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In July 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on two cases: Students for Fair Admissions vs. the University of North Carolina and Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, effectively prohibiting the use of race as one of many factors in college or university admissions decisions. To explore these two cases, we conducted a content analysis of the legal briefs, the final court ruling, concurrences, and dissents. In its ruling, the Court did not overturn precedents upholding affirmative action, but the majority interpreted those prior cases in such a way that makes it impossible to justify the use of race in college admissions. Although these cases are from the context of higher education, the ruling highlights the fragility of affirmative action generally and may challenge the legal and regulatory structure that underpins many other important civil rights issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The capacity to leverage information from others' opinions is a hallmark of human cognition. Consequently, past research has investigated how we learn from others' testimony. Yet a distinct form of social information--aggregated opinion--increasingly guides our judgments and decisions. We investigated how people learn from such information by conducting three experiments with participants recruited online within the United States (W = 886) comparing the predictions of three computational models: a Bayesian solution to this problem that can be implemented by a simple strategy for combining proportions with prior beliefs, and two alternatives from epistemology and economics. Across all studies, we found the strongest concordance between participants' judgments and the predictions of the Bayesian model, though some participants' judgments were better captured by alternative strategies. These findings lay the groundwork for future research and show that people draw systematic inferences from aggregated opinion, often in line with a Bayesian solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.S. Supreme Court has heard several cases regarding special education. These cases have resulted in decisions that have addressed issues involving special education programming and procedural issues. On March 21, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling in Perez v. Sturgis Public Schools. This decision, which was the most recent special education case heard by the highest court in the United States, involved litigation in special education. In this brief article, we address the Supreme Court's decision in Perez by (a) examining the background of the case, (b) reviewing the decision by the lower courts and the U.S. Supreme Court, and (c) discussing the implications of the case for special educators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An economic model of news contends that the pressures of limited column space and market competition force media actors to be strategic concerning which notable events receive exhaustive coverage, if any at all. Applying this framework to the Supreme Court can explain why coverage of the Justices' decision-making has historically been sensationalized and reserved for decisions sure to have a pronounced effect on public discourse. However, the emergence of social media as a practical alternative for mass media dissemination raises notable questions, chief among them being whether the economic framework fully extends to this newer medium. In this study, I analyze media coverage of the Court's decisions using Twitter and observe important distinctions among environments for news dissemination. I argue that the apparent reduction in the economic costs associated with coverage dissemination and consumption on social media platforms like Twitter requires viewing Supreme Court news in these environments through an amended theoretical framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In examining public evaluations of governing institutions, are job approval and legitimacy related? This question has dominated scholarship on Supreme Court legitimacy for decades. Conventional wisdom suggests that specific support (e.g., job approval) and diffuse support (e.g., legitimacy) are independent. Specific support captures short-term orientations based on policy alignment with the Court. Legitimacy is a long-term perspective reflecting more fundamental support for the Court as a governing institution. We challenge the paradigm that job approval and legitimacy are largely unrelated concepts. Specifically, we employ a variety of statistical techniques and panel data to show that changes in legitimacy are a direct effect of changes in public approval. Salient decisions and Court vacancies directly shape approval and indirectly shape legitimacy through their effects on approval. Longitudinal analysis confirms that changes in job approval precede and predict changes in legitimacy. These results suggest that the Court needs public approval, and its public approval is rooted in outcome-oriented perceptions of its decisions and membership. Further, sustained low levels of approval will eventually erode legitimacy and limit the Court's influence over policy. Thus, like the outwardly political executive and legislative branches, it is important for the Court to build political capital through job approval. