The Influence of Perceived Injustice on the Endorsement of Political Leaders1

Recent public opinion polls have suggested that there is a striking lack of public support for national political leaders and institutions. The two studies discussed in this paper explore why public evaluations of political leaders and institutions are low. In particular, they examine the role of perceived injustice in creating dislike for and distrust of leaders and institutions. This focus upon justice is contrasted with the more traditional focus upon the level of outcomes received from the political system and upon congruence in citizen-leader policy preferences. The results strongly support a focus upon justice by showing that judgments of injustice exercise an influence upon leadership evaluations and in stitutional endorsements which is independent of beliefs about the level of outcomes the political system is providing to citizens or of public support for government policies. In fact, both studies suggest that judgments of justice or injustice have more influence upon the endorsement of political leaders and institutions than do outcome-related concerns.     

Responsibilities of Criminal Justice Officials

In recent years, political philosophers have hotly debated whether ordinary citizens have a general pro tanto moral obligation to follow the law. Contemporary philosophers have had less to say about the same question when applied to public officials. In this paper, I consider the latter question in the morally complex context of criminal justice. I argue that criminal justice officials have no general pro tanto moral obligation to adhere to the legal dictates and lawful rules of their offices. My claim diverges not only from the commonsense view about such officials, but also from the positions standardly taken in legal theory and political science debates, which presume there is some general obligation that must arise from legal norms and be reconciled with political realities. I defend my claim by highlighting the conceptual gap between the rigid, generalised, codified rules that define a criminal justice office and the special moral responsibilities of the various moral roles that may underpin that office (such as guard, guardian, healer, educator, mediator, counsellor, advocate, and carer). After addressing four objections to my view, I consider specific contexts in which criminal justice officials are obligated not to adhere to the demands of their offices. Amongst other things, the arguments advanced in this paper raise questions about both the distribution of formal discretion in the criminal justice system and the normative validity of some of the offices that presently exist in criminal justice systems.     

Beyond Skills and Structure: Justice Dispositions as Antecedents of Young Citizens' Volunteering and Political Participation

Community involvement is usually attributed to opportunity structures and individuals' ability to be involved. Building on psychological justice research, this paper proposes that justice dispositions add to explaining why young citizens become active in their communities or not. Furthermore, it is argued that justice dispositions help to understand why most studies find only moderate relationships between youth volunteering and forms of political involvement. In a sample of 321 young Swiss volunteers, this study shows justice centrality and belief in a just world to predict the extent of volunteering and political participation, even after controlling for civic skills and opportunity structures. However, scrutinising the motivations to volunteer, self‐oriented motivations (enhancement, social, career and understanding) more strongly affected the level of volunteering than motivations related to justice dispositions (political responsibility and social responsibility). These findings have implications for the attraction and retention of volunteers as well as for the politics of volunteering and community development in general. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Civil disobedience and legal responsibility

