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Revolutions in genetic technology have heralded the age of population-scale genomic metadata. This article analyzes the tensions and gaps between traditional conceptions of personhood and international legal responses to a person’s right over disembodied data obtained from his/her body. The opportunities for breakthroughs in healthcare by interrogating population-scale genomic databases are accompanied by questions about privacy, property, dignity, and the nature of information regulation in a global economy. This article highlights instances where law and policy makers have grappled with these challenges, and foreshadows some emerging future challenges. It also highlights differences between jurisdictions, and calls for greater global participation in the development of a coherent framework, rather than continued reliance on a small number of stakeholders, to develop that framework.

The shipping industry, although relatively carbon-efficient, is projected to produce rising carbon emissions in the future as a consequence of increasing world trade. A number of candidate regulations designed to mitigate these emissions have been canvassed by the UN’s International Maritime Organisation and by the European Commission. Many of these schemes are focussed on the use of market measures—emission trading schemes or fuel levies. This paper draws on observational and interview data gathered to examine enforcement issues associated with the control of ships’ sulphur emissions in order to consider the possible enforcement problems that might be associated with projected market measures to control ships’ carbon emissions. Enforcement problems are shown to be associated with the globalised character of the industry and its polycentric governance structure.

Central to the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) is the claim that a conferral of incapacity may not be based on the wisdom of a decision alone. This paper problematizes this position. Values-based medicine is drawn on to explore the process of capacity assessment, highlighting the presence of preconceptions throughout assessment. Two cases before the Court of Protection are examined to bring into focus the complexity of conducting assessment without reference to wisdom. The paper proposes that every stage in the assessment of capacity is undertaken with reference to preconceptions and that an acknowledgement of these, along with transparency about when they are to be employed, would allow for greater clarity about what the MCA demands of practitioners.

Trends in international human rights law have challenged States globally to rethink involuntary mental health interventions from a non-discrimination perspective. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) in particular prohibits laws that discriminate on the basis of disability. However, a key criterion for compulsory mental health treatment under typical mental health legislation is a psychiatric diagnosis (in conjunction with risk of harm and other criteria). Hence, for people with mental health disabilities, rights to liberty and consent in healthcare are held to a different standard compared to other citizens. A prominent law reform option being explored by some governments and commentators for achieving non-discrimination is to replace the diagnostic criterion for triggering involuntary intervention with an assessment of mental capacity. After all, every citizen is subject to restrictions on autonomy where they are deemed to lack mental capacity, such as where concussion necessitates emergency service. However, the use of mental capacity “testing” is seen by diverse commentators as wanting in key respects. A prominent criticism comes from the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which considers mental capacity assessments a form of disability-based discrimination. This article queries the call to replace the diagnostic criterion in mental health law with an assessment of mental capacity in the light of jurisprudence on equality and non-discrimination in international human rights law. Instead, we examine the doctrine of necessity as an area of law, which might help identify specific thresholds for overriding autonomy in emergency circumstances that can be codified in a non-discriminatory way. We also consider the need for deliberative law reform processes to identify such measures, and we suggest interim, short-term measures for creating a “supported decision-making regime” in the mental health context. The article focuses in particular on the Australian context of mental health law reform, though the analysis can be generalised to international trends in mental health law.

Recently, a political shift has been observed, in that some political conservatives are now advocating, adjusting, or abandoning draconian drug laws, including mandatory minimums, and funding diversion, re-entry, and drug programs. Vocal proponents of this movement include Grover Norquist, Rand Paul, Edwin Meese, and Mark Levin, from the Texas Public Policy Council. Any movement away from the mass incarceration that has characterized the U.S. correctional policy for the last 30 years is welcomed, however, it is important to note carefully the philosophical foundation of the conservative’s interest in shifting correctional policy. This paper explores the potential factors contributing to this philosophical shift.

This article proposes a change in public policy that promises to greatly reduce major crime in the United States, protect society, eliminate prison overcrowding, and save taxpayer dollars. This policy would employ electronic monitoring (EM) technology in a way that discourages individuals who might otherwise be tempted to commit crimes. The approach is arguably more effective, efficient, humane and ethical than any alternative strategy and potentially could revolutionize law enforcement and the American criminal justice system. Keywords: crime; policy; corrections; law; electronic monitoring; cost-benefit; criminal justice 1. Introduction Existing policies to “get tough” on crime have not only failed to control crime but have contributed to an enormous increase in the number of incarcerated individuals [1,2]. This suggests that the underlying premise—stiffer sentences deter criminals—may be incorrect. Furthermore, even in the unlikely event that incarceration rates could be tripled through a tripling of law enforcement and prison budgets, the available data suggest that the probability that an offender would be apprehended and incarcerated would remain low. As of 2004, the probability that an offender would be incarcerated was negligible for residential burglary (0.8 percent), vehicle theft (0.6 percent), robbery (1.7 percent), and assault (1.2 percent); and fairly small for rape (12.4 percent) [3]. This suggests that the deterrent effect of policies to “get tough” on crime would remain weak, and suggests a need to switch paradigms.

