Boundary-work and the demarcation of civil from uncivil protest in the United States: control,legitimacy, and political inequality

Beyond the reaches of scholarly debates about how to define and value civility properly, social actors across various institutional domains routinely demarcate civil from uncivil behavior. Yet this everyday classification process remains understudied and undertheorized, despite being widespread and having significant stakes for the individuals and groups involved. This article begins to fill this gap by developing the concept of civility contests—practical efforts to draw symbolic boundaries between civil and uncivil individuals, groups, or behaviors. Through a focus on the realm of political protest in the United States, this article demonstrates that civility contests involve a wide range of political actors (including institutionalized power holders, opposing movements, and the media) who engage in this boundary-work in order to justify the control or (de)legitimation of protest. It then highlights patterned disparities in the outcomes of these contests, demonstrating that the likelihood of being marked as uncivil and the extent to which this prompts negative social sanction is shaped by one’s social position. Overall, the article seeks to stimulate and guide future empirical research on civility contests and to deepen theoretical understandings of the relationship between symbolic and social boundaries and the role of symbolic boundary-work in the reproduction of political inequality.     

Civility Proxies and Social Tolerance in American Marketplaces

Acknowledging the wide–ranging possibilities for diversity in commercial and retail environments, researchers and scholars have long asked the familiar questions of "public for whom" and "public for what," understanding how much social tolerance in public space is commonly and informally negotiated by its users. Private interests have long played a strong role in controlling behavior in publicly used commercial spaces, and one of the most visible forms of such control has been the appearance of posted signs and notices throughout America's marketplaces that exhort people to be nice and to act appropriately—to clean up after themselves, to give (or not give) donations or tips, to not solicit, or to refrain from loitering. Such civility proxies have the potential to circumvent the public, face–to–face responsibility for and engagement with civility, and may likewise subvert the mutual trust and presumption of equality that civility can promote. Tolerance of diversity in public, therefore, may be impeded when the policing of civility is usurped by entities that are not direct public space participants. This article proposes that when public civility is dictated by signs–as–proxies instead of by the general public, the public realm's civility negotiation process that promotes social tolerance can be undermined by private interests.     

Male and Female Civility: Toward Gender Justice

This article examines the concept of civility in American society taking into consideration the influence of gender and gender roles, especially that of women in 20th–century America. This was a century in which social roles, especially those of women, changed or expanded dramatically, influencing not only individual rights and relationships but also the structure of almost every organization from the family to the classroom, from corporations to statehouses. As women have transformed themselves and their presence in our culture, men have also been forced to examine their relationships with women and, more subtly, the role of men in our society. A study of male and female civility must take into consideration the history of relationships between the genders at the both the micro level (i.e., interpersonal relationships) as well as the macro level (organizational behavior). As we move forward into the 21st century, we must not only reflect on the progress made during the last several decades but also continue to explore strategies that will continue to advance a climate where gender civility becomes more entrenched in our cultural values. Some of the issues and possible solutions that must continue to be explored in terms of creating a more civil society for gender relations are discussed.     

Accountability of nonprofit organizations and those who control them: The legal framework

Legal accountability, understood as either an obligation to meet prescribed standards of behavior or an obligation to disclose information about one's actions even in the absence of a prescribed standard of behavior, is imposed on nonprofit organizations and those who manage them by state law and by fedral tax-exemption law. A perception that charities are exempt from both the electoral control that holds government accountable and the market forces that discipline business encourages a tendency to look to law to ensure accountability in the charitable sector, to perceive that shortcomings in the law are responsible for shortcomings in the sector, and to conclude that repair or reconstruction of the legal framework is the appropriate corrective. However, although the legal framework is far from perfect, sweeping change will not likely solve the problems and may well undermine the most positive characteristics of the sector. Some aspects of accountability cannot and should not be the subject of legal rules. Efforts to make charities accountable by redrawing legal standards of behavior in accord with popularly recognized standards of propriety, or even “excellence,” are likely to be counterproductive. Instead, adjustment of the legal framework in the hope of improving accountability should be incremental and should be evaluated in the context of organizing principles and core values that reflect our best understanding of the unique strengths of the sector and the functions it serves in our society.     

论法学本科专业《商法学》课程考试改革——以法商结合人才培养为视角

21世纪是法商结合的时代，商业行为离不开法律的应用和规范，法律也寸步不离地在影响着商业行为。基于现代社会对人才的这种需求，高等院校所培养的法律人才必须是法商结合的人才。为实现“法律为市场经济服务，法律人为市场经济建设服务”的法学专业人才培养目标．以社会需求为导向，法学本科专业《商法学》课程必然要进行教学改革，关注学生综合性素质的提高，强化过程性质量评价，充分发挥考试的多方面功能，以考试改革引领教学改革，将考试改革的研究贯穿于整个教学改革研究中，探索考试改革对于教学改革的推动和促进作用。     

The Responsible Use of Psychological Testing in Child Custody Evaluations: Selection of Tests

SUMMARY

The responsible use of psychological tests in child custody evaluations requires an advanced understanding of both psychological issues of test selection and legal criteria regarding admissibility of expert testimony. This paper discusses the psychological and legal issues associated with test selection and with admissibility of expert testimony pertaining to psychological test data. It is argued that the legal standards of relevance and helpfulness require the methodology underlying an expert's testimony to be both reliable and valid. Therefore, it is essential to select psychological tests with demonstrated reliability and validity. Case law regarding expert testimony and the integration of professional practice guidelines pertaining to the use of psychological tests with ethical standards will be discussed.     

