Journal of Law and Society最新文献

In this article, I use a structural-functionalist analysis to explain how the sentencing process in the People's Republic of China has morphed into what I call the ‘sentencing pyramid’, with largely discrete and separate praxis across various legal apparatuses. The base of this hierarchical composition encompasses a vast number of infractions, where police monopolize the sentencing process through primarily administrative procedures. The middle level predominantly consists of misdemeanours, whereby sentences are ordinarily determined by procuratorates under the scheme of ‘plea leniency’. The upper level involves serious crimes, which are the main target of ‘trial centredness’ devised to ensure judicial authority in sentencing. In many respects, China's sentencing pyramid is moving away from being a ‘system’ per se, as the three levels of sentencing practices are independent and only very loosely interconnected, with particular legal authorities using vastly different programmes, procedures, and principles to achieve their distinct goals of punishment.

This article shows how supposedly efficient plea bargaining can obstruct and militate against the prospect of offender rehabilitation and reintegration (R&R). This argument is made by bridging the scholarly gap between the ‘legal’ work of plea bargaining and the ‘corrections’ work of R&R, which requires engaging with offenders and not simply doing things to them. The argument is rooted in the current literatures and supported by a case study that illustrates the mechanisms through which offenders’ subjective experiences of plea bargaining can alienate them from their own cases and deny a sense of participation and humanization. Consequently, the article shows how offenders can come to resent what is done to them, how they are disempowered, and that, in such circumstances, the prospects of working with offenders for R&R are reduced. Given that reoffending costs billions of pounds annually, if plea bargaining hinders R&R, then this is potentially its gravest inefficiency.

This study investigates legal professionals’ understanding of the attribution of moral guilt to complainants in court hearings, comparing rape, assault, and fraud cases in Sweden. Sixteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with judges, prosecutors, defence lawyers, and complainants’ counsels. The findings suggest that while professionals assert that attributions of moral guilt to complainants are rare, complainants may perceive blame due to misinterpretation of legally relevant questions. Undue attribution of moral guilt occasionally occurs, particularly during defence cross-examination. Strategies to mitigate the risk of blame include ensuring that hearings are respectful and fact oriented, addressing victim-blaming issues in professional development courses, and preparing complainants prior to hearings. In our study, the attribution of moral guilt predominantly centred on rape cases, which may be due to historical discourse and sensitivity surrounding sexual assault cases. The study highlights the need for further research into mechanisms of attributing moral guilt to complainants and into sources of tension that contribute to negative experiences for complainants.

This article questions whether the twenty-first-century policing of rap music in England can be legitimized by reference to crime, or whether it is instead better interpreted as the policing of Black culture. Section 2 outlines the origins of rap and its policing, going on to explain why rap music should be interpreted as an art form. In Section 3, the policing of rap in England is chronicled, focusing mainly on grime and drill, but also on rap outside London and in the United States. Section 4 asks whether rap music causes crime; having established that the evidence does not support this conclusion, the article determines that the policing of rap in England amounts to cultural policing underpinned by an ideological state response to social insecurity. Finally, Section 5 considers the consequences of the policing of rap for Black communities, leading to a call for the state to reinterpret rap and recognize its value in informing policy and as a fixture within educational curricula. Throughout, the lyrics of rappers themselves take centre stage as a form of critical thought.

This article examines how nature is mediated by law in climate cases. In the Federal Court of Australia decision in Minister for the Environment v. Sharma (2022), the court applied a narrow definition of ‘matter of law’ (justiciability), and thereby negated ‘matter in law’ (such as carbon dioxide and ecological destruction). Climate destruction demands the extension of legal categories and obligations such as tort and nuisance. However, rendering matter through law manifests the classical opposition between nomos and physis (law and nature). By considering the treatment of matter in climate cases, I open a wider discussion about the potentials and limitations of legal technique as a means of mediating nature. Turning to Theodor Adorno's ‘negative dialectics’, I consider how the negation of nature might be redeemed through the extension of legal concepts. Such legal mediation shows the potential for reorienting the dialectic of law and nature – an urgent means of pursuing planetary justice in the current moment.

Lawmakers around the world are turning their attention to deepfake sexual abuse to reduce its prevalence and provide redress to victims. Thus far, criminal law reforms have tended to focus on the distribution of this material, with far less attention given to targeting the root cause – namely, creation and solicitation. Accordingly, we provide the first comprehensive analysis of sexually explicit deepfake creation. We explore the distinct harms of creation, including the ‘invisible threat’ of deepfake sexual abuse now pervading the lives of all women and girls. ‘Sexual digital forgeries’ is suggested as a more appropriate term that better recognizes the nature and harms of this form of abuse. We justify the deployment of criminal sanctions, advancing the idea that this phenomenon should be understood as the ‘new voyeurism’. The laws in jurisdictions that currently criminalize creating sexually explicit deepfakes are examined, together with law reform options being considered in England and Wales. We recommend that legislators act with urgency, adopting a comprehensive approach to criminalizing creation.