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Why certain social actors use the courts instead of pursuing their policy goals through the traditional political venues-the executive and the legislature? A standard response is that political minorities, or more generally the "losers" of a policymaking process, are the ones who tend to judicialize policy issues. However, and regardless of the advantages of its parsimony, an analysis merely based in terms of winners and losers does not provide too much leverage in explaining processes of policy litigation. Arguably, in a lawsuit always there is a party who claims to be an "unfair" loser of a relationship; otherwise, there would be no reason to litigate. More significantly, that approach does not help us to explore and learn about the relationships between quality of government and the judicialization of policy conflicts, especially in the context of post-transitional democracies like Argentina. Instead, this paper answers this question by studying whether and how the functioning of the democratic system of governance affects the emergence of policy litigation. Specifically, it analyses whether problems of interest representation, political fragmentation or state performance drive citizens groups into the courts. To assess these different explanations, this study develops a comparative study of major judicialized conflicts in four policy fields in Argentina: environmental policy, consumer protection, health care and indigenous rights. By tracing the processes by which these policy disputes reach the courts, the paper explore what problems of governance trigger judicialization and how. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What determines whether or not constitutionalization and judicial empowerment influence the social policy environment? This paper engages this question for health policy in Colombia. In 1991 a constitutional assembly entrenched a long list of positive rights, created a Constitutional Court, and broadened access to the judicial system. Since then litigants have invoked the right to health in hundreds of thousands of cases, the outcomes of which have broadened the scope of health policy beyond that envisioned by legislators. Contrary to bottom-up arguments, however, my research suggests that open access to the judiciary was necessary but not sufficient for the judicialization of social policy in that country. Rather, judicialization was contingent on, and driven by, judicial attitudes inside the new Constitutional Court. The Colombian legal culture has historically been adverse to normative conceptions of rights. The first Constitutional Court, however, was composed of judges for whom the central role of the judiciary is to protect and promote constitutional promises. To change existing judicial behavior and stimulate social policy litigation the justices on the Court actively pursued cases dealing with social rights provisions. In doing so, they created a progressive jurisprudential regime that has guided lower court decisions on social rights cases and triggered the formation of a support structure for judicial power. This conclusion suggests that the process by which newly empowered courts are populated is key to understand the policy impact of constitutionalization in different political systems. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally one can find an immense amount of research focused on civil and criminal courts in both the United States and Canada. While some of this research has examined the structure and processes of theses courts, other research has analyzed the effects of the adjudication processes on the participants in these court systems. As courts of limited jurisdiction in most of the states in the U.S. and in Canada, the same empirical literature cannot be found for justice of the peace courts. This research looks at the justice of the peace courts first by examining the socio-legal historical context of their formation and legitimacy followed by the issues that surround their current role in a contemporary legal system. Current research needs affecting policy implications are addressed; both advocations to dismantle the justice of the peace courts system, as well as suggestions for increased professionalism of justices in order to maintain the legitimacy and the role of these courts. Findings to date reveal a surprisingly minute amount of specific research that is considered necessary on these justice of the peace courts that are a component of most larger court systems. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last two decades have seen the emergence of a "new governance" that seeks to re-direct the efforts of judicial, administrative and legislative bodies to create more de-centered, participatory, collaborative models of dispute resolution . In this paper, we focus on the rise of problem-solving justice represented, for example, by the proliferation of problem-solving courts in the U.S. and internationally. We ask two sets of questions. First, how do we theoretically characterize problem-solving justice, what are its key features and how does it fit in with related forms and antecedents? Proponents point to affinities with restorative justice, therapeutic jurisprudence, democratic experimentalism, yet problem-solving justice diverges in significant ways from each of these approaches. Second, how is problem-solving justice related to larger trends toward de-regulation, de-constitutionalization, de-legalization? While on the one hand, it incorporates many aspects of what Heydebrand calls "process rationality" or the "logic of negotiated process," an emphasis on loosening legal formalism in striving toward pragmatic and utilitarian problem-solving and the use of informal, flexible and expedient strategies, it also emphasizes substantive values in its specific problem-solving goals as well as an emphasis on participation and a quest for equality. Additionally, then, we ask about the implications of problem-solving justice for social and economic equality; in particular what does it contribute to how we understand the importance of respect or moral recognition versus material redistribution in conflict resolution? While legal positivism simply distinguishes between legal and illegal solutions to problems, the vexing question of who defines what a "problem" is in the first place suggests how close legal policy tends to come to social policy. Overall, we seek to scrutinize problem-solving justice, the social context that summons it, and its continuities and differences with new and ongoing reform movements. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to determine how well the distributional institutions of the law are performing their role in society, it is helpful to understand what the law is and how its institutions are designed. This paper will test the idea that law can best be classified as a common pool good. There are two primary reasons why it matters to say that the law is a common pool good. First, economic theory states that common pool resources tend to be underprovided and overused. Significant portions of the population may be left without adequate access to the law, resulting in a depletion of the legitimacy from which courts receive their power. The role of collective action is to provide the institutional framework for preventing this depletion. This paper will argue that the primary component of such a framework is a strongly regulated legal profession operating within a common law system. Second, legal recognition of certain types of property rights activates a number of Constitutional protections. While the U.S. has recognized the right of criminal defendants to have access to an attorney, that right is based on a threat to their liberty, not property. Because the United States operates under a negative conception of liberty, the liberty argument does not apply to civil cases where freedom is not at issue. This paper therefore will argue that individuals have a property interest in the law itself, the denial of which violates the due process clause. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As rigorous land titling projects are promoted throughout Asia, land disputes involving serious conflicts among titled landowners and traditional customary rights as well as among state lands and untitled private rights are increasing remarkably. While various devices have been introduced by governments for dispute resolutions, most of them remain unpopular. Instead, it is observed that local people's aspires for justice have been producing some bottom-up trend　of interactions among formal and informal forums for dispute resolutions in an expectation of integrating the formal and the informal norms. This paper will explore such recent trends of land disputes in Cambodia and Indonesia. