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After sustained reductions in robberies and thefts in 2016, the city of Montevideo, Uruguay, experienced a sudden increase in these crimes in late 2017. Using interrupted time series regressions, and controlling for seasonality using ARIMA models, we investigated three potential explanations for this increase: (1) the failure of a hot spots policing program to maintain crime decreases; (2) improved crime recording by police patrols using tablet computers; and (3) the change from an inquisitorial to an adversarial criminal justice procedure. We found that the hot spots policing program that began in April 2016 continued to be associated with crime reductions during 2017, that the increases observed after November 2017 were strongly associated with the new criminal justice procedure, and that tablets had a positive, albeit negligible, effect. The findings illustrate that criminal justice reforms, desirable as such reforms may be, can have unintended consequences on crime levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the Spanish Competition Authority’s (CNMC) most ground-breaking implementation of the bidder exclusion for competition infringement since March 2019. Through an analysis of key case-law and regulations, we explore the CNMC’s traditional approach to debarment decisions and its subsequent reconsideration following influential judgments from the High Court of Justice of Catalonia. This study sheds light on the evolving landscape of the bidder exclusion, and provides valuable insights into its legal nature, application procedure, and potential effects on fostering fair and transparent competition in Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we compare deterrence, settlement, and litigation spending under adversarial and inquisitorial systems. We present a basic litigation model with three sequential stages—care, settlement, litigation—and we test the predictions on experimental data. In line with our theoretical expectations, we find that, compared with the adversarial system, the inquisitorial system is associated with lower litigation spending, lower rates of cases settled, and tends to strengthen deterrence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We explore costly deliberation by two differentially informed and possibly biased jurors: A hawk Lones and a dove Moritz alternately insist on a verdict until one concedes. Debate assumes one of two genres, depending on bias: A juror, say Lones, is intransigent if he wishes to prevail and reach a conviction for any type of Moritz next to concede. In contrast, Lones is ambivalent if he wants the strongest conceding types of Moritz to push for acquittal. Both jurors are ambivalent with small bias or high delay costs. As Lones grows more hawkish, he argues more forcefully for convictions, mitigating wrongful acquittals. If dovish Moritz is intransigent, then he softens (strategic substitutes), leading to more wrongful convictions. Ambivalent debate is new, and yields a novel dynamic benefit of increased polarization. For if Moritz is ambivalent, then he toughens (strategic complements), and so, surprisingly, a more hawkish Lones leads to fewer wrongful acquittals and convictions. So more polarized but balanced debate can improve communication, unlike in static cheap talk. We also show that patient and not too biased jurors vote against their posteriors near the end of the debate, optimally playing devil’s advocate. We shed light on the adversarial legal system, peremptory challenges, and cloture rules.

