The Rise of Digital Justice: Courtroom Technology,Public Participation and Access to Justice

This article addresses a little discussed yet fundamentally important aspect of legal technological transformation: the rise of digital justice in the courtroom. Against the backdrop of the government's current programme of digital court modernisation in England and Wales, it examines the implications of advances in courtroom technology for fair and equitable public participation, and access to justice. The article contends that legal reforms have omitted any detailed consideration of the type and quality of citizen participation in newly digitised court processes which have fundamental implications for the legitimacy and substantive outcomes of court‐based processes; and for enhancing democratic procedure through improved access to justice. It is argued that although digital court tools and systems offer great promise for enhancing efficiency, participation and accessibility, they simultaneously have the potential to amplify the scope for injustice, and to attenuate central principles of the legal system, including somewhat paradoxically, access to justice.     

The People's Law versus Judge Judy Justice: Two Models of Law in American Reality-Based Courtroom TV

This essay examines the popular American daytime courtroom programs Judge Judy and People's Court and comparatively analyzes two distinct models of law and justice developed in these shows. Using the techniques of qualitative media analysis, I argue that Judge Judy represents a shift in the way popular culture imagines the role of law in the lives of ordinary people. This shift accords with neoliberal notions of governance and individual self-responsibility for protection against risk. Conversely, People's Court represents an older, liberal-legal model of law that emphasizes individual rights, public participation in the court process, and due process. By demonstrating the supersession of Judge Judy justice over that of People's Court , I argue that this shift in the way law is imagined in American popular culture signals wider shifts in American and indeed international attitudes toward the law in our everyday lives.     

Women and Publication Patterns in Criminal Justice Journals:

No abstract available for this article.     

Courtroom Context and Sentencing

This study provides an evaluation of the major policy shift in sentencing practices over the past half-century – namely the shift from indeterminate to determinant sentencing policies and the use of sentencing guidelines. The theoretical literature on courtroom organization and focal concerns informs this evaluation of determinate sentencing practices in Florida. Drawing from prior theoretical and empirical research, hierarchical linear and generalized linear models are estimated to assess courtroom effects on individual level sentencing outcomes. The findings document that location matters when sentenced in Florida. Specifically, the likelihood of being sentenced to prison and the length of sentence varies across counties, even after controlling for individual case and offender characteristics and a variety of contextual characteristics. Additionally, the influence of legal and extra-legal factors on prison in/out and sentence length decisions varies significantly across counties. Several court characteristics, including court size, caseload pressure and trial rate assert direct influence on a county’s likelihood of prison in/out and mean sentence length decisions.

     

The Journalist in the Courtroom

"Proceedings in all courts shall be open to the public." Such is the content of Article 157 of the Constitution of the USSR. The principle that judicial proceedings are to be open to the public—a principle that is contained in the nation's highest legislative act—is of enormous practical significance. The fact that judicial proceedings are open to the public is a guarantee that procedural norms are scrupulously observed in the process of examining the materials of a case, thereby substantially reducing the probability of judicial error. It goes without saying that the further improvement of social oversight over the work of law enforcement agencies is a necessary condition to the democratization of public life. What is more, the openness of judicial proceedings to public scrutiny is a powerful means for the legal education of citizens and of forming a truly socialist legal conscience.     

庭审提问策略的语用功能透析

庭审提问可以看作是提问者为实现特定交际目的和顺应不断变化的交际环境而进行言语选择的动态过程。在庭审提问过程中，提问者根据不断变化的语境选用不同的策略（如重复、重述、并置、话题控制等），可以实现不同的交际目的，推动合作或推翻虚假供词。     

庭审话语中法官“介入”的人际意义

以评价理论的介入子系统为分析框架,从语气系统的小句层面探讨庭审中法官介入的实现方式和人际意义,可以发现,法官在不同小句类型中的介入方式与庭审的语类结构密切相关,并伴随法官话语角色的变化呈现交错互动的韵律特征。法官介入资源的合理运用为庭审营造了公平、公正、有序的氛围,构建了法官作为庭审组织者、裁判者的权势地位。     

Courtroom testimony by psychologists on eyewitness identification issues

This article makes two major points in regard to expert psychological testimony on eyewitness identification. First, the attention devoted by psychologists to eyewitness identification issues is far out of proportion to the incidence of trials involving eyewitness identifications of criminal defendants; furthermore, the often-expressed concern over wrongful convictions is probably misplaced. Second, the experimental methods used in studies of eyewitness performance are fundamentally unsuited for drawing conclusions about actual witnesses. Hence, there is not an adequate scientific foundation for expert psychological testimony on eyewitness identification. Archival research is perhaps the most promising approach to the study of the criminal justice system.     