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research shows that many people support courts based on their ideological congruence with those courts and their decisions. But people likely hold varying degrees of intensity in their preferences for judges who will implement conservative or liberal policy. We suspect that court support is a function of that intensity. Our results agree. Court support turns on the intensity with which people prefer conservative, moderate, or liberal judges. In fact, accounting for the strength with which people prefer ideological judges explains more of their support for courts than some existing approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the Supreme Court ruling in Miller banning mandatory juvenile life without parole (JLWOP) sentences, many states have gone one step further and completely eliminated JLWOP sentences. However, this trend has stagnated. One potential reason is society's "tough on crime" framework, which legislators are hesitant to deviate from. To understand public opinion on adolescent adolescent development and sentencing of youth, we surveyed residents in one state considering legislation that would ban JLWOP and similar sentences, Michigan. Most participants had sufficient understanding of adolescent development and viewed adolescents as having the capacity for change. Additionally, most participants supported alternative sentences to JLWOP, with support primarily given to sentences that were rehabilitative in nature. Our results can help policymakers better understand their constituents' beliefs regarding adolescent sentencing, which can inform policy decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on an ethnography developed with social movements derived from the eviction process of an old popular district in the city of São José dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil, we analyze how an idea of neighborship is applied to the processes of struggle and their outcomes. In 2004, a land of over 1,000,000 m2, owned by a bankrupt industry, was occupied by an entire district of over 5,000 people. This "illegal" occupation had been going on for almost 8 years when a court decision ordered the land to be vacated. The case of the Pinheirinho dos Palmares neighborhood, as it was known, became an emblematic example of Brazilian housing policies, with its violent eviction drawing the entire country's attention. This article deals with the struggles that the evicted residents started and that resulted, at the end of almost 5 years, in the construction of a new district by the state, based on a new housing program. We are going to analyze how concerns about organizing the new neighborship from the old neighborhood relations were fundamental in the geographical and architectural production of the new district. The article seeks to intertwine the notions of resistance and neighborship, responsible for the new configuration of the district. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Supreme Court decision that race conscious admissions policies in universities are unconstitutional has created questions and concerns about the sustainability of diversity, equity and inclusion programs in many organizations and across sectors. This editorial provides hopeful examples of how belongingness is being embraced as a core value in many organizations. In an interview with education expert, Dr Pauline Dow, we discuss ways that the education sector creates trust and belongingness and explore best practices and leadership development methods that allow teachers to thrive. Lessons learned in the educator sector offer insights into how belongingness can be cultivated in other sectors, organizations and communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and Objectives: English allows inanimate objects to be sentence subjects (e.g., "The knife cut the bread") but Korean and Japanese restrict subjects of causal sentences on the basis of animacy. In previous work, we found that Korean speakers relaxed their native grammatical animacy constraint when immersed in English (e.g., found knives to be acceptable sentence subjects in Korean). We suggested this L2 influence occurred because the Korean animacy constraint does not map cleanly onto the semantic representation of animacy—some inanimate objects (e.g., "fire") can be subjects of causal sentences. In the current study, we further test this idea by examining the case of Japanese–English bilinguals. We predict that because the Japanese animacy constraint aligns well with the semantic representation of animacy, it will be less susceptible to L2 influence. Methodology: We first independently assessed the semantic representation of animacy by comparing animacy ratings from native speakers of Korean, Japanese, and English for 60 objects. We then asked Japanese–English bilinguals and Japanese monolinguals to provide grammaticality judgments for sentences that varied in subject animacy. Data and Analysis: We analyzed participants' animacy ratings and grammaticality judgments using mixed-effects models. Findings: Animacy ratings supported a closer correspondence between semantic representation of animacy and the grammatical animacy constraint for Japanese grammar than for Korean grammar. In contrast to previous results for Korean speakers, Japanese–English bilinguals' grammaticality judgments did not significantly differ from those of Japanese monolinguals. Originality: The current study is unique in that it suggests the vulnerability of structures at the syntax–semantics interface to L2 influence varies across different language groups based on the alignment between syntactic and semantic features. Implications: The current findings support the possibility that representations at the syntax–semantics interface may only be vulnerable to influence when syntax is incongruent with semantic features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The opinion focuses on the European Court of Human Right's (ECtHR) recent judgment in Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz v Switzerland which was handed down on 9 April 2023. The decision broke new ground by establishing that 'Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights must be seen as encompassing a right for individuals to effective protection by the State authorities from serious adverse effects of climate change on their life, health, well-being and quality of life'. The opinion discusses five key aspects of this voluminous judgment which will likely have an impact far beyond this individual case, including the points made relating to the role of the ECtHR, courts in general and the Convention as a living instrument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most employment discrimination