Apologies for cross posting

>Dear Members:  Below please find abstracts for the December issue of
>the Journal of Law & Society.  



JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 25, NUMBER 4, DECEMBER 1998

ABSTRACTS

The New Model Wales
by
RICHARD RAWLINGS

The United Kingdom is currently undergoing a rapid process of
fundamental constitutional change. One of the chief developments is a
redistribution of law-making and governmental powers to different
territories of the Union. It is a programme of devolution, as befits
an unwritten constitution characterized by the doctrine of
parliamentary sovereignty, and not federalism. The case of Wales,
historically closely integrated with England, presents here its own
challenges. The aim of this article is to examine the process of
change for Wales, to explicate and critically assess the Welsh scheme
of devolution, and to consider possible future development in a broad
legal and constitutional setting. 


The Case Against Constitutional Reform?
by
JOHN MORISON

Proposals for constitutional reform in the United Kingdom are examined
critically. Ideas of 'governance' as posited by various accounts in
the literature of politics are compared with the simpler idea of
'government' that is predicated within the reform programme. It is
argued that changes in the site of public power, as well as in the
reality of its exercise through a range of bodies beyond the
traditional state, now provides a much more complex situation than the
reform programme acknowledges. The paper calls for the development of
a new technology of constitutional control to capture fugitive power.
The paper concludes with a brief examination of some newer theories of
radical or participatory democracy and their potential to assist in a
wider project of constitutional renewal.


The Perceptions of Academic Lawyers concerning the effects of the
United Kingdom’s Research Assessment Exercise by DOUGLAS W. VICK,
ANDREW D. MURRAY, GAVIN F. LITTLE, KEVIN CAMPBELL

In this article, the authors analyse quantitative and qualitative data
compiled from a large-scale postal survey of legal academics
concerning the United Kingdom's Research Assessment Exercise.  The
purpose of the study was to measure the attitudes of academic lawyers
affected by the RAE rating process and institutional responses to that
process.  The study reveals that a substantial number of respondents
lack faith in the objectivity of the rating process, believe
institutional responses to the RAE have caused damage to academic
working environments, and perceive that the RAE has failed to improve
the quality of legal research.


Plea Bargaining: Ethics and Politics
by
MIKE McCONVILLE

This article argues for a re-orientation of the debates concerning
plea bargaining in the light of a process of re-legitimation currently
under way in which professional codes of ethics are given new
importance. In the new rhetoric, plea bargaining is claimed to be in
line with rather than contrary to traditional adversarial principles.
The focus of this paper is to argue for a re-affirmation of
deep-seated principles which contextualize professional ethics in the
wider domain of the politics of criminal justice.


Water Regulation and Pre-payment Meters
by
MARK DRAKEFORD

This paper provides a study of the use of law to invoke and protect
the interests of the poorest consumers of the privatized water
industry. It focuses upon the introduction of pre-payment devices by
water companies and the legal action taken to prevent their use. The
context for the study lies in the privatization of the water industry
in 1989, one of the last major acts in a decade in which the transfer
of public enterprises into private ownership had become one of the
self-proclaimed ‘flagship’ policies of successive Conservative
governments. The claims which surrounded the application of the policy
to water were familiar: private ownership produced efficiency,
effective management, and attentiveness to customers’ needs.
Essentially, the sale of public assets created benefits for everyone.
This article finds the claim to be false. It considers the social
engineering role of law in attempting to protect the interests of the
poorest consumers, highlighting the resources - individual, community,
and political - which required mobilization in order to give effect to
potential remedies. It concludes by suggesting that not only is access
to the law differentiated by power and resources, but that compliance
with it is also mediated by the same inequalities. 


The Fine Art of Regulated Tolerance: Prostitution in Amsterdam
by
CHRISJE BRANTS

I  explore the idiosyncrasies of Dutch policy with regard to
prostitution, placing them in the broader framework of criminal
justice and policy debates in general. More especially, I shall be
looking at recent developments towards, on the one hand, legalization
of prostitution, and on the other a crackdown by the (criminal
justice) authorities on the organized criminal networks that would
appear to have gained the upper hand in Amsterdam’s red-light
district.




David Wall,
Centre for Criminal Justice Studies,
University of Leeds.
Leeds. LS2 9JT
U.K.

TEL: 44 (0)113 233 5023
FAX: 44 (0)113 233 5056

EMAIL [log in to unmask]
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/law/ccjs/homepage.htm


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