Search Results (76)

In the Chinese Buddhist tradition, copying and printing sacred texts is considered a form of merit-making, or virtuous activity. One reason for the printing and circulation of books in the Buddhist tradition is the belief that one can gain merits. From the introduction of Buddhism into China, devotees copied, printed and disseminated sūtras to generate merit, a kind of spiritual goodness, which accumulates with each positive act. The author has gathered a large amount of data from libraries, museums and temples around the world that demonstrates how the imperial family members, concubines, court ladies, eunuchs, Buddhist monks and lay devotees supported the construction of the Buddhist canon. They believed that the printing of the Buddhist scriptures would grant them all kinds of merit, such as those who seek happiness in life now and happiness in the next life, or those who encounter disasters and difficulties in the present world. As this paper deeply delves into the sources of the editions of the Chinese Buddhist canon, we may further analyze the practice of merit-making hierarchically and horizontally. Full article

Background: Children can be removed from their home if allegations of abuse or neglect are substantiated. The preference is to place them with family members. In the most extreme cases, a child may be placed in a congregate care setting. A child with diabetes should only be placed in such a facility if the staff have been appropriately trained. Otherwise, the consequences can be devastating. In 2022 and 2024, two children were placed into congregate care facilities in Arizona and died of diabetic ketoacidosis due to a lack of appropriate employee training. Study Objective: We aim to inform providers of the legal processes and laws that can result in a child being placed into a congregate care setting. We analyze what went wrong in the care of these two children. We present alternative pathways that might ensure the safety of children before they are placed in such facilities. Methodology: We reviewed public information for cases of morbidity and mortality in children with diabetes in congregate care. We reviewed the California Welfare and Institution legal codes and applicable laws in the Federal Register. We obtained information regarding children with diabetes mellitus who were in the care of child welfare on PubMed. Results and Conclusions: While there are legal safeguards for children with diabetes who are placed in congregate care, these safeguards are ineffective if staff are inappropriately trained. We present programs and recommendations to prevent a child who is placed in a congregate care facility from suffering medical complications or death. Full article

Genealogy has shifted from the private domain of family history to a central mechanism in law and governance. This article examines how genealogical claims are used as evidence in three critical domains: citizenship, inheritance, and indigenous recognition. Using a comparative socio-legal approach, the study analyses statutes, case law, and interdisciplinary scholarship to reveal both convergences and divergences in evidentiary practice. Across legal systems, descent remains decisive in allocating rights and recognition, yet the hierarchy of proof varies. Civil law states privilege documentary records, common law courts increasingly rely on DNA testing, and indigenous forums continue to give authority to oral genealogies. The rapid growth of genetic genealogy databases adds new complexity. While these technologies expand opportunities for verification, they also create ethical challenges concerning privacy, consent, and the extension of genealogical data into surveillance. To address these dynamics, the article develops an evidence regime framework that treats genealogy as criteria of proof, media of proof, institutional gatekeepers, and social consequences. The findings highlight genealogy’s dual character: it enables claims to rights yet also reproduces exclusion when evidentiary hierarchies are imposed. The article argues for pluralist standards that respect documentary, genetic, and oral genealogies, offering a pathway toward more inclusive and just legal recognition. Full article

This paper examines conversion to Islam in eighteenth-century Ottoman Jerusalem as a multifaceted transformation negotiated across social, legal, and economic domains. Drawing on Jerusalem Court Registers and the scholar al-Khalīlī’s (d. 1734, Jerusalem) fatwās, the study suggests that conversion was both a declaration of faith and a mechanism for restructuring social boundaries. The removal of the yellow turban after the shahāda signalled a symbolic rupture that reshaped kinship, property and legal status. Court cases and fatwās reveal that marriage, dowry, custody, inheritance, and debts were governed not only by Islamic law but also by social negotiation. While the situation of the children illustrates the fragility of social boundaries, the principle of subordination to one’s origins was a crucial factor in the transmission of identity. Through the amalgamation of normative discourse with judicial practices, this article provides a nuanced micro-sociological contribution to the comprehension of Ottoman Jerusalem. Conversion transcends a personal change in belief and emerges as a social experience that reorganizes family ties, property relations, and social belonging. Consequently, conversion functions as a boundary-making site where integration and exclusion are contested and where symbolic authority intersects with material interests. Full article

