Why Not a Justice School? On the Role of Justice in Legal Education and The Construction of a Pedagogy of Justice

Why are law schools not named schools of justice, or, at least, schools of law and justice? Of course, virtually every law school will reply that this is nit-picking; all claim to be devoted to the study of justice. But our concern is not so easily dismissed. The names of institutions carry great significance; they deliver a political, social, or economic message. . . This Article contends that not only do law schools virtually ignore justice – a concept that is supposed to be the goal of all legal systems – they go so far as to denigrate it and turn students away from a concern with justice. This Article argues that justice-based advocacy is superior to that traditionally taught in law school; and further asserts that lawyers because of their disproportionate influence in society have a particular need and responsibility to understand and confront fundamental issues of social justice. This Article also discusses what a proposed school of justice would look like, and discusses curriculum which embrace a justice perspective. New pedagogy is proposed, that takes the emphasis off the lawgiver-professor, and puts it onto the student, who must do her work by continually confronting her own concept of what is just. Lastly, the article acknowledges the concern that teaching justice will be time consuming and suggests, that there be a reduction in the case method which will give law professors the necessary time to turn their attention to matters of justice

The Crime Victim\u27s Right to a Criminal Prosecution: A Proposed Model Statute for the Governance of Private Criminal Prosecutions

The thesis of this article is that the public prosecutor should to have a monopoly on criminal prosecutions; some supplementary system of private criminal prosecution should be available. Two such systems, or models, currently exist in New York. The first model, available statewide, theoretically allows a complainant to initiate a non-felony criminal prosecution without any screening by a prosecutor or judge. This system is unwise, unworkable and illusory because it obscures the exercise of judicial discretion and focuses the court’s attention on the wrong issues, usually precluding the crime victim’s complaint. The second model, limited by statute to New York City, allows an aggrieved person to apply to a judge for the issuance of a criminal complaint. This model, though far preferable to the first model, is in need of substantial refinement. The exercise of judicial discretion should be guided and circumscribed by explicit statutory guidelines. This Article suggests such guidelines in the form of a model statute to govern the initiation and litigation of private criminal prosecutions

Why Not a Justice School? On the Role of Justice in Legal Education and The Construction of a Pedagogy of Justice

Why are law schools not named schools of justice, or, at least, schools of law and justice? Of course, virtually every law school will reply that this is nit-picking; all claim to be devoted to the study of justice. But our concern is not so easily dismissed. The names of institutions carry great significance; they deliver a political, social, or economic message. . . This Article contends that not only do law schools virtually ignore justice – a concept that is supposed to be the goal of all legal systems – they go so far as to denigrate it and turn students away from a concern with justice. This Article argues that justice-based advocacy is superior to that traditionally taught in law school; and further asserts that lawyers because of their disproportionate influence in society have a particular need and responsibility to understand and confront fundamental issues of social justice. This Article also discusses what a proposed school of justice would look like, and discusses curriculum which embrace a justice perspective. New pedagogy is proposed, that takes the emphasis off the lawgiver-professor, and puts it onto the student, who must do her work by continually confronting her own concept of what is just. Lastly, the article acknowledges the concern that teaching justice will be time consuming and suggests, that there be a reduction in the case method which will give law professors the necessary time to turn their attention to matters of justice

Dynamical Stability of Witten Rings

The dynamical stability of cosmic rings, or vortons, is investigated for the particular equation of state given by the Witten bosonic model. It is found that there exists a finite range of the state parameter for which the vorton states are actually stable against dynamical perturbations. Inclusion of the electromagnetic self action into the equation of state slightly shrinks the stability region but otherwise yields no qualitative difference. If the Witten bosonic model represents a good approximation for more realistic string models, then the cosmological vorton excess problem can only be solved by assuming either that strings are formed at low energy scales or that some quantum instability may develop at a sufficient rate.Comment: 11 pages, LaTeX-ReVTeX (v.3), 2 figures available upon request, DAMTP R-94/1

Who is Teaching (or Not Teaching) Mexican Youth in Southeast Idaho About Safer Sex Practices?

Because of the high rate of HIV/AIDS in the Hispanic community, the original purpose of this qualitative study (n=20) was to investigate the explanatory models of HIV and AIDS in Mexican migrant women in southeast Idaho. However, a reoccurring theme emerged that pointed toward the possibility of a breakdown in communication between the Mexican migrant families and the education system regarding sex education. Eighty percent of the women interviewed believed that their children were receiving education about condoms and safer sex practices in the school, while in reality the students were only receiving abstinence-based sex education. Since the women believed that their children were being educated in school, there was no dialogue in the family unit about safer sex practices. Because of the high rate of HIV/AIDS and teen pregnancy in the Hispanic community in the United States, it is important to examine this lack of education as a possible catalyst to these problems

Gay Men and Loose Women – Southeast Idaho Mexican Migrant Women’s Beliefs About Who Gets HIV

Since the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980’s, there have been stereotypes about certain groups of people being infected with the disease. This paper is based on a qualitative study consisting of twenty (n=20) interviews with Mexican migrant women in Southeast Idaho. The study investigated who Mexican migrant women believe are most likely to be infected with HIV, and then analyzed the beliefs in a socio-cultural context, examining a loss of both social and material capital as a catalyst for these beliefs

Lensing Properties of Lightlike Current Carrying Cosmic Strings

The lensing properties of superconducting cosmic strings endowed with a time dependent pulse of lightlike current are investigated. The metric outside the core of the string belongs to the $pp$--wave class, with a deficit angle. We study the field theoretic bosonic Witten model coupled to gravity, and we show that the full metric (both outside and inside the core) is a Taub-Kerr-Shild generalization of that for the static string with no current. It is shown that the double image due to the deficit angle evolves in an unambiguous way as a pulse of lightlike current passes between the source and the observer. Observational consequences of this signature of the existence of cosmic strings are briefly discussed.Comment: 21 pages, LaTeX-REVTeX, 7 figures available upon request, preprint # DAMTP-R94/1

Primordial magnetic field and spectral distortion of cosmic background radiation

The role played by a primordial magnetic field during the pre-recombination epoch is analysed through the cyclotron radiation (due to the free electrons) it might produce in the primordial plasma. We discuss the constraint implied by the measurement or lack thereof COBE on this primordial field.Comment: to appear in International Journal of Mod. Phy

Influence of classical resonances on chaotic tunnelling

Dynamical tunnelling between symmetry-related stable modes is studied in the periodically driven pendulum. We present strong evidence that the tunnelling process is governed by nonlinear resonances that manifest within the regular phase-space islands on which the stable modes are localized. By means of a quantitative numerical study of the corresponding Floquet problem, we identify the trace of such resonances not only in the level splittings between near-degenerate quantum states, where they lead to prominent plateau structures, but also in overlap matrix elements of the Floquet eigenstates, which reveal characteristic sequences of avoided crossings in the Floquet spectrum. The semiclassical theory of resonance-assisted tunnelling yields good overall agreement with the quantum-tunnelling rates, and indicates that partial barriers within the chaos might play a prominent role