A fascinating exploration of the first two Supreme Courts and how they laid the groundwork for the modern-day Court. When the Supreme Court was established in 1789, no other country had a judicial body quite like it. The early justices struggled to give definition to such concepts as "judicial review" and "separation of powers." The early court approached its role in ways that would be startling today, often using its power to support the new government rather than merely serving as an independent arbiter. The Jay-Ellsworth Courts were the first to take up the role of interpreting the constitution, and their approach influenced constitutional debates for the next two centuries. Clearly, this is a book for any reader who wishes to understand how the court was initially set up and how it functioned in our early judicial history. Biographies of key justices such as Oliver Ellsworth, John Marshall, and John Jay Background reference section containing A-Z entries on the people, such as George Washington and John Adams; laws and constitutional provisions, including the First Judiciary Act and Article III; and concepts, such as "judicial review" and "separation of powers," that are important to an understanding of the Jay and Ellsworth Courts

Many critics attack federal judges as anti-democratic elitists, activists out of step with the mainstream of American thought. But others argue that judges should stand alone as the ultimate guardians of American values, placing principle before the views of the people. In The Most Democratic Branch, Jeffrey Rosen disagrees with both assertions. Contrary to what interest groups may claim, he contends that, from the days of John Marshall right up to the present, the federal courts by and large have reflected the opinions of the mainstream. More important, he argues that the Supreme Court is most successful when it defers to the constitutional views of the American people, as represented most notably by Congress and the Presidency. And on the rare occasion when they departed from the consensus, the result has often been a disaster. To illustrate, Rosen provides a penetrating look at some of the most important Supreme Court cases in American history-cases involving racial equality, affirmative action, abortion, gay rights and gay marriage, the right to die, electoral disputes, and civil liberties in wartime. Rosen shows that the most notorious constitutional decisions in American history-the ones that have been most strenuously criticized, such as Dred Scott or Roe v. Wade-have gone against mainstream opinion. By contrast, the most successful decisions-from Marbury v. Madison to Brown v. Board of Education-have avoided imposing constitutional principles over the wishes of the people. Rosen concludes that the judiciary works best when it identifies the constitutional principles accepted by a majority of Americans, and enforces them unequivocally as fundamental law. Jeffrey Rosen is one of the most respected legal experts writing today, a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine and the Legal Affairs Editor of The New Republic. The provocative arguments that he puts forth here are bound to fuel heated debate at a time when the federal judiciary is already the focus of fierce criticism.

An important contribution to constitutional literature, this collection of ten unpublished decisions by the Warren Court puts the decision making process of the Supreme Court in a new light. By following the major changes that occur in each case from the circulation of tentative majority opinions to the final issuance of opinion, the book portrays how the justices communicate with each other and how they are influenced by each other's arguments. Interpretations and commentaries by the author illuminate the significance of each case and provide insight into the different judicial philosophies and personal styles of the justices. This book will be of substantial value to law schools, law libraries, bar associations, and lawyers practicing in the field of constitutional law.

In The Judicial Role in a Diverse Federation, Robert Schertzer uses the example of the Supreme Court of Canada to examine how apex courts manage diversity and conflict in federal states. Schertzer argues that in a diverse federation where the nature of the federal system is contested the courts should facilitate negotiation between conflicting parties, rather than impose their own vision of the federal system. Drawing on a comprehensive review of the Supreme Court federalism jurisprudence between 1980 and 2010, he demonstrates that the court has increasingly adopted this approach of facilitating negotiation by acknowledging the legitimacy of different understandings of the Canadian federation. This book will be required reading both for those interested in Canada's Supreme Court and for those engaged in broader debates about the use of federalism in multinational states.

