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The English educational revolution c.1560-1640 excited much interest in the 1960s and '70s. This paper seeks to show the relationship between the emergence of learned professions of church, law and medicine and that more general expansion in education. It shows how scholars have established the comparability of the ethos of these professions with that of the gentleman. It proceeds to detail, through a review of the literature, the consequences of this relationship for one of the professions--the clergy. The law of unintended consequences operated: state intervention and the introduction of formal educational requirements sometimes undermined the raison d'etre of the clergy and the control they had over their own affairs. It suggests a way forward for consideration of the development of all learned professions that requires close attention to both the external and the internal influences on them and, above all, to conflicts of interest among segments of each profession. (Contains 45 footnotes.)

The age of globalization requires an understanding of intercultural communication and diversity issues in workplaces. This is especially so in a country such as New Zealand, which has recently been experiencing the phenomenon of recruiting and attracting skilled, professional immigrants from China, India, and other parts of Asia and the Middle East to fill New Zealand's skills shortage. However, the experiences of these new arrivals have not always been positive (Forsyte Research, 1998). This article describes current research on the communication barriers encountered by immigrants in the New Zealand workplace. It also discusses the author's interviews with two practitioners: a lawyer who advises employers on employment relations practices and a representative of the health care industry who provides adjustment support for staff members recruited from overseas.

Drawing on a sample of 798 Ohio criminal justice professionals (police, prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges), the authors examine respondents' perceptions regarding the frequency of system errors (i.e., professional error and misconduct suggested by previous research to be associated with wrongful conviction), and wrongful felony conviction. Results indicate that respondents perceive system errors to occur more than infrequently but less than moderately frequent. Respondents also perceive that wrongful felony conviction occurs in their own jurisdictions in 0.5% to 1% of all felony cases, and in the United States in 1% to 3% of all felony cases. Respondents, however, specify an acceptable rate of wrongful conviction to be less than 0.5%. Findings thus indicate that criminal justice professionals perceive an unacceptable frequency of wrongful conviction and associated system errors and suggest that programs aimed at reducing system errors and improving professional conduct would be broadly accepted among criminal justice professionals.

The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis of the Scopes Trial based upon the film "Inherit the Wind" (United Artists 1960) and how it helped to shape the public's perception of teachers, within the context of historical accounts of the trial, including the trial transcript and daily reports from individuals such as H. L. Mencken, a journalist with the Baltimore Sun. When scrutinized, the film both shapes and reveals much about the public perception of American teachers during the 1920s. Its dialogue also speaks volumes about social divisions during the age commonly known as the "Roaring Twenties," when the distant voice of Victorian traditionalists was met by the frenetic cries of the modernists. In popular culture, "Inherit the Wind" has come to stand for the historical account of the classic legal drama between Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan over the right to teach evolutionary theory in public schools. While "Inherit the Wind" raises the stature of lawyers by portraying Darrow and Bryan as legal giants whose brilliance captivated an entire town and the nation, it portrayed the catalyst to the drama, teacher John Scopes, as a helpless, pitiable character, powerless to act owing to his position as victim. Yet, when the actual account of the historical events surrounding the Scopes Trial is held up to the movie version, one sees a sharp contrast. Scopes is no longer the victim but one of the agitators. He not only survives the trial, but throughout it maintains a good relationship with fellow Daytonians. He makes the most of his involvement by cultivating friendships with scientists called upon by the defense team to testify at the trial.

Purpose: This study examined the association between cognitive functioning and completion of a durable power of attorney for health care. Design and Methods: Participants were from the Second Longitudinal Study on Aging (LSOA II), a nationally representative sample of community-dwelling persons who were at least 70 years of age at the time of participation. The sample included 325 older adult respondents (144 men, 181 women) with a mean age of 80.7 years (SE = 0.36) and a mean educational attainment of 11.6 years (SE = 0.18). Researchers measured each respondent's cognitive functioning during follow-up by using an adapted Telephone Interview of Cognitive Status, and a proxy informant indicated whether the respondent completed a durable power of attorney for health care. Results: A durable power of attorney for health care was completed by 60.8% (SE = 2.51) of respondents prior to their death. Logistic regression demonstrated that respondents with the first quartile of global cognitive functioning were 76% less likely to have completed a durable power of attorney (adjusted odds ratio = 0.24, 95% confidence interval = 0.09-0.60) than those with the fourth quartile of cognitive functioning. Implications: The factors associated with completion of durable power of attorney for health care by older adults with lower levels of cognitive functioning should be investigated further. Such data could be used to inform interventions to increase the completion rates of durable power of attorney for health care among this particular group of older adults. (Contains 1 figure and 4 tables.)

