Could the courts really order the death of your innocent baby? Was there an illegal immigrant who couldn't be deported because he had a pet cat? Are unelected judges truly enemies of the people?

Most of us think the law is only relevant to criminals, if we even think of it at all. But the law touches every area of our lives: from intimate family matters to the biggest issues in our society.

Our unfamiliarity is dangerous because it makes us vulnerable to media spin, political lies and the kind of misinformation that frequently comes from loud-mouthed amateurs and those with vested interests. This 'fake law' allows the powerful and the ignorant to corrupt justice without our knowledge – worse, we risk letting them make us complicit.

Thankfully, the Secret Barrister is back to reveal the stupidity, malice and incompetence behind many of the biggest legal stories of recent years. In Fake Law, the Secret Barrister debunks the lies and builds a defence against the abuse of our law, our rights and our democracy that is as entertaining as it is vital.

From white-collar to environmental crime, and hate crime to sexual violence, the study of victims and of the processes of victimisation is indispensable to understanding the full scale of the effects of crime in society. In this book, Basia Spalek offers a theoretically detailed and empirically rich account of how victimology has developed into a field that transcends academic disciplines and brings together researchers, practitioners, activists and community members. This second edition of Crime Victims continues to be a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the historical, social, political and cultural issues and trends in approaches to victims and victimisation. It introduces victimological theory, explores the impacts of crime on victims, and the challenges involved in developing victim support services. In addition, acknowledging the increasing recognition of trauma as central to understanding victimisation, it includes a therapeutic toolkit for victims, offenders and practitioners working in and with the criminal justice system. With Cutting Edge Research and Case Study sections added at the end of each chapter to highlight victimology as a vibrant and continuously developing field, Crime Victims is an essential resource to a broad audience, ranging from students of victimology, criminology and sociology to practitioners and professionals.

John Rebus stands accused: on trial for a crime that could put him behind bars for the rest of his life. Although it's not the first time the legendary detective has taken the law into his own hands, it might be the last. What drove a good man to cross the line? Or have times changed, and the rules with them? Detective Inspector Siobhan Clarke faces Edinburgh's most explosive case in years, as a corrupt cop goes missing after claiming to harbour secrets that could sink the city's police force. But in this investigation, it seems all roads lead to Rebus - and Clarke's twin loyalties to the public and the police will be tested to their limit. A reckoning is coming - and John Rebus may be hearing the call for last orders...

A[a�?The notion . . . that miscarriages of justice are not simply idiosyncratic instances, but are rather part of the ordinary machinery of law, is a crucial insight, one that deserves this kind of book-length treatment.A[a�?
--James MaMartell, author of "Subverting the Leviathan: Reading Thomas Hobbes as a Radical Democrat"

Since 1989, there have been over 200 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the United States. On the surface, the release of innocent people from prison could be seen as a victory for the criminal justice system: the wrong person went to jail, but the mistake was fixed and the accused set free. A closer look at miscarriages of justice, however, reveals that such errors are not aberrations but deeply revealing, common features of our legal system.

The ten original essays in When Law Fails view wrongful convictions not as random mistakes but as organic outcomes of a misshaped larger system that is rife with faulty eyewitness identifications, false confessions, biased juries, and racial discrimination. Distinguished legal thinkers Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., and Austin Sarat have assembled a stellar group of contributors who try to make sense of justice gone wrong and to answer urgent questions. Are miscarriages of justice systemic or symptomatic, or are they mostly idiosyncratic? What are the broader implications of justice gone awry for the ways we think about law? Are there ways of reconceptualizing legal missteps that are particularly useful or illuminating? These instructive essays both address the questions and point the way toward further discussion.

When Law Fails reveals the dramatic consequences as well as the daily realities of breakdowns in thelawA[a�a[s ability to deliver justice swiftly and fairly, and calls on us to look beyond headline-grabbing exonerations to see how failure is embedded in the legal system itself. Once we are able to recognize miscarriages of justice we will be able to begin to fix our broken legal system.

Contributors: Douglas A. Berman, Markus D. Dubber, Mary L. Dudziak, Patricia Ewick, Daniel Givelber, Linda Ross Meyer, Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., Austin Sarat, Jonathan Simon, and Robert Weisberg.

