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Legal epistemology seems to be exploding. More and more philosophers seem to be taking an interest in the theory of evidence law, and to bring along with them to legal theory the freshest news from the abstract study of epistemology . This is understandable, of course: The law in general, and evidence law in particular, seems to be employing the same natural-language terms epistemologists are (or are at least supposed to be) interested in (“knew or should have known”, “reasonable doubt”, “evidence”, “presumption” (of innocence), and so on) . In this paper we argue that a large part of this project is based on a mistake, roughly analogous to the mistake involved in thinking of studies of intelligence as relevant to the understanding of military intelligence. With qualifications shortly to emerge, epistemology is not, we think, intrinsically and directly relevant to normative evidence law theory, at least, that is, as long as the relevant perspective is that of designing the evidence law regime. When it comes to the conscientious fact-finder, things may be – we’re not sure about this – importantly different.

One of the most intractable, but significant problems in the theory of legal evidence concerns circumstantial evidence. The diversity and complexity of criminal cases cause some bottlenecks and difficulties in developing reasonable methods to prove the criminal issue by means of circumstantial evidence. The main purpose of this paper is to present more effective methods of fact-finding just by means of a system of circumstantial evidence (SCE). On the basis of analysis of the nature of circumstantial evidence, we find it necessary for the prosecution to construct a SCE in order to make a judge or jury accept the prosecution’s conclusion as the best explanation. We also present a reasonable logical structure of such a system and address some legal and logical problems in introducing it.

Experts have played a prominent role in recent proceedings before the International Court of Justice (the Court). Against the backdrop of high-profile criticisms of the Court's fact-finding process, recent cases before the Court have produced a number of notable developments which can be seen as responses to these concerns. However, some issues persist, largely due to a lack of conceptual clarity regarding the role that both party- and Court-appointed experts should play in proceedings, a consequence of the rudimentary procedural provisions in the Court's constitutive instruments. This article advances a number of proposals for reform in the form of two Practice Directions that set out modalities for the examination of party-appointed experts and the appointment of the Court's own experts, as well as providing reasoned guidance on the independence of experts. These proposals not only flesh out the role of the expert, but also show how the Court can accommodate the principles of party autonomy and the proper administration of justice which operate upon it.

In February 2019, some six years after the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) removed legal aid from a wide range of civil and family matters, the Government release...

Digital PR is a public relations function in the digital era, one of its tasks is to manage social media owned by agencies. Trans Studio Bandung Mosque is one of the mosques that has successfully implemented digital PR management in packaging the social media account Instagram @masjidtrans in an effort to attract public enthusiasm. The research method used in this research is descriptive analysis method with a qualitative approach and constructivism paradigm. The results of his research are digital PR TSB Mosque successfully implemented four stages in the concept of four steps of PR namely, (1) Fact finding is done by analyzing the situation, analyzing the target audience and analyzing the media. (2). Planning: planning the goals to be achieved and making tactical planning. (3). Taking action and communication: dividing the type of content according to Instagram features, following up the content of the study to the organizer community, crosschecking content, creating accidental content, making posting strategies on Instagram and performing posting intensity and content packaging. (4). Evaluation: determine assessment indicators and make monthly reports. Digital PR management in packaging da'wah content on the Instagram account of the Trans Studio Bandung Mosque also increases the congregation who attend the presentation or event held at TSB Mosque

This study examines and explicates the lexico-semantic parameters, which Joseph Edoki deploys to convey his themes in The Upward Path, his second novel. Edoki is a contemporary Nigerian novelist who is preoccupied with the socio-political problems in Africa with the hope of a brighter future. The novel is the story of Mr. Gaga, a Rhwandan American PhD student, on a fact finding mission in Savannah, an African country, for his Thesis entitled ‘’ Why Africa is Underdeveloped’’. For failing to portray Africa in line with the negative views about the continent in his proposal, Gaga’s supervisor recalls him back to America in anger. But in defense of his conviction and research findings about Africa, Gaga remains in Savannah to complete his Thesis. This study is of significance because as a linguistic study, it will serve as a springboard to future researches in the language of African literature. Moreover, the good governance, which Edoki presents in Savannah, the fictional country, in which the novel under study is set, is a blue print for the development of Africa.

