Public Opinion, Demonstrations,and the Passage of Antidiscrimination Legislation

This paper considers the relationship of public opinion anddemonstrations to the passage of federal civil rights legislationsince World1 War II. Congress passed such legislation when substantialmajorities of the population favored equal rights and the proportionfavoring equal rights was clearly increasing. The evidence isconsistent with the notionthat civil rights demonstrations playeda significant role in the passage of the legislation. Both demonstrationsandchanges in public opinion appear to have been necessary componentsof the drive to provoke congressional action.     

Rural Landowners,Energy Leasing,and Patterns of Risk and Inequality in the Shale Gas Industry

Landowners who lease property for shale gas development (i.e., “fracking”) face the possibility of procedural disenfranchisement and risk. They also stand to benefit financially from bonus and royalty payments. This article evaluates the frequency with which these experiences occur and how they vary between landowners. Using a mixed‐methods approach, we combine surveys and interviews with northeastern Pennsylvania landowners with a content analysis of energy lease documents. We find that landowners generally experience relatively infrequent environmental harm, receive substantial financial benefits, and leverage their property rights to secure better lease conditions. However, our findings also demonstrate that procedural disenfranchisement does occur, environmental risks are infrequent but real, and outcomes tend to vary by firm‐specific rather than sociostructural factors. Accordingly, the advantages conferred by private property are not a panacea for the alleviation of risk and inequality in energy development. These findings inject considerable nuance into ongoing discussions of risk, inequality, and shale gas development: Rather than perceiving themselves as victims, landowners tend to see themselves as beneficiaries of industry activity, an experience structured directly by their ownership of property and mineral rights.     

Children's rights: developments and prospects

The decade since International Year of the Child has witnessed a variety of suggestions and initiatives to promote the rights of children. Proposals for ombudswork with children, a Minister for Children, a Children's Congress, a Children's Rights Officer, a Youth Charter and Youth Councils are each critically assessed. It is argued that the forthcoming Convention on the Rights of the Child may prove less effective in winning rights for children than its advocates imagine. The author concludes that rights for children are less likely to be achieved by adopting any specific group of reforms, than by acknowledging and supporting the principle that, wherever possible, children should be encouraged to make decisions for themselves and act on their own behalf     

Demanding an ‘adequate solution:’ the American Legion,the Immigration Act of 1924, and the politics of exclusion

This article analyses the American Legion’s role in developing a discourse of exclusion surrounding the Immigration Act of 1924. The Legion strategically used the political rhetoric of states’ rights and federalism in addition to racist and nativist language to emphasise the need for increased federal restrictions on immigration. The arguments found in the Legion’s resolutions, pamphlets and testimony to Congress place the organisation’s emphasis on the political disruptions caused by Japanese migrants within the context of evolving immigration reform. The Legion’s activism in exclusion contributes to an understanding of the history of states’ rights and federalism tropes in anti-immigrant arguments during the twentieth century.     

The National Protection and Advocacy System

Abstract

Many in the profession of social work are unfamiliar with the national system of protection and advocacy services that were set in place by Congress. The system provides advocacy and legal representation to protect the civil rights of all persons with disabilities, with a particular emphasis on persons with developmental disabilities and persons with mental illness. The article describes this system of resources, its method of operation, and shows its compatibility with the purpose and mission of social work.     

A liberal paradox for judgment aggregation

In the emerging literature on judgment aggregation over logically connected propositions, expert rights or liberal rights have not been investigated yet. A group making collective judgments may assign individual members or subgroups with expert knowledge on, or particularly affected by, certain propositions the right to determine the collective judgment on those propositions. We identify a problem that generalizes Sen’s ‘liberal paradox’. Under plausible conditions, the assignment of rights to two or more individuals or subgroups is inconsistent with the unanimity principle, whereby unanimously accepted propositions are collectively accepted. The inconsistency can be avoided if individual judgments or rights satisfy special conditions. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the LGS-4 Conference in Caen, June 2005, and at the World Congress of the Econometric Society in London, August 2005. We are grateful for the comments we received at both occasions as well as from anonymous referees. Franz Dietrich acknowledges financial support from the European Commission-DG Research Sixth Framework Programme (CIT-2-CT-2004-506084 / Polarization and Conflict Project). Christian List acknowledges the hospitality of the Social and Political Theory Program, RSSS, Australian National University.     

Where do organizational forms come from?

Most theory and research on organizations assumes that the great diversity of organizational attributes reflects variation in implementation of a relatively small number of forms. Modern conceptions of organizational form concentrate on discontinuities in distributions of either attributes or relationships with other organizations. We argue that this approach be supplemented with an explicitly dynamic one that focuses on processes that create and erode boundaries in the organizational world. This paper discusses some of the advantages of this approach and specifies a number of processes that create and erode boundaries around organizational populations.     

