Thursday, July 25, 2019
Strategy and Plans of Operation on the Event of a Government Shutdown Essay
Strategy and Plans of Operation on the Event of a Government Shutdown - Essay Example .. 5 Causes of Federal Shutdownâ⬠¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦. 5 Effects of a Federal Shutdownâ⬠¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦.. 7 Strategies during Federal Shutdownâ⬠¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦....................... 8 Contingency Planâ⬠¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦.. 10 Referencesâ⬠¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦. 11 Appendicesâ⬠¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â ¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦Ã¢â¬ ¦ 12 Abstract Government shutdowns occur when the Congress and the President fail to enact and make law the appropriations bills for the agencies of the government. On this case the opinions of Attorney General Civilleti and the Antideficiency Act take in action wherein the government is prohibited to spend, enter into contracts or other obligations, and provide government service and employees, except for those that are rated essential by the law. This paper will be focusing on the understanding of how the government shutdown occurs, as well as its adverse effects on the federal employees, public, and business institutions that are involved in providing goods and services to the federal government. This paper will also cover strategies and plans that a company can establish in order to anticipate and develop a course act ion plan in the event of a government shutdown. Strategy and Plans of Operation on the Event of a Government Shutdown Government shutdowns are events that can lead to tremendous effects among workers as well as the public. During a government shutdown, the government tends to stop all its services except those who are termed as essential. This leads to thousands of government employees to be furloughed for a certain period of time. In addition, there are also several institutions and business that will suffer the consequences of the shutdown since it will be expected that cash flow will not occur due to non-payment of invoices. Thus, the need of establishing strategies and a contingency plan is crucial for a company to cope up in the occurrence of a government shutdown. Government agencies will cease in the procurement of equipments or service, installation of equipments, and suspend delivery of equipments to these agencies. The closing will cause tremendous losses for the company e specially when a significant part of the market share of the business comprises the government offices. On the event of a Federal shutdown, several government agencies will furlough most of its employees. However, specific institutions will still continually operate on a normal basis. These agencies include police, fire fighting, postal services, armed forces, utilizes, air traffic management, and the penal system. The goal of the strategy and planning of a business company is to be able to pin-point the affected areas during a shutdown and be able to anticipate its effects on the normal operations. It will also be beneficial for the company if it can establish a contingency plan that will cover the overall course of action on the onset of the shutdown. This can be developed with the help of past records and data of occurrences of government shutdow
Compare Fashion in 19th century to contemporary form of popular Research Paper
Compare Fashion in 19th century to contemporary form of popular culture - Research Paper Example The paper pays interests to the kinds of people who participated in this culture, their socioeconomic and cultural context, material practices involved, spaces needed for culture, and the purpose of the cultures to their participants. This paper compares and contrasts the two popular cultures; literary writing and cyber culture. Popular culture refers to intricate assembly of ideas, perspectives, fads, attitudes, images, and values widely practiced by the mainstream population in a given culture. Popular can also entail culture oriented for the market, which is spread via mass media. Popular culture arises from universal exposure to the same media (Hinds, Motz and Nelson 3). Popular culture permeates everyday lives of large segments of people giving them identity. Popular culture affects and consensually informs interests among mainstream population (Boehm 37). Various desires of the masses make up popular culture in the contemporary world. Counter cultural groups and religious groups criticize popular culture because it is shallow, consumerist, melodramatic, and contaminated. However, consumers of popular culture oppose indoctrination and negative view points from critics. Fashion in the 19th Century Literature This includes writing styles and literary genres such as creative writing, popular science, drama, romance, poetry, thrillers, comic books, letters, and crime fiction. Prior to 19th century, the literary economy did not have a stabilized audience for literary goods. With infiltration of literary as a mainstream culture in mid- 19th century, authors could now afford to support