This research empirically examines the difference that type of counsel, public or private, makes in the bail amount set for Hispanic defendants. Data were collected on all felony defendants assigned to the district court in a midwestern county. Specifically, the authors hypothesized that Hispanic defendants who retain the assistance of private counsel will receive lower bail amounts than defendants assigned a court-appointed attorney. Several independent controls were employed including the legal variables--"offense seriousness" and "prior arrests"--and the extralegal variables--"sex," "age," and "residency." These data were analyzed using ordinary least squares multiple regression. The analyses show that although Hispanic defendants utilizing private counsel receive lower bail amounts than defendants assigned a court-appointed attorney, only the variables "age," "residency," and "offense seriousness" significantly affect bail amount set. (Contains 2 tables and 2 notes.)

With the due date for the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) right around the corner, "Education Next" thought it apt to probe the lessons learned in the five years since the act's passage. This article presents an e-mail interview with Sandy Kress, a lawyer and former school board member who, as a domestic policy advisor in the White House, served as President Bush's chief negotiator during the original NCLB debate. In this interview, Kress was asked about the genesis of key aspects of the federal law, whether its crafters foresaw any of its major glitches, and what he thinks of NCLB's prospects going forward. (Contains 2 figures.)

Work uncertainty may affect gender disparities in professionals' upward mobility in organizational hierarchies. Professional work involves three forms of uncertainty--problem variability, strategic indeterminacy and dependence on autonomous actors--that weaken the association between performance and ability, leading organizational decision-makers to weigh gender more heavily in promotion decisions. Strategic indeterminacy also increases the need for trust, so decision-makers feel more comfortable promoting candidates of their own sex. These ideas are explored using data on promotions to partnership in U.S. law firms. Findings show that (1) promotions are less likely to go to women when work involves greater problem variability and strategic indeterminacy; and (2) the negative effect of strategic indeterminacy becomes stronger as the proportion of male partners increases. (Contains 2 tables, 2 figures, and 12 notes.)

In recent years, corporate executives and local bar association officials have increasingly questioned why so few of the nation's elite corporate law firms can claim significant racial and ethnic diversity among their partner or upper management ranks. Some organizations have even pledged to reward law firms that ensure high-level assignments for their minority attorneys and to penalize those firms that don't. Not surprisingly, a number of law professors from some of the nation's leading law schools have taken it upon themselves to examine why the leadership ranks of large corporate law firms remain essentially a White men's club. The question of diversity in the upper echelons of elite law firms has added fuel to an already heated academic debate about the role of affirmative action in the legal profession. This article presents a legal scholars' varying perspectives on the impediments to minority success in large law firms. The article further states that examining the cultures and practices of large firms promises will be a formidable task, because research evidence hasn't yet led to new practices and solutions.

Teaching legal ethics can be a difficult job, as students often come to the course thinking it will be a waste of time--either because they believe it is impossible to find provably correct answers to ethical problems, or because they think that the answers are obvious. This attitude prevents a collection of challenges: the teacher must engage uninterested students, show them that there is either more or less to be said about the subject of ethics than they think, and help them understand that they may not have framed the issues correctly. This is made even more difficult by the fact that law students have already absorbed the idea that lawyers hold a special place in our society, and that serving as someone's lawyer may allow them--or even require them--to engage in conduct which we would otherwise regard as being morally obnoxious. The author has designed his course to help students understand that (1) many solutions to the problems of legal ethics turn not on the unique role of the attorney, but rather on the unique role of the attorney-client relationship; and (2) engaging in ethical decision making is much more difficult in practice than it is in the classroom.