The crucial question for many legal disputes is “what happened,”? and there is often no easy answer. Fact-finding is an uncertain endeavor and risk of inaccuracy is inevitable. As such, I ask, on what basis can we accept the legitimacy of judicial fact-findings. I conclude that acceptable factual determinations depend on adherence to a legitimate process of fact-finding. Adopting Jürgen Habermas’s insights, I offer a theoretical grounding for the acceptability of judicial fact-finding. The theory holds that legal processes must embody respect for legal subjects as equal and autonomous agents. This necessitates two procedural features. First, fact-finding processes must be factually reliable. This requires: (a) relevant evidence is admissible and exclusions are justified based on respecting human autonomy; (b) error-risk management is internally coherent and consistent; (c) the standard of proof is, at minimum, a balance of probabilities; (d) evidence is used rationally. Second, fact-finding processes must ensure fulsome participation rights. This project is justificatory—civil justice systems are imperfect, but there are attainable conditions that make them good, which must never be compromised.

The implementation of Community Service Program in long terms aimed to produce village communication media in the form of village newspaper and website. This village communication media is essential as a media to deliver the information of the village development program implementation and various village’s potential to the village stakeholders. This village communication media also functions as education media to increase the villagers’ awareness regarding various actual issues and village development framework. Method used was fact finding. The data collection was done through literature study, interview and participation observation to the youth villagers (Karang Taruna) and the village apparatus. Technical assistance was performed through a series of journalistic workshop and media production as well as media distribution to various villages’ government stakeholders. The result of this community service was the Village Communication Media, of which one of them is the village newspaper and its development in the form of dynamic website which can be managed by KarangTaruna and the village apparatus.

This paper aims to examine the functional review of public relations management from an ontology perspective. Public Relations is an organizational activity that is manifested in the form of activities and at the same time is a process of communication between one individual with an individual or a community. The communication process that occurs and is created in this activity, is very important for the smooth and sustainable organization. Therefore, an ontology approach is needed, as part of a philosophical study to dissect about public relations management in terms of its function. As part of the study of philosophy, ontology has a very important role in finding out what and to what extent public relations management is to be achieved. In this perspective, the study of the functional review of public relations management concerns matters that have an existence in the dimensions of space and time, and can be reached by sensory experience, which includes the phenomenon of public relations that can be observed, measured and can be obtained and can be interpreted, so that it can be drawn a conclusion. This study uses a qualitative research type library approach. The data analysis technique used is content analysis. The results of the study show that; the managerial functional review of public relations covers the activities of fact finding, planning, communication, actuating, and evaluating.

Adaptive information retrieval systems could provide users individual support for their current search activity. For that a clear detection and understanding of such activities are a necessity. In this paper we analyze reading strategies, such as Scanning, Skimming and ’hard’ Reading, given two search activities, namely Fact-Finding and Exploratory search activities. We analyzed the eye tracking data of a lab experiment and identified a positive correlated trend of ’hard’ Reading towards Exploratory searches and Skimming towards Fact-Finding searches. Using the interpretation of these reading strategies, we argue that we are able to draw conclusions about the possible search intent during individual search activities.

Because of health risks during the global pandemic of 2020, many fact finding hearings previously held in-person were offered in a video format. The return of in-person hearings is reemerging as many practitioners contend that video hearings are inadequate for viewing witness demeanor, thereby hindering determination of witness credibility. This paper summarizes the best available evidence and concludes: (1) personal demeanor is a not reliable factor for weighing witness credibility or deception detection, (2) a variety of indicators to be used by a “trier of fact” are more accurate in evaluating witness credibility, (3) and a video format is more reliable than an in-person hearing in assessing witness credibility. It concludes with an examination of what has been learned and the opportunities recorded video hearings offer for assessing witness credibility in the future.

Objective – When teaching Information Literacy (IL) concepts, instructors often have no knowledge about the background or previous IL exposure of the students they are teaching. This study aims to create a holistic picture of the students at a large Midwestern United States university in a first year introductory course on the design process for solving engineering problems. Methods – Institutional data and course level data were traced and linked to individual students in an introduction to design thinking first year course. This course is at a major high research activity institution in the Midwestern United States. From a total course size of 650, institutional and course level data of 127 students were selected randomly and analyzed. Some data points are self-reported and some data points are performance-based. Results – Underrepresented minorities (URMs) had a higher increase in IL score from assignment 1 to assignment 3 than non-URM students. However, non-URMs performed higher on both the first and the last assignments. Students in concurrent IL designated courses had a higher increase from assignments 1 to 3 than those not in simultaneous IL designated courses. Black and international students had the highest increases from assignments 1 to 3 of any demographic. Regarding IL, the fact that none of the students had been exposed to much IL instruction justified continued collaboration in the course between the instructor of record and the IL specialist. There were significantly negative correlations between the final grade and first-generation status. Legacy students also performed more poorly from assignments 1 to 3. Conclusion – Students are more diverse in a single classroom setting than presumed prior to research; therefore, our instructional practices should be diverse and inclusive, as well. More preparation work and fact finding should be conducted by library faculty and instructors to facilitate the learning of the students, and not just the act of teaching. Librarians could ask for more information about the course demographics and respond accordingly. Librarians should also be properly trained in instructional practices to be better equipped to meet the expectations and challenges of teaching a diverse class.

