After more than seventy years of uninterrupted authoritarian government headed by the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), Mexico formally began the transition to democracy in 2000. Unlike most other new democracies in Latin America, no special Constitutional Court was set up, nor was there any designated bench of the Supreme Court for constitutional adjudication. Instead, the judiciary saw its powers expand incrementally. Under this new context inevitable questions emerged: How have the justices interpreted the constitution? What is the relation of the court with the other political institutions? How much autonomy do justices display in their decisions? Has the court considered the necessary adjustments to face the challenges of democracy? It has become essential in studying the new role of the Supreme Court to obtain a more accurate and detailed diagnosis of the performances of its justices in this new political environment. Through critical review of relevant debates and using original data sets to empirically analyze the way justices voted on the three main means of constitutional control from 2000 through 2011, leading legal scholars provide a thoughtful and much needed new interpretation of the role the judiciary plays in a country's transition to democracy This book is designed for graduate courses in law and courts, judicial politics, comparative judicial politics, Latin American institutions, and transitions to democracy. This book will equip scholars and students with the knowledge required to understand the importance of the independence of the judiciary in the transition to democracy.

This collection of essays by leading commentators on civil justice is an attempt to assess the present state of civil procedure in the UK and the possible impact of proposals recently put forward by Lord Woolf. In addition, the essays deal with the fundamental problems that are encountered today in the administration of civil justice everywhere. The contributors are distinguished practitioners and academics who have extensively contributed to the subject in the past. This book is intended for practising lawyers, judges, and academics concerned with civil justice, the legal system, access to justice, and court procedures campaign groups LAG, CPAG etc.

The topic of "too many lawyers" is both timely and timeless. The future make up and performance of the legal profession is in contest, challenged by new entrants, technology and the demand for transparency; at the same time, lawyers long have participated in contests over professional boundaries. In this book, we take up several fundamental questions about the question of whether there are "too many lawyers". What do we mean by "too many"? Is there a surplus of lawyers? What sort of lawyers are and will be needed? How best can we discern this? These questions and more are addressed here in scholarly articles presented at the Onati International Institute for the Sociology of Law (Spain) by some of the best researchers in the field. The collection, witha chapter by Prof. Richard L. Abel, addresses methodological, normative and policy questions regarding the number of lawyers in particular countries and worldwide, while connecting this phenomenon to political, social, economic, historical, cultural and comparative contexts. This book was previously published as a special issue of the International Journal of the Legal Profession.

There is no universally accepted definition of moral damages, but the concept is usually understood in the context of torts that cause psychological harm to a person or a person's rights that are difficult to quantify. Heaven's Chancellery describes the difficulties of obtaining legal compensation for damages by victims of such moral injustice. To convey the legal impossibility of just compensation for intangible, and therefore immeasurable, damage, the author presents a fictional account of Adam, a scientist who believes the earthly judicial system has wronged him. Adam finds true compensation only when he is invited on a journey to seek justice in Heaven's Chancellery. By utilizing a narrative fiction, the author invites a wide audience of readers to examine the complications of compensation for intangible damage. Even if moral damage is deemed impossible to fully compensate through the legal terms that we have been used for centuries, the story of Adam's journey in Heaven's Chancellery upholds a possibility of an alternative avenue for justice previously denied to him by the earthly convent. This book will be of interest to students of law and the general reader alike.

Globalization and international economic governance offer unprecedented opportunities for cultural exchange. Foreign direct investments can promote cultural diversity and provide the funds needed to locate, recover and preserve cultural heritage. Nonetheless, globalization and international economic governance can also jeopardize cultural diversity and determine the erosion of the cultural wealth of nations. Has an international economic culture emerged that emphasizes productivity and economic development at the expense of the common wealth? This book explores the 'clash of cultures' between international law and international cultural law, and asks whether States can promote economic development without infringing their cultural wealth. The book contains original chapters by experts in the field. Key issues include how international courts and tribunals are adjudicating culture-related cases; the interplay between indigenous peoples' rights and economic globalization; and the relationships between culture, human rights, and economic activities. The book will be of great interest and use to researchers and students of international trade law, cultural heritage law, and public international law.