This paper argues for a conceptualisation of self-determination with respect to Indigenous Peoples’ child protection that is grounded in human rights which are plural, relational, and collective as well as individual. This challenges the idea that human rights are universal and static standards based on a code of enumerated rights with a focus on individual rights. Conceptions of the best interests of the child, permanency in care arrangements, and attachment within colonial institutions such as children’s courts often presume non-Indigenous understandings of family and culture. These child protection concepts, which are often framed as consistent with or even necessary to attain children’s human rights, implicitly embed colonial understandings and values with respect to family and community relations. An acknowledgment of the role of law in structuring relationships is necessary for the human rights of Indigenous children to be upheld. We argue that a relational and distributional conceptualisation of these rights can help to clarify how the law can contribute to strengthening, rather than undermining, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander family and community relationships. Full article

After the end of the Second World War, Hungary, like other war-torn countries, was left with countless orphaned children. The collapsed state structures were unable to care for them, so only various private or church initiatives—such as Gaudopolis, a children’s home set up by the Lutheran pastor Gábor Szehló—provided a means of survival. However, in East-Central Europe—including Hungary, Poland and Romania—where the Soviet Union had a sphere of influence, the emerging Soviet-style system was aimed at the political re-education of society. Ideological goals categorically excluded the possibility of churches being involved in the care and education of youth beyond the existing legal framework. Any person who engaged in such activities was cracked down upon. This study examines the role and responsibility of church persons in the care and upbringing of orphaned children through the fate of the Roman Catholic priest István Regőczi. In the decades of communist dictatorship, István Regőczi repeatedly reorganised orphanages, where he carried out youth education activities based on principles similar to scouting. The values he imparted to the children—such as the Christian religion, family protection, mutual help and social solidarity—were all values of Christian socialism. However, the communist dictatorship—promoting its own political ideology, Marxism—sought to take control of the upbringing and education of children by nationalising all institutions involved in this activity. Anyone who resisted this—as István Regőczi did—was made impossible in the people’s democracy of the 1950s and 1960s, and his child-saving, educating and teaching activities were prevented, even if the courts sentenced him to longer or shorter prison sentences for the crimes of illegal youth organisation, incitement and the abuse of freedom of association. This study, comparing what is described in István Regőczi’s memoirs with the surviving archival sources, shows how during these terrible decades it was possible to save orphaned, needy children and raise them in a Christian spirit, even against the will of the authorities. Full article

In 2020, Bill C92, or an Act Respecting First Nations, Inuit and Metis Children, Youth and Families, came into force in Canada. The Act historically recognized and affirmed Indigenous jurisdiction over child and family services and established national minimal standards for service delivery. In 2024, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the constitutionality of the Act in an appeal from a Quebec Court of Appeal reference case. The Court stressed all parts of the Act must be viewed as “integrated parts of a unified whole” and required the braiding together of Indigenous laws, state laws and international laws into a “single strong rope.” The Act’s aspirations remain in tension with ongoing challenges in implementation. This article outlines the main provisions of the Act. It then examines the law-making efforts and accomplishments of Indigenous governments exercising jurisdiction using the Act, along with some of the hopes and obstacles encountered through this work. Next, it considers some of the emerging jurisprudence interpreting the Act, and some of the implications this case law has on whether the stated purposes of the Act are being achieved. It concludes by highlighting the ongoing uncertainty and hopes for realizing the full potential and aspirations of the Act. Full article

This article aims to analyze the conditions that contribute to the sustainability of violence against women in Bulgaria, an EU member state with high rates of this phenomenon. The analysis is based on data obtained through qualitative and quantitative methods, including in-depth interviews and focus groups with experts from state institutions (the police, prosecutors, courts, and social services), politicians, journalists, and from non-governmental organizations working with victims, as well as a nationwide sample survey of the adult population of Bulgaria. The qualitative data were analyzed through thematic analysis. The article demonstrates that cultural, ideological, and structural conditions in Bulgarian society facilitate the sustainability of violence against women. These include patriarchal norms prevailing in the family, specific characteristics of the popular culture, the neoliberal ideology of extreme individualism, the withdrawal of the state from its obligations, and ineffective institutional response. These conclusions point to the need to enhance the state’s capacity to counteract the phenomenon as well as the need to address ingrained cultural norms of conduct. Full article

