This fresh edition of Satish Sekar's classic work brings events up to date as at 2017 and includes matters that the author was prevented from publishing sooner. Among other things it deals with the collapse of the 2011 trial of police officers and others concerning the original miscarriage of justice in this case and in a new Epilogue calls for a Truth and Justice Commission. The author shows how this extreme miscarriage of justice destroyed families, divided communities and undermined confidence in the criminal justice system. The book takes the reader from the sadistic killing of Lynette White in Cardiff in 1988, via the subsequent investigation and trial to the aftermath of the folding of the 2011 trial over 'lost' documents that later materialised. But above all it deals with the hard scientific facts of the first vindication case of the DNA-age. Based on a 30-year quest for justice. Scrutinises the case from day one. Rejects moves to 'shelve' this troubling chain of events. Calls for a Truth and Justice Commission.

Over the last fifteen years, the analytical field of punishment and society has witnessed an increase of research developing the connection between economic processes and the evolution of penality from different standpoints, focusing particularly on the increase of rates of incarceration in relation to the transformations of neoliberal capitalism. Bringing together leading researchers from diverse geographical contexts, this book reframes the theoretical field of the political economy of punishment, analysing penality within the current economic situation and connecting contemporary penal changes with political and cultural processes. It challenges the traditional and common sense understanding of imprisonment as 'exclusion' and posits a more promising concept of imprisonment as a 'differential' or 'subordinate' form of 'inclusion'. This groundbreaking book will be a key text for scholars who are working in the field of punishment and society as well as reaching a broader audience within law, sociology, economics, criminology and criminal justice studies.

The Royal Financial Administration and the Prosecution of Crime in France, 1670-1789 explores the French monarchy's role in financing criminal prosecutions in the royal courts of the realm-the payment of criminal frais de justice in the vocabulary of the ancien regime-between 1670 and 1789 (that is, from the codification of criminal judicial procedure in the early period of Louis XIV's personal rule to the outbreak of the French Revolution). The subject brings together three areas of scholarly inquiry-criminal justice, royal administration, and the management of the crown's finances. A central goal of the study is to provide factual information and interpretive insights on each of these topics and to explain the relationship of each to the others over a long time period. The book contributes to existing scholarship in four ways. First, although each of the major dimensions of the inquiry-the operation of the criminal justice system, the conduct of the royal administration, and the management of the monarchy's finances-has a large and increasingly sophisticated historical literature, this is the first study to combine them in a systematic way. Second, the long time period covered in the book not only enables the historian to distinguish gradual from rapid change, but it also allows the reader to view how the system functioned in different historical contexts. Third, the study is based on archival sources throughout France. This comprehensive approach permits the identification of elements of a common experience without sacrificing attention to important aspects of regional diversity. Finally, with respect to the sources themselves, the range is broad, encompassing regulatory acts and decisions of the king's councils; administrative correspondence at the central, regional, and in some cases local levels; financial accounts and related papers; and court records from the major appellate courts and from several lower courts as well. An appendix of 33 tables lists figures of annual expenditure and other pertinent financial operations for each of the major financial districts of the kingdom.

When we consider the ideal of the `family' of nations implied by the European Union, it seems unnatural to deal with the question of where Europe's borders lie. Yet the question is urgently raised by grave issues of internal and external security. As the European Union's imminent eastward and southern expansion becomes reality -- side by side with the evolving new emphasis on security spawned by the events of September 11, 2001 -- we must be sure that the Schengen norms remain viable. It is also crucial to take full account of the impact of the enlarged European Union on the non-candidate countries of Eastern Europe. This important book takes the position that trust is the essential ingredient. Fourteen distinguished authors reveal various ways of achieving a level of trust among the members of the enlarged European Union adequate to the need for full freedom, security, and justice. The contexts in which trust must be established include police and judicial cooperation; the fight against terrorism, organized crime, and human trafficking: the latent threats to freedom of movement posed by national responses to increased immigration; and the transparent extension of EU Justice and Home Affairs measures to the candidate countries. The authors include political actors, policymakers, advisers, experts, and researchers from all parts of Europe. Their individual and collective contributions, in each case built solidly on thorough analysis of the relevant issues, bring a wide range of profound and wide-reaching insights to a vital subject. The book is of great significance not only for those charged with law enforcement and security, but also to all academics and policymakers concerned with the future of Europe.

