Conservative Members Research Articles

The Law and Juvenile Justice for People of Color in Elementary and Secondary Schools

The laws enacted in the last two decades have had a negative impact on children of color. The changes in juvenile justice are imposing a form of social control over children of color. However, increased laws and punishments have not deterred juveniles engaged in delinquent behavior. Instead, these changes have merely increased the number of criminals. An alternative solution would be to teach children about the justice system through education on the Constitution. Young people, including children of color, will be inclined to obey the law if they understand the laws and their individual relationship to the Constitution, the courts, and the political process. In America, conservative members of hegemonic groups are using a call for improved measures as a mechanism to control members of marginalized groups by supporting strict criminal codes to control and restrict the constitutional rights of these politically marginalized groups (McNeil, 2002). Federal and state governments in the United States, from the 1960s to the present, have increasingly used crime control measures to restrict the rights of citizens with the major negative results falling on members of non-hegemonic groups-African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans. We examine the impact of these crime control measures designed to exercise increased social control over the poor, with restrictions of the rights of minority children enrolled in our public schools. We restrict our research to public schools because the Bill of Rights in our federal Constitution applies to state action as required by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and not to the private actions of nonpublic schools. Further, most children of color are enrolled in our public schools (Orfield & Yun, 1999). In 1994, the U.S. Congress enacted the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. The 1994 act, known as the Crime Bill, also directed the U.S. Sentencing Commission to make mandatory prison sentencing for certain illegal drug use and sale. For example, the possession of crack cocaine would result in a five-year sentence for a first offense, but for a first offense for the possession of powder cocaine results in a one-year sentence. Further, the possession of 5 grams of crack would result in the same prison sentence as 500 grams of powder cocaine. At the end of 1995, African Americans constituted 85% of all persons convicted of drug use or sale under this law (Brown, 2002). The 1994 Crime Bill also made it possible to prosecute children as young as 13 years old as adults. The federal government and 26 states have three strikes laws, but California is the only state that does not require that the third strike be a violent crime. In California, a nonviolent crime of residential burglary may qualify as a first or second strike (Skipitares, 2002a). In the seven years since the passage of California's Three Strikes Law, nonviolent residential burglary is the second most common third strike accounting for 11% of all cases with robbery being the most common. In 2002, nearly half of the state's 7,206 threestrikers received 25 years to life sentences for a nonviolent third strike, including drug possession and petty theft. For example, Jed Miller in 1995 was sentenced to the maximum for stealing two bicycles and a truck; and another person drew a 25 years to life sentence for shoplifting two bottles of cognac from a Safeway supermarket (Skipitares, 2002b). African Americans make up 7% of California's population, 31% of the overall prison population, and 44% of all the three-strikers in prisons (Skipitares, 2002c). Even in Santa Clara County south of San Francisco where African Americans comprise only 4% of the population, they comprise 32% of the three-strikers. Some claim that robbery, the most frequent crime for which three strikes defendants are jailed, is disproportionately aimed at African Americans; and the statute is picking on African Americans as a group. …

SUBJECTIVITY AND BELIEF

What I attempt to trace out in this essay are the ways my work and thinking have been effected by, first, my experience of being 'outed' by several conservative members of a divinity school and, second, the publication of my book Sex and the Church. Four years after these events, I find myself asking a series of questions that potentially shed light not only on matters of faith but also on the issues of human subjectivity.