Why does torture persist despite its prohibition? Scholars, policymakers, and the public have heavily debated this topic in the past decade. Yet, many puzzles remain about the practice of torture. Scholarship on torture spans academic disciplines, which adds diversity in perspectives brought to these questions but also can lead to redundancy and stunted progress in research on the issue as a whole. This article assesses the state of the multidisciplinary literature on torture in counterterrorism with specific focus on why democracies torture despite prohibiting it, how public perception of torture is malleable, and why so few countries are able to move from commitment to compliance in the prohibition of torture. In each section, the article also identifies underexplored areas in the research and suggests avenues for future investigation.

Previous research suggests that social relations, in particular the forming of family ties and employment (social factors), self-efficacy (personal factors), and therapeutic interventions (institutional factors) constitute main contributors in post-release success. These studies, however, have largely been based on general delinquents serving relatively short prison terms. This study aims to shed light on the influence of social, personal, and institutional factors on post-release success versus failure among paroled lifers. We conducted in-depth life-history interviews with 64 individuals who had served a life sentence, who were either re-incarcerated for another crime or parole violation, or were currently out on parole. The role of social factors in desistance among long-term incarcerated offenders was minimal. Rather, self-efficacy appeared to be a key element in post-release success. These findings suggest that research based on short-term incarcerated offenders cannot be directly translated to long-term incarcerated offenders. This group does not experience the same traditional turning points, such as establishing family ties and employment. Accordingly, long-term prisoners may go through a different process post-release that determines their success versus failure compared to general delinquents who serve shorter sentences.

This article uses the debates surrounding the age of consent as a broad umbrella to question the continued usefulness of Queer Theory. The debates surrounding the age of consent illustrate that Queer Theory has not fulfilled its original promise and that it is not (and possibly never been), “fit for purpose”. Towards the end of 2013, the topic of lowering the age of consent in England and Wales was once again much in the news. This article suggests that much of that debate focused expressly or impliedly on the age of which men and boys have sexual intercourse (whether gay or straight), rather than when people have sexual intercourse. Queer Theory (originating from feminism), was intended to be a liberating phenomenon, but contrary to these hopes and intentions, Queer Theory evolved to become synonymous with white gay men, thus denying its origins and becoming distinctly anti-feminist. Those who argue for a reduction in the age of consent have used (whether knowingly or not) an approach which is consistent with this evolved version of Queer Theory. Consequently, the debate on the age of consent has ignored, or given insufficient attention to, the effect(s) a lowering of the age of consent will have on girls and women. This article, therefore, seeks to question, disrupt and unsettle, what Queer Theory has become, suggesting that, in several significant aspects, it fails to fully acknowledge patriarchy, render (lesbian) women visible, acknowledge and accommodate the lived experiences of women.

Over the last 40 years a number of scholars have called upon fellow criminologists to rethink the field’s priorities and methods, as well as the American criminal justice system and current punishment practices. Drawing on alternative criminologies, including constitutive and peacemaking criminologies, as well as the practice of reintegrative shaming, this paper presents a new model of criminal justice that combines aspects of adversarial, restorative, social, and transformative justice frameworks. The resulting “intersectional criminal justice” offers a holistic harm-reduction model that moves the focus of our criminal justice system away from “rough justice” and towards collective restorative healing and positive social change.

While boys who offend have been a dominant majority and primary concern of the juvenile court since its earliest days, the population of delinquent girls has increased in recent years at a far higher rate in the U.S. The special challenges presented by females, however, continue to be generally overlooked by the justice system. Moreover, while a few specialized programs now serve these girls, the field tends to view young female offenders as a homogeneous group, what distinguishes particular female subpopulations and the characteristics associated with different criminal trajectories have gone largely unexplored. Employing data from the state of Missouri, this study examines girls who offend, identifying models that predict subsequent violent behavior that include indicators such as parental substance abuse and incarceration, and offender substance abuse, mental health, and school behavior. Special attention is given to the effects of child maltreatment, which we find significantly, but weakly correlated with violent behavior. The authors conclude by considering the possibility that maltreatment may be correlated with other criminogenic factors, and by discussing the implications of findings for future research and practice, especially services that take into account the trauma experienced by young women who come to the attention of state authorities.

Revolts in Tunisia and Egypt have led many observers to speak of the “first digital revolution” in the Arab world. Social media sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, are now recognised as the important tools that facilitated the “Jasmine Revolution”. In fact, the willingness of the Mubarak government to block all internet connection in Egypt has demonstrated the concern over the power of new technologies in facilitating political change. The tenacity of the social movements that are still on-going in the Arab world continues to demonstrate the important role that networked technologies—such as the internet, satellite channels and social networking sites—play in revolutions. The revolutions demonstrate an effective use of social media and other network technologies as an organisational tool, and as a means of asserting pressure on current rulers and future governments. Accordingly, this article seeks to expose freedom of expression as a fundamental democratic principle and the internet network as a vehicle driving the demonstrations in the Arab countries of Tunisia and Egypt.

