A Refugee from Justice? Disparate Treatment in the Federal Court of Canada

This article paints a troubling picture of disparate treatment in the Federal Court of Canada. Examining more than 600 immigration and refugee claims, the results link judicial action to litigants' representation, their demographics and national region, and the background and ideology of the judges involved. When compared with prior research in Canada and similar studies from the United States, the findings suggest that an applicant in search of a just result would do as well to hire an experienced lawyer and hope for a sympathetic judge as to prepare an excellent appeal. Canada's immigration process requires greater attention so that the reality of its operation matches the promise of the nation's intentions.     

Does counter-mobilization contain right-wing populist movements? Evidence from Germany

Right-wing populist (RWP) movements have been on the rise in Western democracies. Outside of party politics, such movements regularly organize demonstrations against political elites and minority groups. At the same time, civil society coalitions have mobilized against these movements. Yet we know little about the effect of counter-demonstrations on RWP protest activities. We derive competing theoretical expectations from previous work. On the one hand, counter-mobilization reduces mobilization because the original movement is less likely to achieve its goals (expected utility/costs). On the other hand, clashes and standoffs between opposing movements facilitate mobilization through polarization and anger (identity/emotions). We empirically analyze movement–countermovement dynamics using a new city-level event dataset on street protests by the German Pegida movement and its opponents. In our quantitative analysis, we investigate how counter-mobilization is associated with the onset of Pegida protests, their intensity in terms of participant numbers, and their demobilization. Counter-mobilization does not prevent protest onset, but large counter-demonstrations are associated with larger subsequent Pegida protests, and violence against Pegida supporters reduces the likelihood that they will stop protesting.     

Police Prosecutor and Police Prison: A Note on Summary Justice in Austria

The Austrian Administrative Code, designed to manage relatively minor violations, authorizes an extraordinary court that practices summary justice through a police prosecutor who can impose short sentences to a police prison. This paper concentrates on the use of this remarkable legal institution as a form of holding action that reduces delay between formal charges and final disposition in prosecution under criminal law.     

Zur Geschäftsordnungsreform des österreichischen Reichsrates vom Dezember 1909

SUMMARY

In 1907, the (Cisleithanian) Austrian House of Representatives considered an electoral reform which was initially supposed to be connected with a comprehensive reform of the rules of procedure (Geschäftsordnungsgesetz); however, difficulties in the course of the negotiations led to the decision to let the House decide its own procedure in future. Subsequently, government bills were introduced repeatedly but remained either unfinished or altogether ignored. Furthermore, motions which were mostly politically motivated and focused only on certain aspects of procedure were put forward by various deputies.

The Austrian parliamentary system suffered from an antiquated procedure, with procedural wrangling and filibustering (Obstruktionen) against government and prime minister as impediments. At the end the eighteenth sitting of the twentieth session (15.12–19.12.1909), devoted mainly to such wrangles, saw a tactical move leading to a provisional procedural reform which was modest in content. The path towards this reform was paved with superficial discussions which were to uncover differences of opinion and breaches of the law; however, even the majority of parties who refused either reform or its development were actually in favour of it because they were after all supporters of a functioning parliamentary system. Reform contained various possibilities for speeding up the formal business routine as well as an ineffective paragraph on servants of the house (Hausknechtsabsatz), which enabled the Speaker to exclude a representative from a sitting.

Superficially, reform was designed to strengthen the Speaker of the House of Representatives but in fact none of the leading parties was really interested in getting rid of procedural obstruction by this means. What was of greater importance to them was to have an opportunity to agitate against the government or the majority in the House. Thus it does not seem surprising that shortly after the reform, obstruction started anew.