Earthquake is one of the factors that can cause a crisis for a company. One of the companies that experienced a crisis due to the earthquake in Lombok was Mataram Transmart. Lombok earthquake decreased the sales and customer debts. The purpose of this study was to determine crisis management carried out by the Public Relations Transmart Mataram in increasing sales after the earthquake in Lombok, with a research method that is descriptive. The results showed that from some of the activities carried out by the Public Relations and Transmart Mataram management team starting from planning, investigating (fact finding), identifying the symptoms of crisis emergence, coordinating crisis control, and maintaining good relations with internal and external public companies . After doing all aspects of the crisis management it was seen that there was an increase in sales after the earthquake. Previously during the crisis, the company experienced a decrease in sales turnover, after the earthquake sales turnover began to increase to approximately 15%. However, this increase has not been said to be fully increased because it has not reached the sales target as before the crisis in the company. Keywords: crisis management; public relations, Transmart Mataram, natural disaster

International audience; The study wants to determine the effect of basic psychological need satisfaction and basic psychological need frustration toward work engagement of employees of Divine Word Colleges in Ilocos Region, Philippines. In order to support the study, theories were presented which are supported by related literatures and studies. The population of the study were 250 or all employees of the colleges. The study used descriptive correlational research design aided by fact finding inquiry. Questionnaires were used to gather the data. The result revealed that there is a correlation between basic psychological need satisfaction and work engagement. While, basic psychological need frustration, as a whole, does not correlate to the engagement, except relatedness need frustration.

This study examines the effectiveness of counselor communication on the self-disclosure of students in SMA Negeri 3 Parepare. Counselors in high schools get a clear role and position or place, where counselors as a component of student support services (student support services) to help the development of personal, social, career, and academic aspects of students through guidance and counseling programs to students in plan (individual student planning), responsive service delivery and system development (system support). Therefore, counselors are highly required to have effective communication skills to support counseling, so counseling communication skills can make students open themselves. This type of research is descriptive qualitative using observation, interview, and documentation methods. The subject in this study was the BK teacher of SMA Negeri 3 Parepare as the school counselor using data analysis techniques namely interpretation data analysis techniques and triangulation analysis techniques. The results of this study indicate that the stages of counseling can be seen based on the stages of effective communication conducted by counselors, including; 1) Fact finding, 2) Planning, 3) Communicating, 4) Evaluating. The communication skills applied by counselors in the implementation of counseling are (attending), empathy, summarizing, asking, and honesty. By using the communication model, in this study found that the counselor's communication achieved students' self-disclosure as evidenced by giving their trust to the counselor, expressing honest statements in the counseling process, and students feeling relieved after the counseling. Based on some of the results obtained by researchers, the communication skills conducted by counselors to achieve students' self-disclosure are effective.

A paradigm shift is underway in scholarship on legal fact-finding. Recent work clearly and consistently suggests that persuasion is the product of purely comparative assessments of factual propositions. This paper comments on the philosophical roots of the comparative paradigm. It also highlights two outstanding challenges for the comparative approach: (1) specification of a purely comparative test for the beyond a reasonable doubt standard, and (2) articulation of the mechanics by which unspecific or disjunctive factual propositions are supposed to be weighed in comparative fact-finding.

Hina Jilani is one of Pakistan’s most influential human rights activists and a leader of Women’s Action Forum, the group that began the modern women’s movement in the country. She co-founded the first women’s law firm and legal aid organisation, AGHS, and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. At the international level she has held numerous positions as well. She is a member of the Eminent Jurists Panel on Terrorism, Counterterrorism and Human Rights. In 2009, she was appointed to the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict. She was also UN Special Representative on Human Rights Defenders (2000–2008); appointed to the UN International Fact-Finding Commission on Darfur (2006); and served as President of the World Organisation Against Torture (2016). Jilani received the Amnesty International Genetta Sagan Award for Women’s Rights (2000), and the Millennium Peace Prize for Women (2001). She is a member of The Elders, an independent group of global leaders working together for peace and human rights, founded by Nelson Mandela. Below are edited excerpts from an interview with Ayesha Khan held at Jilani’s home in Lahore on 23 October 2015.