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the consequences of the events of September 11, 2001 has been the mainstreaming of discussions about the trade-offs in the normative desire for the uniformity and universality of laws, and the practical realities of and desirability for respecting the diversities of cultures and identities. In law schools, courses on Comparative Jurisprudence and International Law have mushroomed. At the University Of Maryland School Of Law, I offer one such course. I call it "COMPARATIVE JURISPRUDENCE: Trans-cultural Perspectives on the World's Legal systems". I tell students that it is a course about exploring the rich diversity of cultural, historical, philosophical and religious traditions within which legal concepts and rules have been formulated, implemented, and currently function. My objective is to expose students to conventional literatures on law and justice in the Western jurisprudential tradition, and to juxtapose those literatures against the increasingly rich excavations in English about other legal traditions, such as those dealing with Islamic, Hindu, Chinese and African legal orders. What I hope to do at the LSA meeting is to reflect on the lessons that I've learned as a result of the interactions that I have had with the students, and to suggest ways in which persons who are interested in going beyond the traditional boundaries of comparative Law and Jurisprudence might go about doing so. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although crime victims are increasingly taken into account and afforded more rights by the criminal justice system than in the past, research shows that many of them nevertheless seem to feel that the judicial system has not lived up to its promises and that they sometimes have unrealistic expectations about the healing power of a judicial process. But, affording crime victims a greater position in the legal system could not only be an inappropriate answer to victim's needs, but could also hinder the functioning of the legal process. With the aim of understanding the actual position and expectations victims harbour towards the penal system and the consequences of these for the judicial actors, lawyers, magistrates and victims were interviewed, using semi-directive techniques. Current results of the content analyses carried out on these different discourses point to the conclusion that allowing victims a greater position in the legal system may neither be the best way for victims to obtain the restoration they expect, nor help improve the effectiveness of the criminal justice system. These research findings should hopefully contribute to a better understanding of the impact of the current prominence of victims in the legal process. These results also seem to provide support for the relevance of restorative forms of justice as a means of helping victims go through a reparation process. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to justice may mean different things to different people, but it seems clear that it refers to an aspiration of providing access to a goal called justice. Traditionally in the Netherlands, as in other countries, access to justice focused on providing access to courts and, to ensure equality of arms and a fair trial, to legal representation. But due to the length of court procedures and high costs of legal aid schemes, to name but a few of the problems the Dutch legal system faces, there is growing attention for alternative dispute resolution mechanisms. Following the successful introduction in the Netherlands of alternative dispute resolution, in particular mediation, in civil law cases (e.g. family matters and neighbour disputes), it is now also applied in administrative law disputes between citizens and the government. At different stages in the procedure the use of mediation has been introduced to speed up dispute resolution, but also to provide a more responsive handling of complaints and objections. At the same time however, the procedural rules in Dutch administrative law (continue to) contain a number of formal requirements that when not complied with automatically deny people access to justice. This paper will assess to what extent there is room for manoeuvre for mediation, being a more responsive approach to justice, within in Dutch administrative law disputes, and where it clashes with the rigid and restrictive regime of Dutch administrative procedural law. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many legal systems have increasingly responded to the demands of climate change mitigation, legal and institutional infrastructures remain ill-equipped to effectively deal with the societal needs arising from climate change impacts.Designing regulation that is conducive to adaptation is a key component of a viable adaptation policy. It is a necessary prerequisite for developing social capital that will enable more effective management and response to consequences of climate change.The policy gap between accumulated knowledge on the impacts and risks of a global warming, and the societal needs arising from already occurring changes, is slowly closing. Countries are gaining experience with designing adaptation strategies and accompanying regulation. Describing and assessing these experiences is an important part of a regulatory learning process. The article suggests that a properly conceived regulatory scheme will address six distinct dimensions, capturing most of the challenges facing regulators in adaptation to climate change. The six distinct dimensions of any adaptation regulatory scheme are described on axes which extend between extremities and provide a range of options that are scrutinized and compared to ongoing or debated regulatory initiatives: 1) Adaptive actions- the axes span from planned to autonomous and from anticipatory to reactive. Regulation will not only be required to promote planned adaptation but to control the externalities of autonomous adaptation; 2) Governing refers to both policy formulation and action on axes that spans from local to national. A significant challenge of any regulation scheme will be to coordinate and ensure implementation by the many actors involved at the different levels; 3) Financing is described by two intersecting axes- one extending from private to public and the other from egalitarian to non egalitarian. Equity consideration are central to climate change adaptation, they significantly impact adaptive capacity and are best answered through financing mechanisms; 4) Coverage is described on an axis extending from market coverage to public coverage. Possibilities are considered in context of significant uncertainly regarding risk; 5) Regulatory invasiveness- axes span from command and control through covenants to information regulation. 6) Participation in adaptation policy and implementation has been found to impact adaptive capacity and improve resilience. The article discuss the emerging mechanizes for participation on different levels.Although it is too early in the day to assess the effectiveness of budding regulatory schemes promoting climate change adaptation, the time is ripe to take count of what has been achieved thus far. A broad framework for the design of adaptation regulatory regimes may successfully chart the way to answering present and future needs. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We assume that judges are objective surveyors of evidence, which coincides with our general belief in the fairness of the justice system. However, preliminary research indicates that judges exhibit a pro-government/anti-plaintiff bias. With rare exceptions, in the U.S. the same rules apply for admitting scientific expert testimony for civil and criminal cases. One might expect that with the same standard of admissibility, judges apply these rules uniformly across cases. Legal and socio-legal scholars present anecdotal evidence of a discrepancy and to date, only one study, Risinger (2000), examines this. He found that judges favored admitting government's experts over criminal defendants' and experts of large corporate civil defendants over plaintiffs' in civil suits. This suggests a pro-government/anti-plaintiff bias where the admissibility bar appears to be set low in the criminal arena and set high in the civil, thereby disadvantaging specific parties and threatening the perceived fairness of justice. This paper will test whether a bias exists by reviewing appellate and trial opinions that consider the admissibility of arson experts and will explore potential factors that may influence it within a critical legal studies framework. