The Boundaries of Plea Bargaining: Negotiating the Standard of Proof

The paper explores the boundaries of the plea bargaining process, and makes a case for extending them to the criminal standard of proof. It examines the possibility of converting the criminal standard of proof into a default rule, subject to negotiation between the parties. Under current plea bargaining practices, the defendant agrees to plead guilty in exchange for concessions on punishment offered by the prosecutor. According to the model proposed here, the negotiation process would not be limited to the attainment of a full admission of guilt. Rather, the prosecutor would also be able to obtain from the defendant a reduction of the standard of proof required to establish criminal culpability, in return for an offer of leniency in sentencing. For instance, the parties could agree that the case will be tried according to the civil standard of proof – the preponderance of the evidence. In exchange for the greater risk of conviction, faced by the defendant under a lower standard of proof, the prosecutor would make a partial concession on the sentence in the event of conviction. The paper addresses the viability of this proposed model and advocates its normative desirability

Separation of Law and State

In the framework of the jurisprudential literature, the law-state bond is assumed as a given. Points of dispute emerge only at more advanced stages of the discussion, with respect to such questions as the duty to obey state law or the appropriate extent of state intervention in social relations. This Article will be devoted to a reconsideration of the presupposition of the law-state link and to challenging the state\u27s status vis-à-vis the law-both in its role as the producer of legal norms and its capacity as the arbiter of disputes. The Article opens with a comparative elucidation of the Hobbesian and Lockean justifications for the existence of the state and its intervention in the law. The first Part of this Article analyzes the ills of the State of Nature, reviewing the range of failures that accompany market supply of the legislative and judicial functions. These derive from the public good characteristics of legislative and judicial services, from the fact that law is a network industry, and from the cartelization tendency in the legislative and judicial markets. Based on these failures in organizing social behavior in the State of Nature, Hobbes\u27s and Locke\u27s theories of the social contract justify the concentration of the legislative and judicial functions in the hands of the state sovereign and grant it a monopoly over these functions. The second Part of this Article critiques Hobbes\u27s and Locke\u27s conclusions, first and foremost their disregard for the flaws of the public model, which they support. An implicit premise of both the Hobbesian and Lockean justifications for state law is that where the private market fails, the state will necessarily fare better. However, there is a cost to state intervention, and public supply of legislative and judicial services is not without flaws. Proponents of the public state law model must therefore further show that this model generates more efficient results than those produced by the private model. The second line of criticism will argue that the matter is not resolved even if we assume that the fully privatized model is a less attractive option for the supply of law than the fully public alternative. These two extreme alternatives do not exhaust the entire spectrum of possibilities for the law-state connection. Rather, between these two polar ends there may be intermediate forms of limited state intervention in the markets for legislation and adjudication. These configurations rest on the abandonment of the dichotomy that characterizes Hobbes\u27s and Locke\u27s doctrines, between a monolithic public legal order and sweeping nonintervention in the law on the part of the state. This Article closes by presenting a possible median point along the axis that illustrates the possibility of correcting the failures of the legislative and judicial markets in the framework of a polycentric legal regime based on more limited state intervention in these areas. The conclusion offered will be that while the ills of the State of Nature, as identified by Hobbes and Locke, are valid justifications of state intervention per se in the legislative and judicial markets, they do not justify intervention in the form of a state monopoly over the law. State intervention in legislation and adjudication is vital for creating the space in which legal regimes can grow-where rights can be set and adjudication conducted in light of those rights. There is absolutely no need, and therefore no justification, for the state to hold the sole power to set these rights itself and decide disputes in light thereof

The Boundaries of Plea Bargaining: Negotiating the Standard of Proof

The paper explores the boundaries of the plea bargaining process, and makes a case for extending them to the criminal standard of proof. It examines the possibility of converting the criminal standard of proof into a default rule, subject to negotiation between the parties. Under current plea bargaining practices, the defendant agrees to plead guilty in exchange for concessions on punishment offered by the prosecutor. According to the model proposed here, the negotiation process would not be limited to the attainment of a full admission of guilt. Rather, the prosecutor would also be able to obtain from the defendant a reduction of the standard of proof required to establish criminal culpability, in return for an offer of leniency in sentencing. For instance, the parties could agree that the case will be tried according to the civil standard of proof – the preponderance of the evidence. In exchange for the greater risk of conviction, faced by the defendant under a lower standard of proof, the prosecutor would make a partial concession on the sentence in the event of conviction. The paper addresses the viability of this proposed model and advocates its normative desirability

