to note that the embedding of a rights consciousness in prisons, whereby prisoners and penal actors have become knowing, active and vocal agents of human rights in the penal system, has not been matched by debate and discussion about the doctrinal, legal and socio-cultural mechanisms through which this flows. Moreover, how a rights discourse can co-exist with the closing down of both human rights activism and penal reform under the current President Vladimir Putin requires urgent examination. In this paper, I draw on over ten years of empirical research in some 18 penal colonies across Russia and I examine data from interviews and observations, and from analytical work of both English and Russian language documentation. I offer a limited consideration of the legal consciousness terrain in the Russian penal context, but I aim to raise some questions of how rights consciousness emerges in penal settings. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate over whether black Americans should be awarded reparations has generated a series of challenges not only to legal theory and doctrine, but to our moral and philosophical commitments as well. This paper will explore how the search for a juridical grounding for reparations has invited a reevaluation of the efficacy of the first two Reconstruction amendments, the thirteenth to abolish slavery and the fourteenth to guarantee equal protection and due process; how the search for a jurisprudential grounding has generated arguments about whether reparations is best understood as corrective or distributive justice (or, as I will argue, as transitional justice); and, finally, how the search for a political theoretical underpinning has suggested the limits of conventional liberal theory to achieve racial justice, inviting consideration of alternative political philosophies, such as republicanism. In the end, the paper argues that the search for a juridical and jurisprudential grounding for black reparations not only sheds light on the viability of reparations itself, but also poses significant challenge to several sacred cows within constitutional, jurisprudential, and political theory. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National courts, particularly constitutional courts, can be seen as projecting an image of the national identity. As constitutional court judges make decisions that reflect and interpret the constitutional values of the country they reflect and interpret the national identity as well because the constitution is the statement of the country's political identity. Court decisions and judicial writings provide insight into the judges' understanding of the national identity and values. By influencing the adjudication of civil, political, and social rights embedded in the constitution courts influence the identity of labor and migrants. Does the Romanian Constitutional Court project a national or European identity prior to European Union accession? Is the Romanian Constitutional Court helping to create an unwritten European constitution by adjudicating European constitutional values? By analyzing constitutional court decisions, other judicial writings, and the influence of the European Court of Justice this paper will assess the extent of European identity projected by the Romanian Constitutional Court before and after accession to the European Union. By viewing the actions of the constitutional court in the broader context of both the political development of the constitutional court and the European Union accession process this paper will argue that the constitutional court developed a strong European identity which impacted migration and labor through its decisions even before formal EU accession. The findings will increase understandings of the Romanian national, legal, and constitutional identity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most striking developments in the business world over the last decade has been the emergence of a coherent and energetic "corporate social responsibility" movement. "CSR," as it is universally referred to, has as its theoretical base the notion that the responsibility of a corporation extends beyond the traditional Anglo-American objective of providing financial returns to its shareholders. Instead, CSR proponents have argued, the legitimate concerns of a corporation should include such broader objectives as sustainable growth, equitable employment practices, and long-term social and environmental well-being. Corporate managers, it is argued, should consider not only their shareholders in making their decisions but also a variety of "stakeholder" constituencies, including employees, residents of communities affected by their activities, governments, and organizations advocating for various social and environmental interests,This paper considers the role of corporate lawyers in the promotion of CSR. The authors are engaged in a long-term ethnographic study of the CSR movement, which has included numerous interviews with lawyers who advise corporations and institutional investors. In the US, the consensus view among lawyers is that corporations should focus exclusively on providing financial value to shareholders, and that institutional investors (unless they hold themselves out as "socially resonsible") should focus exclusively on generating financial returns. Consequently, such lawyers see the promotion of CSR as a breach of their duty to clients. The view among lawyers in the UK is quite different, and CSR counseling is emerging as a legal speciality. The paper will consider both outlooks from multiple critical perspectives. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My paper will deal with the Palestinian Arab minority in Israel from the perspective of the Israeli citizenship law and how Israel defines itself as a State for all Jews. It will review the legal relationship that Israel has with the Jewish Diaspora in comparison to the legal association with the Palestinian Arab minority who are citizens of the State and are non Jewish. The paper will also discuss the consequence of religion in determining nationality in a State that defines itself as democratic. It will also discuss the effects of political history of the State of Israel with respect to the Palestinian minority through the analysis of the effects of the military regime on the status of the Palestinian minority. This history, where two legal systems, martial law and civil law, were applied concurrently race and religion were the determining factor for what system was implemented. The paper will then deal with two statuses of citizenship, one for Jews where religion, nationality and citizenship concur; and the other for non-Jews where nationality, religion, and citizenship deviate. In conclusion, the paper will deal with the exploitation of the citizenship law for political aims in order to change the State's demographic nature. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A politics of paper is becoming ever more visible with disputes over immigration and documentation. Paper would seem simply to document who is within and outside national boundaries. However, the politics of paper have extended to internal disputes over legitimate identity as well. The politics of paper assumes that it only demonstrates what is already true, and that it is only a technology of legibility by the state: every citizen has the necessary paperwork to document that s/he is, indeed, who s/he says she is. However, even those who are citizens have conflicting connections to paper's ability to fix identity. This paper is a preliminary meditation on a politics of paper, exploring it as a technology of legibility for the state, but one that calls into being a reality that is sometimes oppressive and in other circumstances is experienced as liberatory. It uses three illustrations, two from the United States and one from Europe and the United Kingdom. One concerns the distribution of aid after Hurricane Katrina, in which many people needed to go from living less documented to more documented lives after dislocation. Next, the United Kingdom has established a procedure for changing gender identity, in response to a political campaign that worked in part through litigation. Finally, one of the grounds for political struggle over rights and responsibilities for same sex couples in the United States concerns getting two parents of the same sex on a birth certificate. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Washington v. Glucksberg (1997), the Supreme Court rejected arguments to nationalize a right to physician-assisted suicide (PAS); Chief Justice Rehnquist opined that "[t]hroughout the Nation, Americans are engaged in an earnest and profound debate about the morality, legality, and practicality of physician-assisted suicide. Our holding permits this debate to continue, as it should in a democratic society." Following Glucksberg, the PAS debate intensified in a number of states as well as in Congress and the Executive branch. Wide-ranging debates notwithstanding, Oregon is the only state to date that has legalized PAS, accounting for the deaths of over 250 of its citizens since 1997. Alarmed by Oregon's law that turns physicians into "killers not healers," Congress debated legislation that would strip a physician of her license to prescribe drugs if it is determined that the prescription was not intended to reduce suffering but to hasten death. This paper examines the constitutional and legal questions underpinning the conflict over PAS between state and national governments in the United States, each laying claim over sovereign prerogative to decide this end-of-life issue. More specifically, this paper aims to describe, evaluate, and critique the statutory and constitutional strategies designed by the national government to impose its resolution of the policy questions attached to PAS on Oregon-or on any other state that might succeed in following Oregon's lead. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Title: The Limits of International LawMy paper would challenge the assumption prevalent in academia and the decisions of many western Supreme Courts that public international law sets a higher standard for human rights observance in Western democracies than do their own constitutions. That assumption is worth considering because it is driving the development of constitutional and international law jurisprudence and its implications have not been fully considered. My paper would consider the current debate about the proper role of foreign sources in constitutional law and suggest that there are good political and legal reasons to limit the role of international law in domestic adjudication.My paper would unpack the assumption and describe international relations and the process of international law creation in such a manner as to show the inevitability of public international law's failure to advance domestic human rights. It would analyze the impact of international legal arguments on constitutional adjudication and challenge the changing approaches to constitutional law and politics that increased receptivity to international law has spawned. It would argue that where such advances have occurred, they were the result of a phenomenon known as "transjudicialism" and not of the application of public international law. My paper would argue that the content of public international law is actually far narrower than contemporary scholars, counsel for NGO's and well meaning judges realize. As such, my paper would suggest that decision-making which appears to be informed by international law is actually based on a new brand of judicial activism, one that purports to be grounded in law and principle, but one that is actually grounded in a misconceived policy. That unwritten policy is to extend the influence of courts globally through an evolving judicial understanding of what the universality of human rights would require rather than what the content of public international law demands. Submitted by: Cassandra KirewskiePh.D. CandidateOsgoode Hall Law Schoolckirewskie@simpatico.ca(905) 825-1860 ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The general belief is that social norms influence behavior and that the willingness to obey legal norms is to a large degree influenced by beliefs and convictions concerning the behavior of others. Yet the nature of the influence of social norms on legal norms depends to a large extent on contingencies which have not been fully investigated. This paper explores two parameters which influence the degree to which social norms influence the willingness of individuals to conform to the law: the type of social norms (positive and negative social norms) and the type of legal norms (rules or standards). The paper employs experimental techniques to explore the effects of these two parameters on legal compliance and the hypothesized interaction that exists between these two factors. The findings indicate that these parameters are important and may affect the degree to which social norms influence the willingness of individuals to conform to the law. While our findings indicate that in the absence of information concerning social norms, rules and standards have similar effects on deterrence, it also indicates that rules and standards have differential effects on deterrence when they interact with social norms. Furthermore our findings also indicate that negative social norms, namely social norms of disobedience have greater effects on the willingness to obey legal norms than social norms of obedience. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political science has told us a great deal about why authoritarian regimes come to power in the Middle East and throughout the world. The discipline, however, has largely overlooked the relationship between these regimes and their citizens, especially when these regimes become entrenched over long periods of time. My dissertation focuses on how the lively current debate over citizenship rights in Egypt sheds new light on the relationship between authoritarian regimes and their citizens. The central question of my research is: Why has the issue of citizenship become the subject of such recent intense public discourse in Egypt? My dissertation focuses on three issues surrounding the question of citizenship in Egypt: 1) Increased activism on the issue among elites; 2) The changing discourse in the general public surrounding the subject of citizenship; and 3) The involvement of the international community, especially NGOs, in the recent movement for increased citizenship rights in Egypt. Part of the answer to my research question will include a discussion of the fact that disparate activist groups from different parts of the political spectrum in Egypt all chose to talk about the same issue - citizenship. In my dissertation, I will argue that it is significant that although these groups were all focused on different problems and inequalities in Egyptian society, they all chose a singular discourse of citizenship. A description of the involvement of international NGOs in local Egyptian politics provides one part of the answer as to why citizenship became Egypt's latest buzzword. In my dissertation, I discuss how an international influx of both ideas and funding encouraged women's rights groups and human rights advocates to focus on citizenship rights. In my dissertation, I argue that both elite political activists and the general Egyptian public were attracted to Western-based discourse surrounding citizenship rights because it was a sanctioned expression of opposition to the regime. The discourse about citizenship rights provides elites and the general public with a safe way to call for increased rights without questioning the political status quo. In this particular paper for the LSA annual meeting, I will focus on Egypt's public and how and why the discourse about citizenship rights that began with political elites resonated with them. