Doing justice to justice

Adshead's recognition that only when taken together can the many different conceptions of justice accommodate what is called for in the particularly demanding setting of forensic mental health care, is to be applauded. Each must be honoured and built into the systems of assessment and treatment that are the tasks of the forensic psychiatrist, she demonstrates. Adshead's far‐reaching revisions could resolve much that is troubling about the present practice of forensic psychiatry. Yet how much these revisions can overcome the moral dilemmas associated with dual roles in forensic psychiatry, is not so clear.     

Social justice and legal justice

The main aim of this paper is to challenge the validity of the distinction between legal justice and social justice. It is argued that what we usually call legal justice is either an application of the more fundamental notion of social justice to legal rules and decisions or is not a matter of justice at all. In other words, the only correct uses of the notion of legal justice are derivative from the notion of social justice and, hence, the alleged conflicts between criteria of social and legal justice result from the confusion about the proper relationship between these two concepts. Two views about the social justice/legal justice dichotomy are of particular importance and will provide the focus for the argument: this dichotomy is sometimes identified with a classical distinction between distributive and commutative justice and sometimes with the distinction between substantive and procedural justice.     

Restorative justice: the indigenous justice system

Dramatically different beliefs about justice will produce dramatically different methods for achieving justice. The beliefs underlying the traditional Indigenous restorative justice systems, systems that dramatically differ from the European-based system practiced in the USA are presented. The discussion highlights the legacy of colonialism for tribal communities and the resilience and creative resistance that have continued to characterize the spirit and ingenuity of Indigenous peoples.     

Digital justice

In a period of growing suspicion about the power of digital technology and ‘tech companies’, this short comment aspires to argue that the conditions for the functioning of the constitutional state contain an inherent obligation for the state not only to be sufficiently sensitive to the changes brought about by digitisation, but also to make use of digitisation. A key condition for the functioning of the constitutional state is e.g. that the judiciary is capable of fully implementing its task of affording legal protection. Reinterpreting this condition in the modern age implies that courts should remain explicitly vigilant when it comes to digitisation. Hence, affording protection is not only a question of what makes formal regulation in a digital world different from regulation in the well-known offline world. If the constitutional state is to be ‘capable’ of implementing its task of affording legal protection, it must also be sufficiently sensitive to the changes brought about by digitisation, as well as deploy the potential that digitisation offers.     

Singapore justice

Singapore was brought to the world's attention in the spring of 1994, when it sentenced Michael Fay to six lashes with a cane. Many debated the issues presented by that case and there were many half‐truths released about Singapore and the eighteen year old male from Ohio. This research does not raise the issues of caning or corporal punishment. Rather, the research was done to explore ‘'Justice in Singapore'’ and how its system of justice really operates.

More specifically, this research will focus on this city‐state consisting of many divergent peoples, races, cultures, languages, and its thriving economy. The major part of the research focuses on crime related matters. The research compares U.S. and Singapore crime rates, and has found the overall U.S. rates to be 200% to 380% higher in the 1980s. Violent crime rates for ten years were also compared, and the U.S. rates range from 749% to 1,405% higher than Singapore. The paper also examines the ‘'drug problem'’ in Singapore and its response to it.

The last section of this paper explores why there is generally very strong support for police in Singapore (little corruption and few acts of police brutality). The court structure was also explored and an analysis has been done on how it functions. Lastly, the prison system is examined and its operations are presented. Justice in Singapore works very well, but it is also very different from other nations of the world.     