A vexing problem in contract law is modification. Two parties sign a contract but before they fully perform, they modify the contract. Should courts enforce the modified agreement? A private remedy is for the parties to write a contract that is robust to hold-up or that makes the facts relevant to modification verifiable. Provisions accomplishing these ends are renegotiation-design and revelation mechanisms. But implementing them requires commitment power. Conventional contract technologies to ensure commitment - liquidated damages - are disfavored by courts and themselves subject to renegotiation. Smart contracts written on blockchain ledgers offer a solution. We explain the basic economics and legal relevance of these technologies, and we argue that they can implement liquidated damages without courts. We address the hurdles courts may impose to use of smart contracts on blockchain and show that sophisticated parties' ex ante commitment to them may lead courts to allow their use as pre-commitment devices.

Should judges in United States courts be permitted to cite foreign laws in their rulings? In this book Jeremy Waldron explores some ideas in jurisprudence and legal theory that could underlie the Supreme Court's occasional recourse to foreign law, especially in constitutional cases. He argues that every society is governed not only by its own laws but partly also by laws common to all mankind (ius gentium). But he takes the unique step of arguing that this common law is not natural law but a grounded consensus among all nations. The idea of such a consensus will become increasingly important in jurisprudence and public affairs as the world becomes more globalized.

Virtually every constitutional order in the common law world contains a provision for executive clemency or pardon in criminal cases. This facility for legal mercy is not limited to a single place in modern legal systems, but is instead realized through various practices such as a law enforcement officer's decision to arrest, a prosecutor's decision to prosecute, and a judge's decision to convict and sentence. Doubts about legal mercy in any form as unfair, unguided, or arbitrary are as ubiquitous as the exercise of mercy itself. This book presents a comparative analysis of the clemency and pardon power in the common law world. Andrew Novak compares the modern development, organization, and practice of constitutional and statutory schemes of clemency and pardon in the United Kingdom, United States, and Commonwealth jurisdictions. He asks whether the bureaucratization of the clemency power is in line with global trends, and explores how innovations in legislative involvement, judicial review, and executive consultation have made the mercy and pardon procedure more transparent. The book concludes with a discussion on the future of the clemency and pardon power given the decline of the death penalty in the Commonwealth and the rise of the modern institution of parole. As a work concerned with the practice of mercy in the common law world, this book will be of great interest to researchers and students of international and comparative criminal justice and international human rights law.

In the first Supreme Court history told primarily through eyewitness accounts from Court insiders, Clare Cushman provides readers with a behind-the-scenes look at the people, practices, and traditions that have shaped an American institution for more than 200 years. Each chapter covers one general thematic topic and weaves a narrative from memoirs, letters, diaries, and newspaper accounts by the Justices, their spouses and children, court reporters, clerks, oral advocates, court staff, journalists, and other eyewitnesses. These accounts allow readers to feel as if they are squeezed into the packed courtroom in 1844 as silver-tongued orator Daniel Webster addresses the court; eavesdropping on an exasperated Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in 1930 as he snaps at a clerk's critique of his draft opinion; or sharing a taxi with future Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., in 2005 as he rushes home from the airport in anticipation of a phone call from President Bush offering him the nomination to the Supreme Court. This entertaining and enlightening tour of the Supreme Court's colorful personalities and inner workings will be of interest to all readers of American political and legal history.

Environmental mediation continues to develop and evolve in different jurisdictions across the world in order to prevent potential environmental conflicts or to resolve the conflicts while avoiding the inherent drawbacks of an adjudicated solution. This book takes a comparative approach to explore the legal framework of environmental mediation with a focus on the judicial, administrative and private procedures and the criteria for accrediting mediators in a range of jurisdictions across the world. It also examines practical considerations for environmental mediators while analysing the effectiveness of different mediation processes.

