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Law & Humanities Blog

Three Law-Related Dramas Win Peabody Awards
BBC Drama "Silk" Comes Back To UK Primetime In 2012
Legal Philosophy in the Common Law World
Coal Mining, Up Close

Posted: 31 Mar 2011 11:16 AM PDT

CBS' legal drama The Good Wife, FX's Justified (based on an Elmore Leonard character), and Sherlock: A Study in Pink (an updating of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes), which ran on many PBS stations this year, have won Peabody Awards. Here's a link to the Peabody Awards home page, which lists all winners, including Rupert Gould's version of Macbeth, starring Patrick Stewart, aired on PBS, Spike Lee's "If God Is Willing and da Creek Don't Rise," aired on HBO, PBS/POV's look back at Daniel Ellsberg, "The Most Dangerous Man in America," and WILL-TV (Champaign, Illinois)'s "The Lord Is Not On Trial Here Today," an examination of the separation of church and state.

BBC Drama "Silk" Comes Back To UK Primetime In 2012

Posted: 31 Mar 2011 07:41 AM PDT

The BBC1 series Silk will return to the airwaves next year. It stars Maxine Peake as barrister Martha Costello. Read an interview with writer Peter Moffatt about why law makes such good drama here.

Lucky UK viewers can watch the first season of Silk online or on DVD.

Here's what Sarah Palin (not, not that one, this one's a barrister) says about the show. Here, another review by James Walton.

Legal Philosophy in the Common Law World

Posted: 31 Mar 2011 07:27 AM PDT

Gerald J. Postema, University of North Carolina, Philosophy and Law, has published Legal Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: The Common Law World, as Treatise of Legal Philosophy and General Jurisprudence volume 11, Autumn 2011. Here is the abstract.

This above-titled monograph tells a critical history of Anglophone general jurisprudence and legal philosophy in the twentieth century as a tale of two Boston lectures, separated by sixty years, and their respective legacies: Holmes's "Path of Law" (1897) and Hart's Holmes Lecture "Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals" (1958). The text here consists of the Preface and Table of Contents of this soon-to-be-published work.

Download the text from SSRN at the link.

Coal Mining, Up Close

Posted: 31 Mar 2011 07:29 AM PDT

The Harvard University Press Blog notes that Spike TV premiered a new reality series, Coal, March 30 at 9 p.m. (8 Central time). The first fourteen minutes of the first episode is available for online viewing. It offers a look at the work involved in drilling for and removing the resource from the earth, and the dangers that miners face every day. The miners who appear on Coal apparently do so without pay from the documentarians.

The TNT television series Leverage addressed the dangers of coal mining and problems with regulation in one episode, "The Underground Job," last year (commentary here). Steven Fesenmaier of WV Film lists movies about coal mining and miners here. Some films, like Matewan (1987), have a definite political/legal message.

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Medical Humanities Blog

On Chronic Stress, Racism, and Inequities in Adverse Birth Outcomes among Black American Women

Posted: 31 Mar 2011 09:36 AM PDT

Lisa Rosenthal and Marci Lobel (Psychology, Stony Brook) have authored a new article out in Social Science & Medicine entitled Explaining racial disparities in adverse birth outcomes: Unique sources of stress for Black American women. Here is the Abstract:

The infant mortality rate for Black Americans in the US is more than twice the rate for White Americans, with similar racial disparities existing in rates of low birthweight and preterm delivery. Survivors of these adverse birth outcomes have poorer development and health in infancy, childhood, and adulthood. Increasingly, evidence suggests that maternal stress is an important risk factor for adverse birth outcomes. We offer a novel perspective on racial disparities in birth outcomes suggesting that Black American women are subject to unique sources of stress throughout their lives and particularly during pregnancy based on their multiple identities as women, Black, and pregnant. We draw on interdisciplinary work to examine three unique sources of stress for Black American women that elevate their risk for adverse birth outcomes: 1) abuses of Black American women by the medical system and issues of power in obstetrics that disadvantage Black American women; 2) contradictory societal pressures exerted on Black American women about whether they should have children; and 3) historical and contemporary stereotypes about Black American women related to sexuality and motherhood. We discuss implications of this analysis, including applications to research and intervention. Developing a better understanding of the experience of Black American women during pregnancy and throughout their lives offers insight into ways to reduce racial disparities in adverse birth outcomes and their lifelong consequences.

