澳大利亚联邦法院对专家证据的采纳

I. Introduction
The opinion evidence of experts is an exception to the general rule that witnesses can only give evidence of that which they have seen or heard and may not give evidence of inferences which arise from their observations and from that which they have heard.     

Devolution and its Jurisdictional Asymmetries

The devolution of legislative and executive powers to the different parts of the United Kingdom has meant that, because of the asymmetric arrangements made, there has been an increase in policy divergence from one part to another. Some of this has been intended, some unintended. With reference, in particular, to Scotland and Wales this article focuses on the asymmetric consequences of devolution which derive specifically from the jurisdictional or 'legal system' differences across the United Kingdom. These affect the conditions under which law-making powers may be devolved, the 'management' of devolution and the rights enjoyed by citizens. It is argued that the devolution of 'legal system' competence carries with it problems quite different from those associated with the devolution of other powers.     

当代国际刊法的新发展

大量证据显示国际刑事审判的展开促进了国际刑法的发展,而在国际刑法发展的进程中,出现了一系列新的观念和原则并逐渐得到国际社会的广泛认可,诸如灭绝种族罪、危害人类罪和战争罪的定义,以及合法性原则、补充性管辖原则、个人刑事责任原则和国际合作与司法协助原则等。国际刑事法院的建立在国际刑法制度发展中具有里程碑式的意义,联合国、联合国宪章以及联合国大会的一系列决议为国际刑法的发展发挥了至关重要的作用。     

Prisoners' Families and the Regulation of Contact

This article explores HM Prison Service policy and the impact of case law on the rights of prisoners to family contact. First, state provision and policy for prisoner-family contact is reviewed and the constraints imposed on contact over the past decade are explored. A number of legal challenges to these constraints have been made recently and, drawing on domestic case law and challenges in the European Court of Human Rights we explore the nature of prisoners' rights of contact in prison. This analysis shows that while fathers' rights for indirect contact are upheld, their rights are not respected as much as those of mothers in cases of direct contact and also that men unable to establish family life have their rights further eroded. Drawing upon empirical research findings as well as case law, the relationship between the Prison Act 1952 and the Children Act 1989 is considered and policy recommendations are put forward.     

黄克功杀人案与陕甘宁边区的司法公正

黄克功杀人案发生在陕甘宁边区成立后不久。边区司法机关仅用六天时间,便完成了从案件的侦破、起诉到审理、判决和执行的所有程序,为陕甘宁边区的司法公正,从效率、民主与人权保护等方面,确立了标准。在缺乏明确的实体法及程序法规范的情况下,边区高等法院通过对此案的审理,创设了人民群众民主参与刑事案件的陪审制度和公审制度、边区高等法院对重大刑事案件一审终审的诉讼程序制度、法律适用主体的平等原则等重要制度,体现了边区在特定历史条件和战争环境下实现司法公正的独特方式,对革命法制的发展产生了巨大而深远的影响。     

Can Online Courts Promote Access to Justice? A Case Study of the Internet Courts in China

The right to access the courts is a basic human right in civilised societies, but the current legal system is unfriendly and often unaffordable for the victims of e-commerce disputes and copyright infringements seeking access to justice. Therefore, how to design a judicial system that is more accessible for the aforementioned victims has become a critical legal point of contention in the digital economy era. In particular, it is not easy to provide solid evidence of consumer disputes or copyright infringements on the Internet because the electronic evidence stored on the current centralised database has data security and trust problems. In response to this challenge, China established three Internet Courts in 2017 to move dispute resolution for e-commerce disputes and copyright infringements from the physical courts to the Internet. All the proceedings in these Internet Courts are conducted on the Internet, so the time and expenses of the litigants can be largely reduced. Most notably, these Internet Courts accept the use of blockchain as a method of securing evidence, to overcome the risks that evidence stored on the Internet can be hacked or falsified. The notion of an Internet Court, which substantially enhances popular access to justice, is a significant judicial innovation. It is of special significance for those lawsuits with small value claims and online evidence, and in which the parties are separated by long distances. However, these Internet Courts leave much to reflect on, including whether due process can be guaranteed, whether public trial can be fully implemented, and whether blockchain-based evidence is absolutely admissible. Even so, this article argues that true justice is not only to pursue absolute correctness of judgements, but that true justice should also strike a balance between the correctness and efficiency of trials. For this reason, Internet Courts may yet establish a new judicial paradigm to pursue a balance between correctness, time, and cost.     

