The tradition of the public inquiry has become a pivotal part of public life, and a major instrument of accountability in the United Kingdom. There have been over 30 significant public inquiries in the decade (including the BSE, Shipman, Hutton, Bloody Sunday and Billy Wright Inquiries). This book is written and edited by practitioners who have appeared in a large number of these significant inquiries. This new work is the first of its kind, and will function as a handbook for practitioners. The work examines and explains both statutory (in particular the Inquiries Act 2005 and the Inquiry Rules 2006) and non-statutory inquiries in chapters relating to the need for and purpose of the public inquiry, the mechanisms for establishing a public inquiry, terms of reference, the subject matter of inquiries, the relationship of inquiries to other legal proceedings, the constitution of an inquiry, the administration of an inquiry, evidence and procedure, public access to an inquiry, immunities and defamation, representation and funding, inquiry reports and the duty to be fair, ending the inquiry and challenging an inquiry. This book is fully indexed and cross-referenced, including extensive referencing to the position in other jurisdictions. With a Foreword written by Lord Brown.

In this book, James R. Maxeiner takes on the challenge of demonstrating that historically American law makers did consider a statutory methodology as part of formulating laws. In the nineteenth century, when the people wanted laws they could understand, lawyers inflicted judge-made, statute-destroying, common law on them. Maxeiner offers the cure for common law, in the form of sensible statute law. Building on this historical evidence, Maxeiner shows how rule-making in civil law jurisdictions in other countries makes for a far more equitable legal system. Sensible statute laws fit together: one statute governs, as opposed to several laws that even lawyers have trouble disentangling. In a statute law system, lawmakers make laws for the common good in sensible procedures, and judges apply sensible laws and do not make them. This book shows how such a system works in Germany and how it would be a solution for the American legal system as well.

The culture of defense work has undergone significant change over the course of the last twenty years. These changes may have generated confusion and uncertainty concerning the role of the defense lawyer in the modern era. If the lawyer is confused as to his role, is it possible to zealously advance the best interests of his client? While the role of the defense has been explored through the culture of their law firms, the individualized role of the defense lawyer in the context of criminal procedure and their contribution to adversarial justice is something that has not been exposed to scrutiny. This book explores how lawyers view their own individual role in the context of the changed obligations introduced by the CPIA 1996 and the CrimPR, looking at the defense lawyer as part of a system, rather than as part of a relationship. Through a theoretical lens, Ed Johnston provides a wider perspective on the changing nature of criminal justice and the place of a key actor within it to draw conclusions regarding the role of the defense lawyer in the modern era.

This book examines how alcohol intoxication impacts upon the memory of rape victims and provides recommendations for how best to investigate and prosecute such rape complaints. An estimated 75% of victims are under the influence of alcohol during a sexual assault and yet there is surprisingly little guidance on conducting interviews with complainants who were alcohol-intoxicated during the attack. This book will provide a distinctive, rigorous and important contribution to knowledge by reviewing the evidence base on the effects of alcohol on memory performance. The book brings together a range of academics from various disciplines, including psychology, law and criminology, and it discusses the implications for practice based on consultation with various criminal justice practitioners, including police officers, barristers who defend and prosecute rape cases and policy makers.

This book examines access to justice in summary criminal proceedings by considering the ability of defendants to play an active and effective role in the process. 'Access to justice' refers not just to the availability of legally aided representation, but also to the ability of defendants to understand and effectively participate in summary criminal proceedings more generally. It remains a vital principle of justice that justice should not only be done, but should also be seen to be done by all participants in the process. The book is based on socio-legal research. The study is ethnographic, based on observation conducted in four magistrates' courts in South East England and interviews with both defence lawyers and Crown prosecutors. Setting out an argument that defendants have always been marginalised through particular features of magistrates' court proceedings (such as courtroom layout and patterns of behaviour among the professional workgroups in court), the political climate in relation to defendants and access to justice that has persisted since 2010 has further undermined the ability of defendants to play an active role in the process. Ultimately, this book argues that recent governments have demanded ever more efficiency and cost saving in criminal justice. In that context, principles that contribute to access to justice for defendants have been seriously undermined.

