Law and Society

"Police Museums in Latin America: Preface"

by Amy Chazkel

Contributing editor of "Forum: Police Museums in Latin America," in "Calling the Law into Question: Confronting the Illegal and Illicit in Public Arenas," Special Issue of the Radical History Review 113 (Spring 2012), 127-33.

Organized by the historian Amy Chazkel, who also provides the foreword, this forum gathers the work of three... more Organized by the historian Amy Chazkel, who also provides the foreword, this forum gathers the work of three historians of Latin America who have written extensively on the social history of crime, prompting them to reflect on a ubiquitous but little studied public history institution: the police museum. Alejandra Bronfman, Lila Caimari, and Robert Buffington, specialists in Cuba, Argentina, and Mexico, respectively, guide us through a selection of five police museums: one in Havana that played a crucial role in legal medicine and developing ideas about race during Cuba's Republican period but no longer exists; one in Buenos Aires that was founded as part of the early twentieth-century wave of police reform and modernization; and two in Mexico City and one in Guadalajara that mushroomed in the context of the Mexican police's public image hemorrhage of recent decades. This forum is a critical examination of not only objects on display but also the deeper logic of the categorizing schemes used in each museum. The official history of crime presented to the public, epitomized by police museums, provides a fascinating counterpoint to the contemporary academic history of crime in Latin America, which is remarkably diverse but converges on its use of historical analysis to challenge normative understandings of the law and the illicit. Far from “calling the law into question,” unsurprisingly, police museums naturalize and dehistoricize the criminal law. Yet this forum points toward ways in which further research on police museums can shed new light on how the public encounters the most problematic and controversial manifestations of state power.

Toward a Political Sociology of Conjugal-Recognition Regimes: Gendered Multiculturalism in South African Marriage Law

by Michael Yarbrough

While conjugal-recognition policies are often a subject of political debate, scholarly attempts to explain such... more While conjugal-recognition policies are often a subject of political debate, scholarly attempts to explain such policies are relatively rare and typically focused on discrete policies—same-sex marriage, no-fault divorce, etc.—with comparatively little investigation of potential connections among policies. This article begins to develop a more holistic approach focused on explaining and understanding what I call conjugal-recognition regimes. Adapting the concept from the existing literature on welfare regimes, I argue that conjugal-recognition regimes exist when an identifiable pattern or principle organizes an institution’s conjugal-recognition policy and thereby shapes social relations at multiple levels, from the individuals in conjugal relationships to the multiple institutions (state, religious, and so on) that confer official conjugal recognition. I argue that these organizing patterns or principles emerge out of historically specific, institutionally situated, and discursively constructed political debates on specific conjugal issues and go on to shape subsequent conjugal-policy controversies. I demonstrate these ideas through an extended analysis of post-apartheid South African marriage law, which has recently incorporated numerous previously excluded conjugal formations but has also assigned each new form to its own statutory and administrative structure or, as I call it, “silo.” I argue that these silos entrench a principle of “gendered multiculturalism” that officially defines cultures in terms of their supposedly characteristic gender relations. This principle increasingly tends to favor religious and cultural elites’ understandings of their respective traditions.

A Storied Shooting: Liberty Valance and the Paradox of Sovereignty

by Joshua Dienstag

Localizing Global Rules: Public Participation in Lawmaking in Vietnam

by John Gillespie

33 Law and Social Inquiry (3) (2008). 673-707.

As the pace of legal harmonization in developing East Asian states increases to comply with international trading... more As the pace of legal harmonization in developing East Asian states increases to comply with international trading treaties, a disjunction is forming between legislative expectations and everyday business practices. Evidence considered in this article suggests that Vietnam is no exception. State control over public discourse favors the interests of business elites, while small-scale entrepreneurs struggle to make their views known. Lawmakers exposed to this asymmetric discourse rarely adjust global legal rules to suit the transactional requirements of small-scale entrepreneurs. As a consequence, the largely imported commercial legislative framework is increasingly reflecting the interests of business elites. The article concludes that for the state to develop a more inclusive regulatory regime, it needs to relax its control over public deliberation and give small-scale entrepreneurs more opportunities to convey local precepts and practices to lawmakers.

