Under New Jersey law, institutionalized mental patients can vote unless a judge has declared them incompetent.
His landscape refers to near infinite peaks and valleys of human flourishing -- between societies which embrace, say, the doctrine of honor killing, and are thus eternally mired in deadly, retributive cycles of bloodletting (a valley), versus those which embrace institutionalized codes of law that allow members to go about their daily quest for individual fulfillment in peace (a peak).
Then, of course, there's the criminalization of women for defend themselves, implicit and institutionalized discrimination in the law, and the fact that women's survival strategies are being judged by a normatively gender-biased "reasonable man" standard that fails us every day.
For all we know, the Supreme Court could kick the can down the road on DOMA and Prop 8 or, worse, uphold both laws and the institutionalized discrimination they entail.
Commonly held values or views of a specific issue can be regarded as prescriptive, forming the basis of a code of conduct and justifying institutionalized obligations such as directives, laws and other regulations.
Corruption is as bad as ever, institutionalized transparency and rule of law remain weak and consensual politics nonexistent.
We pursue the liberty of laws reformed from the institutionalized shaming that blames women for being raped, wives for betting battered and girls for being assaulted to achieve the justice of punishing the perpetrator and healing the survivor not blaming the victim.
And yet the political leaders of this nation of liberty cannot seem to muster the courage and principle to sweep away one remaining example of institutionalized, government-sanctioned discrimination: The 1996 law that denies the right of marriage to same-sex couples.
"'To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.' Though the times have changed, issues such as institutionalized racism as evidenced by discriminatory law enforcement practices, poverty, high unemployment rates, challenges to voting rights have not.
Furthermore, because VAWA was initially established on the premise that violence is caused by institutionalized sexism and patriarchal beliefs, the law has allocated financial and legal resources primarily to female victims, while ignoring the complex nature of violence and its causes.
