GENOCIDAL MUTATION AND THE CHALLENGE OF DEFINITION

Abstract: The optimum definition of the term “genocide” has been hotly contested almost since the term was coined. Definitional boundaries determine which acts are covered and excluded and thus to a great extent which cases will benefit from international attention, intervention, prosecution, and reparation. The extensive legal, political, and scholarly discussions prior to this article have typically (1) assumed “genocide” to be a fixed social object and attempted to define it as precisely as possible or (2) assumed the need for a fixed convention and sought to stipulate the range of events that should be denoted by the term. Even if its meaning is a matter of convention, however, “genocide” is not a fixed object but varies by context and evolves in methods and forms over time. In fact, as relevant laws, legal interpretations, and political commitments develop, so do would‐be perpetrators modify what genocide is in order to avoid political and legal consequences. This article advances an approach to a definition of “genocide” that allows even legal definitions to keep pace with this evolutionary process.     

Blasphemy and Protection of the Faith: Legal Perspectives from the Middle Ages

ABSTRACT

Jewish, Christian, and Muslim legal traditions have all attempted to define and prohibit blasphemy: insult or verbal attack against their religion, against its rites and symbols, against God and his human representatives. Such laws could be internal (prohibiting blasphemy by members of the faith group) or external (prohibiting insult by those outside the faith). This article will first briefly trace the former, looking at how Jewish, Christian, and Muslim legal traditions from Antiquity and the Middle Ages define and prohibit blasphemy. The second part of the article will then focus on the second issue, looking at how Christian and Muslim legal traditions attempted to prohibit insults to the faith by adherents of other religions. We shall look, for example, at various Christian laws dealing with what was perceived as Jewish mockery of Christian ritual and sacred objects: from mock crucifixions allegedly practiced by Jews as part of Purim celebrations in the fifth-century Roman Empire to Jews who supposedly derided the Eucharist during thirteenth-century Corpus Christi processions. We shall in parallel examine prohibitions in Muslim legal texts (including the so-called Pact of ?‘Umar) of dhimmīs insulting the Prophet Muhammad or the Qur'an. This comparison will show that, while blasphemy was illegal and could be harshly sanctioned and there were lines that religious minorities must not cross, these lines were often not clearly delimited, and became the object of conflict and negotiation.     

Legal Innovation for Social Change: Exploring Change and Resistance to Different Types of Sustainability Laws

In this article I argue that a desirable future direction for political psychology would be to pay more attention to social‐psychological processes involved in the response to innovative laws, in particular those devised with sustainability and environmental protection aims. This involves taking into account the following premises: (1) innovation and change are not unitary phenomena; instead there are different types of innovation; (2) legal and policy innovation is a specific type and is highly central in an era when global challenges are increasingly dealt with by global treaties which are then translated into national laws with a call to transform local practices; (3) offering attention to the reception of such innovation involves developing specific conceptual tools; (4) devising a typology of legal innovation is one step in this direction; (5) furthering our comprehension of how people, groups, and institutions receive—i.e., accept, contest—legal innovation for sustainability is important for helping to push forward sustainability goals, which are legislated but far from attained. The present article outlines theoretical tools for addressing psychosocial processes involved in the reception of legal innovation, drawing mostly on the approach of social representations and the literature of environmental psychology, and offers three criteria for a typology of laws. Finally I present some examples of responses to subtypes of legal innovation from the sustainability domain, taken as an illustrative case, and discuss differences and commonalities in the processes of acceptance and resistance that each mobilizes.     

Counselors’ Mandated Responsibility to Report Child Maltreatment: A Review of U.S. Laws

Although counselors in 44 states are mandatory reporters of child maltreatment, they may lack an understanding of their legally designated role. This article presents the results of a systematic review of child maltreatment reporting laws in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The authors apply relevant legislation to real‐life contexts for counselors.     

Privileged Communication in the Counselor‐Client Relationship

Determining the status of privileged communications between counselors and clients is a complex task. The scope of counselor‐client privilege varies considerably across states, and several sections of state codes directly and indirectly influence its status. This article presents an analysis of state laws related to privileged communication in the counselor‐client relationship and discusses prevalent legal exceptions. The authors offer implications for practice to assist counselors in balancing their ethical and legal obligations.     