Conclusion In Section One the automatic ratification of existing law as immediately self-validating is shown to undermine the very purpose of law - the surpassing of arbitrariness and of Czar-like ukases. In Sections Two and Three there is an attempt to explore the justification or grounding that can be given for the existing laws and civil disobedience, respectively. In both cases, the justification has been given in terms of fundamental human dignity which should never be violated by empirical laws. Only when such a violation does occur can civil disobedience be justified. Therefore, the rationale for, and motivation of, both a legal system and civil disobedience are the same.However, one does not so easily resolve the opposition between the two. For the law itself is proclaimed apodictically, without the reservation that one may with impunity break the law and commit an act of civil disobedience whenever the law violates one's conscience. Otherwise, we do not have a rule of law but instead anarchy. For, as Jesus has said and Abraham Lincoln paraphrased it: A kingdom (house) divided against itself will not stand. The law cannot declare that it is legal to break the law without incapacitating itself. The law must punish its violators to be a valid law; without powers of enforcing sanctions against violators the law is no law.However, we must not consider for this reason that those who are responsible for making, interpreting, and enforcing the law (on the one hand) and those who are civilly disobedient (on the other hand) are working at cross purposes. Both are concerned with justice. The civilly disobedient individual (who has not given up on the existing legal system and therefore who stops short of being a revolutionary) is concerned with improving the existing legal system. He envisions his role as therapeutic rather than destructive. He believes that the ideal of justice is being violated in some way in the existing laws (even though these laws may have been found Constitutional by the Supreme Court). He therefore makes of himself a martyr, bearing witness to the truth, and hoping thereby to educate and enlighten and to move men of good will - in short, to effect a change in the law.Before an individual who respects the rule of law should be willing to be civilly disobedient he must be convinced of the violation of basic human rights in the law. He also must consider whether civil disobedience is the most effective means of producing the desired change. But beyond the pragmatic consideration of the most effective means to produce the desired end, there is also the question of what is most meaningful and suitable for him personally in living in conformity with the categorical imperative. Discussions of civil disobedience which limit themselves to questions of practical consequences do a great disservice to such actions. For, must we not admire those who resisted Hitler, even though they realized that their actions were futile in terms of changing the law and might even mean their deaths?In a free society, dedicated to the rule of law, all citizens are concerned with justice. Those entrusted with the responsibility of enforcing the law obviously must do just that, so that violators of the law have to be punished. However, when legislators and judges notice that some of the most perspicacious and conscientious individuals are openly violating existing laws in the name of a higher law, they should also make a serious reappraisal of their positions, looking to see whether they may not have become morally insensitive or careless. Indeed, the real value of a free society is its flexibility and tolerance of dissent, even that of civil disobedience, which can serve to dramatize forcefully, deep-seated convictions concerning the injustice of certain laws on the books. It is true that fanatics from time immemorial have been willing to sacrifice much in the name of their cause. But whenever one finds that there is an individual who is willing to sacrifice much without the hope of personal advantage and who is also willing to provide arguments in defense of his position, society would do well to listen to his words and actions.Without the constant delving scrutiny and criticism of existing laws, there cannot be true legal responsibility. Therefore, the civilly disobedient individual, who is willing to put his head on the block in order to abrogate unjust laws, is in fact the legally responsible individual par excellence.     

"Us" and "Them":

Abstract: In the Aristotelian tradition, politics is a matter of public deliberation over questions of justice and injustice. The Bush administration's response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, has been uniformly hostile to this notion, and it has instead promoted a jingoistic politics of self‐assertion by an America largely identified with the executive branch of its government. This is doubly disturbing, as the executive branch has sought to free itself from international law, multinational commitments, and domestic judicial regulation, even as it has sought to validate itself by demonizing its enemies. This essay draws out the disturbing echoes here of Carl Schmitt's work of the 1920s, in particular of Schmitt's conception of the sovereign as the ungrounded ground of the law and the political as the site of mortal conflict between friend and enemy. The essay argues that Schmitt's position in the twenties, for all of its evident problems, is superior to that of Bush, Wolfowitz, and Ashcroft in at least two senses: Schmitt condemns the idea of waging war for profit and recognizes that such wars will often be disguised as moral crusades waged against the “inhuman”; and he acknowledges that claiming to fight a war for humanity denies one's enemies their humanity, leaving them open to torture and even extermination.     

Finding Space for Criminal Prosecutions Post‐Conflict

Post‐conflict criminal prosecutions for the worst of crimes can play a meaningful role in achieving transitional justice. This once‐common view has recently been the subject of widespread criticism that is rooted in the belief that criminal prosecutions undermine reconciliation. This has lead some scholars to argue that we must either abandon criminal prosecutions post‐conflict or that we ought to use them for more general transitional justice aims, like restorative justice. This article argues against abandoning criminal prosecutions post conflict and against subsuming criminal justice aims under restorative or reconciliatory aims. When post‐conflict criminal prosecutions are properly structured and practiced they can bolster respect for the international, regional and domestic rule of law and in that way limit conflict in a number of important ways.     