This paper attempts to describe expert opinions from a comparative and genre-based perspective. It addresses the central question of whether expert opinions follow any specific rhetorical and organizational patterns and the extent to which these may have been imposed by the respective judicial institutions in Russia, Bulgaria and the USA. After reviewing the institutional contexts and constraints imposed on experts and their opinions, the analysis focuses on exploring the status of generic structure in three sets of documents: US common law opinions, Russian and Bulgarian civil law opinions. The concept of 'generic model' has been approached from the perspective of Genre Analysis using the model of 'rhetorical moves' (Swales 1990; Tardy & Swales 2014). The analyses have revealed that expert witnesses can be described in terms of individual text segments, each with distinct rhetorical or communicative purpose(s). While most identified text segments are shared by all the opinions, irrespective of the legal system, the major difference is that the generic structures of Russian and Bulgarian opinions are strictly regulated by law, which results in increased levels of detail and conventionality. In contrast, the discourse community of American experts has much more leeway in shaping the conventions of the genre, as long as the experts take account of the general standards contained in the Federal Rules of Evidence. American opinions reflect not only the expertise of their authors but also their individual style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Opinião Jurídica is the property of Revista Opiniao Juridica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Cuestiones Políticas is the property of Revista Cuestiones Politicas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Dissatisfaction with the administration of justice is as old as law proclaimed the distinguished American legal scholar Roscoe Pound in 1906. The system of administration of justice has been under considerable scrutiny in Cyprus following the excessive delays in resolving disputes that are highlighted in reports such as the European Union's Justice Scoreboard, the World Bank's Doing Business Reports as well as European Commission papers on Cyprus, urging authorities to modernize the system in order to be able to meet the demands following the financial crisis. For this reason, various experts have been assigned with the task of identifying the problems and coming up with proposals and solutions. The discussions, though, are not new as similar problems have been presented in common law jurisdictions, in particular, but they have been tackled decades ago, with the adoption of reforms that moved the adversarial system of justice closer to civilian stereotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In criminal cases involving eyewitness reports, psychologists or psychiatrists may be recruited as expert witnesses to help triers of facts to evaluate eyewitness statements, on the assumption that psychologists and psychiatrists are real experts, familiar with scientific progress about how memory works. But are they knowledgeable concerning the science of memory? We assessed the knowledge about eyewitness memory of experts from France and Norway, countries having different legal systems, that is inquisitorial and adversarial, respectively. We reanalysed the results of a Norwegian psychologists and psychiatrists survey and compared the results with survey data of a sample of French psychologists and psychiatrists serving as judicial experts. The French sample performed inferior relative to the Norwegian sample. More precisely, discrepancies in correct answers were found on seven critical items related to both experimental and clinical psychology. Such weaknesses in the knowledge about memory are briefly discussed with regard to psychological education and to legal systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vast majority of accused in Canada are released on bail with conditions pending the resolution of their case. As members of the court-room workgroup, the defence, the Crown, and the Justice of the Peace (JP) are tasked with negotiating a set of release conditions in a timely fashion; yet little work has attempted to understand how exchanges between these court-room participants shape the number and type of bail conditions imposed and how closely their in-court actions align with their legally mandated roles. Data collected from court-room observations of 257 bail cases in southwestern Ontario show that the distinct occupational roles of the defence, the Crown, and JPs are blurred within bail proceedings, contributing to a culture of numerous conditions and restrictive releases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Chilena de Derecho is the property of Revista Chilena de Derecho and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this contribution it is argued that the adversarial system of litigation does not serve the best interests of children upon divorce. After a brief analysis of the system it is concluded that other less aggressive means of litigation should be considered under upon divorce. Collaborative Law is suggested as a means to bear in mind. The fact that current practice of lawyer negotiations in respect of divorce is not too far removed from Collaborative Law may lead to practitioners readily accepting the concept.

At present, experts have become a mainstay of modern litigation, although criticisms suggest that the problems of how to fit expert knowledge comfortably into the method of adversarial fact-finding are numerous, significant, and without simple solutions. Concerns about partisanship and lack of scientific competence by adjudicators to evaluate contradictory expert testimony have been widely recognized in the traditional use of party-called expert witnesses. While such concerns cannot be wholly ameliorated, there may be alternative mechanisms that can help. One solution would be to call for the use of neutral court-appointed experts, to create a nonpartisan source of expert knowledge. A system of neutral court-appointed experts is an advisory tribunal to the court that could deliver "those general truths, applicable to the issue, which they may treat as final and decisive." However, no matter in which country, the choice of appointing neutral experts still seems to be a rare option for trial judges to consider and exercise. An obvious question would be: Why are neutral experts not used more frequently at trial? This paper did a study on court-appointed experts, with a focus on challenges that such mechanism faces. Part I examines problems in the traditional use of expert witnesses in an adversarial system. Part II discusses the incentives to make greater use of court-appointed experts in a typical adversarial system and to what extent such mechanism would solve difficulties within the traditional use of party-called expert witnesses. Part III further explores and analyzes obstacles that a typical neutral expert system nowadays encounters when it operates in practice. Taking all analysis together, Part IV makes an overall evaluation of the mechanism of court-appointed experts.

