Globalization has increased the number of individuals in criminal proceedings who are unable to understand the language of the courtroom, and as a result the number of court interpreters has also increased. But unsupervised interpreters can severely undermine the fairness of a criminal proceeding. In this innovative and methodological new study, Dingfelder Stone comprehensively examines the multitudes of mistakes made by interpreters, and explores the resultant legal and practical implications. Whilst scholars of interpreting studies have researched the prevalence of interpreter error for decades, the effect of these mistakes on criminal proceedings has largely gone unanalyzed by legal scholars. Drawing upon both interpreting studies research and legal scholarship alike, this engaging and timely study analyzes the impact of court interpreters on the right to a fair trial under international law, which forms the minimum baseline standard for national systems.

The technical, economic, and social development of the last 100 years has created a new type of long-term contract which one may call "Complex International Contract". Typical examples include complex civil engineering and constructions contracts as well as joint venture, shareholders, project finance, franchising, co-operation and management agreements. The dispute resolution mechanism, which normally deals with such contracts, is commercial arbitration, which has been deeply affected in recent decades by attempts to improve its capabilities. Most importantly, there is the trend towards further denationalization of arbitration with respect to the applicable substantive law. In this regard, a new generation of conflict rules no longer imposes on the arbitrators a particular method to be applied for the purpose of determining the applicable rules of law. Moreover, arbitration more frequently took on the task of adapting Complex International Contracts to changed circumstances. Also, special rules have been developed for so-called multi-party arbitration and fast track arbitration facilitating efficient dispute resolution. The author describes these trends both from a practical as well as a theoretical perspective, evaluating not only the advantages, but also the risks involved with the new developments in arbitration. Relevant issues with respect to the drafting and renegotiation of such contracts are also discussed.

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.

Nagel draws on his experience as a practicing attorney and legal scholar to present a clear and concise discussion of the analytical methods in law which deal with causation and prediction. Within the legal arena, causal analysis explains the factors involved that cause legal policies/decisions to be adopted and the impact a legal policy is likely to have, and why. Predictive analysis is an attempt to forecast the outcome of a legal action and is especially useful for those involved in courtroom procedures. Causation, Prediction, and Legal Analysis is the only book available on this broadly focused subject, encompassing a thorough exposition of both the theory and application of causation and prediction.

The International Court of Justice is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, and epitomizes the very notion of international judicial institution. Yet, it decides inter-State disputes only with the parties' consent. This makes it more similar to international arbitral tribunals than other international courts. However, the permanent nature of the Court, the predetermination of procedural rules by the Statute and the Rules of Court, the public character of proceedings, the opportunity for third States to intervene in a case under Articles 62 and 63 of the Statute and the Court's role as the principal judicial organ of the United Nations mark a structural difference between the ICJ and non-institutionalized international arbitral tribunals. This book analyses if and to what extent these features have influenced the approach of the ICJ (and of the PCIJ before it) to its own judicial function and have led it to depart from the principles established in international arbitration.

All litigants before the General Court of the EU (GC), the Court of Justice of the EU (ECJ) or indeed before any EU body or agency will need to have full access to the documents held by the European Union. Though the legislation regulating the field, Regulation 1049/2001, has been in force for some time, it is a complex field for all would-be litigants. In this book the authors, both experienced practitioners in the area, clearly set out the documentation, access requirements and processes. They include a helpful glossary of terms, tables and appendices setting out the relevant legislation. This will be the seminal text for all practitioners who need to access documentation held by the EU.

The development of judicial review has been one of law's great growth industries for more than a quarter of a century. It is the public bodies whose activities are routinely subjected to judicial scrutiny which have felt the effects of judicial review most keenly. There has also been a trend in recent years towards judicial review of private bodies whose activities include a public aspect. This has meant a growing awareness,in industry and commerce, of the potential for review of regulatory decisions. In light of the growing importance of this branch of public law, the LSE and Brick Court Chambers decided jointly to host a series of seminars out of which this book has developed. In this important new book expert academics and practitioners (some of them lawyers working in regulated industries) analyse the origins and modern growth of judicial review in the commercial context and attempt to analyse the way in which the law may develop in the future.