themselves from writing. This from of culture in 19th century accommodated different audiences and authors. Most of the literature and writings exhibited varying styles occasioned by prevailing ethos, periods or movements. Literary writing responded to the culture of the family centred middle class. Most of the literary writings of 19th century were metropolitan each addressing an audience (Patell 18). For instance, there were children books mostly dwelling on comic and literature for scholars such as scientific writings. Children literature expressed practical advice and enhanced moral and spiritual growth. The Comic in both books and newspapers came in different shapes, colours and sizes. They both used humor expressed in basic and straight drawings. Similarly, domestic fictionââ¬â¢s chief audience were women. The literary space paid homage to family space; menââ¬â¢s, womenââ¬â¢s, and childrenââ¬â¢s world as well as historical. The literary writings highlighted domestic culture as they addressed socially distinct audiences. Literature provided spaces for reading and writing. Each space attracted a distinctly constituted audience. The divergence of audiences experienced its own cultural forces hence bestowing contrasting value and support. Literary writing of the 19th century provided open-spaces for re engagement with the society. The culture illuminated the culture of the peoples constructively. Literary writings of the 19th century documented historical truths of the society and aided in reconstitution of new cultures e.g. advancing the debate on slavery and racial equality which eventually led to civil rights movements (Patell 22). This culture was amplified by nationalism, in a special way; it articulated the prevailing anxiety on cultural dependency that had endured political independence. The literary market of 19th century was boosted by the vitality of middle-class literary taste. The literary works did no longer enumerate and support class defining values. This heralded a new organization of consumption, purely for entertainment. Some of the audience were working class with
Wednesday, July 24, 2019
The Effect of Budgeting on Nursing Care Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words
The Effect of Budgeting on Nursing Care - Essay Example Keywords: budgeting, nursing care, nursing leadership, quality care, cost control Introduction In this literature review, the proponent wants to emphasize the substantial effect of budgeting on nursing care. The proponent seeks to find answers as to what are the probable impacts of budgeting on nursing care by using reputable sources from reliable researches in this field. This in particular would prove that changing nursing practice would have substantial impact on budgeting and eventually on the prevailing quality of nursing care. The article written by Gordon, Buchanan and Bretherton (2010) suggests the importance of contemplating on the issue of controlling health care costs while making sure that there is substantial number when it comes to nurse-to-patient ratios. This primarily is a good point showing the fact that patients are given with high value of care. On the contrary, as discussed in the said article, nurses have to be forced to accept specific hospital changes just to obtain the above objective. In the long run, this particularly would result to making nursing career a less promising field to be explored and it would further result to crisis in finding the right and necessary skills (Gordon, Buchanan & Bretherton, 2010). There is quite a contradiction in here between the above-mentioned approaches. Pursuing the former would basically lead to lack of human resource in the field of nursing and would even aggravate the prevailing issue about the shortage of nurses around the world (Gordon, Buchanan & Bretherton, 2010). The main arguments The article of Blum (2010) explores governance within health care system, in which all essential laws and institutional concerns can be elaborately applied. Regulatory formats are therefore based on these institutional operations. These institutional formats are remarkably used in order to support major changes within the health care system, making them legal and substantially applicable for the society. The importa nce of Blumââ¬â¢s article in this argument is to point out the fact that whatever changes made in the health care system could be substantially backed up with working regulation in its delivery. In other words, whatever changes within the health care system for as long as it is supported by regulations emancipated by the government, it may still sound legal, but it actually does not fully change the fact that there are other various concerns that need to be taken into account. For example, the stated concern on budget and the quality of nursing care are still covered within this act. The problem is that the governing laws surrounding the health care system could actually justify specific moves, and the very proof of this is the continuing high price for health care system in the United States. It is true that the very purpose of this governance is to come up with financial improvement, improving patient safety and realizing work-force to be more engaged in the health care system. Unfortunately, the problem based on the varying models explicated by Blum is the need to understand better the prevailing leadership involved in health care system. Highly commercialized health-care system may actually try to figure out financial concerns, plus patient