Topological social choice: Reply to Le Breton and Uriarte

One of us has given seminars on related issues at Cornell, LSE, University of Pennsylvania and the University of British Columbia. We are grateful to all participants. For helpful conversations we are grateful to David Cass, Birgit Grodal, Andrew McClennen, Murat Sertel and Ho-Mou Wu. The views expressed are our own.     

Empowering Communities Through Public Work,Science, and Local Food Systems: Revisiting Democracy and Globalization*

Abstract Communities are the foundation of our society and of our overall well‐being. Unfortunately they are experiencing rapid transformations that may significantly erode their capacity to remain viable and sustainable both domestically and internationally. Issues of empowering communities are examined in regard to social justice, challenges to democracy, and globalization of the economy and other sectors of society. It is argued that the ways in which we view and structure work, generate and disseminate knowledge through science and technology, and produce, distribute, and consume food are essential factors affecting our self‐identity and the empowerment of our communities. How we shape decisions and actions around work, science and technology, and food, as well as other key factors affecting our communities, is crucial to achieving a just and sustainable agenda for the future. Finally, it is proposed that all citizens be engaged in a procedural process called discourse ethics, which is guided by the principles of justice, recognition, respect, and accountability.     

‘English… it's part of our blood’: Ideologies of language and nation in United States Congressional discourse

Utilizing a combination of corpus linguistics and critical discourse analysis, the article describes ideologies of United States (U.S.) national identity based in civic and ethnic nationalisms. These ideologies circulated during debates and hearings in the U.S. Congress concerning the 2006 reauthorization of provisions of the Voting Rights Act requiring that multilingual voting materials be made available for language minorities in certain jurisdictions. The article argues that although those legislators supporting the use of multilingual voting materials construct an ideology of civic nationalism that promotes inclusion of language minorities, they are still greatly influenced by the dominant language ideology. Those opposing multilingual voting materials construct a U.S. national identity that places stringent requirements on newcomers to assimilate and learn English. These legislators simultaneously attempt to avoid the suspicion of ethnic nationalist ideologies by arguing that English is a neutral entity, detaching it from its dominant linguistic community. The findings suggest that despite Congressional support for multilingual voting materials, the language ideologies present in Congress are not necessarily favorable to the rights of language minorities. These findings have language policy implications in that they suggest opposition to a right to language for linguistic minorities in the U.S.     

Collective violence as social control

Collective violence is often social control: self-help by a group. It typically defines and responds to conduct as deviant. When unilateral and nongovernmental, it appears in four major forms—lynching, rioting, vigilantism, and terrorism—each distinguished by its system of liability (individual or collective) and degree of organization (higher or lower). Following Donald Black's paradigm of pure sociology, the central assumption is that collective violence varies with its location and direction in social space—the conflict structure. I offer ten propositions that predict and explain the likelihood and severity of collective violence in general and the four forms of collective violence in particular. Conflict structures with a high degree of relational distance, cultural distance, functional independence, and inequality between the adversaries are associated with collective violence in general. Each of the four forms depends on the degree of social polarization between the parties as well as the continuity of the deviant behavior to which the violence responds. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, August 1992, and the Centennial Congress of the International Institute of Sociology, University of Paris (Sorbonne), Paris, June 1993.     

Using the lessons learned from US and English law to create a regulatory framework for charities in evolving democracies

The evolving democracies of Eastern Europe and the former USSR republics are keenly interested in establishing charities. They have little law on this issue because their former governments did not encourage the development of charities. This article compares US and English regulation of charities and proposes a regulatory framework based on what the authors believe are the best attributes of both. Although the framework is based on the common law system, it can be adapted to the civil law systems of the Eastern European nations and the former USSR republics. The article includes such issues as developing a body of law, tax relief and creating a regulatory agency.Mr Hopkins is a lawyer with Powers, Pyles & Sutter, 1275 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20007, and author ofThe Law of Tax-Exempt Organizations (1992a).Ms Moore is also a lawyer, 5908 N. 35th St., Arlington, Virginia 22207.The authors would like to thank Mssrs Kersi Shroff and Stephen F. Clarke, Senior Legal Specialists, American-British Law Division, Library of Congress, and Mr. William H. Morris, an attorney at Steptoe & Johnson, Washington, D.C., for their kind assistance during the researching of this article.     