The paper aims to determine the associations of mediators’ religiosity, assessed as self-reported religious belief and religious practice frequency, with their recognition of the existence of a work ethic of mediators, their personal approach to the occupation, their values, their adherence to the rules of mediation, and their perception of its objectives. The article is based on the results of a quantitative study conducted among Polish court mediators (n = 391). It was found that the mediators who were religious believers and regularly practiced their religion were more often convinced about the existence of a work ethic, treated work in their occupation as an opportunity to help people, and remained neutral in disputes, but they were also more inclined to violate the principle of impartiality by being prepared to conduct mediation in their friends or family members’ cases. Our research on mediators’ work ethic may be useful in raising the standards of mediator training in specific areas of specialization, including working with migrants and multicultural communities, enhancing the effectiveness of mediations, improving their quality, and boosting the level of disputants’ satisfaction. Full article

Social work has long operated at the intersection of care and control—nowhere is this more apparent than in its treatment of sex-working parents. This article draws on participatory research with thirteen sex-working parents in California to examine how the child welfare system, family court, and public benefit infrastructures extend punitive surveillance under the guise of support. Utilizing the framework of prison industrial complex abolition, the analysis identifies three key findings: first, family policing systems often mirror the coercive dynamics of abusive relationships that sex work helped participants to escape; second, access to social services is contingent on the performance of respectability, with compliance met not with care but with suspicion and deprivation; and third, sex-working parents enact abolitionist praxis by creating new systems of safety and stability through mutual aid when state systems fail. As social work reckons with its complicity in the carceral state, the everyday practices of sex-working parents offer a powerful blueprint for care rooted in trust, unconditional positive regard, and self-determination. Full article

The landmark Philippine Supreme Court case Llorente vs. Llorente illuminates the complex intersections of transnational migration, inheritance law, and colonial legacies in the Philippines. The case centers on Lorenzo Llorente, a Filipino US Navy serviceman whose estate became the subject of a fifteen-year legal battle between his first wife Paula and his second wife Alicia. Lorenzo returned from the battles of World War II to find his wife in Nabua living with his brother and pregnant with his brother’s child. Lorenzo obtained a divorce in California in 1952. He later returned to the Philippines and married Alicia, naming her and their three adopted children as heirs in his will. Upon his death in 1985, Paula challenged the validity of the US divorce and claimed rights to Lorenzo’s estate under Philippine succession laws. While lower courts initially favored Paula’s claims by rigidly applying Philippine laws that are rooted in the colonial era and privileged blood relations, the Supreme Court ultimately upheld Lorenzo’s will in 2000, recognizing his right to divorce as a US citizen. This case reveals how postcolonial Philippine legal frameworks, still heavily influenced by Spanish colonial law, often fail to accommodate the complex realities of transnational families and diverse kinship practices, instead imposing rigid interpretations that fracture rather than heal family relations. Inheritance, previously a highly shared and negotiated process mediated by the elders, can now escalate to family disputes which play out in the impersonal space of the courtroom. Full article

Background: The United States has the highest number of immigrants in the world, with over 46 million foreign-born residents as of 2022. A growing number of migrants originate from Latin America, driven by factors such as economic instability, food insecurity, and crime. This study explores their experiences and perceptions regarding trust in the criminal justice system (CJS) in both their home countries and the United States. Methods: This study surveyed 500 migrants at a transitional institution in a U.S.–Mexico border city in the summer of 2023. The survey assessed confidence in law enforcement, immigration officers, courts, and government institutions using a 5-point Likert scale. Results: Migrants reported significantly higher confidence in the U.S. CJS compared to that of their home countries. Multivariate analysis revealed that satisfaction with border officials, documentation status, English proficiency, and health were positively associated with confidence in the U.S. CJS, while employment status, traveling with family, and fear of crime correlated with lower confidence. Conclusions: This study highlights the stark contrast in migrants’ confidence levels between their home countries and the U.S. criminal justice system. While migrants view the U.S. system as more legitimate, challenges such as fear of crime and legal uncertainties persist. Full article