The Optimize series is designed to show you how to apply your knowledge in assessment. These concise revision guides cover the most commonly taught topics, and provide you with the tools to: Understand the law and remember the details using diagrams and tables throughout to demonstrate how the law fits together Contextualise your knowledge identifying and explaining how to apply legal principles for important cases providing cross-references and further reading to help you aim higher in essays and exams Avoid common misunderstandings and errors identifying common pitfalls students encounter in class and in assessment Reflect critically on the law identifying contentious areas that are up for debate and on which you will need to form an opinion Apply what you have learned in assessment presenting learning objectives that reflect typical assessment criteria providing sample essay and exam questions, supported by end-of chapter feedback The series is also supported by comprehensive online resources that allow you to track your progress during the run-up to exams.

This book engages with and advances the current debate on new governance by providing a much-needed analysis of its relationship with the courts. New modes of governance have produced a plethora of instruments and actors at various levels that present a challenge to more traditional forms of command-and-control regulation. In this respect, it is commonly maintained that new governance generally - and political experimentation more broadly - weakens the power of the courts, producing a legitimacy problem for new forms of governance and, perhaps more fundamentally, for law itself. Focusing on the European Union, this book offers a new account of the role of the courts in new governance. Connecting new governance with the conception of deliberative democracy, this book demonstrates how the role of courts has been transformed by the legal and political experimentation currently taking place in the European Union. Drawing on a series of case studies, it is argued that, although deliberations in governance frameworks provide little by way of hard, binding law, these collaborative frameworks nevertheless condition judicial decision making. With far-reaching implications for how we understand the justiciability of 'soft law', participation rights, the legitimacy of governance measures, and the role of courts beyond the nation-state, this book argues that, far from undermining the power of the courts, governance regimes assist their functioning. Its analysis will therefore be of considerable interest for lawyers, political scientists and anyone interested in the transformation of the judiciary in the era of new governance.

Sweeping changes are being introduced into the lower-tier magistrates' courts in England and Wales in efforts to modernise the system and speed up case processing. They concentrate on delivering prompt justice within a modern, efficient and technologically advanced system. But these transformations are fundamentally changing the way justice is delivered. This book analyses criminal court streamlining processes and argues that there are areas where due process protections are being undermined. Transforming Summary Justice reports empirical research carried out with lay magistrates and criminal justice professionals. Views and experiences drawn from magistrates are valuable because of the central role they perform in lower court justice. Further, magistrates provide a wider understanding of the context in which the lower criminal courts operate and enable a critical appraisal of this unique style of 'lay justice'. This book is directed at students of criminology, criminal justice and socio-legal studies, who will find the debates stimulating and useful to engage with in contemporary analyses of criminal court justice. It will also be of interest to justice and legal professionals who are seeing swingeing alterations to the field in which they work. The book will have appeal in other common-law jurisdictions, where similar modifications to lower court justice are occurring, and also across Europe, where lay involvement in legal decision-making is being debated and becoming accepted practice.

Winner of the 2017 British Society of Criminology Book Prize The penal voluntary sector and the relationships between punishment and charity are more topical than ever before. In recent years in England and Wales, the sector has featured significantly in both policy rhetoric and academic commentary. Penal voluntary organisations are increasingly delivering prison and probation services under contract, and this role is set to expand. However, the diverse voluntary organisations which comprise the sector, their varied relationships with statutory agencies and the effects of such work remain very poorly understood. This book provides a wide-ranging and rigorous examination of this policy-relevant but complex and little studied area. It explores what voluntary organisations are doing with prisoners and probationers, how they manage to undertake their work, and the effects of charitable work with prisoners and probationers. The author uses original empirical research and an innovative application of actor-network theory to enable a step change in our understanding of this increasingly significant sector, and develops the policy-centric accounts produced in the last decade to illustrate how voluntary organisations can mediate the experiences of imprisonment and probation at the micro and macro levels. Demonstrating how the legacy of philanthropic work and neoliberal policy reforms over the past thirty years have created a complex three-tier penal voluntary sector of diverse organisations, this cutting-edge interdisciplinary text will be of interest to criminologists, sociologists of work and industry, and those engaged in the voluntary sector.

This collection explores the stakes, risks and opportunities invoked in opening and exploring law's archive and re-examining law's evidence. It draws together work exploring how evidence is used or mis-used during the legal process, and re-used after the law's work has concluded by engaging with ethical, aesthetic or emotional dimensions of using law's evidence. Within socio-legal discourse, the move towards 'open justice' has emerged concurrently with a much broader cultural sensibility, one that has been called the "archival turn" (Ann Laura Stoler), the "archival impulse" (Hal Foster) and "archive fever" (Jacques Derrida). Whilst these terms do not describe exactly the same phenomena, they collectively acknowledge the process by which we create a fetish of the stored document. The archive facilitates our material confrontation with history, historicity, order, linearity, time and bureaucracy. For lawyers, artists, journalists, publishers, curators and scholars, the document in the archive has the attributes of authenticity, contemporaneity, and the unique tangibility of a real moment captured in material form. These attributes form the basis for the strict interpretive limits imposed by the rules of evidence and procedure. These rules do not contain the other attributes of the archival document, those that make it irresistible as the basis for creative work: beauty, violence, surprise, shame, volume, and the promise that it contains a tantalising secret. This book was previously published as a special issue of Australian Feminist Law Journal.

