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Evidence in Context explains the key concepts of evidence law in England and Wales clearly and concisely, set against the backdrop of the broader social and theoretical contexts. It informs students of the major debates within the field, providing an explanation as to how and why the law has developed as it has. This third edition has been expanded to cover the field of civil evidence alongside its traditional criminal focus. It has also been thoroughly revised and updated to take into account recent developments in the law and the considerable amount of case law that has emerged since publication of the previous edition. This edition includes a new chapter structure, with new chapters on the adversarial trial and suspect evidence. Updated features include self test questions and advice on further reading at the end of each chapter key learning points which summarise the chapter as well as highlighting the most important issues New and updated chapters on topics such as adversarial trial, witnesses and suspect evidence. Addressing the evolving case law on subjects such as hearsay and bad character which were overhauled in the Criminal Justice Act 2003, this book is an essential purchase for anyone studying evidence law.

This book examines the evolution of international criminal procedure from the 1945–1946 Nuremberg and Tokyo trials to the present period. It is largely based on a normative-jurisprudential approach to the procedural rules, comparing both norms and case law of the relevant courts and tribunals. The book shows the possibility of classifying “international criminal procedure” as an autonomous concept and field of study, which is constantly evolving due to the interaction of different legal cultures that characterizes this subject matter and is derived from the varied procedures as established in both statutory law and jurisprudence. Far from being an autonomous entity, international criminal procedure now represents a great compromise between the legal traditions of different ICC member States. What emerges is the historical evolution of an international criminal procedure with a unique identity, a very real “third way” between the traditional dichotomy of common law and civil law, between the Anglo-Saxon and the European Roman Law-oriented legal traditions. The book will be of interest to academics, scholars, and researchers working in the areas of international criminal law, comparative law, criminal procedure, and legal history, as well as judges and international legal professionals.

This book is the first of its kind to bridge the gap between corpus linguistics and forensic linguistics, illustrating the value of applying corpus linguistic data, tools, and methods in the analysis of language in the law, evidence, crime, and justice.The volume begins by taking stock of the use of corpus linguistics in the field of forensic and legal linguistics over its roughly thirty-year history as a foundation for critically reflecting on the current state-of play within the discipline. Wright uses this discussion as a jumping-off point from which to demonstrate the opportunities and challenges of using corpora and corpus methods to analyse language in legal and forensic contexts and offers possible solutions to collecting and analysing types of data that are typically not in the public domain. The five analysis chapters that follow apply corpus method to both established and emerging areas of forensic and legal linguistics, summarized in a concluding chapter which also looks ahead to future directions for the interface of the two fields.This book will be key reading for graduate students and researchers in forensic linguistics and corpus linguistics methods as well as scholars working across disciplines interested in the intersection between language and the law.

This collection explores a variety of issues facing contemporary juries, bringing together innovative research from different disciplines and jurisdictions. The debate stems from a real concern that criticism of the jury may lead to a loss of public confidence in the institution and that this may renew government efforts to further restrict the role of the jury in criminal proceedings in England and Wales. This work offers an interdisciplinary approach presenting insights from legal, psychological and criminological perspectives, thus bypassing traditional borders and presenting a cohesive view. Issues discussed reflect the rapid advances in technology, changing dynamics and behaviours in society, and challenges that have been aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Whilst the focus is primarily on juries in England, Wales, Scotland and across Ireland in terms of challenges and opportunities, the collection also invites a comparative perspective, drawing on experiences and related research in other jurisdictions. The book will be of interest to academics, researchers and policy-makers working in the areas of criminal law and procedure, criminal justice, criminology and psychology.

'Inquisition'was the new form of criminal procedure that was developed by the lawyer-pope Innocent III and given definitive form at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. It has since developed a notoriety which has obscured the reality of the procedure, and it is this that Professor Kelly is first concerned with here. In contrast to the old Roman system of relying on a volunteer accuser-prosecutor, who would be punished in case of acquittal, the inquisitorial judge himself served as investigator, accuser, prosecutor, and final judge. A probable-cause requirement and other safeguards were put in place to protect the rights of the defendant, but as time went on some of these defences were modified, abused, or ignored, most notoriously among papally appointed heresy-inquisitors; but in all cases appeal and redress were at least theoretically possible. Unlike continental practice, in England inquisitorial procedure was mainly limited to the local church courts, while on the secular side native procedures developed, most notably a system of multiple investigators/accusers/judges, known collectively as the jury. Private accusers, however, were still to be seen, illustrated here in the final pair of studies on'appeals'of sexual rape.

Slapper and Kelly's The English Legal System explains and critically assesses what law is, how it is made and applied, and how it affects the general public.This latest edition has not only been restructured and updated, but extensively refocused, to provide a reliable analysis of the contemporary legal system in the sociopolitical uncertainty of a post-Brexit, post-Covid UK.It retains the key learning features of: useful chapter summaries which act as a good checkpoint for students; ‘food for thought'questions at the end of each chapter to prompt critical thinking and reflection; sources for further reading and suggested websites at the end of each chapter to point students towards further learning pathways; and a fully updated online resource for students and instructors. Trusted by generations of academics and students, this authoritative textbook is a permanent fixture in this ever-evolving subject.

Covering both the principles and practice of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), this important new textbook equips students not only with a contextual understanding of the role of ADR in adjudicating civil disputes but also with the different forms of mediation and ADR available and the key issues in their application.Providing theoretical and practical insights, the book begins with a critical examination of the tenets on which ADR is based, where it sits in relation to civil law, and how it is applied in different national contexts. It discusses the various areas in which mediation or arbitration can be applied, from family mediation to restorative justice, and includes chapters on the ethics of mediation and its psychology, as well as an introduction to online dispute resolution (ODR). The concluding chapter offers some thoughts on the benefits and challenges of mediation.Featuring a glossary of key terms, detailed case law, end-of-chapter problem questions, and advice around listening skills during a mediation process, Mediation and other forms of Alternative Dispute Resolution is an essential textbook for any student approaching ADR for the first time and offers practitioners an opportunity to reflect on the context of ADR.

