Colonial Traditions,Co‐optations,and Mi'kmaq Legal Consciousness

In 1996 a provincial court was established at Eskasoni Mi'kmaq Community in Nova Scotia, Canada, in response to overwhelming evidence confirming the failures of the Canadian legal system to provide justice for Indigenous peoples, and as a specific recommendation of the Royal Commission on the Donald Marshall, Jr., Prosecution. Marshall, a Mi'kmaq wrongfully convicted of murder, served eleven years of a life sentence before proving his innocence. The importation of provincial legal culture into an Indigenous community creates tensions and contradictions surrounding the legitimacy, authenticity, and efficacy of Indigenous laws. The ontological conflicts that arise from the imposition of a justice system integrally linked with colonization, criminalization, and assimilation cannot be resolved through indigenization of court staff and administrative conveniences. The Mi'kmaq continue to assert their laws and articulate their legal consciousness against the co‐optation of dominant system, with mixed results.     

陪审团审理微观制衡机制考察——一个以美国为对象的分析实证视角

“陪审团决定事实问题、法官决定法律问题”的常识观点虽揭示出陪审团审理的基本框架,却过于简单,且与实际不完全相符。陪审团审理还存在一种微观的制衡机制,即法官可以通过运用证据规则、对陪审团作出指示、指定裁决形式,以及批准作为法律事项的判决的动议和重新审理动议等方式制约陪审团的事实认定;陪审团则可以在定罪、量刑和裁定民事赔偿额度等方面影响法官对法律问题的决定。这种微观制衡机制既保障了陪审团审理中的事实认定,又维护了法律适用的正当性。     

Without Peers

Abstract

This writing will, in two parts, trace the development of Anglo-American law in regard to women and jury service from the early Anglo-Norman jury to the present American system. In this long history, women were largely excluded from the public world of the legal system. As criminal defendants, they did not face a jury of their peers. The first part, contained in this edition, examines the limited participation of women in the legal system in medieval and early modern England, colonial America, and the new American nation ending with their entry into the public world and the victory of women's suffrage in the United States. Within this setting, this first section traces the evolution of trial by jury. The second part, to follow, will examine the twentieth century legal, and political, struggle for women's full participation in the American jury system.     

The representative jury requirement: Jury representativeness and cross sectional participation from the beginning to the end of the jury selection process

The paper specifically addresses the many ways in which the facially neutral procedures actually fail to secure representative jury pools. Although the Sixth Amendment's fair cross‐section requirement forbids systematic discrimination in the creation of the jury venire and panel, it does not guarantee that the criminal jury will in fact reflect an accurate cross‐section of the community. As a result, not only does the Court fail to focus on nonlegally recognized screening mechanisms and factors such as exemptions, excuses, failure to followup jurors, etc., may affect jury representativeness, but also the Court never examined cross‐sectional representation at the entirety of the jury selection processes, except jury panels and final juries.

The first section of this paper presents a brief overview of the constitutional law impacting impartial juries, especially addressing the fair cross‐section doctrine that is the focus of contemporary jury selection procedures. In providing empirical and systematic comparisons of jury participation at each of the distinct jury selection stages encompassing a general population, jury wheels, jury qualified pools, jury eligibles, jury panels, and actual trial jurors, the second section of this paper makes critical analyses of the cumulative effects of screening mechanisms in jury selection. The paper assesses jury compositions by looking at demographic, socio‐economic, and ideological profiles of prospective jurors, illustrating that those jury profiles do not necessarily reflect cross‐sectional representation of the community population at comprehensive stages of the jury selection process. The analytical findings show that unless some deep seated reforms are made to eliminate cumulative effects of selection biases and correct representative imbalances of jury wheels, qualified pools, jury panels, and trial juries, historically underrepresented groups such as racial minorities, the poor, and part‐time employees will continue to be underrepresented on juries, negating the public's shared responsibility for the administration of justice in one of America's most heralded democratic institutions.     

The Jury between the Civil and the Criminal Law

This article comprises two case studies of a ``problem' within the Anglo-Welsh legal process of jury trial. In that tradition, the judge not only instructs on the law to be applied by the jury, s/he also ``summarises' the evidence after counsel have already done so. This summarising is largely unconstrained by appellate control. The ``problem' that the two cases present is that they were trials of ``civil' issues in which the subject matter is also categorised as ``criminal'. Where such overlaps occur the relevant law is not easy nor clear. This can present difficulties for the judge, which may and in these cases were transmitted and amplified to the jury. In the first case study, the rhetorical direction of the judge's language are analysed. In the second, the language is analysed as a generator of confusion rather than direction. In both cases the outcome in the jury's verdict reflect the judicial language. Under current British law, investigation of the conversion process from judicial ``Summing-up' through collective jury deliberation to verdict is illegal.     