In the United States, lawyers are very much accountable for their actions--or nonactions. When they represent a client, they have a legal obligation to act professionally, responsibly, and ethically. Unfortunately, all too many lawyers do not live up to these established standards. If you have been victimized by your attorney, legal recourse is available. "How & When to Sue Your Lawyer was designed to help you protect yourself from the effects of legal malpractice. Written in plain English, "How & When to Sue Your Lawyer spells out what you need to know to take appropriate legal action against your attorney. The first part of the book begins by explaining the American Bar Association's categories of malpractice--substantive, administrative, client relations, and intentional wrongs. It next details the "model rules" of professional responsibilities established by both national and state bars. Finally, it discusses the all-important differences between guidelines and actual laws set by legal precedent. The second part of the book explains the steps you must take to establish a solid case against your attorney. From developing the facts to gathering the hard evidence to proving the allegation, it's all here. If you feel that you have lost a case because of your counsel's mismanagement or incompetence, or if you have been taken advantage of financially or sexually by your attorney, "How & When to Sue Your Lawyer will help you gain satisfaction, compensation, and justice.

Prillaman argues that a sound judiciary is critical for building popular support for democracy and laying the foundations for sustainable economic development, but that most Latin American governments have made virtually no progress toward building a more effective judiciary. He shows that the traditional approach to judicial reform is flawed on several levels. Reformers are wrong to focus on a single aspect of the judiciary on the assumption that one reform naturally leads to another. In fact, all aspects of the courts are so closely related that failure to reform one aspect creates a "negative synergy" that ultimately undermines the reformed areas. Instead, a successful reform strategy must simultaneously tackle independence, accountability, access, and efficiency; otherwise, it is virtually assured of failure. As Prillaman points out, judicial reform is not merely a technical process that can be isolated from broader economic and political forces. Rather, it is an inherently political process that will be opposed by forces ranging from politicians accustomed to stocking the courts to judges and court personnel reluctant to accept greater oversight and professional norms. Based on four case studies, Prillaman concludes that failed judicial reforms have led to growing support for mob lynching and vigilante justice that promises to fill the void created by ineffectual courts--ultimately challenging the quality and sustainability of democracy. An invaluable survey for political scientists, students, and researchers involved with democratic consolidation, institution building, and comparative judicial politics in Latin America specifically and the developing world in general.

Is there something distinctive about penology in Europe? Do Europeans think about punishment and penal policy in a different way to people in other parts of the globe? If so, why is this the case and how does it work in practice? This book addresses some major and pressing issues that have been emerging in recent years in the interdisciplinary field of 'European penology', that is, a space where legal scholarship, criminology, sociology and political science meet - or should meet - in order to make sense of punishment in Europe. The chapters in European Penology? have been written by leading scholars in the field and focus in particular on the interaction of European academic penology and national practice with European policies as developed by the Council of Europe and, increasingly, by the European Union.

This volume analyses the legal grounds, premises and extent of pecuniary compensation for violations of human rights in national legal systems. The scope of comparison includes liability regimes in general and in detail, the correlation between pecuniary remedies available under international law and under domestic law, and special (alternative) compensation systems. All sources of human rights violations are embraced, including historical injustices and systematical and gross violations. The book is a collection of nineteen contributions written by public international law, international human rights and private law experts, covering fifteen European jurisdictions (including Central and Eastern Europe), the United States, Israel and EU law. The contributions, initially prepared for the 19th International Congress of Comparative law in Vienna (2014), present the latest developments in legislation, scholarship and case-law concerning domestic causes of action in cases of human rights abuses. The book concludes with a comparative report which assesses the developments in tort law and public liability law, the role of the constitutionalisation of the right to damages as well as the court practice related to the process of enforcement of human rights through monetary remedies. This country-by-country comparison allows to consider whether the value of protection of human rights as expressed in international treaties, ius cogens and in national constitutional laws justifies the conclusion that the interests at stake should enjoy protection under the existing civil liability rules, or that a new cause of action, or even a whole new set of rules, should be created in national systems.

"Written for a general audience. . . . Excellent. . . . If enough American judges and law professors read his book, some of the silly rules that he criticizes will be discarded."
"--Judge Richard A. Posner, Times Literary Supplement"

"A beautifully written, finely nuanced work, a marvelous comparative constitutional study of criminal procedure that seeks to understand the larger culture."
"--Lawrence Fleischer, New York Law Journal"

"In a cogent, direct argument, Pizzi inveighs against the triumph of the law of unintended consequences over the law of practicality. . . . An important book."
"--Publishers Weekly"

"Pizzi is certainly convincing in his argument that the American trial system is in dire need of overhaul. "
--"Law Society Journal," July 2002 Rodney King. Reginald Denny. O. J. Simpson. Colin Ferguson. Louise Woodward: all names that have cast a spotlight on the deficiencies of the American system of criminal justice. Yet, in the wake of each trial that exposes shocking behavior by trial participants or results in counterintuitive rulingsaoften with perverse resultsathe American public is reassured by the trial bar that the case is not "typical" and that our trial system remains the best in the world.