Police Custody in Ireland brings together experts from policing studies, law, criminology, and psychology, to critically examine contemporary police custody in Ireland, what we know about it, how it operates, how it is experienced, and how it might be improved.This first-of-its-kind collection focuses exclusively on detention in Garda Síochána stations, critically examining it from human rights and best practice perspectives. It examines the physical environment of custody, police interview techniques, existing protections, rights, and entitlements, and experiences of specific communities in custody, such as children, ethnic minorities, non-English speakers, the Mincéir/Traveller community, and those with intellectual disabilities or Autism Spectrum Disorder. Police Custody in Ireland gives a snapshot of garda custody as it is now and makes important recommendations for necessary future improvements.An accessible and compelling read, this book will be of interest to those engaged in policing and criminology, as well as related areas of interest such as human rights, youth justice and disability studies.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

Evidence: Law and Context explains the key concepts of evidence law in England and Wales clearly and concisely, set against the backdrop of the broader political and theoretical contexts. The book focuses on the essential topics commonly found on Evidence courses, covering both criminal evidence and civil evidence. Taking a contextual approach, the authors show how wider policy debates and societal trends have impacted upon the recent evolution of the law, helping to explain how and why the law has developed.The sixth edition has been revised to include: the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the introduction of the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE), and updates on previous statistics on the increase in the use of ‘show pleas,'false confessions, and miscarriages of justice, alongside a comparative perspective on how the American criminal practice has evolved along a parallel line. Learning points summarise the major principles and rules covered and practical examples are used throughout the text to give better understanding as to how the technical rules are applied in practice. Self-test questions are included in the book, helping students to test their understanding and prepare for assessment.Well written, clear, and with a logical structure throughout, it contains all the information necessary for any undergraduate evidence law module.

The Political Economy of Plea Bargaining provides the political, economic, and cultural context for understanding the evolution of plea bargaining as a juridical technology implemented to ensure the efficient administration of violations of criminal law.Across two parts, this book contends that the confluence of political, economic, and cultural factors necessary to enhance the legal preservation of the slave system and white supremacy spatiotemporally coincided with burgeoning Northern industrial capitalism and the liberty of contract doctrine, and that each was contextualized within hegemonic liberal republican ideology out of which grew the implementation of an efficient technology of juridical control achieving normative legal status – plea bargaining. It argues that, as with their predecessors, contemporary actors operating within the criminal legal system and who are responsible for administering plea bargaining are perpetuating a system reproducing a steering mechanism that historically constitutes a through line from Reconstruction to the present day. Following Von Mises, these actors serve as useful innocents, modern-day confused and misguided sympathizers. They are juridical actors who inherited and are perpetuating a system of conflict resolution that serves to maintain a form of social control uniquely situated to historically relevant political, economic, and cultural power in the United States.The Political Economy of Plea Bargaining will be important reading for legal and social science academics researching and practicing within the field of criminal law and procedure. It will also act as a valuable guide to the debates surrounding plea bargaining for students with a keen interest in criminal law.

This book offers a scholarly and lively introduction to comparative criminal justice. It considers the state of crime globally and examines and reflects on the ways different countries and jurisdictions deal with the main stages in the criminal justice process, from policing to systems of trial, to sentencing, and punishment. This popular bestseller has been fully updated and expanded for the fifth edition. This textbook provides the reader with: A comparative perspective on criminal justice and its main components Insight into methods for comparative research and analysis A discussion of global trends such as the global drop in crime, the punitive turn, penal populism, privatisation, international policing, and international criminal tribunals An understanding of the emerging concepts in comparative criminal justice such as security, surveillance, crimmigration, and penal exceptionalism Global and historical consideration of the death penalty and international criminal justice Increased attention to environmental crime, climate change, genocide, and police brutality The new edition has been fully updated to keep abreast with this growing field of study and research, to include a broader coverage of the global south, and new chapters on criminology and climate change, and on victimology.In this book, lists of further reading, study questions, and boxed case studies help bring comparative criminal justice to life for students and instructors alike. This book is perfect reading for advanced undergraduates and postgraduates taking courses in comparative criminal justice and those who are engaged in the study of global responses to crime.

This book presents an analysis of the effectiveness of European Union cross-border insolvency proceedings. It provides a thorough assessment of the development of cross-border insolvency proceedings established in the Regulation on Insolvency Proceedings ((EU) 2015/848) and how they contribute to the general goals of the EU internal market. Insolvency law has not been subject to a global mandatory harmonization process, with no globally biding legal act. Instead, the landscape of international insolvency law is characterized by a patchwork of national laws that seek to accommodate cross-border insolvencies and soft law agreements. In the EU cross-border insolvency law holds significant importance in ensuring the smooth operation of the internal market. Fostering international investments and legal foreseeability in insolvency proceedings, it upholds the fundamental freedoms within EU law. This book covers the main elements of EU cross-border insolvency law, such as jurisdiction, applicable law, recognition and enforcement of judgments. It also focuses on previously unexplored areas, such as the exercise of creditors'rights in cross-border insolvency cases and the tracing and recovery of assets and discusses the application of the Restructuring and Insolvency Directive ((EU) 2019/1023) in relation to the rescue of viable companies and the discharge of debts for insolvent entrepreneurs. This book will be of interest to students and practitioners of insolvency law, EU law and private international law. It will also be useful for national legislators and EU institutions working on the development of EU insolvency law.