Victims of Intimate Partner Violence: Arrest Rates Across Recent Studies

Efforts by women's rights activists, concomitant with results of research studies and court cases, have prompted legal reforms in public policy that include recently implemented mandatory arrest and prosecution laws. A review of the recent research since the advent of these laws suggests that arrests of women have increased by 25–35%, while the most liberal estimate is that only 1–7% of all IPV arrests are of actual female primary batterers, suggesting that victim arrests are on the rise. Various factors contribute to officers arresting not only primary batterers but victims as well, creating confusion and resentment over mandatory arrest policies. The negative implications of this arrest pattern are far-reaching because errant arrests hold negative consequences for victims, including legal, financial, employment, and familial repercussions.     

Civil law regulation and criminal enforcement of mandatory vaccination policies: A comparative aspect

One of the most important tasks of any state is to provide everyone, including the child, with the opportunity for a healthy and fulfilling life. Processes of immunisation through vaccination are considered most appropriate for the prevention of infectious diseases. The purpose of this study is to understand the legal regulation of immunisation of the population and to give it a legal assessment, to review the legal acts on vaccination in different countries of the world and to identify the legal tendencies of resolving conflicts in the field of vaccination on the basis of court decisions. As a result of the research the prospective directions of work of civil and criminal regulation of vaccination of children, regulation of the right to education for children who have not been vaccinated, the lawsuits, petitions and court decisions regarding the population response to vaccinations were analysed. The authors of the study conclude on the methods of introducing mandatory vaccination of children, the development of new criminal legislation to protect rights and freedoms.     

Equality in Law and Philosophy

This article discusses various arguments for and against treating equality as a fundamental norm in law and political philosophy, combining prior arguments to the effect that equality is essentially an empty idea with arguments that treat it as a non‐empty but mistaken value that should be rejected. After concluding that most of the arguments for treating equality as a fundamental value fall victim to one or both of these arguments, it considers more closely arguments made by philosophers such as Ronald Dworkin and Thomas Nagel that base a duty of promoting equality on the fact that governments impose a legal order on persons without their consent. It concludes that these arguments are mistaken: if the legal order imposed by government is justified then imposing it is not wrongful and generates no duty of equal treatment, while if that order is not justified no requirement of equality of treatment would cure the lack of justification. It concludes that equality should not be a value in law or political theory, but in some cases other considerations (such as alleviating poverty and distress, promoting accuracy and substantive justice, avoiding arbitrariness, and other values) may justify particular rules that are sometimes mistakenly thought to be based on equality.     

What goes into a Paradigm? Some reflections on gender‐issue ‘differences’ between Sunni law schools,and the problematic of their historical attribution

Traditional Islamic law developed within a number of paradigmatic blueprints that were later ascribed to the ‘founders’ of ‘law schools’. This law was neither code‐driven ‘civil law’ in the sense of the Napoleonic code, nor was it ‘common law’ in the English and American sense. Speaking mainly in the language of traditions, medieval scholars formulated legal rules whose admissibility depended on communal consensus regarding their validity. Many of the rules remained imbedded in ‘examples’, Hadith‐reported case studies, and/or qur'anic exegesis, while the underlying principles formed part of the developing legal tradition. That they were not codified provided the latter with an inherent flexibility, enabling judges and jurisconsults not just to apply, but to develop the law. The following article is a study of a legal concept, tahlil marriage, and the ways in which the four extant Sunni law schools have dealt with this notion, including the development of legal categories that were brought to, and derived from, the concept in question.     

Should smallpox vaccine be made available to the general public?

In June 2002, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) approved draft recommendations concerning preparation for potential biological terror attacks that utilize the smallpox virus. ACIP recommends against both mandatory and voluntary vaccination of the general public. The present paper examines the moral and political considerations both for and against each of the general public vaccination options considered by the ACIP in the context of the state's authority over vaccination for the purposes of protecting public health. Although it is clear that compulsory mass vaccination is not justified at this time, the issues surrounding voluntary vaccination are more complex. Should smallpox vaccination prior to an outbreak be made available to the general public? The paper concludes that the vaccine should not be made available at this time. This conclusion, however, is based upon contingent features of current circumstances, which would change once an outbreak occurred. In the even of a terror-related outbreak of smallpox, the general public's access to voluntary vaccination would become justified, even in areas beyond where the outbreak has occurred.     