In the paper "A Fairer Deal For Legal Aid" (2005), the Department of Constitutional Affairs poses the question: Are we ensuring that system resources are used in the "most proportionate, efficient, effective and timely way to ensure the best possible outcomes for children and families?" This paper argues that the issue of effective use of system resources is equally applicable to Northern Ireland. It discusses the expectation that the Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1995 implemented on 4 November 1996 would deliver a re-balancing of the relationship between the State and the family, with emphasis on prevention and early intervention and with less demand for crisis-orientated services. The statistical evidence generated by agencies involved in Children Order proceedings suggests that this expectation was not met. The statistics on the number and length of Care Order applications suggest the use of compulsion has increased and, it is argued here, that the result of this is that the resource demands of the legal process affecting all of the agencies that support this process have also increased. It is also argued that by continuing to direct resources toward the legal process, the availability of resources for early intervention and for the prevention of cases coming before the court in the first place is reduced.

This article profiles Marian Wright Edelman, a crusader for civil and children's rights. She was born June 6, 1939, at a time when prejudice and segregation were the norm. The Wright family lived in a small, southern town of Bennetsville, South Carolina, where Marian was the youngest of five children. Her father, the Reverend Arthur Jerome Wright, was a Baptist preacher, and her mother, Maggie Leola Bowen Wright, was an activist for the rights of women and African-Americans. Her father expected his children to do two things--work hard at getting an education and serve others through community service. Marian Wright was encouraged by her parents, teachers, and church leaders to live her life with no limits. These key adults kept telling her that she could go anywhere and do anything she wanted regardless of the limits placed upon her by society. These humble beginnings set the stage for a brilliant law career and a career of advocacy for children and marginalized families. With multiple degrees, countless honors, several books, and a long array of national and international experiences to her credit, she is quick to note that her modest beginnings were the foundation of her strength today. Marian Wright Edelman's most influential political tie was during the Clinton Administration. Former First Lady and current New York State Senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton, was once a Children's Defense Fund staff attorney and chairperson. Through this political tie, Edelman was able to advance the cause of children's rights and the plight of African Americans in general. Edelman continues to fearlessly crusade for the rights of the poor and marginalized children. Her unfailing devotion to this cause has proven over and over that it is possible for one individual to accomplish greatness.

In the mid- to late 1980s, the challenges facing the editors and journalists working for the South African antiapartheid newspaper, the "Weekly Mail," were formidable. In addition to the more than one hundred censorship laws already in place, the apartheid government had declared a series of states of emergency in a final and desperate attempt to maintain power. To prevent those in the South African media from reporting on the massive violence that the security forces were using to try to crush the liberation movement, the government enacted a series of emergency regulations. This article examines the tactics of indirection used by the "Weekly Mail" to convey essential information about the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. The success of the newspaper was predicated precisely on the notion of "collective agency": journalists who wrote articles venturing into the gray areas of the censorship restrictions, attorneys who assisted them by developing creative legal justifications, and, finally, editors who had sufficient courage to publish these risky articles. (Contains 9 notes.)

Prosecutorial misconduct involves the intentional use of illegal or improper methods for attaining convictions against defendants in criminal trials. Previous research documented extensive errors in the prosecution of severe crimes. A theory formulated to explain this phenomenon proposes that in serious cases, increased pressure to convict encourages misconduct; further, serious cases increase perceptions of the suspect's guilt, which facilitate justification of the misconduct. A controlled laboratory experiment allows tests of theoretically derived predictions while controlling for extraneous factors common in naturally occurring settings. University undergraduate participants were assigned randomly to prosecute a contrived case of murder or assault; otherwise the two cases were identical. Results showed that participants improperly withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense more often in the murder case than in the assault case. Further, participants prosecuting the murder case expressed a stronger belief in the defendant's guilt than did participants in the assault case. Implications for future research in naturally occurring settings are discussed. (Contains 1 table and 8 footnotes.)

This article evaluates the effectiveness of an interdisciplinary social work and law curriculum for domestic violence. A pretest-posttest control group design with both law and social work students indicates that the course effectively increased: (1) knowledge about domestic violence theory and practice and differential roles, duties, and privileges of lawyers and social workers, and (2) positive attitudes about interdisciplinary work; and reduced (3) myths and stereotypes about domestic violence. Implications for interdisciplinary teaching and domestic violence services are discussed. (Contains 4 tables.)