This book is concerned with the vulnerability of suspects and defendants in criminal proceedings and the extent to which the vulnerable accused can effectively participate in the criminal process. Commencing with an exploration of how vulnerability is defined and identified, the collection examines and analyses how vulnerability manifests and is addressed at the police station and in court, addressing both child and adult accused persons. Leading and emerging scholars, along with practitioners with experience working in the field, explore and unpack the human rights and procedural implications of suspect and defendant vulnerability and examine how their needs are supported or disregarded. Drawing upon different disciplinary approaches and a range of analyses – doctrinal, theoretical and empirical – this book offers unique insights into the vulnerability and treatment of the criminal accused. In bringing together a diverse range of perspectives, the book offers key insights into the recognition of and responses to vulnerability among suspect and defendant populations in criminal justice systems across European jurisdictions. The book will be a valuable resource for academics, practitioners and policymakers interested in how vulnerable suspects and defendants are protected throughout the criminal process, and those working in the areas of law, criminology, sociology, human rights and psychology.

This second edition examines judicial independence as an aspect of democratization based on the premise that democracy cannot be consolidated without the rule of law of which judicial independence is an indispensable part.It pays particular attention to the restraints placed upon judicial independence and examines the reforms which are being applied, or remain to be adopted, in order to guard against the different kinds of interference which prevent judicial decisions being taken in a wholly impartial way. Focusing on the growing authoritarianism in the new democracies of Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa, the book analyses the paradox of judicial activism arising from the independence endowed upon the judiciary and the rights bestowed on citizens by post-authoritarian constitutions. Finally, it asks how judicial accountability can be made compatible with the preservation of judicial independence when the concept of an accountable, independent judiciary appears to be a contradiction in terms.This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of judicial studies, democratization and autocratization studies, constitutionalism, global governance, and more broadly comparative government/politics, human rights and comparative public law.

The gap between what the law and legal processes deliver for victims of domestic abuse and what they actually need has, in some instances, arguably widened. This book provides the reader with a thorough understanding of the remedies available to victims in the civil, family and criminal law. It contends that expectations of the legal remedies have increased as the number and scope of remedies has proliferated. It further examines how legal responses to domestic abuse have evolved over the past decade and explores how the victim's rights narrative and associated litigation, which has become prevalent in legal discourse and criminal justice reforms, has shifted expectations and impacted domestic abuse policy and law. The book presents a valuable addition to the literature in drawing on a discourse familiar to those with an interest in human rights, demonstrating its impact on a substantive area of law of great significance to both family and criminal lawyers and anyone with an interest in domestic abuse and legal responses.

This book tackles the growing issues concerning the managerialism and bureacratisation of criminal justice systems across a number of jurisdictions. Here, managerialism means the move towards more standardised, bureaucratic and efficiency-driven systems, influenced by a desire to ensure predictability, control risks and, ultimately, economic savings via a more efficient process. The volume explores the phenomenon of managerialism in selected national criminal legal systems, covering all stages of criminal case processing from arrest to the imposition of sanction. The selected countries represent diverse socio-economic, political, cultural and legal traditions including common law, civil law, mixed common and civil law and post-Soviet tradition. The book engages with a variety of relevant theoretical concepts, such as fairness, rationality, efficiency and legitimacy. The authors critically examine whether and to what extent the trend towards managerialism is indeed discernible, and what are its likely effects in the given national criminal legal systems. The book will be of interest to students, researchers and practitioners working in the areas of comparative criminal justice and procedure.

This edited volume presents research and policy insights into the theory and practice of dispute systems reform in diverse jurisdictions. It highlights how important extra-judicial mechanisms are for resolving cross-border disputes, as evidenced both by the breadth of scholarship dedicated to the issue and the proliferation of parties resorting to non-litigious dispute resolution mechanisms in recent years. Drawing on selected case studies, the book examines the impact of comparative research and policy analysis in advancing reform of dispute resolution institutions at both the regional and global levels. It explores the challenges and opportunities of understanding and assessing developments in systems of dispute resolution in diverse social and political contexts through comparative research.With a growing number of disputes which have come to involve cross-border issues, anyone interested in transnational and comparative dispute resolution will find this book a useful reference.

Family Life, Family Law, and Family Justice: Tying the Knot combines history, social science, and legal analysis to chart the evolution and interdependence of family life and family law, portray current trends in family life, explain the pressing policy challenges these trends have produced, and analyze the changes in family law that are essential to meeting these challenges. The challenges are large and pressing. Across the industrialized West, nonmarital birth, relational stress, multi-partner fertility, and relationship dissolution have increased, producing a dramatic rise in single parenthood, poverty, and childhood risk. This concentration of familial and economic risk accelerates socioeconomic inequality and retards intergenerational mobility. Although the divide is most pronounced in the United States, the same patterns now affect families throughout the Western world. Across the European Union, there are 9.2 million'lone'parents, and just under half of their families live in poverty. Tying the Knot demonstrates how today's family patterns are deeply rooted in long-standing, class-based differences in family life and explains why these class-based differences have accelerated. It explains how the values that guide family law development inevitably reflect the world in which families live and develops a new family law capable of meeting the needs of twenty-first century families.The book will be of considerable interest to family specialists from a number of fields, including law, demography, economics, history, political science, public health, social policy, and sociology.