Judicial Education has greatly expanded in common law countries in the past 25 years. More recently it has become a core component in judicial reform programs in developing countries with gender attentiveness as an element required by donor agencies. In civil law jurisdictions judges schools have long played a role in the formation of the career judiciary with a focus on entry to the judicial profession, in some countries judges get an intensive in-service education at judicial academies. Gender questions, however, tend to be neglected in the curricula. These judicial education activities have generated a significant body of material and experience which it is timely to review and disseminate. Questions such as the following require answers. What is the current state of affairs? How is judicial education implemented in developed and developing countries all around the world? Who are the educators? Who is being educated? How is judicial education on gender regarded by judges? How effective are these programs? The chapters in this book deal with these questions. They provide a multiplicity of perspectives. Six countries are represented, of these four are civil law countries (Germany, Argentina, Japan, Bosnia and Herzegovina) and two are common law countries (Canada; Uganda). This book was previously published as a special issue of International Journal of the Legal Profession.

Although international arbitration has emerged as a credible means of resolution of transnational disputes involving parties from diverse cultures, the effects of culture on the accuracy, efficiency, fairness, and legitimacy of international arbitration is a surprisingly neglected topic within the existing literature. The Culture of International Arbitration fills that gap by providing an in-depth study of the role of culture in modern day arbitral proceedings. It contains a detailed analysis of how cultural miscommunication affects the accuracy, efficiency, fairness, and legitimacy in both commercial and investment arbitration when the arbitrators and the parties, their counsel and witnesses come from diverse legal traditions and cultures. The book provides a comprehensive definition of culture, and methodically documents and examines the epistemology of determining facts in various legal traditions and how the mixing of traditions influences the outcome. By so doing, the book demonstrates the acute need for increasing cultural diversity among arbitrators and counsel while securing appropriate levels of cultural competence. To provide an accurate picture, Kidane conducted interviews with leading international jurists from diverse legal traditions with first-hand experience of the complicating effects of culture in legal proceedings. Given the insights and information on the rules and expectations of the various legal traditions and their convergence in modern day international arbitration practice, this book challenges assumptions and can offer a unique and useful perspective to all practitioners, academics, policy makers, students of international arbitration.

First published in 1987, Rape on Trial investigates the impact of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act, 1976 and considers the treatment of rape victims by the courts in United Kingdom. Extracts from trials are used extensively, and the author examines in particular: how the anonymity provisions have worked out in practice; how far the victim's previous sexual history is brought up in court; how far she is held to be responsible for her victimisation; ways in which the validity of her complaint is questioned in court; and defence strategies to present her as a legitimate victim. Also included are a critical discussion of the controversial question of sentencing for rape, and new proposals for legislative and procedural change. Extremely pertinent to current times, this book will be of interest to students of law, criminology, sociology as well as to any concerned citizen.

Introduction to Critical Legal Theory provides an accessible introduction to the study of law and legal theory. It covers all the seminal movements in classical, modern and postmodern legal thought, engaging the reader with the ideas of jurists as diverse as Aristotle, Hobbes and Kant, Marx, Foucault and Dworkin. At the same time, it impresses the interdisciplinary nature of critical legal thought, introducing the reader to the philosophy, the economics and the politics of law. This new edition focuses even more intently upon the narrative aspect of critical legal thinking and the re-emergence of a distinctive legal humanism, as well as the various related challenges posed by our 'new' world order. Introduction to Critical Theory is a comprehensive text for both students and teachers of legal theory, jurisprudence and related subjects.

This book asks how we should make sense of sentencing when, despite huge efforts world-wide to analyse, critique and reform it, it remains an enigma.Sentencing: A Social Process reveals how both research and policy-thinking about sentencing are confined by a paradigm that presumes autonomous individualism, projecting an artificial image of sentencing practices and policy potential. By conceiving of sentencing instead as a social process, the book advances new policy and research agendas. Sentencing: A Social Process proposes innovative solutions to classic conundrums, including: rules versus discretion; aggravating versus mitigating factors; individualisation versus consistency; punishment versus rehabilitation; efficient technologies versus the quality of justice; and ways of reducing imprisonment.