Direct Measures: An Alternative Form of Affirmative Action

This essay proposes an alternative form of affirmative action in legal education, one which does not rely on racial classifications, but nevertheless achieves many of the same goals as race-conscious affirmative action. Specifically, I suggest that law schools adopt a program that would grant admissions preferences on the basis of three criteria: (1) whether the applicant has experienced the effects of racial discrimination; (2) whether the applicant is likely to contribute a perspective or viewpoint on racial justice that is currently not well-represented in the classroom; and (3) whether the applicant is likely to provide legally undeserved communities with services and resources. This program relies on race-neutral criteria to directly measure those qualities for which law schools have traditionally used race as a predictor. By relying on these race-neutral criteria, the program bypasses the constitutionally problematic use of race as a proxy, and directly measures whether applicants have these experiences, viewpoints and commitments without regard to racial identity. Justice Scalia himself has argued that programs targeting identified victims of discrimination do not constitute racial preferences, even if the majority of their beneficiaries are people of color, so long as they do not use racial identity as a proxy for identifying those victims. Nor is it a problem that the direct measures preferences target victims of discrimination. Indeed, in past equal protection cases, the Court has defined racial identity very narrowly, in a way that discounts any historical link between discrimination and a particular racial identity. The essay anticipates and answers the argument that the program constitutes an impermissible attempt to create a racial classification under the pretext of a race-neutral program. Again, Scalia and the other conservative members of the Court have declared that remedying discrimination is a wholly legitimate and even desirable goal, not to mention a constitutional one, so long as government does not use racial classifications to achieve those goals. Recent voter redistricting cases make clear that so long as a program is targeted to capture theoretically race-neutral qualities (like political party affiliation), the program is constitutional even if there is significant historical overlap between those qualities and racial identity.

Surveying physics

What will be the hottest areas of physics in the next decade? Quantum technologies, complex systems, biophysics, new materials, cosmology, and high-energy physics are the six areas identified as priorities in Physics in a New Era: An Overview. The report, out this month, is the culmination of a survey by the National Research Council, which over the past five or so years has published a series of field-specific reports. Physics in a New Era: An Overview looks not just at physics research in the US, but also at the conditions under which it is carried out and at its impact on society.The overview makes nine key policy recommendations. They include increasing funding for basic physics research, developing mechanisms for the US to participate in international research collaborations, revamping undergraduate physics education, reestablishing basic research as a high priority in the Department of Energy’s defense labs, and fostering collaborations among government, academia, and industry. Physics in a New Era: An Overview may be ordered from National Academies Press by e-mail at [email protected] or from their Web site at http://www.nap.edu. Survival of the curriculum. The Kansas State Board of Education has restored Darwinian evolution, the Big Bang, and the age of Earth to the K–12 science curriculum, ending a controversy that began in 1999 when creationists on the board stripped such “controversial” science from the state’s education standards. (See Physics Today, November 1999, page 59, and October 2000, page 75.)A contentious election last November that centered on the evolution issue resulted in the defeat of three conservative board members. On 14 February, the new board, by a 7–3 vote, approved new science standards that had been developed by a 27-member committee of science teachers and other experts. The new standards will be used in developing tests that will be administered statewide this spring.Referring to the elections that put creationists in the majority on the board of education, then removed them, John Staver, director of Kansas State University’s Center for Science Education, noted, “I said when this began a year and a half ago that democracy got us into this, and democracy would get us out, and it did.” Staver was the cochair of the committee that wrote the new education standards. Nano journal. Physical, chemical, and biological structures, and processes and applications at the nanoscale are the topics spanned by Nano Letters, a new peer-reviewed journal published by the American Chemical Society. Articles are posted online regularly and collected in print monthly. The online multimedia version is free through June at http://www.pubs.acs.org/journals/nalefd/. Paul Alivisatos, a professor of chemistry and materials science at the University of California, Berkeley, is the journal’s founding editor. Scanning for alien lasers. A team led by Harvard physicist Paul Horowitz hopes to spot laser pulses from extraterrestrials with a new optical telescope. The 1.8-meter telescope will scour the northern sky, seeking flashes from fixed objects or aliens on the move.It’s easy to make beamed laser pulses brighter than stars, says Horowitz. The telescope will view any one spot for only about a minute, he adds, “but if they are sending flashes frequently, we’ll see it.”This latest tool joining the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is scheduled to go online early next year 65 kilometers west of Boston, in Harvard, Massachusetts. The Planetary Society is paying for the telescope, with half the $350 000 tab donated by entrepreneur David Brown of Santa Barbara, California.© 2001 American Institute of Physics.