Why have many victim-centred policy initiatives met with so little success? How have those initiatives unfolded differently in different global jurisdictions over different periods of time? This book aims to address these questions.Building on a major research project exploring victims'access to justice over time and place, Victims'Access to Justice considers the potentialities for victims'participation in criminal justice systems and in victim programmes both in historical and comparative context. It considers a range of topics: ways of identifying and accommodating victims'needs and senses of justice; the impacts for criminal justice systems of seeking to accommodate these; and the ways in which adversarial criminal justice systems, in particular, may enable or inhibit victim participation.This is essential reading for all those engaged in understanding and working with victims of crime.

Taking up the study of legal education in distinctly biopolitical terms, this book provides a critical and political analysis of structure in the law school.Legal education concerns the complex pathways by which an individual becomes a lawyer, making the journey from lay-person to expert, from student to practitioner. To pose the idea of a biopolitics of legal education is not only to recognise the tensions surrounding this journey, but also to recognise that legal education is a key site in which the subject engages, and is engaged by, a particular structure—and here the particular structure of the law school. This book explores that structure by addressing the characteristics of the biopolitical orders engaged in legal education, including: understanding the lawyer as a commodity, unpicking the force relations in legal education, examining the ways codes of conduct in higher education impact academic freedom, as well as putting the distinctly Western structures of legal learning within a wider context.Assembling original, field-defining essays by both leading international scholars and emerging researchers, it constitutes an indispensable resource in legal education research and scholarship that will appeal to legal academics everywhere.

This book examines the evolution of the contemporary crime victim's procedural place within modern Western societies. Taking the history of the Irish crime victim as a case study, the work charts the place of victims within criminal justice over time. This evolves from the expansive latitude that they had during the eighteenth century, to their major relegation to witness and informer in the nineteenth, and back to a more contemporary recapturing of some of their previous centrality. The book also studies what this has meant for the position of suspects and offenders as well as the population more generally. Therefore, some analysis is devoted to examining its impact on an offender's right to fair trial and social forms. It is held that the modern crime victim has transcended its position of marginality. This happened not only in law, but as the consequence of the victim's new role as a key sociopolitical stakeholder. This work flags the importance of victim rights conferrals, and the social transformations that engendered such trends. In this way victim re-emergence is evidenced as being not just a legal change, but a consequence of several more recent sociocultural transformations in our societies. The book will be of interest to researchers, academics, and policy makers in criminal law, human rights law, criminology, and legal history.

Cultural Histories of Law, Media and Emotion: Public Justice explores how the legal history of long-eighteenth-century Britain has been transformed by the cultural turn, and especially the associated history of emotion.Seeking to reflect on the state of the field, 13 essays by leading and emerging scholars bring cutting-edge research to bear on the intersections between law, print culture and emotion in Britain across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Divided into three sections, this collection explores the ‘public'as a site of legal sensibility; it demonstrates how the rhetoric of emotion constructed the law in legal practice and in society and culture; and it highlights how approaches from cultural and emotions history have recentred the individual, the biography and the group to explain long-running legal-historical problems. Across this volume, authors evidence how engagements between cultural and legal history have revitalised our understanding of law's role in eighteenth-century culture and society, not least deepening our understanding of justice as produced with and through the public.This volume is the ideal resource for upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates and scholars interested in the history of emotions as well as the legal history of Britain from the late seventeenth to the nineteenth century.

Drawing on experiences from other jurisdictions within the UK, Criminalising Coercive Control explores the challenges and potential successes which may be faced in implementing Northern Ireland's new domestic abuse offence.A specific offence of domestic abuse was introduced in Northern Ireland in March 2021. This represents a crucial development in Northern Ireland's response to domestic abuse. The new legislation has the effect of criminalising coercive and controlling behaviour, thereby bringing Northern Ireland into line with other jurisdictions within the UK, and also with relevant human rights standards in this regard. The book begins with a discussion regarding the offence itself and the underpinning domestic abuse policy in Northern Ireland. Subsequent chapters explore further measures which may be needed to respond effectively to domestic abuse in Northern Ireland, by drawing upon the experiences of other jurisdictions of criminalising coercive control. These reflections are considered through the lenses of policing, prosecutorial practice and frontline domestic abuse working.Criminalising Coercive Control will be of great interest to students and scholars in a variety of fields, such as criminal law, criminology, social policy, human rights, family law, gender studies and sociology. The book is also accessible beyond academia, including practitioners and those in the voluntary sector who are working in the area of combating domestic abuse.

This collection brings together international experts to present a comparative analysis of wrongful conviction and criminal procedure. The volume takes an interdisciplinary approach with authors drawn from a broad range of backgrounds including law, psychology, forensics and journalism. All are experts in their field with direct experience of the investigation of wrongful conviction in their own countries. Focusing on the main areas of concern in their own jurisdiction, each author discusses common themes, including: the extent of the problem; the types of cases that feature in miscarriages of justice; the legal mechanism for the correction of a wrongful conviction; compensation for the wrongly convicted; public awareness and concern about the issue generally and in light of highprofile cases; and the extent to which wrongful conviction has driven criminal justice reform. The book will be essential reading for students, researchers and policy-makers interested in comparative law, criminology and psychology.

This collection presents a unique and diverse range of contributions on challenges faced by criminal justice in England and Wales in the wake of the Covid-19 global pandemic.The book brings together leading experts to examine the impact of the pandemic on policing and criminal procedure, prisons, and the post-conviction stage of the system. The work further explores the lessons that may be learned and explores the relevance of these lessons for the wider criminal justice system. The reader will gain substantial insight into contemporary challenges in these areas, through original analysis and argument. The experience of England and Wales during the pandemic will also be of interest to the wider international community who will have encountered many of the issues raised in this collection.The book will be essential reading for researchers, academics, and policymakers involved in criminal justice.

