By Andrew C. Eggers , Haritz Garro, and Justin Grimmer

After the 2020 US presidential election Donald Trump refused to concede, alleging widespread and unparalleled voter fraud. Trump’s supporters deployed several statistical arguments in an attempt to cast doubt on the result. Reviewing the most promi nent of these statistical claims, we conclude that none of them is even remotely convincing. The common logic behind these claims is that, if the election were fairly conducted, some feature of the observed 2020 election result would be unlikely or impossible. In each case, we find that the purportedly anomalous fact is either not a fact or not anomalous.   

  PNAS 2021 Vol. 118 No. 45 e2103619118  

ByNicolas Berlinski, Margaret Doyle, Andrew M. Guess, Gabrielle Levy, Benjamin Lyons, Jacob M. Montgomery, Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler

   Abstract Political elites sometimes seek to delegitimize election results using unsubstantiated claims of fraud. Most recently, Donald Trump sought to overturn his loss in the 2020 US presidential election by falsely alleging widespread fraud. Our study provides new evidence demonstrating the corrosive effect of fraud claims like these on trust in the election system. Using a nationwide survey experiment conducted after the 2018 midterm elections– a time when many prominent Republicans also made unsubstantiated fraud claims– we show that exposure to claims of voter fraud reduces confidence in electoral integrity, though not support for democracy itself. The effects are concentrated among Republicans and Trump approvers. Worryingly, corrective messages from mainstream sources do not measurably reduce the damage these accusations inflict. These results suggest that unsubstantiated voter-fraud claims undermine confidence in elections, particularly when the claims are politically congenial, and that their effects cannot easily be mitigated by fact-checking.  

Journal of Experimental Political Science (2023), 10,34–49 

By John Carey, Brendan Nyhan, Brian Fogarty,  Jason Reifler

This study reports several experiments testing the e ects of corrective messages debunking false claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 and 2022 U.S. elections as well as a complementary experiment after the 2022 Brazilian presidential election. We find evidence that prebunking false voter fraud claims with substantive information about election security can reduce misperceptions more effectively than corrections from credible sources. Other results indicate that corrections of specific voter fraud claims fail to generate broader changes in perceptions of election integrity and that party (but not putative candidate race) is the major factor in perceptions of voter fraud at the Congressional race level. 

Cambridge, MA: MIT Election Lab, 2024.

By Judith Hahn

This "Open Access" book investigates the legal reality of the church through a sociological lens and from the perspective of canon law studies, the discipline which researches the law and the legal structure of the Catholic Church. It introduces readers from various backgrounds to the sociology of canon law, which is both a legal and a theological field of study, and is the first step towards introducing a new subdiscipline of the sociology of canon law. As a theoretical approach to mapping out this field, it asks what theology and canon law may learn from sociology; it discusses the understanding of “law” in religious contexts; studies the preconditions of legal validity and effectiveness; and based on these findings it asks in what sense it is possible to speak of canon “law”. By studying a religious order as its struggles to find a balance between continuity and change, this book also contributes to the debates on religious law in modernity and the challenges it faces from secular states and plural societies. This book is of interest to researchers and students of the sociology of law, legal studies, law and religion, the sociology of religion, theology, and religious studies. 

Cham: Springer Nature, 2022. 235p.

A Comparative Perspective

Edited by Juliet Pietsch and Marshall Clark

This volume brings together a group of scholars from a wide range of disciplines to address crucial questions of migration flows and integration in Europe, Southeast Asia, and Australia. Comparative analysis of the three regions and their differing approaches and outcomes yields important insights for each region, as well as provokes new questions and suggests future avenues of study.

Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, OA Open. 2015.

Edited By William Gervase Clarence-Smith

Over a million slaves were exported from Indian Ocean and Red Sea ports in Eastern Africa during the 19th century, with millions more moved within the continent[. The slave trade expanded significantly in the 19th century, driven by demand for labor in the western Indian Ocean and improved maritime security. Slaves were used in various roles, including laborers, concubines, eunuchs, and administrators, with significant numbers employed in agriculture, urban economies, and domestic roles.: The nature and scale of slavery varied across regions, with some areas like Zanzibar and Pemba having plantation systems similar to the New World, while others had more subsistence-based servitude.

FRANK CASS AND COMPANY LIMITED. Gainsborough House, Gainsborough Road, London. 1989. 228p.

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

Between 1889 and 1918, 3,224 people were lynched in the U.S., with 78.2% being African Americans. The South had the highest number of lynchings, with Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas leading.While lynchings decreased over the 30-year period, the South saw a slower decline compared to the North and West. Despite appeals from leaders like President Wilson, lynchings continued, and mob members were rarely convicted.

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People National Ofce 70 Fifth Avenue, New York. APRIL, 1919. 102p.