Professional Training in Applied Psychology: Towards a Signature Pedagogy for Forensic Psychology Training

Forensic Psychology is a recognised and important sub‐specialty of the Psychology discipline. However, after an expansion in the number of training places that were offered when programmes were first developed, recent years have seen these diminish in response to changes in university policies, resulting from reformulated Federal government funding models. In this article, we argue that it is important for the future of specialist areas of professional psychology to not only articulate the core skills and competencies that are associated with specialist practice but also to develop unique and distinctive approaches to teaching and learning signature pedagogies. Based on the premise that forensic psychological practice is, indeed, a distinctive activity that requires different skills and, importantly, different ways of thinking about the work from other areas of professional psychology, it is suggested that professional training in this area should aim to develop a signature pedagogy which combines methods of teaching and learning that have been developed in legal training programmes with principles of problem‐based learning.     

Affirming the Existential within Medicine: Medical Humanities, Governance, and Imaginative Understanding

This paper first distinguishes governance (collective, autonomous self-regulatory processes) from government (externally-imposed mandatory regulation); it proposes that the second of these is essentially incompatible with a conception of the medical humanities that involves imagination and vision on the part of medical practitioners. It next develops that conception of the medical humanities, as having three distinguishable aspects (all of them distinct from the separate phenomena popularly known as "arts-in-health"): first, an intellectual enquiry into the nature of clinical medicine; second, an important dimension of medical education; third, a resource for moral and aesthetic influences upon clinical practice, supporting "humane health care" as the moral inspirations behind organised medicine. Medical humanities sustains these three aspects through paying proper attention to the existential and subjective aspects of medicine. By encouraging authentic imagination among health care practitioners, medical humanities aligns well with both humane health care and governance in the sense of self-regulation. However, it can neither be achieved mechanistically nor well-measured through proxies such as patient satisfaction. Above all, it should not be allowed to supply, through inappropriate qualitative "targets," new forms of management tyranny.     

Nonrelativist Ethical Standards for Goal Setting in Psychotherapy

A number of authors have commented on the topic of mandated reporting in cases of suspected child maltreatment and the application of this requirement to researchers. Most of these commentaries focus on the interpretation of current legal standards and offer opinions for or against the imposition of mandated reporting laws on research activities. Authors on both sides of the issue offer ethical arguments, although a direct comparison and analysis of these opposing arguments is rare. This article critically examines the ethical arguments made by authors on both sides of the debate. The conclusion is reached that researchers should be mandated reporters of child maltreatment because the current arguments do not justify their exclusion from current ethical and legal standards. The author makes recommendations for the ethically responsible conduct of research in regard to this topic and legal implications are discussed.     

The “Paradox of Self‐Constitution” and Korsgaard's Two Conceptions of Maxims for Action

This article argues that Christine Korsgaard gives two accounts of maxims, the identity‐priority account and the form‐priority account. There is a tension between the accounts because (1) Korsgaard's form‐priority maxims account cannot function apart from the identity of a well‐formed agent that precedes and tests maxims to determine if they should count as reasons or laws, and (2) Korsgaard's identity‐priority maxims account needs the form of the maxim to precede, bind, and constitute the well‐formed agent. This tension mirrors the two sides of what Korsgaard has called the “paradox of self‐constitution.” The article concludes that Korsgaard's paradox of self‐constitution leads to an arbitrariness that undermines the formation of moral laws.     

Yemeni debates on the status of non‐Muslims in Islamic law

This essay examines Yemeni legal debates, in the period between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, regarding the status of and relations with non‐Muslims inside and outside the Islamic state. The legal works considered in this paper are written by Zaydi scholars, but they are informed by all other Muslim legal traditions. Studies of the Islamic law of nations and of the dhimma system have traditionally fluctuated between either wholesale condemnation or unqualified apologetic defence. And yet, as the works examined in this essay illustrate, the Islamic legal position on each of the controversial aspects of the laws of non‐Muslims is diverse, and it does not lend itself to essentialist classifications. Moreover, this diversity demonstrates the internal flexibility of the law and its inherent potential for reforming itself.     

