Advocating The Death Penalty :: essays research papers fc

Advocating the Death Penalty Thousands of people will attack the death penalty. They will give emotional speeches about the one innocent man or woman who might accidentally get an execution sentence. However, all of these people are forgetting one crucial element. They are forgetting the thousands of victims who die every year by the hands of heartless murderers. There are more murderers out there than people who are wrongly convicted, and that is what we must remember. I, as well as many others, have total confidence in the death penalty. It is a very beneficial component of our justice system. The death penalty saves lives. It saves lives because it stops those who murder from ever murdering again. It also deters potential murderers from ever committing the crime. Unfortunately, the death penalty is currently used so rarely that it isn’t nearly as effective as it could be. In order for it to work, we must put it into practice more often. In recent years, crime in America has been on the rise, in particular, violent crime. This has led not only to an overcrowding of prisons in our country, but also to an increase in the number of death sentences handed down by the courts. Despite the fact that the number of inmates on death row is climbing, the number of death sentences actually carried out in any given year lags far behind. People simply aren’t fearful of the death penalty when it isn’t used the way it should be (Stewart 50). If the death penalty has been declared legal, then the federal and state governments must employ it to its fullest as a means of stopping previous murderers from recommitting their crimes. Since most of the prisoners on death row are there for murder, executing them would ensure that they would never kill again. Obsessive murderers, who know no alternative to killing, need to be executed to protect both prison guards and society. This view is perhaps best illustrated through the words of Judge Alfred J. Talley of New York who explained â€Å"If I as an individual have the right to kill in self defense, why has not the state, which is nothing more than an aggregation of individuals, the same right to defend itself against unjust aggression and unjust attack?† (Kaplan 28) About two and a half years ago, my dear cousin, Jaime, became the first victim of a serial killer named Brian Duffy.

Dehumanization of the Jews Essay

Dehumanization is the process of making a person less human by taking away the important things in their life and what makes them who they are; not only the material things but their ideas and morals as well. The Nazi’s dehumanized millions and millions of Jews during the Holocaust. In Elie Wiesel’s recollection of his experience in the German’s concentration camps, he explained how brutal the Nazi’s could be, how they could take a person’s life away in the matter of seconds, and how they change a person’s outlook on life entirely. The Jews were dehumanized from the very beginning of the Holocaust and only grew to be worse. Dehumanization is the process of making a person less human by taking away the important things in their life and what makes them who they are; not only the material things but their ideas and morals as well. The Nazi’s dehumanized millions and millions of Jews during the Holocaust. In Elie Wiesel’s recollection of his experience in the German’s concentration camps, he explained how brutal the Nazi’s could be, how they could take a person’s life away in the matter of seconds, and how they change a person’s outlook on life entirely. The Jews were dehumanized from the very beginning of the Holocaust and only grew to be worse. The Nazi’s didn’t make anything easy for them. The Jews endured a continuous struggle that they could do nothing about. In the beginning, it all started with the German’s forcing them out of their homes and sending them to the ghettos. The Nazi’s stripped them of their rights, took away their belongings, and removed them from their daily lives. This left them with nothing. They left behind their lives. â€Å"To live? I don’t attach any importance to my life any more. I’m alone,† states an early deportee, Moshe the Beadle. (pg. 5) The Jews were ridded of all sense of security. Once they arrived at the concentration camps, they were struck with another loss of â€Å"themselves. † At the camp, they received tattoos. These tattoos were a series of numbers which represented â€Å"who† they were in the concentration camps. They were known as numbers, not people, numbers. A name is sacred. A name is who you are, without it, you’re only a being. They were people with friends and family that knew them by this name, their name. It was just another way to break away the ties of humanity. In the camps, the prisoners were treated like animals. They had to work all day long. They had to eat when they were told to eat. They had do everything they were told. If anyone misbehaved they would be shot down like dogs. Wiesel asks, â€Å"Was there a single place here where you were not in danger of death? † (pg. 37) A human is meant to be free, do as they please, and not live life in fear. The Jews weren’t allowed to have these luxuries anymore. They were worn down to nothing, which is exactly what Hitler was trying to do. Dehumanization was carried on throughout the Holocaust. The Nazi’s wanted the Jews gone. They made them flee their homes and their personal lives. They were left with nothing. They were given numbers in replace of their own name, the name that makes them the person they grew up as. They Jewish prisoners were treated like animals. They worked, hardly ate, hardly slept, and worked some more. If someone was to do the slightest thing wrong, they were shot down. The person they used to be is gone. The Jewish weren’t given a chance to fight for their lives. The Nazi’s made this impossible. They had to hold onto the little bit of hope left in their wounded hearts.