This article is highly recommended. The analysis is subtle and penetrating, going several layers deep and bringing together a number of findings from across multiple disciplines to assay the several dimensions that converge to produce such stark inequalities in adverse birth outcomes among African-American women as compared to White American women. I learned much in reading it.

Law & Humanities Blog

The State of Literature: Was It Under Siege? Is It Still?

Posted: 30 Mar 2011 07:40 AM PDT

From NPR: one story about three books that made it past Soviet censors and another consoling us that literature and language will survive in spite of individual tastes and governmental policies.

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Law & Humanities Blog

Some New Books From Routledge
Bob Dylan and the Law: Take It From the Top
Rhetoric and Revolution

Some New Books From Routledge

Posted: 29 Mar 2011 12:26 PM PDT

Some new titles of interest from Routledge (abstracts from the publisher's catalog)

Jacques de Ville, Jacques Derrida: Law as Absolute Hospitality (due August 2011).

Jacques Derrida: Law as Absolute Hospitality presents a comprehensive account and understanding of Derrida's approach to law and justice. Through a detailed reading of Derrida's texts, Jacques de Ville contends that it is only by way of Derrida's deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence, and specifically in relation to the texts of Husserl, Levinas, Freud and Heidegger - that the reasoning behind his elusive works on law and justice can be grasped. Through detailed readings of texts such as To speculate – on Freud, Adieu, Declarations of Independence, Before the Law, Cogito and the history of madness, Given Time, Force of Law and Specters of Marx, De Ville contends that there is a continuity in Derrida's thinking, and rejects the idea of an 'ethical turn'. Derrida is shown to be neither a postmodernist nor a political liberal, but a radical revolutionary. De Ville also controversially contends that justice in Derrida's thinking must be radically distinguished from Levinas's reflections on 'the other'. It is the notion of absolute hospitality - which Derrida derives from Levinas, but radically transforms - that provides the basis of this argument. Justice must on De Ville's reading be understood in terms of a demand of absolute hospitality which is imposed on both the individual and the collective subject. A much needed account of Derrida's influential approach to law, Jacques Derrida: Law as Absolute Hospitality will be an invaluable resource for those with an interest in legal theory, and for those with an interest in the ethics and politics of deconstruction.

Law and Art: Ethics, Aesthetics, Justice (Ed. Oren Ben-Dor). (published March 2011).

The contributions to Law and Art address the interaction between law, justice, the ethical and the aesthetic. The exercise of the legal role and the scholarly understanding of legal texts were classically defined as ars iuris – an art of law – which drew on the panoply of humanist disciplines, from philology to fine art. That tradition has fallen by the wayside, particularly in the wake of modernism. But, as this book demonstrates, a
consideration of the relationship between law and art can still bring jurisprudence, and particularly critical
jurisprudence, to life. In its attention to the inexpressible, art can contribute to the liberation of legal doctrine from its own self-imposed limits. It can inform the ethics of a legal theory that is concerned to address how theoretical abstractions and concrete oppressions overlook the singularity and spontaneity to which art attests. The contributors to this volume – and their engagement with the full range of 'the arts' – seek, therefore, to disturb and to supplement conventional accounts of justice: raising the difficulty, but also the promise, of that surplus which art reveals: of life over legal formalisation.

Deidre Pribram, Emotions, Genre, and Justice in Film and Television (published March, 2011).

Through their cultural meanings and uses, emotions enable social identities to be created and contested, to
become fixed or alter. Popular narratives often take on emotional significance, aiding groups of people in
recognizing or expressing what they feel and who they are. This book focuses on the justice genres – the generic network of film and television programs that are concerned with crime, law, and social order – to examine how fictional police, detective, and legal stories participate in collectively realized conceptions of emotion. A range of films (Crash, Man on Fire) and television series (Cold Case, Cagney and Lacey) serve as case studies to explore contemporarily relevant representations of anger, fear, loss and consolation, and compassion.