This study observed adolescents’ Internet practices as they did homework and explored student, parent and teacher views on Internet use for learning the academic disciplines. Findings revealed that instruction of the new literacies of the Internet should address strategic information searching and critical evaluation of online information. Factors of Internet use in schools are teachers’ knowledge of technology, access issues, educational policy, and adult attitudes. Implications include prioritizing instruction of aspects of Internet literacy, implementing district and school initiatives targeted to enabling effective use of the Internet for learning, and transforming pedagogical frameworks of learning from fact finding tasks to inquiry processes.

Background: Cancer diagnosis and related treatment can limit young patients’ privacy. Their need for private physical and psychological spaces can be impeded by limited freedom, e.g., sharing hospital rooms with others and exposing their body to their parents and doctors. Methods: We conducted a survey among young patients of our center to investigate how their perception of privacy changed after being diagnosed with cancer and their need for hospital dedicated physical spaces and time for patients to enjoy their privacy. A questionnaire with 16 items was developed by the staff involving psychologists and physicians. The relevance of changes before and after the cancer diagnosis was assessed by calculating two scores indicating the situation before and after diagnosis for each answer, as well as a delta score. Results: Between May and June 2020, the questionnaire was completed by 60 patients aged 16–24 years. The median delta scores describing the changes before and after diagnosis were −8 points for perception of privacy, indicating a significant decrement of the level of privacy perceived. A major issue was the constant presence of parents being perceived as intrusive. Concerning hospital dedicated physical spaces and time for patients to enjoy their privacy, respondents requested dedicated spaces (50% of patients) and opportunities to have private interviews with medical personnel (88%). Conclusions: Our study offers a snapshot of how young people with cancer perceive the impact of the disease and its treatment on their privacy with the restrictions imposed on their individual freedom. Patients’ personal needs must be taken into consideration to adopt appropriate measures and better organize wards.

Researchers have long argued that an important impetus for the creation of the administrative state was the desire to bring experts into government and especially into the regulation of business. Yet Progressive Era politicians did not focus on attracting experts when crafting one part of the administrative state, independent regulatory commissions. This article examines the contemporary understanding of regulatory commissions and shows that they were most often intended as a substitute for vacillating juries. Commissions’ most important advantage over juries was that they acquired experience in investigations of a single subject over time, not that their appointees were already academics or experts in a particular subject. This article also shows that appointments to these commissions did not demonstrate a desire for apolitical expertise. This is the first examination of all members appointed to the Interstate Commerce Commission, Federal Trade Commission, Federal Power Commission, Federal Communications Commission, and the Securities and Exchange Commission in the period from 1887 to 1935. This article finds that political and sectional balance, rather than previous expertise, were the most important criteria for these commissions’ members, at least until the late 1920s, after the end of the supposed Progressive Era.

It is well accepted that China’s criminal procedure law (CPL) adopts an objective standard of proof, which mandates the judicator’s fact-finding must satisfy certain extrinsic goals or requirements. However, there is no specific rule regulating to what extent the prosecutor should convince the judicator and what kind of inner certainty should the judicator reach for fact-finding.

Legal epistemology seems to be exploding. More and more philosophers seem to be taking an interest in the theory of evidence law, and to bring along with them to legal theory the freshest news from the abstract study of epistemology . This is understandable, of course: The law in general, and evidence law in particular, seems to be employing the same natural-language terms epistemologists are (or are at least supposed to be) interested in (“knew or should have known”, “reasonable doubt”, “evidence”, “presumption” (of innocence), and so on) . In this paper we argue that a large part of this project is based on a mistake, roughly analogous to the mistake involved in thinking of studies of intelligence as relevant to the understanding of military intelligence. With qualifications shortly to emerge, epistemology is not, we think, intrinsically and directly relevant to normative evidence law theory, at least, that is, as long as the relevant perspective is that of designing the evidence law regime. When it comes to the conscientious fact-finder, things may be – we’re not sure about this – importantly different.