research has focused on race and gender. The relatively fewer papers dealing with religion suggests that discrimination exists. We extend the literature by examining the effects of job type (public safety/non-public safety), religion (Muslim/non-Muslim) and Muslim gender on selection decisions. Participants ranked applicants and made judgments on trust and whether to interview applicants after evaluating seven resumes for either a shipping clerk or a security guard position. Participants rated Muslim applicants lower than non-Muslim applicants for the security guard position. We found no evidence of discrimination in the shipping clerk position. Perceived trust may be a possible explanation for some of the decisions people made. We also found that the Muslim female candidate was rated higher than the Muslim male candidate for the security guard position; no gender differences existed for the shipping clerk position. Our findings are consistent with the gender discrimination literature in that job type affected the extent to which religious-based discrimination occurred and the intersectionality literature/models specifying that combinations of demographics can impact judgments. One implication is the need to incorporate religion in discrimination interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to establish that capital punishment is not rational and cannot be rationalized without suicidally destroying the very ground on which lawful and rational punishment bases itself. It argues that in capital punishment, just as in any lawful punishment, the criminal is both held (humanly) rational and therefore culpable. But, unlike other forms of punishment, in capital punishment, the condemned is at the same time, held as irrational and irredeemable, beyond reform, and therein outside the ambit of rationality and humanity. In this sense a fundamental aporia is reached in rationalizing capital punishment because of the contradiction between the basis of punishment (the human as rational) and its operational logic (the condemned person as beyond reform therein irrational). Expressed another way, the judge proclaims a form of infallibility in their reasoning where the incorrigibility of the judgment is horrifically demonstrated and ironically reflected (and projected) in the incorrigibility of the condemned. This broad argument is pursued in two parts; one part interprets canonical texts such as Hobbes, Hegel and Foucault, while the second part interprets the Supreme Court of India's jurisprudence around the death penalty. While these are very different discourses it will be shown that they share much common ground in their expressing—and negotiating—the fundamental problem as described above. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes that Hannah Arendt and Alexandre Kojève's responses to Carl Schmitt's theory of sovereignty, when combined, provide a historical and normative basis for a cosmopolitan view on human rights. I argue that by systematically merging Kojève's theory of the "disinterested and impartial third" and Arendt's theory of "disinterested judgment," legal institutions, economic redistribution, and intersubjective normativity can be combined to create a robust response to Schmitt's theory of sovereignty. To demonstrate this, I examine their efforts to resolve the contradiction between universal rights and national sovereignty from a phenomenological standpoint. Arendt's idea of the "common world" is analyzed, showing how it upholds the idea of a non-sovereign public realm as a normative source of human rights but fails to consider the institutional and economic factors required for their realization. I then explore Kojève's theory of impartial international legal institutions and his critique of economic colonialism to confront these factors. Additionally, Arendt's theory of disinterested judgment is shown to address the limitations of Kojève's phenomenological view of disinterestedness. This convergence between Kojève and Arendt provides a comprehensive response to the practical challenges of Arendt's theory, while also highlighting the importance of "world opinion" in transforming sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review Yovino v. Rizo in 2020, leaving in place a Ninth Circuit Court decision that the use of salary history when determining compensation levels violates the Equal Pay Act of 1963. Aileen Rizo, a math consultant for the Fresno County School District, had argued that the basing of her starting salary on her previous level of compensation perpetuated past salary discrimination. Salary history is a common tool for setting starting salaries, and was used by the school district in a gender-neutral, uniform manner. A critical analysis of the technique, however, shows that salary history does not reflect job-related knowledge, skills, and abilities and has a disparate impact on female applicants and employees. Alternatively, public employers bear the responsibility to advertise competitive pay rates that reflect internal and market-based considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Supreme Court ruling Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (June 2022) overturned federal protection of abortion rights, resulting in significant impact on both male and female reproductive rights and health care delivery. We conducted a retrospective review of all patients who underwent vasectomy at a single academic institution between June 2021 and June 2023. Our objective was to compare the rates of childless and partnerless vasectomies 1 year before and after this ruling, as these men may be more susceptible to postprocedural regret. Of total, 631 men (median age = 39 years, range = 20–70) underwent vasectomy consultation. Total vasectomies pre- and post-Dobbs were 304 (48%) versus 327 (52%). Total childless and partnerless vasectomies pre- and post-Dobbs were 44 (42%) versus 61 (58%) and 43 (46%) versus 50 (54%). Vasectomy completion rate was slightly increased post-Dobbs (90% vs. 88%; p =.240). The post-Dobbs cohort had significantly