This book presents a ground-breaking, interdisciplinary study into the various goals assigned to international criminal trials. It starts from the proposition that no hierarchy exists amongst the different goals meaning that trials should strive to achieve all of them in equal measure. This is made difficult by the fact that not all of these goals are compatible and the fulfilment of one may lead to others going unmet. Therefore, a balance must be found if the goals of trial are to be achieved at all. The book posits that fairness should serve as the guiding principle when weighing the different trial goals against one another. It is argued that without fairness international and internationalised criminal courts and tribunals lack legitimacy and without legitimacy they lack effectiveness. The book concludes that international criminal trials must adopt procedures that emphasise fairness to all of the parties and trial participants if they wish to accomplish any of the goals set for them. Each chapter is devoted to identifying and explaining a different trial goal, providing analysis of how that particular goal functions in conjunction with the other goals, and discussing the ways in which a fairness-oriented trial model will help achieve those goals. The book provides a dynamic understanding of the different trial goals and the importance of fairness in the trial process by drawing on research from a variety of different legal disciplines while also incorporating scholarship rooted in criminology, political theory, international relations, and psychology. The book will be essential reading for researchers, academics and professionals working in the areas of International Criminal Law, Public International Law and Transitional Justice.

This book examines the best language fair trial practices of the courts in arguably the most multilingual region of the world. It contains an instructive list of standards and approaches to linguistic dynamics, which may be considered a language fair trial rights code.By way of jurisprudential analysis and scrutiny of constitutional imperatives and examination of legislation among the respective jurisdictions from the Sahel region, to the Horn of Africa, and the Cape, this publication presents peculiar country-specific practices and common standards aiming towards the realisation of a fair trial in a multilingual context. The exceptionally multilingual nature of legal processes in Africa makes the standards in the region instructive in the progression towards a universal language fair trial rights code. The book reveals valuable lessons across jurisdictions, including those outside Africa, and suggests measures that may be taken to improve existing approaches.It will be a valuable resource for academics, researchers, and policy-makers working in the areas of Law and Language, Legal Linguistics, Forensic Linguistics, Criminal Justice, and Comparative Law.

This book examines how the European Court of Human Rights approaches the matter of evidence, and how its judgments affect domestic law. The case law of the Court has affected many areas of law in Europe. One of these areas is the law of evidence, and especially criminal evidence. This work examines the key defence rights that may touch upon evidence, such as the right to adduce evidence, the right to disclosure, the privilege against self-incrimination and access to a lawyer, entrapment, and the right to cross-examine prosecution witnesses. It explains the relevant assessment criteria used by the Court and introduces a simple framework for understanding the various assessment models developed by the Court, including the Perna test, the Ibrahim criteria, and the sole or decisive rule. The book provides a comprehensive overview on the relevant case law, and will be a valuable asset for students and researchers, as well as practitioners, such as judges, prosecutors, and lawyers, working in the areas of criminal procedure and human rights.

In Tackling Rape Culture: Ending Patriarchy, Jan Jordan asks why, despite decades of feminist activism, does rape culture remain so endemic within contemporary society. She argues that, in order to understand the global pandemic of sexual violence, we must view rape culture as a consequence of the social divisiveness that emerges from the logic of patriarchy. In advancing this argument, Jordan offers a comprehensive indictment of the patriarchal system while recognising also women's efforts to resist its edicts. Jordan critically explores two mechanisms that she argues are central to the maintenance and reproduction of rape culture - silencing and objectification. Both are examined as patriarchal strategies that have been relied on for centuries to control and constrain women's lives, silencing their voices and keeping them as ‘othered'outsiders in a male-defined world. Women throughout history have sought ways to resist such control and, since the second-wave women's movement of the 1970s, this has included multiple initiatives both offline and more recently online. While #MeToo is being hailed by many as evidence that the silencing of women's voices about rape has finally been broken, Jordan urges a more critical appraisal given the continued dominance of patriarchal thinking. To end rape culture, Jordan argues, we must end patriarchy.This timely and provocative book, which complements Jordan's Women, Rape and Justice: Unravelling the Rape Conundrum (Routledge, 2022), will be of great interest to researchers, students, practitioners and activists seeking to understand and challenge the pervasive rape culture characterising contemporary patriarchal society.

This edited collection brings together leading and emerging scholars in the important field of sexual violence scholarship. The last ten years have witnessed an international reckoning on sexual violence, typified in the mainstream imagination by the #MeToo movement, acknowledgement of the violence of university campus life, and the overdue recognition of the enduring harms of child sexual abuse. While the state has been forced to respond through law and other political processes, at times revealing its agility and at other times its archaic investment in the past, much of the real work responding to sexual violence and abuse has taken place within communities, and in the personal responses of the individuals writing the scripts of their experiences. This volume explores the nuances of these individual experiences and considers how they are shaped and reflected by intersecting axes of power including gender, race, class, age and able-bodied status. It reflects on law and law reform in the area and suggests new modes and frames through which to explain and understand sexual violence and institutional responses to it. Debates within this contested personal and political arena do not map onto longstanding binaries of liberal and radical feminism, nor conservative and progressive politics. This interdisciplinary volume traces that murky terrain and features some of the leading international scholars writing on sexual violence in English today. This book will appeal to scholars and students across the broad disciplines of law and legal studies; criminology; gender studies; political science and sociology.

This book presents a comprehensive comparative analysis of the substantive and procedural aspects of compensation for wrongful convictions in European countries and the USA, as well as the standard derived from the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. The collection draws comparative conclusions as to the similarities and differences between selected jurisdictions and assesses the effectiveness of the national compensation schemes. This enables the designing of an optimum model of compensation, offering accessibility and effectiveness to the victims of miscarriages of justice and being acceptable to jurisdictions based on common law, and civil law traditions, as well as inquisitorial and adversarial types of criminal process. Moreover, the discussion of the minimum European standard as established in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights enables readers to identify how the Strasbourg Court can contribute to strengthening the compensation scheme. The book will be essential reading for students, academics and policymakers working in the areas of criminal law and procedure.