In its initial stages, the international legal discourse around COVID-19 focused heavily on two narrow questions: first, the international legality of lockdowns, and secondly whether China could be held legally responsible for the pandemic. In September 2020, Donald Trump called upon the UN to find China responsible for COVID-19. Similarly, Australia called for a fact finding mission over the question of China’s state responsibility. For its part China has rebuffed such claims, at one point seeming to place responsibility for the pandemic with the WHO or, more recently, with imported frozen food that allegedly triggered a super-spreader event at the Wuhan food market. These accusations are not simply of concern to a small number of government-employed international lawyers. The popular international law blog EJIL:Talk! announced in late 2020 that its most read post for the year was a piece by Peter Tzeng on the possibility of holding China internationally responsible for the pandemic. Tzeng’s piece was part of – and itself generated – a flurry of academic commentary on China’s potential legal responsibility. Of course, one could retort here that the combination of veto rights at the UN Security Council, the absence of obvious grounds for ICJ jurisdiction and the operation of sovereign immunity make the possibility of China (or any other state for that matter) facing proceedings over COVID-19 wildly implausible. Questions of proof – both in the light of non-cooperation but also sheer uncertainty – and causation make the suggestion that anyone will be held internationally responsible sound like a cruel joke. One would be tempted to dismiss, then, these discussions as being irrelevant, as the expressions of an out-of-touch profession on the part of lawyers and simple rhetoric on the part of states. However, it is important to resist this ‘realist’ impulse. It cannot explain why these ‘impossible’ accusations have recurred with such frequency in the discourse around the pandemic. Indeed, from this perspective it is the sheer implausibility of these legal schemes that makes their popularity worth interrogating. Why, in such a practice-orientated field as law, does such an seemingly impracticalset of accusations recur? Our argument is that law, including international law, has many functions: it represses, it distributes resources, opportunities and violence, and it produces representations of our relationship with the world, or, in other words, it operates as an ideology. Our intervention is concerned with this latter, ideological function of law. In particular, we seek to detect and critique the specific representations about the relationship between states, capital, and global disaster that are implicitly articulated through discussions of state responsibility for the pandemic.

The United States Constitution is most often associated with stirring ideals, such as liberty, equality, and due process. It is not typically thought of as being defined by the empirical world in which it operates, or in which it has operated. However, both the interpretation and functioning of the Constitution require courts to identify relevant facts and to evaluate empirical evidence that supports—or fails to support—the Constitution’s meaning and application. Examples abound, including whether minors are developmentally mature enough to be executed under the Eighth Amendment, or predictions of violence are sufficiently valid to civilly commit someone under the Due Process Clause, or segregation is “inherently unequal.” In virtually every constitutional case, the soaring language of the Constitution is brought down to earth by plain facts. Because facts play such an integral role in constitutional cases, there is a need for an empirically sophisticated judiciary. However difficult the task, judges cannot fulfill their constitutional responsibilities if they do not critically understand the methods of fact-finding, whether involving history or histology. Unfortunately, courts have yet to rise to this need. This Chapter brings procedural order to the reception and use of facts in constitutional decision making. Specifically, it defines and describes the functions of three types of constitutional facts—doctrinal, reviewable, and case-specific. Doctrinal facts are relevant to interpreting the meaning of the Constitution and thus affect the definition of the rules or standards used to implement the Constitution. Reviewable facts, like doctrinal facts, are general in nature; reviewable facts become relevant under some particular interpretation of the Constitution and must be found pursuant to some applicable rule or standard. Case-specific facts, as the name implies, are relevant only to the respective cases in which they arise. This taxonomy offers a framework that judges can use to gain the needed understanding of the empirical world and apply that empirical awareness to the inspirational ideals embedded in the Constitution. Without such an understanding, those ideals will be left untethered and without effect.

Contains fulltext : 219544.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Interest in fostering creative problem solving (CPS) from primary education onwards is growing. However, embedding CPS in Education seems to be a challenge. One problem is that generating creative ideas (idea finding) is often taught in isolation, rather than also including processes such as exploring knowledge (fact finding), defining the problem (problem finding) and comparing ideas to identify the most creative ones (solution finding). In the current study, we prepared CPS tasks for primary education that represent this more complete CPS model and studied whether successful fact finding and problem finding were positively associated with the creativity of the ideas found. Additionally, we studied whether solution finding is doable for these young students and how they select the most creative ideas. Bayesian analyses indicated a positive association of fact finding and problem finding with the number of ideas generated and the originality of these ideas. In addition, problem finding seemed to be positively associated with the completeness of ideas, whereas fact finding seemed not. We also found that primary school students were able to identify their most creative ideas. Students did not seem to undervalue certain aspects of creativity when applying solution finding. Our results indicate that when aiming for more and original solutions, teachers could embed fact finding and problem finding in their CPS teaching practices. Our results also indicate primary school students are able to recognize creativity. 10 p.