Courts are starting to keep data about the numbers of litigants who personally file court documents and appear without counsel. The growth in numbers of unrepresented litigants is aptly described as a phenomenon and can be attributed to various causes. Whether or not it is a ‘problem’ however, is arguable. This article explores the concept of the unrepresented litigant in a strange and unnavigable milieu and the ethical duties of lawyers as officers of the court in that context. Focussing on Australian examples, the primary aim of the article is to highlight the lack of guidance in both codes of ethical conduct and judicial commentary on ethical issues for lawyers faced with an unrepresented opponent. Ethical issues at various stages of the dispute resolution process are discussed, including the complexities involved with unbundled legal services. The author argues that as an officer of the court, counsel should assist the judicial officer and consider the situation through a lens of ethical reasoning, while recognising the dilemma this can pose for lawyers who must respect their duties to their own clients. The article concludes that lawyers must abide by their ethical responsibilities whether or not the opponent has representation, while acknowledging that this may be challenging for a variety of reasons. It also suggests that the absence of any reference to unrepresented litigants in ethical codes of conduct should be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike most Latin American countries, the implementation of restorative justice in Chile has not been regulated by law. In Chile, restorative justice is implemented on a limited basis through pilot programs limited to specific jurisdictions. Most of these pilot programs establish prosecutors as gatekeepers when referring criminal cases to restorative justice programs. Regardless of this crucial role, there is a lack of studies addressing prosecutors’ definitions toward restorative justice and the obstacles they face when referring criminal cases to restorative programs. This study fills this gap by interviewing high-ranking prosecutors from Chile (N = 25), exploring their definitions and obstacles in applying restorative programs within the adversarial system. Our findings reveal the existence of contrasting restorative justice definitions, including victim-centered perspectives and conceptualizations focused on the rehabilitation and punishment of the accused. Also, our findings suggest that legal rules and policies play a key role in the prosecutors’ application of restorative justice programs. The obstacles to apply restorative justice programs include two main themes: (1) prosecutors’ conflicting roles and duties toward victims and (2) values incompatible with restorative justice promoted by public defenders. We conclude by highlighting policy and training implications to expand the use of restorative justice programs in adversarial settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the author analyses criminal procedural rules created as an expression of the synthesis of the common-law accusatorial and the continental mixed criminal procedural justice system in International Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The field of analytical treatment in this paper is limited not only to textual material of criminal procedural rules, but the author also attempts to demonstrate the practical achievements and implications of criminal procedural institutes. In Part 1 (published in this issue) the author deals with the general concept of the ICTY procedural law. More specifically, the research will focus on sources of procedural law and it follows the different pre-trial procedural stages. Furthermore, the reasons of these synthesis are revealed and categorized into those caused by the practical need - to make the process faster and more efficient (justified by the right to an expeditious trial), and those originating from the flexible adaptation of procedural rules to the legal habits and type of education of lawyers who are referred to the application of the rules. The aim of the paper is to point out the practical consequences of the criminal procedure roles and to outline their practical achievements, depending on the underlying factors. This goal is of great practical importance, considering that legal theory in this area has no influence on establishing criminal procedural rules, but it is also out of step with the critical analysis of some criminal procedural law institutes that are gradually being transferred from the ICTY to other international or national criminal procedure rules. The selected issue has been fairly neglected in our literature, although actualized in recent amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure of Serbia. By these changes, the continental type of mixed system of criminal procedure has been replaced by the model inspired by Anglo-American criminal procedural law.

In this paper, the author analyses criminal procedural rules created as an expression of the synthesis of the common-law accusatorial and the continental mixed criminal procedural justice system in International Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The field of analytical treatment in this paper is limited not only to textual material of criminal procedural rules, but the author also attempts to demonstrate the practical achievements and implications of criminal procedural institutes. Furthermore, the reasons of these synthesis are revealed and categorized into those caused by the practical need to make the process faster and more efficient (justified by the right to an expeditious trial), and those originating from the flexible adaptation of procedural rules to the legal habits and type of education of lawyers who are referred to the application of the rules. The aim of the paper is to point out the practical consequences of the criminal procedure roles and to outline their practical achievements, depending on the underlying factors. This goal is of great practical importance, considering that legal theory in this area has no influence on establishing criminal procedural rules, but it is also out of step with the critical analysis of some criminal procedural law institutes that are gradually being transferred from the ICTY to other international or national criminal procedure rules. The selected issue has been fairly neglected in our literature, although actualized in recent amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure of Serbia. By these changes, the continental type of mixed system of criminal procedure has been replaced by the model inspired by Anglo-American criminal procedural law.

This is the first part of a two-part article, which calls for the removal of terms such as rights and custody, including joint and shared custody, and visitation from the legal discourse in relation to children and their parents. This part demonstrates how the current discourse, based on the competing rights of the parents, leads inevitably to competitiveness and litigation, which are highly damaging to the child. The proposed paradigm of parental responsibilities requires establishing the needs of the specific child when there are parental disharmony and separation, while emphasizing the joint responsibilities of both parents to ensure that those needs are adequately met. This part also addresses the question: who has parental responsibilities, when a child is born as a result of Assisted Reproductive Technology, and also the quasi-parental role of the court. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An important requirement for admission as an attorney or advocate is to be a "fit and proper" person. Lawyers are also struck from the respective rolls of advocates or attorneys if they cease to be "fit and proper". This requirement of being a "fit and proper" person is not defined or described in legislation. It is left to the subjective interpretation of and application by seniors in the profession and ultimately the court. In the apartheid years this requirement was applied arbitrarily but today the question may be asked why some lawyers who have been found to be "fit and proper" do not act as such. The pre-admission character screening of lawyers seems not to be effective any more. Post- admission moral development is imperative.

