COPING WITH JUSTICE
In 1922, Roscoe Pound and Felix Frankfurter urged that the criminal justice system be judged not "the occasional dra- matic case but by its normal humdrum operations."
The American public has generally ignored this advice.
In their choice of television shows, tabloid newspapers, pop- ular fiction, and political rhetoric, Americans are drawn to the most fanciful, gruesome, bizarre, or self-serving portrayals of criminal justice. Public attention goes to the Juan...
Since the early 1970s, the Oregon Social Learning Center in Eugene, Oregon, has treated hundreds of families with "prob- lem" children, children who bite, kick, scratch, whine, lie, cheat, and steal. As might be expected nowadays, this group of psy- chologists began with the assumption that the proper way to train difficult children is to reward their good deeds and ignore their bad ones.
The idea was, of course, that eventually the children would be so wrapped up in doing good that...
as synonymous with "sin" and (as Hester Prynne could attest) a criminal justice sys- tem that emphasized the public na-ture of punishment.
The colonies also imported not a few criminals. As Samuel Walker notes in Popular Justice (Oxford, 1980, cloth & paper), after an act of Parlia- ment in 1717, Britain sent 30,000 fel- ons to the American colonies.
Walker's concise, well-written his- tory of crime and criminal justice in the United States runs through the late 1970s. He traces...
public agencies and private institutions
"America's Old Age Crisis:
Public Policy and the Two Worlds of Aging."
Basic Books, 10 E. 53rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10022.232 pp. $16.50.
Author: Stephen Crystal
Behind Social Security and other fed- eral programs for the elderly is the un- spoken assumption that most retirees are impoverished, decrepit, and lonely. In fact, says Crystal, an official with New York City's Human Re- sources Department, such notions hold true for only a...
Speaking at China's National Sci- rather than party cadres to head sci- ence Conference in March 1978, entific institutes, and the work of re- Vice-premier Fang Yi boldly pro- search units is increasingly geared to claimed that China was "entering a China's developmental needs rather new stage of flourishing growth" in than to broad, politically motivated science and technology. (and frequently unrealistic) pro-
"The dark clouds [of the Cultural grams. Revolution] have been dispelled,"...
Na-
omi Caiden, in P~tblic Adnzinistratio~z Re- All Seasons view (NOV.-D~C.
19821, 1120 G st. N.w., Washington, D.C. 20005.
The battles over the federal budget seem to become longer every year. The problem, says Caiden, a political scientist at the California State College at San Bernardino, is not only that "reform" is needed, but that the very idea of an annual budget is obsolete.
Originally, the annual budget, submitted the President and modi- fied on Capitol Hill, was intended...
Na-than Glazer, in The Public Interest (Winter 1983), 10 East 53rd St., New York, N.Y. 10022.
Ronald Reagan's conservative Republican administration and Fran- qois Mitterrand's Socialist government in France have at least one thing in common. Both are pushing programs of political decentraliza- tion, trying to shift more power from the national to the local level.
For both nations, says Glazer, a Harvard sociologist, the changes rep- resent a sharp departure that suggests a new direction for the...
Richard E. Cohen, in Nutior~ulJo~~rizal (Dec. 18, 1982)) 1730 M St. N.W., Wash- ington, D.C. 20036.
Political action committees (PACs) contributed about $80 million of the $300 million spent candidates during the 1982 congressional cam- paign. But, despite growing criticism of the PACs' influence, says Cohen, National Journal staff correspondent, the evidence that they "get what they pay for" is "mixed" at best.
Corporate PACs have come under the heaviest fire. Accounting of...
Congress in 1974 but struck down the Supreme Court in 1976. Other proposals meet with stiff opposition in Congress.
Also in the background is the cautionary example of the 1974 cam- paign finance reforms, which limited both PAC and individual dona- tions. In response, donors simply created more PACs: Contributions by PACs have more than doubled since 1978.
"On Meddling with the Constitution" by
Exploiting the Gary L. McDowelI, in Journal of Contern- poraiy Studies (Fall 1982),Transaction...
Stephen Peter Rosen, in
International Security (Fall 1982), The
Revisited MIT Press (Journals), 28 Carleton St.,
Cambridge, Mass. 021 42.
The doctrine of "limited war" still shapes how and why U.S. conven-
tional forces would fight in such far-off trouble-spots as the Persian
Gulf. Yet, despite the failure of this doctrine in Vietnam, the theory of
limited war has never been revised.
According to Rosen, an aide to the Secretary of Defense, Robert
Osgood and Thomas Schelling, both...