A tanulmányban a szerző a Kúria egyik ítéletének elemzésére vállalkozik, amelyben előremutató bírói jogértelmezés érhető tetten a felszín alatti vizek védelmével kapcsolatos tényfeltárási kötelezettség vonatkozásában. A részletek megvilágítása érdekében a szerző felvázolja a felszín alatti vizekkel kapcsolatos szabályozási főbb elemeit. Nemcsak a nemzeti szintű szabályokat ismerteti, hanem az Európai Unió jogalkotási aktusait is. Az eset részletes bemutatása alapján néhány konklúzió megfogalmazására kerül sor.

textabstractPurpose: Fact finding is an important part of the job of criminal trial judges and juries. In the literature, several potential pitfalls hindering fact finding have been identified, such as context effects (i.e. an unintended effect of non-probative information on conviction) and confirmation bias (i.e. a skewed selection of and overreliance on guilt-confirming evidence and neglect of exonerating information). In the present study, the effect of irrelevant contextual information on conviction and subsequent confirmation bias was tested. Method: A sample of Dutch professional criminal trial judges (N = 105) studied a case file and decided on their conviction of the suspect’s guilt, and subsequent investigation endeavours. There were two versions of the file, differing in non-probative details that might affect conviction, such as crime severity and facial appearance of the suspect. Results: Findings suggest that context information indeed affected conviction, and the subsequent preference for guilt-confirming investigation endeavours. Conclusion: Professional judges may be susceptible to bias threatening the objectivity of legal decision-making.

This paper considers whether the COVID-19 pandemic requires the establishment of an international commission of inquiry. It considers the reasons to pursue inquiry rather than litigation and what an inquiry's mandate might contain, including how much the inquiry should focus on international law or state responsibility. It then considers who could create such a body, what its composition might look like, different working methods, and how to maximise co-operation. Overall, a forward-looking inquiry aimed at improving global preparedness may be more prudent and realistic than a mechanism focused on legal wrongdoing.

In a criminal retrial case, if there in no sufficient evidence found in the original trial court to determine such elements as the time of the victim’s death and the cause of death, the source of the instruments for committing the homicide, and the time of committing crime, there are doubts as to the authenticity, legality of the guilty confessions, and it is also dubious whether the corpus delicti are committed by others, and the standard of proof of certainty and sufficiency has not yet met due to the incomplete chain of evidence proving the accused’s guilt. If so, the accused shall be found innocent of intentional homicide and rape of woman in accordance with law on the ground that the facts are unclear and the evidence is not reliable and sufficient.

In her article, ‘Measuring extraordinary rendition and international cooperation’, Rebecca Cordell seeks to subject the Rendition Flights Database to a model-based, statistical analysis. She argues that her analysis suggests that more countries were involved in the CIA’s rendition programme than our work has previously established, and that many more flights in the database are likely to be connected to rendition operations than we have identified. While we would not dispute the likelihood that both of these statements are correct, and we have always presented our findings with an acknowledgement that they provide a necessarily limited account of the rendition, detention and interrogation (RDI) programme, we suggest that Cordell’s work should be approached with some caution. This is so for two reasons. First, her findings – although derived through a different mode of analysis from our own – do not appear to move beyond those we have already published. Second, because Cordell has not triangulated her analysis with either data relating to transfers of specific prisoners, or with evidence relating to which countries hosted prisons for the CIA and the operational dates for these prisons, we question her claim that the flights she has identified from the Database are ‘likely rendition flights’. We aim to demonstrate the importance of having a clear understanding of the limitations of big data when researching violations of human rights, especially where such data is related to covert operations. We also seek to show why the Renditions Flights Database only has merit when it is triangulated with a wide range of supplementary sources, including first-hand accounts by prisoners themselves, declassified documents from the US Government, and the findings of parliamentary, journalist and legal investigations. It is this process of triangulation which gives the flight data meaning and which makes it of value for establishing the facts of human rights abuses.

Throughout its history, the United Nations has resorted to large-scale ad hoc Commissions of Inquiry (UN COIs) to investigate serious international incidents. These UN COIs have often been highly political affairs, though their tasks and goals—including most recently investigating reports of war crimes or crimes against humanity the world over—are distinctly legal in nature. The result has been a focus on both the politics of such UN COIs—including most prominently whether their mandates or their Commissioners are biased—and on the merit of their legal-criminal findings. Yet it is the processes and procedures of UN COIs, and particularly their commitment to transparent due process, that are best able to form a bulwark against both political and legal attacks. Thus, it is their processes and procedures that should be the focus of much legal-academic work; unfortunately, to date this has not tended to be the case. By analyzing perhaps the most well-known and controversial recent UN COI, the 2009United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, and focusing on its due process and procedures rather than its politics or its correct application of international criminal or human rights law, this paper seeks to remedy this oversight. It seeks to identify the legal and procedural shortcomings—the failures of due process—of a well-resourced, well-staffed political inquiry to offer a representative example of how UN COIs tend to fall short, why they must be considered legal undertakings, and how future UN COIs might remedy these common shortcomings by focusing on the legality of their procedures.

