Parliamentary Sovereignty,Judges and the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants etc.) Bill

It is an aspect of the traditional view of Parliamentary sovereignty that the courts will not rule as invalid an Act of Parliament, or any part of an Act, which has been passed in the correct fashion. This view has been questioned by some, including some senior judges. They argue that certain limits on the legislative competence of Parliament are necessary to protect those fundamental values that are essential in a democracy. Many who argue for limits to the legislative competence of Parliament also suggest that the relationship between the different arms of the government is one based on mutual respect, restraint and co-operation. If Parliament legislates in such a way as to breach this mutuality, and in a way that will cause conflict between Parliament and the courts, then, it is suggested, the courts may reply in kind by holding that legislation, or part of it, invalid. It is argued here that in the recent quarrel between the Government and the courts over the ouster clause contained in the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Bill 2003, the Government was encouraged to undertake to amend the legislation as a result, at least in part, of intimations by senior judges that the clause could be overruled by the courts. This demonstrates, it is argued, that both sides believed this threat to have some force.Lecturer in Law, Department of Law and Criminology, Edge Hill College of Higher Education. Email: mcgarryj@edgehill.ac.uk. I am grateful to Kas Wachala and Maggi Eastwood for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. Any errors remain my own.     

Judges and Juries: The Defense Case and Differences in Acquittal Rates

Kalven and Zeisel's (1966 ) classic study, The American Jury, concluded that juries were "in revolt" from the law when they acquitted when judges would have convicted. Using data collected by the National Center for State Courts to examine jury decision making in four different communities, this article reexamines the question of the judge and jury's respective fidelity to the law and evidence by examining the influence on judge and jury of the defendant's evidence, his criminal record, and his reason for refusing to plead. No data can tell us definitively whether the judge is correct and the jury in error when they disagree, but the data analyzed in the present study can tell us whether the factors that move the jury and fail to move the judge are or are not consistent with the innocence of the accused.     

An Empirical Study of Patent Grant Rates as a Function of Race and Gender

In this article we examine the rate at which patent applications are granted as a function of the inventor's race and gender. Empirical analysis of more than 3.9 million U.S. applications finds minority and women applicants are significantly less likely to secure a patent relative to the balance of inventors. Further analysis indicates that a portion of this bias is introduced during prosecution at the Patent Office, independent of the quality of the application. Mechanisms underlying these disparities are explored. The article concludes with a discussion of our results and their interaction with patent law, innovation policy, and employment trends.     

孤独的法官与法官的孤独——法官的自主性研究

法官需要孤独,孤独不是寂寞,而是一种凝结了真善美的高贵品质。法官的孤独并不是与这个世界的分离,相反法官的孤独是关注这个世界发展的命运基础上的孤独。正是因为法官把握和感受到了这个世界的整体命运,所以法官的孤独才可能对这个世界产生一种推动的力量。法官的孤独是一种具有高度自主性的美好品德。     

Attitudinal change among students in a capital punishment class: It may be possible

Students who participated in a class on capital punishment recorded their attitudes toward the topic on a weekly basis and completed a one year follow-up. The results demonstrate that by the end of the semester 65% of the students indicated opposition to capital punishment. Moreover, one year after the class 73% of the students maintained some degree of opposition to capital punishment. The difficulties associated with assessing attitudinal change as a result of participating in a class and reasons for the discrepancy between the findings of this study and previous research are discussed.     

Sentencing Recommendations by Probation Officers and Judges: An Examination of Adult Offenders Across Gender

Connecting the courtroom workgroup model with attributions and stereotyping based on the focal concerns perspective and gender sentencing literature, the present study investigates the extent to which probation officer recommendations influence judicial sentencing, and whether the gender of the offender further conditions this relationship. Results from logistic and ordinary least squares regression indicate that there is concordance between probation officer recommendations and sentencing by judges. Offender gender has both direct and indirect effects on judicial sentencing through its relationship with probation officer recommendations, and Black males tend to receive lengthier sentences than other race/gender counterparts. These findings provide evidence that probation officer recommendations are an important part of the sentencing process and offer additional insight on how extralegal factors such as gender and race impact criminal justice decision making.     

Accidents,Agency and Asylum: Constructing the Refugee Subject

Refugee law demands that the asylum seeker demonstrate an extremely limited and distorted form of agency that is encapsulated within the legal definition of the refugee. Such a framework also denies the role of the accidental in the refugee experience. I argue that the problem lies at the heart of the legal form, as constructed under capitalism. The sans-papiers show us the potential for refugees themselves to reconstruct a subjectivity that transcends the distorted form of agency and the false dichotomy between the accidental and agency found in law, through their rejection of legal definitions and the re-emergence of themselves as political subjects.     

时间都去哪儿了——基层法院刑事法官工作时间实证研究

以法官工作时间分配为中心的实证研究显示,基层刑事法官的时间主要用于办案,而办案的时间主要耗费于大量的书面性工作,法官用于庭外活动、集体合议与讨论的时间有限,庭长确有相当长时间耗费于行政性的管理工作。这些发现与以往关于中国法官工作状态与工作内容的认识不尽一致,而有些发现则一定程度上印证了学界关于中国刑事审判制度运行的判断。实证研究的一些发现为中国法院改革提供了若干参考。