Policing,profiling and discrimination law: US and European approaches compared

Counter-terrorism officials in the USA and the UK responded to the events of 11 September 2001 and 7 July 2005 with an increasing resort to the use of ‘intelligence-led policing’ methods such as racial and religious profiling. Reliance on intelligence, to the effect that most people who commit a certain crime have a certain ethnicity, can lead to less favourable treatment of an individual with that ethnicity because of his membership in that group, not because of any act he is suspected or known to have committed. This paper explains the context in which intelligence-led policing flourishes, and how this discussion contributes to the profiling debate in both the USA and the UK, and then sets out two key contentions. First, we argue that Article 14 ECHR as applied under the UK Human Rights Act has a more protective, and less ‘prosecutorial’, conception of discrimination than has the US Equal Protection Clause, meaning that judges need not find a discriminatory motive to find that discrimination has occurred. Second, we contend that Article 14 provides the judiciary with the key tool of proportionality, which, when properly applied, makes it harder for discrimination to stand up to scrutiny.     

Alternative agents for humanitarian intervention

The use of private security companies by national governments is met with widespread skepticism. Less understood is the role these companies can play in international humanitarian interventions in the service of international organizations. I argue here that despite valid concerns about the use of such private entities, we should nonetheless see them as legitimate participants in efforts to secure human rights protection around the globe. In order to assess their legitimacy, we need to ensure, among other things, that they can adhere to ethical standards when serving in humanitarian missions, that they can be held accountable when they fail to uphold the standard of justice enshrined in international law, and that their for-profit status does not have implications detrimental to humanitarian concerns.     

Sea for the landlocked: a sustainable development goal?

Outside Europe landlocked states are poor: 16 are extremely poor and another 16 very poor. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) recognise their lack of sea-access as a major cause of their reduced chances of escaping poverty and reaching the stated goals. This paper proposes including corridors to the sea and other forms of sea-access among the SDGs. It also discusses objections to doing so that appeal to the rejection of global egalitarian arguments, to the possibility of compensating those countries for their disadvantage rather than removing it, and to the territorial rights of the coastal countries. The paper concludes that none of these objections to the corridors, and a fortiori to the less ambitious remedies of the Almaty and Vienna Programmes, withstands scrutiny.     

A critique of humanitarian reason: agency,power, and privilege

This paper offers a critical analysis of the work of western humanitarian NGOs operating in the African continent. We argue that in most cases, NGOs and their supporters are deaf to the actual wants, needs, and desires – or, in other words, the agency – of those they are trying to aid. We do this by first offering a series of ways of understanding the ideological commitments that inform the work of many humanitarian NGOs and those who donate to them. In this, we expose the reasons leading to the failure of such individuals and organizations to recognize and take account of the agency of those they seek to help. Second, we offer evidence of the problematic outcome of this failure when coupled with a lack of recognition of the wider context of many of the conflicts that lead to the suffering of those that such NGOs intend to aid. In doing this, we expose the ways in which an NGO's own position can reinforce and contribute to the continuance of this suffering. This, we argue results from the simplified, inaccurate, and de-politicized ways in which NGOs tend to portray the problem of suffering both to those they solicit for donations and in their own conception of the problems and the ‘moral’ role that the organization itself plays in its work.     

National responsibility,global justice and exploitation: a preliminary analysis

This article addresses the problem of filling in a missing component of David Miller's non-cosmopolitan theory of global justice, as elaborated in his recent National responsibility and global justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Miller originally included non-exploitation as one of the norms of global justice, but he does not provide a theory of exploitation in his recent book. This article is a preliminary attempt to suggest how Miller might fill in this gap. This article identifies the problems Miller faces in coming up with a theory of exploitation, given the limits imposed by the other parts of his theory of global justice. It examines and criticises several possible theories of exploitation that Miller might use. Finally, it argues that a modified version of Hillel Steiner's liberal theory of exploitation fits into Miller's overall theory of global justice.     

Difference Scores in the Identification of Children with Learning Disabilities It's Time to Use a Different Method

In this article, we identify ten reasons why discrepancy scores (based on differences between IQ and reading achievement scores) provide an inadequate means for identifying children with reading disabilities. We recommend instead that children be identified simply on the basis of problems in reading skills, regardless of their IQs.     

Generation Units and the Student Protest Movement in the United States: An Intra- and Intergenerational Analysis

The American student protest movement provides exceptional opportunities to observe how formative political experiences can affect intragenerational cleavages over the adult life span and how they may reflect on intergenerational continuities. Long-term national panel data from the high school class of 1965 and data from their parents and offspring are used here to exploit these opportunities. The results show that a sharp rift in political participation and attitudes emerged between protesters and non-protesters during the protest era, a rift that persists into mid-life and one that testifies to the conceptual utility of generation units. Continuities across the three lineage generations are demonstrated by the moderate similarities in the ideological and participative orientations that are associated with the protest status of the student generation.     

A Better Look at Intelligence

The Planning, Attention, Simultaneous, and Successive (PASS) model is offered as an alternative to the unidimensional conceptualization of intelligence as a general ability. The unidimensional conceptualization has not helped researchers and clinicians understand variations of cognitive functions within special populations such as individuals with learning disabilities, disorders of attention, or mental retardation. Neither has this conceptualization aided in program planning for these individuals. PASS is a model of cognitive function based on contemporary research in both cognition and neuropsychology and provides a theory for both assessment and intervention. This article reviews concepts and examples of PASS theory and its application to reading disabilities and mental retardation. For example, the article links dyslexia with a deficit in successive processing. It also identifies the major difficulties of individuals with Down syndrome in phonological memory and articulation. Further research on successive processing, and planning as it relates to language, is suggested.     

Feminist Perspectives on the Human Rights Act: Two Cheers for Incorporation

This paper considers feministperspectives on the Human Rights Act. Itdiscusses the reasons why many feminists aresceptical regarding the impact the Act willhave on women's lives, including theimplications for anti-discrimination law,problems with the framework of rights in theEuropean Convention and deeper difficulties facingfeminism in negotiating rights discourse. Whileacknowledging these problems, it is argued thatthere are grounds for a more positiveinterpretation of incorporation. Questions arethen raised about the nature and scope of rightsand the role of the state in challenging genderinequality.     

Collective Responsibility

The basic bearer of responsibility is individuals, because that isall there are – nothing else can literally be the bearer of fullresponsibility. Claims about group responsibility therefore needanalysis. This would be impossible if all actions must be understoodas ones that could be performed whether or not anyone else exists.Individuals often act by virtue of membership in certain groups;often such membership bears a causal role in our behavior, andsometimes people act deliberately in order to promote the prospectsof members of a given group. Nevertheless, it is rational to awardproportionally to individual contributions to those actions andindividual shares in the production of the consequences of thoseactions.