Tuesday, July 23, 2019
Reading questions for white in jakarta Coursework
Reading questions for white in jakarta - Coursework Example It is human nature to be curious of other cultures and people. Every culture in the world is defined by the dominant race and not through its own means. Some people who feel uncomfortable being identified as a particular race pretend that they are part of the crowd and do not stand out so much. Non-white cultures often have words to call white people. These words can be offensive if used in the wrong manner, but primarily they are non-threatening even if somewhat impolite. White culture tries to portray the view that it is not marked because otherwise it would not have power over non-white cultures. 1. Through reading this I did agree that white people do not really have a defined culture. There are very few celebrations specifically for white people because they seem to be able to celebrate every occasion. It is other cultures that are marked because they have their own celebrations and festivities that are important to them. For white culture to gain importance there needs to be more of a celebration of it. 2. I had not thought that it was rude to call white people a slang term. These terms have always been used to call white people because they are different and stand out, especially when they are in an environment where they are in the minority. 3. The thing I am confused about is why other cultures seem to cope better, or assimilate better, when they enter a dominant white culture, yet the reverse does not produce the same results. I mean that white people who live in countries other than their own tend to struggle because they have been used to being the dominant culture and suddenly are not anymore. I think that it is interesting who white people are portrayed in movies and on television. Because they are the dominant culture, they seem to be able to play every role. Yet people of other ethnicities only have few roles available to them, and those roles will likely fill a stereotype. Why are so
Monday, July 22, 2019
Advertisement Essay Essay Example for Free
Advertisement Essay Essay Anywhere a person looks; there will always be some form of advertisement. Billboards, posters, fliers, and other forms of media are visible almost everywhere. Advertising is a mass communication in the world today, and has been around since 1841. Whether people agree with it or not, itââ¬â¢s not going anywhere. Advertisements are essentially everywhere. No one can go anywhere without seeing at least one advertisement. Theyââ¬â¢re placed on radios, TVs, magazines and even billboards. Advertisers pay media companies to place their ads in such places and therefore the media companies make money off their ads. Advertiserââ¬â¢s main purpose is to influence the consumer to buy their product. They may lie about the product to make it sound better so more people would want to buy it. It can mislead the consumers to believe that any given product can make them popular, or beautiful. I donââ¬â¢t necessarily like advertisements, but I donââ¬â¢t like them either. Advertisements are everywhere, and itââ¬â¢s your choice to read and believe them or not read and not believe them. I agree, they are misleading but how else would people know about a new product or new improved or additions? Advertising exerts a large impact on us, bringing about good and bad consequences in peopleââ¬â¢s life. An example would be, if you were looking through the summer edition of a magazine and you see a Hollister advertisement on a page and the models are in bathing suits, in which they are all fairly skinny. If you were a little meatier than them you would probably think to yourself ââ¬Å"I wish I was that skinny.â⬠Or ââ¬Å"I wish I looked like that.â⬠Thatââ¬â¢s the bad consequence about advertising. Thereââ¬â¢s a huge impact on teens while looking through their favorite magazine or even watching TV. Another reason I feel advertising isnââ¬â¢t the best is, it can mislead the consumer into wasting money on something that either doesnâ⠬â¢t work or will end up breaking. The good side to advertising is it can let people know about free clinics, blood drives, and events coming up in the area. Of course, itââ¬â¢s not going to tell you everything about the event or clinic because an advertisement isà something brief about it, and theyââ¬â¢re trying to get you to be interested about it. Some companies sponsor charity events or sport events to advertise with blimps, airplane signs; on-screen ads and even t-shirts in exchange for free advertising. If you were to think about every ad youââ¬â¢ve read, there really isnââ¬â¢t a limit to it. They really donââ¬â¢t care how vulgar or misinterpreting it could be, theyââ¬â¢re getting paid for it so whatever they have to do to get your attention, they will. Advertisement should have a limit of what they can put on ads.