The revised tenth edition of this core textbook provides an understanding of major world criminal justice systems by discussing and comparing the systems of six of the world's countries - each representative of a different type of legal system. England, France, Japan, South Africa, Russia, and China are all covered in detail, and an additional chapter on Islamic law uses three example nations to illustrate the range of practice within Sharia. Political, historical, organizational, procedural, and critical issues confronting the justice systems are explained and analyzed. Neatly organized with a parallel structure throughout the text, each chapter contains material on government, police, judiciary, law, corrections, juvenile justice, and other critical issues.A new feature of this text focuses on the nature of the political world order and the significant clash between some democratic and authoritarian governments. Of particular concern are those authoritarian governments that have seen the rise of what has been popularly referred to as the strongman leader. The countries covered in this text have seen the emergence of four such strongmen. While the rise of each occurred in different contexts, they were each facilitated in significant ways by the manner in which they asserted their control over the country's criminal justice system.This book is suitable for undergraduate and graduate students in criminal justice, prelaw, and similar programs. A comprehensive test bank is available online.

This collection examines contemporary challenges to the criminal justice system in England and Wales. The chapters, written by established academics, rising stars and practising lawyers, seek not only to highlight these challenges but to offer solutions. The book examines issues with legal assistance in the police station, concerns relating to juror decision making and problems in and presented by both virtual hearings and the advent of the Single Justice Procedure Notice. The work also examines challenges surrounding vulnerability in the criminal justice system. Here, diversity includes vulnerability in the criminal trial, neurodivergence as well as issues with diversity and marginalisation in the criminal justice system as a whole. The book also discusses matters centred around sexual offending – including the attrition rate in rape cases as well as the recent development of ‘vigilante'paedophile hunters and their acceptance as a viable limb of the criminal justice system. Finally, the volume looks at the post-conviction stage and examines recent prison policy through the lens of the human rights of the prisoner. The closing chapter examines the independence of the Criminal Cases Review Commission and highlights how recent changes have undermined this. While focused on England and Wales, the topics discussed are of wider international significance and will be of interest to students, academics and policy-makers.

This book presents an important ethnographic and theoretical advance in legal anthropological scholarship by interrogating customary law, customary courts and legal pluralism in sub-Saharan Africa. It highlights the vitality and continued relevance of customary justice at a time when customary courts have waned or even disappeared in many postcolonial African nations. Taking Botswana as a casestudy from in-depth fieldwork over a fifty-year period, the book shows, the ‘customary'is robustly enduring, central to settling interpersonal disputes and constitutive of the local as well as the national public ethics. Customary law continues to be constitutionally protected, authorised by the country's past as an authentic, viable legacy, from the British colonial period of indirect rule to the postcolonial state's present development as a highly bureaucratised democracy. Along with a theoretical overview of the underlying issues for the anthropology and sociology of law, the book documents customary law as living law in the context of legal pluralism. It takes a legal realist approach and highlights the need to pay close attention to the lived experience of justice and its role in the production of legal subjectivities.The book will be valuable to Africanists but also, more broadly, to social scientists, social historians and socio-legal scholars with interests in law and social change, public ethics and personal morality, and the intersection of politics and judicial decision making.

This collection interrogates relationships between court architecture and social justice, from consultation and design to the impact of material (and immaterial) forms on court users, through the lenses of architecture, law, socio-legal studies, criminology, anthropology, and a former senior federal judge.International multidisciplinary collaborations and single-author contributions traverse a range of methodological approaches to present new insights into the relationship between architecture, design, and justice. These include praxis, photography, reflections on process and decolonising practice, postcolonial, feminist, and poststructural analysis, and theory from critical legal scholarship, political science, criminology, literature, sociology, and architecture. While the opening contributions reflect on establishing design principles and architectural methodologies for ethical consultation and collaboration with communities historically marginalised and exploited by law, the central chapters explore the textures and affects of built forms and the spaces between; examining the disjuncture between design intention and use; and investigating the impact of architecture and the design of space. The collection finishes with contemplations of the very real significance of material presence or absence in courtroom spaces and what this might mean for justice. Courthouse Architecture, Design and Social Justice provides tools for those engaged in creating, and reflecting on, ethical design and building use, and deepens the dialogue across disciplinary boundaries towards further collaborative work in the field. It also exists as a new resource for research and teaching, facilitating undergraduate critical thought about the ways in which design enhances and restricts access to justice.

This book argues that the expressivist justice model provides a meaningful foundation for the participation of victims in international criminal proceedings.Traditional criminal justice theories have tended to marginalise the role afforded to victims while informing the criminal procedures utilised by international criminal courts. As a result, giving content to, shaping, and enhancing victims'participatory rights have been some of the most debated issues in international criminal justice. This book contributes to this debate by advancing expressivism, which has the capacity to create a historical narrative of gross human rights violations, as a core of international criminal justice able to provide a worthwhile basis for the participation of victims in proceedings and clarifying the scope and content of their participatory rights. The work provides an in-depth discussion on issues related to victims'participatory rights from the perspective of international human rights law, victimology, and the philosophical foundation of international criminal justice.The book will be a valuable resource for researchers, academics, and policymakers working in the areas of international criminal justice, international human rights law, transitional justice, and conflict studies.