By Robert E. Speer

This book emphasizes that all races are part of one human family, created by God, and that racial distinctions are not biological but social constructs. It discusses the erroneous belief in racial superiority and the harm it causes, and argues that races can change and progress through education and environment, not just heredity. The ultimate solution to racial problems is presented as following the teachings of Jesus Christ, promoting love, peace, and unity among all races.

By Tiie Council of Women For Home Missions And Missionary Education Movement Of The United States And Canada. 1924. Read-Me.Org Classic Reprint 2024. .263p.

BY GEORGE PADMORE

The document details the severe exploitation and oppression of Negro workers across various regions, including British, French, Belgian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian Africa. It discusses the conditions of black slaves in the United States, the West Indies, and Latin America, highlighting the brutal realities of slavery and its lasting impacts. The book describes the awakening and revolutionary movements among Negro workers in different regions, emphasizing their struggles for freedom and better living conditions, and outlines the role of imperialist powers in exploiting Negro workers and the economic and social challenges faced by these communities under imperialist rule.

R.I.L.U. Magazine for the International Union Committee of Negro Workers London, 1931. 125p.

Christopher Ross,

FROM THE DOCUMENT: Immigration is one of, if not the, top voting priority for 2024 American voters [1]. Both political parties are poised to increase asylum restrictions but to disparate degrees. One policy under serious consideration is mass deportation [2]. It is not a novel American immigration policy concept [3]. But introspection from previous attempts should chill the notion of mass deportation being a viable solution worthy of serious consideration. The costs would be exorbitant. It would leave large swaths of American communities decimated. The local and national economies would take serious hits. Families and loved ones would be separated. Already backlogged immigration courts would be further overwhelmed as a matter of due process. Immigration must be addressed, and the rule of law is to be respected. But solutions must equally be practical. An August 2019 immigration raid in Jackson, Mississippi where 680 immigrants were arrested while working at nearby chicken processing plants provides a window to review how mass immigration enforcement, detention, and deportation affects an American community in the 21st century. This paper provides an analysis of the immigration raid and its effects on the local community, economy, and social services. It will also provide a scaled analysis of major metropolitan areas to show the deleterious effects of mass deportation and dissuade the consideration of mass deportation as viable policy. Finally, it will propose an alternative policy that may prove to be in the best interests of all parties involved.

Center for Migration Studies. .August 6, 2024. 63p.

By Benjamin Rooij

Over the last decades, some non-OECD countries such as Brazil, Indonesia, Colombia, Mexico, India and China have been rapidly industrializing. While this has had positive effects on economic growth, it has also caused pollution with severe effects . In response to the new pollution threat, most of the industrializing economies have installed pollution prevention and control regulations, and implementing institutions. In practice, however, the regulations often fail to achieve the desired results. This Research and P

olicy Note explains why the regulation of pollution in these countries is so difficult.

Leiden: Leiden University Press, OA Open. 2008.

By Benjamin van Rooij and Ineke van de Meerie

Reforms to improve poor people’s access to justice and to promote their legal empowerment comprise the latest trend in legal development cooperation. This volume answers a number of basic questions about this new trend, such as access to justice and legal empowerment entail and its importance; the obstacles the poor and marginalised face in seeking justice and empowerment through the legal system; and the reforms proposed by these approaches to legal development co-operation. Furthermore, it outlines important considerations for policy-makers concerning access to justice and legal empowerment reforms.

Leiden: Leiden University Press, OA. Open.2008. 

By Inka Stock

 This book is concerned with the effects of migration policy making in Europe on migrants in the Global South and links insights on immobility to social theories of time to examine the human consequences of current migration dynamics from the perspectives of migrants themselves. Based on in-depth ethnographic research, this is an invaluable learning resource that aims to challenge current international migration politics and policy-making 

Bristol: Bristol University Press, OA. Open. 2019.  202p. 

By Heather M. Ouellette, Beth M. Huebner, Andrea Giuffre, Lee Ann Slocum, Brian P. Schaefer

Research Summary

The average length of jail stays is increasing despite national efforts to reduce these populations. The current study examines variations in lengths of stay, differentiating between short and long pretrial stays. Using data from two large jails in metropolitan jurisdictions, we take an intersectional perspective and model potential differences among race, gender, and residing in a high-poverty area. In both locations, we find that Black men are the most likely to have long lengths of stay, but that length of stay varies depending on the intersection of gender, race, and neighborhood poverty.

Policy Implications:

The human costs of pretrial detention are paid unequally by different groups of people. Given the downstream costs of pretrial detention, this work suggests that focusing policy efforts on the barriers to release among people of color, particularly Black men, would be fruitful. There is evidence that bail reform can reduce some barriers to release without increases in crime. Further, attending to obstacles to case processing could lead to pretrial system reform. This work also highlights another area of the criminal legal system where Black males, compared to their White counterparts, are disparately affected and denotes the continuing need for intersectional perspectives on reform.

Criminology & Public Policy Early View, July 2024.