Sunday, July 21, 2019
Relationship Between Strategic Communication and Ethics
Relationship Between Strategic Communication and Ethics Discuss the role of strategic communication in relation to Ethics In the industry of public relations, understanding the ethical aspects of the profession has now become increasingly important. Just like any other professional industries such as journalism and psychology, public relations and ethics need to work hand in hand in order for the practice to be given a better name. As public relations have a bright future ahead due to the growing global economy, the professionsââ¬â¢ most profitable days may still exist on the horizon. But public relations practitioners must know that in order to capitalize upon this growth, the hinge may lie on the ability for the industry to silence the critics of it being an unethical profession. However, due to the publicââ¬â¢s negative perception of public relations, many people are saying that public relations and ethics are an oxymoron. In this essay, we will try to understand why there is a negative discourse of PR being an unethical profession and how we can change that perception. We will also analyse the importance of education in regards to public relations ethics. Before we proceed with the in depth discourse of Public relations ethics, we need to first define the meaning of public relations and ethics. According to Gunig and Hunt (1984), they wrote that ââ¬Ëpublic relation is the management of communication between an organisation and its publicsââ¬â¢. Harlow (1988) defined public relations in a more elementary level. He mentioned that Public relation is ââ¬Ëa management function which deals with the relations between two or more organisations or public.ââ¬â¢ There are many other scholars and practitioners that have produced their own definition of public relations but it is basically a communication process which uses different strategies to ultimately build beneficial relationships with publics or organisations. These obligations of serving the publicsââ¬â¢ interest have caused heated debates amongst many practitioners and scholars over its fundamental values of public relations. It has also become a highly controversial indu stry as many people have negative stigmas towards public relations. It is obvious that for a long time there exists a negative perception of PR. It is not entirely a surprise that the general public has this negative stigma about public relations. BrautoviÃââ⬠¡ and Brkan (2009) said that ââ¬ËPR professionals have become manipulators of public mind rather than conveyers of truth.ââ¬â¢ That is why the term public relations ethics is often understood as an oxymoron. There will be stories about PR making it to the media which are invariably the negative ones. Media outlets know that nice fluffy stories like successful charity work or meaningful campaigns donââ¬â¢t sell. But can we entirely blame the media for the bad reputation public relation has on the public? The tarnished reputation of public relations is often due to situations where PR was used to camouflage some serious problems, not to mention something that is today called spin. But what exactly is spin in the context of public relations? Spin can be classified as propaganda, where the ultimate goal is to persuade public opinion to be in favor or against a certain organization or public figure (Safire, 1994). Due to this term spin, publics often perceive the profession to be manipulative and unethical. According to Miller Dinan (2008), they mentioned that people believe the profession is about ââ¬Å"spinningâ⬠stories in order to enhance the image of an organization at the expense of many others. One such case was the BP oil spill which happened in 2010 which falls under the category of spin. With regards to strategic communication, the oil company kept downplaying and deflecting the severity of the incident. BP (British Petroleum) underestimated the size of the spill and therefore tried to divert the attention of the oil spill as the ââ¬Å"Gulf of Mexico oil spill.â⬠The companyââ¬â¢s attempt to sidestep the health and economic issues were s een as artificial and unethical. Case studies like these that are popularised by the media represent the problems that arise when public relations strategies are deceptive. Timothy Commbs, who teaches Public Relations at Eastern Illinois University said, ââ¬Å"Wherever the fault lies, BP shouldnt be splitting hairs. Companies should take the fall and work out recriminations behind closed doorsâ⬠(Beam, 2010). This goes to demonstrate why ethical public relations strategies are necessary to accomplishing the goals of an organisation. Though challenges still remain in the practice of public relations, there is also forward ethical progress. Much of this comes in the form of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). World Business Council for Sustainable Developmentââ¬â¢s (2008) defines CSR as ââ¬Å"the continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society at largeâ⬠. It basically means that an organisation doing CSR will have also ethical and societal responsibilities that go beyond their economic responsibilities. CSR is also seen as a way of behaving, which draws on ethics. But most importantly, there are many public relation bodies all over the world which provides similar codes of practice/ethics for public relation practitioners to follow and abide to. It articulates the value these bodies places on honesty, integrity, loyalty, advocacy, fairness etcetera. As public relations becomes more evident in the 21st century, two reports from the Commission on Public Relations Education, A Port of Entry (1999) and The Professional Bond (2006), insisted on the need for public relations ethics education at a university level. Public relation scholars Shen and Toth (2008) reiterated that there arenââ¬â¢t enough university level courses offering the