Private Crimes Research Articles

Commentary: Standard of Care During a Crisis: What Should a Surgeon Know (and Do)?

Commentary: Standard of Care During a Crisis: What Should a Surgeon Know (and Do)?

POJĘCIA I ŻYWOTNOŚĆ RZYMSKIEGO PRAWA KARNEGO

THE NOTIONS AND VITALITY OF THE ROMAN CRIMINAL LAWSummary In the recent studies one tends to revaluate the influence of the Roman criminal law on the later penal doctrine, as well as the achievements of the Roman criminal law itself, rejecting the previous theories presenting it as significantly inferior. It is noticed in this study that the medieval jurists idolized the Roman law, adopted it to the new circumstances, and obviously made mistakes interpreting it. And thus the influence of the Roman jurisprudence on the penal doctrine of the ius commune Europe was thoroughly substantial. Notwithstanding the popular opinion also many of the Enlightenment jurists (as, for instance, Gaetano Filangieri and Francesco Mario Pagano) not only knew but also benefited from the Roman criminal law legacy. The doctrine of crime of the successive period was less inspired by the Roman criminal law, which however did not totally lose its significance. It still had some indirect influence, as the nineteenth century codifiers did not stop using the notions of criminal law shaped-up by the mediaeval jurists overwhelmingly impressed by the Roman law.The main part of the study presents a brief overview of the Roman criminal law, especially of the principal rules constituting today the general part of criminal law, principles which could be directly or indirectly found in the experience of the Roman prudentes. It is pointed out that the only Roman lawyer who tried classifying Roman criminal law was Claudius Saturninus (D. 48,19,16). His classification is later discussed in the article as well as some of the crimina (public law crimes), observing that the Romans never separated the Roman criminal law from ius. On this occasion it is underlined that one of the rules often ascribed to the Romans, nullum crimen, nulla poena sine praevia lege poenali, not only was not their own invention but it was clearly contrary to the criminal law practice in their times (the principle itself being probably formulated only by a German lawyer, Feuerbach). The Romans tried describing the subjective and objective element of the crime as well as presenting various defences available to the culprits (e.g., age, necessity, self-defence, mistake, etc).In the last part o f the paper the possible influence of the Roman criminal law constructions on the Middle Ages is pondered over. The often wrong interpretations of the ancient sources led to some embarrassment and paradoxes. This explains Baldus’ famous statement allowing the judge to construe the (Roman) statute according to the principles of the ius commune, which would in turn revive the statute and save it from an inevitable decay. The mediaeval lawyers studied and analysed the figures of deliberate misconduct and unintentional negligence (anyway without further effects in clarifying vague issue o f the subjective element of the crime). Some of the defences, like the most important figure of self-defence, known and elaborated in the Roman law came to the teachings and studies of the doctores in their original shape and significance, sometimes even stimulating further development of the penal doctrine. The mediaeval ius commune jurists adopted Roman considerations applying different responsibility regarding the doer’s age as well as Roman systématisations of the crimes subordinated to various legal principles. And therefore the doctores, following the Roman example, drew a line between public and private crimes, these which were officially prosecuted and those which were brought to court on a basis of a private motion. The jurists distinguished between lay-public and ecclesiastical crimes, between ordinary and peculiar offences, dishonourable and regular wrong-doings. Similarly the mediaeval lawyers took over the Roman considerations about attempt and iter criminis as well as concurrence of crimes and offenders.In conclusion the paper, wishing for a future development of the studies on the subject, summarises that the theoretical solutions and considerations in the Roman criminal law wrought out above by the classical jurisprudence outlived their times and became the source of the doctrinal inspirations in the coming centuries.

Tracking Violence

Social disorganization theory proposes that specific neighborhood characteristics contribute to an increase in crime rates. In a disorganized community, informal social controls are not present; therefore, crime and delinquency flourish. Researchers have focused on these measures of social disorganization and the ability to explain public crimes. Recently, researchers have focused their attention to characteristics of socially disorganized areas and their ability to predict private crimes, such as domestic violence. This study contributes to the research on domestic violence and its applicability to social disorganization theory by examining domestic violence in Chicago neighborhoods and Illinois counties. Results indicate that different measures of social disorganization are significantly associated with domestic violence at different units of analysis.