This book can improve the effectiveness of those working within the legal process and in legal policy. It seeks to clarify how the examination of risk levels, time allocation, and other legal policy situations can lead to optimum choices. The principles discussed are amplified by illustrative examples covering such important subjects as right to counsel, plea bargaining, client selection, pretrial release, jury size, crime prevention, delay reduction, and many other controversial and problematic issues of concern to the practicing attorney, the legal scholar, and the legal policymaker. Nagel offers the reader realistic applications of the theories provided, and is unique in his hands-on direct relation of those theories to the decision-making process.

This book examines the simultaneous protection of fundamental rights by various norms and jurisdictional organs, focussing on the multilevel protection of the principle of legality in Criminal Law.Written by accredited specialists in criminal law, constitutional law, international public law, and the philosophy of law, the majority of them ex-Counsels of the Spanish Constitutional Court, it addresses various manifestations of the principle of legality: the requirement of precision, the judicial subjection to law and the prohibition of bis in idem. It does so not only from a theoretical perspective, but also through a comparative study of the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the Court of Justice of the European Union and state constitutional courts. This practical approach characterizes the book, which culminates in a detailed analysis of the relevant ECtHR Judgement Del Rio Prada v. Spain on the retroactivity of unfavourable jurisprudence."Multilevel protection of the principle of legality in Criminal Law" is a useful instrument of reflection for scholars of both the principle of criminal legality and the problems that arise from the concurrency of protective jurisdictions of human rights.

The recent National Research Council's report on forensic science calls for more fundamental education and training in the science behind the discipline. Nowhere is this need greater than in crime scene investigations. Long seen as merely "bagging and tagging," crime scene investigation and processing is now a complex process, involving numerous sciences and methods. "The Science of Crime Scenes" addresses the science behind the scenes and demonstrates the latest methods and technologies in depth.

The "Science of Crime Scenes" covers the philosophy of crime scenes as historical events, the personnel involved at a scene (including the media), the detection of criminal traces and their reconstruction, and special crime scenes, such as mass disasters and terroristic events. Written by an international trio of authors with decades of crime scene experience, "The Science of Crime Scenes" is the next generation of crime scene textbooks.
* Offers a science-based approach to crime scene investigation
* Includes in-depth coverage of disasters and mass murder, terror crime scenes, and CBRN (chemical, biological, radioactive and nuclear) - not covered in any other text
* Written by an international trio of authors with decades of crime scene experience
* Instructor website with lecture slides, test bank, outlines, definitions, and activities, and a student companion site with an image collection

In this long-awaited book, Antony Duff offers a new perspective on the structures of criminal law and criminal liability. His starting point is a distinction between responsibility (understood as answerability) and liability, and a conception of responsibility as relational and practice-based. This focus on responsibility, as a matter of being answerable to those who have the standing to call one to account, throws new light on a range of questions in criminal law theory: on the question of criminalization, which can now be cast as the question of what we should have to answer for, and to whom, under the threat of criminal conviction and punishment; on questions about the criminal trial, as a process through which defendants are called to answer, and about the conditions (bars to trial) given which a trial would be illegitimate; on questions about the structure of offences, the distinction between offences and defences, and the phenomena of strict liability and strict responsibility; and on questions about the structures of criminal defences. The net result is not a theory of criminal law; but it is an account of the structure of criminal law as an institution through which a liberal polity defines a realm of public wrongdoing, and calls those who perpetrate (or are accused of perpetrating) such wrongs to account.

"This book explores the origins of the so-called "punitive turn" in penal policy across Western nations over the past two decades. It demonstrates how the context of neoliberalism has informed penal policy-making and argues that it is ultimately neoliberalism which has led to the recent intensification of punishment"--

