Search

This paper is drawn from an ethnographic dissertation, "Shadows of the State, Subalterns of the State: Alternating Legitimacies and Contested Authorities of the Police in Contemporary India." It considers law enforcement personnel in Uttar Pradesh as shadows cast, i.e., an animate representation of the State that would seem to be thrown off by the light of the Law, and yet in fact reveals the contestable authority of State practitioners, and of the State itself as an idea. Police in India are often spoken of as being "shadows" of the legitimate authority of the government, who at times may "run amok" and self-aggrandizingly feel that they outsize the "real" powers, i.e., elected executive and legislative officials. This evinces a kind of insubstantiality of the police, which, I argue, is different from the "force of law" as residing in the "invisible everywhere" spectrality of police, as argued by Walter Benjamin ("Critique of Violence" 1978[1922]) and Jacques Derrida ("Force of Law," 2002[1991]). The police are not the genuine stuff of the State that "make law" through their practice, but rather a visible automaton presence, the mere appearance, or refraction, of so-called real authority. This thesis will be illustrated, and in keeping with the LSA/CLSA/ACDS theme, "Les Territoires du Droit: Placing Law," through a discussion of what is called "the transfer industry." This is a local category in India that indexes the constant and hyper-politicized—though it is officially justified as "routine bureaucratic procedure"—shuffling of officers and personnel to different posts and locations, rendering these subjects placeless and replaceable. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Co-Presenters: Melanie Randall, Assoc. Prof, Law, UWODr. Lori Haskell, Ed.D., C.Psych.Clinical Psychologist / Assistant Professor, Psychiatry, University of Toronto (Status Appointment)In this presentation we critically assess some of the possibilities for the application of a restorative justice legal approach to crimes of violence against women in intimate relationships. Several decades of research and analysis of traditional criminal justice system approaches to domestic violence and sexual assault suggest that this system has profound deficiencies in providing an adequate legal response or remedy. These deficiencies are even more stark when examined from victims' perspectives. Restorative justice is an approach which potentially offers a more respectful, inclusive and victim centred response to remedying crimes of gendered intimate violence, yet it also carries with it significant challenges and limitations, conceptually and concretely. Part of this presentation will involve critically engaging the major lines of controversy within the field, especially the feminist literature, surrounding restorative justice and crimes of gendered violence.In order to take seriously the concerns, challenges and transformative possibilities of the use of a restorative justice approach to cases involving gendered violence, we need to think about the issue from a more sound theoretical base which builds upon a more clearly articulated definition of what restorative justice actually is, and a recognition that all those programs situating themselves under the restorative justice umbrella may not, in fact, adhere to its defining principles. Part of this presentation will address an academic-community collaborative research project being undertaken in Canada (Nova Scotia) to contribute theoretically and empirically to our knowledge about restorative justice in practice. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is an empirical research about the judicial impunity for torturers in Brazil. It was identified an inefficient criminal procedural system that collaborate to impunity. The main problem was verified in the area of preliminary investigation, where there is a conflicting relationship between public prosecutor's office and the police. Even with evidences, reports of torture and police abuses were rarely successfully investigated. 119 criminal proceeding in the state of Pernambuco related to police abuses and violation of human rights were analyzed. Prosecutors, which were supposed by law to investigate reports of police torture, delegated their task of investigation to police officers. Thus, it allowed police to develop considerable spaces of autonomy on investigating the torture committed by others police officers. In reality, they managed to direct the investigation towards their own interests - not to criminalize police colleagues. In this complex scenario, prosecutor fails to punish police torture. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I examine whether the German model of the prosecutorial function offers a solution to the problems involving prosecutorial misconduct that the U.S. is experiencing today. At first glance the German model would appear to offer important lessons for American policy-makers since German prosecutors have been described as the "most objective civil servants in the world." It is impossible, however, to understand the German prosecution function without understanding how that function fits within Germany's legal culture. In 1975 and 1981 Damaška argued that differences in the Anglo-American and Continental systems of justice could be traced to different visions of the nature of justice, order, and law itself. In this paper, I reexamine Damaška's main contentions. Using interview and observational data, I argue that resource constraints and the rising value placed on efficiency have weakened the German legal system's driving normative aspiration to find the truth. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of mass incarceration universally point to the mid 1970s as a pivotal turning point in penal history marked by a growing consensus that "nothing works" in rehabilitating offenders and a turn towards more punitive policies. But while there has been extensive research on changes in policy-makers' rhetoric, incarceration rates, and sentencing policy, we know very little about the actual practice of punishment and investments in prisoner rehabilitation. This paper uses nationally representative data on inmate program participation and prison staff allocation to examine how rehabilitative services changed between 1974 and 2005 in state correctional facilities. Contrary to the dominant narrative, these data suggest that the percent of staff devoted to inmate services remained fairly constant nationwide from the 1970s through the early 2000s. Inmate participation in educational and vocational programs also remained constant between 1974 and 1991, but declined significantly during the 1990s and early 2000s. However, as vocational and education programs declined, participation in re-entry related services increased. In addition, more correctional facilities and programs became dedicated to special populations, including substance abusers and the mentally ill. These findings support two broad conclusions. First, scholars have largely exaggerated the level of programming in the 1970s and the extent to which the decline in rehabilitative rhetoric matched an immediate decline in inmate services. Second, prison administrators appear to have shifted their emphasis from general rehabilitation programs to more specialized interventions, such as alcohol/drug treatment, reentry planning, and sex offender therapy. Together these findings suggest a need to refine our understanding of "the end of the rehabilitative era" and to reconsider the meaning of prison services today. