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"Judging Positivism is a critical exploration of the method and substance of legal positivism. Margaret Martin is primarily concerned with the manner in which theorists who adopt the dominant positivist paradigm ask a limited set of questions and offer an equally limited set of answers, artificially circumscribing the field of legal philosophy in the process. The book focuses primarily but not exclusively on the writings of prominent legal positivist, Joseph Raz. Martin argues that Raz's theory has changed over time and that these changes have led to deep inconsistencies and incoherencies in his account. One re-occurring theme in the book is that Razian positivism collapses from within. In the process of defending his own position, Raz is led to support the views of many of his main rivals, namely, Ronald Dworkin, the legal realists and the normative positivists. The internal collapse of Razian positivism proves to be instructive. Promising paths of inquiry come into view and questions that have been suppressed or marginalised by positivists re-emerge ready for curious minds to reflect on anew. The broader vision of jurisprudential inquiry defended in this book re-connects philosophy with the work of practitioners and the worries of law's subjects, bringing into focus the relevance of legal philosophy for lawyers and laymen alike."--Provided by publisher

Front Matter -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- Preface to the Second Edition -- Preface to the First Edition -- Part I: Principles and Practices for a Federal Statistical Agency -- Part II Commentary -- References -- APPENDIX A Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics of the Statistical Commission of the United Nations -- APPENDIX B Selected Federal Statistical World Wide Web Sites, May 2000.

Intro -- Table of Contents -- List of Contributors -- Introduction -- PART ONE: LEGAL THEORY AND ITS CRITICAL ROLE -- 1. Reasoning Within and About (Legal) Practices -- I. Introduction -- II. Dworkin on Arguing within a Practice -- III. Fish on Arguing within a Practice -- IV. Compare and Contrast -- 2. Fish versus Dworkin: Sound and Fury, But …? -- I. Introduction -- II. The Fish/Dworkin Exchange in a Nutshell -- III. The Fish/Dworkin Exchange: A Post-Mortem -- IV. Conclusion -- 3. Explaining Us to Ourselves -- I. Do Judges Need Theory? -- II. Some Misunderstandings -- III. Stanley Fish on the Issue of Constraint -- IV. Pragmatism as Default -- V. Dennis Martinez -- VI. Who Exactly Needs Theory? -- VII. From the Implicit to the Explicit -- VIII. Disagreement -- IX. Scrambled Fish -- 4. Law, Reason and Celestial Music -- I. Introduction -- II. Hart and the Gunman -- III. Interpretation -- IV. Laws and Reasons -- V. Force and Reason -- 5. The Game Goes On: Why Legal Theorists Can Never Admit that Stanley Fish is Right -- I. Introduction -- II. Stanley Fish and Legal Theorist -- III. The 'Problem' with Stanley Fish -- IV. Conclusion: Could the Law Do without Theory and its Other Rhetorical Trappings? -- PART TWO: INTERPRETATION AND CRITICAL CONSTRAINTS -- 6. Reenchanting Practice: Stanley Fish and the Challenge of Virtue Ethics -- I. Introduction -- II. The 'Engaging in a Practice' V. 'Discoursing on a Practice' Distinction -- III. The Distinction as Applied to Judging: Thinking within a Practice and Thinking with a Practice -- IV. The Virtue Ethics Challenge to Fish's Distinction -- V. Contesting the Claim of Atheoretical Generation -- VI. Contesting the Claim of Inauthentic Explanation -- VII. Conclusions -- 7. The Law in Quest of Integrity: Interpretation, Invention and Internal Critique -- I. Introduction -- II. Archimedean Jurisprudence.

As part of a larger project focused on the intersection of educational and health trajectories over the life course, we use in-depth interviews with 28 adults who experienced multiple non-promotional school changes during the course of their K-12 schooling in three U.S. urban centers to advance understanding of frequent student mobility. Prior research focuses predominantly on isolating the impact of student mobility while saying little about processes through which mobility influences educational trajectories in particular contexts. Frequent student mobility was intertwined with adverse childhood experiences and access to coping resources, and these forces shaped participants' trajectories in patterned ways. Supporting frequently mobile students, almost a third of school-age children in the United States, will require greater attention to the reasons for, processes of, and contexts of student mobility.

Recent research links disparities in children's language-related brain function to poverty and its correlates. Such disparities are hypothesized to underlie achievement gaps between students from low-income families and more advantaged peers. Interventions that improve language-related brain function in low-income students exist, but evaluations of their implementation within high-poverty elementary schools do not. This comparison-group study evaluates whether implementation within high-poverty elementary schools of Harmony Project music-based mentoring, previously shown in randomized controlled research to improve language-related brain function and literacy in low-income students, might be associated with academic improvement for participants compared with non-participating peers. Standardized academic achievement scores were evaluated retrospectively for 2nd graders who opted into or out of Harmony Project (HP) at baseline (nHP = 218; nnon-HP = 862) for weekly music-based mentoring over 2 years. Adjusting for baseline scores, HP participation was associated with higher standardized scores for math (+17 points; ß = .06, p = .02) and English language arts (+26 points; ß = .08, p = .002). Importantly, students with the lowest prior achievement scores showed the greatest gains for both math (+33 points; ß =.13, p =.02) and English language arts (+39 points; ß =.14, p =.02). Implementation within high-poverty elementary schools of a program previously found to improve language-related brain function in low-income students was associated with significant academic improvement for participants, particularly those with the lowest prior levels of achievement. Findings support the hypothesis that disparities in children's language-related brain function linked to poverty and its correlates may underlie achievement gaps.

"In recent decades, new international courts and other legal bodies have proliferated as international law has broadened beyond the fields of treaty law and diplomatic relations. This development has not only triggered debate about how authority may be held by institutions beyond the state, but has also thrown into question familiar models of authority found in legal and political philosophy. The essays in this book take a philosophical approach to these developments, debates and questions. In doing so, they seek to clarify the relevant issues underpinning, as well as develop possible solutions to the problem of how legal authority may be constructed beyond the state"--