William T. Pizzi here argues that what the public perceives is in fact exactly what the United States has: a trial system that places far too much emphasis on winning and not nearly enough on truth, one in which the abilities of a lawyer or the composition of a jury may be far more important to the outcome of a case than any evidence.

How has a system on which Americans have lavished enormous amounts of energy, time, and money been allowed todegenerate into one so profoundly flawed?

Acting as an informal tour guide, and bringing to bear his experiences as both insider and outsider, prosecutor and academic, Pizzi here exposes the structural faultlines of our trial system and its paralyzing obsession with procedure, specifically the ways in which lawyers are permitted to dominate trials, the system's preference for weak judges, and the absurdities of plea bargaining. By comparing and contrasting the U.S. system with that of a host of other countries, Trials Without Truth provides a clear-headed, wide-ranging critique of what ails the criminal justice systemaand a prescription for how it can be fixed.

The essays in this volume reflect the wider concept of legal history - how legal processes fitted into the social and political life of the community, and how courts and other legal processes were used by contemporaries - rather than the more traditional but narrower study of internal procedural development interpretation. In doing so, they both aim to justify the study of legal history in its own right and to show how legal records, including those of a variety of central and local courts can be used to further the understanding of a range of social, commercial, popular and political history.

The development of private law across the common law world is typically portrayed as a series of incremental steps, each one delivered as a result of judges dealing with marginally different factual circumstances presented to them for determination. This is said to be the common law method. According to this process, change might be assumed to be gradual, almost imperceptible. If this were true, however, then even Darwinian-style evolution - which is subject to major change-inducing pressures, such as the death of the dinosaurs - would seem unlikely in the law, and radical and revolutionary paradigms shifts perhaps impossible. And yet the history of the common law is to the contrary. The legal landscape is littered with quite remarkable revolutionary and evolutionary changes in the shape of the common law. The essays in this volume explore some of the highlights in this fascinating revolutionary and evolutionary development of private law. The contributors expose the nature of the changes undergone and their significance for the future direction of travel. They identify the circumstances and the contexts which might have provided an impetus for these significant changes. The essays range across all areas of private law, including contract, tort, unjust enrichment and property. No area has been immune from development. That fact itself is unsurprising, but an extended examination of the particular circumstances and contexts which delivered some of private law's most important developments has its own special significance for what it might indicate about the shape, and the shaping, of private law regimes in the future.

This book investigates the concept of procedural autonomy of Member States in the light of EU law. Does procedural autonomy still adequately describe the powers of national lawmakers and courts to design their civil procedural systems or is it misleading? For the last few decades, Europe has been in a period of increasing Europeanisation of civil procedure. Increased powers of the EU have resulted in hard law, case law and soft law that regulate many types of domestic and cross-border civil cases. These rules have both direct and indirect implications for national procedural law.Gaining insights from selected European jurisdictions (Belgium, England and Wales, Finland, Germany, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden), this book explores the concept of procedural autonomy from different angles: Is procedural autonomy an adequate term? How is procedural autonomy understood nationally, and is there variation among the Member States? Do some types of EU law or specific characteristics of EU civil procedural law restrain procedural autonomy more than other? How can these differences be explained and is it possible to identify the sources causing such discrepancies?Procedural Autonomy across Europe is a stimulating discussion for lawyers with an interest in civil procedure.

