Criminal Lying, Prosecutorial Power, and Social Meaning

This article concerns the prosecution of defensive dishonesty in the course of federal investigations. It sketches a conceptual framework for violations of 18 U.S.C. § 1001 and related false-statement charges, distinguishes between harmful deception and the typical investigative interaction, and describes the range of lies that fall within the wide margins of the offense. It then places these cases in a socio-legal context, suggesting that some false-statement charges function as penalties for defendants’ refusal to expedite investigations into their own wrongdoing. In those instances, the government positions itself as the victim of the lying offense and reasserts its authority through prosecution. Enforcement decisions in marginal criminal lying cases are driven by efficiency rather than accuracy goals, which may produce unintended consequences. Using false-statement charges as pretexts for other harms can diminish transparency and mute signals to comply. Accountability also suffers when prosecutors can effectively create offenses, and when it is the interaction with the government itself rather than conduct with freestanding illegality that forms the core violation. The disjunction between prosecutions and social norms about defensive dishonesty may also result in significant credibility costs and cause some erosion of voluntary compliance. Animating the materiality requirement in the statute with attention to the harm caused or risked by particular false statements could mitigate these distortions. An inquiry into the objective impact of a false statement might account for the nature of the underlying conduct under investigation, whether the questioning at issue is pretextual, whether the lie is induced, and whether the deception succeeds or could succeed in harming the investigation. By taking materiality seriously, courts could curtail prosecutorial discretion and narrow application of the statute to cases where prosecution harmonizes with social norms

Sorry vs please, accept my apologies: teaching politeness explicitly to first grade high school students

Tesis (Profesor de Inglés para la Enseñanza Básica y Media y al grado académico de Licenciado en Educación)The purpose of this project is to determine how can we help students to develop a more native-like performance. Since Chile has an English Program oriented and based on the communicative approach, teaching pragmatics is something which is not considered in the educational curricula and also there is a limited provision of materials given by the Ministry of Education. For the aforementioned reason, the students of the first-grade high school in a bilingual school were subjects of an intervention that was carried out during four pragmatic lessons in order to analyze the impacts that teaching Pragmatic Competence (PC) in an explicit way has, considering also the self-perception about their skills to communicate themselves using the English language before and after the treatment. To conduct this project a mixed method approach was selected as it gave us the opportunity of combining quantitative and qualitative instruments in order to obtain better and more precise results. The aim of this project is to contribute in a field which currently is not studied deeply; despite the studies that already exist is not common to make an analysis on pragmatics. Most of the students are confident in terms of language proficiency, the majority of the participants evaluated themselves better in receptive than productive skills. In terms of sociopragmatic competence, there was not a statistically significant improvement. However, requests showed a more native-like performance. Regarding pragmalinguistic competence, strategies in the post-test were better applied than in the pre-test. In light of the results obtained in this study, there are some implications that can be recommended for different areas. Mainly, this study has a huge influence in terms of national education policies. Keywords: pragmatic, sociopragmatic, pragmalinguistic, speech acts, teaching pragmatics, pragmatic strategies.El propósito de este proyecto es determinar cómo podemos ayudar a los estudiantes a desarrollar un rendimiento más natural al hablar en inglés. Debido a que en Chile se aplica un programa de inglés orientado y basado en el enfoque comunicativo, la enseñanza de la pragmática es algo que no se considera en los programas educacionales ni tampoco en los materiales entregados por el Ministerio de Educación. Por esta razón, estudiantes de primero medio de una escuela bilingüe fueron sujetos de una intervención que se desarrolló durante cuatro lecciones con el fin de analizar los impactos que tiene enseñar una competencia en pragmática de manera explícita, considerando además la percepción propia acerca de sus habilidades para comunicarse usando el inglés, antes y después del experimento. Para llevar a cabo este proyecto se seleccionó un enfoque de método mixto, que nos dio la oportunidad de combinar instrumentos cuantitativos y cualitativos para obtener resultados mejores y más precisos. El objetivo de este proyecto es contribuir en un campo que actualmente no se estudia profundamente; a pesar de los estudios que ya existen no es común hacer un análisis de la pragmática. La mayoría de los estudiantes se sienten bastante seguros en términos de su nivel de inglés. Muchos de ellos se evaluaron mejor en las habilidades receptivas que en las productivas. En términos de competencia sociopragmática no hubo una mejora significativa. Sin embargo, en la parte de petición, los alumnos mostraron respuestas más nativas. En relación con las estrategias de pragmalingüística, en el post-test, fueron mejor utilizadas que en el pre-test. Los resultados obtenidos en este estudio tienen implicaciones que pueden ser recomendadas para diferentes áreas. Principalmente, este estudio tiene una gran influencia en términos de políticas nacionales educacionales