Like systems and procedures in most areas of modern society, the functioning of courts throughout the world has been enormously affected by information and communication technologies (ICT). It has become crucial for lawyers to keep pace with technical changes in judicial systems, especially in international cases where an understanding of procedural variations from one system to another could spell the difference between success and failure. This text has been written by experts who have been engaged in the planning and implementation of ICT in the courts of their respective countries. To ensure information that is as homogeneous as possible, and to facilitate cross-border comparisons, the authors have followed a common and detailed "blueprint" which includes a brief description of the judicial system under discussion. Specific areas of court technology covered include case management systems, electronic filing, and electronic data interchange. Although the emphasis is on EU Member States, a general overview of ICT applications in some Latin American judiciaries is also provided.

Accusing someone of committing a crime arrests everyday social relations and unfurls processes that decide on who to admit to criminal justice networks. Accusation demarcates specific subjects as the criminally accused, who then face courtroom trials, and possible punishment. It inaugurates a crime's historical journey into being with sanctioned accusers successfully making criminal allegations against accused persons in the presence of authorized juridical agents. Given this decisive role in the production of criminal identities, it is surprising that criminal accusation has received relatively short shrift in sociological, socio-legal and criminological discourses. In this book, George Pavlich redresses this oversight by framing a socio-legal field directed to political rationales and practices of criminal accusation. The focus of its interrogation is the truth-telling powers of an accusatory lore that creates subjects within the confines of socially authorized spaces. And, in this respect, the book has two overarching aims in mind. First, it names and analyses powers of criminal accusation - its history, rationales, rites and effects - as an enduring gateway to criminal justice. Second, the book evaluates the prospects for limiting and/or changing apparatuses of criminal accusation. By understanding their powers, might it be possible to decrease the number who enter criminal justice's gates? This question opens debate on the subject of the book's final section: the prospects for more inclusive accusative grammars that do not, as a reflex, turn to exclusionary visions of crime and vengeful, segregated, corrective or risk-orientated punishment. Highlighting how expansive criminal justice systems are populated by accusatorial powers, and how it might be possible to recalibrate the lore that feeds them, this ground-breaking analysis will be of considerable interest to scholars working in socio-legal research studies, critical criminology, social theory, postcolonial studies and critical legal theory.

Perry illuminates the Supreme Court's unique advantages in sustaining a noble public image by its stewardship of the revered Constitution, its constant embrace of the rule of law, the justices' life tenure, its symbols of impartiality and integrity, and a resolute determination to keep its distance from the media. She argues that the Court has bolstered these advantages to avoid traps that have marred Congressional and presidential images, and she demonstrates how the Court has escaped the worst of media coverage. In this detailed examination of the Court, its justices, decisions, facilities, and programs as well as its place in modern American culture, Perry illustrates that the Court has consciously endeavored to preserve its exalted standing. The Priestly Tribe provides an original and insightful analysis of this intriguing judicial institution for students and scholars of the Court and the general public.

Commentary on the Italian Code of Civil Procedure is a unique and comprehensive guide to understanding the structure and functioning of the Italian Code of Civil Procedure. The book provides a reliable translation to the provisions for the implementation of the 840 articles of the Italian Code of Civil Procedure. An indispensible resource for practitioners in the field, this book provides a description of civil procedure and the translated text of the Italian Code of Civil Procedure, with an explanation of the legal terms, provisions for the implementation of the Code, and valuable commentary. The commentary and translations included in this book were prepared by Italian attorneys with extensive experience working with the Italian Code of Civil Procedure and American Civil Procedure.

In 2007, the Corston Report recommended a far-reaching, radical, 'women-centred' approach to women's imprisonment in England and Wales. It suggested a 'fundamental re-thinking' about how services to support women in conflict with the law are delivered in custody and in the community, recommending the development and implementation of a decarceration strategy. This argued for appropriate treatment programmes in the community, reserving prison for only those women who commit serious and violent offences. Ten years on, what progress has been made? What is the relationship between Corston's vision and a more radical abolitionist agenda? Drawing on a range of international scholarship, this book contributes to the critical discourse on the penal system, human rights, and social injustice, revealing the consequences of imprisonment on the lives of women and their families. A decade on from Corston's publication, it critically reviews her report, revealing the slow progress in meeting the reforms it proposed. Identifying the significant barriers to change, it questions the failure to reverse the unrelenting growth of the women's prison population or to transform state responses to women's offending. Reflecting the global expansion of women's imprisonment, particularly marked in advanced democratic societies, the chapters include comparative contributions from jurisdictions where Corston's recommendations have relevance. It concludes with a critical appraisal of reformism and the case for penal abolition. Essential for applied and theory courses on prisons, punishment, and penology; social justice and the criminology of human rights; gender and crime; and feminist criminology.