The Limits of Criminological Positivism: The Movement for Criminal Law Reform in the West, 1870-1940 presents the first major study of the limits of criminological positivism in the West and establishes the subject as a field of interest.The volume will explore those limits and bring to life the resulting doctrinal, procedural, and institutional compromises of the early twentieth century that might be said to have defined modern criminal justice administration. The book examines the topic not only in North America and western Europe, with essays on Italy, Germany, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Finland but also the reception and implementation of positivist ideas in Brazil. In doing so, it explores three comparative elements: (1) the differing national experiences within the civil law world; (2) differences and similarities between civil law and common law regimes; and (3) some differences between the two leading common-law countries. It interrogates many key aspects of current penal systems, such as the impact of extra-legal scientific knowledge on criminal law, preventive detention, the ‘dual-track'system with both traditional punishment and novel measures of security, the assessment of offenders'dangerousness, juvenile justice, and the indeterminate sentence. As a result, this study contributes to a critical understanding of some inherent contradictions characterizing criminal justice in contemporary western societies.Written in a straight-forward and direct manner, this volume will be of great interest to academics and students researching historical criminology, philosophy, political science, and legal history.Chapter 2 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Rural Victims of Crime offers a pioneering sustained assessment of ‘the rural victim'. It does so by examining and analysing the conceptual constructs of a victim and challenging the urban bias of victimisation and victimology in criminological study. Indeed, far too much criminological scholarship is based on the false assumption that rural areas are relatively crime free – and thus free, too, of victims.Providing international perspectives, chapters in this edited collection focus centrally on notions of place and space, and constructions of rural victims in a variety of contexts, exploring the impact that geographic location has on the type and prevalence of victimisation. The concept of victimisation is often considered in terms of interpersonal relationships between humans, neglecting the potent impact of victimisation of non-humans and the natural and built environment. Rural Victims of Crime discusses existing notions of victimology in relation to non-human subjects, broadening conceptualisations of the victim and associated impacts resulting from victimisation. Structured in three parts, Rural Victims of Crime conceptualises the rural victim, enhances understanding of the realities of rural victimisation and considers both formal and informal responses to rural victimisation. Chapters are accompanied by practical, contemporary case studies to connect theory with praxis.This book is an essential and valuable resource for academics, students and practitioners alike in the fields of criminology, criminal justice, rural studies, victimology, geography, sociology and spatiality.

Unlocking the English Legal System will help you grasp the main concepts of the legal system in England and Wales with ease. Containing accessible explanations in clear and precise terms that are easy to understand, it provides an excellent foundation for learning and revising.This new edition offers a brand-new chapter on ‘Ethics and Law'which details the duties and responsibilities of lawyers and introduces law students to the kinds of ethical dilemmas that they may encounter when they are lawyers. The up-to-date ongoing debates surrounding UK law are discussed, such as the impact Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic have, and continue to have, upon the English Legal System. Further detail on the devolution settlements in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales is provided as well as looking at the question of Scottish independence. Learn how to read cases and statutes, about career skills and interview preparation, and find out further information on how the new Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) will operate and the reaction it's received from law schools. There is also focus on the impact of racism in the criminal justice system, the new Sentencing Code introduced in 2020, and how technology is changing the way the English Legal System operates.The books in the Unlocking the Law series get straight to the point and offer clear and concise coverage of the law, broken down into bite-size sections with regular recaps to boost your confidence. They provide complete coverage of both core and popular optional law modules, presented in an innovative and visual format.

This book presents an up-to-date analysis of women as victims of crime, as individuals under justice system supervision, and as professionals in the field. The text features an empowerment approach that is unified by underlying themes of the intersection of gender, race, and class; and evidence-based research. Personal narratives supplement research and statistics to help students connect the text material with real-life situations.This new edition is informed by consideration of major ongoing social movements such as #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, and the fight to reduce mass incarceration. The text stresses contemporary topics such as recognition of lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues in juvenile and adult facilities; the introduction of trauma-informed care in detention centers and prisons; the criminalization of Black girls and women; the effects of an increasingly militarized police culture; and the contributions of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and other influential women. With its emphasis on critical thinking, this text is ideal for undergraduate courses concerning women in the justice system.

Infanticide examines medical expert evidence in infanticide cases, focusing specifically on the shifting notion of'certainty'in medical testimony. Beginning in the Early Modern period and concluding in the mid-twentieth century, it considers how courts determined whether an infant died from natural causes or other reasons, including violence. The book explores expert evidence in cases of infanticide and examines the extent of certainty created by medical specialists who founded their testimony on anatomical exploration and science. As the book progresses, it becomes clear that medical specialists were unable to scientifically establish cause of death and in doing so conveyed uncertainty in court proceedings. Rather than being regarded as a professional failing, Dixon argues that the uncertainty created by medical specialists redirected the outcomes of infanticide cases. The combination of uncertainty and the changing perceptions of infanticidal women by the court lead juries to find infanticidal women not guilty of a capital offence in many cases. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Criminology, Law and History.

Unlocking the Law of Evidence will help you grasp the main concepts of the subject with ease. Containing accessible explanations in clear and precise terms that are easy to understand, it provides an excellent foundation for learning and revising Evidence. The information is clearly presented in a logical structure and the following features support learning, helping you to advance with confidence: Clear learning outcomes at the beginning of each chapter set out the skills and knowledge you will need to get to grips with the subject Key Facts summaries throughout each chapter allow you to progressively build and consolidate your understanding End-of-chapter summaries provide a useful check-list for each topic Cases and judgments are highlighted to help you find them and add them to your notes quickly Frequent activities and self-test questions are included so you can put your knowledge into practice Sample essay questions with annotated answers prepare you for assessment Glossary of legal terms clarifies important definitions. This edition has been updated to include the most recent updates in case law and criminal and civil procedure as well as more practical pointers and practice tips to further aid putting knowledge into practice.The books in the UNLOCKING THE LAW Series get straight to the point and offer clear and concise coverage of the law, broken down into bite-size sections with regular recaps to boost your confidence. They provide complete coverage of both core and popular optional law modules, presented in an innovative, visual format.