The relationship between perceived inclusion and the imposter phenomenon as mediated by work and gender identities in South Africa

Abstract : The desire to feel included is an essential need for all humans which extends into the context of the work environment. Employees who experience a lack of perceived inclusion at work, on the basis of their work identity and gender identity, may experience internal feelings of fraudulence, intellectual inadequacy or fear that they will not be able to maintain their success. This describes a psychological experience known as the imposter phenomenon. In this study, the mediating effect of work identity and gender identity on the relationship between perceived inclusion and the experience of the imposter phenomenon was examined. The moderating variable in this study was gender, through the use of male and female sample groups. A total sample size of 323 employees completed the measurement instruments used in this study, including: an adapted Perceived Inclusion Scale; the Tilburg Scale for Work Identity Commitment and Reconsideration of Commitment (TWIS-CRC); the Gender Identity Measure for the Experiences @ Work Project; and the Clance Imposter Phenomenon Scale (CIPS). The study was quantitative in nature and the results from the Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) indicated that there were no significant differences in the measures across the male and female sample groups. The results from the Multi-Group Structural Equation Modelling (MG-SEM) indicated that work identity and gender identity provide full mediation on the relationship between perceived inclusion and the experience of the imposter phenomenon for male employees but not for female employees. For female employees, a weak yet negative statistically significant direct relationship was found between perceived inclusion and the experience of the imposter phenomenon. The results suggest that for male employees, their identity, specifically their work identity and gender identity, predict their feelings of intellectual inadequacy and unworthiness, whereas for female employees, their feelings of intellectual inadequacy and unworthiness is predicted by their perceptions of inclusion. Managers should support those employees who experience feelings related to the imposter phenomenon and should encourage them to stop their involvement in the imposter cycle.M.Com. (Industrial Psychology

State Inc.

The central objective of this paper is to put the marketization of the state debate into context, both on the descriptive level and on the normative level, by viewing it through the prisms of the ideal types of interaction between states and individuals, and against the background of global competition. At the outset of the paper, we begin by presenting various manifestations of citizenship for sale and the marketization of the state-individual interaction. We then turn to portray two ideal types of state-individual interactions, which we termed the democratic model and the consumerist model, and depicted the erosion of the state-market dichotomy as a shift from the democratic to the consumerist ideal type. But this, we claim, is only part of the story: for, when global competition is taken into account these two ideal types no longer serve as discrete end points on the spectrum. Rather, they become inherently interconnected, and the infiltration of market logic into the state-individual interaction becomes inevitable. In a world in which the state is forced to compete for residents and resources, its position as a market player inevitably infiltrates into its interaction with individuals, and defines its political realm. The political realm, in other words, is constituted by the market, and cannot operate in a manner that is detached from consumerist logic

State Inc.

The central objective of this paper is to put the marketization of the state debate into context, both on the descriptive level and on the normative level, by viewing it through the prisms of the ideal types of interaction between states and individuals, and against the background of global competition. At the outset of the paper, we begin by presenting various manifestations of citizenship for sale and the marketization of the state-individual interaction. We then turn to portray two ideal types of state-individual interactions, which we termed the democratic model and the consumerist model, and depicted the erosion of the state-market dichotomy as a shift from the democratic to the consumerist ideal type. But this, we claim, is only part of the story: for, when global competition is taken into account these two ideal types no longer serve as discrete end points on the spectrum. Rather, they become inherently interconnected, and the infiltration of market logic into the state-individual interaction becomes inevitable. In a world in which the state is forced to compete for residents and resources, its position as a market player inevitably infiltrates into its interaction with individuals, and defines its political realm. The political realm, in other words, is constituted by the market, and cannot operate in a manner that is detached from consumerist logic

The Prevalence of Gender Communication in Social Media

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between online self-disclosure and perceived appeal and define characteristics that individuals find appealing and unappealing in online self-disclosure. The findings from this study reveal significant differences in gender communication that distinctly affect the perceptions of online social media profiles. Using Deborah Tannen’s Genderlect theory, these gender differences are explained