This article involves Platt's research and activism on the campus of California State University, Sacramento, that brought to light the past of Sacramento banker and philanthropist Charles M. Goethe, who was honored during the campus' formative years, but was part of a California eugenics circle that boosted Nazi “racial science.” Beyond his strong ties to Nazi eugenics scientists were his discriminatory business practices that helped to shape racial boundaries in Sacramento. In the 1920s, Goethe stopped selling real estate to Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans; refused to sell homes to Japanese immigrants; in the 1940s, he bankrolled racist, anti-Japanese campaigns, and in the 1950s, he railed against the “Oriental penetration” of the United States. Student activism has successfully protested the university's blind spot regarding Goethe, including the naming of a campus arboretum after him.

Playing off the World Social Forum’s motto, “another world is possible,” this article examines some of the challenges associated with “teaching for social justice” or creating “another classroom” based on a class entitled "Racism in American History." This class initially explored the historical and contemporary manifestations of racism in the United States from 1492 until the present, but it eventually transgressed those boundaries. The course material--books, discussion topics, films, music, and role-playing exercises--sparked emotional responses from the students and instructor. As the class progressed, group solidarity and cohesion slowly emerged, generating a shift from merely studying racism to actively working against it. This article examines this transformation and discusses how the course became “another classroom.” It also explores the short and long-term impact it had on the students and instructor and concludes with some reflections on teaching, activism, and “burn-out.”

U.S. leaders have, at various times, claimed three different justifications for the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq: a self-defense right under United Nations Charter Article 51, legal authorization under preexisting U.N. resolutions relative to Iraqi disarmament, and the need for humanitarian intervention to protect Iraqi citizens from the Baathist government of Saddam Hussein. In this article, the authors demonstrate that there is no evidence to support any of these claims under international law and that the United States and its allies have routinely been guilty of violations of international humanitarian law in their conduct of the occupation of Iraq. They conclude with an appeal for a return to a law-governed approach to international relations by the United States and other world powers.

Laurie Taylor discusses torture, social control, and our extraordinary capacity to deny with sociologist Stan Cohen, who has spent his life analyzing and opposing injustice and inhumanity.

Despite neoliberalism’s promises for growth, poverty alleviation, and democratic development, economic liberalization has reinforced the unequal socioeconomic structure that characterizes most Latin American societies and further weakened the position of Latin American countries in the global hierarchy of power. In response to the emergence of social movements, as well as to the working majority’s opposition to market-oriented policies, the main focus of the military apparatus under the civilian democratic regimes of the 1990s has continued to be "elimination of the internal enemy." This article exposes the increased militarization, state-sanctioned violence, and repression that have accompanied consolidation in Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico due to neoliberal policies.

Recent judicial reforms in Chile have been hailed by some observers as the most successful in Latin America, and a significant step in the deepening of Chilean democracy. However, the reforms largely ignored the jurisdiction and procedures of military justice. This article analyzes Chilean military justice, arguing that some of its features are incompatible with a democratic legal system. The article then examines attempts to reform the system during and after the democratic transition in Chile, arguing that such attempts failed due to continuities in the power of the military.

For care workers, workplace violence is dealt with in ways that reflect the restructuring of work and the welfare state, and the position of care work in the new, neoliberal, world order. Using literature and data drawn from a larger study of violence, stress, and workload in the social services, this article explores four major legal remedies -- the right to refuse dangerous work (administrative), the duty to warn (civil), assault charges (criminal), and criminalizing employer neglect (criminal) -- in relation to how these remedies might work within the specific, gendered, context of care work and a workforce that are not well insulated from management retaliation or their own concerns that they are harming marginal and vulnerable clients by breaking the silence around these issues.

Data derived from Trial Judge Reports (TJRs) pertaining to homicides in 45 Missouri Circuit Courts, across the period of 1978 to 1996, were analyzed to test the effectiveness of judicial reforms instituted by Gregg v. Georgia (1976). Binary logistic regression analyses demonstrated that considerable race and class disparities persist in that state's death sentencing, which ranks fourth in the United States in executions in the post-Furman era. Analysis also indicated that the Gregg reforms focusing on jury composition and instruction were misplaced.

The homefront screen detective of the 1940s often challenged the law, as did his or her counterpart on the assembly line. This challenge became bolder as the war continued and can be seen in the progression of detective adaptations from Dashiell Hammett’s rigorous lawman, to Raymond Chandler’s detective dealing with corrupt or cold cops, to Cornell Woolrich’s errant outsiders, often female, who blatantly transgress the law. Current detective fiction likewise points the way to a new explosion of the dissident detective, whose contemporary journey outside the law questions the way in which the law is used for the profit of the few in the "war on terror."