Download Free Local Justice Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Local Justice and write the review.

The well-being of individuals routinely depends on their success in obtaining goods and avoiding burdens distributed by society. Local Justice offers the first systematic analysis of the principles and procedures used in dispensing "local justice" in situations as varied as the admission of students to college, the choice of patients for organ transplants, the selection of workers for layoffs, and the induction of men into the army. A prominent theorist in the field of rational choice and decision making, Jon Elster develops a rich selection of empirical examples and case studies to demonstrate the diversity of procedures used by institutions that mete out local justice. From this revealing material Elster fashions a conceptual framework for understanding why institutions make these crucial allocations in the ways they do. Elster's investigation discloses the many complex and varied approaches of such decision-making bodies as selective service and adoption agencies, employers and universities, prison and immigration authorities. What are the conflicting demands placed on these institutions by the needs of applicants, the recommendations of external agencies, and their own organizational imperatives? Often, as Elster shows, methods of allocation may actually aggravate social problems. For instance, the likelihood that handicapped or minority infants will be adopted is further decreased when agencies apply the same stringent screening criteria—exclusion of people over forty, single parents, working wives, and low-income families—that they use for more sought-after babies. Elster proposes a classification of the main principles and procedures used to match goods with individuals, charts the interactions among these mechanisms of local justice, and evaluates them in terms of fairness and efficiency. From his empirical groundwork, Elster builds an innovative analysis of the historical processes by which, at given times and under given circumstances, preferences become principles and principles become procedures. Local Justice concludes with a comparison of local justice systems with major contemporary theories of social justice—utilitarianism, John Rawls's A Theory of Justice, Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia—and discusses the "common-sense conception of justice" held by professional decision makers such as lawyers, economists, and politicians. The difference between what we say about justice and how we actually dispense it is the illuminating principle behind Elster's book. A perceptive and cosmopolitan study, Local Justice is a seminal work for all those concerned with the formation of ethical policy and social welfare—philosophers, economists, political scientists, health care professionals, policy makers, and educators.
What are the social and political consequences of poor state governance and low state legitimacy? Under what conditions does lynching – lethal, extralegal group violence to punish offenses to the community – become an acceptable practice? We argue lynching emerges when neither the state nor its challengers have a monopoly over legitimate authority. When authority is contested or ambiguous, mass punishment for transgressions can emerge that is public, brutal, and requires broad participation. Using new cross-national data, we demonstrate lynching is a persistent problem in dozens of countries over the last four decades. Drawing on original survey and interview data from Haiti and South Africa, we show how lynching emerges and becomes accepted. Specifically, support for lynching most likely occurs in one of three conditions: when states fail to provide governance, when non-state actors provide social services, or when neighbors must rely on self-help.
Human rights law and the legal protection of women from violence are still fairly new concepts. As a result, substantial discrepancies exist between what is decided in the halls of the United Nations and what women experience on a daily basis in their communities. Human Rights and Gender Violence is an ambitious study that investigates the tensions between global law and local justice. As an observer of UN diplomatic negotiations as well as the workings of grassroots feminist organizations in several countries, Sally Engle Merry offers an insider's perspective on how human rights law holds authorities accountable for the protection of citizens even while reinforcing and expanding state power. Providing legal and anthropological perspectives, Merry contends that human rights law must be framed in local terms to be accepted and effective in altering existing social hierarchies. Gender violence in particular, she argues, is rooted in deep cultural and religious beliefs, so change is often vehemently resisted by the communities perpetrating the acts of aggression. A much-needed exploration of how local cultures appropriate and enact international human rights law, this book will be of enormous value to students of gender studies and anthropology alike.
Notions of justice and fairness are central to the American belief that the pursuit of a healthy and productive life is the right of all citizens. Yet in the real world there are seldom sufficient resources to meet the needs of everyone, and institutions are routinely forced to make difficult decisions regarding who will be favored and who will not. Local Justice in America is an insightful look into how selections are made in four critical areas: college admissions, kidney transplants, employee layoffs, and legalized immigration. This volume's case studies survey the history and modern rationale behind seemingly enigmatic allocation systems, chronicling the political and ethical debates, occasional scandals, and judicial battles that have shaped them. Though these selection processes differ significantly, each reflects a bitter struggle between opposing—and equally intense—principles of local justice. For example, are admissions officers who use special points to foster student diversity less fair than those who rely exclusively on scholastic achievement? How did the system of personal discretion among doctors selecting transplant patients come to be viewed by the public as more inequitable than compassionate? Does the use of seniority as a gauge in layoffs violate equal opportunity laws or provide employers with their only objective and neutral criterion? How have partisan interest groups repeatedly shifted immigration quotas between the extremes of xenophobia and altruism? In framing chapters, editor Jon Elster draws upon these studies to speculate on the unique nature of the American value system. Arguing that race matters deeply in all considerations of local justice, he discusses how our society's assessment of neediness balances on the often uneasy compromises between the desire to reward deserving individuals and the call to strengthen opportunities for disadvantaged groups. Well informed and stimulating, Local Justice in America speaks directly to policy debates in the fields of health, education, work, and immigration, and makes an important contribution to our understanding of the fundamental social issues that affect our daily welfare.