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Restorative Justice & Responsive Regulation (2002), John Braithwaite argues that in contemporary societies (1) a large and steadily increasing proportion of the injustices individuals experience arise from their interactions with large, bureaucratically-organized governmental agencies and business corporations; (2) in making legal claims against such sophisticated "repeat player" organizations, it is extraordinarily difficult for individuals to prevail. The implication is that the quantum of injustice individuals experience is increasing. Studies by Lauren Edelman and colleagues suggest that the internal dispute-resolution systems established by large organizations are largely symbolic, conflict-dampening systems, unlikely to vindicate individuals' "justice claims." Yet the Wisconsin Civil Litigation Project in the late 1970s indicated that most disputes are resolved at that level, and that a very significant proportion of claimants get some or all of what they had claimed. We need to know more. With the exception of the research by Edelman et al, and some studies of complaint systems in some urban police departments (e.g, by Douglas Perez and by Charles Epp), there has been little systematic study of inter-organizational, inter-issue, or temporal variation in how responsive organizational dispute-resolution systems are to individual claims, or in how well such systems use claims data to reduce the incidence of complaint-stimulating harms or injustices. This paper will outline the issues and argue that students of civil justice ought to intensify their focus on the factors (market pressures, government regulation, class action lawsuits, professional norms) that account for inter-organizational and temporal variability in the responsiveness and "regulatory effectiveness" of intra-organizational claims or dispute-resolution systems. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores restorative justice for Aboriginal offenders in Canada as a contested terrain key to the promise of self-government. There are two key strands in this paper. Firstly, I consider the theoretical double-meaning of "self-government", both as Foucauldian technologies of the self and as an expression fundamental to liberal rights discourses. The second strand of this paper considers restorative justice as a kind of "case study" of self-government's double meaning. Restorative justice is an important site to contemplate self-government for two reasons. On one hand, restorative justice itself has increasingly been critiqued in the scholarly literature as a mode of governmental regulation of a "risky" population, which involves the inculcation of technologies of self. On the other hand, restorative justice is discussed as an expression of "authentic" and "traditional" Aboriginal law. Liberal discourses of self-government name law as a central site of self-determination (e.g., self-legislation). It appears, therefore, that discourses of restorative justice and self-government contain the seeds of both governmentality and liberalism. This discursive matrix is further complicated by the Canadian state's tenacious interest in managing Aboriginal affairs. My "case study" considers how the Canadian state insists that restorative justice measures operate within the Canadian state's justice system, threatening to render restorative justice a mere chimera of autonomous law. Therefore, while governmentality and liberalism tensely co-exist in restorative justice and self-government discourses, the colonial state and the First Nations struggle over the operationalization of these discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Powerful western nations (who constitute the primary markets for trafficked labor) are engaged in pressuring "source" countries to standardize their legal definitions of and responses to the problem of human trafficking. This paper draws upon ethnographic fieldwork in Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) among law enforcement and human rights officials involved in the effort to improve BiH's "rating" in a US State Department evaluation of its anti-trafficking measures. It undertakes what Paul Kahn has referred to as a cultural study of law as it emerges through politically charged interactions in an "emergent democracy. Rather than examining the effectiveness of anti-trafficking legal efforts themselves, the paper seeks to elucidate the mechanisms through which legal change is wrought, and the specific cultural assumptions embedded in both international and local anti-trafficking laws. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the elements of law reform campaign failure? Most of what we know about law reform activism comes from observations of success stories. Because they are not as obvious, failed campaigns are not easy to identify and as a result have been understudied. Yet, the picture of law reform is incomplete without an analysis of failure. In this paper we attempt to fill this gap. We present the results of a case study of Law Enforcement's unsuccessful attempts to reform one of the toughest gun control laws in U.S. history—the 1998 Lautenberg Act. A thematic analysis of reform rhetoric produced a typology of the hallmarks of failure. An overarching theme of "competition" resonates throughout the types of strategies that lead to the campaign's demise. In this paper we discuss the implications this typology has for law reform activists and those who support and oppose them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the mid-1990s, Canada and the United States have seen an expansion of youth risk/need assessment tools in corrections. Young offenders are now classified according to computer-generated statistical profiles that identify the degree of risk, or the probability, that a youth will re-offend. The intent is to make juvenile justice decision making more objective and scientific by relying on statistical information rather than subjective diagnoses of clinicians. The result has been an increasingly technocratic and calculated system of governing. The paper draws on interviews with government researchers, policy developers, probation officers and correction workers in all of Canada's 13 provinces and territories. The paper seeks to i) understand the concepts of 'risk and 'need' as it relates to assessments of youth; ii) provide a theoretical critique of risk/needs assessments, and iii) discusses the legal implications of their use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that South Africa's new Sexual Offences Bill represents an inadequate State response to low reporting & high attrition rates in that country, because it has failed to take account of evidence that points to the rigidity (or lack of 'plasticity') of prevailing norms within the criminal justice system, as evidenced by police, prosecutorial and judicial practice, and to evidence on this point from jurisdictions that have previously implemented similar reforms. As a result it has failed to craft sufficient checks on the exercise of especially police & prosecutorial discretion and adequate guarantees of institutional accountability. This paper will draw on empirical research conducted by the South Africa-based Consortium on Violence Against Women over the past three years into criminal justice responses to domestic violence & sexual offences. It will also attempt to draw lessons for South Africa from a substantial body of empirical research relating to the relative failure of similar reforms in other jurisdictions. Finally, this paper looks at specific possibilities for addressing problems of discretion and accountability in the processing of rape cases, such as changes to accountability structures, legislating positive duties on the police & prosecution and providing legal representation for rape victims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about the Mexican criminal system and how it works in practice. It shows, from a defendant's perspective, how criminal laws are applied, and describes the problems that impede the functioning of the criminal system. The thesis of this paper is that the Mexican criminal system is still, at heart, inquisitorial and the reforms made to modify this system, and move towards an adversarial one, have failed due to social, structural, institutional and political conditions under which the system operates. These conditions are not only apt for the prevalence of an inquisitorial system but are also the ground for the formation and continuance of an inquisitorial culture. This study describes, from a defendant's perspective the functioning of the criminal system. The study compares the results of a survey on prison inmates (CIDE survey) with the law. It presents a general panorama of what the law regarding criminal procedure is and how this law differs from what, according to defendants' perception, is the reality of criminal practice. In addition, it uses the right to an adequate defense as a means to further analyze the enforcement of criminal rights. This study is an effort to understand the gap between written criminal law and practice. The hypothesis is