The United Nations system's foundational principle of sovereign equality reflects persistent disagreement within its membership as to what constitutes a legitimate and just internal public order. While the boundaries of the system's pluralism have narrowed progressively in the course of the United Nations era, accommodation of diversity in modes of internal political organization remains a durable theme of the international order. This accommodation of diversity underlies the international system's commitment to preserve states' territorial integrity and political independence, often at the expense of other values. For those who impute to the international legal order an inherent purpose to establish a universal justice that transcends the boundaries of territorial communities, the legal prerogatives associated with state sovereignty appear as impediments to the global advance of legality. That view, however, neglects the danger of allowing powerful states to invoke universal principles to rationalize unilateral (and often self-serving) impositions upon weak states. Though frequently counterintuitive, limitations on cross-border exercises of power are supported by substantial moral and political considerations, and are properly overridden only in a limited range of cases. Sovereign Equality and Moral Disagreement accomplishes two tasks. One is to construct a unifying account of the manifestations of the principle of sovereign equality in international legal norms governing a range of subject areas, from foundational matters such as the recognition of states and governments to controversial questions such as legal authority for extraterritorial criminal prosecution and armed intervention. The other is to defend the principle as a morally sound response to persistent and profound disagreement within the international community as to the requirements of legitimate and just internal public order.

The Injustice of Punishment emphasizes that we can never make sense of moral responsibility while also acknowledging that punishment is sometimes unavoidable. Recognizing both the injustice and the necessity of punishment is painful but also beneficial. It motivates us to find effective means of minimizing both the use and severity of punishment, and encourages deeper inquiry into the causes of destructive behavior and how to change those causes in order to reduce the need for punishment. There is an emerging alternative to the comfortable but destructive system of moral responsibility and just deserts. That alternative is not the creation of philosophers but of sociologists, criminologists, psychologists, and workplace engineers; it was developed, tested, and employed in factories, prisons, hospitals, and other settings; and it is writ large in the practices of cultures that minimize belief in individual moral responsibility. The alternative marks a promising path to less punishment, less coercive control, deeper common commitment, and more genuine freedom.

This book summarizes and synthesizes a vast body of research on the effects of legal punishment and criminal behavior. Covering studies conducted between 1967 and 2015, Punishment and Crime evaluates the assertion that legal punishment reduces crime by investigating the impacts, both positive and negative, of legal punishment on criminal behavior, with emphasis on the effects of punitive crime control policies via the mechanisms of deterrence and incapacitation. Brion Sever and Gary Kleck, author of the renowned Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, present a literature review on legal punishment in the United States that is unparalleled in depth and scope. This text is a must-read for students, researchers, and policymakers concerned with the fields of corrections and crime prevention.

1.Whereas many of the competing books focus on prisons, fewer focus on the concept of punishment, and its social and political context. 2. This book has a multi-disciplinary market across criminology, sociology and soco-legal studies. 3. This book is well-suited for upper level courses on punishment and penology, prisons and the criminal justice system.

What suspects tell the police may become a crucial piece of evidence when the case comes to court. But what happens to 'the suspect's statement' when it is written down by the police? Based on a unique set of data from over fifteen years' worth of research, Martha Komter examines the trajectory of the suspect's statement from the police interrogation through to the trial. She shows how the suspect's statement is elicited and written down in the police report, how this police report both represents and differs from the original talk in the interrogation, and how it is quoted and referred to in court. The analyses cover interactions in multiple settings, with documents that link one interaction to the next, providing insights into the interactional and documentary foundations of the criminal process and, more generally, into the construction, character and uses of documents in institutional settings.

What is the epistemological value of testimony? What role does language, images, and memory play in its construction? What is the relationship between the person who attests and those who listen? Is bearing witness a concept that is exclusively based in interpersonal relations? Or are there other modes of communicating or mediating to constitute a constellation of testimony? Testimony/Bearing Witness establishes a dialogue between the different approaches to testimony in epistemology, historiography, law, art, media studies and psychiatry. With examples including the Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge and the Armenian genocide the volume discusses the chances and limits of communicating epistemological and ethical, philosophical and cultural-historical, past and present perspectives on the phenomenon and concept of bearing witness.

