Acclimation Effects on the Supreme Court of Canada: A Cross‐Cultural Examination of Judicial Folklore*

Objective. Few public law theories developed to understand the decision making of U.S. courts have been examined in different cultural settings. This study examines the applicability of the “freshman effects” theory in the context of the Canadian Supreme Court. Methods. The article uses analysis of variance tests to examine changes in the voting and authorship patterns of 15 Canadian Supreme Court Justices during the Laskin, Dickson, and Lamer Court periods (1973–1999). Results. We find very little evidence of acclimation effects on the Canadian Supreme Court. However, through the Chief Justice's power to compose decision panels, Canadian justices in their first full year of service are assigned significantly fewer cases than in subsequent years of their career. Thus, Canadian justices are given time to acclimate to the high court through a lower workload, a luxury not afforded to U.S. justices. Conclusions. Theories of public law adopted to understand U.S. courts may be limited in their generalizability beyond the U.S. setting because of the institutional and political forces that shape judicial decision making in other courts.     

Putting the child at the centre of inter‐professional cooperation in out‐of‐home care

A large part of most children's childhood is about taking part in educational and leisure‐time activities together with other children across various contexts. However, children in out‐of‐home care do not always have easy access to these possibilities for participation. In general, parents coordinate their children's everyday lives, but in the case of children in out‐of‐home care, the responsibility of care is distributed between several professionals and institutions. Research often recommends that inter‐professional cooperation should put the child at the centre and be more child focused. But what does that mean? The paper investigates theoretical understandings of ‘child centredness’ in inter‐professional cooperation. It also includes an empirical example taken from a research project that followed four children in their everyday lives in two residential homes in Denmark. The research explored how professionals work together across contexts in order to support children to take part in school and leisure‐time activities. The overall reasoning leads to the point that for children in out‐of‐home care, the possibility of exercising personal agency in their everyday life constitutes a difficult but vital issue. How children in out‐of‐home care learn how to conduct their everyday lives, is closely related to the ways professionals cooperate across contexts. It points to the need for close inter‐professional cooperation in order to encourage and support children's initiatives and engagements in activities in communities with other children.     

新世纪西方文论展望:文化研究与生态批评

20世纪的西方文论丰富多彩 ,更迭频繁。随着全球化时代的到来 ,文化研究将成为新世纪的显学之一。文化研究具有跨学科性、开放性、批判性与政治性的特征。新世纪文论界的另一显学是生态批评。它是研究文学和自然环境之间相互关系的学问。它把文学批评放在地球生态圈这一大语境下 ,以独特的生态批评视角和对全人类生存前景的终极关怀而充满生机和活力。它的宽泛性、跨学科性和开放性使它与现存文学理论交叉结合起来 ,使文学研究走向更加广阔的生态学视野     

Putting the parity into service‐user participation: An integrated model of social justice

Models of service‐user participation have derived from citizenship or consumerist agendas, neither of which has achieved the structural reforms important for the most marginalised social work clients. This article proposes Fraser's model of ‘parity of participation’ as an appropriately multifaceted frame for capturing the social justice aspirations of service‐user participation. A qualitative case study compared the experiences and expectations of people who had used Australian mental health services with a sample who had used Australian homelessness services to examine their expectations of participation at individual and representative levels. The findings reinforce concerns from Fraser's research about the tendency for identity‐based consumerist notions of participation to reify group identity. This leads to tokenistic service‐user involvement strategies that have little impact on participation at a structural level. Fraser's parity of participation is shown to have untested potential to reshape service‐user participation to meet the social justice aspirations of social work clients. Key Practitioner Message: ● Innovative, service‐user driven strategies for collaboration will be those which challenge existing power structures; ● Service users want their contributions to decision making to generate identifiable change in the system of social services; ● The success of service‐user participation strategies might be the extent to which political, economic and cultural opportunities are enhanced.     

十八世纪日本的变革思想和批判精神

在十八世纪,德川幕藩制国家作为官僚制国家在体制上已经确立.思想家在强化封建统治的意识形态同时,随着各种社会矛盾逐渐暴露,其变革思想和批判精神也逐渐突现出来.荻生徂徕、室鸠巢、山县大贰是变革和批评家的代表.而其变革思想和批判精神也是催生日本近代思想萌芽的温床.     

日本“辩论兼和解”的民事审判方式

通过论述诉讼和解制度在日本民事诉讼纠纷解决机制中的地位、诉讼和解率的变迁、辩论兼和解的含义、特征、采用的理由以及所存在的问题,剖析辩论兼和解制度的后果,得出结论是：如果将此审理方式予以立法化,将会导致牺牲民事诉讼法的公正性与透明性等问题。