Adolescent Medical Decision Making and the Law of the Horse

Legal and ethical regimes relating to adolescent medical decision making resemble what Judge Frank H. Easterbrook derisively called “the Law of the Horse”: Many laws deal with horses, he wrote, but there is no such field as “horse law.” Similarly, even though the United States has juvenile and family courts, as well as pediatric and adolescent medical departments, there is not a distinct field of “adolescent medical decision-making law” or ethics; there are just many disparate policies that implicate or impinge upon decisions made by adolescents. These include state laws ranging from those that permit minors to seek treatment for substance misuse or mental illness without parental consent to those that prohibit tattoo parlors from serving minors even with parental consent. They also include ethical norms that inform hospital and clinic policies about whether minors may refuse life-extending medical treatment over their parents’ objections or whether parents may compel their children to have cosmetic procedures without the child’s agreement. At first glance, this range of policies might seem less coherent and productive to mine as a unified body of legal and ethical norms than even “horse law.” But there is a deeper connection between adolescent decision-making law and ethics and “the Law of the Horse,” one that suggests that adolescent decision making may not be the disparate collection of regimes that it appears to be. The legal and ethical norms relating to adolescent decision making illuminate more general issues about how legal and ethical doctrines incorporate scientific information about human cognition and development. Since the existence of separate laws and ethical norms for adolescents and adults is premised on actual differences between them, some kind of consensus about the nature of those differences ought to unify the “law and ethics of adolescent medical decision making.” But it does not. By working through examples of how legal and ethical doctrines interact with issues of adolescent decision making, we can elucidate a set of general questions about doctrinal reliance, or lack thereof, on neuroscientific evidence about human development and behavior. This piece serves as the Introduction to a symposium issue of the Journal of Health Care Law & Policy, which presents a collection of essays that coalesce around the regulation of adolescent decision making in light of current research on brain development

Regular access to constantly renewed online content favors radicalization of opinions

Worry over polarization has grown alongside the digital information consump-tion revolution. Where most scientific work considered user-generated and user-disseminated (i.e., Web 2.0) content as the culprit, the potential of purely increased access to informa-tion (or Web 1.0) has been largely overlooked. Here, we suggest that the shift to Web 1.0 alone could include a powerful mechanism of belief extremization. We study an empiri-cally calibrated persuasive argument model with confirmation bias. We compare an offline setting—in which a limited number of arguments is broadcast by traditional media—with an online setting—in which the agent can choose to watch contents within a very wide set of possibilities. In both cases, we assume that positive and negative arguments are balanced. The simulations show that the online setting leads to significantly more extreme opinions and amplifies initial prejudice

Out-group hate in the UK: Insights from race and religious hate crime representations and attitudes towards immigrants

Hate crimes have become a common problem in the United Kingdom (UK), especially following the European Union (EU) referendum and the BREXIT vote in June 2016. Consequently, hate crimes have received a great deal of attention in the recent past, with increasing discussions tailored around the need to accurately record and investigate these crimes. However, the field of hate crimes is complicated by inaccuracies in reporting and recording of these crimes, in addition to there being no clear understanding of how hate crimes are constructed by the general public and the intersection between the public perceptions and hate crime scholarship. Hate crime policing has advocated the protection of five-strands of people that are most likely to be recipients of such victimisation, while statistics suggest that two of the strands, race and religion, account for 80% of hate crime in the UK. Due to the frequent occurrence of race and religious hate crimes in the UK, this research aimed to investigate the general public and cultural perceptions and understandings of race and religious hate crime, in particular. Using a mixed-method design, this thesis conducted three empirical studies to investigate the facets of race and religious hate crimes in the UK. Study 1 carried out a cultural analysis of hate crime by examining newspaper articles to extract the key attributes evident in the reporting of race and religious hate crimes. A total of 22 key variables were seen to present when reporting such crimes, so for the general public these maybe the trigger for, and ideas by which, they come to define and understand an event as possibly being a hate crime. Study 2 looked more specifically at this perception and understanding of race and religious hate crimes amongst the general public by using a ‘storycompletion task’. The results suggested a variety of themes by which people might understand and demarcate race and religious hate crime; these are key social-psychological factors that need to be considered in terms of hate crime practice and policy. Finally, Study 3 evaluated the underlying social-psychological factors that may contribute to negative attitudes towards out-groups, a well-established finding in previous literature and evident in study two, that ‘othering’ and being seen as an out-group can be the basis of hate crime. The results suggested that people who are high on ethnocentrism are significantly more likely to show prejudice towards immigrants. In conclusion, the thesis highlighted that ‘othering’ individuals based on prejudicial attitudes can lead to hate crimes, therefore it is proposed that education on ethnic differences and early interventions to reduce prejudice (e.g. incorporating discussions of ethnicity in school curriculums), may be beneficial in reducing overall prejudice amongst the general public, which in-turn would help reduce hate crimes

