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This Article looks at the enactment and subsequent nullification of a 1992 Washington law that state legislators intended to protect the privacy of child sex-crime victims. The Article uses this statute to illustrate that through the enactment of such statutes, politicians may sacrifice constitutional rights, such as freedom of the press and access to government proceedings, in order to achieve short-term political gains. Therefore, because it is somewhat less affected by elections and the political process, the judiciary is often the only branch of government responsible for protecting civil liberties. In the case of Washington's law on access to child sex-crime victims' names, politicians sought to curry favor by eliminating public and press access to court proceedings. Washington courts blocked the legislators' efforts, in the process issuing important statements about the value of openness in government.Part I of this Article provides a history of the controversy in Washington over the Shelton-Mason County Journal's publication of child sex-crime victims' names. Part II explains how this controversy led to the passage of a victim identification law that eliminated public and press access to court proceedings and documents in cases involving child sex-crime victims. The passage of this law resulted in a lawsuit by Washington media, who claimed their ability to monitor and report on court proceedings was severely damaged. Part III discusses the media's lawsuit. Part IV explores the Washington Supreme Court's rationale in overturning the victim identification law, reviewing precedents and detailing the court's decision. Finally, Part V of this Article discusses the historical importance of access to government proceedings and documents and explains why the judiciary historically has been more protective of the right to access than the legislature.

In this article, I explore how immigrants from the West African nation of Guinea-Bissau living in Portugal use mobile phones in their daily lives in Lisbon. Whereas one might assume that mobile phones and other new information technologies facilitate transnational communication between Africa and Portugal, the ethnographic fieldwork that I conducted in Lisbon from 1999 to 2003 revealed a different scenario. Instead, mobile phones as imagined and used by the Guinean immigrants I met in Lisbon revealed less about transnationalism and globalization than they did about constructing community and identity in a new locale. As Guinean immigrants in Portugal reconfigured their relationship to their former colonizers and struggled to make their way in a new, multicultural Europe, they used their mobile phones to engage local networks, shape local identities, and transform Lisbon's sprawl into an African migrant village. Here, I highlight the gendered dimensions of this process and contend that Guinean men's and women's varied uses of mobile phones in Lisbon underscore contrasting experiences of migration, mobility, and belonging.

In 1995, Jane Goodwin wrote ―U.S. welfare policy has yet to adequately address a mother's two work roles - care-giving and wage-earner‖ (p. 254). The first welfare programs began in the early 1900s and the first statewide Mothers' Aid Law passed in 1911. In 1935, the federal government launched a program called Aid to Dependent Children, which later be changed to Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) (Cheng, 2007). Cheng (2007) noted this program was created to address the issue of poverty in the USA by assisting impoverished mothers to financially care for their children. As the welfare system evolved in the 1960s, it included more programs such as educational services, job training and job search assistance to aid single mothers in gaining employment (Cheng, 2007, p. 212). However, the welfare system would undergo a major overhaul in the mid-1990s. In August of 1996, President Clinton proclaimed by signing the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PWROA) there would be an end to welfare as we know it (Deavers & Hattiangadi, 1998). By signing the act, almost 60 years of entitlement came to an end. Welfare recipients soon found themselves faced with having to conform to more strict policies and requiring them to participate in job search activities. Under the provisions of the newly signed Act, states were given more discretion and authority over determining welfare policies with the federal government still overseeing and intervening as needed (Lee, 2009).