All Rise! Standing in Judge Betty Fletcher’s Court

In this essay, based on a talk given at the Washington Law Review’s March 2009 symposium in honor of Senior Ninth Circuit Judge Betty Binns Fletcher and her three decades of service on that court, I selectively survey her opinions on justiciability issues: standing, ripeness, mootness, and political questions. A significant starting point for this survey is Professor Richard Pierce’s 1999 law review article, Is Standing Law or Politics?, arguing that many Supreme Court votes in standing cases generally, and appellate judges’ votes in environmental-standing cases specifically, can be explained better on the basis of politics than by reference to supposedly governing doctrine. Based on the findings reported in Pierce’s article, one might expect to find Ninth Circuit judges splitting along predictable ideological lines. In this brief survey, I find that some Ninth Circuit panels on which Judge Fletcher has sat do split along ideological lines, but that most are unanimous in their justiciability rulings even when the panels are ideologically mixed—and one finds variations, such as splits among judges appointed by Democratic Presidents and generally regarded as “liberal.” Another possible tendency would be for judges to find justiciability when they might be expected to be favorably disposed to the substantive claim on the merits, and to avoid reaching the merits of what might be unappealing claims. Similarly, in some cases on which Judge Fletcher has sat, some judges’ votes could be viewed as fitting such patterns, but counterexamples abound. This essay, which focuses on the work of one judge and does not systematically compare votes of judges from different parts of the political spectrum, cannot claim to disprove the political view; but that view finds little if any support in Judge Fletcher’s cases

Domestic violence : A discourse analysis of domestic violence in the journal Socionomen

Syftet med denna kvalitativa uppsats är att undersöka hur våld i nära relationer framställs i tidskriften Socionomen. Vår empiri består av 42 artiklar som berör våld i nära relationer. Artiklarna är publicerade mellan åren 1997 - 2013 i tidskriften Socionomen. Uppsatsens teoretiska utgångspunkt är ett socialkonstruktionistiskt perspektiv, som bidrar med att synliggöra sociala konstruktioner inom forskningsområdet. Som analysmetod används en form av diskursanalys för att urskilja subjektspositioner och kategorier i det empiriska materialet. Resultatet av analysen visar på fyra diskurser som handlar om skuld och skam, genus, det "rena" våldsoffret och dess motsats samt föräldraskap. Dessa diskurser manifesterar olika sätt att samtala om våld i nära relationer som i sin tur kan påverka det sociala arbetet utifrån hur problemet beskrivs. Olika framställningar av våld i nära relationer kan leda till olika bemötanden av klienter i socialt arbete