Judicial errors, deliberate or otherwise, often cause damage to litigants. Sometimes the damage suffered by the litigant is irreversible. In England and many other common law countries the injured person will normally have no redress because of the privilege of immunity from suit enjoyed by judges. This result also normally follows when the complaint is against the actions of someone acting in a quasi-judicial capacity. The situation then raises a number of questions, including questions about civil rights, the redress of wrongs, and the whole foundation of judicial independence. As more people resort to the courts and other judicial tribunals for the resolution of their disputes the question of the proper approach to injurious judicial errors becomes more important, especially since every participant in judicial proceedings is a potential victim. This book presents an in-depth study of the substantive, procedural and theoretical issues that arise when a judge is to be sued. The material is drawn mainly from English and American Federal case law. The study however also incorporates some Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand case law.

This book is an unconventional reappraisal of Soviet law: a field that is ripe for re-evaluation, now that it is clear of Cold War cobwebs; and, as this book shows, one that is surprisingly topical and newly compelling. Scott Newton argues here that the Soviet order was a work of law. Drawing on a wide range of sources - including Russian-language Soviet statues and regulations, jurisprudence, legal theory, and English-language 'legal Kremlinology' - this book analyses the central significance of law in the design and operation of Soviet economic, political, and social institutions. In arguing that it was an exemplary, rather than aberrant, case of the uses to which law was put in twentieth-century industrialised societies, Law and the Making of the Soviet World: The Red Demiurge provides an insightful account of both the significance of modern law in the Soviet case and the significance of the Soviet case for modern law.

The US Supreme Court is an institution that operates almost totally behind closed doors. This book opens those doors by providing a comprehensive look at the justices, procedures, cases, and issues over the institution's more than 200-year history. The Court is a legal institution born from a highly politicized process. Modern justices time their departures to coincide with favorable administrations and the confirmation process has become a highly-charged political spectacle played out on television and in the national press. Throughout its history, the Court has been at the center of the most important issues facing the nation: federalism, separation of powers, war, slavery, civil rights, and civil liberties. Through it all, the Court has generally, though not always, reflected the broad views of the American people as the justices decide the most vexing issues of the day. The Historical Dictionary of the U.S. Supreme Court covers its history through a chronology, an introductory essay, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 700 cross-referenced entries on every justice, major case, issue, and process that comprises the Court's work. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Supreme Court.

First published in 1937, Prison from Within is a first-person account of a prisoner sentenced to imprisonment for eighteen months for fraud. It is a linear narrative honestly recording the various facets of prison culture, along with candid character analysis. The book touches upon philosophical notions of sin and remorse; the social groups of prisoners and the camaraderie shared among them; the poor living condition of prisons and the exploitation of prison labour; and the general politics of the time. The book successfully humanizes criminals and is an excellent reminder of the fact that the prison industry has only worsened with time. Prisons were designed for the purpose of 'cleansing' bourgeoise society; therefore, it is important to revisit the institution and question its utility in modern times. This book will be of interest to students and teachers of history, sociology, criminology, criminal justice, literature, and penology.

Civil Procedure provides an indispensable guide both to students of civil procedure at all levels as well as practitioners who regularly have to grapple with the CPR.

Expert evidence presents a number of challenges to the legal system: how can the courts ensure that the scientific evidence they admit is reliable? How should statistical evidence be presented to juries? What aspects of human nature should experts be allowed to testify on? How can the effects that adversarial tactics have on expert witnesses be restrained? This book explores these questions. Drawing on work in psychology, the philosophy and sociology of science, probability theory, forensic science, as well as on a broad spectrum of legal writings, Redmayne suggests how the challenges of expert evidence can be met.

For law students and lawyers to successfully understand and practice law in the U.S., recognition of the wider context and culture which informs the law is essential. Simply learning the legal rules and procedures in isolation is not enough without an appreciation of the culture that produced them. This book provides the reader with an understandable introduction to the ways in which U.S. law reflects its culture and each chapter begins with questions to guide the reader, and concludes with questions for review, challenge and further understanding. Kirk W. Junker explores cultural differences, employing history, social theory, philosophy, and language as "reference frames," which are then applied to the rules and procedures of the U.S. legal system in the book's final chapter. Through these cultural reference frames readers are provided with a set of interpretive tools to inform their understanding of the substance and institutions of the law. With a deeper understanding of this cultural context, international students will be empowered to more quickly adapt to their studies; more comprehensively understand the role of the attorney in the U.S. system; draw comparisons with their own domestic legal systems, and ultimately become more successful in their legal careers both in the U.S. and abroad.

