Structural Mechanism, Law, and the Dalit Question in India

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-33
Author(s):  
Dag-Erik BERG
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Structural Mechanism ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Legal Context ◽  
Upward Social Mobility

AbstractThis paper argues that the Dalit situation of caste-based oppression in India could be characterized by the enduring co-existence of upward social mobility and atrocities. While being a common-sense understanding, the paper suggests that the relation between upward social mobility and enduring atrocity could be referred to as a “structural mechanism” in the Dalit situation. The concept is used to explain the Dalit problem. Moreover, this structural mechanism sheds more light on developments and discursive breaks in the legal context. A central lesson in the post-colonial period is that the problem of “untouchables” could not simply be conceptualized as a problem of civil law and untouchability. Rather, the problem of atrocities created demands and a need to make caste-based atrocities a concern for criminal law. Ambedkar’s significance as a symbol of Dalit assertion could be viewed in connection with the structural mechanism of Dalit achievements and caste-based exclusion.

criminal law, Roman

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew M. Riggsby
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
Public Office ◽  
The Core ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Agreed Definition ◽  
Personal Crimes

“Crime” lacks a fully agreed definition across modern societies, but competing versions tend to stress notions like punishment, protection of public or collective interests, and a pervasive role for the state in proceedings. Over time the Romans used a series of different procedures (successively, trial before the assemblies, by specialized juries, or by imperial inquisitors) to try most of their offences that would be more or less recognizably criminal today. Substantively, the core of this group were offences against the state in an institutional sense (e.g., sedition, electoral malpractice, abuse of public office, forgery). Over time it also came to include an increasing number of (personal) crimes of violence. Some core modern criminal offences such as forms of theft and forgery of private documents came to be grouped in with these only at a very late date and incompletely. “Moral” offences that are treated as criminal more sporadically today (e.g., use of intoxicants, gambling, prostitution) were not criminalized. Penalties in earlier periods included fines, civic disgrace, and exile; later periods introduced finer differentiation of penalties, as well as execution. Imprisonment was not a formal penalty. Roman criminal law had a deeper and more complicated relationship to politics than did the private, civil law. This is true both in the sense that the jurists were relatively uninterested in the criminal law, especially before the late 2nd century ce, and that known trials in the criminal courts seem to have been little governed by niceties of the law. Common-sense notions of guilt and innocence were relevant, but not legal technicalities.

scholarly journals Classical probabilities and belief functions in legal cases

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-107
Author(s):  
Ronald Meester
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Bayes Rule ◽  
Primary Concern ◽  
Belief Functions ◽  
Legal Cases ◽  
Legal Context ◽  
Classical Setting ◽  
The Individual

Abstract I critically discuss a recent suggestion in Nance (Belief Functions and Burdens of Proof. Law, Probability and Risk, 18:53–76, 2018) concerning the question which ratios of beliefs are appropriate when in criminal or civil cases one works with belief functions instead of classical probabilities. I do not call into question the use of belief functions themselves in this context, and I agree with in Nance (Belief Functions and Burdens of Proof. Law, Probability and Risk, 18:53–76, 2018) that so-called ‘uncommitted support’, possible in the framework of belief functions, should not be taken into account in a decision-theoretic framework. However, I argue against in Nance (Belief Functions and Burdens of Proof. Law, Probability and Risk, 18:53–76, 2018) in that, at least in criminal law, relative sizes of beliefs should not be used for decision-making at all. I will argue that only the individual, absolute beliefs should be considered. Since belief functions generalize classical probabilities, this position seems at first sight to conflict with the fact that odds are abundant when we use classical probabilities in a legal context. I will take the opportunity, then, to point out that also in the classical setting, odds are not our primary concern either. They are convenient since they appear, together with the likelihood ratio, in the odds form of Bayes’ rule. Apart from that, they do not have any individual significance. I also note that in civil law the conclusions might be different.

Criminal Law and Justice

Shariah ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John L. Esposito ◽  
Natana J. Delong-Bas
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Islamic Law ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Muslim Countries ◽  
Law And Justice

Criticisms of Islam and Islamic law often focus on reports and media coverage of harsh hudud punishments in Muslim countries. This chapter compares the rationales and goals of Islamic criminal laws in their original context with hudud punishments in the post-colonial period. The original rigorous...

scholarly journals European and Cameroonian scholarship on ethnicity and the making of identities in Cameroon: colonial and post-colonial trails

Afrika Focus ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Emmanuel Yenshu Vubo
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Key Words ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Bench Mark ◽  
Social Anthropology ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Scientific Level ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial Studies

Relations between colonial and post-colonial studies in and on Cameroon have been both continuous and discontinuous. As reflected in the domains of historiography and social anthropology, this has impacted on ethnic self-representations and popular labeling. This paper examines contrasting drives that have led to a replication of colonial redefinitions of ethnicity and how this informs current discussions on ethnicity in Cameroon. The argument is that certain research works have informed or substantially influenced the identity question when one aknowledges that the colonial period is a bench mark epoch in the establishment of certain categories of ethnic perception. Although substantially deconstructed at the scientific level, these categories have survived and continue to influence social categories of perception that become common sense intrusions (what Bourdieu called doxa) into social science. Key words: colonialism, ethnicity, identity, perceptions, scholarship 

scholarly journals European and Cameroonian scholarship on ethnicity and the making of identities in Cameroon: colonial and post-colonial trails

Afrika Focus ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-52
Author(s):  
Emmanuel Yenshu Vubo
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Bench Mark ◽  
Social Anthropology ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Scientific Level ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial Studies

Relations between colonial and post-colonial studies in and on Cameroon have been both continuous and discontinuous. As reflected in the domains of historiography and social anthropology, this has impacted on ethnic self-representations and popular labeling. This paper examines contrasting drives that have led to a replication of colonial redefinitions of ethnicity and how this informs current discussions on ethnicity in Cameroon. The argument is that certain research works have informed or substantially influenced the identity question when one aknowledges that the colonial period is a bench mark epoch in the establishment of certain categories of ethnic perception. Although substantially deconstructed at the scientific level, these categories have survived and continue to influence social categories of perception that become common sense intrusions (what Bourdieu called doxa) into social science.