Farewell to the world: a history of suicide

Introduction Part One: In the West I. The Worst Sin and the Gravest Crime II. The Key to Our Prison III. Killing God, Oneself and Others IV. If Poverty Does Not Protect Part Two: In the East V. Before Becoming a Widow VI. Making the Strong and Powerful Tremble. VII. The Body as a Bomb Conclusions Introduction Part One: In the West I. The worst sin and the gravest crime 1. The rise in suicide: a most tragic fact . 2. When did the figure start to rise? 3. The reasons for this growth. 4. Past reactions. 5. Punishments for those who killed themselves or attempted to do so. 6. Dishonourable burial. 7. On the formation of Christian ethics regarding voluntary death. 8. Chastity, rape and adultery. 9. Arabs, Christians and martyrs. 10. Christian beliefs regarding the causes of suicide. 11. Despair and the Redcrosse Knight. 12. Pre-Christian beliefs on the consequences of suicide. 13. Suicide as theft and desertion. 14. A new crime, that would hardly be believable . 15. Internal and external controls. II. The key to our prison 1. The lawfulness of suicide. 2. A changed sensitivity in the literature. 3. A new name for an old deed. 4. Natural and supernatural causes. 5. Melancholy, hypochondria and hysteria. 6. Depenalisation de facto. 7. Depenalisation de iure. 8. Saving endangered lives. 9. The freedom to take one s own life. III. Killing God, oneself and others 1. Two opposite trends. 2. Two channels of a single stream. 3. Public and private crimes. 4. What brought about these changes. 5. At the forefront of change. 6. Despair, anger, hatred. IV. If poverty does not protect 1. Sociology s one law and what remains. 2. When the Jews lost their ancient immunity . 3. The effects of Nazism and Fascism. 4. Concentration camps and prisons. 5. The Great Wars. 6. Emigrations. 7. Suicide is a White thing . 8. A question of some delicacy. 9. Sexual orientation. 10. Economic depressions [Recessions?] and crises of prosperity. 11. The unforeseen consequences of the shift to methane. 12. The trend inversion in central and northern Europe. 13. The medicalization of suicide and its effects. 14. The treatment of pain and other illnesses. 15. The steep rise in Eastern Europe. Part Two: In the East V. Before becoming a widow 1. Sati. 2. The Rite. 3. The effects of polygamy. 4. Funeral and wedding ceremonies. 5. Through love or coercion. 6. Suicides: condemned and admired. 7. The origin and spread of sati as a custom. 8. Sati or widow. 9. A clash of cultures. VI. Making the strong and powerful tremble. 1. The past. 2. Chinese peculiarities. 3. Continuity and change. 4. Old people and filial devotion. 5. Suicide among Chinese women. 6. Mao Zedong and the May Fourth paradigm. 7. The cultural repertoire of suicides. 8. The State and honouring the virtuous. 9. After a husband s death. 10. Differences compared to sati. 11. Following the death of a fiance . 12. A way of not submitting to enemies. 13. After assault and sexual violence. 14. Against arranged marriages. 15. The origin of the changes. 16. Against oneself and others. 17. Female suicide in the last two decades. VII. The Body as a Bomb 1. Suicide attacks and terrorism. 2. The modern phenomenon of suicide missions. 3. The rationality of weak players. 4. Nationalism and religious differences. 5. The globalisation of suicide missions. 6. Cyberspace. 7. Becoming a suicide bomber. 8. For a noble cause. 9. An army of roses. Conclusions

LIVY AND CORNEILLE

The great Roman historian Livy describes a radical attempt at conflict resolution in his version of the story of the Horatii. The warring cities of Rome and Alba agree to settle their differences by pitting two sets of triplets against each other in a battle to the death. Two of the Roman champions, the Horatii, are killed, but the remaining brother wins the day for his city. In a further twist, he then goes on to kill his sister when he finds her grieving for one of the dead Alban brothers, to whom she was betrothed. Although guilty of a dreadful crime, by the will of the people the murderer is spared because of his services to the state. In the version of the story dramatized by the seventeenth-century French playwright Pierre Corneille, it is rather the Roman king who saves the surviving Horatius by deeming that his heroism places him above the law. This article considers whether the interests of the state can offset private crimes, as appears to be the case in the versions of the story told by both Livy and Corneille; and it concludes by referring to Livy's continuation of the story, which shows the resolution of the conflict to be short-lived.

International Criminal Law

This textbook introduction to international criminal law seeks to give an overview of the field as it is structured by both political and private crimes, and domestic, transnational and supranational modes of enforcement.