The 20 chapters in Courts, Law, and Justice cover a wide range of sharply contested topics, including drug and gun control laws as well as the ins and outs of the criminal justice system as encountered by arrested suspects, during the trial process, and during the sentencing phase. This volume looks closely at "Miranda" rights and the impact of polygraphs and DNA testing; legal and procedural issues during prosecution, including exclusionary rules and double jeopardy; and sentencing and punishment for crimes, including for offenses such as DUI and sex offenses. The role of the victim during the prosecutorial process is also examined. Addressing such engaging topics as asset forfeiture, DNA evidence, double jeopardy, expert witnesses and hired guns, eyewitness testimony and accuracy, insanity defense, the jury system, mandatory sentencing, plea bargaining, polygraphs, three-strikes laws, and more, the authors of this volume all closely examine the development of the justice system and consider the key opinions supporting or contesting the laws and policies used during investigation, prosecution, and sentencing.

The Series

The five brief, issues-based books in SAGE Reference s "Key Issues in Crime & Punishment Series "offer examinations of controversial programs, practices, problems or issues from varied perspectives. Volumes correspond to the five central subfields in the Criminal Justice curriculum: Crime & Criminal Behavior, Policing, The Courts, Corrections, and Juvenile Justice.

Each volume consists of approximately 20 chapters offering succinct pro/con examinations, and Recommended Readings conclude each chapter, highlighting different approaches to or perspectives on the issue at hand. As a set, these volumes provide perfect reference support for students writing position papers in undergraduate courses spanning the Criminal Justice curriculum. Each title is approximately 350 pages in length."

In England mediation became a key part of the civil justice reform agenda after the Woolf Reforms of 1996, as disputants were deflected from litigation towards settlement outside the court system. The Civil Procedure Rules (CPR) give courts the power to 'encourage' mediation through judicial case management or use stronger measures by using costs to penalise parties who act unreasonably by refusing to use ADR or mediation. One of the effects of this institutionalisation is an emerging case law that defines how mediation is practiced as it is merges with the litigation process. When mediation first began to be used in England the parties either agreed to mediate by a contract before a dispute happened or decided to attempt the process as a way of resolving disagreements. Inevitably, some disputants either refused to abide by their contractual obligations or would not follow through with the settlement agreements reached through the process. This brought the authority of the law into a new area and the juridification process began. This book explores how mediation law shapes the practice of mediation in the English jurisdiction. It provides a comprehensive examination of the legal framework for mediation, and explores the jurisprudence in order to analyse the extent that institutionalisation by the state and courts has led to the monopolisation by lawyers and a further 'juridification' process results. The book includes a comparative legal methodology on the framework underpinning mediation practise in other common law jurisdictions, including the United States, Australia, and Hong Kong, in order to explicate shared or distinctive approaches to mediation. The book will be of great interest to academics and students of legal theory and dispute resolution.

In the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008, Western societies entered a climate of austerity which has limited the penal expansion experienced in the US, UK and elsewhere over recent decades. These altered conditions have led to introspection and new thinking on punishment even among those on the political right who were previously champions of the punitive turn. This volume brings together a group of international leading scholars with a shared interest in using this opportunity to encourage new avenues of reform in the penal sphere. Justice is a famously contested concept and this book takes a deliberately capacious approach to the question of how justice can be mobilised to inform new reform agendas. Some of the contributors revisit an antique question in penal theory and reconsider the question of what fair or just punishment should look like today. Others seek to make gender central to understanding of crime and punishment, or actively reflect on the part that related concepts such as human rights, legitimacy and trust can and should play in thinking about the creation of more just crime control arrangements. Faced with the expansive penal developments of recent decades, much research and commentary about crime control has been gloom-laden and dystopian. By contrast, this volume seeks to contribute to a more constructive sensibility in the social analysis of penality: one that is worldly, hopeful and actively engaged in thinking about how to create more just penal arrangements. Justice and Penal Reform is a key resource for academics and as a supplementary text for students undertaking courses on punishment, penology, prisons, criminal justice and public policy. This book approaches penal reform from an international perspective and offers a fresh and diverse approach within an established field.