Never Being Able to Say You’re Sorry: Barriers to Apology By Leaders in Group Conflicts

Conner and Jordan discuss three implications of the foregoing analysis for leaders, peacemakers, and scholars interested in apology as an instrument to advance justice, prevent destructive conflict, and promote cooperation. First, an effective apology is likely to occur only after other changes have softened up negative attitudes between the groups--referred to here as ripeness. Second, even with a degree of ripeness, apology is unlikely without a window of opportunity, a confluence of circumstances that permits the leader to limit the scope of the apology so as not to concede too much. Third, even if these conditions are satisfied, words alone are not enough for an apology to be effective

Never Being Able to Say You’re Sorry: Barriers to Apology By Leaders in Group Conflicts

Conner and Jordan discuss three implications of the foregoing analysis for leaders, peacemakers, and scholars interested in apology as an instrument to advance justice, prevent destructive conflict, and promote cooperation. First, an effective apology is likely to occur only after other changes have softened up negative attitudes between the groups--referred to here as ripeness. Second, even with a degree of ripeness, apology is unlikely without a window of opportunity, a confluence of circumstances that permits the leader to limit the scope of the apology so as not to concede too much. Third, even if these conditions are satisfied, words alone are not enough for an apology to be effective

Changing Minds: The Work of Mediators and Empirical Studies of Persuasion

The use of mediation has grown exponentially in recent years in courts, agencies, and community settings. Yet the field of mediation still operates to a considerable extent on folklore and opinion, rather than reliable knowledge. Mediator attempts at persuasion are pervasive in a wide variety of mediation contexts, yet “persuasion” is, for some, a pejorative word and a contested norm in the field. Perhaps as a result, there has been little, if any, evidence-based writing about what kinds of persuasive appeals might be effective in mediation, how they might operate, and how they might be experienced by disputants. In an effort to begin to fill that void, this article examines empirical research findings on persuasion from such diverse fields as advertising, public health, communications, politics and race relations. It focuses on studies of both indirect or behavioral approaches to persuasion (role reversal, apology, group brainstorming) and different types of direct persuasive appeals (questions vs. statements, more vs. less explicit statements, use of “negative” emotions such as fear and guilt, and sequential vs. straightforward requests for concessions). As almost none of the empirical work on persuasion has involved dispute resolution, the article raises questions about how these social science findings might apply to the work of mediators. Some of the research findings described in this article are unsurprising, while others may challenge common assumptions. Where the research appears at odds with conventional mediation wisdom, the authors discuss its potential implications for ongoing philosophical and skills-based debates in the field. Of particular note, the literature canvassed in this article may cast new light on old debates about facilitative versus evaluative mediation, and the importance of mediators having substantive, as well as process, expertise

Yahoo and Democracy on the Internet

This article examines the French court order requiring Yahoo to prevent French Internet users from accessing images of Nazi memorabilia available for auction on the company\u27s American web site. The article uses the French case to challenge the popular belief that an entirely borderless Internet favors democratic values. The article starts from the premise that while the Internet enables actors to reach a geographically dispersed audience, the Internet should not change the accountability of those actors for their conduct within national borders. The article shows that Yahoo\u27s extensive business in France justifies the application of France\u27s democratically chosen law and argues that the decision has important normative implications for pluralistic democracy on the global network. Namely, the decision promotes technical changes in the Internet architecture that empower democratic states to be able to enforce their freely chosen public policies within their territories. At the same time, the infrastructure changes will not enhance the ability of non-democratic states to pursue repressive policies within their territories in violation of international law. The article shows the French decision as a maturing of the Internet regulatory framework and argues that the policy rules embedded in the technical infrastructure must recognize values adopted by different states and must not be dictated by technical elites