less children (1.8 vs. 2.0; p =.031). Men in the post-Dobbs era were significantly more likely to be commercially insured (72% vs. 64%) and less likely to be uninsured (1% vs. 6%; p =.002). Men who underwent childless vasectomy were significantly more likely to be younger (36.4 vs. 39.8 years; p <.001). There was a significantly greater proportion of Hispanic and Black men in the partnerless cohort compared to the cohort with partners (24% vs. 19% and 9% vs. 2%; p =.002). In conclusion, patients should be counseled on the permanent nature of this procedure, underscoring need for effective and reversible male contraception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study was carried out to develop guidelines for more appropriate interventions for people who stalk following the enforcement of the Stalking Crime Punishment Act. By content analysis, 407 cases of the first trial judgment data from the start of the stalking punishment law application were collected and substituted with categorical data. Three types of stalking persons—Aggressors, Indirect Contactors, and Approachers—were created by latent class analysis. Notable distinctions emerged among these types, encompassing criminal history, mental health, online sexual crimes, and the frequency of contact. For instance, Aggressors were individuals who displayed aggressive behaviors most frequently; Indirect Contactors engaged in online sexual harassment against victims; and Approachers approached victims without mutual agreement. Therefore, considering these findings would hold great significance when approaching individuals who engage in stalking with a more comprehensive understanding. This approach aims to provide insights to enhance criminal responses and practices in South Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia, imprisonment remains a popular form of crime control amidst rising costs in prison expenditure and high rates of prison return. While changes to crime rates and to policing policy have impacted the growing prisoner population in recent years, less is known about the language underpinning the courts' decision to imprison. This article presents the results of a critical discourse analysis on 124 sentencing remarks on imprisonment from the District Court of New South Wales in 2017. Three discourses were identified in the texts as facilitating the justification of a prison sentence: the discourse of control, the discourse of safety and the discourse of duty. These findings highlight the ways in which the prison is constructed and legitimated in the courts, which has implications not only for sentencing policy and practice but also for conceptions and applications of justice more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This case report discusses six judgments of the Court of Justice of the EU rendered between September and 19 December 2023. The first judgment reported is in case C-422/22 Zaklad v TE, in which the Court took the opportunity to clarify that the duty for the issuing institution to verify that the conditions for issuing an A1 (posting) certificate are met arises not only at the moment of the issuance but also continuously during the posting period. The case report also covers the case C-45/22 HK v Service fédéral des Pensions, in which the Court interpreted for the first time Article 55(1) (a) of Regulation 883/2004 on the method of calculation for overlapping benefits of a different kind. The case report ends with two rulings dealing with infringement procedures against the Netherlands: C-459/22 and C-360/22 European Commission v Kingdom of The Netherlands. In these judgments, the Court considered that the Dutch tax rules on transfer of pension capital were an infringement of the free movement of workers (Article 45 TFEU). Finally, we report on two cases on social security benefits for EU officials and two cases dealing with Covid-19 measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives : Judgments about police procedural fairness consistently have a stronger influence on how the public ascribes legitimacy to the police than evaluations of police effectiveness. What remains largely underexplored, however, is the potential moderating effect of procedural justice on the relationship between effectiveness and legitimacy and whether this moderation varies by citizen race. Method: We administered two separate surveys to determine whether procedural justice's moderating effect on the relationship between police ineffectiveness and legitimacy varies by citizen race. The first was a mail survey of a random sample of citizens in a southern US city (N = 1,681) conducted in 2013; the second, a national survey of adults (N = 972) administered via Qualtrics in 2022. Results: We found that procedural justice could help protect against the harmful influence of perceived ineffectiveness on police legitimacy in Study 2. However, contrary to expectations, this moderation effect held only for White Americans. Conclusions: The effect of perceived ineffectiveness on legitimacy evaluations does not vary depending on citizens' perceptions of procedural justice. Yet, police still do have control over how they treat people with whom they interact, which is one mechanism that can improve citizens' views on police legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantitative research into the effectiveness of the UN human rights treaty bodies (UNTBs) in eliciting remedial responses from states is impeded by a lack of usable data on how states respond to their decisions. The new Treaty Body Views Dataset (TBVD) aims to fill this gap. It comprises details on all published decisions in individual complaints cases issued by the UNTBs between 1979 and 2019 and matches these with information on their state of compliance. The TBVD can be used for research on the activities of the treaty bodies, the nature of the decisions themselves, or state behavior following a decision. An empirical application illustrates how the TBVD can advance knowledge about the factors that correlate with compliance with adverse UNTB