The nomination and confirmation of Supreme Court justices has, in recent years, become a battleground like no other. Bruising Senate confirmation hearings for failed nominee Robert Bork and successful nominee Clarence Thomas left the reputation of all branches of government in disarray and the participants-and the nation-exhausted. The Senate's Constitutional prerogative to provide advice and consent to the President's nominations to the highest court in the land has given rise to political grandstanding and ideological battles. Less well known is how other players-interest groups, the news media, and, through their involvement, the general public-also affect the conduct and outcome of the Supreme Court nomination process. Electing Justice reveals how from the late 1960s on, the role of these other players grew in intensity to the point that the nomination process would be unrecognizable to its original devisers, the Framers of the Constitution. Over the past quarter century, live television coverage of Senate hearings, "murder boards" in preparation for those hearings, a flood of press releases, television and radio advertisements, and public opinion polls all characterize nominations. Unlike earlier, more elite-governed processes, the involvement of outside groups has become highly public and their effect on the outcome of some nominations is now widely accepted. How should we respond to this informal democratization of the selection process? The genie, Davis contends, cannot be put back into the bottle and we cannot return to a non-political, elite-driven ideal. Davis concludes with several controversial recommendations that preserve the public role while avoiding the excesses of past controversial nominations. By embracing the public's new role in the examination of nominees we can ensure a democratic process and secure an independent and accountable judicial branch.

The House of Lords served as the highest court in the UK for over 130 years. In 2009 the new UK Supreme Court took over its judicial functions, closing the doors on one of the most influential legal institutions in the world, and a major chapter in the history of the UK legal system. This volume gathers over 40 leading scholars and practitioners from the UK and beyond to provide a comprehensive history of the House of Lords as a judicial institution, charting its role, working practices, reputation and impact on the law and UK legal system. The book examines the origins of the House's judicial work; the different phases in the court's history; the international reputation and influence of the House in the legal profession; the domestic perception of the House outside the law; and the impact of the House on the UK legal tradition and substantive law. The book offers an invaluable overview of the Judicial House of Lords and a major historical record for the UK legal system now that it has passed into the next chapter in its history.

Billings Learned Hand was one of the most influential judges in America. In Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge, Gerald Gunther provides a complete and intimate account of the professional and personal life of Learned Hand. He conveys the substance and range of Hand's judicial and intellectual contributions with eloquence and grace. This second edition features photos of Learned Hand throughout his life and career, and includes a foreword by Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Gunther, a former law clerk for Hand, reviewed much of Hand's published work, opinions, and correspondence. He meticulously describes Hand's cases, and discusses the judge's professional and personal life as interconnected with the political and social circumstances of the times in which he lived.
Born in 1872, Hand served on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. He clearly crafted and delivered thousands of decisions in a wide range of cases through extensive, conscientious investigation and analysis, while at the same time exercising wisdom and personal detachment. His opinions are still widely quoted today, and will remain as an everlasting tribute to his life and legacy.

This book offers a comprehensive introduction to China's judicial administration system. It presents in-depth analyses of the country's current judicial administration system, as well as a new theory on the system that is based on the realities of today's China, and provides guidance on reform. The book examines the system as a whole, as well as various specific aspects of judicial administration, putting forward bold theoretical proposals for improving China's judicial administration system and judicial system in general.