Michael Salter, Carl Schmitt: Law as Politics, Ideology and Strategic Myth (due October 2011).

There has been and continues to be a remarkable revival in academic interest in Carl Schmitt's thought within politics, but this is the first book to address his thought from an explicitly legal theoretical perspective. Transcending the prevailing one-sided and purely historical focus on Schmitt's significance for debates that took place in the Weimar Republic 1919-1933, this book addresses the actual and potential significance of Schmitt's thought for debates within contemporary Anglo-American legal theory that have emerged during the past three decades.

These include: the critique of legal positivism; the 'indeterminacy thesis' of American Critical Legal Studies; the reinterpretation of law as a form of strategically disguised politics by the contemporary sociology of law movement; the emphasis upon law as implicated in, and as aspect of, a network of mobile yet dispersed power relationships irreducible to a central state; the legal theoretical critique of human rights and liberalism more generally; Schmitt's critique of innovations within international criminal law: the inhumanity and hypocrisy of supposedly universalistic 'crimes against humanity'; and the retrospective criminalisation of 'aggressive war' as part of the Nuremberg trials process. In these respects, therefore, Michael Salter provides an overview and assessment of Schmitt's thought, as well as a consideration of its relevance for contemporary legal thought.
Veronique Voruz, Foucault and Criminology: An Introduction (due April, 2011).

[p]rovides an introduction to Michel Foucault, written from the perspective of criminology's engagement with his work. Foucault's writing has become a central reference in theoretical and sociological criminology generally and, more specifically, in what Jock Young has called 'control theory'. The main purpose of this book is to offer a better, clearer and deeper understanding of ongoing criminological debates to both undergraduate and research students in criminology by outlining the theoretical framework which criminologists have taken from Foucault. Its second purpose is to trace the evolution of Foucault's political project and to counterpose the thrust of his elaborations to the more pedestrian applications of his critical analyses of the present in the field of criminology. In these respects, Foucault and Criminology offers a 'map' to guide students and practitioners of criminology: both through Foucault's own writings and those of contemporary criminologists whose work may be characterised as Foucauldian. In so doing, it also pursues the argument that Foucault's historical and theoretical analyses of discipline, power and governance must be understood in the context of his overall project if criminologists are to avoid reducing Foucault's radicality, and to reclaim the critical, and resistive, potential of his work.

Bob Dylan and the Law: Take It From the Top

Posted: 29 Mar 2011 10:18 AM PDT

The blog Nightly Song has an interesting post on Bob Dylan and Law, seeming to take its cue from the Bob Dylan and Law conference post here several days ago). The poster notes and comments on several Dylan songs that discuss, lament or rail against the law and justice. Several commenters also chime in with their takes on Dylan songs.

Rhetoric and Revolution

Posted: 29 Mar 2011 08:23 AM PDT

Fernando Estrada, Universidad Externado de Colombia, Facultadad de Finanzas, Gobierno y Relaciones Internacionales, and Boris Salazar, Universidad del Valle have published Brains that Make Revolutions. Here is the abstract.

This paper work assesses the key aspects of a framework for research on revolutions. Our approach includes a heuristic based on an idea suggested by Marx in the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: "The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living." From this maxim of Marx advance on conventional interpretations by postulating that the language and metaphors are a challenge in several respects: (1) The brain is a physical basis for understanding key political revolutions, (2) advances in neuroscience and language (Lakoff/Johnson/Narayanan) have allowed the reconstruction of conceptual frameworks in various fields, including philosophy, mathematics and politics (3) The language expressed in songs, text, flags, emblems, illustrations, slogans, speeches and rumors is key to represent and demonstrate loyalty to the idea of revolution and, more crucially, to "make" the revolution, (4) Metaphors are a powerful rational action in revolutionary processes. One interpretation of these can contribute to decipher, for example, how the brain are activated in neural systems that link past and present, how to operate the symbolic frameworks of language to influence political opinion, how metaphors interact with processes artificial simulation or how metaphors evolve in a revolution from simple metaphors.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

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Law & Humanities Blog

The CSA's Legal History

Posted: 28 Mar 2011 03:21 PM PDT

G. Edward White, University of Virginia School of Law, has published Recovering the Legal History of the Confederacy as Virginia Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper No. 2011-11. Here is the abstract.