The aim of the present study was threefold: to examine (1) the relation between both cognitive and affective empathy and prosocial behavior, (2) the relation between both cognitive and affective empathy and offending, and (3) the role of cognitive distortions in the relation between cognitive empathy, affective empathy and offending in a sample of adolescent girls with lower SES and education (N = 264). Results showed that both cognitive and affective empathy were positively related to prosocial behavior. Furthermore, cognitive empathy was positively related to offending, whereas affective empathy was not related to offending. Finally, no support was found for our hypothesis that cognitive distortions play a moderating role in the relation between empathy and offending.

The first tribunal in Mexico was established in the central state of San Luis Potosi in 1926. The Law Regarding Social Prevention and Juvenile Delinquency for the Federal District and Mexican territories was promulgated in 1928. In 2005, Article 18 of the Mexican Constitution was modified to establish a comprehensive system (“Sistema Integral de justicia” in Spanish) of justice for juveniles between 12 and 18 years old who had committed a crime punishable under criminal law. Its objective was to guarantee juveniles all the due process rights established for adults, in addition to the special ones recognized for minors. The constitutional reform also provides a framework that includes special tribunals as well as alternative justice options for juveniles. With these reforms, institutionalization of minors was to be considered an extreme measure applicable only to felonies and to juveniles older than 14. In 2006, all states within the Mexican federation enacted the “Law of justice for adolescents”. This system, at both the federal and state levels, formalizes a new global paradigm with regard to the triangular relationship between children, the State and the Law. It recognizes that children are also bearers of the inherent human rights recognized for all individuals, instead of simply objects in need of protection. However, despite formally aligning Mexican juvenile justice law with the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), issues of actual substantive rights remained and new ones have appeared. For example, juveniles younger than 14 who have not committed a felony are released from institutions without any rehabilitation or treatment options, and alternative forms of justice were included without evaluating their possibilities of application or their conditions for success. In addition, the economic status of most juvenile detainees continues to be one of the most important determining factors in the administration of justice. Juveniles lack real access to an adequate defense because they cannot afford to pay lawyers. This disconnection between rights and reality undermines the new system, raising the question of whether recent modifications to bring laws in line with international norms are in fact advancing juvenile justice. By approaching the Mexican juvenile justice systems as a single, multilayered system combining international, federal and local laws and procedures, we can better describe some of the substantive inconsistencies that continue to prevail, even as new ones develop in terms of children’s rights.

Online copyright infringement is one of the toughest challenges the content industry has faced in the twenty first century. Article 8(3) of the Information Society Directive, implemented under section 97A of the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, provides an injunctive remedy in response to such online infringement. Given the elusive nature of the website operators and the sheer number of their users, rights owners have turned to the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to implement the injunctions granted under section 97A to block websites with infringing content. In their battle to keep pace with online infringers, the UK courts have permitted significant compromises to the procedures while granting these injunctive blocking orders. One of the pioneers in this line of cases in the UK is the Pirate Bay case (TPB case), which ruled as a matter of law that the procedure under Section 97A does not require the alleged infringers to be made parties to those proceedings. TPB case also marks the trend of the ISPs consenting to an order of injunction, and not defending the proceedings. This has resulted in the absence of any adverse party in the proceedings under section 97A. This threatens the basic tenets of procedural fairness and propriety, having adverse consequences on both the substantive and procedural aspects, evident in the cases that followed TPB case. This article examines the aspects of the judgment in TPB case that led to these procedural compromises, whether it had any basis in the pre-existing case law, what the nature of an injunction under section 97A is and how the subsequent line of cases have followed TPB case as a precedent. It further explores the adverse consequences of the procedural compromises and whether any safeguards are available against such compromises.

This paper analyzes the criminal offence of the non-consensual distribution of intimate images (frequently called “revenge porn”). Focussing on the debate currently underway in Canada surrounding Bill C-13 (Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act), it notes that such an offence would fill a grey area in that country’s criminal law. Arguing, more broadly, that the criminal law has an important expressive function, the paper posits that the offence targets the same general type of wrongdoing — sexual objectification — that undergirds sexual assault. While not all objectification merits criminal sanction, the paper explains why the non-consensual distribution of intimate images does, and why a specific offence is legitimate.