Power, crime and criminology in the new imperial age

As a consequence of the U.S. pursuit of neo-liberal global hegemony in the post-Soviet era, the language of empire has returned to political discourse and social analysis after an eighty-year absence. Although the pursuit of empire and the exertion of imperial control is deeply and demonstrably injurious to the nations and people subjected to this control, orthodox criminology has given relatively little attention to this emerging world of transnational social injury, choosing instead to continue its traditional focus on private crimes of greed, lust and rage. In this essay I detail how legal formalism, methodological individualism, ameliorative motives, mass-communications and the reward structure of orthodox criminology combine to form a meta-theoretical framework that has kept the criminological gaze averted from injurious actions of transnational structures of power. I then offer an alternative framework for a criminology of empire and other power crimes focused on how intersections among economic, political and cultural processes generate social injuries that are analogous to crimes in their nature and consequences, and that, as a result should become as significant a focus of criminological inquiry as the street crimes that now dominate criminological research and writing.

Lamb (review)

Reviewed by: Lamb Christine Stewart-Nuñez (bio) Frannie Lindsay. Lamb. Perugia Press. Frannie Lindsay’s Lamb, winner of the 2006 Perugia Press Prize, vibrates with emotional intensity. These poems, with their straightforward diction and graceful lineation, convey exchanges in which the power of touch destroys or comforts. The opening poem, “The Ewe Lamb,” introduces such a moment and reveals the complex love and violence Lindsay explores in the collection. Its Biblical epigraph, “But the poor man had nothing except for a little lamb he had acquired. He raised it, and it grew up alongside him and his children. It used to eat his food, drink from his cup, and sleep in his arms. It was just like a daughter to him” (2 Samuel 12:3), parallels the speaker’s story; she has raised her one ewe lamb “as a daughter, fed her / red clover, the last hearts / of my cabbage, offered / her inky lips my cup” yet hands her over to slaughter. Lindsay fills Lamb with such poems, pieces whose compressed language yet expansive themes linger in readers’ imaginations. Moreover, what makes Lamb superb is its artfulness as a book. The pain revealed in one poem echoes, building a symphony of energy surrounding each one in succession. As readers may expect when opening a memoir, Lindsay introduces us to an innocent girl, abusive father, and ineffectual mother in the first section, Good, Good Daughter—another type of the nurturing/slaughter dynamic. These poems witness personal injustice yet resist sensationalizing private crimes. Only “Father in Darkness” actually depicts a man molesting his daughter; the rest show versions of this violence. “Clean” depicts mother instructing a young daughter how to clean herself in the tub; the mother’s care to use the “paw of her washcloth” and to dry the shivering girl off juxtaposes the father’s transgressions. In “Doll,” readers see the speaker cutting her doll’s hair, stepping on her and spanking her, yet another manifestation of the violence and its effects. Lindsay also accomplishes this symbolically, a technique that resists spectacle yet conveys emotional impact. For instance, in “Something He Did,” Lindsay describes the father striking “what would have been // the pear tree’s waist if it were a girl.” Two of the strongest poems in Good, Good Daughter, “The Chores” and “Saying Amen to My Father,” end this section. In “The Chores,” father and adolescent daughter shoot a litter of kittens. By skillfully placing the sentence “He pats my bottom” in a description of the scene that focuses on the speaker’s preparation to kill the kittens, Lindsay reminds readers of the father’s control, how he has shaped this good daughter. In “Saying Amen to My Father,” however, Lindsay conveys a point of the daughter’s empowerment and agency—foreshadowing poems in the third section—where the daughter contemplates nurturing touch. She begins: “Finally one spring I was less afraid / to climb the crabapple tree, / its elbows knotted and able to take / the unfolding hand of my body” and [End Page 174] she decides, should she want to, that she could reach into his study window using only a stick of blossoms, close the book in his lap, flick the afghan over his rising and falling shoulders, and blow out the lamp with a kiss that touched nothing. Not only does this poem exemplify how Lindsay exploits arrangement for thematic development, it also shows her skillful deployment of music. Because of the poem’s lean architecture, the subtle repetition of “s” and “z” sounds (stick, blossoms, kiss; close, rising, shoulders) balances the heavy emotional resonances. In these stark and powerful moments, music binds experience and art. Love grounds this collection, protecting it from charges of selfish exploitation that some critics apply to personal narratives of abuse. Even though one type of love witnessed is perverted by violence, Lindsay explores it, noting that the father calls his actions “love” (“Father in Darkness”). Perhaps this is a corrupted love, the anti-nurturing the cat in “Salvage” gives her kitten when she feeds it poisoned milk. Lindsay does not dwell in this realm, however; she shifts away in the second section, Beatitude, toward a love based on mutual need...