Should I Stay or Should I Go? Engaging and Disengaging Experiences in Welfare-Sector Volunteering

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - This paper seeks to reconstruct the specific experiences that strengthen or erode the commitment of volunteers in the...     

Evaluating the effectiveness of student assistance programs in Pennsylvania

This article presents data from an evaluation of the Pennsylvania Student Assistance Program (SAP). Focusing on both program process and effectiveness, the evaluation was conducted to determine the overall efficacy of SAPs in Pennsylvania and, more specifically, how SAP is currently being implemented. Five data collection strategies were employed: statewide surveys of SAP team members and county administrators, focus groups, site visits, and the Pennsylvania Department of Education SAP Database. A total of 1204 individual team members from 154 school buildings completed the team member survey. Fifty-three county administrators completed the county administrator survey. Focus groups were comprised of SAP coordinators, school board personnel and community agency staff. Site visits were conducted at five schools. The findings of the evaluation indicate that SAP in Pennsylvania is being implemented as designed. Recommended is the development of benchmarks and indicators that focus on the best SAP practices and the extent to which various indicators of the effectiveness of SAP are occurring at appropriate levels.     

Do Differences Matter?

Abstract

Have women members of Congress made a difference? A handful of studies have answered this “so what” question by looking for differences between male and female legislators. We build on previous research and propose an additional way of answering this question. If women members are making a difference, then they should be changing how men behave in Congress. Specifically, if women members are making a difference, then they should be changing how their male colleagues debate the issues. We content-analyze each House floor debate on the Hyde Amendment to see if women are changing how men debate the abortion issue. We find that men and women frame the abortion debate differently, and we find some evidence that women members of Congress have shifted the debate over time to focus less on the morality of abortion and more on the health of the pregnant women. We hope our research stimulates further work that not only looks for differences between men and women legislators, but also looks to see if the differences cause legislatures to change the way they do business.     

Rights for All: A Response to Blau

Most of the world's nations have revised their constitutions to protect the human rights of their citizens. Yet there has been no national discussion in this country to write human rights into our own constitution. Building on Blau's (2015) call to action, this work explores ways in which sociologists can align the principles of our profession to the advancement of human society and the protection of human rights.     

From refugees to immigrants: the legalization strategies of Salvadoran immigrants and activists

"The legalization strategies pursued by Salvadoran immigrants and activists from the 1980s to the present demonstrate that migrants' and advocates' responses to policy changes reinterpret law in ways that affect future policy. Law is critical to immigrants' strategies in that [U.S.] legal status is increasingly a prerequisite for rights and services and that immigration law is embedded in other institutions and relationships. Immigration law is defined, however, not only when it is first formulated but also as it is implemented, enabling the immigrants who are defined according to legal categories to shape the definitions that categorization produces. Immigrants and activists also take formal legal and political actions, such as lobbying Congress and filing class action suits. Through such formal and informal policy negotiations, immigrants seek to shape their own and their nations' futures."     

Delineating (and delimiting) the boundary spanning role of the medical public information officer

Medical public information officers serve as boundary spanners between medical experts and journalists. Editors at every daily newspaper in Pennsylvania and cardiac surgeons in Pennsylvania were surveyed about the role of medical PIOs. While the two groups expressed many similar opinions, editors generally were more open to medical PIOs as boundary spanners, whereas surgeons preferred to handle their own media relations.     

The Americans with Disabilities Act in Federal Court: litigating against public entities

This study represents the first systematic inquiry into the outcome of litigation against state and local public entities under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990. Because Congress instituted a system of judicial review that established the courts as the final authority of rights and responsibilities under the Act, Title II litigation has a potentially significant impact on the disability policymaking of state and local governments in the United States. The analysis is based on all reported federal court rulings through June 2000 in which the court adjudicated a Title II claim against a public entity. The results show that plaintiffs are moderately successful in their suits against public entities, especially when compared to their record in litigating against private employers. However, the courts, particularly at the appellate level, still exercise restraint about interfering in the disability policies of subnational governments when implementing the ADA.     

《中华人民共和国残疾人保障法》实施三十年:回顾与展望

《中华人民共和国残疾人保障法》(以下简称《残疾人保障法》)实施三十年来,为促进残疾人事业发展和维护残疾人权益发挥了至关重要的作用.本文简要回顾了《残疾人保障法》起草和修改时的背景情况、主要争议和创新内容以及法律通过后产生的深远影响,从全国人大常委会执法检查和司法机关法律适用角度分析了《残疾人保障法》的贯彻实施情况,提出了全面依法治国背景下促进《残疾人保障法》进一步完善和实施的具体建议,期冀能够对我国残疾人事业法治建设有所裨益.