decisions. Results show that the likelihood of implementation hinges critically on decision-level characteristics, and reveal differences and similarities between compliance with UNTB decisions and regional human rights court judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In what ways do amicus curiae or friend of the court briefs shape the decisions of constitutional courts outside of the United States? Using a unique data set of more than nine hundred briefs from the Bulgarian Constitutional Court, hearing cases of constitutional review and legal interpretation, we analyze the Court's propensities to both borrow language from briefs and cite the identity of interested parties. We find that the Court is more inclined to incorporate language from briefs by powerful government actors rather than non-governmental groups. Furthermore, the Court's alignment with the governing coalition and the type of constitutional review also influence the propensity to borrow language from briefs. However, the Bulgarian Constitutional Court does not appear to favor citing any particular interested party. These results question whether the briefing process in Bulgaria lives up to democratic expectations for including less powerful civil society viewpoints into decision-making. The study is one of the few of its kind to explore how the reasoning found within the brief influences an important national high court outside of the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Criminal defendants can face significant pressures to plead guilty, but wrongful conviction scholarship has largely overlooked the study of guilty pleas. This study content analyzed 139 Australian appellate court judgments in which a guilty plea conviction was overturned, investigating the types of errors involved in these convictions, and the stage of the criminal justice process at which the errors occurred. The findings revealed that errors occurred during the police investigation, pretrial preparations, and formal court procedures, with the most frequent errors involving incorrect or inappropriate charges, inadequate legal representation, and the courts erroneously accepting a guilty plea. The findings raise important implications regarding the adequacy of safeguards to ensure guilty pleas are appropriate or factually and legally accurate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Russia's practice of the ban introduced by the so-called 'fake news laws' during the war against Ukraine. It blends doctrinal legal with discourse analysis to study how and why Russian courts have applied the laws, which epistemology of knowledge they have constructed while limiting fake news about the war and what implications this has for freedom of expression and public debate of the war within Russia. The dataset covers 446 Russian court decisions from 2022 to 2023. A historical approach is utilised to discuss the results in connection to the Soviet Communist ideology. The article argues that Russian courts have used the laws to make truth in Russia conditional and loyalty unconditional, actualising the Soviet principles of 'partyness', 'objectivity' and 'scientificalness'. It demonstrates how courts construct a mythologised reality about the 'imaginary' 'military operation' to help the government monopolise the public debate and misrepresent the war against Ukraine within Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to challenge the prevailing view that violence is legally actionable because human bodies are capable of experiencing pain, injury, and death. Drawing on literature in the area of new materialism, this article demonstrates how pain, injury, and death are not ontological properties of the flesh-and-bone body, but rather, they are the effects of how violence is made sense-able, knowable, as part of the criminal legal process. Here, I examine four of the materializing practices through which violence becomes sense-able to us: crime scene photography, forensic pathology, legal judgments, and bodily performance. If the effects of criminal violence can be traced to the discursive practices by which we observe, measure, think, and speak about bodies, it becomes much harder to sustain the view that human violence is exceptional because the human body is special. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human trafficking in the hotel industry represents a hidden threat that demands decisive action. Despite public commitments, the sector's initiatives remain inconsistent, and a wave of lawsuits imposes both financial and reputational risks. Through analysis of relevant legislation and case law, the article demonstrates hotels' potential liability as venues enabling trafficking. However, inconsistent self-regulation and lawsuits reveal limited progress. The authors advocate for insurance companies to play a pivotal role in combatting human trafficking in the hotel industry by strategically adjusting coverage provisions. They trace the historical influence of insurers on the trajectory of slavery when 18th-century British insurers' actions contributed to the rise of abolitionism and argue that similar private regulation today can incentivize hotels' proactive measures against trafficking. The article proposes that insurers possess diverse tools, including exclusions, premium adjustments, auditing, and loss prevention, to compel action rather than complacency. Mandated self-insured retentions can also hold hotels financially accountable for their negligence. However, relying solely on pricing alterations faces challenges due to market competition and inconsistent judicial rulings on liability exclusions. Ultimately, addressing this complex issue requires a collaborative, multi-stakeholder approach. Government fines and prosecutions can further incentivize self-disclosure and cooperation, while publicized settlements can promote transparency and empower consumers to make informed choices for hotel venues. This combined framework can transition hotels from passive enablers to active contributors in the fight against human