This book seeks to provide and promote a better understanding and a more responsive and inclusive governance of the automation and digital devices in public institutions, particularly the law and justice sector. Concerns related to AI design and use have been exacerbated recently with the recognition of the discriminatory potential that can be embedded into AI applications in public service institutions. This book examines issues relating to the assigning of responsibility in a public service produced and delivered on the basis of an automated mechanism. It encourages critical thinking about the legal services and the justice institutions as they are transformed by AI and automation. It raises awareness as to the prospect of transformation we face in terms of responsibility and of agency and the need to design a citizen-centered and human rights compliant system of technology assessment and AI monitoring and evaluation. The book calls for a comprehensive strategy to enable professional practitioners and decision makers to engage in the design of AI driven legal and justice services. The work draws on on-going research and consulting activities carried out by the author across different countries and different systems in the legal and justice sector. The book offers a critical approach to encourage a new mindset among legal professionals and the justice institutions thus empowering and training them to develop the necessary responsiveness and accountability in the justice sector and legal systems. It will also be of interest to researchers and academics working in the area of AI, Public Law, Human Rights and Criminal Justice.

This book considers how access to justice is affected by restrictions to legal aid budgets and increasingly prescriptive service guidelines. As common law jurisdictions, England and Wales and Australia, share similar ideals, policies and practices, but they differ in aspects of their legal and political culture, in the nature of the communities they serve and in their approaches to providing access to justice. These jurisdictions thus provide us with different perspectives on what constitutes justice and how we might seek to overcome the burgeoning crisis in unmet legal need. The book fills an important gap in existing scholarship as the first to bring together new empirical and theoretical knowledge examining different responses to legal aid crises both in the domestic and comparative contexts, across criminal, civil and family law. It achieves this by examining the broader social, political, legal, health and welfare impacts of legal aid cuts and prescriptive service guidelines. Across both jurisdictions, this work suggests that it is the most vulnerable groups who lose out in the way the law now operates in the twenty-first century. This book is essential reading for academics, students, practitioners and policymakers interested in criminal and civil justice, access to justice, the provision of legal assistance and legal aid.

This book exposes the myriad of victims of wrongful conviction by going beyond the innocent person who has been wrongfully incarcerated to include the numerous indirect victims who suffer collaterally. In no way overlooking the egregious effects on the wrongfully convicted, this book widens the net to also examine consequences for family, friends, co-workers, witnesses, the initial victims of the crime, and society in general-all indirect victims who are often forgotten in treatments of wrongful conviction. Utilizing interviews of exonerees and indirect victims, the authors capture the tangible and intangible costs of victimization across the board. The prison experience is examined through the lens of an innocent person, and the psychological impact of incarceration for the exoneree is explored. Special attention is given to the often-ignored experience of female exonerees and to the impact of race as a compounding factor in a vast number of miscarriages of justice. The book concludes with an overview of the victimization experiences that follow exonerees upon release. Unique to this book is its interdisciplinary approach to the troubling subject of wrongful conviction, combining perspectives from a number of fields, including criminal justice, criminology, victimology, psychology, sociology, social justice, history, political science, and law. Undergraduate and graduate students in these disciplines will find this book helpful in their respective areas of study, and professionals in the legal system will benefit from appreciation of the far-reaching costs of wrongful convictions.

This book explores fundamental topics concerning the functioning of the judiciary. The authors - class scholars, international judges and jurists from a diverse range of countries - address general theoretical issues in connection with judicial power, the role and functioning of international courts, international standards concerning the organization of national judiciaries, and the role of domestic courts in international relations, as well as alternative means of settling disputes. The book contributes a novel and valuable global perspective on burning issues, especially on judicial power and independence in a time in which illiberal and authoritarian regimes are constantly seeking to diminish the role of the judiciary.