On the striking cover of this important work, Attorney-General Sir Hartley Shawcross is captured addressing the International Court of Justice at some point during the Corfu Channel case. The date given for this photograph (on the back cover of the book) is 13 March 1948, although, from the official record of oral proceedings, we know that the Attorney-General presented before the Court on 28 February and 5 March of that year, on the preliminary objection of Albania. No matter, for this depiction still fulsomely conveys the intended message of how, even before the International Court of Justice, fact and law command their own theatrics and techniques of persuasion: ‘[t]he adversarial system’s equivalent of the invisible hand...

This paper on the statutory quest for truth in class and group actions intends to provide an overview of the social state of law, from which they have arisen and which endows them with meaning. Inquiring about the purpose of contemporary processes in fact finding for conflict resolution, and defining the judge’s powers in this context, this paper aims to perform a succinct analysis about the burden of proof and its mechanisms in compliance with Act 472 of 1998 and jurisprudence by the Supreme Court, the Civil Hall and the State Council.

This chapter examines issues surrounding transnational access to evidence, witnesses, and suspects. More specifically, it considers whether the evidence can be transferred between nation-states without negatively affecting the legitimacy, fairness, and reliability of the fact-finding procedure. The focus is on basic questions arising from the conflict between the criminal justice systems’ genuine interest in comprehensive and reliable fact-finding and the specific restrictions on fact-finding when evidence exists beyond a state border. The chapter first traces the historical roots of transnational access to evidence and provides an overview of current legal practices before using the German and U.S. legal frameworks as case studies to illustrate the impact of mutual legal assistance in a civil law and a common law jurisdiction. It then outlines new approaches to transnational access to evidence such as the framework of the European Union, with emphasis on safeguards for reliability and fairness of fact-finding.

This chapter discusses U.S. constitutional law surrounding the admissibility of confessions and the contexts in which the law demands exclusion and those in which a cost-benefit analysis by the court results in its inclusion. Justifications and practical effects of exclusionary rules and the public debates surrounding their use are explained. In the U.S., rights that are expressly protected by the Constitution—such as the right to remain silent, the right to be free from an unreasonable search or seizure, and the right to counsel—are weighed more heavily than the state’s need to fully explore the facts in a criminal case. The values of fairness, dignity, privacy, and liberty embodied in these rights frequently outweigh the need for reliable fact finding. In deciding how to enforce these constitutional rights, however, U.S. courts are well aware of competing interests throughout the criminal justice system.

Issues relating to the establishment of the facts, seemingly as stubborn as ever, are a prominent feature of proceedings at the international level today. This chapter examines certain issues of evidence, fact-finding and experts which are common to various dispute settlement mechanisms, with the goal of identifying similarities and differences between these regimes. In doing so, it will focus on three illustrative evidentiary issues in particular, namely; proof, discovery and expert evidence. Section B shows that, in terms of the liberty, burden and standard of proof alike, a significant degree of similarity can be discerned across the international courts and tribunals examined. A relatively informal approach to issues of proof is evident, in the absence of detailed provisions on such issues in relevant constitutive instruments. Section C, dealing with the issue of discovery, reveals a similar lack of detailed evidentiary provisions in this context, and examines how some tribunals have dealt with such issues in recent proceedings. The same trends can be seen in Section D, which addresses perhaps the most prominent evidentiary issue in contemporary practice, expert evidence. Finally, Section E reflects more generally on the issues raised in the preceding sections, noting that a common feature of the international courts and tribunals examined is the flexible nature of the fact-finding regimes which operate. Such flexible regimes, facilitated by relatively rudimentary provisions governing such issues in their constitutive instruments, were designed to accommodate the wishes of the parties, in accordance with the principle of party autonomy. As a result, courts and tribunals are left to innovate solutions to evidentiary issues as they arise on a case by case basis. This, in turn, provides both parties and judges and arbitrators a degree of flexibility and discretion in terms of how to handle such issues, but is also problematic in certain situations, as is illustrated in this Part. For this reason, it is argued that greater clarification and elaboration of evidentiary rules is likely to be necessary in the future.

In its August 2018 report on violence against Rohingya and other minorities in Myanmar, the Fact Finding Mission of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights noted that “the role of social media [was] significant” in fueling the atrocities. Over the course of more than four hundred pages, the report documented how Facebook was used to spread misinformation, hate speech, and incitement to violence in the lead-up to and during the violence in Myanmar. Concluding that there were reasonable grounds to believe that genocide was perpetrated against the Rohingya, the report indicated that “the Mission has no doubt that the prevalence of hate speech,” both offline and online, “contributed to increased tension and a climate in which individuals and groups may become more receptive to incitement.” The experience in Myanmar demonstrates the increasing role that social media plays in the commission of atrocities, prompting suggestions that social media companies should operate according to a human rights framework.