El presente estudio analiza los supuestos de prueba documentada regulados en aquellos códigos de las entidades federativas mexicanas que han adecuado el proceso penal al sistema acusatorio con tendencia adversarial. En ese sentido, se entiende por prueba documentada aquellas diligencias, principalmente declaraciones, realizadas durante la etapa de investigación que la ley otorga valor probatorio al no poder asistir el órgano de prueba a la audiencia del juicio oral por razones ajenas a su voluntad.This study analyzes the cases of the documented proof in those codes regulated the Mexican states that have appropriate criminal proceedings prone to adversarial system. In that sense, it is understood by those measures documented evidence, primarily statements made during the investigation stage that the law gives the probative value could not attend the court hearing to test the trial for reasons beyond their control.

The inequity of medical negligence-based adversarial litigation in the USA, UK and Australia is a recognised target for reform. Plaintiff autonomy is weakened by a dispute resolution system that has evolved around lawyers, opposed experts and indemnity insurers; the need to prove breach and causation excludes compensation for other categories of medical injury; and patient access to the system is restricted by high entry costs. Two strategies towards reform are raised here. A short-term approach involves routine initial use of a single court-appointed medical expert for assessment of errors and liabilities, thus improving access while relegating fault-finding to a reserve role. In the longer term, adversarial litigation could be replaced in part by a no-fault compensation scheme - such as in Scandinavia, France and New Zealand - funded by taxation and by re-directed medical indemnity fees. Reforms such as these would be challenging to implement, but are achievable, so it is not premature for relevant bodies to consider a timetable for action., (© Royal College of Physicians 2023. All rights reserved.)

We investigated differences in judges' attitudes between court-appointed and party-appointed forensic psychiatric expert evidence, including who commissioned the report and how this impacted on the judges' perception of the evidence presented. We also investigated the experts' views on being either a party-appointed or court-appointed expert. This survey has no explicit preconceptions. It sought to gather information empirically. The attitudes towards the experts are seen both from the legal professionals' view and from that of the experts themselves. Two groups, one of 107 forensic psychiatric experts (39 psychologists, 65 psychiatrists and three non-specialist medical doctors), and one of 157 legal professionals (44 judges, 74 attorneys and 39 prosecutors) responded to an online survey. We found that 88% of the experts had been appointed by the court and of these, 73% preferred to be court-appointed. Fifty-one per cent had also been party-appointed and the most common principal was the defence attorney (46%). Sixty-two per cent of the judges who had an opinion stated that the party-appointed experts did not assist the court. This indicates that the judges clearly preferred independent court-appointed experts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Derecho Penal y Criminologia is the property of Universidad Externado de Colombia, Departamento de Derecho Penal y Criminologia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Themis: Revista de Derecho is the property of Themis Asociacion and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Themis: Revista de Derecho is the property of Themis Asociacion and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Quaestio Iuris (QI) is the property of Editora da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (EdUERJ) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study theoretically analyzes the effect of decoupling punitive damages under the adversarial system. Decoupling means taking punitive award windfalls away from plaintiffs and placing them into state-administered funds. In particular, it aims to reveal the incentive structure of decoupling and examine how this affects human behaviors. Although some commentators argue that decoupling punitive damages effectively disgorges plaintiffs of any potential windfall without diminishing the deterrent effect of punitive damages, we demonstrate that decoupling actually reduces the deterrence effect under the adversarial system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Estudios de Derecho is the property of Estudios de Derecho and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The jurisprudence of the burden of asserting contains the basic connotation, the applicable object and allocation or performance, etc. The burden of asserting means the litigant should assert favorable ultimate facts to avoid unfavorable outcomes. In the civil case of private interest, the burden of asserting has its intrinsic or independent values; the normal relationship between burden of asserting and burden of proof is concluded as 'he who asserts must prove'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses in depth, a conviction for the offense of receiving, issued by the Circuit Criminal Court 30 of Bogotá (Colombia), in term of the adversarial system provided in the Legislative Act 03 of 2002 and Act 906 of 2004. Through a deconstruction process, I show the arguments of the judicial office to take an adverse choice to the interests of the sentenced and the possible flaws that could incur, based on the guidelines of the criminal dogmatic, the improper evidence assessment and the failure of the constitutional principles underlying criminal proceedings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the entry into force of the new Criminal Procedure Code the legislator has regulated a new system of rules of criminal procedure, based on the continental system, but the contents of which include various elements of adversarial type. One of these adversarial elements is the preliminary hearing procedure of a witness, meaning the prosecutor may send a request to the judge of rights and liberties to proceed to hearing a witness during the criminal investigation phase, on the grounds that the witness will not be able to be heared during trial directly by the court. Thus, the author of this study wishes to bring to the attention of all readers a new procedure, which, so far, has not been frequently used in the judicial practice. Because the legislator has not allocated more than one article devoted to the preliminary witness hearing, the judicial bodies could face some difficulties regarding the interpretation and application of the procedure. Through this article, the author wishes to contribute to the development of criminal law doctrine, by explaining the content of this procedure in order to facilitate its application in practice. In the first part of the study, the author makes a brief introduction about what is to be addressed with reference to the history of preliminary witness hearing procedure. In this respect, it is shown that the usefulness of this procedure is indisputable in an adversarial system, but in terms of a continental system, such as the one in Romania, there are some doubts regarding this. In the second part, the author presents the new rules of the Criminal Procedure Code regarding the administration of evidence, rules that are significantly different that those provided by the old Code. Thus, if the defendant does not challenge the evidence during the criminal investigation, the court is not obliged to proceed to its readministration during the trial, unless it considers it necessary to establish the truth or it is requested by the parties or the prosecutor. Also, the impossibility of examining a witness during trial, for objective reasons, entitles the court to read his or her statement in open court and to put it into the parties' discussion. Because of this rule, the utility of the preliminary witness hearing is being questioned. In the thirdpart of the study, the author reviewed the procedure's utility this procedure through the jurisprudence of European Court of Human Rights, showing that, however, it is highly useful when a witness statement is the only evidence or when it is determined to conviction. According to the European Court, the defendant must be given adequate and proper opportunity to question the prosecution's witnesses. The author argues that this procedure ensures compliance with the European standards, meaning that, although a witness was heared during the criminal prosecution and not by the court and his or her statement is exclusive or determinant for a conviction, the defendant was given the opportunity to confront the witness, in front of a judge. In the fourth part of the study, the article of the Criminal Procedure Code dedicated to preliminary witness hearing is analyzed in detail by the author, who presents points of view on how it should be interpreted in practice and criminal doctrine. Afinal conclusion about the purpose of the preliminary witness hearing procedure is offered at the end of the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper studies the problem of an uninformed decision maker who acquires expert advice prior to making a decision. I show that it is less costly to hire partisan agents than impartial agents, especially under advocacy, and that the decision maker prefers partisan advocacy to other forms of institutions. I also extend the literature, originating with Dewatripont and Tirole (), to a setting with contracts that condition on information provided and not just the decision made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Justicia (0124-7441) is the property of Universidad Simon Bolivar and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article focuses on Youth Protection Act in Quebec which was amended in 2006. The auditor reflects on the history of this law which falls under the family protection law of Quebec and mentions that before the amendments the law had come under conflict with his legal framework. The author further mentions that the current law is not compatible with the adversarial system followed in Canada.