The impact of two Los Angeles County Teen Courts on youth recidivism: comparing two informal probation programs

Objective

This study sought to examine the impact of two Teen Courts operating in Los Angeles County, a juvenile justice system diversion program in which youths are judged by their peers and given restorative sentences to complete during a period of supervision.

Methods

A quasi-experimental design was used to compare youths who participated in Teen Courts (n = 112) to youths who participated in another diversion program administered by the Probation Department (the 654 Contract program) (n = 194). Administrative data were abstracted from the probation records for all youths who participated in these programs between January 1, 2012 and June 20, 2014. Logistic and survival models were used to examine differences in recidivism, measured as whether the minor had any subsequent arrest or arrests for which the charge was filed.

Results

Comparison group participants had higher rates of recidivism than Teen Court participants, after controlling for age, gender, race/ethnicity, and risk level. While the magnitude of the program effects were fairly consistent across model specifications (odd ratios comparing Teen Court [referent] to school-based 654 Contract ranging from 1.95 to 3.07, hazard ratios ranging from 1.62 to 2.27), differences were not statistically significant in all scenarios.

Conclusions

While this study provides modest support for the positive impact of Teen Court, additional research is needed in order to better understand how juvenile diversion programs can improve youth outcomes.

     

Participants' Attitudes in the Utah Juvenile Victim‐Offender Mediation Program

This paper describes an archival evaluation of the Juvenile Court Victim‐Offender Mediation Program (VOMP) of the Utah State Courts in Salt Lake City. From 1997 to 2000, 147 victims and 330 offenders reported their attitudes towards their experiences in VOMP. Although victims were more satisfied than offenders for some outcomes, all participants reported exceptionally high satisfaction. These promising results are consistent with other published studies on the effectiveness of VOMP and other forms of restorative justice in demonstrating the promise of mediation in criminal justice.     

Interpreting the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Scales of Justice</Emphasis>: Architecture,Symbolism and Semiotics of the Supreme Court of India

The neutrality of the art and architecture of courtrooms and courthouses has dominated the public perception in the Indian context. The courtroom design and the visual artistic elements present within these judicial places have very often been considered to be insignificant to the notions of law and justice that they reflect. As art and architecture present certain historical narratives, reflect political allegories and have significant impact on the perceptions of their viewers, they have critical socio-political ramifications. This makes it pertinent to explore them and investigate the paradox of their deployment and interpretation in today’s increasingly mediatized world. Through an ethnographic study of the Supreme Court of India, this paper interprets its art and architecture, and, the symbolism and semiotics reflected through them. Arguing against their neutrality and insignificance, the paper demonstrates how they reflect nationalism, certain ideologies and power-space dynamics. It further argues that they act as evidence of political metaphors related to justice, power and democracy. With a conversation between law, architecture and semiotics, the paper investigates the historical and spatial dimensions of its architecture and artistic elements. Mapping the Court’s architectural elements, I examine how the visual representation of ‘justice as virtue’ finds translation in its design through transfer of certain images, including the image of the ‘scales of justice’, into it, while absenting the notion of ‘justice as struggle’—to contemplate on how legal architecture gives evidence to the vexed relationship between law and justice and also of the break from the colonial past     

Statute review Lagos state property protection law 2016

The paper reviewed provisions of the Lagos State Property Protection Law in the light of existing criminal legislation with a view to, or otherwise, justifies its enactment within the corpus of administration of criminal justice system; interrogates the efficiency and efficacy of the law against the knowledge of criminal jurisprudence.The paper found that apart from the establishment of a task force unit, the stiff penal provisions, the infusion of restitution remedy and conferment of jurisdiction on Special Offences Court; the provisions of the law are well couched and covered under the existing Criminal law of Lagos State.     