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This qualitative study examines the experiences of parents whose children are involved with the juvenile court through interviews of parents of juveniles charged with committing delinquent acts in Boston, MA. Parents are often required to attend court hearings regarding their children in the juvenile justice system. Yet little research has been conducted examining the expectations, roles, interactions, and reactions of these parents in relation to the juvenile justice system. This research explores how parents develop attitudes about the law and legal systems, how they interact with courtroom actors, and subsequently how their experiences with the juvenile court system may affect these legal attitudes. Research questions include how parents understand their role in the juvenile system, how these perceptions fit with juveniles' guaranteed constitutional rights, and what factors impact the parents' assessment of the juvenile system. This study also examines how juvenile court can affect the relationship between parents and their children as well as whether parents' notions of the courts and the legitimacy of law change through the process of participating in their child's juvenile case. Gaining a fuller understanding of the development of parents' attitudes toward the legal system is important because parents may transmit these attitudes to their children which could lead to more (or possibly less) delinquent acts by the child. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will explore the Russian legal system's response to human trafficking, an increasingly complex problem facing countries of the former Soviet Union. Though many international organizations have decried Russia's inadequate response in terms of prosecution of human traffickers, this paper will show that the reality is more complicated. Enforcing the new law on human trafficking requires law enforcement to make a series of institutional adjustments. Using an original database of human trafficking cases covered in local and national news media, statistics from law enforcement agencies and documents from several court cases, I will explore what types of cases are prosecuted, what the results are and how law enforcement professionals and judges understand the anti-trafficking laws and apply them. This will be the first systematic analysis of the empirical evidence on Russian prosecution of human trafficking cases. Thus, it will not only contribute to our understanding of what happens on the ground, but will also uncover the processes and decision-making procedures that lead Russian law enforcement professionals to pursue trafficking cases. Studying trafficking also speaks to the larger question of how law enforcement organs learn to use and apply new laws. In a globalized world where criminals are quick to learn and apply new techniques, law enforcement's ability to implement laws that outlaw new crimes reflect their effectiveness and commitment to the rule of law. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents current ethical issues which staff attorneys of the Japan Judicial Support Center (JJSC) confront. The JJSC was established in April 2006 under the Justice System Reform policies. The purpose of it is to provide legal services all over Japan so that "rule of law" can be realized in Japan. This is the first time that the government established an independent administrative legal entity - the JJSC - and employed attorneys through the JJSC. How do they provide legal services? How are they different from ordinary private practitioners? What is the typical ethical problem they confront and how they deal with it? The answers of these questions illustrate a symptom of a new attorney model in Japan. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the result of research conducted for the International Development Law Organization (IDLO) in Kabul, Afghanistan in July and August of 2007. It attempts to evaluate international support for the Afghan government's department for official mediation, the Hukuk Department, in light of its role in the Afghan justice system. Part I of the paper summarizes the research findings about the Hukuk, including its functions, current challenges, and local perceptions of international support. Part II describes international efforts ongoing in 2007 to build the Department's capacity, and Part III draws on the best practices literature to evaluate these efforts. The paper concludes that, at the time of writing, 1) some positive steps had been taken to increase the transparency and merit basis of the selection process for Hukuk members; 2) efforts to reform the Hukuk's procedural code appeared well-designed to respond to a pressing need; and 3) short-term, quick-impact training programs were addressing immediate needs for legal and practical training. However, urgent needs existed for 1) developing a long-range training plan for current and incoming members; 2) securing adequate resources for the Department; and 3) improving evaluation of programs underway. The paper concludes that, if adequately supported, the Hukuk Department can provide a key bridge between the formal and informal justice systems in Afghanistan and serve to improve access to justice for ordinary Afghans. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the impacts on the constitution idea, of the use of foreign materials by courts. This practice has been indicated as a global trend and, as I argue here, represents a new phenomenon that signalizes the existence of an ongoing process of cross-fertilization among courts, and contributes for the consolidation of an arising global constitutionalism.Traditionally, those borrowings are associated with different purposes: as a way of filling in gaps; as a means of clarify obscurities in the statutes and precedents in hard cases; as a way of legitimizing its practice through the borrowing of authority arising from consolidated institutions; as a way of increasing the level of international legitimacy of the practice of the court; or even as a mere rhetorical purposes.In despite of this, three different factors can be identified which, together, give this apparently instrumental concern a great preeminence on contemporary constitutional theory. They are: the existence of a process of globalization and interpenetration of the legal orders; the existence of a broader movement of the redefinition of the functions of the Judiciary Branches, which confers on it a major role in the definition of the public agenda (judicialization of politics at national and supra-national levels);and, a sudden change on the role of the constitution, which requires a general duty to justify the public reasons for each decision.Therefore, comparative law, by emphasizing transnational dialogue, has an accentuated subversive character (Fletcher) and one of destabilization (Frankenberg), which internalizes an external vision, as a factor of criticism and valuation of the premises itself adopted by national system.In order to fulfill its proposals, this work is divided as follows: firstly, it presents some general considerations on constitutional borrowings; secondly, the debate over its legitimacy is presented in summary form; below, it is presented the idea of a multi-leveled global constitutionalism, arising from the existence of certain common constitutional practices shared; and, finally, it is discussed its consequences on the modern concepts of constitutional identity, and catalogue of sources of law. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a rising of judicial politics in Taiwan. Politics became judicialization: many political issues and conflicts were sent to courts for seeking a judgment. One of major concerns of judicial politics is judicial independence. That is "who controls the judiciary." The two major strategies that politicians and the judicial elites have used to control the judicial system are case control and personnel control. The case control was overcome by the movement for case-assignment reform. Peter Russell argues that the "danger point for judicial independence may be more in the process of promotion and career advancement than initial appointment." Therefore, the big issue for Taiwan' judicial independence is who has personnel control. The Personnel Review Council of Judge in the Judicial Yuan controlled judges' promotion, punishment, and transfer. In this study, I want to understand how the Personnel Review Council of Judge decided judicial personnel cases. In this paper, I used the data mainly from the interviews of judges and judicial elites, including two form presidents of the Judicial Yuan, four the director of the Personnel Department, several members of the Personnel Review Council of Judge. I will argue that politicians and political parties did not have influence on judicial personnel affairs in Taiwan. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between statutory design and policy implementation has been thoroughly examined by scholars like Drazen and Van de Ven (1985); Alexander (1985); and Ingram and (1990). The overall message of the literature is uniform, despite some differentiation in the recommended approaches: strategic statutory design facilitates policy implementation by exploiting existing organizational structures and implementation contexts. Despite the logical extension of this conclusion to judicial policy design, no study to this date has applied this learning to the work of judges. In this paper, I hope to fill this gap by examining three questions: *What, if any, benefits are there for judges to consider implementation when designing opinions?*Is it possible for judges to consider implementation? What, if any, impediments are there to doing so? *On balance, is it prudent for judges to do so?Ultimately, I conclude that it is possible for judges, particularly at the Supreme Court level, to incorporate basic lessons of policy implementation scholarship into the design of certain opinions, and that when they do so, judges are more likely to achieve their own rational policy goals and to satisfy the needs of individual litigants and the broader public. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The machinery of civil justice sustains social stability and economic growth by providing public processes for peacefully resolving civil disputes, for enforcing legal rights and for protecting private and personal rights. However, today we are witnessing the decline of civil justice - the downgrading of the importance of civil justice, the degradation of civil court facilities, and the diversion of civil cases to private dispute resolution, accompanied by an anti-litigation/anti-adjudication rhetoric that interprets these developments as socially positive. This has happened because recent policy on the administration of civil justice has disregarded the social importance of a well-functioning civil justice system, that both external and internal pressures threaten the future of civil justice, and that these threats are visible in jurisdictions around the globe. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social scientists conceptual contemporary capital punishment as primary in organizing state/citizen relations, expressing the moral outrage of a community, and re-inscribing race and class distinctions. Drawing on observations of death penalty trials across the country, I show that these do not adequately explain how capital sentencing works in practice. Instead capital sentencing is the adversarial practice of persuading a lay audience that a given offender is worth keeping alive or deserves to die. It differs from other criminal sentencing venues not only its potential outcome, but in the content of the proceedings. The nexus of social relations, rules, norms, and actions make it a unique site in which human worth is built, performed, and contested. To understand capital sentencing then, we need a different comparative paradigm. Here capital sentencing is taken outside its usual setting and framed along side other events dealing with life, death, and human worth: euthenasia, abortion, tort claims, and military engagement. We can then ask of capital sentencing: what is the value of a human life in this setting? What acts are contested as worthy? What types of authority and expertise define human worth? Are there categories of worthiness that are commonly relied upon by defense and prosecution? How is this concept of worth different from other settings? Implications of the comparisons are discussed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the US Supreme Court decided Republican Party of Minnesota v. White in 2002, there have been serious questions about the constitutionality of various Judicial Canons barring judicial candidates from activity that would clearly be constitutionally protected if engaged in by non-judicial candidates. This paper will examine how the White decision has affected contested state trial court races in Ohio since 2002 and how the relevant Judicial Canons have been modified in light of White. The paper will also examine impact of White on judicial election campaign advertising and speech in Ohio and related disciplinary measures to determine whether the result has been an increase or decrease in the partisanship of these contested judicial races. In addition, the paper will explore the relationship between campaign contributions and the level of discourse and partisanship in selected contested trial court races in 2008 ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars and courts debate whether and how churches, vital non-state actors that they are, should be subject to regulation of secular law. One current controversy concerns the judicially created "ministerial exception" to federal anti-discrimination laws, under which religious organizations cannot be held liable under federal law for race, sex, and other employment discrimination against those whose functions involve the organization's ministry and religious doctrine, broadly defined. This limitation on the reach of federal law is born of the broader "Freedom of the Church" doctrine, under which the First Amendment commands that religions alone define and carry out their theological identities and missions, free from constraints of secular law and secular courts.This paper considers how to properly characterize the Freedom of the Church doctrine. Is it a limitation on the reach of substantive law and the power of legislatures to regulate activity by religious organizations? Or is it a limitation on the power of courts to hear and resolve legal disputes involving those organizations and their alleged wrongdoing? In arguing that the Freedom of the Church is entirely about the former, I demonstrate that the answer demands parsing of the expansive concept of jurisdiction. At issue is the too-often-misunderstood and ignored, but essential, distinction between prescriptive or legislative jurisdictionâ??the power of bodies (usually, although not exclusively, legislatures) to prescribe substantive legal rulesâ??and adjudicative or judicial jurisdictionâ??the power of courts to adjudicate and resolve legal and factual disputes arising under substantive law. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Retributivism, while controversial, has strong foundations in firmly held ideals of justice, desert, and dignity. However, recent work has shown that positive retributivism, by which all guilty persons must be punished in proportion to their crimes, is impossible to implement in the real world, given scarce resources and competing societal needs and goals. Consequentialist retributivism, in which trade-offs are allowed in order to maximize some measure of punishment or justice, has been proposed as a compromise in order for some "degree" of positive retributivism to be implemented. This essay will explore the philosophical implications of consequentialist retributivism from a deontological standpoint, asking if there is any way such a version of retributivism can be formulated to satisfy deontological concerns regarding the immeasurability of justice and the incomparability of dignity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Russia introduced jury trials in 1993â??1994 in nine out of 89 provinces of the Federation, and within ten the system expanded to other regions of the country. To date, Chechnya is the only region where defendants do not enjoy the right to fair trial by fellow citizens. The jury reform is expected to be completed by 2010. One of the possible reasons for delay in introducing jury trials in Chechnya is the concern of the Kremlin that Chechen (Muslim) defendants accused of crimes against the state, including terrorism, would be acquitted by representatives of their ethnic community. In order to prevent jury acquittals in cases related to such crimes, the Security Committee of the State Duma sponsored a bill, which would exclude juries from consideration of espionage, high treason, terrorism and other similar offences. If this bill is passed and signed by the President, it would indicate a gradual diminution of jury trials in Russia. The paper explores the history of jury trials in terrorist and treason cases in the Russian Empire and post-Soviet Russia. It also examines methods used by the government to manipulate juries in various categories of cases. Finally, the paper will discuss the background and activities of a grass-root organization, the Juror Association (Klub prisiazhnykh), which has recently emerged in Russia to defend the endangered jury system. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent discussion in policy circles in the UK has focused on the importance of 'proportionate' dispute resolution to deal with people's problems with public services. The meaning of 'proportionate' is difficult to define but is often assumed to mean 'low cost', while at other times it is based on achieving resolution of disputes, short of a full court or tribunal hearing. Socio-legal scholars have recognised that there are potential conflicts between different requirements of dispute mechanisms. This paper considers the views of citizens in this debate.Recent research on complaints about local authority community care services showed that some potential complainants were deterred by the idea of 'complaining'. However, these can be contrasted with people who were more assertive in making a complaint, who focused instead on justifying the act of complaining, either because they felt it would help other people or because their problem had been sufficiently serious. The important point is that people stressed that they had made an appropriate complaint, contrasting themselves with people who might complain inappropriately. People often justify their disputes in terms of the public good while policies on dispute resolution usually work on the premise that disputes are individualistic. This paper considers different understandings of the idea of 'proportionate' and 'appropriate' dispute resolution mechanisms and of the relationship between individual and collective action in disputes about public services. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public opinion studies assume that Americans' desire to punish underlies support for penal policies that drive our skyrocketing imprisonment rate; however sociologists of punishment theorize that the relationship between citizens and government influences the character and appeal of criminal justice legislation. Jonathan Simon's "governing through crime" theory explains how this relationship might work. The current study links Simon's theory to public opinion by using ideas about legal consciousness to conceptualize a "governing-through-crime mentality." I test the relationship between this mentality and support for mandatory sentencing with data from a national telephone survey. Results suggest that while the punitive public exists, wanting to separate offenders from society, and distrusting the courts increases the likelihood of support for mandatory sentencing. This demonstrates the importance of accounting for attitudes about governance when studying public opinion. If ideas about citizenship and government influence support for crime policy, then curbing policies that increase the prison population requires a fundamental shift in the values underlying our democracy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prosecutors wield tremendous power, which is kept in check by a set of unique ethical obligations. In explaining why prosecutors sometimes fail to honor these multiple and arguably divergent obligations, scholars tend to fall into two schools of thought. The first school focuses upon institutional incentives that promote abuses of power. These scholars implicitly treat the prosecutor as a rational actor who decides whether to comply with a rule based on an assessment of the expected costs and benefits of doing so. The second school focuses upon bounded human rationality, drawing on the teachings of cognitive science to argue that prosecutors transgress not because of sinister motives, but because they labor under the same cognitive limitations that all humans do. In this article, I begin to unify these two schools of thought into a comprehensive approach. I apply the lessons of cognitive science to identify the ways in which prosecutors' distinctive institutional environment may undermine not just their willingness to play fair, but their ability to do so. Research on the psychological effects of accountability demonstrates that when people are judged primarily for their ability to persuade others of their position, they are susceptible to defensive bolstering at the expense of objectivity. I argue that prosecutors operate under precisely such a system, and are therefore particularly susceptible to biases that undermine their ability to honor obligations that require some objectivity on their part. In support of this claim, I present the results of two original experiments demonstrating that holding people accountable for their ability to persuade others of a suspect's guilt exacerbates common cognitive biases relevant to prosecutorial decision making, and discuss the implications of this research for reform. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prosecution, truth and reconciliation and lustration are tools of justice that have been implemented in transitional societies. However, transitional justice is intricately intertwined with the state building projects of elites. Using comparative methods, this paper identifies some of the key dimensions of conflict and state building contexts that influenced transitional justice in post-Nazi Germany, post-communist Czech Republic and post-apartheid South Africa. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prison spaces are often viewed through the frame of socio-spatial exclusion, i.e. prisons lie far away from cities and inmates are excluded from the rest of society. This paper, based on a fieldwork carried out in France (observations and interviews), proposes a broader view of the spatialities of exclusion, considering both the physical/geographical location of prison and the prison space experience of inmates. Analysing the actual physical location of prisons, they are situated closer than expected to big cities. Some local authorities argue in favour of the installation of a prison on their territory. At the French national scale, prisons overall are not as isolated from the rest of the population as it may seem. Interestingly, it is more at a local scale, where we discovered that people do not want to live close to a prison. Furthermore, inmates do not always experience prison space as a space of exclusion. These experiences represent a broad spectrum, and are very subjective, in particular some inmates feel themselves to be completely abandoned, whereas others recreate a localised world, full of experiences and encounters. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research concerning probation focuses on probationers' recidivism rates as the single determinant of success. The current study was conducted in two phases. To begin, a sample of 1000 participants were selected from those supervised in drug offender probation status during a two- and-a-half year study period. This included those who were successful in the program (graduates) and those who violated. Demographic and information concerning social controls were carefully considered to determine statistical inferences of inequality. These were held constant in determining whether time in the program negatively affects recidivism rates. Secondly, the project qualitatively examines participants' supervision within a community-based supervision program. The main findings were that despite the quantitative analysis's suggestion of social bias, sources of inequality were found to be more bureaucratic than social. As a result of these findings, programs may wish to increase individual attention given to participants rather than administrative procedure. With regard to method, this study shows that qualitative observation can fill in many of the holes remaining after a strictly quantitative approach. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Outsider narratives about battered women have significantly influenced the evolving terrain of domestic violence response in the U.S. since it began as a powerful grassroots movement more than three decades ago. As the "face" of the battered woman changed to include not only poor and socially disadvantaged women, but women from all walks of life, increased options for civil protection from batterers emerged and arrest laws and prosecution policies in most jurisdictions now offer improved legal response aimed at holding batterers accountable for their behavior. Paradoxically, expanded legal options have created unique access to justice issues for low and no income battered women who must consider carefully whether the risks of invoking the power of a hierarchical, top-down, legal system to end violence in their homes might outweigh the benefits of doing for them and for their children. With increased distance from grassroots activism that sparked what are undeniably significant improvements in domestic violence response by the legal system, narratives of no and low income battered women have reemerged as alternative stories within a system inherently resistant to the messiness legal plurality brings forth. This paper analyzes domestic violence response as a social project of law that must more fully embrace subject-based interpretations of battered women's experiences and disrupt the traditional verticality of legal problem solving. It concludes with discussion of domestic violence responses that reinforce bottom-up legal practice to expand access to justice for no and low income battered women. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our preliminary research suggests that serious academic dishonesty in law school may be treated confidentially, lightly punished, and not reported to bar examiners in connection with moral character disclosures. If this is true, it raises a number of troubling questions. First, it compromises or at least undermines the ability of bar examiners to conduct meaningful moral character investigations. Second, it may expose clients to the risk of representation by unscrupulous practitioners. Finally, it potentially undermines the culture of the legal profession, public perceptions of the profession, and the integrity of our system of justice.Our proposed paper has two goals. First, we will conduct a survey of law school administrators responsible for handling disciplinary matters and moral character reporting and interview bar examiners about their experience in moral character investigations. Second, depending what our research reveals, we will begin considering how law school disciplinary process and moral character procedures affect the legal profession. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many existing studies of courts and judicial power suggest that courts have been assigned or have assumed a number of vital functions around the world ranging from defining and enforcing the boundaries of executive power; institutionalizing the protection of individual rights and liberties; enforcing and signaling a state's commitment to property rights and providing political insurance that facilitates peaceful transitions of power, among others. While most studies Do these functional roles emerge in a consistent pattern? Are they the product of consistent sets of incentives? Or are they highly culturally and historically specific? The objective here is to step back to develop more general, cross-national and cross-disciplinary theories that will help us to understand the conditions under which courts and judicial authorities play one important role rather than another, play several roles at once, or fail to play any significant role at all. That we are looking at nations, judicial institutions and political traditions that are so fundamentally different, that are embedded in such distinctly different cultural, economic, political and historical circumstances poses a daunting challenge. This paper proposes a method, a means that might generate real opportunities for developing and eventually testing theories that might explain not only the DNA of constitutional courts, but the sequencing of that DNA - the circumstances and conditions that might be expected predictably to generate and entrench the exercise of judicial power in comparative perspective. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legislators possess a variety of means to formally constrain a court, from curtailing the docket or changing the duties or composition of the jurists to directly reversing the decision either through the passage of a statute or adoption of a constitution amendment. Directly challenging the court is not the only option available to legislators and other political actors. Through ad hominem attacks against the court or the introduction of legislation criticizing the court, political actors may create a political environment hostile to the judiciary (Liptak 2006). Since legislators often respond to the decisions of the court in one form or another (Whittington 1999, 2007; Pickerill 2004), how and the degree to which political actors respond to the court may indicate the willingness to formally constrain or defile the judiciary.The reactions by other government actors and the subsequent counter-reactions by the judiciary indicate that the existing literature on judicial independence is narrowly conceived. Many theories of judicial independence suggest that autonomy is measured by the degree to which justices are insulated from pressure or undue influence by the other branches of the government (see Epstein et al. 2001; Moustafa 2003). However, studies that measures the institutional arrangements of the court, the decisions of the court, or when the decisions are overturned or ignored face important limitations (Larkins 1996). In this paper, I examine will examine how members of the United States Congress and the Parliament of Canada responded to judicial opinions from their respective Supreme Court during their 2007 term. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low-income householders are especially at risk of contending not only with housing that is unaffordable but also the substandard living conditions and poor health outcomes that commonly coincide with poor housing options. A growing body of inter-disciplinary research has pointed to housing and neighborhood quality as significant culprits of health disparities that disproportionately impact low-income and minority populations. The existence of laws and codes established by local, state and federal entities and designed to protect the health and welfare of inhabitants greatly facilitate efforts to enforce the rights of housing residents and ensure a decent, healthy living environment. Nevertheless, legal approaches are not as widely used among the poor when addressing various housing hardships. The barriers to legal strategies, which include a lack of knowledge of or access to the legal system, leave poor families contending with common problems such as those in housing without legal recourse despite the fact that legal options exist to protect their rights. The goal of the present research is to examine how the law can be better used as an instrument in addressing housing and neighborhood conditions that pose health risks among poor householders. In treating the law as a pathway through which to mediate the negative health effects of housing, I argue that legal interventions may serve to intercept and alleviate the harmful links between poor housing and poor health. In depicting 12 (of 72) in depth case study reviews where there is a health-related risk and a justiciable claim in a housing case, I illustrate the outcomes of legal interventions among poor householders and show how legal framing serves in the interest of protecting health and advancing opportunities for rights claiming and the promotion social justice and equality in the civil justice system. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keith Whittington's recent work (2007) argues that, despite recurrent claims about the antidemocratic nature of the judiciary, the Court actually tends to reflect the ideological preferences of the other, democratically elected branches. Furthermore, Whittington claims that the Court plays a fundamental role in establishing a new political regime, a fact which is evident among the appointments of, borrowing Skowronek's terminology, reconstructive presidents. This paper will take this analysis one step further. While Whittington claims that the effects of regime change can be seen in the relationship between the president and the courts, the focus here will be more specific. The main question that will be addressed is, do presidents seem to consciously choose their appointees with the maintenance and expansion of the new regime in mind? To answer this question, a historical analysis will be undertaken of some of the appointments to the Supreme Court of reconstructive presidents. Specifically, the appointments of Thomas Jefferson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt will be considered in order to determine if these men had good reason to suppose that these judges would be faithful to the values and preferences of the new regime, thus demonstrating a conscious effort to remake the judiciary in the mold of their particular revolutions. By examining the pre-Court records of all eleven appointments, a pattern emerges whereby three types of nominee can be identified, here termed patronage, ideological or regional/political, all of which seem to play an important role in establishing the new political regime represented by each reconstructive president. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Judicial efficiency, measured by how quickly a lawsuit is resolved, has long been considered an important criterion for a successful judiciary. Objectivity is another such criterion. At times, these criteria theoretically are at odds: by increasing perceived judicial objectivity, efficiency may be reduced. An example of this tradeoff is when an appellate court vacates a decision and remands a lawsuit to a trial court for further proceedings. The remanded lawsuit can be assigned either to the original trial judge or to a different trial judge. If the lawsuit is remanded back to the original trial judge, one would expect the remanded lawsuit to be handled more efficiently. The original judge already will be familiar with all of the facts and will need less time to understand the issues. The original judge may, however, have a desire to have the result on remand be the same as the original trial result. This desire may result in a decrease in judicial objectivity. Conversely, a new trial judge should have no appreciable interest in the results of the retrial --- and hence be more objective. However, the new judge will likely be slower at resolving the lawsuit.To test the tradeoff empirically, this study evaluates the level of judicial objectivity and judicial efficiency in appellate court remands. More specifically, the study evaluates cases, some of which were remanded to the original judge and some to a different judge. Efficiency is measured by the length of time the lawsuit pended after remand, and objectivity is measured by how often the remanded lawsuit was decided in favor of the original prevailing party. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japanese law has long provided for kinds of conciliation or settlement. However, when reintroduced under a new name, "alternative dispute resolution," this tradition is now seen as an innovation based on foreign models. The diffusion of ADR is one of the central issues for Japan's judicial reform since the late 1990s, and new ADR law was enacted in 2007. Despite its concept of "alternative justice," ADR has been controlled by the legal establishment, the Ministry of Justice and the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, in particular. The legal establishment has successfully established and maintained jurisdictional barriers at the legal filed in Japan. Similarly, the legal establishment is getting to dominate the new ADR field as well. The regulations introduced by the legal establishment have become obstacles hindering non-lawyers' entry to the ADR market. Consequently, most of certified ADR providers are operated by local bar associations. Unlike the United States, non-lawyers in Japan are not successful in professionalizing themselves as ADR experts. I argue that the persistent dominance by the legal establishment and the absence of growing public criticism toward official justice are some of the factors that non-lawyers are not able to claim their jurisdiction in the ADR field. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan has been an outlier among advanced industrial democracy in that the level of judicialization seems to be low. This paper asks whether this is changing. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we trace and analyze recent developments in rights adjudication in Chile, in both the ordinary courts and the Constitutional Tribunal. In past work, we have each demonstrated the general quiescence and conservatism of courts in Chile, and we have placed heavy emphasis on historical-institutional variables to explain this long-standing passivity in rights cases. Very recently, however, signs of change in judicial attitudes and practices regarding rights have emerged in lower courts and in the Constitutional Tribunal (though far less so in the higher ranks of the ordinary courts). We document these changes and explain how they were made possible by institutional reforms: the creation of the Judicial Academy and the criminal procedure reform, for the ordinary courts; and the change in rules regarding appointment and standing, for the Constitutional Tribunal. We then use this analysis to reflect on debates about the origins of judicial reform and the roots of judicial behavior, in Latin America and in general. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to declining financial support from the government sector, the legal profession has assumed primary responsibility for the delivery of legal services to persons of limited means. Law firms, particularly large firms, have committed substantial resources to this effort, both in terms of direct financial support and through the pro bono services of their lawyers. However, as the market for fee-based legal services tightens, it might be expected that large firms will become more reluctant to allocate significant resources to the delivery of legal services to persons of limited means, while at the same time, the demand for those services will increase. Drawing upon a series of interviews with law firm pro bono partners, administrators from non-profit provider organizations, and law school clinicians, this paper addresses the effects of an economic down turn on availability of legal services and access to justice. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, justice has been pictured in distinct manners in Brazilian popular culture. From shows depicting legal issues to crime cases and the demands of civil society, media has been an important part of the discussion of law in Brazilian society. This paper considers three aspects of justice deliverance in Brazil as presented in the media. Those arguments can be seen in reality television shows like "Ratinho," in which disputes between two parties are mediated by the main character, who decides the quarrels. Ratinho is a lawyer and a judge who is able to deliver justice through the media. Crime control can be observed in "Elite Squad," a movie based on the true story of a Rio de Janeiro's Police Force Elite Team who fought criminal in difficult circumstances and in which rules are not necessarily followed by the book. The civil society aspect is presented in "Cidade de Deus (City of God)," a movie that shows the enforcement of law according to the narrative of a drug dealer and a young teenager who has not joined a gang. The paper describes how those media products depict perceptions of justice in Brazilian society in different contexts. In conclusion, the paper states that media products are an important instrument to understand the delivery of justice in Brazil and its significance to different social groups. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Glover v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court suggested that judicial review of claims of ineffective assistance of counsel at sentencing may be different in non-capital discretionary sentencing regimes than in mandatory non-capital sentencing regimes. Ineffective assistance claims are ordinarily decided under the two-prong Strickland test: whether counsel rendered deficient performance and whether that performance was prejudicial. Relying on Glover, several lower courts have held that the Strickland prejudice analysis does not apply in non-capital discretionary sentencing regimes. This paper argues that the lower courts are incorrect that the prejudice analysis should be affected by whether a non-capital defendant was sentenced in a discretionary rather than a mandatory regime. Instead, the paper argues, the performance inquiry for discretionary systems should differ from mandatory systems. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In June 2007, Japan introduced consumer group litigation system under the Consumer Contract Act. A consumer group certified by the Prime Minister may demand injunction against a business operator for its unconscionable contract. The system will shortly be expanded to cover misleading representations under the Premiums and Representation Act as well as unfair conducts under the Specified Commercial Transaction Act. In this paper, I will start to explain the legislative background and outline of the consumer group litigation system, and then I will study its remaining issues including corrective redress and funding. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Japan, the lay judge system will start no later than May 2009. This new system will have the deliberation process by 6 lay judges and 3 professional judges. The purpose of this study is to analyze the text data of the deliberation process through the text mining. The subject of analysis is the record of mock trial in a District Court. The text mining quantified the appearance frequency of words in the text. And we conducted the correspondence analysis and cluster analysis to derive the relationships of correlation and co-occurrence between top 25 frequency words. This approach enables generalization of the analysis process while keeping the aspect of text analysis in the qualitative psychological dimension. As a result, we could get the 2 dimensional map that shows the arrangement of each cluster and the relations of correlation and co-occurrence between the professional judges and the lay judges. As the distances in the Map become closer, the speaker and the content of speech appeared more frequently during the deliberation. Professional judges are mutually positioned closer to each other, as compared with lay judges, and, in particular, their positions are almost the same, which suggests that the content and direction of their speech were very close. In contrast, lay judges are positioned in a rather wide range at the center of a medium-size cluster, which indicates that they vocalized their opinions and discussed the case from their own viewpoints as compared with the professional judges. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Afghanistan, both Afghans and foreign actors have stated ambitious goals for achieving a rule of law. The discrepancies between stated goals and actual achievements are daunting. Although program agendas extend across a broad field, adopting an extensive view of "rule of law", actual achievements to date have fallen far short of implementing even a very narrow conception of the rule of law. "Pluralism" may define competing coherent systems of legal norms; in Afghanistan there is competition between alternative incoherent systems, each claiming a political constituency. Building upon the author's four years working with Afghan institutions, this paper explores available paradigms for rebuilding legal systems in conflict situations; explores choices explicit or implicit in Afghan and donor initiatives, and seeks to identify some of the paradoxes that must be addressed in attempting to implement technical legal assistance programs in Afghanistan. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2005 a landslide struck the Southern California coastal town of La Conchita, destroying some three dozen homes and taking the lives of 10 people. It was the second significant landslide to hit the town in ten years; the town offers interesting lessons in the ways in which our legal system works actively to make so-called natural disasters like the La Conchita slide not only possible but inevitable. A trial that stemmed from a similar slide in 1995 deemed the event a "natural" calamity in which defendants played no significant part. In a 2008 suit against the same defendants, however, plaintiffs relied on a different causal theory to win damages in the millions of dollars for the 2005 slide. Differences between the causal theories on which the two cases turned highlight the difficulties that our system faces in sustaining itself in the natural environment. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I). Title: Law and Public Policy in the United States:a discussion for absolute monism 2). Table of Contents Chapter I.What is LawChapter II.Law and IdeologyChapter III.Comparative Study: A Selection of European Union Cases Chapter IV. Legal NormsChapter V. Emergence of a Transnational Norm: Case Study on Children and Behavioral HealthChapter VI.Domestic State Law and International Law3). ContentUnited States and International Law:A Comparative Paradigm for Absolute Monism Monism is a conceptual theory which holds that domestic law, that is national law, and international law, are a part of the same body of law. Here, two separate legal systems are applied to relevant situations as one legal order. Dualism results in the maintenance of two separate legal systems, existing completely independent of the other. This is due to the question of whether one legal system, must be categorized as superior, or supreme over the other.Transnational Law is the common field of law where both legal systems emerge to combine into a new legal order, applicable to cases, issues, that are commonly found under situations arising out of transnational activity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2004, China has promulgated a new law to strengthen its traditional lay assessor system and the people's court in order to meet the challenges of new generations. Japan is also set to begin a new quasi-jury trial in 2009. South Korea has already begun a 5 year experiment in allowing lay judges to adjudicate criminal cases in all-citizen jury trials. Thailand has debated, prior to a 2006 military coup, the possible introduction of a lay justice system, and so did the Taiwanese government. The bar association and critically engaged legal scholars in Philippine have recently discussed the possible introduction of their own lay judge system. While India abandoned its jury system in 1960, Sri Lanka continues to rely on a jury trial to adjudicate criminal cases. Many of former Soviet republics in Central Asia have also decided to introduce their own systems of lay participation in law. This paper examines the historical significance and political ramification of the social, cultural, and legal transformation of the emerging adjudicatory systems in Asia. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1998, the French Parliament enacted a law regarding the struggle against discrimination (1). In response to this legislation, the French Minister of Justice implemented a new judicial structure (the "Houses of Law") in areas which had been defined as "districts in difficulty" or "areas where the law is not applied anymore." The purpose of this structure was to provide advice to inner city inhabitants within these Houses of Law with the aim to reduce inequalities between the citizens who can hire private lawyers and the ones who cannot. First, this research examines the means by which the French Government implemented these affirmative action policies, which are an obstacle in the state's pursuit of the principle of equality; a fundamental precept of the French Republic (2). Instead of focusing on people, governmental policy targeted geographic areas, specifically inner city. Secondly, this research studies the work of private lawyers operating within the public sector judicial structures and asks whether these "Houses of Law" are equitable arrangements for all citizens due to their locational situation. --(1) "The French law of 29 July 1998 on the fight against various kinds of exclusion is presented as an impressive three-fold scheme, targeting improvement of the effectiveness of social rights in order to prevent the development of various processes causing vulnerability and setting up instruments for observing and monitoring social exclusion. The measures adopted essentially fall into four categories: employment policy, the right to lodging, the problem of over-indebtedness and ensuring minimum resources for those at the greatest disadvantage" (W. Cassiers, "Fighting exclusion: dignity at stake. An analysis of the French law of 29 July 1998", Belgian Review of Social Security, 2, 1999). (2) According to the first article of the French Constitution: "France shall be an indivisible, secular, democratic and social Republic. It shall ensure the equality of all citizens before the law, without distinction of origin, race or religion. It shall respect all beliefs". According to French law (Art. 225-1 of the New Penal Code) no one can be discriminated against based upon "...origin, sex, family situation, state of health, disability, customs, political opinions, union activities, membership or non-membership, real or supposed, of a particular ethnic group, race or religion…". ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]