Frenemies: restorative justice and customary mechanisms of justice

More often than not, restorative justice is said to take roots in Indigenous practices. In fact, Indigenous and other traditional mechanisms of justice are often described as examples of restorative justice practices. In New Zealand, the government equates the Mãori approach to doing justice with family group conferences (FGC); a restorative justice mechanism which it claims embodies Mãori values and preferences. This article contends, however, that the type of ‘justice’ embodied in customary mechanisms, has often been taken out of context, and rendered universal and ahistorical through its representation as restorative justice mechanisms. Using fieldwork evidence, an analytical comparison between principles of restorative practices, New Zealand’s FGCs and the Mãori approach to justice was conducted. It concludes that this tendency to equate restorative justice with Indigenous approaches to law and justice is harmful and dangerous for it risks rendering the scholarship homogenizing and universalizing restorative justice, to the detriment of local preferences and practices.     

Teaching restorative justice to education and criminal justice majors

In academia, departments in Education and Sociology/Criminal Justice are in different colleges, but professionals in these fields frequently interact, such as probation officers working in schools and teachers working in prisons. This paper describes a course that addressed a commonality of the two by focusing on Restorative Justice. The content of the course was multi-disciplinary and co-taught by two professors from these different disciplines, and students were from a wide range of majors. Not only did the course content focus on Restorative Justice, this perspective guided how the course was taught. All classes were conducted within a Circle, students participated in the creation of the syllabus, students contracted for grades, and students organized many of the discussions. Emphasis was on critical analysis of Restorative Justice practices and theories. Quantitative and qualitative evaluations were provided as well as reflections by the teachers.     

Publication productivity of criminal justice faculty in criminal justice journals

An important dimension of university faculty life is publication expectation. Often the level of publication productivity is used to assess general program prestige or to evaluate individual faculty performance. The publication rates of faculty in PhD and master-level programs have been unclear. This study examined the publication rates using a general list of criminal justice journals, and a select list of the leading journals, over a five-year period. The faculty members were located in criminal justice programs that granted PhD and master degrees. Publication productivity rates were established for the two different degree level programs, and the institutions with the strongest publication rates were identified. Publication rates are only one factor used in the assessment of program quality and the relationship of publication rates to other program features is discussed.     

Procedural justice research

During the past decade the study of the psychology of procedural justice has become well established within the field of justice. It has been widely found that people are as concerned with the fairness of the way decisions are made as they are with the fairness of those decisions (i.e., distributive justice). This paper identifies the questions which have dominated research on procedural justice during the past decade, discusses the conclusions which have been reached about those questions, and suggests important areas for future exploration by procedural justice researchers.     

Access to justice

Conclusion The central aim of providing access to justice should be to ensure that every citizen receives implementation of his legal rights at the lowest overall cost, not just the cost to litigants, or the courts' budget, or insurers, but to society as a whole. How far the proposals in the Report will achieve that will have to be seen when they are implemented, whether in whole or in part. Although the proposals are radical in many ways, it is certainly possible to argue that on one construction they merely preserve the present distinction between small claims, County Court, and High Court cases, with a variety of significant modifications. If that be so, it is equally arguable that very much the same result could be achieved by modifications to both the County Court and High Court rules without the need for universal sweeping changes. Certainly all practitioners and judiciary are going to find that the next few years are full of challenge and interest. It will be fascinating to observe the changes and the outcome. Q.C., M.A., LL.M. (Cantab), J.D. (Chicago), one of Her Majesty's Circuit Judges since 1987. The opinions expressed in this article are purely personal to the author and should not be attributed to any other member of the judiciary.     

Sentiments of justice

In empirical research on social inequality one question remains largely open: Why are certain types of social inequalities legitimate or not? Three theoretical approaches to this question are discussed: the universalist, the cultural, and the interactionist approach. The interactionist approach is defended: Sentiments of justice can be predicted or deduced from the system in which the actors are located. It is important to know whether actors have reasons to be interested in the system of interaction in question, including reasons for approving the rules and the mode of its functioning. At the same time, the existence of an unrestricted residue must also be recognized: With good reasons one group of individuals can find that a certain state of affairs is just, another group that it is unjust. Because divergences of opinion are inescapable, certain questions pertaining to the issue of social justice can only be resolved by the method of regulated political debate. Questions of social justice can in no way be resolved a priori.