This article explores the challenges posed by an archival interest in the broad palimpsest of daily life left on social networks that are controlled by private corporations. It addresses whether social networks should be archived for the benefit of future generations and proposes a policy thought experiment to help grapple with these questions, namely, the proposal for the formation of the public interest-oriented Networked Memory Project by the Library of Congress for the archiving of social networks. My discussion of the challenges posed by this thought experiment will focus on the U.S. legal framework within which the Library of Congress operates and take Facebook. To the extent that social networks have user-generated contents that range from the highly “private” to “public” as opposed to other networked platforms that contain materials that are considered “public”, the bar for the historical archival of social networks is much higher. Almost every archival effort must contend with the legal hurdle of copyright, but the archiving of social networks must also address how to handle the potentially sensitive nature of materials that are considered “private” from the perspective of the social and legal constructions of privacy. My theoretical exercise of proposing the formation of the Networked Memory Project by the Library of Congress responds to the need to consider the benefits of a public interest-oriented archive of social networks that can counter the drawbacks of the incidental corporate archiving taking place on social networks.

The task of this paper is to identify the causes of juvenile delinquency and juvenile offending. The French proverb chosen for its title ( Step back in order to jump better ) reflects the inherent challenge in this task; that is, how far back must we step in order to gain a complete understanding of these causes? Do we commence with adolescence, childhood, birth, pregnancy, conception, or the young person’s parents and their life experiences? How wide a net do we cast? Should we focus primarily on intra-individual factors, or the social ecologies in which young delinquents are found? Every story must have a beginning. In this story about young people who fall off the prosocial developmental trajectory, all sign posts point to attachment and the quality of the child’s first attachment experiences. This review will examine, from attachment and other developmental perspectives, how many of the more proximal causes of delinquency and youth offending have their origins in the emotional deficits suffered in early life. We will argue that delinquent and offending behavior represent attempts to redress these deficits. Consequently, interventions that attempt to prevent offending and reduce recidivism that do not address attachment ruptures and other early deficits cannot expect satisfactory outcomes.

The increasing prominence of new Internet and social media technologies and their growing importance as a source of health information are pushing the pharmaceutical industry towards digital channels. This paper explores the potential impacts of the pharmaceutical industry’s increasing interest in online marketing and considers how the existing regulatory framework in Canada translates into the social media sphere. Direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription drugs is prohibited in Canada, as it is in most industrialized countries. Although Health Canada has reaffirmed that the existing DTCA regulations apply to new Internet and social media technologies, new dynamics such as user-generated content, consumer propagation, and targeted marketing make applying the existing regulations an uncertain process. Moreover, certain problems often associated with DTCA may be exacerbated in the social media context. Finally, there is skepticism around whether government regulators have the resources or political will to effectively monitor new digital media. As such, this paper considers not only the role of direct government regulation in monitoring and enforcing the regulation of DTCA, but also the role of third party oversight and industry self-regulation—both of which may play an important role in filling the gaps in the regulation of the Internet and social media.

Access to justice has become an important issue in many justice systems around the world. Increasingly, technology is seen as a potential facilitator of access to justice, particularly in terms of improving justice sector efficiency. The international diffusion of information systems (IS) within the justice sector raises the important question of how to insure quality performance. The IS literature has stressed a set of general design principles for the implementation of complex information technology systems that have also been applied to these systems in the justice sector. However, an emerging e-justice literature emphasizes the significance of unique law and technology concerns that are especially relevant to implementing and evaluating information technology systems in the justice sector specifically. Moreover, there is growing recognition that both principles relating to the design of information technology systems themselves (“system design principles”), as well as to designing and managing the processes by which systems are created and implemented (“design management principles”) can be critical to positive outcomes. This paper uses six e-justice system examples to illustrate and elaborate upon the system design and design management principles in a manner intended to assist an interdisciplinary legal audience to better understand how these principles might impact upon a system’s ability to improve access to justice: three European examples (Italian Trial Online; English and Welsh Money Claim Online; the trans-border European Union e-CODEX) and three Canadian examples (Ontario’s Integrated Justice Project (IJP), Ontario’s Court Information Management System (CIMS), and British Columbia’s eCourt project).

In industrial societies, women increasingly postpone motherhood. While men do not fear a loss of fertility with age, women face the biological boundary of menopause. The freezing of unfertilized eggs can overcome this biological barrier. Due to technical improvements in vitrification, so-called “social freezing” (SF) for healthy women is likely to develop into clinical routine. Controversial ethical debates focus on the risks of the technique for mother and child, the scope of reproductive autonomy, and the medicalization of reproduction. Some criticize the use of the technique in healthy women in general, while others support a legally defined maximum age for women at the time of an embryo transfer after oocyte cryopreservation. Since this represents a serious encroachment on the reproductive autonomy of the affected women, the reasons for and against must be carefully examined. We analyze arguments for and against SF from a gendered ethical perspective. We show that the risk of the cryopreservation of oocytes for mother and future child is minimal and that the autonomy of the women involved is not compromised. The negative ethical evaluation of postponed motherhood is partly due to a biased approach highlighting only the medical risks for the female body without recognizing the potential positive effects for the women involved. In critical accounts, age is associated in an undifferentiated way with morbidity and psychological instability and is thus used in a discriminatory way. We come to the conclusion that age as a predictor of risk in the debate about SF is, from an ethical point of view, an empty concept based on gender stereotypes and discriminatory connotations of aging. A ban on postponing motherhood via SF is not justified.