Homicide: Towards a Deeper Understanding offers an in-depth analysis into the phenomenon of homicide, examining different types of homicide and how these types have changed over time. Based on original analysis on Scottish data, this book draws upon an international body of research to contextualize the findings in a global setting, filling an important gap in the homicide literature pertaining to the relationship between trends in homicide and violence. Examining homicide from gendered as well as Gothic perspectives, this book also relates homicide to novel, critical theory. The book covers a thorough description of different types of homicide, including sexual homicide, and provides an explorative approach to the identification of homicide subtypes. The book also explores how these findings relate to current homicide theory, and proposes a new theoretical framework to gain a deeper understanding of this crime. The main argument of the book is that if homicide and its relationship to wider violence is to be fully understood, theoretically as well as empirically, this crime needs to be disaggregated in a way that reflects the underlying data. Overall, this book therefore fills an important gap in criminological literature, providing an in-depth understanding of one of the most serious violent crimes.

Addresses simple to advance microscopy techniques for the effective analyses of trace evidence Pairs chapters on a particular type of microscopy, explaining it fully, before delving into specific usage for forensic applications Presents theories and as well as the real-world applications outlining current standards and best practices Provides numerous micro-photographs from authors' and editors' collections, including graphical representations and flow charts to clearly illustrate concepts

Addresses simple to advance microscopy techniques for the effective analyses of trace evidence Pairs chapters on a particular type of microscopy, explaining it fully, before delving into specific usage for forensic applications Presents theories and as well as the real-world applications outlining current standards and best practices Provides numerous micro-photographs from authors' and editors' collections, including graphical representations and flow charts to clearly illustrate concepts

This book illuminates the decision-making processes of the US Supreme court through an examination of several prisoners' rights cases. In 1964, the Supreme Court declined to hear prisoners' claims about religious freedom. In 2014, the Supreme Court heard a case that led to the justices' unanimous endorsement of a Muslim prisoner's religious right to grow a beard despite objections from prison officials. In the fifty-year span between those two events, the Supreme Court developed the law concerning rights for imprisoned offenders. As demonstrated in this book, the factors that shape Supreme Court decision making are well-illustrated by prisoners' rights cases. This area of law illuminates competing approaches to constitutional interpretation, behind-the-scenes interactions among the justices, and the manipulation of legal precedents. External actors also affect the Supreme Court and its decisions when the president appoints new justices and Congress targets the judiciary with legislative enactments. Because of the controversial nature of prisoners' rights issues, these cases serve to illuminate the full array of influences over Supreme Court decision making.

This book examines the attainment of complete free movement of civil judgments across EU member states from the perspective of its conformity with the fundamental right to a fair trial. In the integrated legal order of the European Union, it is essential that litigants can rely on a judgment no matter where in the EU it was delivered. Effective mechanisms for cross-border recognition and the enforcement of judgments provide both debtors and creditors with the security that their rights, including their right to a fair trial, will be protected. In recent years the attainment of complete free movement of civil judgments, through simplification or abolition of these mechanisms, has become a priority for the European legislator. The text uniquely combines a thorough discussion of EU legislation with an in-depth and critical examination of its interplay with fundamental rights. It contains an over-view and comparison of both ECtHR and CJEU case law on the right to a fair trial, and provides a great number of specific recommendations for current and future legislation. With its critical discussion of EU Regulations from both a practical and a theoretical standpoint, this book is particularly relevant to legislators and policymakers working in this field. Because of the extensive overview of the functioning of the EU's mechanisms and of relevant case law it provides, the book is also highly relevant to academics and practitioners. Monique Hazelhorst is Judicial Assistant at the Supreme Court of the Netherlands. She studied Law and Legal Research at Utrecht University and holds a Ph.D. in Law from the Erasmus School of Law at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