Judicial Law-Making Essay

The independence of the judiciary was ensured by the act of settlement 1700, which transferred the power to sack judges from the crown to the parliament. Consequently, judges should theoretically make their decisions based purely on the logical deductions of precedent, uninfluenced by political or career considerations. The eighteenth century legal commentator, William Blackstone, introduced the declaratory theory of law, stating that judges do not make law, but merely, by the rules of precedence, discover and declare the law that has always been: ‘the judge being sworn to determine, not according to his private sentiments†¦ ot according to his own private judgement, but according to the known laws and customs of the land: not delegated to pronounce a new law, but to maintain an expound the old one’. Blackstone does not accept that precedent does not even offer a choice between two or more interpretations of the law: where a bad decision is made, he states, the new one that reverses or overrules it is not a new law, nor a statement that the old decision was bad law, but a declaration that the previous decision was â€Å"not law†, in other words that it was the wrong answer. His view presupposes that there is always one right answer, to be deduced from the objective study of precedence. Today, however, this position is considered somewhat unrealistic. If the operation of precedent is the precise science Blackstone suggested, a large majority of cases in the higher courts would never come to court at all. The lawyer’s concern could simply look up the relevant case law and predict what the decision would be, then advise whichever of the clients would be bound to lose not to bother bringing or fighting the case. In a civil case, or any appeal case, no good lawyer would advise a client to bring or defend the case that they had no chance of winning. Therefore, where such a case is contested, it can be assumed that, unless one of the lawyers has made a mistake, it could go either way, and still be in accordance with the law. In practice, thus, judges’ decisions may not be as neutral as Blackstone’s declaratory theory suggests: they have to make choices which are by no means spelled out by precedent. Yet, rather than openly stating that they are choosing between two or more equally relevant precedents, the courts find ways to avoid awkward ones, which give them the impression that the precedents they do choose to follow are the only ones they could possibly apply. Ronald Dworkin argues that judges have no real discretion in making case law. He sees law as a seamless web of principles, which supply a right answer – and only one – to every possible problem. Dworkin reasons that although stated legal rules may â€Å"run out† (in the sense of not being directly applicable to a new case) legal principles never do, and therefore judges never need to use their own discretion. In his book, ‘laws’ empire 1986†², professor Dworkin claims that judges first look at previous cases, and from those deduce which principles could be said to apply to the case for them. They then consult their own sense of justice as to which apply, and also consider what the communities’ view of justice dictates. Where the judges’ view and that of the community coincide, there is no problem, but if they conflict, the judges then ask themselves whether or not it would be fair to impose their own sense of justice over that of the community. Dworkin calls this the interpretive approach and, although it may appear to involve a series of choices, he considers that the legal principles underlying the decisions mean that in the end, only one result could possibly surface from any one case. Dworkin’s approach has been heavily criticised as being unrealistic: opponents believe that judges do not consider principles of justice but take a much more pragmatic approach, looking at the facts of the case, not the principles. Critical legal theorists, like as David Kairys (1998) take a quite different view. They argue that judges have considerable freedom within the doctrine of precedent. Kairys suggests that there is no such thing as legal reasoning in the sense of a logical, neutral method of determining rules and results from what has gone before. He states that judicial decisions are actually based on a ‘complex mixture of social, political, institutional, experiential, and personal factors’, and are simply legitimated, or justified, by reference to previous cases. The law provides a ‘wide and conflicting variety’ of such justifications ‘from which courts pick and choose’. The process is not necessarily as cynical as it sounds. Kairys points out that he is not saying that judges actually make the decision and then consider which precedents they can pick to justify it: rather their own eliefs and prejudices naturally lead them to give more weight to precedents which support both views. Nevertheless, for critical legal theorists, all such decisions can be seen as reflecting social and political judgements, rather than objective, purely logical deductions. Critical theory argues that the neutral appearance of so called ‘legal reasoning’ disguises the true nature of legal decisions which, by the choices made, uphold existing power relations within society, tending to favour, for example, employers over employees, property owners over those without, men over women, and rich, developed countries over poor, undeveloped ones. Griffith (1997) argues that judges make their decisions based on what they see as the public interest, but that their view of this interest is coloured by their background and their position in society. He points out that