This book presents a creative synthesis of two ostensibly disparate fields of law - arbitration and human rights. More specifically, it focuses on various legislative approaches to excluding the annulment of arbitral awards (setting-aside proceedings) at the seat of arbitration and evaluates the compatibility of such approaches with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), in particular the right to a fair trial under Article 6(1). The book first assesses the applicability and impact of the ECHR, in particular Article 6(1), on international commercial arbitration. It then analyses a number of legislative approaches to excluding setting-aside proceedings, focusing on two synergetic phenomena - exclusion agreements and the total lack of setting-aside proceedings in national arbitration law. Lastly, the book investigates to what extent the lack of setting-aside proceedings in national arbitration law may lead to a violation of arbitrating parties' right to a fair trial under Article 6(1), and puts forward certain de lege ferenda recommendations on how to best approach the regulation of setting-aside proceedings in national arbitration law from the standpoint of compliance with the ECHR.

With court calendars already overcrowded and the number of civil cases steadily mounting, prolonged litigation and successive lawsuits are becoming an increasing burden on plaintiffs, defendants, and the court system alike. The doctrines of res judicata and collateral estoppel, which are well respected by both the bench and the bar, offer the best means for avoiding such situations and for reaching swift and definitive judgement. This volume is the first work to provide clear, fully documented discussion of the subject, even for the nonspecialist attorney or manager. Written by a seasoned legal professional, it incorporates citations and systematic analyses of the most recent applicable case law.

A selection of cases decided by ICC arbitrators during the period 1986-1990. It reproduces case notes including extracts of awards in their original language with a commentary, as well as three indexes - an analytical and chronological one, and a keyword index in English and French - for easy reference. This reference should be of value to all interested in ICC arbitration procedure and ICC awards applying the various laws of a variety of trading nations.

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.

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE, STARRING MICHAEL B. JORDAN, JAMIE FOXX, AND BRIE LARSON.

A NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, BOSTON GLOBE, ESQUIRE, AND TIME BOOK OF THE YEAR.

A #1 New York Times bestseller, this is a powerful, true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix America’s broken justice system, as seen in the HBO documentary True Justice.

The US has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. One in every 15 people born there today is expected to go to prison. For black men this figure rises to one in 3. And Death Row is disproportionately black, too.

Bryan Stevenson grew up poor in the racially segregated South. His innate sense of justice made him a brilliant young lawyer, and one of his first defendants was Walter McMillian, a black man sentenced to die for the murder of a white woman ― a crime he insisted he didn’t commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, startling racial inequality, and legal brinkmanship ― and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever.

At once an unforgettable account of an idealistic lawyer’s coming of age and a moving portrait of the lives of those he has defended, Just Mercy is an inspiring argument for compassion in the pursuit of justice.

With the recent explosion of high-profile court cases and staggering jury awards, America's justice system has moved to the forefront of our nation's consciousness. Yet while the average citizen is bombarded with information about a few sensational cases--such as the multi-million dollar damages awarded a woman who burned herself with McDonald's coffee-- most Americans are unaware of the truly dramatic transformation our courts and judicial system have undergone over the past three decades, and of the need to reform the system to adapt to that transformation.

In Reforming the Civil Justice System, Larry Kramer has compiled a work that charts these revolutionary changes and offers solutions to the problems they present. Organized into three parts, the book investigates such topics as settlement incentives and joint tortfeasors, substance and form in the treatment of scientific evidence after Daubert v. Merrell Dow, and guiding jurors in valuing pain and suffering damages. Reforming the Civil Justice System offers feasible solutions that can realistically be adopted as our civil justice system continues to be refined and improved.

