Academic Discourse Issues in Criminology
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Created: October 5, 2000
Latest update: December 24, 2000
jeanne

Rights discourse is that legal doctrine that says that the legal system should guard peoples' rights and protect "human rights over mere property rights." the difficulty with this doctrine is that it is an ideal that has never been met. Says Kennedy: "The system fails to enforce the rights formally recognized."

Kennedy says that "rights discourse" will not support the liberal students' expectations because the very concept of rights presupposes the wicked little unstated assumption that "the world is and should be divided between a state sector that enforces rights and a private sector" in which individuals are free to pursue their individual interests. But that is the social infrastructure pattern that has produced inequality and unequal access. It is the juxtaposition, as though they are not interdependent, of a state and a private sector. Kennedy maintains it is that very interdependence we need to recognize, in order to be able to grasp the concept of democratic workers controlling work schedules, profitability, planning, instead of leaving it in the hands of either the state or the private sector.

Does Kennedy agree with Alfie Kohn that grades are detrimental? p.63 and for Kohn on grades.

Yes. On p. 63 he says "Most of the process of differentiating students into bad, better, good could simply be dispensed with without the slightest detriment to the quality of legal services."

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