Changing views of jury power

This article highlights the major events and empirical research in the continuing debate over the power and competence of the jury in civil and criminal trials. The concept ofjury nullification, the power of the jury to return a verdict based upon their moral conscience despite the evidence and the law, is used as a convenient filter to discuss the legal and behavioral assumptions about jury power and performance. The legal, historical, and even behavioral contexts reflect a bipolar theme in the level of trust Americans have exhibited towards the jury system. One pole reflects the notion that juries lack predictability and rationality in their verdicts and are moved by emotional concerns. Antipodally, juries have been thought to reflect an historical competence at applying common sense notions of equity and rationality to conflicted and ambiguous cases. This article traces the history of these two views of jury power and competence. A critical review of the empirical research that may inform the debate about the jury's competence in both criminal and civil arenas is provided.     

The Rule of Law and Jury Nullification

Jury nullification occurs when a jury renders a verdict based on what it feels the law ought to demand, as opposed to what the law in fact demands. While it is beyond doubt that criminal juries in common law jurisdictions have the ability to so act without fear of legal censure or redress, it remains a highly contentious issue as to whether such juries ought to be informed of this ability. One of the main objections to informing jurors of their purview to nullify is that, in so acting, the rule of law is subverted. Thus, while jurors might have the ability to so act, they ought to be discouraged from doing so. This ability, in other words, must be hidden from them – a subterfuge justified by reference to the rule of law. In this paper I closely examine the rule of law objection and conclude that the conflicts between jury nullification and the rule of law are greatly exaggerated. In fact, in many respects jury nullification promotes the very same ends and goals as does the rule of law. Hence, I conclude, if there is a reason to withhold from the jury any knowledge of jury nullification, such a reason cannot be grounded on considerations of the rule of law.     

‘Authorizing the Peril’: Mythologies of (Settler) Law at the End of Time

The promised paradises of colonial capitalism and neoliberalism are set in a perpetually elusive future (Fitzpatrick 1992). This future is not a set destination, but an endless linear journey set to the thrum of ‘progress’ and ‘development’. This paper considers, in the context of recent cases relating to development in the Athabasca tar sands region, what the law of the Canadian settler state does when it is faced with interruptions and ruptures in its timescape. Drawing on Fitzpatrick’s seminal work, The Mythology of Modern Law, I argue that a conceptualisation of law’s behaviour in these contexts as functionally mythological highlights some of the elusive ways that settler law maintains a stranglehold over legal imaginaries of oil and gas developments: by distorting and flattening the pasts and presents of Indigenous societies that pre-dated (and continue to co-exist with) the settler state on ‘Canadian’ land, by mediating between the ‘origin’ of the settler state and the daily rhythms of colonial time through ‘Eternal Objects’ such as property and economic development, and by asserting a general ‘objectivity’ of law to evade any direct grappling with the stark possibilities of the ‘end of the world’ created by the climate crisis. I conclude, drawing on Indigenous scholarship and the work of de Goede and Randalls, that a meaningful response to the climate crisis requires re-enchanted attachments to life that necessitate a departure from the one-dimensional temporality of the mythologies of settler law.

     

中世纪欧洲法医学溯源

法医学是应用病理学、生物学、生物化学和其他医学科学理论和技能解决法律问题,为侦查和审判提供证据的科学。法医学学科属性是医学,其目的是解决法律问题,因而法医学同时具有自然科学和人文科学属性。现今,我们对于法医学的研究往往局限在自然科学领域,而对其人文学科属性却有所忽视。当代西方法医学起源自中世纪的欧洲大陆,当时罗马法和教会法占统治地位,它们没有设立陪审团制度,而且允许对嫌疑人进行刑讯逼供,而英美法系的司法审判程序设立了陪审团制度。在这两种司法体制下,法医医学证言、证词逐步形成了两种形式：英美法系控诉式诉讼体制下的言辞证据形式和罗马法诉讼中纠问体制下的书证形式。本文将对中世纪欧洲的法医学进行溯源研究,从欧洲法医学的起源和发展角度,完善法医学史研究内容,为世界法医学史比较研究提供借鉴。     

USING A JURY SIMULATION AS A CLASSROOM EXERCISE

The authors' empirical research project considers the effects of differences in actual legal rules on jury decisions and, concurrently, gives business students the opportunity to participate in a realistic jury experience. The project uses actual trial evidence to produce a videotaped simulated trial presentation thereby insuring that the testimony, legal arguments, jury instructions and facts are realistic. To date, approximately 2,000 business students have participated in the simulation, under the supervision of 13 different Academy members at 11 different universities. This article describes the project and its curricular benefits within the context of an introductory course in law.     

The Jury as a Translation of Democratic Participation and Political Conflict

In this response to Valerie Hans's Presidential address, I use her “legal translating” term to argue that the implementation of liberal democratic structures in new democracies opens new opportunities to translate the jury system into and onto new democratic societies. While policy makers have concerns about the strength and vibrancy of lay participation in the legal system, policy makers' decisions to adopt trial by jury are not always democratic. Nonetheless, the consequence of the translation of trial by jury furthers democratic development. Using Nicaragua, Mexico, and Russia as case studies, I suggest that one goal of policy makers who attempt to adopt trial by jury is to reduce the discretionary power of judges who remain from the prior government. Comparative trial‐by‐jury research can contribute more to our understanding of democratic development than prior research has indicated.     