This book maps the changes in court advocacy in England and Wales over the last three centuries. Advocacy, the means by which a barrister puts their client's case to the court and jury, has grown piecemeal and at an uneven pace; the result of a complex interplay of many influences. Andrew Watson examines the numerous principal factors, from the effect on juniors of successful styles deployed by senior advocates, changes in court procedure, reforms in laws determining who and what may be put before courts, the amount of media reporting of court cases, and public and press opinion about the acceptable limits of advocates' tactics and oratory. This book also explores the extent to which juries are used in trials and the social origins of those serving on them. It goes on to examine the formal teaching of advocacy which was only introduced comparatively recently, arguing that this, and new technology, will likely exert a strong influence on future forensic oratory. Speaking in Court provides a readable history of advocacy and the many factors that have shaped it, and takes a far wider view of the history of advocacy than many titles, analysing the 20th Century developments which are often overlooked. This book will be of interest to general readers, law practitioners interested in how advocacy has developed in courts of yesteryear, teachers of advocacy who want to locate there subject in history and impart this to their students, and to law students curious about the origins of what they are learning.

With a new Foreword by David Ormerod of the Law Commission. Within the criminal justice system of England and Wales, the Crown Court is the arena in which serious criminal offences are prosecuted and sentenced. On the basis of up-to-date ethnographic research, this timely book provides a vivid description of what it is like to attend court as a victim, a witness or a defendant; the interplay between the different players in the courtroom; and the extent to which the court process is viewed as legitimate by those involved in it. This valuable addition to the field brings to life the range of issues involved and is aimed at students and scholars of criminal justice, policy-makers and practitioners, and interested members of the general public.

This book examines the way international court judges are chosen. Focusing principally on the judicial selection procedures of the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court, it provides the first detailed examination of how the selection process works in practice at national and international levels: what factors determine whether a state will nominate a candidate? How is a candidate identified? What factors influence success or failure? What are the respective roles of merit, politics, and other considerations in the nomination and election process?
The research was based on interviews, case studies and survey data in a range of different states. It concludes that although the nature and quality of nomination and election processes vary widely, a common theme indicates the powerful influence of domestic and international political considerations, and the significant role of a small group of diplomats, civil servants, lawyers, and academics, often without transparency or accountability. The processes allow overt political considerations to be introduced throughout the decision-making process in ways that may detract from the selection of the most highly qualified candidates and, ultimately, undermine independence. This is particularly evident in the election campaigning that has become a defining feature of the selection process, accompanied by widespread vote trading and reciprocal agreements between states. The effect of these practices is often to undermine the role of statutory selection criteria and to favour candidates from more politically powerful states. The book reviews new judicial selection models adopted or proposed in other international and regional courts, and considers a number of proposals for change to promote more independent, transparent, and merit-based nomination and election procedures.

This new fourth edition of a well-established book is a timely response to the continuing development of the new rules of civil procedure in force in most of the jurisdictions of the English-speaking Caribbean. The new edition has been substantially revised to cover amendments to, and recent case law interpreting and applying, the Civil Procedure Rules of the various territories. It is essential reading for law students and legal practitioners in the region.

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of the extent, method, purpose and effects of domestic and international courts' judicial dialogue on human rights. The analysis covers national courts' judicial dialogue from different regions of the world, including Eastern Europe, Latin America, Canada, Nigeria and Malaysia. The text is complemented by studies on specific subject matters such as LGTBI people's and asylum seekers' rights that further contribute to a better understanding of factors that stimulate or hold back judicial dialogue, and by first hand insights of domestic and European Court of Human Rights judges into their courts' involvement in judicial dialogue. The book features contributions from leading scholars and judges, whose combined perspectives provide an interesting and timely study.

This volume explores the role that European institutions have come to play in regulating national prisons systems. The authors introduce and contribute to advancing a new research agenda in international penology ('Europe in prisons') which complements the conventional comparative approach ('prisons in Europe'). The chapters examine the impact - if any - that institutions such as the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the European Court of Human Rights have had on prison policy throughout Europe. With contributions from a wide range of countries such as Albania, Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Norway and Spain, this edited collection offers a wide-ranging and authoritative guide to the effects of European institutions on prison policy.