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indian race - and consequently, anti-Indian racism - is invisible in our contemporary national consciousness. The invisibility is a product of a very specific American story about Indians disappearing via extinction, genocide, removal, or absorption, a story that has been shaped and reinforced by the legal rules constructing Indian racial identity. For example, unlike the rule of hypodescent, which ensured an ever-increasing black population and facilitated the exploitation of black labor, Indian race has been defined according to minimum blood quantum and cultural performance requirements, which ensured that Indians would eventually die out and facilitated the appropriation of Indian land. Despite this invisibility, Indian race is made salient today in specific local contexts, such as reservation border communities and cities with significant Indian populations, where white-Indian is the defining racial hierarchy. In these communities, Indian people regularly experience race-based stereotyping, discrimination, hate crimes, police profiling, and disproportionate incarceration. These experiences, however, remain largely unseen and certainly under-theorized. This invisibility is amplified by the doctrinal and theoretical separation between Indian law and civil rights law. These two areas of law are taught separately in law schools and treated separately by courts. At times, they are explicitly juxtaposed against each other, such that political is understood to mean non-racial. Born out of a need to protect Indian programs from encroachment by colorblind, anti-affirmative action jurisprudence, the "political, not racial" rule, first enunciated in Morton v. Mancari, has developed into a reflexive disavowal of race on the part of Indian advocates -- a move which reinforces a reductionist conception of race, forces Indian people to choose between racial and political identities, and weakens the struggle against anti-Indian racism in particular and racism generally. At the same time, discussions of race and racism often fail to fully account for the political dimension of Indian identity and the importance of tribal sovereignty to Indian people. Federal Indian law, which recognizes and protects tribal political rights, must not be treated as separate and antithetical to civil rights. Instead, race theorists must understand how Indian law protects Indians from the effects of racism. Incorporation for Indian people has historically meant invisibility and extinction, and the political rights of tribal governments have enabled Indian people to preserve cultural distinctiveness. While race theorists have questioned the value and voluntariness of assimilation, integration, and incorporation for other minority groups, Indian law is the only area of legal doctrine that explicitly disavows assimilation and facilitates separateness for people of color in the United State, and it is thus an important part of any discussion about race in this country. Most Indian people are simultaneously members of sovereign nations and racialized as subordinate within the domestic racial order, and theory should reflect this. This paper thus argues against the disaggregation of Indian race and tribal political rights and attempts to formulate an analysis that links the two. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this research project I set out to fundamentally shift the understandings of a 'human right to water' that, over the past two decades, have come to dominate understandings of conflicts over access to water in many locations around the world. Focusing on the specific context of disputed water rights casting villagers against the Coca-Cola Company in Kerala, India, this paper explores the multiple conceptions of 'rights'. I argue that a more meaningful engagement with issues of autonomy and freedom is urgently needed in debates over what are generally grouped as 'social, economic and cultural' human rights. The struggle in a small village in India was spearheaded by adivasis (also referred to as the 'scheduled tribes' in India). It began with allegations of excessive extraction of ground water by the Coca-Cola Company and of pollution of existing wells - the traditional sources of drinking water in the area, and is now in its seventh year. This dispute raises several significant issues of competing rights and local self-governance that are also currently pending adjudication before the Supreme Court of India. Ethnographic research in adivasi hamlets around the Coca-Cola Company's plant in Kerala forms the primary basis of this work, informing its theoretical understandings profoundly. Beginning with adivasi peoples' conceptions of justice, and their everyday engagement with formal state law, I draw upon intersecting debates in scholarly literature relating to the alienation of tribal lands, pursuit of 'development' in a post-colonial state, and economic rationality to argue that such struggles are not just about conflicts for limited natural resources, but more essentially about radically differing worldviews, social organization, and approaches to resource management. Any serious attempt to understand struggles as these therefore requires a focus that takes seriously the understandings and histories of adivasi peoples and their counterparts around the globe. This, in turn, requires a fundamental rethinking of historical assumptions, contemporary lived experience, and alternative possibilities of governance and pluralism in the future. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we would like to discuss the law applied to the mentally ill offenders. Nowadays we are facing a policy that treats these patients as things, and not human beings who deserve our attention and respect, the same way that any other person does. One part of our field research takes place in Brazil and the biggest problem we have to deal with is the treatment given to the patients. As usually, the reason for the meager living conditions is the lack of money invested in their cause in order to improve the establishment, introduce more activities and so on. Another situation, which is the consequence of this first circumstance, is the deinstitutionalization drama, and has the same cause of problems: the lack of money spent in the health department. Despite having an interesting post-institutionalization program, without the resources nothing is done because of the complications of the patients' transfers and the funding spent of their health when they are at the institution and after they leave. A great way to reintroduce the patients back to the «outside life» is the day-care centers, where they have medical, psychological and social care, group activities, their homes and also a few job opportunities, according to every one's capacity of working. But in order to make this work we fall into that loop, in which funding is the first tool we need to use so we can build a better mental health system. An important change in the legislation would be to reassign the mental health program to the health department and not the sole justice department anymore, since the justice department has been dealing with the problem not quite properly, meaning that they see the mentally ill offenders the same way they see any other offender, put out in common jail. Those patients need special attention, care and treatment, which call out for financial support in order to satisfy their needs, improving their quality of life, physical and mental health. This change of policy would benefit the patients because, as if it was nothing, doctors - who have their well-being in great consideration - would be able to make decisions concerning the subsidy more properly, once they are working directly with the needs and could make a more reasonable choice on how and when to spend it. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mediation has been used to address a range of social and interpersonal conflicts, but it is currently underutilized in the handling of citizen complaints of policing. The literature recognizes that oversight systems should contain a mixture of adversarial and non‐adversarial procedures as well as a variety of dispositional outcomes but the institutional reality is quite different. The fact is that the criminal trial model with its punitive, disciplinary approach dominates the citizen review landscape. The model is often perceived as costly, unsatisfactory to the parties, and ineffective. The literature also shows that empirical tests of the effectiveness of mediation have been very limited and that this is one of the obstacles for the growth of mediation programs. This paper addresses these two key topics and presents the results of recent quantitative studies on the effectiveness of mediation. These studies show that mediation has effective deterrence benefits and provides greater satisfaction to the parties in conflict, both with the handling process and the final resolution of the complaint. I argue that the underutilization of mediation in the civilian oversight context is the result of insufficient empirical research, deficient program evaluation and, more importantly, a profound misunderstanding about the goals, interests, and sense of justice of both civilians and officers. A more careful reading of the research currently available or in‐progress and proper analysis of programs will show that the ultimate goals of deterring police misconduct and building public trust on police work could be better attained through the implementation of innovative alternative dispute resolution approaches. The quantitative part of the study uses survey analysis as well as survival and probability hazards analyses to measure the estimated impact of participating in the mediation process in an officer's complaint history. Findings show that the likelihood of complaint re‐incidence is greater among officers who rejected to participate in mediation than among officers who participated in the mediation process. It also shows that, although recidivist patterns are similar among those officers who receive a new complaint, there is a significant difference among minority and white officers who accepted mediation. The results suggest that the implementation of mediation programs produce more significant changes in the behavior of individual officers than disciplinary proceedings. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women are seen as merely the means by which society reproduces itself, rather than as individual human beings, persons, who are entitled to the various rights that every single human being is entitled to. They are more often than not mal nourished, dying in childbirth, and vulnerable to any epidemic or disease that sweeps through their village or town. "The National Health Policy adopted in 2002, and the Tenth Five Year Plan create the primary framework for the delivery of public health services in India and both aim to raise the health status of the population through ensuring equal access to primary health care for all citizens." The National Health Policy recognizes "that women and other 'underprivileged' groups disproportionately experience poor access to health services and it aims to facilitate such groups' access to basic health care services. Under the policy, the central government is to give top funding priority to programs targeting women's health"The objective of this paper to examine the status of women's health concerns till now and examine the extent to which state policies in India have addressed the issues and if not, why not. The hypothesis is that so long as fundamental changes in the social structures that reinforce the stereotypes of the inferiority and lack of value of women's lives is not made no state policy or law can ensure good health for women and guarantee them their right to life under national and international law. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why has the murder of an adulterous wife been treated more leniently than other homicides in virtually every legal system in the world? Legal traditions, legal systems, and laws themselves vary from country to country, but similarities in dealing with this kind of homicide are striking and demand a comparative examination. Studies of American and other Western law have focused on the notion of "crimes of passion," while law in the Arab and Muslim world has been examined with regard to the practice of "honor killings." Honor and passion are distinct concepts in law, and neither is necessarily a gendered concept. However, the operation of both concepts tends to privilege a particular set of homicides - those committed against sexually transgressing women - by allowing the killers to receive reduced penalties or to avoid prosecution altogether. This paper examines existing laws and legal practices in the West and in the Arab world and compares available data on rates of femicide, prosecutorial outcomes, and the social understanding of and tolerance for such crimes. The implications of this legal inequality extend even beyond the law. Social orders that tolerate the application of extra-legal force by privileged members of society to the detriment of subordinate groups and individuals are compromising a principle of justice that is essential to democracy. Following Ingelhart's and Norris's findings on attitudes toward gender equality, I will seek to link the prevalence of the gender-inegalitarian legal practices described above to existing attitudinal research about support for democracy and its components. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two distinct but related themes pervade discussions on globalization, and the restructuring of the State. There is on the one hand the nationalist anxiety about the erosion of the national space to pursue social policies. On the other hand there is the cosmopolitan excitement about new governance, soft regulation and the promise of democratic experimentalism. This paper attempts to rationally vindicate nationalist anxiety through a concrete, historical/structural analysis of the transformations in the post-colonial State and its sovereign power.I focus on role of the state in the development process. I will make three arguments. First, nationalist anxiety fails to capture the specificities of the post-colonial development state. Second, the experience of states to go beyond "chastened neo-liberalism" no longer fits any one development model. Ruling elites and policy makers eclectically combine elements from competing development models. Their eclecticism is the effect of disenchantment with the policy determinism within the different development models. Third, in this disenchanted, post-development policy landscape, critical evaluation of the real effects of development policies, and the relative success and failure of any particular country's experience, can be best conducted holistically focusing on how these policies work with and against each other. This can be best done from the perspective of the state and its normative order as a whole.I will develop these arguments by exploring, in the context of Egypt, the structural relations linking regulation of foreign investment, "Export Processing Zones," transformations in state bureaucracy, informality, and the state of emergency. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will examine the role that the United States Supreme Court has played in obstructing the attempts by democratic institutions to construct a racially integrated society. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at an unintended consequence of policies intended to promote public participation in decision-making: the increasing prevalence of deliberative products marketed as solutions to these mandates. As stakeholder involvement has gone mainstream, public administrators have turned to professional consultants who offer expertise in collaborative process, consensus-building, and public deliberation. These public participation professionals do not simply provide advisory services, however. Increasingly, high-profile firms and foundations in this emerging field promote their own proprietary participatory products, such as "ChoiceDialogues™," "Fast Forum Opinionnaires®," "Citizen Choicework" and "Deliberative Polling®"-- all designed to deliver maximal participation of diverse stakeholders, minimal contention within communities, and popular support for decisions made. From "meeting in a box" dialogue kits to multi-million dollar programs, the ramifications of privatizing deliberation have not been explored by scholars of democracy, who tend to see these innovations in local governance solely as progressive interventions. Through analysis of trade documents, participant observation at trainings and conferences, and a case study of an "exemplary" national-scale participatory process, I explore how understanding deliberative processes as sites of production and consumption rather than as sites of social activism can lead to a richer understanding of the agents and logics sustaining the new deliberation industry. Finally, I propose that celebrants of governance reform attend to how public deliberation has been commodified in order that a new expert class can take advantage of a burgeoning marketplace—one predicated on soliciting the volunteer service, time, and knowledge of everyday citizens. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is drawn from an ethnographic dissertation, "Shadows of the State, Subalterns of the State: Alternating Legitimacies and Contested Authorities of the Police in Contemporary India." It considers law enforcement personnel in Uttar Pradesh as shadows cast, i.e., an animate representation of the State that would seem to be thrown off by the light of the Law, and yet in fact reveals the contestable authority of State practitioners, and of the State itself as an idea. Police in India are often spoken of as being "shadows" of the legitimate authority of the government, who at times may "run amok" and self-aggrandizingly feel that they outsize the "real" powers, i.e., elected executive and legislative officials. This evinces a kind of insubstantiality of the police, which, I argue, is different from the "force of law" as residing in the "invisible everywhere" spectrality of police, as argued by Walter Benjamin ("Critique of Violence" 1978[1922]) and Jacques Derrida ("Force of Law," 2002[1991]). The police are not the genuine stuff of the State that "make law" through their practice, but rather a visible automaton presence, the mere appearance, or refraction, of so-called real authority. This thesis will be illustrated, and in keeping with the LSA/CLSA/ACDS theme, "Les Territoires du Droit: Placing Law," through a discussion of what is called "the transfer industry." This is a local category in India that indexes the constant and hyper-politicized—though it is officially justified as "routine bureaucratic procedure"—shuffling of officers and personnel to different posts and locations, rendering these subjects placeless and replaceable. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper inquires whether it is possible to export liberal democracy to countries which do not share a tradition based on the individual. Although usually considered as part of the Western democratic tradition, a socio-legal analysis of the Greek Constitution will reveal how the French model which has inspired it has been altered to the detriment of fundamental liberties and rights. A mistaken conception of the relationship between State and Church appears as crucial in the politicization and secularization of the Church and in the creation of a religious, "believing State". The lack of separation between Church and State shows the Greek incongruence of two co-existing drives: a) westernization; b) loyalty to the Orthodox tradition of pre-modern, community- and family-oriented values. In conclusion the displacement of Western constitutional models has resulted in a clash between the liberal concept of individual and the Christian concept of persona. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The very same technologies that enable ordinary citizens to become creators as well as consumers of media content are fostering a quiet revolution in another area—namely, human rights advocacy. On websites such as 24 Hours for Darfur and The Hub, citizens are engaging in work formerly done primarily by human rights professionals. Moreover, the kind of advocacy in which they are engaging is—like the content produced on Flickr, Craigslist, and YouTube—fundamentally social, multidirectional, and participatory. The social nature of these interactions offers the potential to transform human rights advocacy. Citizens are not only becoming involved in discussions previously dominated by political elites, but also engaging directly with those who are affected by the policies in question.In attempting to democratize political activism on human rights issues, these websites have necessarily taken on tasks previously fulfilled by human rights professionals. This paper will evaluate three central challenges associated with this shift. First, although citizen activism has great potential to mobilize constituencies, can it also transform the energy generated by those constituencies into political power? That is, how can a model of citizen activism retain the benefits of peer-produced reporting while providing enough organization to be politically effective? Second, can amateur human rights reporting provide enough indicia of reliability without the strict methodological control on which human rights organizations have historically based their legitimacy? Third, what functions will continue to be filled most effectively by human rights professionals and how can professionals and amateurs collaborate most effectively? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of Islam in the legal system of Pakistan has to some extent mirrored its role in politics. However, the close relationship of Islam, law and politics is less obvious since 1999, when Musharraf staged a coup d'etat and toppled the government of Nawaz Sherif. Having used the votes of Islamic parties in order to legitimise in the early years of his regime, Musharraf's relationship with Islamic movements has deteriorated markedly in recent years. Tribal insurgencies in the name of Islam, provincial governments controlled by Islamic parties and violent agitation and terrorisms by jihadi movements reaching into the heart of Pakistan's centre of power now constitute a formidable and serious threat to Musharraf's rule.This paper will examine the role of Islam in Musharraf's Pakistan, charting and analysing its influence as a source of law and a basis of judicial reasoning from 1999 until the present, paying particular attention to two areas of law: firstly, judicial recourses to Islam in the area of constitutional law, and secondly, the development of Islamic criminal law. It argues, by way of a preliminary thesis, that Islam has been gradually retreating from the fora of the official legal system. In the de-Islamisation of the legal system, the interests of the liberal sections of civil society and those of Musharraf's regime have converged, leaving Islamic political forces at the margins of the legal system and the corridors of power. However, serious doubts must remain over the legitimacy and also sustainability of this process of de-Islamisation. Liberal critics of the Islamisation project have stressed its undemocratic origins, and it will be argued that the current de-Islamisation project shares the same tarnish, and might be challenged on that ground, albeit this time not by the liberals but Islamists. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of migration exists worldwide and has been in existence since time immemorial. Yet it now occurs more prominently not only within a state but also internationally. There has been a strong urge on the part of the rural population to leave their home to find employments and opportunities elsewhere in space and time within and beyond national boundaries attempting to bring a change in their lifestyles both economically and socially. On the one hand, the development of different components of our local government including rural infrastructure and economy did not keep pace with the development emphasis on the urban areas, while on the other, globalization, recent advances in communication, both physical and electronic, as well as ushering in of modern science and technology is resulting in vital resettlement of people around the world with consequent legal complexities which is leading to significant displacement of population segments, major dislocation of families and consequent desolation and painful reshaping of the societal values as a consequence of our existing laws lacking the ability to cope with these "new conditions" with a "human face" in sustaining social relationships in the context of modern-world space and time.The paper aims at analyzing this complex social context resulting from this new global perspective with a typical example of movement of poverty stricken work forces across Bangladesh's rural, urban as well as global neighborhoods of the industrialized countries as manifested through the inadequate legal framework prevailing in the existing power structure around the globe. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our understanding of whether there are implied limits to constitutional change is co-extensive with our understanding of what all changes are retrogressive to the constitutional spirit. This understanding has certainly evolved in the last sixty years of Indian constitutionalism and will continue to evolve as we work the constitution in the future. Borrowing from Professor Tribe, I impress that the underlying ideals, socio-political or legal, in the Indian constitution would reflect the essential aspects of Indian constitutionalism which cannot be bartered away in form of an amendment. Drawing upon my argument, I ask - Do the amending clauses under the national constitutions permit a more or less complete reversal of respective constitutional traditions and principles? Or are there "constitutional essentials" and therefore substantive limits imposed on valid constitutional amendments? I argue that there are limits to what can qualify as a valid amendment to the Constitution. This is so even when the amending procedures provided for in the constitution are fully and correctly followed. Even as we contest the exactness of these limits, the fact that there are limits on the power should lead us to a consensual ground for furthering our discussion. However, a textual understanding of the amending clause in the Indian constitution, as it stands today, would bring us to a different conclusion. The wordings of Article 368 would have us believe that the constitution never ever envisaged any limits on the amending power of the parliament. But the reminder that Art 368, as it stands today, in itself, has been at the receiving end of this power and is quite different from it used to be before the 24th Amendment only compounds our confusion. Of all things it does, it does not assign a specifically limited overtone to the amending clause but certainly leaves us in a constitutional quandary of immense proportions. One could certainly argue that Article 368 therefore permits any amendment to the Constitution that is secured by means of following the procedures under Article 368. To appreciate my musings, one would have to consider the kind of hypothetical amendments that raised this issue for the German scholar, Dieter Conrad. At a time when the settled law on the constitutional amendments suggested plenary powers for the parliament, Conrad discussed the Theory of Implied Limitations. The reasons for Conrad's invocation would be discussed in the paper. Basing upon Conrad, I impress that upon our continued dereliction of the necessary implications of amending clauses in our Constitution, we might run the risk of trivializing these distinct possibilities, which have, upon their materialization, critical consequences for the constitutional life in India. As we gather today, there are a host of questions surrounding the legality and legitimacy of constitutional transition, answers to which I hope, may be partly discussed through this symposium. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I am interested in examining women judges' commentary on public policy matters through speeches, articles, and dissenting opinions (i.e., by means other than majority opinions). Here, I refer not simply to dissent-writing, but, even more importantly, dissent-reading, as seen in the U.S. Supreme Court's last Term with Justice Ruth Ginsburg's reading aloud from her dissents in the partial birth abortion and pay disparity cases.I have previously written on the history of women's judicial appointments and why it matters, from a feminist theoretical perspective, that women have served and continue to serve as judges. In this paper, I take a new and different look at the significance of women's judicial service by examining the public policy commentary of certain state and federal judges. My central inquiry is for whether these forms of commentary can be understood as modes of judicial leadership, and, if so, how effective they have been. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After sworn in as the president, Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian championed the idea of forging a partnership with indigenous groups on the island, hoping that the government and the aboriginal population would go hand in hand and contribute to the sustainable development of Taiwan. This new governmental position toward indigenous peoples also leaded many legal reform policies and acts, including the Indigenous Basic Law which became effective on February 5 2005. This paper discusses key debates and issues of the Indigenous Basic Law, and some cases on how indigenous peoples negotiated and utilized the Basic Law for their rights and legal protection. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After Hong Kong returns to China in 1997, the Basic Law, as Hong Kong mini-constitution, provides a set of new constitutional frameworks for this territory. The 10 years' constitutional practice witnesses Hong Kong people's increasing demand for democratization—universal suffrage, which is definitely stipulated in the Basic Law. The crux of realizing universal suffrage lies in the paradox between current institutional designs and local political development. Current partial institutions circumscribe the further development of local politics, while a stunted local politics makes it more difficult to amend current institutions. This crux leads to three problematics of realizing universal suffrage, that is, Beijing's initiative and final say on this issue, the "executive-led" political structure, and Functional Constituencies system in the legislature. These institutions make it very difficult that Hong Kong transforms from a semi-democratic polity into a democratic one. However, universal suffrage is definitely not an impossible mission. It is argued in this paper that to escape from the impasse of constitutional development, all actors in the political arena of must properly deal with two kinds of relationships—vertical (the central-local relationship) and horizontal (dynamics among various local political forces). I shall point out that Beijing, as a sovereignty state, mainly emphasize on the political aspect of democratization, while the vested interests mainly stress on the economic aspect of universal suffrage. And then I shall suggest there is a possible scheme to satisfy both Beijing and the vested interests under the context of the Basic Law. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the spreading of legal rules through international agreements on environment subjects as instrument of globalization. The ecosystems of natural environment, in nationals territories and international areas, depends on each other. This phenomenon turn them natural subject of international agreements, wich are intregrated to the nacional law systems, giving them greater similarity. A true globalization of legal rules. Sometimes the interests of hemisphere north developed contries are in collision with the hemisphere south countries interests wich owns the major part of biodiversity of Earth and great part of its natural resources. Its important, in this way, that hemisphere south not developed coutries organize themselves together to a fairy negociation in the international system of coutries. In another side the globalization of legal rules can results in a greater environmental conservation of whole planet, what is a common interest of all coutries sociaties and its populations, doesn't matter wich hemisphere, north or south, these societies belongs. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As has been widely recognised and commented upon, border controls across Europe and America have been strenuously tightened since September 11, 2001. In fact, of course, the movement of certain non-citizens in and around most western, industrialised countries had been restricted for some time predating the advent of the 'war on terror'. In this paper I will explore the particular use being made in Britain of immigration detention as a means of securing the border and the implications of the reliance on criminal justice discourses in the development of immigration and asylum policies. Laying out the practical and conceptual interdependence of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) and the HM Prison Service, I shall explore the implications of the securitization of population control. Issues that I shall deal with include: how policy changes and discourses on citizenship and belonging have symbolically revitalized the prison and why the adoption of detention as means of dealing with asylum seekers and some immigrants deepens popular punitive sentiment towards foreigners. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a 'discoursal production' approach to the study of new modes of governance in the construction of Social Europe. These new modes of governance are a broad phenomenon that are adopted and refined on various scales by advanced liberal societies, as well as the EU. The 'discoursal production' approach overcomes the shortcomings of current studies that reproduce a division between the production of ideas, arguments, statements, etc., and organizational practices, which articulate, draft, communicate, and implement these ideational elements. A consistent bottom-up inquiry into the production of social policies becomes possible with this approach. One conspicuous aspect of the formation of the EU is the immense production of texts and the accompanying forms of societal arrangements that coordinate and articulate text production processes in the service of the multi-level and multi-lateral governance of the EU. The EU is in the process of founding its governing practices on large-scale production of social meanings, whose bearers are texts, whose production process is distinct form document production process. In the EU, the shift from document to text production can be traced to the extension of the European Employment Strategy policy to newer policy domains, identified as 'soft law' governance. This process of legitimization of policy making is founded on text production. 'Soft law' governance has created contention between its proponents and those who defend classical regulatory mechanisms based on 'hard law'. Finally, it is argued that the legitimization of discoursal production of texts necessitates a new vision of European citizen practices. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The division of paid and unpaid work between men and women is still unbalanced in the Netherlands and this has an important impact on income and power relations. The employment rate of women is much lower than the employment rate of men. The number of working hours, the kind of work and their positions in the labour market diverge. The gendered division of labour gets even stronger when employees become parents. A great majority of women quits the job (11%) or reduces their working time after the birth of the first child (49%). Only 9% of the fathers quit or reduce the working time (SCP & CBS: Emancipatiemonitor 2006, p. 110).Policies of the Dutch government are aimed at achieving a better work-life balance. Part of this strategy is a better quality of non-standard work such as casual work, part-time work and fixed-term contracts. A right to adjust one's individual working time has been introduced by statutory legislation in 2000. Bills aimed at facilitating the conciliation of work and family life and on childcare have been adopted and been subject to evaluations. A recently adopted Act on lifecycle agreements should facilitate career interruptions. Currently more fundamental questions are being discussed, such as changes to the social security system. This paper will sketch these recent developments in the Netherlands, assessing them from a gender perspective. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of key legislative changes guaranteeing protection from religious discrimination have been introduced recently in the British context. These range from the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into the fabric of British laws by the Human Rights Act 1998, to the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003, a significant addition to British employment laws. Prior to these legislative changes, religious groups were forced to rely on the Race Relations Act 1976 in order to gain any form of protection from religious protection. However, unlike other religious groups, Muslims were notably excluded from such statutory protection. This paper offers an analysis of contemporary anti-religious discrimination laws and an appraisal of the form and level of protection such laws offer Muslim women in Britain. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Time, as a carrier of significance, may shape power relations which are present in every social interaction. Law can produce autonomous individuals as bearers of rights only when they can conceive themselves as authors of laws to which they are subject as private legal persons. Both statements are inconceivable unless participants in social interactions are coeval, that is, share the same Time. In this paper I discuss some changes in the way Time is conceived by homeless boys and girls, sometimes involved in drug-dealing economy, in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro. This new intersubjective Time, as well as the new politics of space that comes with it, produces a new frame of experience where the punishments that constitute the base of Brazilian mainstream legal system are emptied of meaning and force. The key concept for the analysis is "Vertiginous Time". It is a Time lived in a shorter time scale, which produces a life lives in a much faster pace. In this Time, one is born, grows up, constitutes a family, has children and dies in an average time-span of around twenty years. These boys and girls live in a time scale four times shorter than the one with which our legal system was conceived to deal. So, a Law system that relies on punishments seen as the "death" of the transgressor and the "birth" of the new individual does not match the temporality of those to whom it is asserted. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of every law is to serve as instrument for positive social change, control of human behaviour and regulation of human conduct. It is necessary therefore for every law to take into consideration the socio-cultural and religious background of the people for whom it is made. If the law keeps a blind eye to those considerations, it will not command respect and obedience; hence the desired social change and respectability will not be achieved. Using this parameter, the paper examines the controversy surrounding the promulgation of Nigeria's Child's Right Act which has been passed into law by the National Assembly and duly assented to by the President in July, 2003. The Act is about the most important document which has incorporated the rights of the Nigerian child. The document had sought to set out human rights of the Nigerian child using the standard obtainable at international level. Specifically, the Act derived its inspiration from the following instruments: United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child, 1959 and the Millennium Development Goals. The Child's Right Act has made adequate provision for promotion of the welfare of Nigerian Child and promotes unity amongst the various interest groups in Nigeria.. The Act no doubt contained