Persons with disabilities often find themselves marginalized by society and by our justice systems. We can improve access to justice by training better advocates. Advocates not only must be knowledgeable concerning relevant laws and regulations, but also must be able to interact effectively on a personal, professional level with persons who have disabilities. We also want to make certain that persons with disabilities have the opportunity to learn to advocate for themselves and for other persons with disabilities. Technologies are available that can help us accomplish these goals. This article provides a brief survey of legal protections (and gaps in such protection) for persons with disabilities. Successful advocate training programs from around the world are identified and described. The article provides examples of how technology is being used to support these efforts and provides suggestions regarding additional ways in which technology could be employed. Law schools around the world have begun to embrace the goal of better advocacy, but improving access will require well-prepared advocates to answer the call. Training advocates to provide services to a population that may have significantly different needs even within that population may be a more efficient and effective way to improve access to justice than by attempting to draft laws and regulations that somehow address all possible circumstances.

The death penalty lives on in America, with some 1350 prisoners put to death since 1976, when the modern American death penalty was reborn. Most prisoners get a last meal of their choice, though that choice is constrained by cost and, often, the stock in the prison kitchen. Last meals can be thought of as brief moments of autonomy in a relentlessly dehumanizing execution process. They also entail a distinctive cruelty. At their lowest point, prisoners seek comfort food but are never comforted. This meal is no entre to a relationship, but instead a recipe for abandonment. Dignity is nowhere to be found on the death house menu. Yet hope lingers, even here; human beings, it seems, cannot live or die without hope. Justice, the most profound human hunger, goes unsated by design.

This article examines major changes in the migratory policy of the Dominican Republic over the last decade, and how they possibly relate to the consolidation of racist perceptions of the Other, prevalent since the Haitian and Dominican independence wars in the early 19th century. Generally focusing on the intersection of politics, exclusion, and Otherness, the paper takes a multidisciplinary approach fundamentally focused on the juridical and legislative processes, whenever the rule of law is presented as a legitimizing vehicle through which racism is expressed. Considering the conceptual usefulness of migration as a threat, the article problematizes cultural and biologic understandings of Haitian migrants in the Dominican Republic, and their legislative reduction to ‘bare life’. It finally examines the convenience of Haitian lives for the Dominican State, conditioned by de facto and de jure processes of exclusion.

Sub-federal enforcement of immigration law has expanded significantly in the last decade raising questions concerning policing, rights violations, and remedies. While the Fourth Amendment has historically provided an avenue for potentially suppressing evidence obtained in violation of a criminal defendant’s civil rights, its applicability in the immigration removal context has been circumscribed. Thus, the avenues to protect the rights of unauthorized noncitizens in immigration removal proceedings are less clear where sub-federal agents act outside of their authorization, particularly in the context of Secure Communities, and enforce immigration law. In the context of immigration exceptionalism, racial profiling has historically played a unique role in immigration law. The lack of adequate measures to deter rights violations where sub-federal agents enforce immigration law raises questions concerning the relationship between criminal and immigration law, and the importance of deterring civil rights violations such as racial profiling, in immigration enforcement. This article will examine the problem of sub-federal law enforcement agents’ use of criminal law violations as a pretext to enforce immigration law and the lack of adequate deterrence of civil rights violations.

The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is the principal international law document, which regulates the establishment of the maritime economic zones, namely the Continental Shelf (CS) and the Exclusive Economic Zone (ΕΕΖ) as well as any issues that may come up during their delimitation. Maritime delimitation issues are settled either through state agreements or through legal redress before the respective international tribunals. In this context, the aim of this paper is to elaborate on the delimitation prospect concerning a Greek CS/EEZ based on contemporary conventional and customary international law of the sea, in addition to contemporary judicial decisions. More specifically, the analysis focuses on dispute issues in the region of the Aegean Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean, between Greece and its neighboring country Turkey, concerning the CS/EEZ delimitation. An attempt is made to critically compare this case to the outcome of recent relevant international judicial decisions by highlighting not only the common points but also any differences and complexities. The main purpose is to render the reader aware of the special treatment needed for the case in question, with the expectation for a fair future delimitation of the Greek maritime economic zones.

Undocumented immigrants face significant challenges in accessing health care. Throughout the United States, these challenges may relate to the structure of the public health system in which the undocumented find themselves. In addition, local, regional, and national practices aimed at targeting immigrants for deportation or other non-health reasons may serve to punish them for seeking health services or care. Spain and the United Kingdom serve as useful case studies in comparing the ability of the undocumented to seek health services in Europe and the United States. Overall, promoting access to comprehensive health services for the undocumented should be a national priority, along with analysis of any immigration-related laws or policies for potential harmful impact on health care access.