Intersectionality and Women's Access to Justice, edited by J. Jarpa Dawuni, propounds layered intersectionality as a paradigm for examining how gendered factors affect women's access to justice, whether as judges or litigants. Through intersectional and decolonial frameworks, the contributors analyze the lived experiences of women and their access to justice by situating the courtroom as both a spatial and a temporal arena for seeking justice (as litigants) and for seeking access to the bench (as judges). This book examines patterns of mutually reinforcing discriminatory practices that women share based on common gender identities and depending on which identities are at play at a given point in time in both traditional and statutory courts. The book provides recommendations for various justice sector providers.

The number of people incarcerated in the U.S. now exceeds 2.3 million, due in part to the increasing criminalization of drug use: over 25% of people incarcerated in jails and prisons are there for drug offenses. Judging Addicts examines this increased criminalization of drugs and the medicalization of addiction in the U.S. by focusing on drug courts, where defendants are sent to drug treatment instead of prison. Rebecca Tiger explores how advocates of these courts make their case for what they call "enlightened coercion," detailing how they use medical theories of addiction to justify increased criminal justice oversight of defendants who, through this process, are defined as both "sick" and "bad." Tiger shows how these courts fuse punitive and therapeutic approaches to drug use in the name of a "progressive" and "enlightened" approach to addiction. She critiques the medicalization of drug users, showing how the disease designation can complement, rather than contradict, punitive approaches, demonstrating that these courts are neither unprecedented nor unique, and that they contain great potential to expand punitive control over drug users. Tiger argues that the medicalization of addiction has done little to stem the punishment of drug users because of a key conceptual overlap in the medical and punitive approaches--that habitual drug use is a problem that needs to be fixed through sobriety. Judging Addicts presses policymakers to implement humane responses to persistent substance use that remove its control entirely from the criminal justice system and ultimately explores the nature of crime and punishment in the U.S. today.

This book argues that past inattentive treatment by state criminal justice agencies in relation to domestic abuse is now being self-consciously reversed by neoliberal governing agendas intent on denouncing crime and holding offenders to account. Criminal prosecutions are key to the UK government's strategy to end Violence Against Women and Girls. Crown Prosecution Service policy affirms that domestic abuse offences are 'particularly serious' and prosecutors are reminded that it will be rare that the 'public interest' will not require of such offences through the criminal courts. Seeking to unpick some of the discourses and perspectives that may have contributed to the current prosecutorial commitment, the book considers its emergence within the context of the women's movement, feminist scholarship and an era of neoliberalism. Three empirical chapters explore the prosecution commitment on the one hand, and the impact on women's lives on the other. The book's final substantive chapter offers a distinctive normative conceptual framework through which practitioners may think about women who have experienced domestic abuse that will have both intellectual appeal and practical application.

The EU's activity under its intergovernmental pillars - The Common Foreign and Security Policy and Justice and Home Affairs - has traditionally been beyond the scope of judicial control offered by the central EC legal system. The increasing importance of this activity, and its growing intrusion into the lives of individuals, has led to a sense that the level of judicial oversight and protection is insufficient and that the constitutional balance of the Union stands in urgent need of reform. While the need for reform is widely recognised, wholesale constitutional change has been stalled by the failure to ratify the Constitutional Treaty and the delay in ratifying the Treaty of Lisbon. This book charts the attempts to develop more satisfactory judicial control over the intergovernmental pillars in the face of such constitutional inertia. It examines the leading role played by the European Court of Justice in reforming its own jurisdiction, and analyses the ECJ's development as a constitutional court in comparison with more established constitutional adjudicators. Throughout the book the current constitutional position is compared extensively to the reforms introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon, offering a timely snapshot of the EU's federal structure in a state of flux.

