Search

This essay can be read as both a tragedy of neoliberal governance and a paean to the resilience and creativity of humanity. Reporting an ethnographic assessment of the impacts of Denver's recent camping ban on homeless communities, I build on John Searle's constructivist social theory to argue not only that undomiciled people construct homes, but also that they exercise rights to property. Part of a social order, people living on the streets find creative ways to sheathe themselves in home spaces. By depriving them not only of the stability of their homes but also of the social power afforded by property, this ban dismantles heterodox orders, which then decay from anarchy. Nevertheless, accounts provided by homeless individuals themselves demonstrate that primitive property, though always fragile, can withstand emphatic disruption: this continued resilience is seen in the webs of mutual reciprocity previously and subsequently woven beneath, between, and behind state apparatuses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article asserts that the Knobe Effect should inform equal protection jurisprudence and explains the concepts of intentionality and equal protection jurisprudence. Details related to the arguments and decisions on cases Washington v. Davis, Arlington Heights v. Metro, and Personnel Administrator of Massachusetts v. Feeney have been examined. It was analyzed that equal protection jurisprudence provides weight to both the primary objective of government action and the possible impact of government action. The scholarly reactions on and applications of the Knobe Effect are also discussed. It is believed that the Knobe Effect affirms that people will assess government action as intentional and there is a need to promote the foreseeability of a disproportionate impact in the intent inquiry.

This Article exploits an anomaly in Title VII doctrine to develop a new theory of employment discrimination law. The anomaly is that employers are held liable for discrimination when their employees are harassed by customers or other third parties. Such liability cannot be squared with traditional Title VII theories of disparate treatment or disparate impact. Instead, courts accept claims that essentially assert denial of reasonable accommodations, notwithstanding the consensus that Title VII disallows such claims. To understand this anomaly, the Article posits a new analysis of what disparate treatment and nonaccommodation have in common. First, both involve "membership causation": workplace harm caused by an individual employee's membership in a protected class. Second, both involve criteria for establishing an employer's responsibility for preventing membership causation. These structural continuities facilitate Title VII liability in third-party harasser cases. In these cases, membership causation exists in conjunction with employer negligence as a basis for responsibility, even though the employer lacks any discriminatory intent. This analysis also illuminates a series of other confused areas where Title VII doctrine deviates from a discriminatory intent standard without turning to disparate impact, all of which conjoin membership causation and a basis for employer responsibility. More generally, membership causation and employer responsibility enable a theoretical synthesis of disparate treatment and nonaccommodation. That synthesis offers employment discrimination law a firmer normative foundation in liberal egalitarian thought. Such a theory may provide an alternative to established approaches built on the process defects of discriminatory intent or the structural goal of ending group subordination, while retaining the primary virtues of those approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors compared East Asians' and Americans' views of everyday social events. Research suggests that Americans tend to focus more on the self and to have a greater sense of personal agency than East Asians. The authors assessed whether, com- pared to East Asians, Americans emphasize main characters even when events do not involve the self and whether they see more agency or intentionality in actions, even when the actions are not their own. Whether East Asians would observe more emotions in everyday scenarios than would Americans also was investigated. In Study 1, Chinese and Americans read alleged diary entries of another person. Americans did focus more on main characters and on characters intentionality. Study 2 replicated these results comparing Taiwanese and Americans on free recall of events concerning the self and of narratives and videos concerning others. Study 2 also found that Taiwanese made more comments about the emotional states of characters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the significance of behavioral objectives curriculum in human relations in the U.S. to foster the exercise of free choice. The behavioral posture is associated with prediction and control over behavior. Nevertheless, there are only little considerations that have been given on the possible utilization of these techniques to help individual free himself and provide for self-direction. The author restricts his study within the bounds of a curriculum in human relations, with a behavioral frame of reference, whose primary objective is the development of teachers who can act freely and spontaneously with internationality. Internationality is best described behaviorally through the passive or active behavior of teachers. The curriculum of human relations described in this paper has a secondary objective, the direct instruction of teacher trainees in specific behaviors of human relations.

This article discusses legal liabilities associated with intentional contamination of food products. According to the author, the rule of vicarious liability means that a company is liable for all harm caused by wrongful acts of an employee if he is acting within the scope of employment. He argues that generally there is no vicarious liability for criminal or intentional acts. He provides exceptions under the doctrines of strict product liability and foreseeability. He discusses cases which include spiked ham and wheat gluten contaminated with melamine.