study of public relations ethics. They also wrote that public relations education needs to integrate the study of ethics into existing PR electives in order for students to become more viable and attain a comprehensive public relations education. However, Juditb A. Kolb, together with other prominent scholars and wrote that public relations ethics courses are not only limited but it is also expanding to more university classrooms (Kolb, Lin, Frisque, 2005). Nowadays there are many university schools which offer the study of public relation ethics. Schools like the University of Virginia in the United States, where students will need to complete a module called ââ¬ËPublic Relations, Ethics and Lawââ¬â¢. The unit explores the ethical issues that arise in the practice of public relations and the ethical standards that govern the practice. In Peth, Australia, Murdoch University also offers the study of Public Relations Ethics in a module called Campaign Management. It is understandable for practitioners and scholars agreeing that the study of public relations ethics is crucial for students to have as a public relations curriculum but students themselves needs to know the importance too. As The Professional Bond state, ââ¬Å"While public relations professional education perhaps cannot make students ethical, either professionally or personally, such education can define and teach professional ethics as It can provide a body of knowledge about the process of ethical decision-making that can help students not only to recognize ethical dilemmas, but to use appropriate critical thinking skills to help resolve these dilemmas in a way that results in an ethical outcome.â⬠Kate Fitch, a Senior lecturer at Murdoch University, did a study on how students perceives ethics in public relations education and practice. Participants of a focus group study done by her acknowledged that public relations ethics was a grey area; ââ¬Å"The line is very blurry but the uni is doing a good job to try and show us that PR isnââ¬â¢t all about thatâ⬠(Fitch, 2013). The study also found out that students see ethics in public relations as being responsible to themselves, client or employer. In this study, students were critical of the Code of Ethics provided by bodies such as the PRIA as it only emphasise on issues such as reputation and risk manager rather than practices that are socially responsible. To conclude, the industry of public relations has indeed left many people with a sour taste in their mouths. We found out that PR is often perceived by the public as unethical, as practitioners often use the term ââ¬Ëspinââ¬â¢ whereby he or she may not give a truthful interpretation of events which would ultimately lead to the lack of trust in the PR practitioner. With practitionersââ¬â¢ lack of trust it leads to the lack of trust of the organization and leads directly to the loss of reputation. That is why public relations ethics is paramount. Although professional skills are important in this industry, it needs to be ethical. What it basically means is that PR professionals need to do the right thing. Referring to international PR bodies for their codes of conduct is the first step when in doubt. We will also need to provide more emphasis for education and approved courses as to ensure that students will be trained on ethics and ethical decision making in practice of publi c relations in the real world. Word count: 1472 Grunig, J.E., Hunt, T. (1984) Managing Public Relations. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace http://195.130.87.21:8080/dspace/bitstream/123456789/904/1/Ethics%20in%20Public%20Relations.pdf file:///C:/Users/Joel%20St%20Pierre/Downloads/MA6_11_Helena_Brautovic_i_Dragana_Brkan.pdf http://thornelyhill.co.uk/dirty-words-the-ba-reputation-of-public-relations/ William Safire, The Spinner Spun, New York Times, December 22, 1996. World Business Council for Sustainable Development. (2008). Definition. [Online] Available: http://www.wbcsd.org/templates/TemplateWBCSD5/layout.asp?type=pMenuId=MTE0OQ. http://www.prsa.org/Intelligence/PRJournal/Documents/2014SilvermanGowerNekmat.pdf http://www.academia.edu/6415032/Public_relations_student_perceptions_of_ethics
The Critical Legal Studies Movement
The Critical Legal Studies Movement The Critical Legal Studies (CLS) movement came to the fore in the United States (US) in the 1970s. This movement is a body of like-minded thinkers who claim to attack the virtues that they say are proclaimed by the liberal legal system. It is a radical theoretical movement which rejects the distinction between law and politics and the notion that law can be neutral and value free. The movement proposes the integration of law and social theory. Since the Critical Legal Studies movement is relatively new, its value as a theory of law is still being assessed, but despite its continual development it has given much of interest to thinking about the law. Indeed, like other sceptical theories it may undermine the coherent world of law which legal academics and practitioners tend to portray. In Britain, the Critical Legal Conference was formed in 1984.Ã [1]Ã Although CLS has been largely a US movement, it was influenced to a great extent by European philosophers, such as nineteenth-century German social theorists Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Max Weber; Max Horkheimer and Harberd Marcuse of the Frankfrut School German social philosophy; the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci; and poststructuralist French thinkers Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, representing respectively fields of history and literary theory. CLS has borrowed heavily from legal realism, the school of legal thought that flourished in the 1920s and 1930s. Like CLS scholars, legal realists rebelled against accepted legal theories of the day and urged more attention to the social context of the law. Among noted CLS scholars Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Robert W. Gordon, Mark Kelman, Peter Gabel, Morton J. Horwitz, Dunkan Kennedy and Katherine A. Mackinnon.