Freedom, Law, and the Colonial Project

In this essay I develop a Marxist-informed anticolonialist position, and from this position I assess the role of law in the early Canadian settler-state. I claim that the flexibility of law is a measure of its restitutive and exploitative facets, such facets that operate dialectically as a means of moderating between the settler-state’s liberal democratic ideals (e.g. individual freedom and enfranchisement) and its capitalist imperatives (e.g. privatization of land, expansion, and profit). Law plays an integral role in this context because, by performing this moderating function, it stabilizes the socio-economic order of the emergent settler-state. In the second half of this essay, I enrich my theoretical analysis by examining the variable legal subjectivity of early Ukrainian immigrants to Canada. This historical perspective allows me to illuminate the intricacies of the logic that informs law’s flexibility, and to show how the liberal democratic principle of freedom was—and continues to be—both extolled and compromised by the law’s moderating function.     

A Dutiful Voice: Justice in the Distribution of Jury Service

Jury service in the United States is both compulsory and yet distributed to some but not others in a nonsystematic way. Concerns about unfairness in this distribution system have led to legal changes; however, there is still little empirical information on how jurors view the jury selection process. This study considers jury selection in terms of participants' perceptions of procedural and distributive justice. I argue that justice in this setting is related to areas of conflict between the decision maker and the prospective jurors, especially over privacy protection, despite strong rhetoric that jurors minimize their own preferences and rights in this setting. Data from interviews of 194 formerly excused and selected jurors support this contention.     

The making of the Canadian legal profession: a hybrid heritage

The Canadian legal profession emerged from the confluence of two distinct traditions: the American and the English. The colonies of British North America followed the pre-revolutionary American model of a unified legal profession, according to which all lawyers could practise as barristers and solicitors. American and Canadian lawyers pursued a client- and market-driven, eclectic type of practice that was receptive to innovations – such as the large law firm, the contingency fee, and university legal education – that were strongly resisted in England. On the governance side, however, Canadian lawyers created an indigenous but English-inflected model whereby professional self-governance was delegated to a statutorily-created body that had the power to compel all lawyers to join if they wished to practise law. With their commitment to client-centred service and strong governance, Canadian lawyers long enjoyed a cooperative and productive relationship with provincial governments, unlike the adversarial one characteristic of the United States or the long benign neglect of the legal professions by the English state. It is argued that this historical pattern may help to explain the continuing strength of the self-governance model in Canada at a time when it is being questioned and radically reformed elsewhere in the common law world.     

Juries Don't Make Legal Decisions! And Other Problems: A Critique of Hastie et al. on Punitive Damages

Hastie, Schkade, and Payne (1998) published a simulation experiment intended to study the performance of jurors and juries regarding verdicts on whether punitive damages should be allowed. They concluded that juries were not very competent and discussed the legal policy implications of this conclusion. I identify a fatal conceptual flaw that renders the study irrelevant to legal policy: The jurors were asked to decide law, a decision that is the responsibility of the trial judge, not the jury. I also identify a number of misstatements and unsupported assertions in the article.     

国人对民决团在英美法庭中的功能的误解

民决团仅仅负责事实审,决定事实问题;法官则负责法律审,决定法律问题。这个认识的错误在于：普通法中没有“事实审”、“法律审”的术语,这是国人杜撰出来的。普通法事实发展出来法律,法律是事实的积累。民决团事实上既决定法律又决定事实。它在美国,具有最高权力,大于总统、国会和最高法庭。另外民决团在美国7个州还决定量刑,在有死刑的州,还决定死刑。事实与法律的区分和混合,有助于法官将复杂问题交给民决团决定并在上诉中捍卫民决团的最高权力;也有助于法官对法律问题下命令、进行违宪性审查。总之,理解民决团的最高权力,是理解普通法的关键。     

陪审制的分权机制与证据法的发展

针对我国人民陪审员制目前面临的“陪而不审”、“审而不议”之晋遍困境,本文探讨了西方国家陪审制产生和发展的过程,认识到“分权是陪审制成长的基本条件”;详细探讨了我国“陪而不审”、“审而不议”现象的主要形态,指出没有实行分权是造成这种困窘局面的根源;讨论了正在兴起的河南人民陪审圆制度的进步意义与局限性;主张我国应当建立以分权为首要特征的人民陪审员制度,为此需要立法机关制定有关陪审团如何与法官分享裁判权的制度,其中最关键的是制定证据法和陪审团法。     

对我国陪审制的理性思考——从比较两大法系国家陪审制生存条件的视角

由于法律传统和人文环境的不同,陪审制在英美法系国家与大陆法系国家以不同的形式存在.英美法系国家实行的是陪审团制,而包括我国在内的大陆法系国家实行的则是参审制.我国不具备陪审团制生存的条件,而参审制式的陪审制的施行绩效又不如人意.面对这一现实状况,我们不能再进行简单的选择和取舍,而应该进行制度的重新架构.