Religion and the Human Rights Idea

Three recent books focus, in different ways, on the idea of human rights and its relation to religion and religious ethics. All three books discussed here address criticisms of the human rights idea and seek to establish the relationship of religion and human rights with regard to the field of policy. The present discussion begins with an overview that places these three books in the larger context of the development of the human rights idea and its historical relationship with religion. It then turns to Little's book, next to the collection of essays edited by Twiss, Simion, and Petersen, which is described internally as a Festschrift for Little, and then to Hogan's book, and in the final section it explores comparisons among the books.     

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.     

CATHOLIC ETHICS AS SEEN FROM PADUA

During the summer of 2006, over four hundred Catholic ethicists from around the world gathered for four days in Padua, Italy. About sixty of the conference papers have become available in two edited collections, Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church: The Plenary Papers from the First Cross‐cultural Conference on Catholic Theological Ethics, and Applied Ethics in a World Church: The Padua Conference. As the conference was marked by a distinctive and creative tension—between the diversity which characterized the nationalities and cultural identities of the participants, on the one hand, and the commonness of their religious heritage, on the other—these essays can tell us much about contemporary Catholic ethics in its response to global pluralism. The following develops four reflections. First, the conference papers pursue a style of scholarship that is at once critically creative and ecclesially rooted. Second, the conference raises new concerns about the importance that Christian formation must have in a pluralist world. Third, the participants affirm and defend the ultimate universality of moral goods while also arguing that these goods are expressed and embodied in unavoidably particular ways. Finally, the most important contribution that Catholic ethics can make to public conversations about issues of common concern is through its articulation and defense of key human values.     

Factors in childhood that predict later criminal behavior

A follow-up study was conducted on the aggressive and delinquent behavior of an original sample of 220 pupils of two age groups. The subjects were 7 and 9 years old in 1978 when they were interviewed for the first time. The present paper focuses on predictors of the subjects' aggressive and criminal behavior in adolescence and in young adulthood. Four different groups of variables were chosen as possible predictive factors: 1) parental aggression, punitivity, and attitudes of rejection toward the child, 2) previous acts of aggression by the subjects, 3) the viewing of violence on television during childhood, and 4) aggressive, indifferent, and delinquent behavior in adolescence. Physical aggression in adolescence and the number of arrests and traffic violations in young adulthood were used as dependent variables. The analyses established that for the male subjects, the best predictor of physical aggression in adolescence was previous aggression, whereas for the female subjects the best predictor of physical aggression in adolescence was previous viewing of violence on television. The number of arrests in young adulthood was best predicted for the male subjects on the basis of previous aggression and viewing of violence on television. The best predictors of the number of arrests in young adulthood for the female subjects were, apart from previous aggression and viewing of violence on television, also aggressive and delinquent behavior in adolescence as well as parental aggression, punitivity, and attitudes of rejection. The results emphasize the importance of the atmosphere of socialization in childhood and previous aggressive behavior as significant predictors of physical aggression in adolescence and criminal behavior in young adulthood. © 1996 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Between Literature and Psychology: Konishi Masutaro (1862–1940) in the History of Russo–Japanese Scientific Connections

The aim of this paper is to describe some episodes from the life of Konishi Masutaro (1862–1940), a Japanese scholar and psychologist who obtained his theological and psychological education in Russia and who played a role in the development of psychological science in Russia. Masutaro is mostly known as a translator of Lev (Leo) Tolstoy, and the psychological side of his biography is not well studied. Masutaro's life and work in Russia occurred in the context of great political and cultural changes. He was one of the first authors who translated fragments from Eastern philosophy (works by Laozi and Confucius) into the Russian language. Personal and scientific details of the life of this educated scholar are also given in the present paper.     

Evolution and the nonlegal equivalent of aggressive criminal behavior

Within the framework of modern evolutionary theory, arguments are reviewed that the nonlegal equivalent of aggressive criminal behavior may have evolved by natural selection among mammals, particularly primates, as part of their overall approach to reproduction. If so, the commission of aggressive crimes (or their nonlegal equivalent) by humans, and even efforts to prevent fellow social group members from being victimized by aggressive crimes, may also be partially explainable in natural selection terms. The plausibility of this deduction was explored, first, by specifying the three elements that a human act must have to be regarded as an aggressive crime. Summarily, these were that (1) injury to a victim must be a likely result of the act, (2) the act must be intended, and (3) the act must elicit negative responses from those witnessing it. The primate behavior literature was examined for evidence that some behavior of nonhumans met all three conditions. Affirmative results were obtained. Therefore, while further research is in order, human aggressive criminal behavior, as well as human efforts to control it, seem to have close parallels in other primates. This would be consistent with the notion that aggressive criminal behavior (along with its condemnation by fellow group members) is part of a social system produced and sustained by natural selection.     

Mnemonics Strategy Development: Improving Alphabetic Understanding In Turkish Students,At Risk for Failure in EFL Settings

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of integrated mnemonics on consonant letter naming and consonant sound production for three 4th grade Turkish students, at-risk for failure in an English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) classroom. Mnemonic picture cards, where the target consonant letter was embedded as an integral part of the picture, were developed (e.g., the letter C as the clock, the letter D as the drum). Results showed that (a) all three students reached mastery on consonant letter naming, and (b) all three students showed marked improvement for consonant sound production, with one student reaching mastery. Letter-sound correspondence performance remained near instructional levels one week post-intervention. Generalization data showed students could produce some words that began and ended with consonant sounds, once consonant letter-sound correspondence was mastered.     

The growing complexity of international policy in intellectual property

Intellectual property has historically been a self-contained policy at the international level. With the introduction of the TRIPs Agreement in 1994 and developments since the conclusion of the TRIPs Agreement, the relationship between intellectual property policy and other areas of public policy has become much more complex and interactive. This shift reflects the centrality of intellectual property in the knowledge economy, the rapid development of enabling technologies, notably the Internet and biotechnology, and the advent of the networked society. The consequences of this shift are manifold and herald the increased sophistication and complexity that may be expected of intellectual property regimes in the knowledge economy. An earlier version of this paper was presented at an international conference, “The Ethics of Intellectual Property Rights and Patents,” held in Warsaw, Poland on 23–24 April, 2004.     

Informed consent and the use of placebo in poland: Ethical and legal aspects

The concept of informed consent was one of the most fruitful ideas that deeply changed the relationships between physicians and their patients from paternalism to respect for the personal autonomy of subjects needing professional medical care. The great progress in medicine, also involving the pharmaceutical industry, has created an increasing need to perform different clinical and experimental trials. The evolution of clinical research in the last decades has influenced strongly the design of these studies. One of the most important changes in this field has been the use of placebo groups in double-blind controlled studies. The controversies have involved not only the use of placebo when standard or proven treatment was available, but also some specific problems concerning the procedure of obtaining informed consent in such trials. This paper briefly presents the evolution of informed consent in Poland as well as different ethical and legal problems concerning informed consent and the use of placebo controls in clinical trials. An earlier version of this paper was presented at an international conference, “Placebo: Its Action and Place in Health Research Today,” held in Warsaw, Poland on 12–13 April, 2003.