THE IDEA OF DEFENSE IN HISTORICAL AND CONTEMPORARY THINKING ABOUT JUST WAR

What is, or should be, the role of defense in thinking about the justification of use of armed force? Contemporary just war thinking prioritizes defense as the principal, and perhaps the only, just cause for resorting to armed force. By contrast, classic just war tradition, while recognizing defense as justification for use of force by private persons, did not reason from self‐defense to the justification of the use of force on behalf of the political community, but instead rendered the idea of just cause for resort to force in terms of the sovereign's responsibility to maintain justice, vindicating those who had suffered from injustice and punishing evildoers. This paper moves through three major stages in the historical development of just war thinking, first examining a critical phase in the formation of the classical idea of just cause as the responsibility to maintain justice, then discussing the shift, characteristic of the modern period, to an idea of sovereignty as connected to the state and the prioritization of defense of the state as just cause for use of force, and lastly showing how this conception of the priority of defense became part of the recovery of just war thinking in the latter part of the twentieth century. The paper concludes by noting recent changes in thought on international law that tend to emphasize justice at the expense of the right of self‐defense, suggesting that the roots of just war thinking imply the need for a similar rethinking of contemporary just war discourse.     

An examination of the assumptions of specialization, mental disorder, and dangerousness in sex offenders

Sex offenders have been singled out for differential treatment by the legal and mental health systems. This article attempts to inform law reform efforts and criminal justice mental health policy by examining the assumptions underlying differential legal and mental health treatment of sex offenders. These assumptions include the theories that sex offenders are mentally disordered and in need of treatment, specialists in sex crimes, and more dangerous than other criminal offenders. Empirical findings demonstrate that sex offenders are not specialists in sex crimes and are not mentally disordered. Examination of past research suggests that sex offenders are not at more risk than other criminal offenders to commit future sex crimes. Implications of research findings for selective prosecution of sex crime cases, mental health policy, sex offender legislation, and predictions of future dangerousness are discussed. Proposals for future research needs and law reform are presented.     

Citizens' Sense of Justice and the Legal System

When an actor commits a wrong action, citizens have perceptions of the kind of responsibility the actor incurs, the degree to which the act was mitigated or justified, and the appropriate punishment for the actor. The legislatively mandated law of criminal courts, statutes, and criminal codes deals with the same issues. Experimental evidence shows that there are important discrepancies between the principles that people and legal codes use to assign responsibility. That is, the moral retributive-justice principles that people use are sometimes in conflict with the directions in which modern code drafters are taking criminal law. These discrepancies may cause citizens to feel alienated from authority, and to reduce their voluntary compliance with legal codes.     

Correspondence and metaphysics: Andrew Newman's The Correspondence Theory of Truth

ABSTRACT

The article begins by contrasting medical and moral views of addiction and how such views influence responsibility and policy analysis. It suggests that since addiction always involves action and action can always be morally evaluated, we must independently decide whether addicts do not meet responsibility criteria rather than begging the question and deciding by the label of ‘disease’ or ‘moral weakness’. It then turns to the criteria for criminal responsibility and shows that the criteria for criminal responsibility, like the criteria for addiction, are all folk psychological. Therefore, any scientific information about addiction must be ‘translated’ into the law's folk psychological criteria. Distractions about responsibility are then quickly canvassed. Then it addresses the direct relation between addiction and criminal responsibility. It argues that most addicts retain sufficient rational and control capacities at the relevant times to be held responsible, especially for crimes that are not part of the definition of addiction itself. It suggests that there is good reason to excuse or mitigate addicts for the crimes of purchase and possession for personal use. It concludes by briefly considering what contemporary science can contribute to our understanding of addiction and agency.     