Current UK government policy is to promote mediation as a way of avoiding family court proceedings and there is a risk, therefore, that welfare report-writing practice may receive less critical attention than it merits. A largely unstudied aspect of this practice is the significance given by practitioners to the child's age. More widely, across a broad academic and policy canvas, preoccupying concerns with children's rights, their ability to participate and their individuality have shifted attention away from questions about the age relatedness of competence. Two sets of findings from recent research are presented in this article: first, statistical data relating to the age of children involved in welfare report enquiries; and, second, data drawn from a qualitative study of how private law practitioners establish the wishes and feelings of children of different ages. (Contains 4 tables and 12 notes.)

In April 2005, Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal filed the first lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education over the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). In this essay, Attorney General Blumenthal presents Connecticut's reasons for legally challenging NCLB. He argues that prior to ratification of the act, Connecticut had been nationally recognized for its assessment program aimed at closing the achievement gap and increasing accountability. NCLB mandates that require testing at all grade levels would force Connecticut to replace its formative assessments with summative assessments and divert their limited educational funds from supplementary educational programs to the expansion of the state's testing office. Blumenthal argues that NCLB's unfunded testing mandates are illegal and may prove detrimental to Connecticut students' academic achievement. While he strongly supports the goals of NCLB, Blumenthal concludes that if schools are to achieve those goals, it is imperative that the federal government allow for flexibility and assume financial responsibility for implementation of NCLB. (Contains 1 note.)

People with communication disabilities experience problems in accessing the justice system. In this article we describe the development of a multimedia package designed to train legal personnel to identify and reduce communication barriers to their services. The training package is being developed collaboratively by a diverse team that included researchers, a clinician, legal personnel, and people who use augmentative and alternative communication. The focus of the training is to improve the knowledge and skills of legal personnel regarding how to communicate effectively with people who use augmentative and alternative communication, thus enabling greater access to the legal system for such individuals. In this article, development of training vignettes is described. The next step will be to evaluate the effectiveness of the training materials. Suggestions are offered for conducting this evaluation and future research in this important area.

Privacy--and the loss of it--attracts attention. Few issues enjoy a higher national profile. In the growing list of data breaches reported over the last year, the leading industry sector has been higher education. Colleges and universities now find themselves in the spotlight as they grapple with an increasingly complex legal and regulatory environment relating to information privacy and security. It is not surprising, then, that a recent survey of college and university attorneys identified the proliferation of privacy regulations and technology to be among the most important issues and trends emerging for higher education in the next five to ten years. In this article, the authors discuss the role of the Chief Privacy Officer (CPO) in higher education. They conclude that privacy management is an essential component in any organization's overall effort to manage information responsibly. In higher education, that effort is uniquely challenging. The success of an institution's privacy program depends on senior management support, the skill set and organizational placement of the CPO or other privacy professional, strategic partnerships, and collaboration. To address this challenge, institutions of higher education have begun to look to the private sector for lessons on creating comprehensive data privacy programs that mitigate risk while building trust with key stakeholders. (Contains 17 notes.)

In this article I highlight the challenges facing a law lecturer in a multicultural society in transformation where the student is being prepared to serve society in different occupational fields as a professional person. I indicate that the law itself cannot effect change. For this we need properly trained lawyers. For an effective transformation of the society we rely heavily on previously disadvantaged groups to take responsibility in all fields of the legal profession. The requirements exacted from lawyers are very high. I furthermore focus on the tension between the kind of graduate we are expected to produce and the students presenting themselves at our institution. Particular attention is paid to the kind of skills that we have to transmit to students, as well as the obstacles in the way of achieving this at a distance education institution.