The proper protection of minority shareholders is a cornerstone of any well-developed corporate law system. Pivotal to the minority shareholder's armoury is the derivative action. Section 165 of the South African Companies Act 71 of 2008 introduces the new statutory derivative action, and entrusts the court with a key function as the gatekeeper to the derivative action. The courts have an important filtering function and may disallow applications for derivative actions that are frivolous, vexatious or without merit. The vital judicial discretion to grant or refuse leave to an applicant to bring a derivative action is the crux of the new statutory derivative action. The court is required to exercise its discretion with reference to three important but vague guiding criteria for the grant of leave to institute a derivative action. Thus the courts have been entrusted by the legislature to flesh out the details, the contours, and the practical application of these guiding criteria. This crucially endows the courts with a dominant and decisive role in shaping the effectiveness of this much-needed new remedy. The New Derivative Action under the Companies Act is primarily aimed at developing guidelines for the exercise of the judicial discretion in the field of the new statutory derivative action. It takes into account valuable principles gleaned from other comparable jurisdictions such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. The book also discusses the overlap between the derivative action and the oppression remedy.

Mediation in family & divorce disputes is intended as a handbook for mediators and clients who are involved with family and divorce disputes. It distills 20 years’ of priceless experience into a succinct and lucid handbook that will be invaluable to attorneys, mediators, social workers, psychologists and parties to disputes, helping clients to decide whether they would like to try to resolve their dispute through mediation and professionals to reflect on the fundamental principles and practical applications of their work. The goal of mediation is to enable clients to negotiate an effective settlement of their dispute, rather than necessarily reconciling – although occasionally that is a result of mediation. In a real sense mediation coaches clients to negotiate effectively. It is about helping clients to negotiate mutually acceptable, realistic and legal settlements of their disputes. Although the book is written in a South African context, the principles will apply and be of interest beyond South Africa and to all mediators and clients in mediation whether their primary focus is on family disputes or not. For mediators the book sets out to provide practical and theoretical guidelines for their work. The practice tips, further reading suggestions and references serve as an introduction to some of the work of leading mediators in the field for those readers who would like to develop a deeper understanding of the process. The book is also designed to be of use to those who have recently been trained as mediators or will soon be trained, as it complements the material usually presented in such training. For clients it explains what they can expect in the mediation process, tips as to what to look for in a mediator and what they can do to prepare for their mediation in order to get the most out of the process. Each chapter includes tips for mediators and for clients, as well as suggested further reading if you want to follow up in more depth on a topic covered in one of the chapters.

The presumption of innocence is universally recognized as a fundamental human right and a core principle in the administration of criminal justice. Nonetheless, statutes creating criminal offences regularly depart from the presumption of innocence by requiring defendants to prove specific matters in order to avoid conviction. Legislatures and courts seek to justify this departure by asserting that the reversal of the burden of proof is necessary to meet the community interest in prosecuting serious crime and maintaining workable criminal sanctions. This book investigates the supposed justifications for limitation of the presumption of innocence. It does so through a comprehensive analysis of the history, rationale and scope of the presumption of innocence. It is argued that the values underlying the presumption of innocence are of such fundamental importance to individual liberty that they cannot be sacrificed on the altar of community interest. In particular, it is argued that a test of 'proportionality', which seeks to weigh individual rights against the community interest, is inappropriate in the context of the presumption of innocence and that courts ought instead to focus on whether an impugned measure threatens the values which the presumption is designed to protect. The book undertakes a complete and systematic review of the United Kingdom and Strasbourg authority on the presumption of innocence. It also draws upon extensive references to comparative material, both judicial and academic, from the United States, Canada and South Africa.

Constitutional litigation in general attracts two distinct types of conflict: disputes of a highly politicized or culturally controversial nature and requests from citizens claiming a violation of a fundamental constitutional right. The side-by-side comparison between the U.S. Supreme Court and the German Federal Constitutional Court provides a novel socio-legal approach in studying constitutional litigation, focusing on conditions of mobilisation, decision-making and implementation. This updated and revised second edition includes a number of new contributions on the political status of the courts in their democratic political cultures.