Bodies of science and law: forensic DNA profiling, biological bodies and biopower

by Victor Toom

Toom, Victor. 2012. "Bodies of science and law: forensic DNA profiling, biological bodies and biopower." Journal of Law and Society 39(1):150-66.
The paper is part of the Special Issue 'Material Worlds: Intersections of Law, Science, Technology, and Society', edited by Chris Lawless and Alex Faulkner.

How is jurisdiction transferred from an individual’s biological body to agents of power such as the police, public... more How is jurisdiction transferred from an individual’s biological body to agents of power such as the police, public prosecutor and judiciary, and what happens to these biological bodies when transformed from private into public objects? These questions are examined by analyzing bodies situated at the intersection of science and law. More specifically, the transformation of ‘private bodies’ into ‘public bodies’ shall be analyzed by going into the details of forensic DNA profiling in the Dutch jurisdiction. It will be argued that various ‘forensic genetic practices’ enact different ‘forensic genetic bodies’. These enacted forensic genetic bodies are connected with various infringements of civil rights, which become articulated in exploring these forensic genetic bodies’ ‘normative registers’.
The pdf is freely available, click the Wiley button.

Book Review: The Measure of Injury: Race, Gender and Tort Law

by Nahel N. Asfour

Published in Law, Culture and the Humanities February 2011 vol. 7 no. 1 142-145

La généralisation des enquêtes judiciaires et la construction du pouvoir princier dans le duché de Bourgogne (xiie-xiiie siècles)

by Armando Torres Fauaz

Justice and Power: Understanding the linkages among Society, Economics and Politics from a Multi-Level Perspective

by Nathan Andrews

This paper discusses the interconnections among society, market, and the state (politics). The argument is that such an analysis should begin with a re-definition of 'power'. Please read on....comments are welcome!

Book Review -- Tort, Custom, and Karma: Globalization and Legal Consciousness in Thailand (Jaruwan Engel and David Engel)

by Tyrell Haberkorn

Published on New Mandala: New Perspectives on Mainland Southeast Asia, 15 June 2011.

Illegal evictions? Overwriting possession and orality with law’s violence in Cambodia

by Simon Springer

Springer, S. Forthcoming. Illegal evictions? Overwriting possession and orality with law’s violence in Cambodia. Journal of Agrarian Change.

The unfolding of a juridico-cadastral system in present-day Cambodia is at odds with local understandings of... more The unfolding of a juridico-cadastral system in present-day Cambodia is at odds with local understandings of landholding, which are entrenched in notions of community consensus and existing occupation. The discrepancy between such orally recognized antecedents and the written word of law have been at the heart of the recent wave of dispossessions that have swept across the country. Contra the standard critique that corruption has set the tone, this paper argues that evictions in Cambodia are often literally underwritten by the articles of law. Whereas ‘possession’ is a well-understood and accepted concept in Cambodia, a cultural basis rooted in what James C. Scott refers to as ‘orality’, coupled with a long history of subsistence agriculture, semi-nomadic lifestyles, barter economies, and–until recently–widespread land availability have all ensured that notions of ‘property’ are vague among the country’s majority rural poor. In drawing a firm distinction between possessions and property, where the former is premised upon actual use and the latter is embedded in exploitation, this article examines how proprietorship is inextricably bound to the violence of law.

Divergence and Convergence in Policy Meanings of European Environmental Policies: The Case of the Birds and Habitats Directives

by Raoul Beunen

A version of this article can also be found in the book The Governance of Nature: http://edepot.wur.nl/15808

The link between European environmental policies and spatial planning and decision-making in Member States is... more The link between European environmental policies and spatial planning and decision-making in Member States is complicated and the subject of much debate among students of the European Union and the processes of Europeanization. This paper focus on policy meaning, and analyses the mechanisms of divergence and convergence that are at work in planning and decision-making practices in which the Birds and Habitats Directives are implemented. While many of the mechanisms are unconscious and unintentional and thus cannot be affected, others can be used intentional and strategically during the formulation and implementation of the policies.