judges’ view of public interest assumes that the interests of all the members of society are roughly the same, ignoring the fact that within society, different groups, employers and employees, men and women, rich and poor – may have interests which are diametrically opposite. What appears to be acting in public interest will usually mean in the interest of one group over another, and therefore cannot be seen as neutral. Waldron, in his book ‘The Law’ (1989), agrees that judges do make law, and that they are influenced in those instances of law-making by political and ideological considerations, but argues that this is not necessarily a bad thing. He contends that while it would be wrong for judges to be biased towards one side in a case, or to make decisions based on political factors in the hope of promotion, it is unrealistic to expect a judge to be ‘a political neuter – emasculated of all values and principled commitments’. Although judges have traditionally seen themselves as declaring or finding rather than creating law, and frequently state that making law is the prerogative of the parliament, there are several areas in which they clearly do make law. In the first place, historically, a great deal of English law is and always has been case law, made by judicial decisions. Contract and tort law are still largely judge made, and many of the most important developments – for example, the development of negligence as a tort – have had profound effects. Even though statutes have later been passed in these subjects, and occasionally parliament has attempted to embody whole areas of common law in statutory form, these still embody the original principles created by the judges. Secondly, the application of law, whether case law or statute, to a particular case is not usually an automatic matter. Terminology may be vague or ambiguous, new developments and social life have to be accommodated, and the procedure requires interpretation as well as application. As we have suggested, judicial precedent does not always make a particular decision obvious and obligatory – there may be conflicting precedents, their implications may be unclear, and there are ways of getting round a precedent that may otherwise produce an undesirable decision. If it is accepted that Blackstone’s declaratory theory does not apply in practice, then clearly the judges do make law, rather than explaining the law that is already there. The theories advanced by Kairys, Griffith, and Waldron, all accept that judges do have discretion, and therefore they do to some extent make law. Where precedents do not spell out what should be done in a case before them, judges nevertheless have to make a decision. They cannot simply say that the law is not clear and refer it back to parliament, even though in some cases they point out that the decision before them would be more appropriately decided by those who have been elected to make decisions on changes in the law. This was the case in Airedale NHS Trust v Bland (1993), where the House of Lords considered the fate of Tony Bland, the football supporter left in a coma, after the Hillsborough stadium disaster. The court had to decide whether it was lawful to stop supplying the drugs and artificial feeding that were keeping Bland alive, even though it was known that doing so would mean his death soon afterwards. Several law lords made it plain that they felt that cases raising ‘wholly new moral and social issues; should be decided by the Parliament, the judges’ role being to ‘apply the principles which society, through the democratic process, adopts, not to impose their standards on society. Nevertheless, the courts had no option but to make the decision one way or another, and they decided that the action was lawful in the circumstances, because it was in the patient’s best interests. Thirdly, our judges have been left to define their own role, and the role of the courts generally in the political system, more or less as they please. They have, for example, given themselves the power to review decisions of any public body, even when parliament has said those decis ions are not to be reviewed. In addition, despite their frequent pronouncements that it is not for them to interfere in parliament’s law making role, the judges have made it plain that they will not, unless forced by very explicit wording, interpret statutes as encroaching on common law rights or judge made law. They also control the operation of case law without reference to parliament : an obvious example is that the 1966 practice statement announcing that the HOL would no longer be bound by its own decisions, which made case law more flexible and thereby gave the judges more power, was made on the courts own authority, without needing permission from parliament. The HOL has explained its approach to judicial law-making (which is likely to be the same for the Supreme Court) in the case of C (a minor) v DPP 1995, which raised the issue of children’s liability for crime. The common law defence of doli incapax provided that a D aged between 10 and 14 could be liable for a crime only if the prosecution could prove that the child knew that what he or she did was seriously wrong. On appeal from the magistrates’ court, the divisional court held that the defence was outdated and should no longer exist in law. An appeal was brought before the HOL arguing that the divisional court was bound by precedent and not able to change the law in this way. the HOL agreed and went on to consider whether it should change the law itself (as the 1966 practice statement clearly allowed it to do), but decided that this was not an appropriate case for judicial law making.