Throughout Europe, judicial systems are under an increasing societal and political strain to increase the speed of proceedings, to improve their organisational functioning, and to pay attention to the media and the public. As a consequence European governments have recognized the necessity to invest in their judicial systems, since they perform a growing role in the democratic life and an essential task in upholding the rule of law This difficult challenge of change can not be left only to the juridical professionals that traditionally have the domain on judicial systems. The contribution of public administration scholars will be important to develop a body of knowledge that can endorse this challenge and combine insights from different perspectives. This collection wants to stimulate further developments of public administration studies in the field of justice. These contributions describe various attempts that have been made in the different countries to cope with the increasing political and societal demands to the justice system. They reveal many existing tensions between traditional legal professional values, in particular judicial independence, and pressures to increase productivity and effectiveness of the work of the courts and public prosecutors' offices. Accountability and legitimacy of the courts are at stake here as well. Attention is also being paid to the consequences of the introduction of Information and Communication Technologies in judicial organisations.

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.

Decision-aiding software, the underpinning of computer-aided judicial analysis, can facilitate the prediction of how cases are likely to be decided, prescribe decisions that should be reached in such cases, and help administrate more efficiently the court process. It can do so, says Nagel, by listing past cases on each row of a spreadsheet matrix, by listing predictive criteria in the columns, and in general by showing for each factual element the estimated probability of winning a case. The software aggregates the information available and deduces likely outcomes. But it can also prescribe judicial decisions by listing alternatives in the rows, the goals to be achieved in the columns, and by showing relations between alternatives in the cells. By similar means decision-aiding software can also help perform administrative tasks, such as rationally assigning judges or other personnel to cases, and by sequencing cases to reduce the time consumed by each case.

In Part I, Nagel provides an overview of computer-aided analysis and the role of decision-aiding software in the legal process. In the second part he deals with judicial prediction from prior cases and from present facts; and in the third part he emphasizes the prescribing role of judges, particularly in deciding the rules that ought to be applied in civil and criminal procedures. Nagel also covers computer-aided mediation and provides a new perspective on judicial decisions. Then, in Part IV, he treats at length the process of judicial administration and how to improve its efficiency. Of particular interest to court personnel will be the benefits to be derived from reducing delays and in the docketing and sequencing of cases.

Today juvenile delinquents are viewed and treated much like adult criminals. The goal of rehabilitating and reforming youthful offenders--once the primary function of juvenile courts--has largely been abandoned in the past decade in favor of a punishment-orientation that includes extended periods of incarceration. This study, written by a distinguished group of criminologists, legal experts, and social scientists, attempts to determine the reasons for the decline in interest in rehabilitation, what can be done to revive it, and whether rehabilitation is ultimately a practical approach to the problem of juvenile crime.

Judicial authority is constituted by everyday practices of individual judicial officers, balancing the obligations of formal law and procedure with the distinctive interactional demands of lower courts. Performing Judicial Authority in the Lower Courts draws on extensive original, independent empirical data to identify different ways judicial officers approach and experience their work. It theorizes the meanings of these variations for the legitimate performance of judicial authority. The central theoretical and empirical finding presented in this book is the incomplete fit between conventional norms of judicial performance, emphasizing detachment and impersonality, and the practical, day-to-day judicial work in high volume, time-pressured lower courts. Understanding the judicial officer as the crucial link between formal abstract law, the legal institution of the court and the practical tasks of the courtroom, generates a more complete theory of judicial legitimacy which includes the manner in which judicial officers present themselves and communicate their decisions in court.

This book analyses the instruments and approaches offered by public international law to resolve cultural heritage related disputes and facilitate the return of illicitly transferred objects to their countries of origin. In addition to assessing the instruments themselves, their origins, and their advantages and disadvantages, it also examines the roles and interests of the actors involved. Lastly, the book explores the interaction between hard and soft law approaches, the reasons for and importance of this interaction, as well as its consequences.