The Story of Storyboards from East Sepik, Papua New Guinea

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-74
Author(s):  
Martin Soukup ◽  
Dušan Lužný
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Field Research ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Cultural Continuity ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Global Tourism ◽  
The Village

This study analyzes and interprets East Sepik storyboards, which the authors regard as a form of cultural continuity and instrument of cultural memory in the post-colonial period. The study draws on field research conducted by the authors in the village of Kambot in East Sepik. The authors divide the storyboards into two groups based on content. The first includes storyboards describing daily life in the community, while the other links the daily life to pre-Christian religious beliefs and views. The aim of the study is to analyze one of the forms of contemporary material culture in East Sepik in the context of cultural changes triggered by Christianization, colonial administration in the former Territory of New Guinea and global tourism.

Vier Arten von Römern unter den Franken im 6. bis 8. Jh.

2016 ◽  
Vol 133 (1) ◽  
pp. 459-468
Author(s):  
Detlef Liebs
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Procedural Law ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Law Texts ◽  
Fourth Kind

Abstract Four kinds of Romans in the Frankish kingdoms in the 6th to 8th centuries. Roman law texts from Merowingian Gaul make a difference between cives Romani, Latini and dediticii, all considered as Romans. This difference mattered only to slaves who had been freed. The status of Latin and dediticius was hereditary, whereas the descendants of one who had been freed as civis Romanus were free born Romans, who should be classified as a proper, a fourth kind of beeing Roman; it was the standard kind. The difference was important in civil law, procedural law and criminal law, especially in wergeld, the sum to be payed for expiation when somebody had been killed: Who had killed a Roman, had to pay different sums according to the status of the killed.

Conflicts in Biafra, Katanga and Cabinda as a result of the geopolitical legacy of colonialism

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (10-3) ◽  
pp. 238-246
Author(s):  
Olga Dzhenchakova
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Republic ◽  
Economic Factor ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Republic Of The Congo ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Impact

The article considers the impact of the colonial past of some countries in sub-Saharan Africa and its effect on their development during the post-colonial period. The negative consequences of the geopolitical legacy of colonialism are shown on the example of three countries: Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of Angola, expressed in the emergence of conflicts in these countries based on ethno-cultural, religious and socio-economic contradictions. At the same time, the focus is made on the economic factor and the consequences of the consumer policy of the former metropolises pursuing their mercantile interests were mixed.

V. II principio dell’irretroattività della legge nell’esperienza giuridica romana dell’età repubblicana

2021 ◽  
Vol 138 (1) ◽  
pp. 245-273
Author(s):  
Umberto Laffi
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Dynamic Relationship ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
The Law ◽  
Criminal Legislation ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence

Abstract The Principle of the Irretroactivity of the Law in the Roman Legal Experience in the Republican Age. Through an in-depth analysis of literary and legal sources (primarily Cicero) and of epigraphic evidence, the author demonstrates that the principle of the law’s non-retroactivity was known to, and applied by, the Romans since the Republican age. The political struggle favored on several occasions the violation of this principle by imposing an extraordinary criminal legislation, aimed at sanctioning past behaviors of adversaries. But, although with undeniable limits of effectiveness in the dynamic relationship with the retroactivity, the author acknowledges that at the end of the first century BC non-retroactivity appeared as the dominant principle, consolidated both in the field of the civil law as well as substantive criminal law.

scholarly journals Failure to Meet up to Expectation: Examining Women’s Activist Groups in the Post-Colonial Period in Nigeria

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-35
Author(s):  
Adebukola Dagunduro ◽  
Adebimpe Adenugba
Keyword(s):  
Colonial Period ◽  
Women's Activism ◽  
Women's Groups ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Nigerian Women ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Liberal Feminism ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Women’S Groups ◽  
Activist Groups

AbstractWomen’s activism within various ethnic groups in Nigeria dates back to the pre-colonial era, with notable heroic leaders, like Moremi of Ife, Amina of Zaria, Emotan of Benin, Funmilayo Kuti, Margaret Ekpo and many others. The participation of Nigerian women in the Beijing Conference of 1995 led to a stronger voice for women in the political landscape. Several women’s rights groups have sprung up in the country over the years. Notable among them are the Federation of Nigerian Women’s Societies (FNWS), Women in Nigeria (WIN), Kudirat Initiative for Democracy (KIND) and Female in Nigeria (FIN). However, majority have failed to actualize significant political, social or economic growth. This paper examines the challenges and factors leading to their inability to live up to people’s expectations. Guided by patriarchy and liberal feminism theories, this paper utilizes both historical and descriptive methods to examine these factors. The paper argues that a lack of solidarity among women’s groups, financial constraints, unfavourable political and social practices led to the inability of women’s groups in Nigeria to live up to the envisaged expectations. The paper concludes that, for women’s activist groups to survive in Nigeria, a quiet but significant social revolution is necessary among women. Government should also formulate and implement policies that will empower women politically, economically and socially.

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