This book exposes the myriad of victims of wrongful conviction by going beyond the innocent person who has been wrongfully incarcerated to include the numerous indirect victims who suffer collaterally. In no way overlooking the egregious effects on the wrongfully convicted, this book widens the net to also examine consequences for family, friends, co-workers, witnesses, the initial victims of the crime, and society in general-all indirect victims who are often forgotten in treatments of wrongful conviction. Utilizing interviews of exonerees and indirect victims, the authors capture the tangible and intangible costs of victimization across the board. The prison experience is examined through the lens of an innocent person, and the psychological impact of incarceration for the exoneree is explored. Special attention is given to the often-ignored experience of female exonerees and to the impact of race as a compounding factor in a vast number of miscarriages of justice. The book concludes with an overview of the victimization experiences that follow exonerees upon release. Unique to this book is its interdisciplinary approach to the troubling subject of wrongful conviction, combining perspectives from a number of fields, including criminal justice, criminology, victimology, psychology, sociology, social justice, history, political science, and law. Undergraduate and graduate students in these disciplines will find this book helpful in their respective areas of study, and professionals in the legal system will benefit from appreciation of the far-reaching costs of wrongful convictions.

As the nation turned its back on Reconstruction, the Supreme Court in turn narrowed Thirteenth-, Fourteenth-, and Fifteenth-Amendment protections of former slaves, thus straying from the understanding of the amendments' framers. Tracking a long line of cases that employed narrow constructions of these amendments and accompanying statutes, this study compares the Court's propositions to the framers' own interpretations. The resulting portrait makes it clear that the Court contributed in a significant way to the nation's retreat from Reconstruction. Before analyzing the relevant cases, Scaturro provides a historical synopsis of the collapse of Reconstruction. The final section demonstrates how the twentieth-century Court handed down decisions that accommodated the demands of the Civil Rights Movement, but did so with constitutional interpretations that preserved several misunderstandings about the Reconstruction Amendments, especially the Fourteenth. This study helps to resolve a contemporary dilemma regarding the consequences of the Court's narrowing of the Interstate Commerce Clause. It also challenges long standing assumptions about the "state action" requirement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments as well as the Fourteenth Amendment's Privileges and Immunities Clause. Besides being valuable to Supreme Court historians, the subject matter of this volume, which covers both constitutional law and legal history, will be of substantial interest to lawyers, judges, and political scientists, particularly in view of recent developments on the high Court. The lessons taught by this chapter of Supreme Court jurisprudence offer insight into constitutional interpretation in general, andthe conclusion develops this idea by looking at the problematic interaction between law and outside historical influences.

* Includes over 1050 full-color photographs, diagrams, and illustrations throughout * Presents the step-by-step processes for current and accepted best practices for photography in nearly every applicable forensic context * The most up-to-date and comprehensive book available on the market for forensic photography * Examines traditional and, primarily, digital photography and the changing landscape of photography in a forensic context. * Contributed to by more than 40 professionals with real-world-hands on forensic photography experience in a variety of scenarios

What role can US domestic courts play in the worldwide enforcement of human rights? When international courts deny hearings to individual plaintiffs who cannot obtain the sponsorship of their own government (which may well be the defendant), these plaintiffs are finding US courts increasingly willing to hear their cases. This volume considers the implications of this de facto extension of the jurisdiction of US courts, the problem of enforcing the decisions of the courts, the relationship between human rights law and foreign policy and the emerging consensus on the primacy of human rights over the sovereign rights of states.

This book explores prisoners' experiences of prison education and investigates whether participation in prison education contributes to an offender's ability to desist from crime and increases social capital levels. While the link between prison education and reduced rates of recidivism is well established through research, far less is known about the relationship between prison education and desistance. The book demonstrates how prisoners experience many benefits from participating in prison education, including increased confidence, self-control and agency, along with various other cognitive changes. In addition, the book examines prisoners' accounts that provide evidence of strong connections between prison education and the formation of pro-social bonds which have been shown to play a role in the desistance process. It also highlights the links between prison education and social capital, and the existence of a form of prison-based social capital arising from the prison culture. Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to those engaged in criminology, sociology, penology, desistance, rehabilitation, the sociology of education and all those interested in learning more about the positive impact of prison education on prisoners.