Punishment is a topic of increasing importance for citizens and policymakers. Why should we punish criminals? Which theory of punishment is most compelling? Is the death penalty ever justified? These questions and many more are examined in this highly engaging and accessible guide.Punishment is a critical introduction to the philosophy of punishment, offering a new and refreshing approach that will benefit readers of all backgrounds and interests. The first comprehensive critical guide to examine all leading contemporary theories of punishments, this book explores – among others – retribution, the communicative theory of punishment, restorative justice and the unified theory of punishment. Thom Brooks applies these theories to several case studies in detail, including capital punishment, juvenile offending and domestic violence. Punishment highlights the problems and prospects of different approaches in order to argue for a more pluralistic and compelling perspective that is novel and ground-breaking.This second edition has extensive revisions and updates to all chapters, including an all-new chapter on the unified theory substantively redrafted and new chapters on cyber-crimes and social media as well as corporate crimes. Punishment is essential reading for undergraduate and graduate students in philosophy, criminal justice, criminology, justice studies, law, political science and sociology.

This book addresses how law and public policy cause or exacerbate vulnerability in individuals and groups.Bringing together scholars, judges and practitioners, it identifies how individuals and groups can become vulnerabilised through the operation of law, and examines how the State can acknowledge and remedy that impact. The book offers not only a theoretical, ethical and normative conception of vulnerability in law, but also an evaluation of the diverse practices of responding to vulnerability in law through accountability mechanisms and public campaigns. The analysis of vulnerability contained in this volume is enhanced by the common use of Ireland as a case study. Despite the robust rights protections available at national, regional and international level, Ireland remains a State where at risk people have experienced vulnerability across a range of thematic areas, such as criminal law, migration and asylum, historical abuse, LGBTI rights and austerity. Drawing on comparative analyses and a consideration of the role of international law in domestic settings, this book offers a comparison of diverse national and transnational attempts to ensure State accountability and responsiveness to legally created vulnerabilities. The book demonstrates lessons learned from theory and practice regarding how vulnerability can be experienced by individuals and groups, structured by law and addressed through legal and political action.This book will be of considerable interest to socio-legal and'law and society'scholars, as well as others working in international human rights, jurisprudence, philosophy, legal theory, political theory, feminist theory, and ethics.

Teaching Evidence Law sets out the contemporary experiences of evidence teachers in a range of common law countries across four continents: Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. It addresses key themes and places these in the context of academic literature on the teaching of evidence, proof and fact-finding.This book focuses on the methods used to teach a mix of abstract and practical rules, as well as the underlying skills of fact-analysis, that students need to apply the law in practice, to research it in the future and to debate its appropriateness. The chapters describe innovative ways of overcoming the many challenges of this field, addressing the expanding fields of evidence law, how to reach and accommodate new audiences with an interest in evidence, and the tools devised to meet old and new pedagogical problems in this area.Part of Routledge's series on Legal Pedagogy, this book will be of great interest to academics, post-graduate students, teachers and researchers of evidence law, as well as those with a wider interest in legal pedagogy or legal practice.

The criminalisation of healthcare malpractice has become a highly topical and somewhat controversial question in recent years. Studies have demonstrated that in England and Wales, the trend towards holding healthcare professionals to account for malpractice is rapidly growing, abolishing the deference doctors enjoyed decades ago. The changing attitude of judges to claims for clinical negligence has been well documented. The role of the criminal process in England and Wales has been less fully analysed with the criminal law playing a very limited role until recently in the regulation of poor healthcare practice. In contrast, in France, the criminal process has for a long time been invoked more readily to respond to cases of healthcare malpractice, which involved even mere errors.This book compares English and French criminal law responses to healthcare malpractice and considers what lessons the French model can provide for potential reform in England and elsewhere. The book takes the HIV-contaminated blood episode as a primary example of the different approaches France and England have in dealing with healthcare malpractice. Kazarian emphasises the impact of rules of substantive criminal law and criminal procedure on the way in which healthcare malpractice is criminalised in a given country. This book explores the key lessons to be drawn on whether the criminal process is an appropriate means to respond to instances of healthcare malpractice. It proposes that features of French criminal law and criminal procedure might be useful to counteract healthcare malpractice.

The Supreme Court's Role in Mass Incarceration illuminates the role of the United States Supreme Court's criminal procedure revolution as a contributing factor to the rise in U.S. incarceration rates. Noting that the increase in mass incarceration began climbing just after the Warren Court years and continued to climb for the next four decades—despite the substantial decline in the crime rate—the author posits that part of the explanation is the Court's failure to understand that a trial system with robust rights for defendants is not a strong trial system unless it is also reliable and efficient.There have been many explanations offered for the sudden and steep escalation in the U.S. incarceration rate, such as'it was the war on drugs'to'it was our harsh sentencing statutes.'Those explanations have been shown to be inadequate. This book contends that we have overlooked a more powerful force in the rise of our incarceration rate—the long line of Supreme Court decisions, starting in the Warren Court era, that made the criminal justice system so complicated and expensive that it no longer serves to protect defendants. For the vast majority of defendants, their constitutional rights are irrelevant, as they are forced to accept plea bargains or face the prospect of a comparatively harsh sentence, if convicted. The prospect of a trial, once an important restraint on prosecutors in charging, has disappeared and plea-bargaining rules. This book is essential reading for both graduate and undergraduate students in corrections and criminal justice courses as well as judges, attorneys, and others working in the criminal justice system.