Post hoc analyses of Rector v. Arkansas have regularly highlighted that the defendant requested that part of his last meal be saved so that he could it eat later. While the observation is typically raised as part of arguments that Rector was incompetent and unfit for execution, the more basic fact is that commentators have drawn important inferences about Rector’s mental state from how he treated his last meal. In this essay, we draw upon multiple disciplines in order to apply the same inferential logic to a much broader sample and explore the question of whether traditionally customized last meals might offer signals of defendants’ guilt or innocence. To investigate this, the content of last-meal requests and last words reported for people executed in the United States during a recent five-year period were examined. Consistent with the idea that declination of the last meal is equivalent to a signal of (self-perceived) innocence, those who denied guilt were 2.7 times as likely to decline a last meal than people who admitted guilt (29% versus 8%). Consistent with the complementary theory that people who admit guilt are relatively more “at peace” with their sentence, these individuals requested 34% more calories of food than the rest of the sample (2786 versus 2085 calories). A third finding is that those who denied guilt also tended to eat significantly fewer brand-name food items. Previous discussions of last meals have often lacked quantitative measurements; however, this systematic analysis shows that last meal requests offer windows into self-perceived or self-proclaimed innocence. Knowing one’s last meal request and one’s last words can provide valuable new variables for retrospectively assessing the processes that led to past executions.

In 2008, the Traditional Courts Bill (TCB) was introduced in South Africa’s Parliament to regulate customary courts in place of the apartheid-era Black Administration Act. The TCB has come under wide ranging attack from civil society across the country, including from people based in the former homelands where the Bill would have effect, for its perpetuation of colonial and apartheid distortions of customary law, and its continuation of the oppressions justified through these distortions. In this article, I examine some of the major epistemic developments in customary law in South Africa, from colonialism to the present, to highlight key logics and genealogies of power that form the foundation and framework for ‘official customary law’. This examination provides the context for analysing the epistemological de-linking from colonial frameworks represented in women’s claims to land, and reveals how changes in women’s access to land over the years allows for a reading of epistemological shifts and contestations in customary law. I read these developments alongside the content of the TCB to examine different references for custom represented in both colonially rooted knowledges and de-colonial knowledges that challenge the premises of the former.

This paper argues that discussion of new food-safety governance should be framed by the realization that the dominant food system within which food-safety governance is designed to makes food safe is itself a structural and systemic sources of food un-safety, poor health and a future of food insecurity for many. For some, an appropriate policy response lies in addressing the connections between the food system and diseases such as heart disease, obesity and diabetes. For others it means subsuming food-safety governance within food security governance. For yet others, safe food implies food sovereignty governance and the primacy of a climate change resilient food system. Conventional approaches to food-safety governance are typically framed within a liability model of responsibility that has limited usefulness for addressing institutional, structural or systemic sources of harm such as those critics increasingly attribute to the dominant food system and which are not amenable to remedy by food-safety governance as it is widely understood. One cannot identify critical hazard points where risk is to be managed. These are food-system safety challenges. Because food-safety governance is so deeply political there needs to be greater attention to issues of governance rather than the more usual focus on the technologies of food-safety. Feminist political theorists have much to contribute to re-thinking food-safety governance in the context of diversity and the complexities of power. One could usefully start with the simple questions, “what food is to be kept-safe, for whom and who is the subject of food-safety governance in a post-Westphalian political economic order?” These questions can help unpack both the narrow parochialism and the misleading universalism of food-safety talk. This paper answers that neither the citizens of a particular state (or network of states) nor the falsely universalizing identity of ‘the consumer’ are adequate answers to these questions about ‘who’ and ‘what’. Answering these questions about who and what with respect to food-safety governance brings issues of justice, ecology, public health and the legitimacy and nature of governance itself into the heart of food-safety discussions.

States pursue various juridical strategies to prevent ‘marriages of convenience’ seen as undermining tightening migration regimes. This article examines how Austrian Alien Law constitutes entering into such a marriage as a criminal offense and looks at the legal proceedings in district courts in Vienna where most cases of alleged ‘marriages of convenience’ are being dealt with. It also studies the work of the Viennese branch of alien police investigating into this offense. These practices are often in conflict with Article 8 and 12 of the European Convention of Human Rights, granting the right to respect for private and family life and the right to marry.