Scholarly exploration into how and why people stop offending (desistance from crime) has focused on the impact of internal and external factors in processes of desistance. Prior research has, in general, been undertaken within one nation and neglected the fact that desistance processes are situated within a broad social context which shapes an individual's perceptions and actions. This book begins to fill this gap by exploring how societies and cultures shape desistance processes and experiences. Desistance and Societies in Comparative Perspective offers findings from a cross-national comparative mixed-method study of desistance processes in England and Israel: two countries with different social-political systems and distinct cultural attributes. The study is the first of its kind in criminology, both in terms of its key objectives and the methods utilised. The findings uncover how social structures and cultures shape individual-level experience. In particular, the findings illustrate how external and internal mechanisms in desistance processes were 'oriented' in particular ways, in accordance with contextual factors. The book outlines five contextual factors which were key in shaping the dynamics of desistance across societies and cultures. These are: cultural scripts; social climates; shared values and norms; social interactions and encounters; and distinct cultural characteristics. These five factors provide a contextual framework within which to understand the role of cultures and social structures in shaping agency and experiences in processes of desistance, and with which to account for variances and similarities across societies and cultures. Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to students and scholars in criminology, sociology, cultural studies, social theory and those interested in learning about why and how people desist from crime.

The intercultural contexts and new configurations in Europe offer fertile ground for social conflict, tensions and threat. This book challenges predominant and fear inducing approaches of justice and security as they appear in intercultural contexts, and develops alternative understandings by exploring both theoretically and empirically the potential of dialogic and restorative justice oriented actions in sensitive areas of living together. The book offers unique opportunities for rethinking frames of (in)justice, (in)security, and their intersections, and for reshaping European practices and policies in a more sustainable way. This book is based on an innovative and exploratory action research project in four European countries, which challenges the obsessive focus on security concerns, the merging of the security discourse with intercultural contexts, and the emphasis on technology and surveillance as a way to conceive the doing of security. Both the project and the book offer another vision on what security means and how it can be done, by multiplying participatory encounters between different groups in society, promoting opportunities for deliberations and dialogue about alternative forms of conviviality. The book is one of two volumes resulting from the work by a group of researchers in six European countries having cooperated intensively during four years in ALTERNATIVE, an action research project funded under the EU Seventh Framework Programme.

This book shows how, with the increasing interaction between jurisdictions spearheaded by globalization, it is gradually becoming impossible to confine transactions to a single jurisdiction. Presented in the form of a compendium of essays by eminent academics and practitioners in the field, it provides a detailed overview of private, international law practice in South Asian nations, addressing contemporary discourse within this knowledge domain. Conflict of laws/private international law arises from the universal acknowledgment that it is difficult to govern human transactions solely by the local law. The research presented addresses the three major threads of private international law - jurisdiction, choice of law and enforcement - within each of the South Asian countries in the areas of family law and commercial law. The research in family law domain includes traditional areas such as marriage, divorce and maintenance, as well as some of the contemporary concerns in this region - inter-country child retrieval, surrogacy, and the country statement on accession to the Hague Conventions related to this domain. In commercial law the research explores the concerns raised with regard to choice of law issues in transnational contracts, and also enforcement of foreign judgment/arbitral awards in the nations of this region.

1. This book can be used as engaging supplementary reading for a range of research methods courses in Criminology, and across the Social Sciences. 2. The book does not just describe the method but brings it alive with case studies of empirical research in criminal justice.

1.Whereas many of the competing books focus on prisons, fewer focus on the concept of punishment, and its social and political context. 2. This book has a multi-disciplinary market across criminology, sociology and soco-legal studies. 3. This book is well-suited for upper level courses on punishment and penology, prisons and the criminal justice system.