Although the government of the Confederate States of America has been formally treated as a legal nullity since 1878, from February, 1861 to April, 1865 the Confederacy was a real government, with a Constitution, a Congress, district courts, and administrative offices. This Article seeks to recover the legal order of the Confederacy in its robust state, before the prospect of its obliteration came to pass.

The Article explores the question why certain southern states would have considered seceding from the United States, and forming a separate nation, in late 1860 and early 1861. It then turns to the legal order of the Confederacy that was erected after secession. If focuses on two characteristics of that legal order: its architecture, including the drafting of the Confederate Constitution, the establishment of Confederate district courts, and the failure of the Confederate Congress to organize a Supreme Court for the Confederacy; and the central legal issues with which the Confederate government was preoccupied.

The Article concludes that in the minds of contemporaries, the outcome of the Civil War and the dissolution of the Confederacy that accompanied it represented a transformative phase in American history, in which the way of life that the Confederacy symbolized was confined to oblivion. Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

UCLA Conference On Pedro Almodovoar

Posted: 28 Mar 2011 09:23 AM PDT

UCLA's New Center for Psychoanalysis is hosting a conference devoted to the films of Pedro Almodovor, Mirrors of the Heart: The Films of Pedro Almodovar. It takes place April 16. Says coordinator Dr. Thomas Brod, "These films are like dreams...There's anxiety in small measures, and you're always in identification with the characters, no matter what they're doing. It's open to all sorts of possibilities. The visual qualities are so exciting, and there's plenty to chew on psychoanalytically. So we like to have psychoanalysts from many different kinds of theoretical perspectives discussing it."

While the experts at this conference don't seem to have the intersection of psychoanalysis and law directly in their sights, I would think that that intersection would be interesting to examine, particularly considering Mr. Almodovor's subjects. Notes another speaker, Dr. Sandra E. Fenster, at the upcoming conference, "Voyeurism, blackmail, unconscious fantasy, early relationships that persist in an adult's mind -- his films really capture that." She will be discussing the film Broken Embraces (2009) "to illustrate obsessive love triangles and jealous revenge."

Last year's conference centered on Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind).

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Medical Humanities Blog

Off Sick: Narratives of Illness Past and Present

Posted: 28 Mar 2011 11:53 AM PDT

Off Sick; Narratives of Illness Past and Present

Scholars from the universities of Glamorgan and Cardiff are currently breaking new ground in the Medical Humanities with the Off Sick project. This research initiative, led by Dr Martin Willis and Dr Keir Waddington, puts a new twist on the well-known concept of the 'illness narrative'. It focuses not on the people who actually suffer from illness, but instead on those who support and care for them. In this vein the project team is currently gathering stories from carers across the South Wales area.

This is very much an interdisciplinary project, which aims to explore not only how carers construct and define their experiences through stories in the present day, but also how they did so in previous decades and centuries. Moreover, Off Sick also brings in comparative material from the literary sphere, including fictional accounts, life-writing and poetry.
The peg on which this work is hung is the encounter with 'medical institutions'. Indeed, the very idea of the illness narrative arose partly in response to a tendency for clinicians to neglect the experiences of the patient, seeing them instead in de-personalized terms as biological problems to be solved with science. Illness narratives are often perceived as a means of reversing this trend and re-empowering the patient.

For that reason, the stories that Off Sick is particularly interested in deal with visits to hospitals and other clinical settings. However, it is the ways in which carers and family members turn their experiences of such encounters into narratives that is the real crux of this research. This emphasis on the stories of those around illness, together with its holistic and comparative approach to contemporary, historical and literary materials, is what makes Off Sick so innovative.

