Legal Centralism

In class today we broke up into groups to dissect passages from the reading. I interpreted “The Legal Centralist Tradition” as such:

The Government was believed to be in charge of rules and enforcement of legal centralism. Hobbes is most known as a legal centralist, Ronald Coase believed that individuals could work out their differences without the aid of a central mediator however he too fell into Hobbes’ thinking and failed “to note that in some contexts initial rights might arise from norms generated through decentralized social processes, rather than from law” (139).

Calabresi notes that the state/government is the center in the order of social hierarchy, that the state is responsible for determining a group’s placement within or outside of society as well as what exposure a group has to goods and services that could bring them closer to the center and which group is ‘entitled’ to those goods.

Cold Case Solved 19yrs Later

A growth in technology over the years has contributed to the solving of a 19yr cold case where a woman was kidnapped as a child and left for dead.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/10/24/justice.rape.19.years/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/technology/01distracted.html?scp=18&sq=text&st=Search

Texting while driving isn't a new phenomenon, it's been around since phones had the ability to send a text message and teenagers were first given access to these phones. However, the debate surrounding whether texting while driving is more dangerous than driving under the influence is ongoing. The above article, which looks at the issue overseas, mentions a PSA that was created to show the dangers of texting with a reenactment of an accident involving a driver and her friends with the driver being oblivious to the road while using her phone.

The YouTube video can be found here, be warned, even though its a reenactment it is a little gory: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I54mlK0kVw&feature=player_embedded

Texting and using a phone while driving is something that is universally done, regardless of age/sex/gender/occupation. Even though many states have made texting and talking on the phone illegal, it seems everyone still takes part in it or knows someone who does. Is it that elephant in the room that we know is there but nobody wants to fully acknowledge? How can we label it as illegal and deviant when the people who are enforcing the punishment (the police) are often caught on their own phones while driving?

Skype Has a Big Brother Too

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/02/technology/internet/02skype.html?scp=19&sq=text&st=Search

Be careful what you talk about.

That's the warning that comes with the NY Times' article "Surveillance of Skype Messages Found in China". The article was forwarded onto me and it raises questions about how this may or may not effect any future amendments to the Patriot Act, especially when there are countries such as China that use a networking site (Skype) to monitor they're citizens. Does this sound a little familiar? After 9/11 restrictions against wire-taps and privacy were greatly lessened and the public for the most part gave into it because we were told that it would prevent future attacks. For me, the article was a wake up call to be more aware of the changes Congress may be making that could jeopardize our privacy.

Claims-Making

Who gets to determine the rules within a community? What would the punishment be if anyone happens to disregard the rules? These are just some of the questions I'll need to tackle with my project on claims-making. But first, let's look at that phrase again: 'claims-making'.

'Claims' suggests that a hierarchy of power has been established to oversee the rest of the community.

In this case the 'making' part symbolizes a set of rules, instructions, norms, etc. that are being established by the center/those in power. Once established, they are carried out to the rest of the community and declared part of everyday life.

Going into this project I think it'll be interesting to see whether there was an established structure with how the responses in the e-mail list were written, who or what actions were ridiculed by members of the community and whether there was one individual with a voice of 'reason' or multiple ones.

The Free-Rider Problem

In class today we discussed the issue of the 'Free Rider Problem' which is when a person takes advantage of the benefits that are offered to them but they fail to contribute anything in return. In Olson's book "Logic of Collective Action" he believed that the only time a problem can be properly solved is when a group is small enough that the problem is visible, with a larger group the problem isn't as clear and there's the risk that those involved can become sidetracked by other issues.

In my head I began applying Olson's view of the 'Free Rider Problem' with our Mills community. Even though our campus is considered small compared to other schools, the 1,000+ students is too big of a sample to apply Olson's theory to. Narrowing it down, I thought of a situation where a class of students are taking an exam. Now, a free-rider may come in the form of a student who doesn't study at all for the exam BUT the student benefits if the professor gives the entire class a curve while grading. The free-rider can benefit from this curve while the other students, who put in their individual work of studying, may end up suffering if the free-rider scores low which in turn can effect how much of a curve is given.