Elder Abuse in the UK:

This article evaluates the range of existing legal responses that may be utilized in cases of elder abuse in the UK. Because no single piece of applicable protective legislation exists, three possible levels of intervention have been identified: preventive measures, private law initiatives, and state intervention. In answer to the criticism of existing law, the Law Commission has published proposals for legal reform drawing on the child protection model. Questions are raised regarding the suitability of the approach given the intrinsic social and legal differences between children and adults.     

Social Civility in the United States

The existence of social civility is explored in terms of the components of social responsibility, social concern, and social involvement. Social civility is viewed as consisting of the degree to which people have a sense of duty or obligation to society, the extent of their concern for the welfare of others as well as themselves, and whether they help others through voluntary activities. The purpose of this article is to describe the level and distribution of the components of social civility in the population. Data are from a 1995 random digit–dialing sample of U.S. adults between the ages of 25 and 74. The findings fail to support the hypothesis of social incivility in the U.S. Adults report high levels of social responsibility and invest a great deal of thought and effort into their life and their contributions to others' welfare. Social civility is found to be higher among more educated, married, female, and older adults. Regular religious attendance, which predicts greater social civility, mediates the relationship of the key demographic variables with social civility.     

CONTESTED PORTRAYALS: Medical and Legal Social Control of Juvenile Sex Offenders

While juvenile courts were originally designed to respond to troubled youth by providing treatment appropriate to the needs of individual offenders, advocates of a system that "gets tough" on young criminals by meting out punishments based on offense characteristics (both present offense and past offense history) have become increasingly influential in recent years. In this article, I examine a special case, that of juvenile sex offenders in a Washington State county. for whom a 1990 law reintroduced treatment as a central goal. While Washington has been a forerunner in the shift toward a juvenile justice system in which offending behavior is the central factor in decision making, I argue that, largely as a result of this law, juvenile sex offending has been "medicalized" and that, in this process, distinctions based on offense characteristics have noticeably diminished. This case study provides both empirical support for established theoretical arguments regarding medicalization and a detailed explication of the differences between medical and legal assumptions about social problems.     

Politics gone cancerous: why the Marikana massacre should be prosecuted as an international crime

What makes the Marikana massacre particularly chilling and poignant is the fact that the use of lethal force on a mass scale was sanctioned by South Africa’s democratically elected government. It also makes the massacre relevant to international law. It will be established in this article that the killing of 34 striking miners by the South African police is a crime that transcends the limits and boundaries of domestic justice. This article will explore an approach to the legal aftermath of Marikana that has not yet received academic attention: the question of whether the Marikana massacre should be prosecuted as an international crime. The article will further consider the factors that will have to be taken into account in classifying the massacre as an international crime. It will be argued that even though instinctively a crime of this scale might seem to reach the gravity of an international crime, the application of the strict legal requirements for international crimes, the policy requirement in the definition of a crime against humanity, the doctrine of complementarity as well as the gravity threshold applied by the International Criminal Court render it complicated but not unlikely that the massacre will be considered an international crime in the sense of meeting the jurisdictional requirements set out for such crimes.     

The EU‐Turkey‐'deal': Legal Challenges and Pitfalls

The EU‐Turkey “deal”, based on the Joint Action Plan (JAP) between the European Union (EU) and Turkey, raises fundamental questions on the range of European asylum law as well as on the scope of the safe third country concept, which has turned out to serve as a political master key to “solve” the problems of the so‐called “refugee crisis” in Europe. This article discusses the legal possibilities of the application of the concept as well as its limitations regarding the human rights orientation of European and international law, focusing on the evolvement and legal implementation of the “Merkel Plan”. The legal analysis also focusses on recent ideas to make new “deals” with third states such as Libya. It concludes with a critical but differentiated(?) acclaim of the controversial externalizing policy approach.     

The Position of the Customs Law in the Legal System

The article considers the position of customs law in the legal system. It starts with changes concerning the phenomenon known as customs policy. The customs policy of the European Union is a foundation of the Union and an essential element in the functioning of the single market. All these changes have to be regulated by law; one of the branches is financial law. It represents a system of legal rules regulating the social and economic relationships that emerge in the process of generating, distributing, and using the centralised and decentralised monetary funds (financial resources) in the environment of the state and of self-governing administrative units, in the interest of providing for financial coverage of the fulfilment of their respective functions. The Slovak legal system and its individual branches including financial law can be characterised on the basis of certain principles. These represent basic goals, rules, and requirements expressing the substance and main focus of a particular branch of law. These principles are described. The second part of the article concerns the position of customs law, which here represents a system of legal rules regulating the social and economic relationships emerging in the process of movement of goods over the customs border. Customs law has its own development and is given a new dimension and dynamics by the common European area in the form of the European Union. The article concludes with the position of customs law, defining it as a subsection of financial law.     