Justice Between Sites of Justice

Michael Blake argues that states are the primary sites of justice for persons and that the function of international justice is to ensure that states interact with each other in ways that preserve the capacity of each to realize justice for their own members. This paper will argue that justice among states requires more of states than that they preserve and maintain each other's capacity as primary sites of justice. Justice among states will require some justification, as well, of the claims of states over resources and territory within their borders. Such a justification, I suggest, must presume a global institutional order, and this will introduce the problem of coercion in the international domain. International coercion will have implications for Blake's understanding of international economic justice since it is premised on the claim that the domestic context is coercive in a way that the international arena is not.     

Courtroom Discourse and the Gendered Construction of Professional Identity

In addition to providing an arena for dispute resolution, the courtroom serves lawyers and judges as an important site for the construction and maintenance of their Professional identity. It is mainly through the strategic use of language within the constraints on courtroom discourse that this process takes place. Within the framework of feminist theories of language as constituent of social identity, this paper analyzes courtroom interaction to determine how gender affects the construction of the Professional identity of lawyers and judges in Israeli district courts. Quantitative analyses of terms of address, intrusions, judges'takeover of examinations, challenging comments, and the forms and use of directives indicated that women judges and women lawyers were accorded less deference than men, and that the Professional competence of women lawyers was challenged and undermined. The qualitative analysis of the off-the-record comments by judges, lawyers, and witnesses to lawyers revealed that all participants questioned the professional performance of women lawyers in gender-stereotypic ways. The devaluation of women professionals and the gendered interpretations of their behavior enacted through the discourse in the courtroom may have implications for the outcomes of trials.     

鉴定人出庭制度初探

司法鉴定是证据制度的重要组成部分,司法鉴定人是司法鉴定的具体实施者,是现代诉讼活动的直接参与者。司法鉴定制度改革应与审判体制改革相适应。本文就我国司法鉴定人出庭质证的现状,结合审判实践,从鉴定人出庭质证的积极意义和面临的问题出发,力求探讨鉴定人出庭质证之策略,理性构建适合我国鉴定人出庭质证制度。     

Law in Film: Globalizing the Hollywood Courtroom Drama

The courtroom drama is a prominent film genre. Most of the movies in this category are Hollywood productions, dealing with the legal system in the United States of America. What they have in common is that essential parts of their stories take place in court. These movies have a tremendous influence on the public's concept of justice even though very few of them accurately reflect legal reality. Anyone with legal training who watches films of this sort will notice in them all sorts of absurdities which are not thoroughly investigated in this paper. Our concern here is to inquire why even movies that take place in continental Europe follow patterns of the American system and also why certain elements from American movies are repeated over and over again.     

论鉴定人出庭质证制度的完善

本文就我国司法鉴定人出庭质证的现状,结合司法鉴定实际经验和审判实践,针对鉴定人出庭难的原因,从改革现行鉴定体制、不出庭的例外情形、不出庭的法律后果及制裁措施、出庭的启动程序和通知制度、出庭程序规则设置及切实解决经济补偿和安全保障等七个方面提出了完善鉴定人出庭制度的对策。     

司法会计鉴定人出庭作证若干问题研究

司法会计鉴定人出庭作证是现代诉讼制度的客观要求,是司法会计鉴定人的应尽义务,纷繁复杂的经济犯罪案件尤其需要司法会计鉴定人出庭对司法会计鉴定结论进行阐明。司法会计鉴定人应作为证人身份出庭作证,出庭前应做好包括心理调整、预测等在内的各方面的准备,出庭作证要围绕证实、阐明司法会计鉴定结论进行,要针对不同的质询采用不同的方法进行答辩,把握好作为接受质证答辩的重点及辩(控)、鉴双方争议较大的焦点,合理运用技巧接受质证,达到理清财务会计事实、司法会计鉴定结论被采信之目的。     

刑事庭审话语与被追诉人的人权保障

刑事被诉人的诉讼权利是人权保障的主体和核心.而诉讼权利的实现和保障要以语言为媒介.因此,对刑事庭审话语的研究是揭示刑事诉讼中的人权保障现状和问题的最有说服力的工具和研究视角.以刑事庭审的详实的语料为切入点,分析中国刑事庭审中存在的被追诉人人权保障,特别是诉讼权利保障的问题,并结合这些语料,对我国的刑事庭审改革提出自己的思路和见解.