Ã [2]Ã The founders of CLS found a yawning absence at the level of theory, fundamentally convinced that law and politics could not be separated. How could law be so tilted to favour the powerful, given the prevailing explanations of law as either democratically chosen or the result of impartial judicial reasoning from neutral principles? Yet how could law be a tool for social change, in the face of Marxist explanations of law as mere epiphenomenal outgrowths of the interests of the powerful? CLS scholars have influenced try to explain both why legal principles and doctrines do not yield determinate answers to specific disputes and how legal decisions reflect cultural and political values that shift over time. They focused from the start on the ways that law contributed to illegitimate social hierarchies, producing domination of women by men, nonwhites by whites, and the poor by the wealthy. They claim that apparently neutral language and institutions, operated through law, mask relationship s of power and control. The emphasis on individualism within the law similarly hides patterns of power relationships while making it more difficult to summon up a sense of community and human interconnection. Joining in their assault on these dimensions of law, CLS scholars have differed considerably in their particular methods and views.Ã [3]Ã One of the characteristic of CSL is that it has been rejected formalism. Formalism has tended to be the fall back position of liberal legal thinking when forced to confront the question: how can a legal system give the kinds of neutral decisions expected of it. Formalists, as CLS characterise them,Ã [4]Ã circumvent this problem by insisting that the judge is not imposing his or anyone elses values but merely interpreting the words of the law. By separating core and penumbra Hart could be taken to admit the problem by his indulgence that the judge had to have recourse to discretion in interpreting the penumbra of legal rules. CLS theorists also share the related view that the law is indeterminate. They have shown that using standard legal arguments, it is possible to reach sharply contrasting conclusions in individual cases. The conclusions reached in any case will have more to do with the social context in which they are argued and decided than with any overarching scheme of legal reasoning. Moreover, CLS scholars argue that the esoteric and convoluted nature of legal reasoning actually screens the laws indeterminacy. They have used the ideas of deconstruction to explore the ways in which legal texts are open to multiple interpretations. The CLS thesis refutes the claim that traditional legal scholarship produces rules and principles of law which guide human behaviour. Both legal formalism and positivism, which look upon law as a system of rules which are rationally made, are repudiated. Traditional legal scholarship treats the law as objective and neutral. The CLS claims that law can not be objective because human and social realities always manifest themselves in the legal discourses. Roberto Mangabeira Unger, who teaches at Harvard Law School and is widely regarded as the intellectual leader of the movement, now offers the public a short manifesto he describes as more a proposal than a description. It is an ambitious and impressive undertaking. It also defies summation. It is a carefully crafted statement with ideas interlocked like a chain-link fence that stretches as far as the eye can see. And the full purport of his message can only be appreciated by an attentive reading. Even so, five themes seem central to his argument. There were two distinct stages in the role of law in western societies before the modern era. First it served to establish and defend social hierarchies and social class divisions. Toward the end of the 18th century, however, it was put to the revolutionary task of protecting rights of individuals irrespective of their social rank or class. In this country the founding fathers relied on democracy (created by our public law, the Constitution) and the market (fostered by private law, notably contract) to give form and limits to those rights.Ã [5]Ã By the 20th century the context in which American law operated had drastically changed. Social arrangements sanctioned by law had come to include an array of hierarchies of economic power and pernicious social distinctions protected as rights by the very legal system created to establish individual freedom and equality. The politics of democracy and the blind forces of the market proved woefully inadequate to govern a society increasingly dominated by modern science and technology. Hence there is a compelling need to restructure our social order to make it compatible with freedom and equality. The way to accomplish this reconstruction, according to Roberto M. Unger, is not through classical revolution of the kind Marx advocated, brought about by an alliance between disaffected elites and the downtrodden. Rather law must be reinvented to give it a revolutionary new purpose: to lead the dismantling of the various hierarchies of power and privilege that through perversions of the legal process have come to threaten the higher values of our society.