This article argues that the culture and practice of legal education in the United States functions to dehumanize law students and potentially produce one-dimensional lawyers in the service of corporate interests and the capitalist status quo. These lawyers are trained to serve not only as the guardians of legal rights, social entitlements and privileges of citizenship but also as the vested producers and protectors of the unjust institutions and systems that deny these rights, entitlements and privileges to certain groups and ensure them to others. Drawing on the work of Freire, Gramsci, and Marcuse, critical legal scholars like Lani Guinier and the history of legal education and the legal profession in the United States, this article uses theory and critical scholarship to read and interrogate the ways in which the current practices and the historical evolution of legal education have functioned and continue to function in the service of capitalism and to the disservice of many of its clients. It also proposes Freirean reforms to the structure of legal education that utilize mandatory clinical education as a means to ensure that legal education and lawyers are multidimensional in their orientation to law and social justice. (Contains 12 notes.)

In light of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2002 landmark decision in "Atkins v. Virginia," a diagnosis of mild mental retardation has taken on a life and death significance for people who are the most deeply involved in criminal justice. As such, each aspect of the mental retardation definition (American Association on Mental Retardation, 2002) is a vital factor to the proper evaluation of individuals being tried for or convicted of a capital crime and who may (or may not) be legitimately diagnosed as having mental retardation. Various professionals who are working in, or are peripheral to, the field of mental retardation must understand how their work continues to play an important role in this process. This article identifies and highlights those factors that help illuminate the courts, the juries, the attorneys, and the public at large to fully comprehend the significance of this disability and its related characteristics.

The Maslach Burnout Inventory--General Survey (MBI-GS) is designed to measure the three subdimensions (exhaustion, cynicism, and professional efficacy) of burnout in a wide range of occupations. This article examines the factorial validity of the MBI-GS across eight different occupational groups in Norway: lawyers, physicians, nurses, teachers, church ministers, bus drivers, and people working within advertising and information technology (N = 5,024). Separate confirmatory factor analyses using LISREL showed that the hypothesized three-factor model had sufficient fit in all occupational groups except for the group of people working in advertising. In a multigroup analysis including all occupations but the latter one and in an analysis of all individuals combined into one sample, the three-factor model had a clearly better fit than the alternative one-factor and two-factor models. The results support that MBI-GS provides a suitable measurement to assess burnout across a diversity of professions. (Contains 1 figure and 3 tables.)

Using unique data from a survey of University of Michigan Law School graduates, we test various models of how sex differences in pay, labor supply and job settings should have evolved as women entered the elite male field of law. We compare the sex gap in earnings 15 years after graduation for two cohorts of lawyers and find that it has remained constant over time. In both cohorts, men earn 52 percent more than women, 17 percent more than women with similar characteristics, and 11 percent more than women with similar characteristics in the same job settings. Sex differences in hours worked have increased over time and explain more of the sex-based earnings gap, while sex differences in job settings and years spent in private practice have declined and explain less of the gap.

In the past, the law has not been considered as an important part of gerontological science. Historically, different sciences such as medicine, biology, psychology, and sociology have played far more important roles in the creation and crystallization of gerontological knowledge. This state of affairs is reflected in academic education and field research, which ascribes little weight to legal aspects of aging. This article maintains that the time is ripe for gerontological education to recognize the importance of exposing students of gerontology in academic institutions to the study and research of law and ageing. Though this claim could be defended on the simple ground that the law is no different, in principle, from a wide range of other scientific disciplines--each of which makes a particular contribution to gerontolog--in this article we shall go one step further. This article attempts to demonstrate special elements which make it particularly important to add the study of legal matters to the curriculum of gerontological education. They are the result of 5 aspects of the encounter between the law and old age: (a) the law as a tool for sociological research; (b) the law as a tool for social change; (c) the law as a tool for planning and undertaking care of the old; (d) the weaknesses of the legal discipline in the field of law and aging; and (e) the potential value of legal education for the practice of gerontology, and collaboration between gerontologists and lawyers.

Court ethnography assignments provide a wonderful way to teach observation skills in an unfamiliar legal setting. Most people obtain their knowledge of legal proceedings from television or movies and students are no exception. But teachers can teach students to closely examine court process and legal behavior in a sophisticated way by assigning them to directly observe courtroom interactions, the needs of lawyers and clients, and the treatment they receive in the legal system. In this paper the author outlines how sociology teachers can use a court ethnography assignment in their non-methods courses, demonstrate its value, and offer some assessments of the quality of student work and learning created by this field work. She concludes with a discussion of strategies for addressing the limitations and concerns of student observations in court proceedings. (Contains 1 footnote.)