Κανονικότητα&Συμμόρφωση

by Michalis Lianos

Periopticon: Control Beyond Freedom and Coercion –and two Possible Advancements in the Social Sciences

by Michalis Lianos

Social Control After Foucault

by Michalis Lianos

Michalis Lianos & Mary Douglas: Dangerization and the End of Deviance

by Michalis Lianos

Les codes de conduite: source du droit global?

by Gregory Lewkowicz

Co-authored with Benoît Frydman, forthcomin in Les sources du droit revisitées, 2013

La doctrine récente en théorie et en philosophie du droit examine depuis plusieurs années les transformations du droit... more La doctrine récente en théorie et en philosophie du droit examine depuis plusieurs années les transformations du droit dans la mondialisation à partir de l’hypothèse de la formation d’un droit global. Les codes de conduites constitueraient un élément typique de ce droit global naissant. 

Confrontés au phénomène massif de multiplication des codes de conduite, considéré comme extérieur au droit, selon la théorie et les critères classiques des normes juridiques, mais qui évolue pourtant en interaction sinon en concurrence avec lui, les auteurs examinent dans cette contribution le problème des rapports entre codes de conduite et sources du droit. Ce problème se décline en deux questions distinctes, mais complémentaires, qui sont traitées successivement. Premièrement, les codes de conduite constituent-ils ou seraient-ils susceptibles de constituer une source formelle du droit et, dans l’affirmative, laquelle ? S’agit-il d’une source spécifique, sui generis, ou peut-on finalement la ramener à des sources connues comme la convention, l’usage ou d’autres solutions encore ? Deuxièmement, dans quelle mesure les codes de conduite nous invitent-ils à repenser la théorie des sources, à éventuellement modifier ou compléter notre compréhension de ce concept, voire, et c’est vers cette option plus radicale que les auteurs inclinent, à remettre en cause la pertinence de la notion de « sources du droit », sa capacité à rendre compte d’un phénomène normatif, qui s’inscrit dans une logique qui fondamentalement différente de l’approche du droit par les sources ?

Direitos, Trabalho, Ócio e Felicidade

by Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

in "Seara Nova", n.º 1717, 2011, pp. 25-26.

A situação de quem é pobre, isto é, de quem precisa de trabalhar para viver (não confundir com o indigente), é hoje... more A situação de quem é pobre, isto é, de quem precisa de trabalhar para viver (não confundir com o indigente), é hoje cada vez mais grave e paradoxal. Se está desempregado, e o desemprego sobe a níveis inimagináveis, é a miséria, porque as protecções sociais escasseiam e diminuem drasticamente. Se está empregado, é submetido aos mais duros tratos: com direitos adquiridos em confisco permanente. Obrigado a ritmos de trabalho, metas, horários, cada vez mais gravosos. Um retrocesso civilizacional devastador. E quando tem escassos tempos livres, mesmo esses são formatados pela cultura mediática, que, muito frequentemente, leva água ao moinho da alienação.

Green Metaphors: Language, Land, and Law in Takings Debates

by Laura Hatcher

Published in Current Legal Issues, Volume 5 (2002)

This article was published in 2002, in the annual entitled Current Legal Issues, published by Oxford University... more This article was published in 2002, in the annual entitled Current Legal Issues, published by Oxford University Press.  In it, I examine the property rights debate in the U.S., paying special attention to the slippage in meaning among various terms used in environmental law and takings claims. 

Introduction to "Property Rights and Neoliberalism"

by Laura Hatcher

Co-authored with Wayne McIntosh, expected in August 2010 (Ashgate: Law, Property and Society Series)

This is the introduction to our new edited volume.  In it, we pose some questions for future research and provide... more This is the introduction to our new edited volume.  In it, we pose some questions for future research and provide a summary of the findings of our nine chapters. 

Economic Libertarians, Property, and Institutions: Linking Activism, Ideas and Identities among Property Rights Advocates

by Laura Hatcher

Published in The Worlds Cause Lawyers Make, edited by Austin Sarat and Stuart Scheingold

Twentieth century economic libertarians developed their ideas and identities through legal advocacy.  This... more Twentieth century economic libertarians developed their ideas and identities through legal advocacy.  This included making use of past arguments concerning the nature of individual property rights that, ironically, involved corporate interests in the late nineteenth century.  These corporate interests, eventually, became part of the regulatory framework that property rights activists in the 20th century took aim at.  Through the development of a "conservative public interest movement", these activists developed legal arguments within the institutions of the legal profession in part by creating new organizations in that profession, including the Federalist Society.  This paper describes this progression, linking ideas and institutions to activism among conservative public interest lawyers who self-identify as economic libertarians.