adequate provisions that will give legal cover to the all round development and welfare of the Nigerian child regardless of the circumstances of his birth, religion, culture and ethnic background. However, in a multi- ethnic, multi-cultural, and multi-religious society as Nigeria, any form of legislation that affects the cultural life is bound to be greeted with opposition and protests. For instance, the Muslims were quick to point out certain gray areas that seem to be inconsistent with their cultural and religious values.Let's take a look at Section 10(1) and (2) under part two of this Act provides that "any discrimination against child on the grounds of sex … or deprivation by reason of circumstances of birth is prohibited". These provisions are in conflict with some rules under Islamic law and they have the capacity of negating those rules. The provision will render negative the Islamic rule which precludes an illegitimate child from inheriting the estate of his illegitimate father. Likewise, the section will invalidate the formula under Islamic law of inheritance where the male child gets twice the share of female child or a non-Muslim child cannot inherit his Muslim father and vice-versa. Under Chapter 4, Verse 11 of the Qur'an, a male child is entitled to twice the share of a female child in cases of inheritance. Likewise Shariah law prohibited right of inheritance between two persons of different religion. Not surprisingly, the Muslim- dominated Northern Nigeria mounted fierce opposition against the law since, according to them, a number of its provisions are violently opposed to their culture and religionKey Words: socio-cultural values, law, religion, shari,ahDr. Sulaiman Khalid is Associate Professor and Head, Department of Sociology, Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto- Nigeria ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The globalization, the "digital revolution" and the wide spread growth of the internet (cyberspace) are extremely modifying the way of world-wide social interactions and communications. As from a special sociological point of view societies are basically constructed by communications (Luhmann), we have been experiencing in the last two decades the genesis of a new global cyber-society. In this respect there is a growing demand for "transnational rules", which will adjust and regulate the interactions and the phenomena of delinquency and crime in cyberspace. These rules may come into conflict with existing cultural values and criminal norms in different countries and societies.In this regard there is a need first of all for substantial empirical and transcultural comparative research. The cyber-society needs more relevant socio-legal studies. The internet can be used as a subject matter as well as a methodical basis of this new kind of sociological research.By using the example of special issues in the context of constructing and defining global cybercrimes this paper will make a contribution to the necessary scientific socio-legal discussions, which have to be transnational as well as interdisciplinary. It is intended to present new empirical data from the author-s own and actual online-survey conducted among a representative population of more than 2000 internet-users in Germany compared with assimilable data from the US and Australia. The presentation of these results may encourage other interested socio-legal researchers in other countries to start a reproductive and forward-looking collaboration to analyze global aspects of cyber-crime via cyberspace. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a large amount of expert testimony by 'forensic linguistis" on both sides of the Atlantic by now. There also is a good amount of academic literature on this activity on each side - and on this growing and promising field of Applied Linguistics altogether. There are much less studies "across" countries and cultures and even less "comparative" studies in the real sense. Very few linguists are concerned it seems with exploring, analyzing and studying the situation "on the other side", which in fact would be a prerequisite to come up with some reliable "tertium comparationis". This paper tries to proceed in that direction by giving a descriptive account of the semantics what "giving expert testimony" actually in real life (in the particular culture) amounts to, which differences and "invariants" exists between the US American and the German "system". It seems that this is not just an asset in widening one's horizon but actually a necessary condition for making any comparative analysis of different systems and of fully evaluating "the same activities" here and there. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will first explore the role that information plays in investors' decisions to invest online, and identify its principle sources. It will then compare the findings of a small empirical study of experiences and attitudes of Australian online investors with both generic theory and empirical research in the wider field of information-seeking behaviour. It concludes with an analysis of the implications of these findings for the regulation of online investing. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports preliminary results from a study of a random sample of federal case filings in employment discrimination cases from 1990-2003, as well as qualitative interviews with parties and lawyers involved in a subsample of cases. Statistical analyses examine the nature and outcomes of cases. The qualitative data examine how parties and lawyers viewed the cases and their experience with the discrimination litigation system. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike criminal courts, juvenile courts were created with a focus on rehabilitation and protection from the stigma associated with criminal prosecution and criminal sanctions. The underlying goal of the juvenile justice system is not so much punishment as it is prevention of future criminality. Diversionary programs for juveniles accused of delinquent behavior arguably serve this goal better than detention, and the research has shown these programs to be highly effective. I seek to address how juveniles are selected for inclusion in these programs, with an eye towards whether racial bias plays a role in the ultimate decision of whether to provide a juvenile with the opportunity to circumvent the criminal justice system through diversion. By controlling for a multitude of variables, I intend to conduct a statistical analysis comparing the juvenile population prosecuted for particular offenses against their variable counterparts selected for diversion. If the findings support my hypothesis that racial bias plays a role in the discretionary selection of juveniles for diversion, I posit there is a need for further study by members of the Law and Society field in order to rectify this shortcoming in the juvenile justice system. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The system of civil servants has changed with the alteration of the approaches to public administration in Turkey. Globalization and information society require restructuring of public administration. Economic crises, the lack of competitiveness in traditional administration approach and non-effectiveness and non-efficiency of services are the other reasons behind the change. The European Union and the IMF, which provides loan to Turkey, are the other driving forces for the change in public administration approach. The changes in public administration approach have had impacts on personnel system as well. It is observed that the status relationship of civil servants tends to be replaced by a more flexible civil servants system. The number of civil servants is to reduce as the role of the State decreases. This is because the definition of essential and permanent public service is at the same time the definition of the role of the State. The personnel who are not in the scope of this definition are to be excluded from the security/guarantee provided by personnel status law. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]