Naming Names: The Impact of Supreme Court Opinion Attribution on Citizen Assessment of Policy Outcomes

The manner in which political institutions convey their policy outcomes can have important implications for how the public views institutions' policy decisions. This paper explores whether the way in which the U.S. Supreme Court communicates its policy decrees affects how favorably members of the public assess its decisions. Specifically, we investigate whether attributing a decision to the nation's High Court or to an individual justice influences the public's agreement with the Court's rulings. Using an experimental design, we find that when a Supreme Court outcome is ascribed to the institution as a whole, rather than to a particular justice, people are more apt to agree with the policy decision. We also find that identifying the gender of the opinion author affects public agreement under certain conditions. Our findings have important implications for how public support for institutional policymaking operates, as well as the dynamics of how the Supreme Court manages to accumulate and maintain public goodwill.     

AFCC Think Tanks: Promoting Dialogue on Difficult Issues in Family Law*

This article examines three think tanks sponsored by the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, which convened representatives of different disciplines, often with differing perspectives, to address policy and practice dilemmas in family law and dispute resolution. This essay was initially commissioned by the Nuffield Foundation, London, UK, as an Insight Article for its Family Justice Observatory, which aims to improve the use of data and research evidence in the family justice system in England and Wales. The think tank process is described and analyzed, identifying factors that created challenges and those that led to success.     

Citizenship and justice: public prosecutors in social contexts in Portugal

All over the world judicial systems are under tremendous pressure as the instruments used by citizens to access their full rights. The erosion of other state powers has transferred expectations of social intervention or, at least, protection for the rights of the weak and vulnerable, to the sphere of justice. Hence, in some countries the social role of judges or public prosecutors has become more important and their work is publicly scrutinised to ensure that their duties are performed correctly and fairly. In addition to criminal law, social areas of justice (concerning workers and children) have become more central to judicial systems, conferring a new public responsibility on these professionals.

In several countries, including Portugal, public prosecutors are unusual within the legal profession given that they have equal status in both social and criminal areas of law. In certain systems, public prosecutors may act as a party, defending the rights of powerless citizens and leading them through the judicial process. Such powers offer great potential for fairness and justice but at the same time can lead to dangerous professional controversies. Through an analysis of the Portuguese model, one of the more advanced of its kind (in terms of intervention), some of the main features will be described and identified.

Public prosecutors in Portugal have, for many years, been in charge of a set of very varied responsibilities within the context of the Family and Juvenile and Labour Courts which far exceed what is publicly acknowledged, particularly in criminal matters. However, their functions are not limited to those of the ‘public prosecutor’ or ‘coordinator of the investigation’ typically associated with responsibilities in criminal matters.

Within the context of these two major and socially sensitive areas, public prosecutors act as intermediaries between the different parties and entities involved in litigation, a fact which, in professional terms, endows them with features which are atypical of magistrates and places them in close contact with citizens. Thus, taking a case study based on the Coimbra Family and Juvenile and Labour Courts as its starting point, this paper aims to map out these formal and informal functions, which create a level of importance that is probably much higher than would have been expected, particularly given the lack of truly credible and effective alternatives that enable citizens to access law and justice.     

论经济政策的司法融入——以政策在民事审判中的介入机制为研究路径

经济政策在人民法院司法裁判中担当着重要的作用,在当前能动司法语境下意义更为重大。经济政策与民法规范存在正相关、弱相关、负相关三重关系,在司法适用上扮演不同的角色。经济政策影响合同的成立、效力、履行和解释,对侵权的保护范围、保护程度和构成要件亦产生作用。经济政策司法融入的路径包括直接适用和间接适用的方式,通过构建经济政策司法考量机制和完善公私法互动对接机制,实现经济政策与民事审判的良性互动。     

Italian criminal trials: Lost in transition? Differing degrees of criminal justice convergence in Italy and Australia

The Italian Code of Criminal Procedure underwent extraordinary reform in 1988, from an established inquisitorial system to incorporate key elements of adversarialism. This reform sought to create greater separation of powers and efficiency of the trial system. Two decades on, Italian criminal trials continue to be overly protracted, and struggle with maintaining independence of the judiciary (particularly a distinct separation from the prosecutorial arm). This paper primarily examines the philosophical foundations of inquisitorial and adversarial systems, and theories of the policy making process. It develops a theoretical framework for understanding the transformation of the Italian trial system, and the challenges that have resulted from combining two divergent approaches to criminal justice. Various important lessons are drawn for criminal justice community, as many jurisdictions are engaging in similar convergence of these systems as a result of global influence and change.     