The project's findings will be showcased through academic presentations and publications, and also through an exhibition (scheduled for June 2011) which is aimed not at academics but at individuals and groups whose lives have been affected by illness and who have their own stories to tell about it. In addition, Off Sick runs a lively, varied and ongoing programme of events and public talks drawing on the expertise of literary scholars, historians, social scientists and medical practitioners.

For more information on the project you can visit the Off Sick website (http://literatureandscience.research.glam.ac.uk/cissmi/offsick/), join the Off Sick Facebook group (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Off-Sick/133055340078848) or follow Off Sick on Twitter (http://twitter.com/OffSick). Alternatively please contact the project's Research Assistant, Dr Richard Marsden, on rmarsden@glam.ac.uk.

Law & Humanities Blog

Garrow the Lawyer

Posted: 27 Mar 2011 11:19 AM PDT

The first season of Garrow's Law, the popular BBC series based on the life of eighteenth century barrister William Garrow, is now available in the U.S. U.K.

fans can obtain both season 1 and season 2.

More about lawyer Garrow's brilliant career here in an article from the Daily Mail, which notes,

Garrow was the Robin Hood of the courtroom - a poor boy who had worked his way up and was now determined that the penniless, the ignorant and the weak would no longer be tried by corrupt officials and framed for crimes they did not commit. It was Garrow who coined the phrase 'innocent until proven guilty'. But the extraordinary story of the young barrister, who became the celebrity of his day, might have been confined to the annals of history had it not been for the publication of Old Bailey trials from 1674 to 1913. When these transcripts were put online for the first time in 2008, dozens of television production companies fell upon them, scouring the court reports to find possible dramatic spin-offs. It was researchers for TwentyTwenty Television who came across Garrow's incredible courtroom performances, and spotted a potential hero from the past who could be immortalised in a television drama. The BBC eagerly agreed, and the project was handed to 51-year-old Tony Marchant, the award-winning writer behind Holding On and The Mark Of Cain.

Clive Anderson of the Telegraph discusses Garrow here. Here's a link to the Garrow Society. Also of interest: The Old Bailey Online, an immense project which allows access to information about nearly 200,000 trial held at the criminal court. John Hostetler and Richard Braby have written a biography of William Garrow, Sir William Garrow: His Life, Times, and Fight For Justice (Waterside Press, 2009). Read More... Law & Humanities Blog

Law & Humanities Blog

A New Blog From Osgoode Law School

Posted: 26 Mar 2011 02:10 PM PDT

Kate Sutherland of Osgoode Law School has launched a new blog, law.arts.culture. Below, the welcome post.

Welcome to law.arts.culture, a blog devoted to exploration of the intersection of law and the arts. I'm blogging solo for the moment which is apt to tilt the blog in a literary direction given that much of my research and teaching is in the field of law and literature, and that I'm a fiction writer besides. But I'm in the process of recruiting a team of bloggers—Osgoode colleagues, students, and alumni—whose diversity of interests and expertise will soon broaden the focus to include music, film, theatre, visual art, and more. Please visit often, and join in the conversation!

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Law & Humanities Blog

Iurisdictio-lex Malacitana: An Interesting Law and Humanities Blog

Posted: 25 Mar 2011 02:10 PM PDT

José Calvo González, Professor of Philosophy of Law, University of Malaga, writes the blog Iurisdictio-lex Malacitana in French, Spanish, and English (there might be a few more languages in there) on the intersections of law, the arts, philosophy, and narrative.

According to the Encyclopedic Dictionary of Roman Law, the Lex Malacitana, together with the Lex Salpensana, was found on bronze tablets in Spain, near Malaga. The Lex Malacitana contains information about "municipal assemblies, candidates in elections and voting, the adminsitration of municipal funds, tax-farming, fines, and the like." See Adolf Berger, Encyclopedia Dictionary of Roman Law, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 43, part 2, n.s.