The dramatic uprisings that ousted the long-standing leaders of several countries in the Arab region set in motion an unprecedented period of social, political and legal transformation. The prosecution of political leaders took centre stage in the pursuit of transitional justice following the 'Arab Spring'. Through a comparative case study of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen, this book argues that transitional justice in the Arab region presents the strongest challenge yet to the transitional justice paradigm. This paradigm is built on the underlying assumption that transitions constitute a shift from non-liberal to liberal democratic regimes, where often legal measures are taken to address atrocities committed during the prior regime. The book is guided by two principal questions: first, what trigger and driving factors led to the decision of whether or not to prosecute former political leaders? And second, what shaping factors affected the content and extent of decisions regarding prosecution? In answering these questions, the book enhances our understanding of how transitional justice is pursued by different actors in varied contexts. In doing so, it challenges the predominant understanding that transitional justice uniformly occurs in liberalising contexts and calls for a re-thinking of transitional justice theory and practice. Using original findings generated from almost 50 interviews across 4 countries, this research builds on the growing critical literature that claims that transitional justice is an under-theorised field and needs to be developed to take into account non-liberal and complex transitions. It will be stimulating and thought-provoking reading for all those interested in transitional justice and the 'Arab Spring'.

In this novel approach to understanding consent, Jill D. Weinberg presents two case studies of activities in which participants engage in violent acts: competitive mixed martial arts (MMA) and sexual sadism and masochism (BDSM). Participants in both cases assent to injury and thereby engage in a form of social decriminalization, using the language of consent to render their actions legally and socially tolerable. Yet, these activities are treated differently under criminal battery law: sports, including MMA, are generally absolved from the charge of criminal battery, whereas BDSM often represents a violation of criminal battery law. Using interviews and ethnographic observation, Weinberg argues that where law authorizes a person's consent to an activity, as in MMA, consent is not meaningfully constructed or regulated by the participants themselves. In contrast, where law prohibits a person's consent to an activity, as in BDSM, participants actively construct and regulate consent. A synthesis of criminal law and ethnography, Consensual Violence is a fascinating account of how consent is framed among participants engaged in violent acts and lays the groundwork for a sociological understanding of the process of decriminalization.

This invaluable one-stop reference source supplies students and general readers with historical and current information on the victims' rights revolution in the United States, providing analysis on everything from human rights reports to Supreme Court cases that allows the reader to fully understand these documents. Victims' rights represent the greatest change in the criminal justice system within the last 30 years. Victims' Rights: A Documentary and Reference Guide traces the origins, evolution, and results of the victims' rights movement. It puts victims' rights in a legal, historical, and contemporary context, and comprehensively collects important victims' rights documents in a single volume-perfect for students as well as general readers. Bringing together dozens of varied documents such as presidential task force reports and recommendations, Supreme Court cases, state constitutions, human rights reports, critical articles, and political documents, this book is an indispensable resource for those seeking to understand the origins and modern consequences of American victims' rights policy. The author's accompanying commentary and analysis helps the reader to gain a complete comprehension of the significance of these documents, while numerous bibliographic sources provide additional resources for interested readers. Many primary source documents, such as the President's Task Force on Victims of Crime A focused bibliography follows each chapter An index offers easy access to documents and analysis

This work deals with the temporal effect of judicial decisions and more specifically, with the hardship caused by the retroactive operation of overruling decisions. By means of a jurisprudential and comparative analysis, the book explores several issues created by the overruling of earlier decisions. Overruling of earlier decisions, when it occurs, operates retrospectively with the effect that it infringes the principle of legal certainty through upsetting any previous arrangements made by a party to a case under long standing precedents established previously by the courts. On this account, in the recent past, a number of jurisdictions have had to deal with the prospect of introducing in their own systems the well-established US practice of prospective overruling whereby the court may announce in advance that it will change the relevant rule or interpretation of the rule but only for future cases. However, adopting prospective overruling raises a series of issues mainly related to the constitutional limits of the judicial function coupled by the practical difficulties attendant upon such a practice. This book answers a number of the questions raised by this practice. It makes use of the great reservoir of foreign legal experience that furnishes theoretical and practical ideas from which national judges may draw their knowledge and inspiration in order to be able to advise a rational method of dealing with time when they give their decisions.