The well-being of individuals routinely depends on their success in obtaining goods and avoiding burdens distributed by society. Local Justice offers the first systematic analysis of the principles and procedures used in dispensing "local justice" in situations as varied as the admission of students to college, the choice of patients for organ transplants, the selection of workers for layoffs, and the induction of men into the army. A prominent theorist in the field of rational choice and decision making, Jon Elster develops a rich selection of empirical examples and case studies to demonstrate the diversity of procedures used by institutions that mete out local justice. From this revealing material Elster fashions a conceptual framework for understanding why institutions make these crucial allocations in the ways they do. Elster's investigation discloses the many complex and varied approaches of such decision-making bodies as selective service and adoption agencies, employers and universities, prison and immigration authorities. What are the conflicting demands placed on these institutions by the needs of applicants, the recommendations of external agencies, and their own organizational imperatives? Often, as Elster shows, methods of allocation may actually aggravate social problems. For instance, the likelihood that handicapped or minority infants will be adopted is further decreased when agencies apply the same stringent screening criteria—exclusion of people over forty, single parents, working wives, and low-income families—that they use for more sought-after babies. Elster proposes a classification of the main principles and procedures used to match goods with individuals, charts the interactions among these mechanisms of local justice, and evaluates them in terms of fairness and efficiency. From his empirical groundwork, Elster builds an innovative analysis of the historical processes by which, at given times and under given circumstances, preferences become principles and principles become procedures. Local Justice concludes with a comparison of local justice systems with major contemporary theories of social justice—utilitarianism, John Rawls's A Theory of Justice, Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia—and discusses the "common-sense conception of justice" held by professional decision makers such as lawyers, economists, and politicians. The difference between what we say about justice and how we actually dispense it is the illuminating principle behind Elster's book. A perceptive and cosmopolitan study, Local Justice is a seminal work for all those concerned with the formation of ethical policy and social welfare—philosophers, economists, political scientists, health care professionals, policy makers, and educators.
Through war crimes prosecutions, truth commissions, purges of perpetrators, reparations, and memorials, transitional justice practices work under the assumptions that truth telling leads to reconciliation, prosecutions bring closure, and justice prevents the recurrence of violence. But when local responses to transitional justice destabilize these assumptions, the result can be a troubling disconnection between international norms and survivors' priorities. Localizing Transitional Justice traces how ordinary people respond to—and sometimes transform—transitional justice mechanisms, laying a foundation for more locally responsive approaches to social reconstruction after mass violence and egregious human rights violations. Recasting understandings of culture and locality prevalent in international justice, this vital book explores the complex, unpredictable, and unequal encounter among international legal norms, transitional justice mechanisms, national agendas, and local priorities and practices.
This volume adds to prior literature about the ICTY by providing a comprehensive view of how people from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, and Serbia view and evaluate the ICTY.
Adolescence is a distinct, yet transient, period of development between childhood and adulthood characterized by increased experimentation and risk-taking, a tendency to discount long-term consequences, and heightened sensitivity to peers and other social influences. A key function of adolescence is developing an integrated sense of self, including individualization, separation from parents, and personal identity. Experimentation and novelty-seeking behavior, such as alcohol and drug use, unsafe sex, and reckless driving, are thought to serve a number of adaptive functions despite their risks. Research indicates that for most youth, the period of risky experimentation does not extend beyond adolescence, ceasing as identity becomes settled with maturity. Much adolescent involvement in criminal activity is part of the normal developmental process of identity formation and most adolescents will mature out of these tendencies. Evidence of significant changes in brain structure and function during adolescence strongly suggests that these cognitive tendencies characteristic of adolescents are associated with biological immaturity of the brain and with an imbalance among developing brain systems. This imbalance model implies dual systems: one involved in cognitive and behavioral control and one involved in socio-emotional processes. Accordingly adolescents lack mature capacity for self-regulations because the brain system that influences pleasure-seeking and emotional reactivity develops more rapidly than the brain system that supports self-control. This knowledge of adolescent development has underscored important differences between adults and adolescents with direct bearing on the design and operation of the justice system, raising doubts about the core assumptions driving the criminalization of juvenile justice policy in the late decades of the 20th century. It was in this context that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) asked the National Research Council to convene a committee to conduct a study of juvenile justice reform. The goal of Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach was to review recent advances in behavioral and neuroscience research and draw out the implications of this knowledge for juvenile justice reform, to assess the new generation of reform activities occurring in the United States, and to assess the performance of OJJDP in carrying out its statutory mission as well as its potential role in supporting scientifically based reform efforts.
The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.