Back for the future: a client centred analysis of social welfare and family law provision

The landscape of legal advice provision is entering a period of significant change in England and Wales. Whilst there is a great deal of uncertainty about how the future landscape of advice service provision will evolve, there are lessons to be drawn from past delivery models.

This article first looks back at the period following the Access to Justice Act 1999, setting out a range of delivery models initiated following the Act, as well as research and evaluation conducted in the millennium decade. Findings are then presented from a comprehensive qualitative study on how people experience and deal with social welfare and family problems, and on facilitators and barriers to integrated advice provision, including inter-organisational working. This is explored through the lens of a delivery model which emphasised partnership and the pooling of resources and specialisms to meet client needs: the Community Legal Advice Centre model.     

Brief history of law enforcement intelligence: Past practice and recommendations for change

Controversies have surrounded law enforcement intelligence because of past instances where the police maintained records of citizens' activities that were viewed as suspicious or anti-American, even though no crimes were being committed. This, of course, violates fundamental constitutional guarantees and offends the American sense of fairness with respect to government intrusiveness. Unfortunately, the boundary is not precise regarding the types of information the police can collect and keep. Some legal guidelines appear contradictory and the application of law to factual situations is often difficult. Beyond the legal ramifications, early intelligence initiatives by the police typically lacked focus, purpose, and process. Important lessons can be learned from these historical experiences that provide context and guidance for law enforcement intelligence today. Aggravating the [kinds of factors referred to above] has been the tenuous relationship between law enforcement intelligence and national security intelligence that has changed continuously since the mid-20th century. These changes have been both politically and legally controversial, responding to changing socio-political events in American history and most recently through post-9/11 counterterrorism efforts. As a result, there is value in understanding selected portions of history from both types of intelligence to gain context and understand the lessons learned.     

Shared services: An outline of key contractual issues

In the wake of the Gershon Report, commissioned to find ways of saving £20 billion in the UK public sector, and the growing strain on the public purse following the credit crunch and the global financial recession, procuring bodies are increasingly looking to the “shared services” procurement model to take advantage of economies of scale and best practice. This article examines the legal issues thrown up by the shared services model and ways of managing them.     

Juridifications and religion in early modern Europe: The challenge of a contextual history of law

To end Europe's great cycle of religious wars, some early modern states imposed a secular ‘rule of law’ in spheres of life previously governed by religion. The following essay compares two instances of this basic fact of seventeenth-century European political history, one German and the other English. In these different religious and political settings, different juridifications were undertaken that do not reduce to manifestations of a single underlying process of social change. Considered in a legal-historical light, early modern juridifications therefore invite a clear disciplinary alternative to the socio-theoretical and socio-critical perspective on juridification associated with Jürgen Habermas. The larger challenge on behalf of legal history is to end the subordination of historical method to critical social theory. This revised version was published online in November 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

法治是一种较为理想的社会治理模式——兼与刘永艳教授商榷

法治本身不是过程,而是一种较为理想的社会治理模式.当然这种社会治理模式可以是理念上的未来蓝图,也可以是现实中的制度范式和生活实践:而法治化或者说对法治的追求探索才是一个漫长的社会发展过程.西方国家法治化的不同进路说明法治化可以有不同的路径选择.中国的法治化应在充分认识国情的基础上走中国特色的道路.     

Law,ideology and social change: An analysis of the role of law in the construction of corporate crime

This paper explores recent efforts to theorize the potential of law as an agency for progressive social change in the context of the debate over corporate crime. Drawing on feminist experience with criminal law reform in the area of domestic violence, the author argues that the strategy of criminalizing corporate violations needs to be problematized, and that attention should also be focussed on exploring other avenues for progressive legal and political struggles aimed at the control of corporate crime.     

Criminal history inquiries and minority threat in the legal profession: An analysis of law school and state bar admission applications

While all but one U.S. law school and every state bar ask about criminal history on their admissions application, such inquiries vary considerably in the depth of information sought. One potential explanation for variations in the depth of criminal history inquiries among law schools and state bars relates to minority threat dynamics. Drawing on data quantifying the depth of criminal history inquiries for 190 ABA-approved law schools and all state bars, as well as school and state demographics, this study explores the issue for the first time. Negative binomial regressions reveal that law schools and state bars located in states with larger Black and Latino populations employ more probing criminal history inquiries. We also find that this relationship is parabolic—where the minority threat effect is negative in states with a critical mass of Black/Latino residents. Finally, minority threat effects for law school criminal history inquiries are moderated by state bar criminal history inquiries, suggesting that law schools are cued by state bar policies. These results provide some support for minority threat theory, informing debates about the continued use of criminal history inquiries to screen prospective law students and lawyers, and the inclusiveness of the legal profession generally.     

试论社会保障的法律保护

社会保障法律的制定,还需要强有力的行政执法手段将其贯彻落实。社会保障行政执法行为的主体是各级劳动和社会保障行政部门及法律授权行使社会保障行政管理职能的组织。据此本文提出了社会保障行政执法的主要措施、劳动和社会保障行政执法的主要形式、劳动和社会保障行政执法活动的行政监督、社会保障争议仲裁。通过社会保障的行政执法保护,使公民的社会保障权确实得到解决。     

Psychology and the law: The critical agenda for citizen justice and radical social change

Many observers have noted that the law-psychology movement has mostly failed to meet its objectives of producing social change in any radical or otherwise substantial way. One explanation for these disappointing results is that no systematic and thorough attempt has been made to explain what the radical agenda embodies, especially in relation to identifying its core assumption. Relying on several insights developed within critical theory and appropriated by scholars of radical law-psychology, this article describes four cutting-edge approaches to contemporary psycholegal inquiry: political economy, feminist jurisprudence, anarchism, and postmodernism. Individually, these orientations provide a clearer portrait of what radical scholarship has come to represent. Collectively, they suggest a new and much-needed direction in law-psychology research, especially in relation to advancing the aims of justice in the legal sphere. This article concludes by tentatively discussing the implications of the critically informed law-psychology approach for future theoretical and applied analyses in the field.     

Emergency suicide care in France: the psychiatrist's liability as seen in case law

In France, in general emergency departments, psychiatric consultations are on the increase and suicidal behavior represents a frequent reason for consultation. Psychiatrists treat patients whose behavior may be impulsive and irrational, and whose critical judgment is impaired. In emergency units, the reception and initial assessment of the patient determines his or her future pathway through the healthcare system. By its very nature, emergency medicine deals with inherently unstable situations, which may lead to the risk of medical malpractice. The aim of this article is to provide a summary of the initial management of suicidal patients by general emergency units and to comment on the medical malpractice that may expose the practitioner to risk of liability. An analysis of case history has shown that in suicide cases, malpractice due to inadequate supervision is the most frequent ruling.