Advocacy, Activism, and Controversial Art: Lessons from Charlotte

In March of 1996, conservative members of the cultural, political, and religious communities in North Carolina threatened Charlotte Repertory Theatre's production of Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning epic Angels in America with closure. When issued a "cease and desist" letter by its own landlord on the day of the first performance, Charlotte Rep successfully took to the courts. The theatre obtained a temporary restraining order--later made into a permanent injunction--by citing legal issues of prior restraint, imminent threats to its livelihood, and the potential violation of its First Amendment rights. The legal victory was followed by a political defeat when the local county commission, in a historic 5-to-4 vote, eliminated $2.5 million in public funding of the arts. A subsequent two-year advocacy effort resulted in the ouster of all but one of the elected officials who voted against the arts and the full restoration of funding, with an additional $500,000 increase. Charlotte Rep's Managing Director, Keith Martin, reflects on these tumultuous events. 1

Illinois Labor and the Return to Class Politics

In labor's 1998 Illinois election, union members consciously focused on class-based economic issues. Most intriguing is the finding that racially conservative white members voted for African-American Carol Moseley-Braun despite opposition to affirmative action. A potentially strong class voting bloc challenges unions to develop ever more effective ways of mobilizing their membership.

Varmus proposes guidelines for stem cell research.

After almost a year of discussion and debate, Harold Varmus, MD, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has proposed guidelines under which federally funded scientists can pursue research using human pluripotent stem cells. The issue has been politically charged. Conservative members of Congress have gone on record against the use of the cell cultures because they believe it violates the federal ban on research using human embryos. In response, petitions from well-known US researchers and Nobel laureates arrived, stating that to ignore such an opportunity would delay, and even prevent, the development of treatments for many now-untreatable and incurable diseases. In December 1998, 2 different research groups reported that they had isolated and cultured human pluripotent stem cells from 2 different sources. Pluripotent stems cells are early progenitors of most of the specialized cells in the human body. The various tissues and organs in the body are composed of these cells. In culture, stem cells can divide for an indefinite period of time. However, the 2 methods used by the researchers raised ethical issues. One group derived their cells from early-stage human embryos that were created and then not used for the in …

Tough Questions Greet New Research Chief

EUROPEAN UNIONThe European Parliament was set to vote this week on the entire slate of new commissioners--the European Union's (EU's) equivalent of a cabinet--put forward by incoming European Commission President Romano Prodi. If, as widely expected, the Parliament approves Prodi's team, Belgian Socialist Philippe Busquin will head the EU's $4-billion-a-year research program. Busquin is something of an unknown quantity, but he outlined his plans earlier this month at a hearing during which he was grilled by conservative members of the European Parliament.

A More Efficient Frontier

In this article, the authors show how a community of investors can provide each of its members with higher expected return for a given standard deviation than any individual member can obtain alone by picking a portfolio from an efficient frontier. The procedure entails pooling the assets of the members into a single community portfolio, then apportioning the gains or losses on this portfolio according to a function depending on the member9s respective risk-return preferences. Use of such a function makes the pooled risk control procedures equivalent to an “internal risk-free rate” at which conservative investor members lend to more aggressive members. The authors argue, however, that this particular version of pooled procedures is not likely to prevail among investment communities.

The R 2 = .93: Where Then Do They Differ? Comparing Liberal and Conservative Interest Group Ratings

Interest groups ratings have long been used by social scientists to distinguish between liberal and conservative members of Congress. It is also well known that ratings by different groups are highly correlated with one another. Here, rather than focusing on the similarities between such measures, we focus on the differences between them. Although the relationship between measures is nearly linear, we find systematic robust differences between ADA and ACU scores.

Modelling the Decision to Donate by Individual Party Members

Models of political participation frequently treat financial donations in the same way as other forms of political activity. This article argues that they should be examined in a different way since they may be regarded for some as the antithesis of conventional participation. Using data from the studies of Labour and Conservative party members, it tests the hypothesis that donations are a means of contracting out of other forms of participation. The model works well in the case of Labour party members and partially in the case of the Conservatives.

REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: The True Law of Kingship. Concepts of Monarchy in Early Modern Scotland. By J. H. Burns. Law‐Making and Society in Late Elizabethan England. The Parliament of England, 1584–1601. By David Dean. The Right to be King. The Succession to the Crown of England, 2603–1714. By Howard Nenner. A Taste for Empire and Glory. Studies in British Overseas Expansion, 1660–1800. By Philip Lawson. Officials of the Royal Household, 1660–1837. Part 1: Department of the Lord Chamberlain and Associated Offices. Compiled by J. C. Sainty and R. O. Bucholz. From Patriots to Unionists. Dublin Politics and Irish Protestant Patriotism, 1660–1840. By Jacqueline Hill. Government and Community in the English Provinces, 1700–1870. By David Eastwood. ‘Scotland's Ruine’. Lockhart of Camwath's Memoirs of the Union. Edited by Daniel Szechi. Parties, Patriots and Undertakers. Parliamentary Politics in Early Hanoverian Ireland. By Patrick McNally. Illusory Consensus. Bolingbroke and the Polemical Response to Walpole 1730–1737. By Alexander Pettit. Edmund Burke. A Life in Caricature. By Nicholas K. Robinson. The Younger Pitt. The Consuming Stmale. By John Ehrman. Thomas Erskine and Trial by Jury. By John Hostettler. Party, State and Society. Electoral Behaviour in Britain since 1820. Edited by Jon Lawrence and Miles Taylor. Education Act Forster. A Political Biography of W. E. Forster (1818–1886). By Patrick Jackson. The Transformation of British Politics, 1860–1995. By Brian Hamson. The Rise of Socialism in Britain, c.1881–1951. By Keith Laybourn. A History of the British Labour Party. By Andrew Thorpe. Generating Socialism. Recollections of L in the Labour Party. By Daniel Weinbren. The Boundaries of the State in Modern Britain. Edited by S. J. D. Green and R. C. Whiting. Jennie Lee. A Life. By Patricia Hollis. Remaking the Labour Party From Gaitskell to Blair. By Tudor Jones. The Labour Party. ‘Socialism’ and Society Since 1951. By Steven Fielding. ideas and Policies under Labour 1945–1951. By Martin Francis. Labour and conservative Party Members, 1990–92. Social Charactetistics, Political Attitudes and Activities. By Patrick Seyd, Paul Whiteley and Jon Parry. How Scotland Votes. Scottish Parties and Elections. By Lynn Bennie, Jack Brand and James Mitchell.

Holding the Line: The Telephone in Old Order Mennonite and Amish Life by Diane Zimmerman Umble