We consider a model where two adversaries can spend resources in acquiring public information about the unknown state of the world in order to influence the choice of a decision maker. We characterize the sampling strategies of the adversaries in the equilibrium of the game. We show that as the cost of information acquisition for one adversary increases, that person collects less evidence whereas the other adversary collects more evidence. We then test the results in a controlled laboratory setting. The behavior of subjects is close to the theoretical predictions. Mistakes are relatively infrequent (15%). They occur in both directions, with a higher rate of over-sampling (39%) than under-sampling (8%). The main difference with the theory is the smooth decline in sampling around the theoretical equilibrium. Comparative statics are also consistent with the theory, with adversaries sampling more when their own cost is low and when the other adversary's cost is high. Finally, there is little evidence of learning over the 40 matches of the experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ius et Praxis (07172877) is the property of Universidad de Talca and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explains the procedure of impeachment of the credibility of the witness in the Colombian accusatory criminal system established by the law 906 of 2004, analyzing some of its problematic aspects from a procedural and probative perspective; it exposes the mistakes of the concept "impeachment" in our environment and its relation to good judgment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the Woolf reforms presented in the 'Access to Justice--Final Report 1996,' by Lord Woolf. Function of the alternative dispute resolution; Characteristics of the civil justice system; Concept of blame.

The definition and role of the expert witness is reviewed. Two conceptual systems for viewing the world, the scientific method and the adversarial system, are compared. The reconciliation and integration of these two discrepant systems are discussed in terms of input versus outcome. The rules of evidence, as well as problems of communication between the systems, are reviewed with the aim of providing expert witnesses with a better understanding of effective testimony. Finally, collaboration between the two systems is called for in order to provide guidelines for both neuropsychologists and attorneys. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]