Expert evidence frequently wins or loses cases. The importance of handling that evidence properly is therefore paramount. Fundamental to this is the application of privilege. Indeed, thorny privilege issues relating to expert documents, drafts, communications, instructions, collateral use, joint statements, statements of replaced experts, amongst other issues, come up time and again in practice. This book approaches 'expert privilege' as a subcategory of privilege of its own. This is not because it is defined by a uniform subset of rules that apply to all situations in which expert material is at issue, but precisely because it is not. Neither can assumptions about privilege in expert evidence be based on other areas of application. Instead, 'expert privilege' is a highly idiosyncratic and problematic area. None of the traditional privilege texts are dedicated to this important subject. A book dealing with 'expert privilege' as a subject area of its own is therefore highly overdue. This is the first such book. This book provides an overview of the issues, cases and rules that feature in this complex area, with the touchstone of practicality kept very much in mind throughout. The order in which issues are discussed follows the process by which expert evidence is prepared, from instruction through to collateral use. The intended readership is solicitors and counsel practicing in England and Wales in all the areas of civil, commercial litigation that use expert evidence. This book will also be of interest to practitioners in other common law countries and academics who are interested in English procedural law.

The contributions in this book cover a wide range of topics within modern disputeresolution, which can be summarised as follows: harmonisation, enforcement andalternative dispute resolution. In particular, it looks into the impact of harmonisedEU law on national rules of civil procedure and addresses the lack of harmonisationin the US regarding the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments. Furthermore,the law on enforcement is examined, not only by focusing on US law, but also onhow to attach assets in order to enforce a judgment. Finally, it addresses certain typesof alternative dispute resolution. In addition, the book looks into the systems andcultures of dispute resolution in several regions of the world, such as the EU, the US andChina, that have a high impact on globalisation. Hence, the book is diverse in the senseof dealing with multiple issues in the field of modern dispute resolution. The book offers explorations of the impact of international rules and EU law on domesticcivil procedure, through case studies from, among others, the US, China, Belgium andthe Netherlands. The relevance of EU law for the national debate and its impact on theregulation of civil procedure is also considered. Furthermore, several contributions discussthe necessity and possibility of harmonisation in the emergency arbitrator mechanisms inthe EU. The harmonisation of private international law rules within the EU, particularlythose of a procedural nature, is juxtaposed to the lack thereof in the US. Also, the bookoffers an overview of the current dispute settlement mechanisms in China. The publication is primarily meant for legal academics in private international law andcivil procedure. It will also prove useful to practitioners regularly engaged in cross-borderdispute resolution and will be of added value to advanced students, as well as to those withan interest in international litigation and more generally in the area of dispute resolution. Vesna Lazic is Senior Researcher at the T.M.C. Asser Institute, Associate Professor ofPrivate Law at Utrecht University and Professor of European Civil Procedure at theUniversity of Rijeka. Steven Stuij is an expert in Private International Law and a PhD Candidate/GuestResearcher at the Erasmus School of Law, Rotterdam. Ton Jongbloed is Guest Editor on this volume.

This edited collection offers multi-disciplinary reflections and analysis on a variety of themes centred on nineteenth century executions in the UK, many specifically related to the fundamental change in capital punishment culture as the execution moved from the public arena to behind the prison wall. By examining a period of dramatic change in punishment practice, this collection of essays provides a fresh historical perspective on nineteenth century execution culture, with a focus on Scotland, Wales and the regions of England. From Public Spectacle to Hidden Ritual has two parts. Part 1 addresses the criminal body and the witnessing of executions in the nineteenth century, including studies of the execution crowd and executioners' memoirs, as well as reflections on the experience of narratives around capital punishment in museums in the present day. Part 2 explores the treatment of the execution experience in the print media, from the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. The collection draws together contributions from the fields of Heritage and Museum Studies, History, Law, Legal History and Literary Studies, to shed new light on execution culture in nineteenth century Britain. This volume will be of interest to students and academics in the fields of criminology, heritage and museum studies, history, law, legal history, medical humanities and socio-legal studies.