Michael A. Rebell, a 61-year-old former Peace Corps volunteer, is one of a small band of lawyers whose legal efforts are changing the way many states pay for their public schools. He was among many lawyers of the era who had been inspired by landmark cases such as "Brown v. Board of Education." In the late 1980s, he noticed education cases would win in court, but that the final resolution wouldn't actually solve the problems. This article reports on how he made a difference through social involvement and as a lawyer.

With the recent splintering of the AFL-CIO and the widespread reluctance of higher education institutions to initiate aggressive anti-union campaigns, colleges and universities could begin to see an increase in union organizing efforts. In this article, two labor and employment law attorneys offer advice on how to prevent an organizing campaign on your campus, or, if one begins, how to respond efficiently, effectively and within the boundaries of the law.

In this article, the author presents an ethnographic study that investigated the relationships that evolve when professional nurses who own a home health care agency write for multiple, conflicting corporate discourse communities, including their lawyers, management consultants, and marketing professionals. This study revealed that conflicting values and agendas led the professional nurses to disagree with their corporate consultants. Based on this finding, the author argues that these business owners may be less likely to learn from their "corporate" consultants because of conflicting agendas and values.

"Brown v. Board of Education" (1954) is one of the greatest achievements of the American judicial system. It decisively declared racial segregation in the schools unconstitutional, inaugurating the modern civil rights era. In addition to advancing equality, "Brown" initiated a new type of judicial decision making. After "Brown," courts increasingly used the federal Constitution to achieve progressive social ends, and they issued detailed orders to implement those goals. Although courts have vindicated both the downtrodden and the powerful during the last 50 years, three factors make them particularly attentive to elites. First, elites understand the obscure customs of judicial process and are comfortable invoking that process. Second, elites can afford to hire the lawyers needed to navigate legal channels. And, finally, judges respond well to the highly intellectual arguments that elites compose. For all these reasons, "Brown's" legacy is double edged. It promises relief to racial minorities and other disempowered groups in some cases, but it also gives elites the power to evade democratic controls. As Americans celebrate "Brown," they must also look to new forms of political engagement to develop "Brown's" full legacy. The civil rights leaders who built the strategy behind "Brown" choose the right strategy for their time. It was essential that the United States Supreme Court declare the fundamental principal of equality and begin enforcement of that principle. Today, the times demand a different tactic. Courts may still play a role in finishing the battle that "Brown" began, but grassroots politics, community organizing, elected officials, and even global networks of protesters will play a more essential role. These are the new political forces with the power to challenge elites.

The phenomenon of people labelling themselves as unmusical is widespread, and terms such as talent, giftedness and musicality characterize the research field. This article presents four case studies of adult non-musicians (a lawyer, a teacher educator, a teacher, and a public servant), providing perspectives of the impact of self-view on their self-judgement of musicality. A major negative consequence is the deprivation of self from future active participation in, and enjoyment of, music making. (Contains 1 figure and 4 tables.)

The Brown v. Board of Education (1954, 1955) decision of the 1950s had no appreciable impact on ongoing Mexican American desegregation litigation during the 1st decade of its implementation. In the long run, however, it led to a shift in the community's litigation strategy for achieving equality of opportunity in the United States and for improving academic achievement in Latino schools. Because of Brown, Mexican American civil rights lawyers abandoned the "other White" legal strategy that had been used for decades in their struggle against discrimination. In turn, they embraced the equal protection strategy and gained legal protection as an "identifiable ethnic minority group." This introduced them to the national desegregation struggle as meaningful actors until they decided to abandon this strategy and focus on gaining equality under the banner of bilingual education.

Business school law courses should promote understanding of legal processes affecting business, help students learn to recognize legal issues and manage legal risks, increase ethical sensitivity, and help students to develop critical thinking skills. To this end, business law and legal environment textbooks tend to focus on ethical and legal analytical processes, the structure and functioning of the legal system, and a number of business relevant areas of substantive law. The many questions from students about finding "good lawyers," hiring them, and paying their fees, as well as more general questions focusing on what lawyers know and do, etc., and survey evidence along with anecdotal evidence suggests considerable misunderstanding. This naivete about lawyers signals a genuine need for exposure to more extensive information about the legal profession. This article explores the extent to which business law and legal environment textbooks inform readers about practical aspects of the attorney-client relationship, specifically those that offer potential clients assistance for interaction with members of the legal profession. This article also offers ideas for supplemental student assignments that can be used to promote better understanding about the legal profession and the process of identifying and working with appropriate legal counsel. (Contains 2 tables and 44 footnotes.)