Liminal Boundaries and Vulnerabilities to Radicalisation in the Context of Securitisation of Migration

This thesis examines the systemic securitisation of migration, the production of liminality and associated vulnerabilities to radicalisation in a refugee camp context against a global backdrop. The camp has been conceived as a total institution that presents forms of physical, mental and other expressions of encampment inimical to freedoms. As such, three interlocking formulations of encampment, which is a measure of securitisation, arise. The first manifestation of encampment arises from the practice of the interminable spatial confinement of refugees in developing countries that has resulted in what is technically known as Protracted Refugee Situations (PRS). The second expression is the onshore and offshore immigration detention system in Western countries. The third manifestation of encampment is symbolic and constitutes the self or externally imposed patterns of settlement in migrant enclaves in developed and developing countries. In recent times, international migration has provoked concerns over insecurity in refugee-hosting states. Beyond the animated public discourse, the tenor of securitisation has further necessitated the use of extraordinary means of refugee containment that include confinement in ‘camps’. Indeed, some camps have become politicised and militarised spaces where sections of refugee populations have developed extreme views and exerted political influence in their homelands and host states. Encampment therefore not only presents humanitarian concerns but also raises significant security challenges for host states and beyond. The thesis examines vulnerabilities to radicalisation in a camp environment that closely interacts with the global system. The Somali protracted refugee situation at Dadaab Refugee Complex in Kenya, the thesis case study, is an archetype of encampment. The elusive actualisation of durable solutions to the Somali refugee problem has placed them in a state of limbo, technically referred to as the liminal state. The thesis traces the historical roots of conflict and forced displacement in Somalia. Further, the study traces the Somali migration trajectory from the homeland to the first host state, Kenya, and concludes the journey in the third countries of resettlement in the West. The research further employs a broad-brush approach and provides examples from other camps and countries to complement the case study and advance its arguments. It is argued that the conditions in a camp in concert with latent ‘external’ factors present sources of vulnerability to radicalisation, particularly in contexts in which polarisation, terrorism and other forms of political violence are already prevalent. It is further argued that as intersubjective constructs, securitisation may create vulnerabilities to radicalisation while radicalisation may expand opportunities for securitisation. Significantly, radicalisation in the context of migration does not occur in a vacuum but in a synergistic dynamic that summons a range of actors and drivers in securitised speech-act. By examining the interface of pre-encampment, encampment and post-encampment, the thesis demonstrates that the camp is a social entity that interacts with other systems. Notably, the continued adoption of ahistorical and reductionist approaches in the analysis of radicalisation in migrant contexts, and in counter-terrorism remain void as long as broader contextual factors and actors in other sub-systems that drive radicalisation are neglected. In adopting this approach, the research addresses the gap of technological advancements, ahistoricity and broader-context reductionism in dominant scholarship on radicalisation among refugees. The thesis’ contribution is therefore the development of an analytical framework that examines the dynamic and evolutionary character of deep-rooted structural drivers of radicalisation. The inter-subjective construction of radicalisation – of the refugee – in public space, constitutes another important contribution.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Social Sciences, 201