By Steve Hallock

From the cardinal Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling that desegregated

U.S. public education to the demonstrations, marches, and violence of the civil rights movement, A History of the American Civil Rights Movement Through Newspaper Coverage: The Race Agenda, Volume 1 traces the crusade for justice through the lens of major newspaper coverage to reveal the combating sectional press attitudes of the era. The book details attempts, blatant and subtle, to frame the major events of the movement in themes that have resonated from before, during, and since the Civil War. States’ rights versus constitutional guarantees of freedom and equality, nullification versus federal authority, and regional social and cultural mores that buttressed the prejudices and political arguments of segregation and desegregation across the nation are some of the issues covered. This analysis of the press coverage of events and issues of that tumultuous period of U.S. history—by newspapers in the North, South, Midwest, and West—exposes perspectives and press routines that remain ingrained and thus relevant today, when journalistic treatment of political debate, ranging from traditional newspapers and broadcast platforms to those of cable, social media, and the Internet, continues to set an often volatile and oppositional political agenda.

Lausanne, SWIT: Peter Lang, OA. Open. 2018.

By Ann Oakley

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Barbara Wootton was one of the extraordinary public figures of the twentieth century. She was an outstanding social scientist, an architect of the welfare state, an iconoclast who challenged conventional wisdoms and the first woman to sit on the Woolsack in the House of Lords. Ann Oakley has written a fascinating and highly readable account of the life and work of this singular woman, but the book goes much further. It is an engaged account of the making of British social policy at a critical period seen through the lens of the life and work of a pivotal figure. Oakley tells a story about the intersections of the public and the private and about the way her subject's life unfolded within, was shaped by, and helped to shape a particular social and intellectual context.

London: Bloomsbury Academic, OA. Open. 2011. 

Edited by Marie McAuliffe and Khalid Koser

"A Long Way to Go: Irregular Migration Patterns, Processes, Drivers and Decision-making presents the findings of a unique migration research program harnessing work of some of the leading international and Australian migration researchers on the challenging and complex topic of irregular maritime migration. The book brings together selected findings of the research program, and in doing so it contributes to the ongoing academic and policy discourses by providing findings from rigorous quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods research to support a better understanding of the dynamics of irregular migration and their potential policy implications. Stemming from the 2012 Expert Panel on Asylum Seekers report, the Irregular Migration Research Program commissioned 26 international research projects involving 17 academic principal researchers, along with private sector specialist researchers, international organisations and policy think tanks. The centrepiece of the research program was a multi-year collaborative partnership between the Department of Immigration and Border Protection and The Australian National University’s Crawford School of Public Policy. Under this partnership, empirical research on international irregular migration was commissioned from migration researchers in Australia, Indonesia, Iran, the Netherlands, Sri Lanka and Switzerland. "

Canberra: ANU Press, 2017. 

By Miriam Ganzfried

Amnesty International's (AI) focus on civil and political rights has marked their work with a gender bias from the outset. In the first comprehensive look at AI's work on women's rights, Miriam Ganzfried illustrates the development of their activities regarding women's rights issues over twenty years. Through interviews with staff members and activists and unprecedented access to archive material from the Swiss and the German AI sections, she shows how women activists strategized to make AI increase its work on women's rights. Additionally, the book demonstrates that, despite the leadership's commitment to the Stop Violence Against Women campaign, internal resistance hampered the integration of women's rights into the organization's overall work.

Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2021.

By Cristina Teleki

Due Process and Fair Trial in EU Competition Law: The Impact of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights is a book by Cristina Teleki that explores the relationship between Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and Articles 101 and 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The book argues that due process and fair trial should be central to competition law, and that these principles should protect independent decision-making and judicial review, and prevent competition authorities from becoming too powerful. The book also examines how the EU competition law enforcement procedure meets the requirements of Article 6(1) of the ECHR

Leiden: Brill/Nijhoff, OA. Open. 2021. 

Edited by Christina Horvath and Richard S. White

he murder of George Floyd in 2020, the renewed international take up of the cry Black Lives Matter and the subsequent toppling of a statue commemorating slave-merchant-turned-philanthropist Edward Colston in Bristol provoked urgent questions on memorialisation, white privilege, social justice and repair. Debates on how legacies of colonialism and empire in Britain should be addressed spilled out of the scholarly world into the public discourse. In the immediate wake of the statue toppling this book offers a unique, distinctive and timely contribution to those debates: a series of voices and experiences are offered as critical commentaries and accounts of recent interventions on an official heritage narrative. It sets out to break the ‘dead silence’, by bringing together diverse perspectives from academics, artists, activists, heritage professionals and tourist guides. The book offers fresh insights, referencing work attending to the impacts and legacies of colonisation primarily in Bath and Bristol, augmented with comparative contributions from Lancaster and Mexico offering significant and pertinent resonances. A range of strategies are explored towards enabling silenced voices to be heard and engage in conversations about how the past is represented, including Co-Creation, new agonistic museum practices, innovative creative and somatic approaches.

Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2024. OA. Open. 424p