Marcy Dutton, a lawyer and associate director of the Illinois Association of School Administrators, believes that Superintendents are prone to practice law and sometimes practice it badly. Because school leaders, and superintendents in particular, are take-charge people, they want to function as armchair lawyers. In other words, they have just enough legal experience to be dangerous. Dutton's advice: If you don't have a law degree, don't practice law. Advice No. 2: In contract negotiations, especially when it concerns your employment, be careful what you ask for--you just might get it. Likewise, she has been getting more reports of school board members becoming aggressive in soliciting candidates for a superintendent vacancy. These boards are pursuing those in neighboring districts and a sitting superintendent now working elsewhere who once worked as a principal or athletic director in the district with a hiring need. The point is this: The next job opportunity just might come knocking on your door without you ever leaving your office. The bottom line about contract language and clauses: Read the contract closely. The language should be in plain English and understandable. If it is not, a little rewriting on the author's or downright stubbornness on your part may be in order.

The purposes of this study were to operationalize individual empowerment within the context of the MOMobile Program, to explore the relationships formed between MOMobile Advocates and their clients, and to develop an appropriate survey instrument for assessing the impact of a Community Health Worker (CHW) intervention in a community-based social service agency. Phase I of a multiphase study used focus group interviews with MOMobile Advocates to operationalize empowerment, define their professional roles, and explore the relationships formed with their clients. This article focuses specifically on operationalizing individual empowerment and describing the relationships formed between the Advocates and their clients. Three major themes emerged: (1) the importance of relationships established between Advocates and their clients, (2) the resources available to the clients, and (3) the ability of Advocates to become change agents for their clients. The Community Health Worker (CHW) model is effective for health promotion in disadvantaged communities. MOMobile Advocates improve quality of life by fostering better patient-provider communication, continuity of care, and help-seeking behavior and by expanding the women's social support systems. Research examining relationships between CHWs and the mothers they assist is needed to assess the full impact of this construct as a health status indicator. (Contains 2 figures.)

Terminology is a central theme of debate about language shift in Malaysia's judicial system--sometimes seen as the last bastion of the colonial language. Advocates of more Malay in courtroom argument and professional practice often point to the Institute of Language and Literature's creation of thousands of terms to equip the national language for modern legal affairs. Those sceptical about the benefits of further reducing the role of English typically focus on lexical, discursive and cultural gaps between the Malay language and an adversarial system that continues to draw heavily on English common law. While supporting the view that comprehensive terminological reform is crucial if Malaysian language planners are to fully implement policies developed for the legal system more than two decades ago, this paper highlights the limitations of terminology as an engine of language shift. Planners have not only to make a corpus of terms available but to consider a range of linguistic and non-linguistic factors constraining their adoption into long-established professional discourses. (Contains 12 notes.)

This article describes the accomplishments of Lani Guinier, Bennett Boskey Professor of Law at Harvard University law school. The first and only African American woman to hold a tenured faculty position at the Harvard University law school, Guinier has put her visibility to use by speaking out on issues of race, gender and democratic decision-making and by urging honest public discussion on these issues. This article transcribes a brief interview with Guinier, outlines the impressive work behind her career and books, and provides first-hand accounts from those who have worked closely with her.

Law often appears to be in a limbo between the Social Sciences and the Humanities. Movements within legal scholarship itself, the law and economics movement and the law and literature movement, represent efforts to portray law as a social science or as a humanity. But if one looks at what lawyers do, one finds that law is more like engineering-lawyers make social devices and structures for their clients just as engineers make physical devices and structures. Just as engineers can usefully draw on scientific knowledge, lawyers can usefully draw on the Social Sciences and the Humanities in making their devices, but lawyers, like engineers, also have their own autonomous concerns about design and effectiveness. Legal education, however, tends to stress only one element in legal design, the validity of legal rules. The position of judges and academic lawyers has a special feature that, unlike practising lawyers, their client is the whole of society or the whole of humanity. This presents academic lawyers and judges with special ethical problems beyond those faced by ordinary professionals. It also brings them close to the practical and normative humanities, such as ethics and political philosophy.