Protecting and Benchmarking Migrants’ Rights: An Analysis of the Global Compact for Safe,Orderly and Regular Migration

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration (GCM) was to be “guided by human rights law and standards” in recognition of the rights of international migrants, who are currently protected by an overlapping patchwork of treaties and international law. The GCM contains many laudable commitments that, if implemented, will ensure that states more consistently respect, protect, and fulfil the rights of all migrants and also that states incorporate data on migration into a more cohesive governance regime that does more to promote cooperation on the issue of international migration. However, many concerns remain. Using a legal analysis and cross‐national policy data, we find that the GCM neither fully articulates existing law nor makes use of international consensus to expand the rights of migrants. In its first section, this article provides a concise analysis of the GCM's compliance with a set of core principles of existing international human rights law regarding migrants. In the second section, we apply a novel instrument to create an objective, cross‐national accounting of the laws protecting migrants’ rights in various national legal frameworks. Focusing on a sample of five diverse destination and sending countries, the results suggest we are close to an international consensus on the protection of a core set of migrants’ rights. This analysis should help prioritize the work necessary to implement the GCM.     

Transparent space: Law,technology and deliberative democracy in the information society

Abstract

The resuscitation of deliberative democracy in the Information Age requires the construction of transparent public spaces ‐ public arenas where power relationships between speakers are discernible and debate ensues according to the rules of civility and reason (conversational transparency). The metaphor of transparency, in the sense of legal accountability, also connects the role of communications regulation to the development of democratic political culture (legal transparency). Finally, transparency suggests the power of technology to obscure and hinder as well as help the progress of deliberative democracy (technological transparency).     

Training issues for supervisors of marriage and family therapists working with persons living with HIV

The purpose of this article is to address the special issues and considerations Martial and Family Therapy (MFT) supervisors might face with the increasing HIV/AIDS epidemic. Three primary issues will be addressed in this article. First, the importance of educating therapists regarding various aspects of the disease process and its transmission will be discussed, followed by educational strategies programs might adopt. Second, we will discuss the ethical and legal considerations that may need monitoring by supervisors and trainees. Third, special therapeutic considerations will be provided to supervisors of therapists working with stigmatized populations.     

Disability at work: Understanding the impact of the ADA on the workplace

It has been more than 25 years since the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed by Congress. Many supporters of the law hoped that it would improve the employment outcomes for people with a disability, yet many scholars argue that it has fallen short in achieving this goal. Such judgments of success or failure are typically offered with little regard for the complex relationship between law and social change. In this paper, I apply a socio‐legal perspective to scholarly research regarding the impact of the ADA on employment. Socio‐legal studies offer a variety of concepts and perspectives, which better capture the complexity of law's impact on social life, and the various paths through which it might have an impact on social change. From this perspective, studies tend to assume that ADA law will either impact social change directly or indirectly. I discuss the findings of both of these approaches and conclude with some directions for future research.     

Unobtrusively Stretching Law: Legal Education,Activism, and Reclaiming Title IX

We often understate the work that activists put into crafting movement tools. This article examines the space between legal texts and movement resources in a study of early activism surrounding Title IX. Though often hailed as a feminist law, the Title IX statute and regulations lay out a narrow set of individual rights and incorporate several conservative principles. In an analysis of early social movement mobilization surrounding Title IX by the Connecticut Women's Educational and Legal Fund (CWEALF), we identify a distinctive legal framing technique tied to the often overlooked practice of lay legal education. In a legal education campaign that targeted schools, CWEALF placed Title IX's actual requirements alongside broader feminist ideas about gender socialization and civic responsibility to imply that the law mandated substantially greater reforms, a tactic we call unobtrusively stretching law. This article contributes to research on social movements and legal mobilization by illustrating how legal education can serve as part of the tool-making kit for social movements as they struggle to transform legislative compromises into movement resources.     

Islam in Europa – Integration durch Recht und ihre Grenzen

The integration of Islam has largely occurred through independent legal systems. This article follows some waymarks and recurrent conflicts in this process, compares an individual rights and corporate recognition path of legal integration with respect to their possibilities and limits; and points to tensions between law and politics that result from extended legal integration. What stands out is the elasticity of legal institutions toward a religion that in no small measure must be an irritation to them.     

Civility, Rituals, and Exclusion: The Emergence of American Golf during the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries

This study examines the relationship between golf and civility and advances the work of Norbert Elias by providing a theoretically informed analysis of the ritual dynamics involved in the civilizing process. Employing content analysis of texts and other forms of data, the authors examine the origins of American golf between 1894 and 1920 and the way various attributes of civility were expressed in this newly emerging recreational pursuit. This research demonstrates that social characteristics of civility found in European noble pastimes were also present in the American game of golf. These qualities dictated a civilized code of conduct and etiquette that included self–restraint, practice, courteousness, proper decorum, compliance, and honorable behavior. Such a code of conduct distinguished the upper class from those of lower rank and designated the game of golf for the former while discouraging others from participating in this pastime.