Juries, Lay Judges, and Mixed Courts

Juries, Lay Judges, and Mixed Courts
Author: Sanja Kutnjak Ivković
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2021-07-29
Genre: Law
ISBN: 110892297X

Although most countries around the world use professional judges, they also rely on lay citizens, untrained in the law, to decide criminal cases. The participation of lay citizens helps to incorporate community perspectives into legal outcomes and to provide greater legitimacy for the legal system and its verdicts. This book offers a comprehensive and comparative picture of how nations use lay people in legal decision-making. It provides a much-needed, in-depth analysis of the different approaches to citizen participation and considers why some countries' use of lay participation is long-standing whereas other countries alter or abandon their efforts. This book examines the many ways in which countries around the world embrace, reject, or reform the way in which they use ordinary citizens in legal decision-making.

Laypeople in Law

Laypeople in Law
Author: Andrea Kretschmann
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2024-06-28
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1040041973

This book contributes to a better understanding of the role laypeople hold in the social functioning of law. It adopts the scholarly insight that the law is unthinkable without an everyday legal understanding of the law pursued by laypeople. It engages with the assumption that not only the law’s existence but also its development is shaped by the layperson’s affirmations, oppositions, ignorance, or negations of the law. This volume thus aims to fill a void in socio-legal studies. Whereas many sociolegal theories tend to conceptualize the law through legal experts’ actions, institutions, procedures, and codifications, it argues that such a viewpoint underestimates the role of laypeople in the law’s processing and advocates for a strengthened conceptual place in socio-legal theory. This book will appeal to socio-legal scholars and sociologists (of law), as well as to legal practitioners and laypersons themselves.

The Oxford Handbook of Criminal Process

The Oxford Handbook of Criminal Process
Author: Darryl K. Brown
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 1066
Release: 2019-02-22
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0190659858

The Oxford Handbook of Criminal Process surveys the topics and issues in the field of criminal process, including the laws, institutions, and practices of the criminal justice administration. The process begins with arrests or with crime investigation such as searches for evidence. It continues through trial or some alternative form of adjudication such as plea bargaining that may lead to conviction and punishment, and it includes post-conviction events such as appeals and various procedures for addressing miscarriages of justice. Across more than 40 chapters, this Handbook provides a descriptive overview of the subject sufficient to serve as a durable reference source, and more importantly to offer contemporary critical or analytical perspectives on those subjects by leading scholars in the field. Topics covered include history, procedure, investigation, prosecution, evidence, adjudication, and appeal.

Democracy in the Courts

Democracy in the Courts
Author: Marijke Malsch
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2016-05-13
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1317153073

Democracy in the Courts examines lay participation in the administration of justice and how it reflects certain democratic principles. An international comparative perspective is taken for exploring how lay people are involved in the trial of criminal cases in European countries and how this impacts on their perspectives of the national legal systems. Comparisons between countries are made regarding how and to what extent lay participation takes place and the relation between lay participation and the legal system's legitimacy is analyzed. Presenting the results of interviews with both professional judges and lay participants in a number of European countries regarding their views on the involvement of lay people in the legal system, this book explores the ways in which judges and lay people interact while trying cases, examining the characteristics of both professional and lay judging of cases. Providing an important analysis of practice, this book will be of interest to academics, legal scholars and practitioners alike.

Injustice in Person

Injustice in Person
Author: Rabeea Assy
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2015
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0199687447

The right to litigate in person is fiercely protected in common law jurisdictions, but litigants in person nonetheless pose serious challenges to the administration of justice. By examining the theoretical underpinnings of the right to self-representation, this book provides a new perspective in the debate over access to justice.

Participation in Courts and Tribunals

Participation in Courts and Tribunals
Author: Jacobson, Jessica
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2020-09-30
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1529211298

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence Effective participation in court and tribunal hearings is regarded as essential to justice, yet many barriers limit the capacity of defendants, parties and witnesses to participate. Featuring policy analysis, courtroom observations and practitioners’ voices, this significant study reveals how participation is supported in the courts and tribunals of England and Wales. Including reflections on changes to the justice system as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, it also details the socio-structural, environmental, procedural, cultural and personal factors which constrain participation. This is an invaluable resource that makes a compelling case for a principled, explicit commitment to supporting participation across the justice system of England and Wales and beyond.

You Have the Right to Remain Innocent

You Have the Right to Remain Innocent
Author: James J. Duane
Publisher: Little a
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: POLITICAL SCIENCE
ISBN: 9781503933392

An urgent, compact manifesto that will teach you how to protect your rights, your freedom, and your future when talking to police. Law professor James J. Duane became a viral sensation thanks to a 2008 lecture outlining the reasons why you should never agree to answer questions from the police--especially if you are innocent and wish to stay out of trouble with the law. In this timely, relevant, and pragmatic new book, he expands on that presentation, offering a vigorous defense of every citizen's constitutionally protected right to avoid self-incrimination. Getting a lawyer is not only the best policy, Professor Duane argues, it's also the advice law-enforcement professionals give their own kids. Using actual case histories of innocent men and women exonerated after decades in prison because of information they voluntarily gave to police, Professor Duane demonstrates the critical importance of a constitutional right not well or widely understood by the average American. Reflecting the most recent attitudes of the Supreme Court, Professor Duane argues that it is now even easier for police to use your own words against you. This lively and informative guide explains what everyone needs to know to protect themselves and those they love.

Apex Courts and the Common Law

Apex Courts and the Common Law
Author: Paul Daly
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 423
Release: 2019-04-26
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1487504438

For centuries, courts across the common law world have developed systems of law by building bodies of judicial decisions. In deciding individual cases, common law courts settle litigation and move the law in new directions. By virtue of their place at the top of the judicial hierarchy, courts at the apex of common law systems are unique in that their decisions and, in particular, the language used in those decisions, resonate through the legal system. Although both the common law and apex courts have been studied extensively, scholars have paid less attention to the relationship between the two. By analyzing apex courts and the common law from multiple angles, this book offers an entry point for scholars in disciplines related to law - such as political science, history, and sociology - who are seeking a deeper understanding and new insights as to how the common law applies to and is relevant within their own disciplines.

The Machinery of Criminal Justice

The Machinery of Criminal Justice
Author: Stephanos Bibas
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2012-02-28
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0190236760

Two centuries ago, American criminal justice was run primarily by laymen. Jury trials passed moral judgment on crimes, vindicated victims and innocent defendants, and denounced the guilty. But since then, lawyers have gradually taken over the process, silencing victims and defendants and, in many cases, substituting plea bargaining for the voice of the jury. The public sees little of how this assembly-line justice works, and victims and defendants have largely lost their day in court. As a result, victims rarely hear defendants express remorse and apologize, and defendants rarely receive forgiveness. This lawyerized machinery has purchased efficient, speedy processing of many cases at the price of sacrificing softer values, such as reforming defendants and healing wounded victims and relationships. In other words, the U.S. legal system has bought quantity at the price of quality, without recognizing either the trade-off or the great gulf separating lawyers' and laymen's incentives, values, and powers. In The Machinery of Criminal Justice, author Stephanos Bibas surveys the developments over the last two centuries, considers what we have lost in our quest for efficient punishment, and suggests ways to include victims, defendants, and the public once again. Ideas range from requiring convicts to work or serve in the military, to moving power from prosecutors to restorative sentencing juries. Bibas argues that doing so might cost more, but it would better serve criminal procedure's interests in denouncing crime, vindicating victims, reforming wrongdoers, and healing the relationships torn by crime.