The objective of this study was to examine the influence of type of counsel across race on juvenile court outcomes. Using data from a sample of juvenile court referrals from two midwestern juvenile courts, this study examined the interaction of race and type of counsel on disposition outcome. The results indicated that youth without an attorney were the most likely to have the charges dismissed, and this effect was more pronounced for non-White youth. In addition, non-White youth represented by a private attorney were significantly more likely than similar White youth to receive a secure confinement disposition. (Contains 5 tables and 9 notes.)

A great deal has been written about the ways in which lawyers' questioning strategies, particularly during cross-examination, may be considered coercive and intimidating for witnesses, even potentially contributing to the wrongful acquittal of guilty defendants. The primary focus of analytical attention in identifying such practices has been the use of closed and/or leading questions, which restrict the response options for the witness, either by prescribing a range of "acceptable" responses, or by restricting the witness to a yes-no answer. In contrast, relatively little attention has been paid to lexical aspects of witness (cross-)examination and, in particular, the role of lexis in creating nuances of meaning for the jury. This article draws on a 5-million word corpus of rape/sexual assault and domestic violence trials held in the late 1990s in the UK, and applies a combination of corpus linguistic and discourse analytic approaches to study the lexicalizations and re-lexicalizations of the crime, its participants and its circumstances and the process of lexical negotiation which takes place between lawyers and witnesses.

This article describes a content analysis project initiated in an Introduction to Criminal Justice course. Students were asked to analyze presentations of specific players in the criminal justice system, including criminals, victims, police, and lawyers. Students were then required to compare the media presentation with reality, as derived from the criminological literature. This article demonstrates that this type of project can address course objectives of introducing students to the criminal justice system. Further, the project is consistent with constructivist teaching practices. Included in the article is a description of the project, justification for the project, specific project details, examples of students' projects, students' assessment of the project, and what students learned. The final section presents a personal reflection about the project, including recommendations.

Japan passed its Child Abuse Prevention Act on 20 November 2000. In these early years following the passage of this Act, it is especially important to attempt to define what constitutes child abuse. Definitions and practical responses may be coloured by perceptions of service providers, and since professional culture is believed to influence individuals, this study compared the perceptions of (a) social workers, (b) physicians, (c) lawyers, and (d) the general public. Results suggested less disagreement in perceptions than was anticipated. When differences were observed, they were correlated more frequently with age and gender rather than with profession.

In this article, the author shares his experiences in working as a tribal liaison consultant to an AIDS education and training center at a Pacific Northwest university's health education research center. The author's experience shows the concerted efforts by the university lawyers to bury issues of discriminatory racism and sexism in hiring practices and in work environments. It condones chastising for whistle-blowing on issues of gender, gay issues, and racial inequality. The author exposes practices that reduce efforts to provide the best care possible for communities and describes how racist and sexist motivations dominate and are condoned at the work environments of the university.

This article provides a general overview of the disciplinary process for nurses. It also outlines at least one example of an alternative, often called a diversion program, to the standard disciplinary process. It urges school nurses to obtain legal counsel when responding to an inquiry from the board of nursing and discusses several factors to consider when seeking an attorney. The article also briefly discusses how the Nurse Licensure Compact affects the disciplinary process.

Examines the effects of preprofessional education on the earnings of lawyers using nationally representative data. Finds that lawyers with undergraduate degrees in economics earn more that other lawyers. States that economics is the only undergraduate field associated with earnings that differ significantly. (JEH)

Profiles attorney Alvin O. Chambliss, Jr., and his fight in "Ayers v. Fordice" to desegregate Mississippi's higher education system. (EV)

Discusses how, by fostering a teamwork relationship between administrators and university attorneys, the preventive law approach can effectively identify risks and develop strategies and policies in advance of any individual legal dispute. (EV)