Women commit significantly fewer murders than men and are perceived to be less violent. This belief about women’s non-violence reflects the discourses surrounding gender, all of which assume that women possess certain inherent essential characteristics such as passivity and gentleness. When women commit murder the fundamental social structures based on appropriate feminine gendered behaviour are contradicted and subsequently challenged. This article will explore the gendered constructions of women who kill within the criminal justice system. These women are labelled as either mad, bad or a victim, by both the criminal justice system and society, depending on the construction of their crime, their gender and their sexuality. Symbiotic to labelling women who kill in this way is the denial of their agency. That is to say that labelling these women denies the recognition of their ability to make a semi-autonomous decision to act in a particular way. It is submitted that denying the agency of these women raises a number of issues, including, but not limited to, maintaining the current gendered status quo within the criminal law and criminal justice system, and justice both being done, and being seen to be done, for these women and their victims.

Although classical theorists tend to believe that immigrant youth are more delinquent than native-born adolescents, the existing empirical studies have shown the opposite. The current paper first gives a comprehensive overview of major theoretical explanations for the relatively lower level of delinquency among immigrant youth, including cultural perspectives, strain theories, social control theory, social learning theory, and social disorganization theory. The main argument is that immigrant youth who have not yet acculturated to the youth subculture of the host society are more law-abiding due to protections from their traditional traits ( i.e ., being more realistic, stronger ties with family/schools, less access to delinquent friends, and higher level of collective efficacy in homogeneous neighborhoods). All these theories are also applied to explain the generational differences in terms of delinquency: compared to earlier generations, later generations of immigrant youth are often more delinquent because they are more acculturated and the protective factors from their origins wear off over time. The continuing public and political bias toward immigrant youth has been explained by social constructionists. We further discuss the necessity of a synthesis of these theoretical approaches and the importance to examine both internal and international migration under similar theoretical frameworks in the modern era.

In part due to its location on the North African coast, in conjunction with its history of being a former French protectorate, Tunisia has become an important country of emigration to the European Union. In particular, maritime arrivals have become a concern for European states, for both humanitarian and security reasons. The experiences of Tunisian irregular migrants arriving to the EU by sea, who are then detained and returned, highlights the multitude of human rights issues that arise across their journey as they interact with the various stakeholders involved—Tunisian and Libyan smugglers, EU and Tunisian authorities and NGOs, amongst others. The situation for these migrants at sea and during rescue and interception operations can most directly involve such issues as the right to life, access to food and water, access to emergency healthcare and access to information. The next stages of detention and return (either immediately or when later identified on EU territory) can most directly involve human rights issues related to the identification and referral mechanisms for groups at risk, access to information and legal remedy, the right of “non-refoulement” and prohibition of torture, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment. By examining Tunisian migrant experiences along the entirety of their trajectory, one can see the specific human rights issues that arise at each stage for maritime arrivals—from departure to return. The article will examine these human rights concerns in the context of the Tunisian migrant journey, focusing on the four identified stages of the situation at sea, rescue or interception, detention and return. The article will present results from qualitative in-depth interviews conducted for the EU Fundamental Rights Agency in 2011 with 15 Tunisian migrants who had arrived by sea to Italy between 2005 and 2011 and were returned to Tunisia between 2008 and 2011, complemented by interviews with two Tunisian fishermen and an anonymous Tunisian non-governmental stakeholder.

A dramatic rise in arrest rates for girls over the past decade has led to an increasing interest in understanding gender differences in the risk factors that are associated with delinquency. Moreover, the call has been made for the implementation of gender-specific or gender-responsive interventions in order to effectively divert girls from an antisocial course. However, questions have been raised about three key assumptions underlying the gender-responsive approach to girls involved in the juvenile justice system: is there unequivocal evidence for gender-specificity in the risk factors that contribute to girls' delinquency; is there clear evidence that existing non-gender-responsive evidence-based interventions for delinquency are less effective for girls than boys; and is there well-grounded evidence that interventions specifically tailored for girls are differentially effective? This article reviews the available research regarding each of these questions and proposes an agenda for future research into the development of effective interventions for juvenile justice-involved girls.

This article considers contemporary border management regimes from a human rights perspective. It demonstrates how a preoccupation with border controls and enforcement has led to serious concerns for the safety and protection of migrants. As border zones have expanded, border crossing has become a more stigmatized and dangerous activity, and even as globalization has given rise to easier and faster international travel, for some, such movement has been outlawed and stigmatized. Measures to strengthen and “secure” borders have paradoxically made migrants, particularly irregular and vulnerable migrants, more at risk of violence and exploitation by non-State and State actors. Migration governance regimes at international borders are thus increasingly located within security and enforcement frameworks that pay little attention to the principles and standards of international human rights law. The paper argues that a human rights-based approach to such regimes is urgently needed, in order to address a growing human rights crisis at international borders.