that by understanding the gap between law and practice, and the causes for this gap, the barriers that impede the enforcement of criminal procedure laws will become clearer. The thesis shows how the current social, cultural and institutional conditions under which the criminal system operates account for the failure to enforce criminal procedure rights. These conditions partly reflect the persisting legacy of the inquisitorial tradition but also reflect the neglect of criminal due process law in general. As a result, the practices that subsequent laws have tried to eradicate still remain in the Mexican criminal system. The thesis concludes with the allegation that unless the cultural and social conditions of the Mexican criminal system are addressed, legal reform will continue to fail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the errors behind wrongful capital convictions, seeking both to identify common factors and to evaluate their effect on the overall fairness of capital prosecutions. The research draws a sample from the over 100 cases in which an innocent defendant has been freed from death row and, relying on a variety of qualitative research techniques, seeks to identify the factors that led to wrongful convictions. Comparing these cases to our understanding of how most criminal prosecutions operate, the paper asks whether the errors were isolated but unfortunate or whether in fact they reflect more serious failings in the ability of the criminal justice system to achieve justice. The paper closes with a proposal for routine empirical evaluation to assess the fairness of capital prosecutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When combined with sincere remorse, confession of a crime tends to acquire a "correctional" value for the offender as well as a restorative value for the community. In this paper, confessing to the commission of a crime, and expressing remorse for it, are conceived of as two key moments of the same socio-legal act, that of Truth production. As such, remorse is envisaged as a major site of conflict between the offender, the offended, and the criminal justice officials responsible for "doing" justice, that is for restoring the Truth about the criminal and his crime. This paper reflects on the "necessary" meshing of issues of impenitence and contrition with notions of denial, confession and Truth as a traditional focal point of Criminal law and of its operative apparatus, the Criminal justice system. The paper questions the privileged status traditionally conferred to the confession within the hierarchy of legal proof, and the concomitant constitution of harms to the offender caught up in the dichotomous scheme of remorsefulness versus remorselessness. Here, remorselessness may be said to strike at the foundations of Criminal law, assailing its hard philosophical core and threatening the stability-producing effect of the existing normative expectation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on one of the most powerful forms of civic participationâ??lay juries as decision-makers in criminal trials. My research examines countries that have some form of the jury as a part of their criminal justice system either currently or in the past. My main research questions are what factors account for the success or failure of a jury system in a country and how juries are tied to democracy. This paper explores those issues, especially the ways in which lay participation in criminal trials is seen as a mechanism of protecting citizens from abuses of power by the state or as a mechanism of racism and inequality. I argue that the perception of juries in a society, and thus the success of a jury system, is primarily dependent on past experiences with the jury, the racial make-up of the society, and perceptions of the judiciary. Although there are other factors that affect whether a country utilizes the jury system, such as whether it is a former British colony and whether it is based on the Common Law tradition, these factors are secondary to the bigger societal factors. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper forms part of a comparative project which looks at how lawyers are disciplined in various parts of the world, in an attempt to challenge some of our pre-existing notions of professional discipline and its role in the regulation of lawyers. The project will examine why different procedures and institutions are used for discipline in different countries and the different ways that discipline interacts with other forms of regulation, such as civil and criminal proceedings against lawyers. This particular paper tracks the fortunes of one Australian lawyer through disciplinary proceedings to consider what it was about this particular lawyer that led to discipline and other proceedings. How and why did the lawyer, prosecutor, disciplinary tribunal, legal profession and broader community respond in the ways that they did? In what ways is this lawyer typical of lawyers who face discipline in Australia and what broader insights does this case provide into lawyer discipline generally or the distinctive features of lawyer discipline in Australia in particular? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The understanding of the always potentially politicized nature of criminal law and the fragile premises of criminal procedure and criminal process were among the animating hallmarks of Dianne Martin's work. The cases I have selected for this paper were tried in her home city of Regina when it was still a small dusty territorial capital. While acknowledging that homicide prosecutions form a minute fraction of the criminal cases involving Aboriginal accused persons in the nineteenth-century Canadian Plains, the two case studies in this paper address issues near to her heart: the role of defence counsel, the fragilities and complexities of evidence in criminal trials, the plight of marginalized persons in criminal prosecutions, and the political processes that impact upon those who have been convicted. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The racial bias of the American criminal justice system has been well-documented at virtually every stage of the process from the racial profiling that results in first contact and unfair treatment by police through racially skewed charging and plea bargaining decisions of prosecutors, and discriminatory sentencing practices by judges. There is, however, little documentation about the role that race plays in determining the bond that is set on people who have been charged, but not yet indicted, with a crime. This paper will fill that gap by providing quantitative and qualitative data and analysis of felony bond decisions made by judges in one county in Ohio. It will document the role that judges play in exacerbating the pre-existing inequalities between races when they make decisions regarding the amount and nature of the bond to impose on a defendant. The paper analyzes a wide range of variables including the defendant's race, gender, previous criminal record, crime(s) charged, level of education and occupation to determine whether racial minorities are disproportionately given higher or more restrictive bonds. In addition, the judge's race, gender, political affiliation, and experience on the bench will be analyzed to determine which judicial traits are correlated with various bond outcomes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper evaluates work of the Kazakhstani mixed court system, which was introduced in January 2007. The paper is based on the results of monitoring project conducted by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe on trials with participation of lay assessors in Kazakhstani courts and on interviews with legal professionals participated in trials with participation of lay assessors. The paper also discusses recent proposals for changes in criminal procedure legislation regarding judge/lay assessor ratio and its implication for the decision-making of lay assessors. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The criminal justice system confers jurors with both a significant amount of responsibility and minimal instruction. While judges have years of experience and "going rates" with courthouse workgroups, jurors are often found to rely on extra-legal factors when making their decisions. Because of this, attorneys often spend immeasurable amounts of money on trial or jury consultants in an attempt to select a panel favorable to their client. Supporters of the practice promote high success rates of prediction, but critics continually point to jurors' ability to base their decisions on the facts of any given case, and not their own personal characteristics or biases. Previous research has focused on the effects of a juror's race or ethnicity, gender, political affiliation, and occupation on tendencies toward verdicts and sentences, but other factors, those not often considered and more difficult for a consultant to discern, may play a greater role. This paper presents findings from surveys of mock jurors charged with sentencing an individual convicted of drunken driving. The sample is unique due to the participants' familiarity with administration of justice issues, and their sentences reflect their awareness and understanding of different conceptions of justice, particularly through their preference for restorative justice above other, more traditional bases for sentences including retribution. This paper demonstrates the importance of exercising caution when selecting jurors as not only their physical characteristics, but their knowledge base and other factors not easily seen or measured, can and do play a significant role in their decision making. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "reasonable person" is often invoked in criminal cases, where the law requires an "objective standard." The Supreme Court, for example, held that drugs seized in a search not based on reasonable suspicion may be admitted, nonetheless, if a reasonable person in the position of the defendant would have felt free to walk away. This paper asks whether survey data about relevant community beliefs or values may be admitted to prove what the reasonable person believes. For example, if most people surveyed say they would not feel free to walk away from a police interrogation, does this show that the reasonable person would not feel free to walk away? Or is a big majority required? Does the hypothetical posed to the survey respondents have to exactly fit the facts in the case in which the survey data is offered? The paper includes survey data collected for an actual criminal defense of a client charged with "threatening battery." The issue was whether or not a reasonable person in the position of the victim, on hearing words spoken by the defendant, would have "feared imminent physical harm." ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Courts of the Criminal Justice System (CCJS) are not achieving the goals that they were designed to achieve. This failure of the CCJS is not simply due to lack of rehabilitation and faulty court personnel. This paper identifies the extent to which the actual process of the CCJS keeps itself from equal distribution of the law. A one-year ethnography was performed at a criminal courthouse in a midsized southeastern city. A grounded theory approach soon turned to a modern application of Max Weber's (and progeny's) theories on modernization, attempting to develop how organizations like the CCJS become bureaucracies. The CCJS is discussed in terms of Ritzer's four characteristics of bureaucracy and the method by which an overemphasis on each of these characteristics can lead to a CCJS that promotes inequality. The paper then describes the effects of an overbureaucratized CCJS on the mentality of its officers, how such a syndrome encourages not only inequality but inefficiency, and how this syndrome self-perpetuates. As a result of these findings, criminal courts may wish to reduce the causes of such inequality and address the substance behind all process and whether it is still the most rational way to achieve the desired result. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa's influential Truth and Reconciliation Commission advocated restorative justice as a response to the dilemmas of transitional justice. Critics charge that restorative approaches confuse justice with therapy and observe that transitional justice institutions have not lived up to their claim to aid victims in healing from past abuses. This paper argues that while such concerns are valid, they do not justify abandoning restorative justice as an alternative or complement to legalistic transitional justice strategies. Instead, the paper proposes a conceptual distinction between restorative justice and therapeutic justice. Whereas therapeutic justice has functioned depoliticize responses to atrocity, restorative justice incorporates political judgment and a commitment to address the political legacy of repression and abuse. I develop the argument by examining restorative justice theory and how it has been adapted to address challenges associated with the political and social legacies of political and structural violence, focusing on the role of restorative justice in truth commissions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous federal statutes purport to regulate conduct in foreign countries, but actual prosecutions are rare. Nonetheless, the United States is surprisingly effective at regulating foreign activity. Through a combination of occasional high-profile indictments and more numerous, informal enforcement actions, the U.S. federal government uses laws in areas such as antitrust, securities, and tax to affect primary behavior abroad.However, there is a substantial disconnect between this effective enforcement action and extraterritoriality jurisprudence. Recent U.S. Supreme Court extraterritoriality decisions arise from private civil litigation and turn on doctrines of comity and reasonableness. These conflict-of-laws doctrines require the judiciary to make a discretionary determination as to whether it is appropriate to apply U.S. law to the foreign activity in a particular case. While these doctrines may be appropriate in litigation between private parties, they risk infringing on executive foreign policy authority when applied to public law enforcement actions. Moreover, they appear to be based on notions of exclusive territorial sovereignty inconsistent with the behavior of modern states.This paper seeks to bridge the gap between extraterritoriality theory and actual enforcement practice. As changes in transportation, communications, and surveillance technology make it progressively easier for governments to regulate foreign activity, legal precedents based on a non-representative subset of fact situations are an increasing cause for concern. Accordingly, this paper explores alternative theoretical approaches that might better explain the broader range of extraterritorial enforcement actions that take place outside the courtroom. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Finding the Truth in Police LiesAlthough the Supreme Court has often said that truth seeking is an imperative to justice, it is clear that police officers, the key investigative component in our criminal justice system, sometimes lie. Because our legal system treats the police as if they were impartial fact gatherers, who are trained and motivated to gather facts both for and against guilt, rather than biased advocates attempting to disprove innocence, which is the reality, the system lacks the structure necessary to expose police lies that distort the truth about criminal or unconstitutional conduct and behavior.My paper proposes a comprehensive change in procedure to encourage police to expose the truth about unlawful and unconstitutional behavior. After briefly cataloging the evidence of police lies and their far-reaching impact, the paper considers what the Supreme Court has said, explicitly or implicitly, about police lies, the exclusionary rule, and other procedural practices that determine the value and prevalence of such lies. The paper also identifies and differentiates between truth-exposing police lies and police lies that conceal and distort the truth. While the paper proposes to maintain the status quo for cases involving police lies that expose the truth, it argues for harsher procedural consequences when a judge finds that the balance of evidence suggests that the police have lied to conceal the truth about a defendant's actions, statements, or culpability, or about his or her own conduct. Finally, in cases in which the police "come clean" about lies they tell suspects or unconstitutional conduct they commit to "catch the bad guy," the new structure provides for more judicial and citizen oversight in evaluating whether the ends of justice justify the initial lies or constitutional infraction. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When it comes to studying criminal justice there is much more of an emphasis on learning empirical theories of crime than normative theories analyzing the important underlying values that are integral to justice systems and approaches. This is surprising given that the study of law making, law breaking, and law enforcement is concerned, first and foremost, with the study of moral behavior. This paper makes a case for having students critically examine what is meant by the term "justice." In doing so, it discusses how to organize a course to familiarize graduate students with a wide range of moral theories and frameworks for analyzing justice, and how to help students identify and reflect on the different, and often conflicting, moral principles and concepts on which these rest. The paper will also describe some of the key challenges of teaching a course on justice as well as some suggestions for ways that they might be overcome. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at discussing the heterogeneity of the institutional forms of conflict resolution in administrative justice systems, especially immigration law, and their relations to the rule of law and to the criminal justice system. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted at the Immigration and Refugee Board (the largest administrative tribunal in Canada), my paper focuses in particular on the role of discretionary power and punitive practices in the regulation of immigration. I argue that new forms of conflict resolution (in non-criminal justice systems) do not necessary lead to the implementation of more inclusive models of social control and/or to the adoption of a liberal and republican-oriented agenda in which non-citizens would be included in the already established rule of law (whether it is democratic or not). To the contrary, the available data suggest the configuration of a continuous state of exception within the rule of law in Canada where immigrants are often rather being ruled by law in an exclusive and punitive manner without the protection of the most basic civil rights or procedural guarantees generally available to citizens. The rule of law model offered by Western States to developing countries may not be as universal and democratic as it says it is. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The grand jury played a prominent role in the history of England and the U.S. This paper examines the distinct civil investigatory mission of the grand jury in the U.S. and explores the possibility of establishing the civil watchdog function in the federal grand jury system. The grand jury was first recognized in the Magna Carta in the 11th century England, and the earlier grand jury consisted of twelve men selected from knights or freemen to inquire into alleged crimes that took place in their local communities. Early colonies in America also inherited the English grand jury system and began to use it as a platform from which to assert their independence from the oppression of colonial rules and authority. The grand jury also served as an ombudsperson for colonists to investigate complaints filed by community members against performances and actions of colonial governments and their officials. The civil function of the grand jury thus gave the colonists the legal tools to assess and evaluate the fairness of local government's decisions and their actions. The civil function of the grand jury also effectively promoted people's resistance against colonial rules and authority.Today, the criminal function of the grand jury system was firmly established in the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The federal criminal grand jury determines from submitted evidence whether a person should be tried for a serious federal crime, thereby authorizing the government's prosecution of suspected criminals. On the other hand, the civil function of the grand jury was left out from the federal statues, and today an only handful of states have the system of civil grand jury proceeding to play the function of popular oversight of the local government.This paper first focuses on the historic evolution of the grand jury system in the U.S. Since California effectively indigenized the system of participatory democracy by keeping the civil function of the grand jury system, the second section of the paper analyzes the socio-legal function of the grand jury proceeding and its impact in California's local communities. Third, the paper also looks at Japan's civil grand jury function of the prosecutorial review commissions (PRC) and their government oversight function. Finally the paper proposes a set of recommendations to help promote the possible establishment of the federal civil grand jury system in America. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, scholars have spent much attention analyzing the impact of the expert on the trial process, concentrating on the ability of the expert to provide ready-made inferences on disputed factual questions and the ability of the expert to provide social context information to triers of fact. But what influence should experts have on earlier stages of the trial process? What role, if any, should experts have when a court must make a threshold determination of whether a witness is competent to testify when the basis of the alleged incapacity stems from a perceived disability? This paper considers some of these questions from the point of view of disability theory using the 2001 decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Parrott as a starting point. It argues that the justice system ought not to adopt practices and policies that frustrate the full inclusion of persons with disabilities. Despite its Canadian content, this paper should be of interest to those from other jurisdictions struggling with how to facilitate the meaningful participation of persons with disabilities in their justice systems. Facilitating such participation may be more complicated than the opinions in Parrott reveal, however. As a first step, this paper aims to contribute to the scholarly discussion by unpacking some of these complications and by exploring the resulting implications that such an approach would have for the law of evidence. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper will examine the criminal law's historical rejection of"obsession" as an emotional state capable of mitigating an actor'sculpability. We will contrast the law's treatment of obsession with itsdoctrinal acceptance of other emotional states, such as "heat ofpassion," as relevant to culpability. This paper further will examinewhether the Model Penal Code's extreme emotional disturbance defenseallows greater opportunity for obsession to be considered as a basis forreducing criminal liability, and we will use several high-profile"obsession" cases to explore this question across differentjurisdictions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of peculiar features of the military criminal justice system in Russia is that in some cases military defendants may apply for trial by jury. Unlike the existing U.S. court-martial jury and the Russian military jury of the early 1900s (World War I period) which were comprised of the members of the armed forces, in modern Russia jurors trying military defendants are civilians. This paper aims to provide a brief history of military jury in Russia and identify issues of independence and impartiality in Russian military courts with participation of lay decision-makers. In particular, the paper will analyze two high-profile cases which resulted in acquittals of Russian officers accused of killing several Chechen civilians during counter-terrorist operations in Chechnya. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 20 October, 1996, 300,000 people participated in a 'White March' through the streets of Brussels to protest against the criminal justice system in Belgium, following the Marc Dutroux-case. Exactly eleven years later, on 20 October, 2007, between ten and twenty thousand protesters marched through the streets of Jena, Louisiana, in what was described as the 'largest civil rights demonstration in years'. These protests were a reaction to the events in the 'Jena Six'-case. In this paper I will argue that the events in Brussels, in Jena and in many similar cases cannot be fully understood using familiar concepts like 'legal mobilization', 'legal culture' or 'legal consciousness'. Instead, the analysis of both Brussels and Jena will benefit greatly if we consider both cases in terms of 'legal alienation' (understood as alienation or estrangement from law). The concept of 'legal alienation' is occasionally used in the socio-legal literature. Generally speaking, however, most usages of 'legal alienation' in the present literature are either too wide or too narrow to be of any use for empirical socio-legal research. Most theoretical studies, for example, use a rather vague and general concept of 'legal alienation' to describe a general feeling of social discomfort. By contrast, many empirical studies of 'legal alienation', use the concept as one among many different indicators to measure the level public support for the law in large scale surveys, but this (narrow) approach is less useful in ethnographic and other qualitative studies. This paper seeks to accomplish two tasks: to explore the relevant literature and unpack the concept of 'legal alienation'; and to provide a way in which different dimensions of legal alienation may be included and tested in empirical research. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My paper examines the impact of language politics on the development of the criminal justice system in Timor-Leste. In the aftermath of the 1999 popular consultation were independence was voted for, the criminal justice system was destroyed and hundreds of criminals required trial for their crimes. Both the resulting trials of the hybrid Serious Crimes Process and the training of the domestic judicial actors was adversely affected by the insistent on integrating Portuguese into the system, despite the fact that only 5-7% of Timorese speak it and that the majority of Timorese judges, prosecutors and defenders were educated professionally in Indonesia. Transitional justice and development are concerned with the creation of a new state identity. However, these prjects have been impeded by the Timorese government's language polucy, which can also be interpreted as a means of identity creation by removing the Indonesian language from society. My paper suggests means how, in the clash of identities, these positions can be reconciled. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crime control has featured prominently in the 39th Parliament of Canada as politicians left and right aim to 'tackle' a phantom menace. To absorb the influx of new prisoners as a result of the passage of 'tougher' sentencing laws, the Government of Canada has set aside $245 million to build two additional federal penitentiaries and upgrade existing facilities. In this paper, I will argue that researchers need to draw from Marxist and Foucaultian understandings of crime control and punishment to address where these prisons will be built and why. To illustrate the need for theoretical complementarity in the study of penal geography, I will analyze an economic development strategy created and tabled by the gouvernement du Québec in January 2007 that recommends that the mayors of the comté du Pontiac actively lobby the federal government to construct a new federal penitentiary in the area. The author of the strategy argues that such a project would address local unemployment and the needs of prisoners who wish to be close to their families in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. Based on existing literature on prison construction in the United States, I will discuss the potential economic benefits and pitfalls of constructing a federal penitentiary in Pontiac, while also discussing possible impacts for prisoners and their loved ones. This paper will conclude with a discussion of the merits and limitations of the configuration of penal geography deployed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atrocities on Marginalized Sections: Response of the State and Civil SocietyJagannatham Begari The paper tries to assess the democratic theory and practice in the context of human rights in India. The paper most probably tries to stress on the assertion of marginalized sections. In the course of time, how they face problems and response from their own people, the dominant elite class and state. Hence, to comprehend the democracy and human rights, the study intended to take two case studies: Chundur dalits massacre (Andhra Pradesh-1992) and Vakapalli (agency area) tribal women rape (Andhra Pradesh-2007) by the CRPF (special rapid police force- Indian Army). Study the causes for these two incidents and the response of the state and its institutions, civil society movements. It is understood that socially and politically effective advancement and assertiveness of the dalits and Tribals that the forward castes find intolerable, and resulted in massacre of Dalits in Psundur. Hence, at the juncture, paper deals with the contradiction of growing consciousness of marginalized sections and increasing unwillingness and growing hostility of the forward castes towards dalits resulting in rupture in social relations. Haragopal (2007) an eminent academician from India holds that because of education, dalits and Tribals could able to assert of their rights and it lead to equalizing opportunities, deepening democratic foundations, strengthening social harmony but this logic is not worked out as he argues political elites and rulers are not committed to the objective of the constitutional safeguards for marginalized sections. Hence, it is necessary to asses the issues relate to responses of the state and civil society which could be explained in terms of social and political implications. As Jean Dreze, an eminent academician (2005) and Balagopal, an eminent human rights activist (1998) argues that the issue of solidarity of the movements becomes extremely crucial in shaping and reshaping the agenda, political discourse of movement and in evolving strategy of transformation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through data derived from criminal court records from one of the first magistrates and later judge in the North-West Territories(1876 - 1903) in Western Canada, this paper analyses the role of Canadian criminal law in a watershed period of social and legal transformation in and for the lives of the First Nations. The paper critically engages with discourses of criminalization in the historiography and calls for greater precision in the use of 'criminalization', where distinctions between criminal law and other forms of law are recognized. Specifically, it argues that offences under the federal Indian Act did not criminalize, but rather 'Indianized', the First Nations. Through an analysis of criminal cases where Aboriginal people were prosecuted for criminal offences, and in cases where the relationship between Government Indian policy and the administration of criminal justice can be discerned, the paper demonstrates the importance of attention to the specificity of different legal forms and actors and the relationship between them in developing an understanding of the relationship between the First Nations and criminal law in Western Canada in the last quarter of the nineteenth century . ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on an evaluation of three major restorative justice schemes for adult offenders in England and Wales, the paper will consider victims', offenders' and their supporters' perceptions of restorative justice. The schemes involved conferencing or mediation carried out during the criminal justice process, either pre-sentence or during sentence. The paper will look at aspects of procedural justice, views on participants' roles and contributions to find potential outcomes. Though the views of different participants may not be so different as might be assumed, they do point to potential inadequacies in the ways in which traditional criminal justice processes may be meeting these needs. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development and application of human rights law is one of the revolutionary legal advances of the 20th Century. The ad hoc tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (the 'ICTY') is at the forefront in further developing international humanitarian and criminal law precedent. Yet for all support granted to ad hoc institutions like the ICTY as well as the new, permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, the question of whether this revolution will fully 'take root' remains open so long as large, powerful states, like the United States or China, continue to resist. Historically, courts have operated as judicial arms of ruling powers, deriving their legitimacy from providing objectivity between parties within a system. (Shapiro 1980) These new bodies, such as the ICTY and the ICC, do not operate under these same restrictions. That altered circumstance has permitted these courts, in some cases, to radicalize legal doctrine. This paper considers one of those cases, the ICTY's aggressive use of "Joint Criminal Enterprise" to prosecute those involved in a criminal act. Under emerging JCE doctrine, even those actors only tangentially involved in criminal activity may be subject to prosecution. While JCE has allowed the ICTY to prosecute high ranking officials who hold no smoking gun yet are surrounded by dead bodies, its growth of use, especially as regards the precedent it offers the ICC, sets international courts on a direct course with political actors, as JCE threatens to make many forms of political participation potentially illegal. This paper will examine the legal and theoretical ramifications of this stunning and controversial addition to international criminal law. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The media, prompted by prosecutors, claims that a "CSI Effect" is impacting our criminal justice system, i.e., seducing jurors with promises of forensic evidence and causing an epidemic of unjustified acquittals. Despite the popularity of these claims, they are not grounded in a statistical increase in acquittals or detailed case studies, but on anecdotes about cases that law enforcement believes it should have won. Anecdote, however, is not an adequate substitute for empirical evidence or a logical theory of media influence. This paper, employing the perspectives of media theory and narrative analysis, examines the entertainment media's contribution to the public's understanding of law. Moreover, it subjects the "CSI Effect" to empirical analysis through deliberation studies of 538 mock jurors (comprised of individuals on jury duty, jury eligible adults, and university students). This paper concludes that neither theory nor survey results support the existence of a "CSI Effect," but that, like its namesake television show, it is merely fiction. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I analyze the development in the U.S. of a network of lawyers and advocacy organizations supporting lawsuits over police misconduct. Although the origins of police misconduct litigation in the U.S. can be traced to the early decades of the 20th century, organized networks among police misconduct litigators began to grow only with the efforts of the NAACP-LDF in the 1940s, remained relatively moribund through the1960s, and then grew exponentially after the early 1970s. The paper documents the development of such networks and analyzes the conditions for their significant growth in the 1970s and 1980s. Finally, the paper discusses the impact of these networks and the liability threats generated by them on police policy and administrative processes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paper analyzes the circulation of ideas and the expertise that takes place from the penal procedural reform in Chile and its influence in the Latin American legal field.In specific the paper will let is know, the characteristics and strategies of the group of experts will be analyzed who led the reform in Chile, to export a justice model that gathers elements of the German and American system of criminal justice. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International conflicts have increased over the twentieth century with industrialization and economic globalization. In the aftermath of conflagrations of various kinds, it has become essential to resolve issues of international criminal conduct so that different peoples involved in the aftermath can begin to rebuild community. In this paper I propose to analyze the process of international criminal justice in dealing with what took place during the Holocaust and how the Nuremberg Trials continue to effect the international community's attempt for justice of ethnic cleansing and genocide during the 1990s and in new millennium with the establishment of the International Criminal Court. This paper explores the possible links between a responsible and critical assessment of injustice after the commission of crimes against humanity, including the prosecution of perpetrators, and the fulfillment of ideals of international criminal justice overall in the aftermath of international crimes. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drug Treatment Courts (DTC) in Canada integrate drug treatment services with the structures of the criminal justice system in attempts to reduce criminal behaviour and disease prevention, create better use of jail facilities and to ensure public safety. Upon admittance to the program clients must plead guilty, vocalize their addiction in court and consequently are forced to comply with several bail conditions, including but not limited to a curfew and spatial boundaries. These boundaries, which are the main focus of this paper, are allocated by the Crown and designate which neighbourhoods clients may or may not enter. Transgressing these boundaries leads to a violation of bail conditions and potential expulsion from DTC. The spatial and racial implications of these boundaries are the focal point of this paper. What precisely is the purpose of these spatial boundaries? Do they help addicts avoid drug use or do they further criminalize racialized poor neighbourhoods? Using court observations from DTC's in Toronto and Vancouver from 2004-2006 I will question the purpose of these boundaries and explore how urban spaces are affected by these bail conditions. This paper will examine how DTC boundaries reinforce the colonial violence of law in space, how they further displace already visible and marked bodies and how they reinforce 'zones of degeneracy'. Overall, this paper will develop an understanding of the post-colonial territoriality of seemingly progressive treatment programs within Canada's Criminal Justice System. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before starting a field research, the researcher has certain expectations from the field which are not always realized. The researcher is immediately faced with the reality that the field has a life of its own and certain rules and dynamics which demand recognition by the outsider. Throughout the whole interaction with the field, the researcher finds her expectations to be re-defined in light of what the field has to offer. Redefinition of expectations is not necessarily an indication of a deficiency on part of the researcher because pre-set aspirations are not met. On the contrary, it enlightens the researcher about the latent face of the field, about its backdoor. This experience with the field ultimately allows the researcher to question her own assumptions, her own tools, her own know-hows. This paper is a product of the experiences a team of researchers has faced during a year long field research for a project on the criminal legal aid service in Turkey. Getting permission from the Ministry of Justice to conduct research at the courts, the researchers hit the road, thinking that the piece of paper in their hands will be enough to reviews the files. Soon to find out that the paper is just a formality, and the real challenge begins when they find out they have to talk to each and individual judge to get their permission. This is the journey of these researchers, trying to display not only what it takes to do research in courts but also to show how the researcher learns to situate herself with respect to authority through which the boundaries surrounding "law and courts" are shaped. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feminist scholars have demonstrated how legal interventions in relation to domestic violence frequently impose further violence on women as a product of a narrow criminal law perspective. Linda Mills argues that legal interventions commonly reproduce the emotional abuse initially perpetrated by violent men. She argues that such interventions ignore the perspectives of the women the interventions are designed to protect and support. This paper draws on a study of court responses to breaches of domestic violence protection orders and explores the violence of state intervention in this context. The law may provide protection to women in the form of domestic violence protection orders and recognise the criminal nature of breaches of such orders. However the process involved in demonstrating a criminal breach often involves a ruthless contest about the facts and numerous court appearances before resolution. Further, breaches often result in no conviction being recorded or in trivialising fines. This paper explores how the understandings and concerns of women, that are generally ignored by the traditional criminal legal paradigm, may be privileged in order to develop non-violent state interventions in this context. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The British Government has recently announced that it wishes to change the law so that the English Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) should be able to uphold a conviction obtained through a serious irregularity at or before trial, even that amounting to an abuse of process, if the Court considers the appellant to be factually guilty. This paper argues that this proposal is deeply flawed in two respects: Firstly, it is based on a fundamental misconception of the nature of appeals against conviction in the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) as the Court cannot properly adjudicate upon guilt or innocence in these appeals; and secondly, it threatens the rule of law by proposing the removal of the Court of Appeal's power to quash a conviction that was based upon the State's illegal conduct. This paper argues that these proposals will encourage illegal acts by state officials such as falsifying evidence, procuring unreliable confessions and in extreme cases, torture, and will endanger public confidence in the administration of justice. Furthermore, the three options provided by the Government as mechanisms for bringing about this change are either not necessary or require a radical change to the Court's powers which it is not currently equipped to perform therefore, this paper argues that these proposals are unworkable in practice and objectionable in nature. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perhaps the most common "alternative" form of public involvement in the governance of American communities is the various institutional structures created as part of community policing programs. So popular is the concept that no mayor or chief wants to be without some effort they can point to that promises to engage the public in policing. Two of the many questions this raises are: who is "the community" that is represented, and how well are they represented?There are many reasons to be skeptical that community collaboration with the police is a feasible process goal. Cities can be deeply divided by race and class, and an influx of new immigrants further complicates the cultural mosaic of many communities. The groups that represent residents of high-crime neighborhoods may be more interested in challenging police practices that promoting collaboration. Better-educated and more cosmopolitan residents might come to dominate discussions with the police, and their interests could be better represented.This paper examines the representation goals of community policing in Chicago. In Chicago's program, beat meetings are the vehicle for grass-roots consultation and collaboration between police and the community. At the meetings the two sides are to come together to identify local priorities, discuss how both police and residents can best address them, and review their progress in doing so. The paper addresses the twin issues of who is represented and how well their interests are represented. The analysis is based on data collected in systematic observations of beat meetings and surveys of the residents and police who attend. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses how the shift in psychiatric representation from the 'morally insane' perpetrator of the 19th century to the modern psychopath or person with antisocial personality disorder involves a recasting of the offender from some one afflicted with an illness whose criminal misconduct is merely a symptom of their disorder to someone whose criminal misconduct is perceived as an expression of their true character. Drawing upon recent case law, the paper then shows how prosecutors deploy this modern psychiatric reconfiguring during the penalty phase of the capital trial to persuade jurors to decide in favor of death over life without parole. Central to the building of this narrative is the reframing of what are taken as the offenders' silence or unconvincing attempts to show remorse as evidence of a pathology whose primary manifestation is the incapacity to feel or experience moral emotions. Applying but also modifying Harold Garfinkel's work on degradation ceremonies, the paper shows how the pathologizing of the offender's lack of remorse involves a rite of passage in which he or she is symbolically reconstituted from someone whose life is viewed as worthy in spite of their crime to someone for whom death is the only appropriate penalty. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of serious domestic strife or international conflict, debates often arise between those within a society who advocate "justice" through domestic or international prosecutions and those who prioritize "peace" and argue that efforts to provide criminal accountability may impair or undermine the fragile post-conflict settlement. No where is this debate more evident today than in Uganda, where peace negotiations are currently underway between the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and the Ugandan government and the International Criminal Court (ICC) has indicated the senior rebel leadership. Based on in-depth field research at the ICC and in Uganda, this paper explores the role of international justice in the Ugandan peace negotiations of 2006 and the understandings of the concepts of peace and justice in Uganda politics and society. The paper makes two basic arguments. First, it argues that the potential for international justice has played a critical, but at times contradictory, role in the present Ugandan peace process. The threat of ICC prosecution has simultaneously shifted the interests of key actors, facilitating peace negotiations, and served as a foil for underlying political divides, potentially hampering ultimate settlement. Second, the paper suggests that, within Uganda, the terms "peace" and "justice" carry distinct meanings that differ from the ordinary uses of the terms in legal scholarship. Recognition these Ugandan understandings" may provide a means of reconciling the competing goals of peace and justice. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canadians have been confronted in recent years with the reality of wrongful convictions, along with efforts to redress and avoid them. Such attention is long overdue and the names of the exonerated men are well known: Milgaard, Morin, Marshall, Sophonow, and others. Recognizing the importance of identifying miscarriages of justice, this paper seeks to broaden the scope of inquiry. It asks whether dominant conceptions of "wrongful convictions", as well as their commonly cited causes, might be gendered and racialized in a manner that does not capture the experience of women convicted of murder or other serious crimes who might have a valid claim to the label "wrongfully convicted". Aboriginal women who take responsibility for a violent act done by another person in their home or who use lethal violence in self-defence after years of abuse are just some of the examples of women not commonly listed among those wrongfully convicted in Canada. This paper is a preliminary look at whether and how dominant conceptions of the nature, causes, and scope of wrongful convictions might be reconsidered, and what might be at stake in expanding the scope of inquiry. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]