The burden of proof is an essential mechanism to ensure that cases are decided fairly. Our existing form of proof burdens, unfortunately, has a number of surprising downsides. Conventional burdens of proof are mathematically discontinuous. This means that a tiny shift in a jury’s confidence in guilt can lead to a dramatic change in consequences for the parties in a case. This article explores the costs and benefits of an alternative approach to deciding cases, the continuous burden of proof, and concludes that adopting the right kind of continuous burden would help make our justice system fairer, more equitable, and more effective at deterring wrongdoing. Existing scholarship has analyzed one type of continuous burden of proof, the linear burden, which scales the amount of damages in direct proportion to a jury’s confidence level that the defendant has engaged in the charged offense. Unfortunately, the choice between linear continuous burdens and traditional burdens involves a hard-to-reconcile tradeoff between the values of deterring wrongdoing and reducing the expected rate of errors at trial. I offer two ways in which we might move beyond this apparent stalemate. First, I enumerate previously unexplored advantages of continuous burdens, including their ability to minimize the impacts of biases and other forms of structural unfairness at trial. Second, I offer the first exploration of the logistic continuous burden of proof. This novel means of deciding cases strikes a better balance between deterrence and expected errors than either a traditional burden or a linear continuous burden does. After making the case for the adoption of a logistic continuous burden of proof, this article will consider some challenges that would stand in its way and some reasonable steps we could take towards the continuous approach.

This paper studies the Rubinstein bargaining game with frequent offers, in which both agents have reservation values. Agents are uncertain whether their opponents have high or low reservation values. As agents try to best each other, a unique distribution of delay emerges similar to the reputation literature. This paper answers the following question - Does ex-ante fact-finding improve efficiency? I show that if fact-finding is almost fully accurate, the outcome is fully efficient. However, if fact-finding is only a little accurate, generically, it adversely affects efficiency. I consider a mediator who could marginally improve the accuracy of fact-finding. I characterize a bargaining environment with simple binary signals, in which the mediator could help improve efficiency by finding facts.

Arguing that courts are as good a place as any to study a people's world view, the author shows that the mode of fact finding and the form of judicial reasoning used in Islamic courts in Morocco express conceptions of the person, truth, and social order that are also apparent in the marketplace and other cultural contexts. Over the years, Morocco has adopted a new legal code and reorganized the courts, but the mode of analysis - of employing reliable witnesses, focusing on oral testimony, weighing the social interest, and relying on local experts - has tended to follow already existing patterns. Law is regularized by reference to local practice rather than to doctrine. The concepts and procedures used in Moroccan courts inform and reinforce the commonsense understandings that Moroccans draw on in everyday life. Bibliogr., ref.

Prayer plays a noteworthy role in Muslims daily lives. Quran and Sunnah testify that regular prayers can boost one’s health, can remove the level of stress, and may make one more productive and vigour. Such findings also noticed by medical and psychological experts, and likewise many contemporary research have shown wide-ranging outcomes in terms of improved wellbeing when prayer is done with sincere devotion. Nevertheless what is lacking is that the policy makers in the Islamic world need to initiate whether there exist any linkages between prayer and productivity, which needs to be appreciated more by them, as well as by Islamic economists and social scientists, Islamic business professionals and Islamic jurists, and then through a concerted effort and dynamic fact finding mission and verification to ascertain the Qur’anic beliefs in our daily lives. This studies using descriptive analysis to explain the linkage between the Islamic prayer and productivityDOI: 10.15408/aiq.v8i2.3160

The Arbitral Tribunal in the arbitration instituted by the Philippines against China has issued its Award on Jurisdiction and Admissibility. Juridical practices have something in common. The arbitral proceedings generally comprise two indispensable stages: findings of fact and application of law. The production, collection, and evaluation of evidence serve a particular purpose: they are meant to enable the adjudicative body to find facts. Thus, evidence is meant to prove or disprove facts. This review paper aims to discuss evidence and fact-finding process in the Award. As a general rule, international judges or arbitrators have wide discretion in the evaluation of evidence, but the guiding principle of the rules governing evidence should be the principle of fair trial. The problems of evidence evaluation and fact-finding revealed in the Award would be much serious at the merits stage, thus have negative implications for the Tribunal to deliver its decision impartially.