In the margins of Byzantium? Some icons in Michael Psellos

In the face of a supposed dearth of recorded responses to icons, historians of Byzantine art commonly infer these either from characteristics that they suppose to inhere in works of art themselves, or transfer to the personal and practical realm such theoretical attitudes as are proclaimed in the proceedings of church councils and similar documents. These methods of argumentation give rise to assumptions that (i) aesthetic reactions to images were unimportant or at least subordinate to attitudes born of piety, and (ii) artists used older works as models and the value of their artefacts was understood to be directly proportional to the fidelity of their copies to the ‘prototype’. Views of this sort can indeed be supported by texts that set out a variety of orthodox positions ranging from bodies of legal opinion to anecdotal accounts of devotion to icons. But to suppose that such readings represent immutable standards is to take part of the picture for the whole. The study of what seem at first sight to be aberrant attitudes can lend a new perspective on behaviour that is often treated as normative. Artists’ ‘deviations’, and highly emotive and even criminal reactions to their work, are still marginal to our perceptions of Byzantium formed by texts that present one or another official position, even while we are aware that styles of painting (as of writing) varied from one individual to another and that private passions and crimes flourished in this society as in any other.

The End of Kings: A History of Republics and Republicans

Written in clear, lively prose, The End of Kings traces the history of republican governments and the key figures that are united by the simple republican maxim: No man shall rule alone. Breathtaking in its scope, Everdell's book moves from the Hebrew Bible, Solon's Athens and Brutus's Rome to the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson and the Watergate proceedings during which Nixon resigned. Along the way, he carefully builds a definition of republic which distinguishes democratic republics from aristocratic ones for both history and political science. In a new foreword, Everdell addresses the impeachment trial of President Clinton and argues that impeachment was never meant to punish private crimes. Ultimately, Everdell's brilliant analysis helps us understand how examining the past can shed light on the present. [An] energetic, aphoristic, wide-ranging book.-Marcus Cunliffe, Washington Post Book World Ambitious in conception and presented in a clear and sprightly prose. . . . [This] excellent study . . . is the best statement of the republican faith since Alphonse Aulard's essays almost a century ago. -Choice A book which ought to be in the hand of every American who agrees with Benjamin Franklin that the Founding Fathers gave us a Republic and hoped that we would be able to keep it.-Sam J. Ervin, Jr.

'Absalom and Achitophel': A Patron's Name or a Patriot's?

In Milton and the Miltonic Dryden Mrs Anne Ferry has demonstrated the value of a study of Dryden's adaptations of Miltonic language. Such adaptations, she tells us, 'in ironic parodies, serious imitations, and allusive comparisons, by calling the reader's attention to parallels between the satire and Paradise Lost, create a context in which Absalom amd Achitophel may be richly understood' (p. 41). One passage in the later poem where a closer study of allusive comparison may add to the richness of our understanding occurs at lines I79-9 . These have been something of a textual crux, which it may be possible to clear up by showing the differing relevance of the textual variants to the whole context provided by Paradise Lost. Apart from the textual question, the variants are interesting in their own right, in their contribution to meaning. It also may not be too much to say that in them we see the process of adaptation actually taking place. The accepted reading of line 179, in the description of Achitophel, who 'Usurp'd a Patriott's All-attoning Name' was not settled until the second edition, when the line was not only revised in itself, but had added to it a new passage twelve lines long: So easie still it proves in Factious Times, With publick Zeal to cancel private Crimes: How safe is Treason, and how sacred ill, Where none can sin against the Peoples Will: Where Crouds can wink; and no offence be known, Since in anothers guilt they find their own. Yet, Fame deserv'd, no Enemy can grudge; The Statesman we abhor, but praise the Judge. In Israels Courts ne'r sat an Abbethdin With more discerning Eyes, or Hands more clean: Unbrib'd, unsought, the Wretched to redress; Swift of Dispatch, and easie of Access.

United States v. Bowman.

Jurisdiction — Personal — Over Subjects Abroad or on the High Seas — United States Criminal Code — Crimes against Private Individuals and Crimes against the Government.