164 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE amusingly depicting the confrontations ofauto drivers with animals, peasants, policemen,judges, and other enemies. Some of the stories are hardly credible, probably invented by clever journalists. One wonders about the complaint of some English farmers who alleged that dust raised by autos rushing by on country roads and settled on their fields dulled their scythes and sickles twice as fast as normal. Many of the yarns attributed to the French context are familiar to students of auto history elsewhere, such as the one about the Nor­ man resident who in 1899 invented an “articulated tree” that was hinged near its base and would be dropped on a motorist. M. Pouzet supplies better documentation for this story than any other, includ­ ing several photos from a magazine showing the tree and the wind­ lass used to raise it for another plunge. In the United States someone is supposed to have rigged a similar articulated tree on a road near Toledo. Unsurprising also are the accounts of farmers pushing dis­ eased cows and chickens onto the road to be dispatched by speeding cars or even throwing themselves under slower-moving vehicles in hopes of minor injury and reimbursement. Common causes such as the early autos’ surprising speed, dust, noise, and smell, along with antagonism of the poor toward wealthy drivers, brought similar results wherever the motor car appeared. This book is in no way scientific or scholarly; there is no effort at quantification; but it is useful for an hour or two of entertainment. It also reminds us of early opposition to a new technology, similar to but stronger than was the case for railroads or computers. James M. Laux Dr. Laux has written extensively on automobile history. His books include The European Automobile Industry (New York: Twayne; Toronto: Maxwell Macmillan Can­ ada, 1992). Holding the Line: The Telephone in Old Order Mennonite and Amish Life. By Diane Zimmerman Umble. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univer­ sity Press, 1996. Pp. xvi+192; illustration, notes, appendix, index. $35.00 (hard cover). Few arguments about technology and culture have been as emo­ tionally wrenching as the Mennonite and Amish communities’ dis­ putes about the telephone early this century. On the one side, objec­ tions: “Telephone lines now form a great network connecting cities, towns, and even Christian people. . . . But spiritually this is a sinful network, as Paul teaches us in 2 Cor. 6,14-17, Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers, etc. Another thing, there is much talking through the phone which amounts to nothing” (p. 119). On the other side, a defense: “The phone is in itself nothing as far as spiritual things are concerned. It is an instrument like many others that we have. If we use it wrong, it is sinful; if we use it right it is not Technology and culture Book Reviews 165 sinful” (p. 124). So serious were these disputes that they hastened permanent schisms among both the Mennonites and Amish. In Holding the Line, Diane Zimmerman Umble recounts the tele­ phone quarrels that split the Old Order Mennonites and Old Order Amish in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. These fights seem to sharply define the clash between modern technology and traditional “community.” The Anabaptist movements tightly bound members together and walled them off from outsiders through distinct doc­ trine, practice, and appearance, and by strong fellowship and stern group discipline. But disagreements nevertheless repeatedly divided them—for example, over English in prayer services, or the use of farm machinery. The fights resulted in secession and the formation of new subcommunities, each adapting to the modern world to vary­ ing degrees. The telephone sparked such divisions in both Lancaster County groups (and elsewhere in the United States, too). The telephone was helpful to rural people for handling emergencies, managing a farm, keeping in touch with distant kin, and so on. Conservative members did not quarrel with their fellows using an “English” neighbor’s or a public telephone, but they campaigned against allowing members to have one in the home. A home telephone was an unnecessary and proud indulgence, encouraged intercourse with (and symbolized) the outside world, reduced face-to-face contact, and tempted women...

The New Role of Parliament in Canadian Sentencing

Introduction If locking up those who violate the law contrib uted to safer societies, then the United States should be the safest country in the world. In fact, the United States affords a glaring example of the limited impact that criminal justice responses may have on This comment, contained in the Twelfth Report of the Standing Committee on Justice and the Solicitor General (February 1993) of the Canadian House of Commons was remarkable not because of what it said, but of who said it. The chair of the committee, a self described supporter of strict law and order and former member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and member of Canada's Progressive Conser vative party, said We can't just continue to build more jails and spend more money on police budgets and have crime increasing the way it is. A fellow Conservative member of the committee, who had sponsored a bill in Parliament attempting to re introduce the death penalty in 1987, also supported the view that prisons don't make us safe. The committee ? dominated by conservative members of Canada's federal parliament ? recommended that, instead of focusing largely on the criminal justice system to improve the nation's security, Canada should dedicate substantial resources to preventing crime. The view that Canada imprisons more people than it needs to is part of criminal justice culture in Canada. Even those responsible for policies that increase prison populations seem to believe that we incarcerate too many people. In the past thirty years, there have been at least six other federal reports to the same effect. Most pointed to Canada's lack of sentencing policy as the primary explanation for the problem. A recent report prepared for the federal/ provincial/territorial ministers responsible for justice had at least four recommendations that appeared designed to reduce Canada's reliance on imprison ment.1

Rhetoric or reality? An economic analysis of the effects of religion in Sweden

On the basis of simple rational-choice theory, it is argued that Christian religious involvement influences the divorce, abortion, non-payment, and children-born-out-of-wedlock rates negatively. This influence stems from an expectation that a god punishes certain forms of action and from social reprimands of devotees. Regression analysis is then used to test the theory in the case of Sweden in the year 1990, and the importance of religion, in its negative effect on all of these rates, is strongly confirmed. A particularly interesting result: the marginal effect on three of these rates of increasing the fraction of people active in the Church of Sweden is clearly larger than the marginal effect of increasing the fraction of more conservative free-church members.