绩效、能力、职位对组织分配公平观的影响

旨在探索基于组织分配公平的认知评价和决策行为的影响因素,为此提出了不公平阈限的概念,即在追求公平和谋求自我利益的动机权衡中,个体为了追求公平而愿意放弃的最高限度的个人利益。采用最后通牒博弈和独裁者博弈的二阶段实验范式,样本量为60。结果发现,工作绩效、工作能力均对个体的不公平阈限有显著的影响;对于公平判断和基于公平的回应行为,工作绩效起着首要作用,工作能力的影响次之,再次是对方的提议数额的影响。第一阶段对方提议的分配方案对被试越有利,则第二阶段被试的回应行为越有利于对方。排除能力差别的作用之后,职位差别并未引起不公平阈限的显著差异。根据研究结果,总结出分配公平的三项原则：绩效原则、能力原则和互惠原则     

An institutional political economy view on Thomas Nagel's ‘minimum humanitarian morality’ in global justice

Thomas Nagel's conservative position of the political conception for world politics and his insightful ‘Minimum Humanitarian Morality’ (MHM) view on global justice are laudable. He admits that the path from anarchy to justice must go through injustice. But Nagel does not clearly identify the conditions under which we put up with global injustice. This paper reviews the conception of MHM through the lens of the institutional political economy. In my view, to recognize the degree of structural failure (weakness in governance) as well as the degree of transition failure (elite bargain or personalization of power being interlocked) in each state can give us a hint on how to conceptualize and apply Nagel's MHM. We also argue that the scope and degree of humanitarian aid may vary in accordance with the options to global justice open to each state.     

Let's Not Do Responsibility Skepticism

I argue for three conclusions. First, responsibility skeptics are committed to the position that the criminal justice system should adopt a universal nonresponsibility excuse. Second, a universal nonresponsibility excuse would diminish some of our most deeply held values, further dehumanize criminals, exacerbate mass incarceration, and cause an even greater number of innocent people (nonwrongdoers) to be punished. Third, while Saul Smilansky's ‘illusionist’ response to responsibility skeptics – that even if responsibility skepticism is correct, society should maintain a responsibility-realist/retributivist criminal justice system – is generally compelling, it would not work if a majority of society were to convert, theoretically and psychologically, to responsibility skepticism. In this (highly improbable) scenario, and only in this (highly improbable) scenario, the criminal justice system would need to be reformed in such a way that it aligned with the majority's responsibility-skeptical beliefs and attitudes.     

Agency and responsibility: The personal and the political

In this paper, I review arguments according to which harsh criminal punishments and poverty are undeserved and therefore unjust. Such arguments come in different forms. First, one may argue that no one deserves to be poor or be punished, because there is no such thing as desert-entailing moral responsibility. Second, one may argue that poor people in particular do not deserve to remain in poverty or to be punished if they commit crimes, because poor people suffer from psychological problems that undermine their agency and moral responsibility. Third, one may argue that poor and otherwise marginalized people frequently face external obstacles that prevent them from taking alternative courses of action. The first kind of argument has its place in the philosophy seminar. Psychological difficulties may be important to attend to both in personal relationships and when holding ourselves responsible. Nevertheless, I argue that neither type of argument belongs in political contexts. Moral responsibility scepticism ultimately rests on contested intuitions. Labelling certain groups of people particularly irrational, weak-willed, or similar is belittling and disrespectful; such claims are also hard to prove, and may have the opposite effect to the intended one on people's attitudes. Arguments from external obstacles have none of these problems. Such arguments may not take us all the way to criminal justice reform, but in this context, we can supplement them with epistemic arguments and crime prevention arguments.     

Pathological gambling as an insanity defense

Recognition of pathological gambling as a diagnostic and clinical entity has been paralleled by its use as an insanity defense by gamblers engaged in criminal behavior. The societal ramifications of exculpation for crimes committed by volitionally impaired defendants require a critical analysis of the relationship between mental illness and criminal acts. Following a summary of current knowledge about pathological gambling as a clinical disorder, case law relevant to its use as an insanity defense is reviewed. It is argued that pathological gambling is not a serious mental illness for the purposes of the criminal law and that it bears no causal relationship to criminal activity. Legal and societal interests dictate that pathological gambling be excluded as a potential insanity defense.     