Transnational Litigation in Comparative Perspective: Theory and Application is the only casebook that examines the principal issues in transnational litigation from a comparative perspective. Each chapter focuses on a particular core problem that all legal systems must address. The first half of each chapter is devoted to exploring the theoretical context of the issue, thereby enabling students to appreciate the complexity of the problem and to see how achieving a resolution requires balancing competing interests. The second part of each chapter then focuses on how different systems deal with these challenges. Topics covered include protective measures, personal jurisdiction, forum non conveniens, forum selection clauses, state immunity, state doctrine, service of process, gathering evidence abroad, choice of law, and recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments.
Distinctive Features
*Uses a comparative approach that better prepares future lawyers for international litigation that may be initiated in countries other than the U.S.
*Offers a hypothetical at the beginning of each chapter to introduce the fundamental issue; the hypotheticals raise questions that are diagnostic rather than prescriptive, leading to many "right" answers
*Accommodates different types of courses--professors who employ a less theoretical approach can use the hypotheticals to ground class discussions
*Considers issues unique to arbitration as they arise in connection with the various topics studied

The Supreme Court has been the site of some of the great debates of American history, from child labor and prayer in the schools, to busing and abortion. The Oxford Guide to United States Supreme Court Decisions offers lively and insightful accounts of the most important cases ever argued before the Court, from Marbury v. Madison and Scott v. Sandford (the Dred Scott decision) to Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade.
This new edition of the Guide contains more than 450 entries on major Supreme Court cases, including 53 new entries on the latest landmark rulings. Among the new entries are Bush v. Gore, Nixon v. United States, Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights. Four decisions--Hamdi v. Bush, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Rasu v. Bush, and Rumsfeld v. Padilla--are considered in a single essay entitled "Enemy Combatant Cases." Arranged alphabetically and written by eminent legal scholars, each entry provides the United States Reports citation, the date the case was argued and decided, the vote of the Justices, who wrote the opinion for the Court, who concurred, and who dissented. More important, the entries feature an informative account of the particulars of the case, the legal and social background, the reasoning behind the Court's decision, and the case's impact on American society. For this edition, Ely has added an extensive Further Reading section and revised the Case Index and Topical Index. The Guide also features the Constitution of the United States, an appendix on the Justices, and a legal glossary.
For anyone interested in the great controversies of our time, this invaluable book is a mustread--a primer on the epic constitutional battles that have informed American life.

It isn't enough to celebrate the death penalty's demise. We must learn from it. When Henry McCollum was condemned to death in 1984 in rural North Carolina, death sentences were commonplace. In 2014, DNA tests set McCollum free. By then, death sentences were as rare as lethal lightning strikes. To most observers this national trend came as a surprise. What changed? Brandon Garrett hand-collected and analyzed national data, looking for causes and implications of this turnaround. End of Its Rope explains what he found, and why the story of who killed the death penalty, and how, can be the catalyst for criminal justice reform. No single factor put the death penalty on the road to extinction, Garrett concludes. Death row exonerations fostered rising awareness of errors in death penalty cases, at the same time that a decline in murder rates eroded law-and-order arguments. Defense lawyers radically improved how they litigate death cases when given adequate resources. More troubling, many states replaced the death penalty with what amounts to a virtual death sentence-life without possibility of parole. Today, the death penalty hangs on in a few scattered counties where prosecutors cling to entrenched habits and patterns of racial bias. The failed death penalty experiment teaches us how inept lawyering, overzealous prosecution, race discrimination, wrongful convictions, and excessive punishments undermine the pursuit of justice. Garrett makes a strong closing case for what a future criminal justice system might look like if these injustices were remedied.

Criminal Defense in China studies empirically the everyday work and political mobilization of defense lawyers in China. It builds upon 329 interviews across China, and other social science methods, to investigate and analyze the interweaving of politics and practice in five segments of the practicing criminal defense bar in China from 2005 to 2015. This book is the first to examine everyday criminal defense work in China as a political project. The authors engage extensive scholarship on lawyers and political liberalism across the world, from seventeenth-century Europe to late twentieth-century Korea and Taiwan, drawing on theoretical propositions from this body of theory to examine the strategies and constraints of lawyer mobilization in China. The book brings a fresh perspective through its focus on everyday work and ordinary lawyering in an authoritarian context and raises searching questions about law and lawyers, politics and society, in China's uncertain future.