(1953) at 559.

Bob Dylan and the Law

Posted: 25 Mar 2011 08:21 AM PDT

Fordham University is hosting a conference on Bob Dylan and the Law.

Bob Dylan and the Law

Fordham Law School

April 4-5, 2011

Co-Sponsored by the Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics, Touro Law School and the Fordham Urban Law Journal

Free and Open to the Public

April 4th McNally Amphitheater

6:00 PM: Welcome – Professor Bruce A. Green, Fordham Law School

Panel Discussion

Moderator: Corny O'Connell, Fordham Law Graduate and DJ with WFUV

Panelists:

Professor David Hajdu, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism

Professor Alex Long, University of Tennessee College of Law

Professor Abbe Smith, Georgetown Law School

7:00 PM: Performance of "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" and other Bob Dylan songs by The Kennedys

The academic portion of the conference will take place on April 5th and is by invitation only.

Contact: Jessi Tamayo

Telephone: 212-636-6988

Email: jtamayo@law.fordham.edu

For more on the law in Bob Dylan's work see the works below (not an exhaustive bibliography).

Idealawg: The Jurisprudence of Bob Dylan

Long, Alex B., [Insert Song Lyrics Here]: The Uses and Misuses of Popular Music Lyrics In Legal Writing (published in volume 64, Washington and Lee Law Review (2007)). Hat tip to Legal Blog Watch

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Chicago Comes To Neuilly

Posted: 24 Mar 2011 11:03 AM PDT

Noted feminist critic Héléne Cixous takes on the rhetoric of French president Nicolas Sarkozy in Nicolas Sarkozy, the murderer of the Princess of Cleves, an essay written for The Guardian. She says in part,

To set an example he, the smooth talker, would "first of all shed his hang-ups about theFrench language". Let's get rid of this weight, of these manners.

Style? Grammar? All in the past! The French language? Those centuries of literature, these treasures of humanity? What's the use? Do you need a fine turn of phrase to be president of the republic? To sway the people? A good kick up the arse, quick and cheap. But language and its inexhaustible resources, its quaintnesses – it empowers speech, carries thought. Like I said, the French people, they don't need to think no more, says the smooth talker. I'm making your lives simpler, look: "Work more to earn more." Ain't that beautiful? As good as Racine, La Fontaine or Hugo. Henceforth (now that's a word we'll chuck out), we'll have less words, more dosh. People of France, don't bother; I am the Law, take it from me.
All of a sudden France is owned by a man possessed, an outlaw; it's like Chicago's come to Neuilly. One no longer has talks or discussions, one lightens the conversation with gunshots, punches and kicks. The sovereign lashes out. He is now separated from the French language, in a thunderous divorce. You've got to see what he does to language. He mauls it, he beats it, he pummels it, he dismembers it. Pushing syncope to the limit, he swallows half the syllables and he spits the rest in his opponent's face. He imposes his idiolect on the world. Only he "speaks" this idiom; only stand-up comedians imitate it. Language gets a hammering from him. Upon its ruins he proclaims the disgrace of culture and the reign of ignorance.

Ms. Cixous is A.D. White Professor at Large, Cornell University. Among her most famous works is Le Rire de la Meduse (The Laughter of Medusa), which has been translated into many languages.

President Sarkozy holds a degree in private law and the DEA in Business Law from the Université Paris X Nanterre. He also studied at the prestigious Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) but left before earning a degree. He passed the bar and practiced as an attorney before entering politics. Read More... Law & Humanities Blog

Law & Humanities Blog

Deadline Approaching For Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction

Posted: 23 Mar 2011 02:45 PM PDT

TUSCALOOSA, Ala.

– The deadline for authors and publishers to enter a novel to win the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction is April 8. The ABA Journal and The University of Alabama School of Law created the prize to celebrate the 50th anniversary of "To Kill a Mockingbird," and to honor former Alabama law student Harper Lee for the role model she created.