For domestic and family violence (‘DFV’) offences, sentencing remarks present a unique opportunity for dialogue between the Court, the offender, the victim-survivor, and the public. At the point of sentencing an offender, the judicial officer provides a rationale for the sentence imposed. This rationale includes a consideration of the impact of the offending on the victim, but can also carry narratives about the harms, dynamics, and outcomes of DFV offences. This article seeks to evaluate the narratives present within sentencing remarks for the offence of threat to kill occurring in a DFV context in the Australian jurisdictions of the Australian Capital Territory and Victoria. The authors use thematic analysis to compare themes generated within the judgments to the sentencing considerations required by the Crimes (Sentencing) Act 2005 (ACT) and the Sentencing Act 1991 (Vic). Our findings support the idea that if required to refer to the nature and dynamics of DFV in sentencing offenders, judicial officers’ understanding of DFV may be improved. We therefore suggest such requirements could potentially play a similar role in other jurisdictions. Full article

More than three decades ago, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) ruled that individuals who are not competent (alternatively referred to by the Court as insane) at the time of their scheduled execution cannot be put to death. Despite the years that have passed since the Court’s decision and the literal life-or-death stakes involved, competency for execution (CFE) remains underexplored in the psychological, psychiatric, and legal literature. A number of important legal and ethical issues that arise when a person on death row maintains they are not competent to be executed are still unresolved even after the landmark Supreme Court cases such as Ford v. Wainwright (1986), Panetti v. Quarterman (2007), and Madison v. Alabama (2019). In this first-of-its-kind descriptive study, we analyzed the demographic and case characteristics of the 28 successful Ford claimants—individuals in the United States who have been found to be incompetent to be executed and compared them to the general death row population and homicide cases nationwide. Our findings reveal some similarities but also some differences between these claimants and the general death row population and homicide cases: the successful Ford claimants are exclusively male (in keeping with the general prison population on death row), relatively older, and underrepresented among White and Latinx inmates (i.e., Black claimants are more successful than their White and Latinx counterparts at evading execution). Nearly all (96%) suffer from schizophrenia, with 79% experiencing psychiatric comorbidity, yet only 54% received any significant treatment before or after the criminal offense. The claimants’ cases also involve a higher proportion of child victims, male family members, and female non-family member victims, as well as more multiple-victim cases (not indiscriminate) and fewer intraracial homicides. Fewer victims are male, and more are female. However, the cases do not align with typical male-on-male violent crimes or femicide patterns, such as those involving sexual or domestic violence. Additionally, systematic psycho-legal deficiencies are prevalent, including a low rate of mental health evidence (61%) presented at trials and some cases lacking psychiatric involvement in CFE evaluations. Temporal influence and drastic state variations on CFE evaluation are also noted. Although the small sample size limits generalizability, this small-scale descriptive study offers a number of important insights into the complexities of CFE decisions and lays the groundwork for future research and policy development. Full article

This case report is a reflection on the cumulative results of a number of research projects conducted in Iceland in the field of parenting with a disability. The underlying research consisted primarily of an analysis of court case documents and interviews with parents, extended family members and relevant professionals. The contribution that follows emerged out of a question that we posed to our overall research findings and experiences—what does justice look like for parents with ID who have to contend with deprivation of custody orders? In the rare instances in which a parent ultimately prevailed over an unjust deprivation order, this was only accomplished after an extensive fight through the court system, after which, a great deal of harm to the family had already been caused. We offer for consideration a close look at one such case that we followed, the aftereffects of which are still ongoing. The other path to success appears to be that of early intervention, but this typically occurs through happenstance and requires the involvement of a network of progressive professionals and fortuitous timing. Our contribution is a call to discuss what justice looks like and how this may be transformed into something more systematic. Full article