Les autorisations d’équipements lourds d’imagerie médicale : un désordre organisé

Medical imaging is essential for all medical specialties and it is natural that the government wants to create a real healthcare provision policy in this area. Medical imaging and particularly the “heavy” equipment are subject to a regulatory and legal framework. This framework results in respect of administrative authorization mechanism. These authorizations are a major tool for development of medical imaging on French territory. This mechanism is an important instrument of economic regulation in controlling health costs. However, the access to this kind of equipment raises various issues in governance and administration but also in matter of economic regulation, distribution of healthcare supply in medical imaging in health territories and respect of public health issues. The authorization mechanism raises questionings, not only at national and regional level in terms of unequal access, but also at European and international level. Indeed, France is among the last countries in the ranking of CT (computed tomography) and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) equipment rates in comparison with many OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries. Now, these authorizations will integrate much more the concepts of accessibility and quality of patient care. The legal and regulatory framework of these authorizations will have to evolve and to adapt to new technologies and practices, which today should be a source of significant cost savings.     

The social context of musical success: A developmental account

This paper brings together extensive data from 257 children to explore the relative importance of social‐environmental factors during critical periods of children's musical development. The paper also presents preliminary findings from a follow‐up of 20 of the most musically successful children 8 years later to determine which childhood factors predict differences in success as adult performers. Those children who continued to play an instrument started at an early age, had higher parental support in lessons, and had first teachers who were friendly but not too technically able. However, these factors alone were not sufficient to predict relative success in childhood. Successful childhood musicians also appear to need teachers who are ‘not too relaxed’ and also ‘not too pushy’ and they also need to do substantial amounts of practice. The follow‐up study suggested, though, that successful adult performers were not those who did the most practice; rather, the successful adults were those who took part in more concert activities in childhood, did more improvisation, and who had mothers at home in their early years. The results are discussed in relation to theories of musical development and the changing influences of parents, teachers and peers.     

Race, youth violence, and the changing jurisprudence of waiver

This article analyzes the legal history and jurisprudential theory of legislative offense-exclusion and prosecutorial waiver laws over the past quarter-century. Initially concerns about racial discrimination and civil rights motivated the Supreme Court in Kent v. United States to require due process in judicial waiver hearings. Offense-exclusion and "direct file" laws evolved and expanded in direct reaction to Kent as lawmakers sought simple and expedient alternatives to judicial waiver hearings. The "just deserts" sentencing movement of the 1970s, which advocated determinate and presumptive offense-based sentences, provided a conceptual alternative to judicial discretion and a jurisprudential rationale for offense exclusion laws. Research on delinquent and criminal careers in the 1970s, which initially promised empirically grounded selective incapacitation sentencing strategies, provided another conceptual foundation for offense-based waiver laws that focused on youths' prior records. Finally, offense exclusion provided a politically attractive strategy for "get tough" public officials who proposed to "crack down" on "baby boom" increases in youth crime. The jurisprudential shift in sentencing emphases from considerations of the offender to characteristics of the offense relocated waiver and sentencing discretion from judges to prosecutors. By the early 1990s, as a result of political "crack-downs" on youth crime, the scope of excluded offense legislation increased substantially, became overly inclusive and excessively rigid, and exhibited many of the negative features associated with mandatory sentencing laws.     

Non-Monotonic Reasoning from an Evolution-Theoretic Perspective: Ontic, Logical and Cognitive Foundations

In the first part I argue that normic laws are the phenomenological laws of evolutionary systems. If this is true, then intuitive human reasoning should be fit in reasoning from normic laws. In the second part I show that system P is a tool for reasoning with normic laws which satisfies two important evolutionary standards: it is probabilistically reliable, and it has rules of low complexity. In the third part I finally report results of an experimental study which demonstrate that intuitive human reasoning is in well accord with basic argument patterns of system P.     

Ideology,moral reframing,and persuasion in the context of COVID-19 vaccines

A possible strategy for circumventing vaccine hesitancy and increasing support for vaccines is moral reframing. Moral Foundations Theory suggests messages framed using individuating foundations should be more persuasive to liberals, while messages framed using binding foundations should be more persuasive to conservatives. In an experiment, we investigated the role of political ideology and moral reframing in persuading college students to support mandating COVID-19 vaccination on university campuses. We tested harm-framed and loyalty-framed interventions to persuade liberals and conservatives, respectively. Results indicated that overall conservatives were less persuaded than liberals. Liberals were more persuaded by a harm-framed than loyalty-framed message when measuring ideology categorically (but not continuously). There were no differences in persuasion among conservatives. With further research, moral reframing could be effective in increasing support for vaccines and mandatory vaccinations.