Ironies in Human Rights Protection in the EU: Pre-Accession Conditionality and Post-Accession Conundrums

In the wake of the extensive scrutiny of the human rights credentials of the new Member States under the EU pre-accession conditionality, which itself was riddled with paradoxes, this article considers a rather unexpected irony thrown up by the accession of these countries. It is that the post-communist constitutional courts, which have been applauded for vigorous protection of fundamental rights after the fall of the Communist regime that was marked by nihilism to rights, have come rather close to having to downgrade the protection standards after accession, due to the new constraints of supremacy of EC law. The article will consider the sugar market cases of the Hungarian and Czech Constitutional Courts and of the Estonian Supreme Court, which appear to add weight to the concerns that have been voiced in some older Member States about the fundamental rights protection in the EU. Indeed such concerns were recently also addressed in the concurring opinions to the Bosphorus judgment of the European Court of Human Rights.     

THE SECOND ANNUAL MEYER ELKIN ADDRESS

A year ago, our journal had the opportunity to publish the inaugural Meyer Elkin Address by Jonah, Peter, and Marian Wright Edelman. This past summer, the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts was honored to have George Thomson speak at its conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. Thomson was presented with this honor for his hard work and dedication to family law in Canada and throughout the world. The Family and Conciliation Courts Review is honored to publish this speech by Thomson. Described by his colleagues as a “miracle worker” and “superman”, Thomson has led a fascinating career that has followed several different paths. As an undergraduate student, Thomson attained a B.A. in philosophy and English from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. He remained at Queen's University and received an LL.B., then completed his formal education with an LL.M. from the University of California. Thomson has had a diverse background in the legal field, serving as an educator, a judge, and a government official. From 1968 until 1971, he worked as both an associate professor and assistant dean at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. After his brief stint with the university, he was appointed judge of the Provincial Court for the Province of Ontario. Thomson held this position for five years before becoming an associate deputy minister of Community and Social Services, where he served as the head of the Children's Services Division. In the 1980s, Thomson returned to the bench in the provincial court. Additionally, he was the director of education for the Law Society of Upper Canada. Most notably, however, Thomson chaired a provincial committee on social welfare reform. By 1989, Thomson had moved from the bench into governmental work. He briefly served as the deputy minister of citizenship for Ontario. He was then appointed the deputy minister of labor until 1992. From 1992 until 1994, Thomson served as Ontario's deputy attorney general. He then became the deputy minister of justice and deputy attorney general of Canada. Most recently, Thomson has been a special advisor to the minister of justice and attorney general of Canada. The following Meyer Elkin address was presented at the annual Convention of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts in Vancouver, Canada, in June 1999.     

The Law and the Desert: Alternative Methods of Delivering Justice

This article considers the way in which the Federal Court of Australia has adapted to the native title jurisdiction. Here we see how common law approaches to law and procedure challenge, and are challenged by, the culture of indigenous peoples and customary law. It conveys the risk of cultural violence in a balancing of legal and cultural norms and shows how access to justice debates reach beyond debates about funding and advice into more fundamental issues about legal process and the nature of substantive law. The Court's approach to facilitating access to justice goes deeper than essential procedural changes. Its approach suggests a cultural change within the Court.     

El principio de reconocimiento mutuo en el derecho de la unión europea según la cláusula de “plena fe y crédito” de la constitución de estados unidos

The paper shows a comparative analysis of the law of the united states of america (US) and the european union (EU) focusing on the principle of mutual recognition, which has served as a basis in order to achieve the enforcement of judicial decisions by the authorities of the different Member States. It illustrates the origins and evolution of this principle within the US legal system, as well as its recent implementation within the European integration system with the aim of creating a common space of freedom, security and justice. The paper lists and analizes a substancial number of legal acts adopted so far in the area of civil and criminal law. Furthermore, it highlights the influence the case-law of the US Supreme Court and the Court of Justice of the EU has had on the development of this principle. Moreover, it elaborates on the function of this principle as a nation-building element, raising the question whether this concept could be possibly transposed to a regional integration system with clear federal traits such as the EU.