The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA) provides that a food is misbranded if the label accompanying the product is false or misleading in any particular. Congress provided minimal guidance to assist the FDA in making these determinations. When challenged, courts have granted substantial deference to FDA’s various interpretations of what constitute a material fact. However, when confronted with the regulatory question of whether or how to label products derived from genetically engineered (GE) crops, the FDA adopted a narrow reading of the statute that focused on changes in the product itself, rather than the act of genetic engineering. Only those GE products that possessed characteristics significantly different from their conventional counterparts would require labels. This “process versus product” distinction in food labels lies at the heart of the FDA’s resistance to repeated calls for mandatory labeling of foods derived from genetic engineering. Consumer interest in GE food, according to the agency, is not a material fact to trigger mandatory labeling under the statute. In contrast to its approach to GE labels, the agency has long required (since 1966) process-based labels for foods treated with irradiation. As recently as 1986, the FDA affirmed that materiality of information under it misbranding analysis is not limited to product safety or even the abstract worth of the information, but whether consumers view the information as important and whether the omission of a labeling statement would mislead the consumer. Accordingly, mere consumer interest can give rise to a mandatory labeling regime under the FFDCA. In the irradiation context, whole foods and single-ingredient products treated with irradiation must bear a label indicating the process. The irradiation of components in a multi-ingredient food product, however, need not bear a label. This distinction between processed, multi-ingredient and whole or single-ingredient foods provides a potential pathway for the agency to revise its approach to mandatory GE labeling. Exempting highly processed, multi-ingredient foods from a labeling regime would minimize traceability and segregation-generated disruptions in the commodity supply chain, thereby minimizing potential compliance costs, while also empowering consumers to express their preferences for non-GE whole and single-ingredient food products.

This article assesses the use of capital punishment for drug trafficking and related crimes from a comparative perspective. Domestic narcotics legislation, as well as important drug trafficking cases in four Southeast Asian nations (Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand) are examined in-depth and compared to the United States, which plays an important role in eradicating global drug-related problems. This article contends that the use of capital punishment is disproportionate to the gravity of drug-related offenses and that international drug control and enforcement treaties never suggested using such sanctions to deter crime. Fortunately, four Southeast Asian countries in this study, including Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, currently realize this disproportionality and have become reluctant to carry out executions for drug trafficking; even though they continue to sentence a large number of drug-related offenders to death annually, they do not actually carry out these executions. Future research related to this topic is also recommended in this article.

This study investigated school discipline infractions leading to suspensions and expulsions in Louisiana to determine patterns and trends, particularly among racial/ethnic groups. Discipline incident data rather than student discipline data were used to provide a more accurate reflection of the number of infractions and dispositions occurring. Findings included that black students and American Indian students had a higher percentage of out-of-school suspensions and were more likely to commit an infraction in the violent discipline infractions category, but the overwhelming majority of offenses for all groups were for non-violent and non-drug offenses. Links to juvenile delinquency and zero tolerance policies are discussed.

Global private food safety and quality standards have undergone some major overhauls during the past two decades, and these will continue to evolve with the recent emphasis on harmonization. The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) attempts to ensure that harmonize retail standards are commendable and elegant in principle, but in practice, retailers continue to demand their own standard, whilst supporting GFSI’s benchmarking program. It is difficult to see such retailers giving up their own standards and the control they currently exert as chain captains. There is also the risk that too much harmonization will result in these standards losing their individuality and uniqueness. Amidst the struggle for private standard dominance, alternative approaches to risk management (e.g., self-assessment of risk, independent audits and risk ranking) may be the way forward, similar to how insurance risks are calculated for businesses. Furthermore, this risk-based approach could also lead to the effective implementation of co-regulation, where both public and private sector compliances are addressed together—a win-win situation. This paper considers the implications and future trends of fresh produce farming, and identifies five interventions ( i.e. , assurance schemes), which include the do-nothing scenario to underpinning one’s brand or label with an existing scheme.

This paper reports on the state of contracts scholarship in the United States, utilizing two methods of approximating where scholarship has focused since 2007 and where it is headed in the future.

The legal objective for surface water in the EU is ‘good ecological status’, as established by the Water Framework Directive, with a timeframe of 15, 21 or 27 years. To reach this objective, suitable legal instruments are needed, and quality standards are among the instruments intended to improve the ecological status. However, both the Directive and quality standards are founded on reductionism, risking an over-application of over-simplified concepts, probably reducing biological diversity. A realistic and more appropriate timeframe for river basin rehabilitation would be around 100 years, emphasizing several concerns, such as the importance of encompassing the entire life history of species, the shift in human perceptions, the systemic unity of humans and ecosystems, environmental irreducibility, site-specific reference points, and the divergence of the assessment of water quality and the general ecological status of a river basin. From a legal standpoint, a century emphasizes a temporal agreement and a normative commitment to the generations to come. Ecologically, a century time-scale gives enough time for the processes of evolution, dispersal and recolonization and succession to re-establish stable, more diverse biological communities in physically rehabilitated habitats and river basins, whereas the present timetable for achievement of the ecological objectives does not.

The editors of Laws would like to express their sincere gratitude to the following reviewers for assessing manuscripts in 2013. [...]