Vast amounts of data are nowadays collected, stored and processed, in an effort to assist in making a variety of administrative and governmental decisions. These innovative steps considerably improve the speed, effectiveness and quality of decisions. Analyses are increasingly performed by data mining and profiling technologies that statistically and automatically determine patterns and trends. However, when such practices lead to unwanted or unjustified selections, they may result in unacceptable forms of discrimination. Processing vast amounts of data may lead to situations in which data controllers know many of the characteristics, behaviors and whereabouts of people. In some cases, analysts might know more about individuals than these individuals know about themselves. Judging people by their digital identities sheds a different light on our views of privacy and data protection. This book discusses discrimination and privacy issues related to data mining and profiling practices. It provides technological and regulatory solutions, to problems which arise in these innovative contexts. The book explains that common measures for mitigating privacy and discrimination, such as access controls and anonymity, fail to properly resolve privacy and discrimination concerns. Therefore, new solutions, focusing on technology design, transparency and accountability are called for and set forth.

The Innocent and the Criminal Justice System examines competing perspectives on, and definitions of, miscarriages of justice to tackle these questions and more in this critical sociological examination of innocence and wrongful conviction. This book: - Is the first book of its kind to cover wrong convictions, from definition and causation to the limits of redress - Provides a wealth of case studies and statistics to apply theoretical discussions of the criminal justice system to real-life situations - Discusses ideas and challenges that are highly relevant to current political and social debates Elegantly written by a leading expert in the field, this book is essential reading for students of criminology, criminal justice and law, looking to understand the workings of the criminal justice system and how it can fail the innocent.

Why do killers deserve punishment? How should the law decide?

These are the questions Samuel H. Pillsbury seeks to answer in this important new book on the theory and practice of criminal responsibility. In an argument both traditional and fresh, Pillsbury holds that persons deserve punishment according to the evil they choose to do, regardless of their psychological capacities. Using real case examples, he offers concrete proposals for legal reform, urging that modern preoccupations with subjective aspects of wrongdoing be replaced with rules that focus more on the individual's motives.

As computer and internet technologies continue to advance at a fast pace, the rate of cybercrimes is increasing. Crimes employing mobile devices, data embedding/mining systems, computers, network communications, or any malware impose a huge threat to data security, while cyberbullying, cyberstalking, child pornography, and trafficking crimes are made easier through the anonymity of the internet. New developments in digital forensics tools and an understanding of current criminal activities can greatly assist in minimizing attacks on individuals, organizations, and society as a whole. Digital Forensics and Forensic Investigations: Breakthroughs in Research and Practice addresses current challenges and issues emerging in cyber forensics and new investigative tools and methods that can be adopted and implemented to address these issues and counter security breaches within various organizations. It also examines a variety of topics such as advanced techniques for forensic developments in computer and communication-link environments and legal perspectives including procedures for cyber investigations, standards, and policies. Highlighting a range of topics such as cybercrime, threat detection, and forensic science, this publication is an ideal reference source for security analysts, law enforcement, lawmakers, government officials, IT professionals, researchers, practitioners, academicians, and students currently investigating the up-and-coming aspects surrounding network security, computer science, and security engineering.

This book discusses how to deal ethically with people with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) in the police, courts and correctional services. Ethical and legal issues associated with the deficits of individuals with a brain disorders such as FASD are surfacing more and more frequently in criminal proceedings. People with FASD often have not been diagnosed and rarely exhibit any visible evidence of the disorder. It has been argued that this invisible disability puts them in a disadvantaged position in the justice system, since the awareness of this condition is limited. The need to identify and to address FASD more effectively and the many ethical issues this raises within the context of the law is increasingly acknowledged within judicial and legislative branches, as well as in government departments, agencies and community programs that provide services to those with FASD and their caretakers and families. This is the first book to give to elaborate on ethical and legal issues of FASD.

Thoroughly revised and updated, this edition of the classic casebook on police ethics explores the moral complexities of situations faced by law enforcement officers every day across the United States. This updated edition of Power and Restraint maintains its place as a leading set of standards for evaluating police behavior. It extends our understanding of the basis of police accountability by grounding it in principles of the social contract and constitutional democracy. It applies the standards of fair access, public trust, public safety first, role discipline, and neutral professionalism to a variety of modern policing situations that help identify best practices and increase understanding of the challenges of policing in 21st-century America. Power and Restraint first locates itself in the context of other significant studies by scholars from various disciplines on moral issues in police work. Next, it establishes a foundation for moral evaluation of police work grounded in social contract theory as expressed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Third, the authors generate five standards derived from the social contract for judging the actions of police. In the second half of the book, the reader is asked to apply these standards to a variety of typical but morally ambiguous policing situations. Clarifies the basis for judgments of police behavior Features case studies of actual law enforcement situations with complex ethical considerations Improves police officers' ability to think about their actions by examining the principles of ethical policing and applying those principles to concrete cases Explains both the need for and limitations on police authority, including the use of force

