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The television series The Americans succeeds as a family drama, crime drama, and political drama. Criminal law offers a useful perspective for interpreting the series. By examining the post-finale criminal liability of two key characters, daughter Paige Jennings and FBI agent Stan Beeman, this chapter provides some novel insights into the characters, their motivations, and the events in the last season of the series. The legal analysis also uncovers some ironies. Most notably, Paige’s legal vulnerability will put her in a moral dilemma because her best way of avoiding a lengthy prison term is to provide evidence against Stan, punishing him for letting her and her parents go.

This chapter is written from the perspective of an experienced middle leader reflecting on what would have been a powerful approach to solving curriculum challenges at the launch of their middle leadership journey. The approach is learning and leading through collaborative inquiry; a process that provides the pathway and direction for a curriculum middle leader (CML) to engage in inquiry to solve a challenge of practice. A CML invests a great deal of time and effort in unpacking and understanding the ‘why’ of a curriculum challenge. This is achieved through unpacking and understanding the ‘how’ which led to the challenge, and thus, strong strategic skills are required. Additionally, effective CMLs do not undertake this work in isolation, rather, they build and facilitate a professional learning community (PLC) (Stoll et al., 2006) of curriculum enthusiasts to undertake this journey with them, which requires substantial relational trust.

Under the doctrine of judicial review established by Marbury v. Madison (1803) and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), courts retain the power and authority to review legislative and executive actions and rule on their constitutionality or legality. Courts may also review actions of judges and lower court decisions. This is an important and necessary action to maintain the checks and balances and separation of powers in the United States (U.S.) political system. It is also critical for providing legal oversight and accountability. This chapter will first look at judicial review historically including relevant statutes and cases, actions by the executive branch, and efforts by Congress.

Additionally, the chapter will examine the relationship between judicial review and public policy. Through laws passed by Congress or regulations enacted by federal agencies, these branches of government draft policies with the expectation the judicial branch will enforce them. The courts, however, are to uphold the Constitution first and foremost, and rule on the constitutionality of the laws and regulations. Judicial opinions can have the effect of creating policy, which is a different purpose than the Founding Fathers intended. After reviewing the court system, the chapter will examine several issue areas where the court has been shaped by and in turn influenced public policy.

This chapter highlights a study showing that knowledge sharing and envisioning processes can have positive effects on human and social capital growth within a network. The chapter begins by arguing that a responsible development perspective can be more proactive approach than a sustainability perspective. Some actors (non-profit, public, and private) have achieved responsible development goals by integrating values, purposes, and visions. More specifically, we conducted a study testing a methodology that can guide a process of building a strategic vision within a network with the goal of improving their responsible development orientation. The chosen methodology is “Participatory Action Research.” The implementation of the envisioning process was studied via quantitative/qualitative research tools. The methodology was tested in an official cross-country project funded by the European Commission. The project was selected as a best practice by the same European Union Commission. The study highlights the importance of envisioning processes in building social and human capital at the inter-organizational level and, in particular, in highly complex sectors such as those oriented toward improving social responsibility. In fact, work on the envisioning process itself represents an essential instrument for developing strategic objectives to be shared among actors within networks that intend to promote responsible development and improve their human and social capital. This bottom-up process of envisioning can also facilitate cultural interaction among community members, even in a cross-country context. This relevant “learning-by-interacting” experience can create a growth process for the human and social capital of entire communities. The creation of social capital also promotes the development of shared knowledge and advances, leading to the general understanding of common core objectives and appropriate ways of acting within the social system. The chapter ends with recommendations for future research.

Greater parental monitoring is commonly associated with reduced delinquent behavior in adolescents, yet less is known about the extent to which parental monitoring behavior changes after a child is arrested for the first time. The present study examines the extent to which mothers’ monitoring behaviors (i.e., parental monitoring knowledge and effort) change in association with juvenile recidivism after their sons’ first arrest, operationalized through both youth-reported recidivism and official re-arrest records. Mother–son dyads (total N = 634) across three states were interviewed in two waves over 30 months following the youth’s first arrest. Mothers who reported both more monitoring knowledge and effort at Wave 1 had sons who self-reported less recidivism and were less likely to be re-arrested at Wave 2. Repeated sons’ re-arrests were associated with a change in mothers’ monitoring behavior, as both parental knowledge and parental effort significantly increased from Wave 1 to Wave 2 when youth have been re-arrested more than once, relative to youth who had never been re-arrested. No change in monitoring behaviors were observed in association with youth-reported recidivism, and mothers who stated an intention to change their monitoring habits at Wave 1 did not necessarily do so by Wave 2. The findings point to the ability of parents to modulate their monitoring behavior to respond to chronic juvenile offending. This provide an opportunity for practitioners to work with parents to improve their monitoring skills, to ensure rehabilitative gains that result from justice system intervention are maintained in the home via parental monitoring.