Taking First-Year Students to Court: Disorienting Moments As Catalysts for Change

This Essay explores the advantages and limitations of taking first-year criminal law students to court to provide a nontraditional first-year experience that encourages students to consider how power and privilege operate within the construction of criminal law. Taking students to court can be a deliberate attempt to disorient them, to encourage them to question the very moorings on which criminal law rests. While the concept of “disorienting moments” is extensively discussed in clinical literature, few scholars have discussed how this teaching tool might be used in a large doctrinal class. Creating “disorienting moments” for first-year criminal law students by taking them to court is an example of one such teaching tool

Arbitrary Death: An Empirical Study of Mitigation

The Supreme Court has long viewed mitigation evidence as key to saving the death penalty from constitutional challenge. Mitigation evidence about a capital defendant’s life history, combined with other procedural protections, is thought to alleviate arbitrariness in juries’ decisions of whether a defendant deserves to die. This Article presents original empirical research studying that hypothesis. Interviews with thirty mitigation specialists who have represented over 700 capital clients in twenty-five death penalty states reveal that despite the Supreme Court’s hope, mitigation evidence has not alleviated arbitrariness in death penalty decisions. Instead, new arbitrariness enters the system through the process of gathering mitigation evidence and presenting it to juries. This Article therefore concludes that mitigation must be reformed if it is to succeed in eliminating arbitrariness in capital punishment decisions. Without such reform, the death penalty will remain unconstitutionally arbitrary despite mitigation

A New Mother’s Cry: Analyzing Traditional Social Support versus Online Social Support in Relation to the Postpartum Crisis

The present study examines the gap that remains involving the transition from traditional to online social support that many mothers have participated in and how this change in communication methods during postpartum recovery may contribute to mental health disorders. This qualitative study aims to examine the differences in lived experiences among mothers regarding in-person and online forms of social support and how these experiences may impact a new mother’s mental well-being. Based on previous research, the present study hypothesizes that a more significant amount of online social support compared to in-person support will result in a detriment to a new mother’s mental well-being during postpartum recovery. The results demonstrated that online support group preferences were low, while participation was high. The opposite was also true regarding in-person social support methods. Preference levels for in-person support were high, while in-person support group participation was low. The findings indicated that informal in-person support methods were the most utilized during postpartum recovery. Additional findings demonstrated a gap that may remain regarding a new mother’s expectations of interpersonal social support and the received amount of this support method. Finally, despite positive reports regarding current support methods, mental health concerns remained prevalent among the studied population. Ultimately, the study provides endorsement for continued integration of in-person support methods during a new mother’s postpartum recovery

"Peer-led support for long term health conditions : its functions, benefits and challenges and how the role of a facilitator could increase effectiveness" : a Masters thesis

Peer-led support groups for long-term health conditions are inexpensive and beneficial resources. However, literature on peer-led support is minimal and suggests that these groups face many challenges. The current study endeavored to explore the challenges and functions of peer-led support groups for long-term health conditions; further, examining how the implementation of the role of a Facilitator for these groups could negate some of the challenges and increase the prevalence and effectiveness of groups. Through focus groups and individual interviews with Group Leaders, Health Professionals and Group Participants involved in peer-led support groups, the current study identified 7 emergent themes. These themes were discussed and analyzed, particularly in relation to the experience of peer-led support groups and the possibility for the development of the role of a facilitator in the future

Thrown Impossibility: The Ontological Structure of Despair

This thesis is a phenomenological analysis of the ontological structure of despair. It begins with an analysis of Heidegger’s work on ‘Affectedness’ whereby through the critique given by Ratcliffe it is seen that moods are primordial and condition the way the world can matter to the subject. It then expatiates the phenomenology of despair where despair is ‘lived impossibility as such.’ Explicating the phenomenology of despair then involves subjecting Freud’s essay ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ to a Heideggerian hermeneutic analysis as discussed by Kristeva and Foucault in particular and also Radden more generally. This phenomenology of despair is then drawn into comparison with Heideggerian ‘Anxiety’ and it is concluded that despair is comparable to Heideggerian anxiety when it is subject to a negative existential reduction as put forward by Dreyfus. The final section of this paper then maps the phenomenology of despair onto the temporality of Heidegger’s care structure, ultimately explicating the ontological structure of despair. This involves a close analysis of the radical diminishing of Heideggerian ‘Projection’ or ‘Understanding’ as is reflected in the radical disruption to temporality that occurs in despair, particularly the diminishing of the futural self- the most profound consequence of which is the loss of the capacity to project towards one’s ownmost possibility, that of death. It is argues that death becomes impossible which then means that life itself becomes impossible