trafficking, fulfilling their duty of care and catalyzing meaningful progress against human exploitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is an editorial note from the Newspaper Research Journal. It discusses the gap between technology and the law, with recent Supreme Court cases and legislation suggesting that the gap may be closing. The article highlights the implications of these cases for communication and news media, such as the ruling that public officials may be sued for blocking critics on social media. It also mentions upcoming Supreme Court cases related to government interactions with social media companies and the question of whether social media companies have editorial control over content. Additionally, the document mentions legislation calling for the sale or banning of TikTok due to concerns about privacy and national security. The editorial note concludes by acknowledging the interest in media literacy, misinformation, and the role of social media in modern society. [Extracted from the article]

The central obligation under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act is to provide each eligible student with a free appropriate public education (FAPE). In Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District RE-1 (2017), the U.S. Supreme Court revised the prior substantive standard for determining FAPE that the court had developed in Board of Education v. Rowley (1982). The Endrew F. court modified the Rowley standard of requiring the individualized education program (IEP) to be reasonably calculated to enable the student to receive educational benefit to requiring a student's IEP to be reasonably calculated to enable the student to "make progress appropriate in light of the student's circumstances." The purpose of this article is to compare what the post– Endrew F. courts use with what the professional literature recommends as measures of appropriate progress. The results inform special education practitioners about the significant discrepancy between the courts' focus on the "must" of legal requirements and the "should" of professional recommendations. The discussion suggests ways that special education professionals can use their expertise to inform courts and legislatures to narrow this gap for the benefit of more effective progress for students with disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Initial impressions of others based on facial appearances are often inaccurate yet can lead to dire outcomes. Across four studies, adult participants underwent a counterstereotype training to reduce their reliance on facial appearance in consequential social judgments of White male faces. In Studies 1 and 2, trustworthiness and sentencing judgments among control participants predicted whether real-world inmates were sentenced to death versus life in prison, but these relationships were diminished among trained participants. In Study 3, a sequential priming paradigm demonstrated that the training was able to abolish the relationship between even automatically and implicitly perceived trustworthiness and the inmates' life-or-death sentences. Study 4 extended these results to realistic decision-making, showing that training reduced the impact of facial trustworthiness on sentencing decisions even in the presence of decision-relevant information. Overall, our findings suggest that a counterstereotype intervention can mitigate the potentially harmful effects of relying on facial appearance in consequential social judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, China has endeavored to implement individualized sentencing for cases of intimate partner homicide (IPH), using both legal and extralegal factors, to protect potential female victims and female defendants. This study examines the factors influencing the sentencing of IPH, utilizing a sample comprising 921 cases from 2016 to 2021 on the China Judgments Online website. The results show that: (1) the legal factor “victim's fault” is the main reason for the leniency of sentencing for female defendants compared to male defendants; and (2) intimate partner relationships between defendants and victims can have a protective effect on sentencing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this research was to explore how the concept of harm is constituted in case law judicial decisions pertaining to the importation, production, possession, and trafficking of drugs in Canada using critical discourse analysis methodology. The research was designed to uncover taken-for-granted assumptions about drugs and associated harms. The data source for this study is judicial decisions. These are published texts where judge(s) summarize details about the factors considered, provide a reasoned interpretation of sentencing principles relevant to the judicial decision, and explain the rationale for their decision. Initially, codes were identified deductively, using words related to drugs and harm. Codes were added when incidents of moralization language were observed to be high. Moralization language was defined as “the usage of language cues referencing moral values”. The selection process resulted in n = 129 judicial decisions meeting the inclusion criteria. Discourse analysis was guided by four tools described by Gee’s study: the significance tool, the why this way and not that way tool, the connections tool, and the intertextuality tool. Emergent themes are: (1) trafficking as an immoral enterprise; (2) scourge to society, (3) fentanyl and harm, and (4) constructing gravity. This study uncovers discursive practices in many judicial decisions that convey the (re)production of institutionalized stigma. High reliance on legal tropes about drug harms, harm of trafficking, moral culpability associated with distribution of some drugs, by some people, in some ways, and a lack of contextual awareness of social inequities that influence the lives of Canadians perpetuates legal interpretations that support rationales for sentence predicated on denunciation and deterrence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]