Training in law and behavioral sciences: Issues from the criminal justice perspective

Interdisciplinary training in behavioral sciences and the law should be appropriate for a criminal justice education program. However, adopting such an interdisciplinary goal is problematic because the divisions in the types of educational curricula need to be confronted. The relationships of the criminal justice academic community with the profession, and of the behavioral sciences with present criminal justice policies, must also be addressed in the attempt to develop familiarity with behavioral sciences and their legal relevance in shaping the criminal justice system. These factors may hinder extensive implementation of such training. Suggestions are made for incorporating this raining in a criminal justice curriculum.     

Accused for Involvement in Collective Violence: The Discursive Reconstruction of Agency and Identity by Perpetrators of International Crimes

This study explores discourses about involvement in violent intergroup conflict and international crimes from the perspective of perpetrators. Through a critical discourse analysis of 12 personal interviews carried out with individuals accused by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for crimes committed during the Yugoslav conflicts, we uncover how their discourse reveals conceptions of lacking agency and powerlessness during the conflict, how it reconstructs power relationships within and between ethnic groups, and how it reflects identity management strategies destined to elude blame and responsibility. Our findings demonstrate how discourses are tainted by the legitimizing framework in which the conflict unfolded but also how they are shaped by the particular context of the communicative situation. Findings are discussed in terms of their significance for international criminal justice and its stated objectives.     

Making the Punishment Fit the Crime and the Criminal: Attributions of Dangerousness as a Mediator of Liability1

This research examines how individuals use information regarding characteristics of crimes (e. g., crime severity) and characteristics of the offender (e. g, prior criminal record) to form an impression of the criminal as dangerous to society, and to make liability judgments. Two studies presented college students and community members with crime scenarios and asked for ratings of crime severity, likelihood of recidivism, perceived dangerousness of the offender, and liability. Type of crime, severity. and likelihood of recidivism significantly predicted both liability and perceived dangerousness. Further more, in crimes against people only, the effects of severity and recidivism on liability were partially mediated by individuals' perceptions of the offender as criminally dangerous. The discussion examines the implications of these findings for attribution theory and sentencing in the criminal‐justice system.     

?Psychische St?rung�� als Begr��ndung f��r staatliche Eingriffe in Grundrechte des Individuums

When dealing with ?old cases?? of preventive detention as well as retrospectively ordered preventive detention, a continuation of confinement should be possible if the offender involved suffers from a ??mental disorder?? which constitutes the danger of future serious violent or sexual crimes. In this psychiatric article it will be explained that the terms ??mental illness?? and also ??mental disorder?? must retain an empirical scientifically definable psychiatric content in order not to instigate deception. They must also be functionally defined in each judicial environment (police law, social law, civil law and criminal law) with respect to the capabilities of the individual which are impaired by the mental disorder. Such an approach could prevent a misuse of psychiatry for purely political security purposes.     

Police,courts, and corrections: Experiences of procedural injustice among Black adults

Racial disparities and a corresponding lack of trust have been documented within the criminal legal system. In response, criminal legal system actors have sought to strengthen the legitimacy of their agencies. However, legitimizing these agencies can be problematic. Some argue that the current criminal legal system continues the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow as Blacks are disproportionately policed and incarcerated. As a framework, procedural injustice can offer a unique backdrop and interrogate ways in which the criminal legal system engages in delegitimizing actions that provoke noncompliance and enable social control. Using a procedural injustice lens, this study examines how justice-involved Black adults experience mistreatment by justice system actors. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 84 Black adults in Newark and Cleveland. Study findings offer a comprehensive account of how participants experience procedural injustice as arrestees, defendants, and incarcerated persons. More specifically, participant narratives describe deliberately antagonistic, abusive, and dehumanizing treatment by justice-system agents—often depicted as racially motivated. Participant accounts also describe this mistreatment as occurring in a context of coercion and powerlessness and as being institutionally sanctioned. Implications for the preservation of racial hierarchies, research, practice, and community psychology are discussed.