This book analyses the interpretation of environmental offences contained in the waste, contaminated land, and habitats' protection regimes. It concludes that the current purposive approach to interpretation has produced an unacceptable degree of uncertainty. Such uncertainty threatens compliance with rule of law values, inhibits predictability, and therefore produces a scenario which is unacceptable to the wider legal and business community. The author proposes that a primarily linguistic approach to interpretation of the relevant rules should be adopted. In so doing, the book analyses the appropriate judicial role in an area of high levels of scientific and administrative complexity. The book provides a framework for interpretation of these offences. The key elements that ought to be included in this framework-the language of the provision, the harm tackled as drafted, regulatory context, explanatory notes and preamble, and finally, purpose in a broader sense-are considered in this book. Through this framework, a solution to the certainty problem is provided.

The voluntary sector has a long history of involvement in criminal justice by providing a variety of services to offenders and their families, victims and witnesses. This collection brings together leading experts to provide critical reflections and cutting edge research on the contemporary features of voluntary sector work in criminal justice. At a time when the voluntary sector's role is being transformed, this book examines the dynamic nature of the voluntary sector and its responses to current uncertainties, and some of the conflicting positions with regards to its present and future role in criminal justice work. It also examines the potential impact of economic, political and ideological trends on the role and remit of voluntary sector organisations which undertake criminal justice work.

By the time he was 26, Michael Tigar was a legend in legal circles well before he would take on some of the highestprofile cases of his generation. In his first U.S. Supreme Court case - at the age of 28 - Tigar won a unanimous victory that freed thousands of Vietnam War resisters from prison. Tigar also led the legal team that secured a judgment against the Pinochet regime for the 1976 murders of Pinochet opponent Orlando Letelier and his colleague Ronni Moffitt in a Washington, DC car bombing. He then worked with the lawyers who prosecuted Pinochet for torture and genocide. A relentless fighter of injustice - not only as a human rights lawyer, but also as a teacher, scholar, journalist, playwright, and comrade - Tigar has been counsel to Angela Davis, Jamil Abdullah AlAmin (H. Rap Brown), the Chicago Eight, and leaders of the Black Panther Party, to name only a few. It is past time that Michael Tigar wrote his memoir. Sensing Injustice: A Lawyer's Life in the Battle for Change is a vibrant literary and legal feat. In it, Tigar weaves powerful legal analysis and wry observation through the story of his remarkable life. The result is a compelling narrative that blends law, history, and progressive politics. This is essential reading for lawyers, for law students, for anyone who aspires to bend the law toward change.

Hardaway argues the criminalization of victimless crimes violates the Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and creates enormous public policy problems in the society. He contends that the Ninth Amendment adjudication model and the concepts of self-determination and the harm principle are the standards to which privacy issues should be litigated. Hardaway contends that privacy issues should be litigated under the standards of the Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution adjudication model, concepts of self-determination, and the harm principle. The Ninth Amendment follows the true beliefs of the founding fathers and their adherence to Natural Law, autonomy, liberty, and the right to privacy. This model needs to replace the substantive due process analysis in the realm of personal autonomy issues used by the courts. The recognition of self-determination and the harm principle will provide individuals with the constitutional protection of rights the founding fathers thought to be imperative to an ordered liberty. By seeking to explain American policy on victimless crimes of which drug use is one, Hardaway seeks to stir a vigorous constitutional debate. As he shows, prostitution and gambling raise similar issues, and he questions whether criminalization serves the interests of society. In examining drug use, prostitution, and gambling, Hardaway compares the policy rationales for each of these societal problems with a view towards creating a general theory of decriminalization. An important analysis for scholars, students, researchers, and public policy makers involved with constitutional law and contemporary criminal law concerns.