Women and Education essays

Women and Education essays Women and Education: Granting women and men equal access to education in light of the Fourteenth Amendments pledge of equal protection. Though taken for granted by many, co-sex educational institutions for higher learning are really just recent occurrences. For the most part, colleges and universities, particularly elite ones, taught either men or women. The reasons for this separation date back to early American history, when a womans place was seen as in the home. In addition, education was seen, though ridiculously, as having detrimental effects on the woman. Some of these ludicrous, yet back then scientific beliefs, included that womens brains were smaller than mens were therefore, making them less capable of academic learning. It was also said that if women utilized their brains at the time of their adolescent years, then their reproductive organs would not develop correctly causing possible sterility. Motherhood has always been seen as a strong link for women to their personal identities. Therefore, the greatest oppression would be to threaten its existence. Having to be a mother is a role traditionally defined by society for women; Most women long for children, even against considerable odds, even when marriage has become a light-minded undertaking, and in direst poverty; women continue to seek to be mothers. This is just one of the avenues that was taken advantage of in order to continue the intolerable oppression of preventing women from educating themselves and enlightening their lives. Women have had to prove that they are equals of men. They have had to prove that they are as intelligent, competent, brave, and as morally responsible. With this incentive Womens Liberation was born and with it women were secured many rights, among them are: the right to vote, to educate themselves, and to have and spend their own money and properties...

Analog vs. Digital

Analog vs. Digital Analog vs. Digital Analog vs. Digital By Mark Nichol What’s the difference between analog and digital, and why is the latter word, which originally referred to fingers, now the antithesis of â€Å"hands-on†? An analog is something related to physical quantities (hence the name; analog comes from a Greek word meaning â€Å"proportion†): An analog clock, for example, shows the passage of time by measuring it with a â€Å"hand† that pivots on a central axis, while a measuring tape represents the length of a tangible phenomenon such as a room’s dimensions. By contrast, digital refers to a device’s reading of binary units, zeros and ones, to perform functions and to the storage of information as binary units rather than an analog recording medium such as magnetic ribbon. Ironically, however, digit stems from the Latin term digitus, meaning â€Å"finger† or â€Å"toe.† The path from appendages to algorithms involves the use of fingers to count, thus the extension of the definition of digit to â€Å"number below ten.† The use of zeros and tens as the basis of the on-off duality of binary computer systems led the technology to be referred to as digital technology. Indeed, the word bit, referring to the basic unit of digital information, is a contraction of the phrase â€Å"binary digit.† The adjective digital now refers both to something done or having to do with fingers (for example, â€Å"digital manipulation†) and something related to digitally rendered numbers, or to computerized data or to electronics. Two other terms with the same root word are digitalis, referring to a plant popularly known as the foxglove and to a medicine extracted from it, and prestidigitation, a sesquipedalian synonym for magic. Digitalis is a Latinized form of the German word fingerhut (â€Å"thimble†), because of the resemblance of the plant’s flowers to the sewing implement. Prestidigitation, meanwhile, is another Latin-looking invention influenced by prestige, which comes from the Latin word praestigiae, â€Å"juggler’s tricks.† (Prestige acquired a laudatory meaning and connotation only in the early twentieth century.) It’s a combination of the Italian word presto and digit hence, â€Å"quick fingers.† Analog, meanwhile, calls to mind its full-form predecessor analogue (which spelling for the adjectival form is also preferred in British English), which means â€Å"something similar.† An analogy is also a similarity, or it can refer to a correspondence or to another form of comparison. Analogous is the adjectival form. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Misused Words category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:25 Subordinating ConjunctionsDifference between "Pressing" and "Ironing"Wood vs. Wooden