Labour and conservative party members, 1990-92: social characteristics, political attitudes and activities

Partisanship social class market research grading subjective class completion of education annual income employment sector economic sector trade union membership gender, age, religion, tenure.

Domestic Violence: The New Law

After a torrid passage through Parliament, the Family Law Act 1996 (hereafter, 'the 1996 Act') finally received the Royal Assent on 4 July 1996.1 This article is concerned only with the domestic violence provisions of the Act. In essence, they are substantially the same as those formerly located in the Family Homes and Domestic Violence Bill 1995, which was 'lost at the eleventh hour because of an uninformed campaign by a tabloid newspaper supported by a minority of Conservative Members'2 who were scaremongered into believing that it undermined what were labelled 'traditional family values.' In finally reaching the statute book, albeit subject to some limited amendment and reordering of the clauses, Part IV of the 1996 Act lays to rest the complex and inadequate regime formerly contained in three separate pieces of legislation.3 It replaces it with an ostensibly simple set of remedies, available in all courts having family law jurisdiction. Equally, beyond locating all the 'designer' domestic violence remedies in one statute, provision is also made to extend their availability to a much wider range of applicants. Nonetheless, in a number of important respects, the new legislation is fairly disappointing. It fails to achieve much of what both the Law Commission4 and members of the Special Public Committee5 recognised as laudable objectives. For example, in its attempt to implement a more enlightened approach to the range of individuals who may avail themselves of its remedies, the Act only partially achieves its objective, and then on rather dubious premises. Equally, the Act provides for only two kinds of order when, by moderate amendment to the Housing Act 1985, it could have helped to accomplish a third, and much more useful, solution to the problem of domestic violence. This article discusses four main features of Part IV of the 1996 Act against the background of its general scheme:6 the question of who will be able to obtain the orders; the injustices created by pockets of deficient draftsmanship; the interrelationship between the Act and existing legislation on the provision of

Rhetoric and the Spread of the Discourse of Thatcherism

This paper puts forward a model of processes of discourse and rhetoric as a way of understanding the attempt of Thatcherism to create a new common sense in British society. The theoretical model is first presented. This includes a notion of the role of a special type of rhetoric (consisting of key words and formulaic phrases) in discursive processes and a notion of the active part played by language users in reproducing and transforming discourses. The aim is to draw a link between macro-processes of social and cultural change and micro-processes of everyday language use. The roots of the rhetoric in the genre of the everyday world facilitate take-up by the mass media and the public and thus the penetration of the discourse of Thatcherism into the language of individual language users. The empirical study which is then presented focuses on the role of one key word, choice, in reproducing and restructuring the discourse of Thatcherism in different sociopolitical domains: official Conservative Party texts and official Labour Party texts (speeches by Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet members to the Annual Party Conferences in 1991), print and broadcast news media (news coverage of the Conferences), the arguments of grass-roots Labour Party members (1991) and grass-roots Conservative Party members (1991 and 1992). It was found that in all the domains studied, the discourse of Thatcherism was reproduced and transformed through the selective use by language users of choice in collocation with other rhetorical terms. A degree of resistance to the discourse was also found. The paper concludes with a short account of the fate of Thatcherist discourse in the UK since the time of the study.

Labour and Conservative Party Members:Change Over Time

Labour and Conservative Party Members:Change Over Time

Rational Choice and Political Participation — Evaluating the Debate

This paper evaluates rational choice models of political participation both at the theoretical and empirical levels. The theoretical discussion is con cerned with evaluating attempts which have been made to circumvent the paradox of participation-the proposition introduced by Mancur Olson that rational actors will not get involved in collective action in order to achieve common goals. The analysis suggests that the paradox is more of an intrac table problem for rational choice theory than is commonly recognized. The empirical section of the paper uses data from the first national survey of Conservative party members in Britain to model the determinants of political activism. It tests rational actor models against an alternative "general incen tives" theory of participation which includes variables that are not consis tent with rational choice theory. The conclusion is that while a rational choice model gives great insights into political participation, it provides an in complete account of participation, and by implication this may be true of such models in other areas of political science.