Street Level Narcotics Investigations is a manual for the beginning uniform police officer to the experienced Detective. Geared to be a no nonsense how to guide that is an excellent aid to police academy students beginning their career in law enforcement as well as individuals studying in the Criminal Justice field. This book clearly explains how to complete drug investigations from receiving the informant tip to completing the search warrant. This book gives step-by step methods commonly used to investigate drug related crimes, from targeting the dealers on the street corner to 'Trash Rip" operations and much more. In addition, investigative tricks and techniques are explained that can build upon even the most experienced Detectives knowledge and background. Not only does this book tell you how to complete various drug investigations but also gives you the case law and legal reasoning behind it. This is designed so that the officer conducting the investigation has the case law to back up their investigation or actions. Some of the topics covered in this book are: Probable Cause Call Outs, Informant Operations/Handling, Evidence Collection, Surveillance Methods, Asset Forfeiture Methods/Investigation, Police Intelligence/Investigation, Writing Search Warrants, Trash Rip Operations and much more. Real life examples of actual search warrants and forms used in drug investigations are included for your use. This book is an excellent reference manual that can be used throughout an officer's career or college studies.

Many legal scholars believe that judges should not be "activists." But exactly what does it mean for judges to practice "restraint," and how did that set of practices evolve in America? In Judicial Restraint in America: How the Ageless Wisdom of the Federal Courts was Invented, Evan Tsen Lee traces the cultural, social, and intellectual forces that shaped the contours of judicial restraint from the time of John Marshall, through the "vested property rights" courts of the early 20th Century, through the Warren Court, and up to the present. The Supreme Court and the many lower federal courts have long used mystifying technical doctrines known as "standing" and "abstention" out of a professed fidelity to judicial restraint. Yet this book aims to demonstrate that the concept of judicial restraint cannot be meaningfully viewed outside of the varying contexts of American history. The notion of judicial restraint only makes sense in light of the waxing and waning American commitments to property rights and Protestant idealism, to scientific pragmatism, to racial equality, and even to environmental protection and the need to stem climate change. This book focuses on the personalities and lives of powerhouse Supreme Court justices - John Marshall, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, William Brennan, and now Antonin Scalia. Largely written in narrative form, it will appeal to those interested in how politics, society, and the power of ideas have shaped American public law.

The creation of a culture of Judicial Independence is of a central significance both in national domestic legal systems, as well as for the international courts and tribunals. The main aim of this volume is to analyze the development of a culture of Judicial Independence in comparative perspectives, to offer an examination of the conceptual foundations of the principle of judicial independence and to discuss in detail the practical challenges facing judiciaries in different jurisdictions. The proposed volume is based on the papers presented at the five conferences held in the framework of The International Project on Judicial independence. The editors of this volume and the contributors to it are leading scholars and distinguished experts on judicial independence and judiciaries.

Expert testimony relying on scientific and other specialized evidence has come under increased scrutiny by the legal system. A trilogy of recent U.S. Supreme Court cases has assigned judges the task of assessing the relevance and reliability of proposed expert testimony. In conjunction with the Federal judiciary, the American Association for the Advancement of Science has initiated a project to provide judges indicating a need with their own expert. This concern with the proper interpretation of scientific evidence, especially that of a probabilistic nature, has also occurred in England, Australia and in several European countries. Statistical Science in the Courtroom is a collection of articles written by statisticians and legal scholars who have been concerned with problems arising in the use of statistical evidence. A number of articles describe DNA evidence and the difficulties of properly calculating the probability that a random individual's profile would "match" that of the evidence as well as the proper way to intrepret the result. In addition to the technical issues, several authors tell about their experiences in court. A few have become disenchanted with their involvement and describe the events that led them to devote less time to this application. Other articles describe the role of statistical evidence in cases concerning discrimination against minorities, product liability, environmental regulation, the appropriateness and fairness of sentences and how being involved in legal statistics has raised interesting statistical problems requiring further research.

Students learn about the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and discover how just 16 words in the U.S. Constitution inaugurated a debate that continues to this day. The author objectively follows the debate in relation to prayer in public schools, government support for religious schools, the right to speak and raise money for religious causes, when religion conflicts with the law, and where this issue stands today.

There is a growing acknowledgment amongst professionals and academics that we need to develop new responses to crime. This book provides an insight into the first introduction of restorative justice to the criminal justice system in the Republic of Ireland. By analysing six case studies of restorative conferencing events, the authors aim to address the salient question of how restorative conferencing for young offenders can facilitate an exchange process whereby forms of reparation and social regulation may be achieved. The restorative justice process has much to offer, and the authors argue that this concept, particularly as it centres on the greater use of non custodial sentences, will not only bring about changes in the law but also have significant implications for social regulation.