Motivation Bhutanese Employees in the Hotel Industry Case Study

Motivation Bhutanese Employees in the Hotel Industry - Case Study Example To lose such an employee at any stage of the production process is suicidal for the organisation. Specific emphasis is therefore taken into account to make sure that such employees are kept for as long as they are required. The hotel industry is very challenging in nature. Research indicates that for employees in this sector to perform their best, they need to be highly motivated. (Armstrong, 2006) There are various factors that motivate Bhutanese employees to be productive in the hotel industry. They include financial rewards that are given to these employees who are in the hotel industry. This includes hospital insurance, annual leave etc. All these have played a great role in motivating the Bhutanese employees. Due to these factors, Bhutanese employees in the hotel industry have been greatly motivated. Workers need to be compensated for their performance in order to encourage them to keep up or improve on that performance. The moment the human resource establishes the performance of the worker, managers should reward to commensurate with the worker's achievement. These will ensure maximum production and effectiveness of the worker; current compensation programs that motivate Bhutanese employees in the hotel industry include mix of basic pay, equities and variable pay. (Beardwell, 1997) Among the factors that have motivated frontline Bhutanese employees to be productive in the hotel industry is good working environment. The employers in this industry have ensured that Bhutanese employees get good working environment. This is through ensuring that all the required facilities are available. The employers have ensured that the frontline Bhutanese employees have protective clothing when working. The employers have ensured that there is a good working environment for the frontline Bhutanese employees in hotel industry. (Cole, 1995) Human capital need to be motivated in order for the company to get the best out of them. An employee who is well motivated will easily stay in the organization and be more productive. For this to occur human resource have to attend to the financial and psychological needs of the workers by rewarding them well. Basic financial remunerations and working conditions are normally stated by the government or workers union. (Geen, 1995) There are various types of reward systems that are used in organizations. They may be as

Linguistic features that distinguish regional and social varieties of Essay

Linguistic features that distinguish regional and social varieties of English - Essay Example These variations constitute the dialects of the people. Many factors have influenced to develop a standard form of language in all major speech communities. These in turn have been used as the official dialects of the communities. (The Columbia electronic encyclopedia,2006) The official dialect usually differs from the day to day language, it has some "officiality" in it which would contain certain standards of grammar, pronunciations etc. The standard English of England is derived from London English. A person is marked as cultivated in the United states which entails usage of standard grammar and pronunciation. Also the degree of politeness of a person is judged by the efficiency with which he or she speaks the standard language. Sometimes ordinary speech can be affected by the standard language. Hence some usages would tend to be incorrect such as "you was" in place of "you were" etc. Similarly "gotten" is accepted in United States but not in England. Similarly "Gotten" is accepted by the United States but not in England. Also the standard of linguistic variations are mainly because of vocabulary. Language changes have traditionally been treated as processes constrained by internal linguistic factors. According to this view, language contacts have b een perceived as disturbing factors. Therefore, explaining language change requires new analytical ways of modelling contact, in which both internal and external factors are closely investigated. Studying language-internal processes requires a fundamental knowledge of sociolinguistic, textual and regional factors, since all variation-based analytical and explanatory models of language change rely on the idea of a combined effect of all factors. Another important insight is to be able to connect the latest language changes with historical ones. Hence, the concept of grammaticalization offers a productive starting point for analyses of language changes that span several hundred years. Linguistics Linguistics is the study of language on a scientific basis. Linguistics can be theoretical and applied. Linguistics compares languages (comparative linguistics) and explores their histories, in order to find universal properties of language and to account for its development and origins (historical linguistics). Slightly separate from general linguistics are the sub-fields of phonology, which studies the role of sounds in particular languages, and phonetics, the study of how sounds are produced and perceived. Linguistics are widely used to understand the variations of languages. Regional variation in English Everyone speaks some form of regional dialect a variety of a language that differs in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary from those spoken in other regions. In this sense, a region implies a construct of social and historical facts as well as a geographic area. The shared linguistic features that make up a regional dialect include historical facts of migration and community experience, social facts of ethnic identity, and geographic facts of climate and terrain. Each regional dialect also includes a number of social dialects that reflect the age, education, social class, and ethnic identity of its speakers. In England various dialects are spoken region wise like Scottish gaelic , Irish