The yearning for historical justice - that is, for the redress of past wrongs - has become one of the defining features of our age. Governments, international bodies and civil society organisations address historical injustices through truth commissions, tribunals, official apologies and other transitional justice measures. Historians produce knowledge of past human rights violations, and museums, memorials and commemorative ceremonies try to keep that knowledge alive and remember the victims of injustices. In this book, researchers with a background in history, archaeology, cultural studies, literary studies and sociology explore the various attempts to recover and remember the past as a means of addressing historic wrongs. Case studies include sites of persecution in Germany, Argentina and Chile, the commemoration of individual victims of Nazi Germany, memories of life under South Africa's apartheid regime, and the politics of memory in Israel and in Northern Ireland. The authors critique memory, highlight silences and absences, explore how to engage with the ghosts of the past, and ask what drives individuals, including professional historians, to strive for historical justice. This book was originally published as a special issue of Rethinking History.

An inside look at the struggles former prisoners face in reentering society Every year, roughly 650,000 people prepare to reenter society after being released from state and federal prisons. In Halfway House, Liam Martin shines a light on their difficult journeys, taking us behind the scenes at Bridge House, a residential reentry program near Boston, Massachusetts. Drawing on three years of research, Martin explores the obstacles these former prisoners face in the real world. From drug addiction to poverty, he captures the ups and downs of life after incarceration in vivid, engaging detail. He shows us what, exactly, it is like to live in a halfway house, giving us a rare, up-close view of its role in a dense and often confusing web of organizations governing prisoner reentry. Martin asks us to rethink the possibilities-and pitfalls-of using halfway houses to manage the worst excesses of mass incarceration. A portrait of life in the long shadow of the carceral state, Halfway House lets us see the struggles of reentry through the eyes of former prisoners.

The law relating to recourse is always changing, but the present period is notable for the number of countries whose law has recently undergone, is now undergoing, or is about to undergo extensive reform. This makes the comparison of differing systems particularly difficult. This book is the second volume in the series "Civil Procedure in Europe." It gives a comparative overview of the systems of recourse against civil judgments actually in operation in 14 countries of the European Union. The reports were written against the background of a document originally circulated in July 1995, but each of them remains the original work of its individual author. The contributions are written by national expects distinguished in the field of civil procedural law. The main reports are written in English, French, German and in one case Spanish, and are followed by summaries in the remaining languages. Extensive bibliographies have been included, to enable the reader to find material for further study. The national reports systematically address the following: a description of the right of appeal in each country; the nature and scope of the appeal against first and second instance judgments; enforceability of Judgment subject to recourse; and default judgments. Recourse against judgments covers the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, England and Wales, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.

This book re-examines fundamental assumptions about the American legal profession and the boundaries between 'professional' lawyers, 'lay' lawyers, and social workers. Putting legal history and women's history in dialogue, it demonstrates that nineteenth-century women's organizations first offered legal aid to the poor and that middle-class women functioning as lay lawyers, provided such assistance. Felice Batlan illustrates that by the early twentieth century, male lawyers founded their own legal aid societies. These new legal aid lawyers created an imagined history of legal aid and a blueprint for its future in which women played no role and their accomplishments were intentionally omitted. In response, women social workers offered harsh criticisms of legal aid leaders and developed a more robust social work model of legal aid. These different models produced conflicting understandings of expertise, professionalism, the rule of law, and ultimately, the meaning of justice for the poor.

First published in 1992, Crime, Criminal Justice and the Probation Service is a thought-provoking analysis of the role of the probation service in developing an integrated system of criminal justice. Robert Harris provides readable information about our knowledge of such areas as criminal statistics, victims, fear of crime and crime prevention. He also explores the treatment of women and ethnic minorities by the criminal justice system, the question of a sentencing council and the future of community corrections. A central theme is that all the professionals involved in the criminal justice system must work more closely together so that the mistakes of the past can be avoided in the future. The book therefore has a wide appeal not only to probation officers and social workers, but also to criminal justice professionals and administrators, including the police and the legal profession.