The prize will be given annually to a book-length work of fiction that best exemplifies the role of lawyers in society, and their power to effect change. Only works first published in 2010 qualify. Completed entry forms must be submitted by the publisher prior to April 8. There is no entry fee.

Members of the Harper Lee Prize Selection Committee, who are responsible for choosing this year's winner, are:

• Best-selling author David Baldacci

• Morris Dees, co-founder, Southern Poverty Law Center

• Best-selling crime novelist and former prosecutor Linda Fairstein

• Robert J. Grey Jr., partner, Hunton & Williams, past president of the American Bar Association

• CNN Senior Analyst Jeffrey Toobin

Visit www.HarperLeePrize.org for more information or to download an entry form.

The University of Alabama, a student-centered research university, is experiencing significant growth in both enrollment and academic quality. This growth, which is positively impacting the campus and the state's economy, is in keeping with UA's vision to be the university of choice for the best and brightest students. UA, the state's flagship university, is an academic community united in its commitment to enhancing the quality of life for all Alabamians.

CONTACT: Rebecca Walden, UA School of Law, 205/348-5195, rwalden@law.ua.edu or Allen Pusey, ABA Journal, 312/988-6214, Allen.Pusey@americanbar.org

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Language and Evidence of Race Discrimination

Posted: 21 Mar 2011 11:48 AM PDT

Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander, University of Georgia, has published The Use of the Term 'Boy' as Evidence of Race Discrimination: Apparently the 11th Circuit Didn't Get the Memo? Here is the abstract.

In an unusual and interesting case, the 11th Circuit decision was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Supreme Court rendered a decision remanding the case with guidance, and upon remand, the 11th Circuit virtually ignored the Court's guidance and went its own way. The Supreme Court determined that the term "boy," when used in referring to an adult African American male, can, under certain circumstances, be evidence of race discrimination. Despite the evidence, the 11th Circuit on remand did not find such circumstances to be present in this case. The decision is not only peculiar in its decision to give only lip service to the Supreme Court's guidance, but also in its staunch refusal to recognize the vestiges of the stark historical realities of the three southern states within the circuit.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

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Medical Humanities Blog

On Relative Priorities in African Bioethics

Posted: 21 Mar 2011 11:04 AM PDT

Jacquineau Azetsop (Faculté de Médécine, Teilhard de Chardin), whose work we have noted here on MH Blog in the past, has an excellent new article out in Developing World Bioethics entitled New Directions in African Bioethics: Ways of Including Public Health Concerns in the Bioethics Agenda. Here is the Abstract:

Research ethics is the most developed aspect of bioethics in Africa. Most African countries have set up Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) to provide guidelines for research and to comply with international norms. However, bioethics has not been responsive to local needs and values in the rest of the continent. A new direction is needed in African bioethics. This new direction promotes the development of a locally-grounded bioethics, shaped by a dynamic understanding of local cultures and informed by structural and institutional problems that impact the public's health, as well as cognisant of the salient contribution of social sciences and social epidemiology which can bring a lasting impact on African local communities. In today's post-Structural Adjustment Africa, where healthcare has been liberalized and its cost increased, a bioethics agenda that focuses essentially on disease management and clinical work remains blind in the face of a structural marginalization of the masses of poor. Instead, the multidimensional public health crisis, with which most African countries are confronted, calls for a bioethics agenda that focuses primarily, but not exclusively, on health promotion and advocacy. Such an approach to bioethics reckons with the macro-determinants of health and well-being and places clinical and research ethics in the broader context of population's health. The same approach underscores the need to become political, not only by addressing health policymaking processes and procedures, but also by becoming an advocacy forum that includes other constituencies equipped with the potentialities to impact the population's health.

Readers of MH Blog can probably guess that I am cheering all the way through this abstract. Research ethics and clinical bioethics have their place in developing world bioethics, but the evidence is robust suggesting that attention to the macrosocial determinants of health -- rather than research or clinical care -- is likely to have the greatest impact on ameliorating disease and human suffering in the developing world. Azetsop is at the vanguard of scholars urging the turn to population-level and public health ethics.

The article is (obviously) highly recommended.