Contenu du sommaire : La justice dans la gestion du social

From Criminal to Social Justice: An Analysis of Legitimating Discourses in the Judicialization of Homelessness in Canada. Based on extensive fieldwork conducted in five Canadian cities between 2008 and 2011, this article proposes an analysis of the different representations and discourses held by judges and prosecutors with respect to homelessness and in particular, with respect to the legitimacy of using the criminal justice system to deal with homelessness. Relying on such judicial representations and discourses, the article presents three possible configurations or models of doing justice. Using Bourdieu's theory of symbolic violence, it ultimately addresses the issue of how the criminal justice system succeeds in maintaining its authority and hegemony as a conflict resolution system as well as its role in reproducing social inequalities in a neoliberal state.

At the Margins of Official Classification: Statusless Indigenous Groups in the Canadian Courts
In Canada, certain indigenous groups lacking official status have turned to the courts in order to secure the recognition of their indigenous identity and their corresponding rights. In most cases, these attempts failed. This study shows that these groups' lack of resources and inability to conform to the stereotyped popular image of the indigenous group are important factors that explain the courts' denial of their claims. This suggests that a marginalized group's visibility or invisibility is a material factor in determining whether courts will address its needs.

Psychological Harassment at Work: Between Psychologization and Victimization
The Québec Labour Standards Act provides that every worker has a right to a work environment free from psychological harassment. A unionized worker's recourse lies with grievance arbitration. Analysis of arbitration decisions reveals language that is often more psychological in nature than legal, especially when associated with the denial of a grievance. Arbitrators take a harsh view of complainants, directing inquiry as to whether their personality is “normal” and whether they have a mental illness. The tendency towards a psychological reading of harassment grievances effectively displaces social and organisational analysis of workplaces, even though legislative intention was to make workplaces healthier through a critical examination of work organization and exercise of management prerogatives.

The mise en scène of Justice
The judicial process of psychiatric commitment seeks to affirm equality of persons with mental disorders. Therefore, beyond formalism, the courts have to play an active role in protecting fundamental rights, notably in removing any clinical or social dimension in the decision process. This empirical study highlights serious difficulties for courts in fulfilling this role. The reproduction of inequality and the “therapeutic role” of the court are materialized by rights violations considered as the lesser of two evils since the commitment is clinically or morally justified. In effect, justice is mise en scène insofar it serves purposes other than those explicitly assigned it.

The Local Government Reform: When the Constitution Becomes Involved
This article proposes, from the point of view of constitutional law, an analysis of the bill concerning the reform of French territorial bodies which modifies, in depth, the local institutional organization: the creation of a district councilor, clarification of the different responsibilities involved etc. This bill, largely inspired by the report drawn up by the Comité pour la réforme des collectivités territoriales, established by President Nicolas Sarkozy, poses the following question: can such a reform work without changing the constitutional framework? Contrary to the choice made in 2003 in regard to Acte II de la décentralisation, the plan is for this reform to pass through the legislative channels. Consequently, we should begin to question more closely the constitutionality of the different provisions of the bill.

The Legal Field as Determined by Recent Scholarship in Legal History
Whereas the classic vision of the history of legal sources focused on custom as primary the element, recent works have shown the multiplicity of historical situations in which customary law was forged after other legal techniques. For several years, studies on colonial law have accepted this idea of an invented tradition; new research on European customary law during the Middle Ages supports the same thesis. This historiographical evolution reinforces the argumentation of legal positivists who consider law an invented technology. Based on these historical works and a combination of “secondary rules” and Bourdieu's “legal field”, this article proposes a fresh perspective on Hart's Concept of Law.

A “Bill of Rights” for Internet Users?
Recent discussions on individuals' freedom, security, and privacy on the Internet concern both the very essence of these rights – their existence, attribution, and acknowledgement – as well as the procedures and tools of their legitimization. This article addresses recent debates on the creation of a declaration or bill of rights for the Internet, and in particular, the right to privacy. The motivations and perspectives underlying the Internet Bill of Rights project are analyzed and compared with alternative forms of “protection” of Internet users' rights, while framing the debate within the main questions in the Internet governance field.

The OND: A Machine to Reprocess Tools Measuring Crime and Insecurity
This paper recounts the daily work of the National Observatory of Delinquency (OND), which was established in 2004 by the French Ministry of the Interior both to collect and distribute data, often scattered and fragmentary, on the statistical evolution of crimes and offenses, and to improve crime prevention and crime-fighting measures. It explains the socio-technical constraints of bringing together policing data by the national police and gendarmerie, and it insists on the Ministry of Justice's reticence. This article shows how mobilizing national victim surveys, conceived as alternative data to the traditional bureaucratic tools, disrupts the general process of harmonization and integration. It illuminates the meanders of the unfinished implementation of a “constituent administrative activity” in a highly politicized context.