Ã [6]Ã Of property law, he says that it has its own inbuilt legal market which is a constitutional interest with its own legal structure in a democracy. According to him, the situation is fraught with ambiguity and indeterminacy, because of the abstract nature of the concept of rights. With respect to contract law, Unger explains that contract law allows freedom to contract, but that this is promptly contradicted by other principles which say that people can only bind themselves in contract for what the law allows. Unger present s an argument on formalism which states that every doctrine relies on some view of human associations which are right and realistic in social life. The lawyer needs a theory as his guiding vision, which prevents him from seeing legal reasoning as a game of analogies. To Unger, reliance on analogies leads to analogy-mongering, and this must stop. He claims that this received wisdom is challengeable as wrong, and to do this one should rely on a normative theory of a branch of law supplied by the CLS. This is Ungers deviation doctrine, which embellishes the CLSs nihilistic view of law. Mark G. Kelman examines the importance to criminal law of the stage that precedes legal analysis. His argument is that legal argument has two phases: interpretive construction and rational rhetoricism, and that the former, a vital step which undercuts the authority of the latter, goes virtually unexamined.Ã [7]Ã For example, the result of a case may depend on weather the defendants act is set in a board or narrow time frame. This issue has come to a head with a series of cases where battered women have murdered their husbands and the scope of the provocation defence has been tested.Ã [8]Ã If a broad time frame as been used she may have defences of provocation, even self-defence; in a narrow time frame she has committed murder. There is no meta-theory to determine the appropriate time frame; the decision accordingly is unreasonable. There are some techniques which the CLS have deployed in analyzing legal texts, namely Trashing, Deconstruction, Genealogy, etc. Leading CLS scholar Mark G. Kelman defends trashing against mainstream academic critics, claiming that the discrediting of accepted legal argument is good According to him the most frequently recurring theme in the attacks on our technique, the more-or-less hysterical counter-Revolution against Trashing. It is abundantly apparent that the vast preponderance of mainstream American legal academics were told (repeatedly) by their moms and dads, If you dont have anything nice or constructive to say, say nothing at all.Ã [9]Ã Again he stated that law-and-economics studies of private law rules have not actually analyzed the concrete implications of rule choices on particular occasions, pretensions of policy relevance to the contrary. Instead, they have again and again simply derived apologies for existing arrangements from a highly general and theoretical economic vision. There are two politically central insights of mainstream private law and economics scholarship: (1) In situations involving strangres (where markets cannot work because of transaction costs), proper legal rules that establish implicit fees for harming others can be applied to concrete cases so that parties who interact to create a joint cost will take all cost-justified, damage-averting precautions; and (2) in situations involving those in contractual relationships, competitive markets function in such a way that buyers inevitably get whatever they desire at the lowest possible price a [*308] price that is the sum of the production cost of the desired good and a normal profit sufficient to prevent industry exit. One goal, if not an inevitable effect, of trashing is to destabilize a variety of theoretical world views (and thus, one would hope, related [*328] commonsense world views) that imply the beneficence or inexorability of social life as we see it. Of course, asserting that there must be a causal connection between the high-level apologetics of the intelligentsia and the everyday mediating political ideals that help us organize and make sense of daily interactions would be patently ridiculous. But one can discern at least a close family resemblance between elaborate, mandarin apologetics and the more ordinary, complacency-inducing, commonsensical bits of wisdom without straining credulity.Ã [10]Ã According to Robert Gordon Decontruction is one of the CLS techniques best work is a familiar work kind of left-wing scholarship, unmasking the often unconscious ideological bias behind legal structures and procedures, which regularly makes it easy for business groups to organise collectively to pursue their economic and political interests but which makes it much more difficult for labour, poor people, civil rights groups to pursue theirs.Ã [11]Ã CLS claims that mainstream legal thought acts to reify; it does this by translating social practices into things. For example, the relation between employer and employee brings about a range of consequences and expectations for both parties. The terms confirm or foster an implicit hierarchy; both employer and employee will expect the latter to follow instructions and generally defer to the former. Another way to heighten awareness of the transitory, problematic, and manipulable ways legal discourses divide the world is to write their history under the Genealogy technique. Some critics charge that CLS work hampers progressive political movements by challenging the idea of the subject and human agency. Others view CLS work as unimportant or failing because of inadequate development of specific policies, strategies, or constructive direction. CLS is faulted for implying that simply changing how people think about law will change power relationships or constraints on social change, although a fair reading indicates that Crits simply treat changes in thought as a necessary but insufficient step for social change. Feminists and Critical Race Theorists object that conventional critical legal studies employ a critique of rights that neglects the concrete role of rights talk in the mobilization of oppressed and disadvantaged people. Robert Gordon has responded with a warning that even such mobilization efforts must be done with an experimental air and full knowledge that there are no deeper logics of historical necessity that can guarantee that what we do now will be justified later. Total Word Count: 2110.
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