Predictive Policing as a New Tool for Law Enforcement? Recent Developments and Challenges

Decision-making processes are increasingly based on intelligence gained from ‘big data’, i.e., extensive but complex datasets. This evolution of analyzing complex data using methods aimed at prediction is also emerging within the field of quantitative criminology. In the context of crime analysis, the large amount of crime data available can be considered an example of big data, which could inform us about current and upcoming crime trends and patterns. A recent development in the analysis of this kind of data is predictive policing, which uses advanced statistical methods to make the most of these data to gain useable new insights and information, allowing police services to predict and anticipate future crime events. This article presents the results of a literature review, supplemented with key informant interviews, to give insight into what predictive policing is, how it can be used and implemented to anticipate crime, and what is known about its effectiveness. It also gives an overview of the currently known applications of predictive policing and their main characteristics.     

What is the Criminal Law for?

The traditional distinction between retributive and distributive justice misconstrues the place of the criminal law in modern regulatory states. In the context of the regulatory state, the criminal law is a coercive rule-enforcing institution – regardless of whether it also serves the ends of retributive justice. As a rule-enforcing institution, the criminal law is deeply implicated in stabilizing the institutions and legal rules by means of which a state creates and allocates social advantage. As a coercive institution, the criminal law requires justification as an instance of legitimate state authority. The operation of criminal justice institutions should therefore not be evaluated by reference to a distinct set of criteria, but should be evaluated by the same criteria that apply to coercive public institutions generally.     

“Ought to” as a Chinese Legal Performative?

The article discusses the legal performatives as used in Chinese legislative language consisting of bixu (shall), yingdang (should or ought to), keyi (may) and bude (shall not) with the illocutionary force of imposing obligations, conferring rights and permission, and prohibition (bude). It postulates that the use of bixu and yingdang is traceable to the influence of the ancient Chinese cultural and legal philosophy of li and fa. It argues that Chinese language is a carrier of messages with built-in Chinese cultural codes and to be able to understand Chinese law, the wider cultural and linguistic contexts must be considered. It also proposes that speech act theory needs to address the interlingual and intercultural variables in the construction of meaning.     

International Law as Language—Towards a “Neo” New Haven School

This paper examines the tension between the mainstream belief in international law as a source of objectivity distinct from politics and its new stream critics that question the validity of such a distinction. It is argued that, as a type of language, international law is not distinct from politics as a function of objectivity, but rather by the fact that it serves the international community’s thymos. The phenomena of global administrative law and NATO’s use of force in Kosovo are analyzed as examples of how the thymos drives international law. Building on feminist theories of international law, the article sets forth a vision of international law as the primary communicative device for the international community’s thymos.     

Does the 'Personal Employment Contract' Provide a Basis for the Reunification of Employment Law?

This article considers Mark Freedland's idea, at the core ofThe Personal Employment Contract, that a unified body of employmentlaw for ‘employees’ and ‘workers’ isboth feasible and desirable. It discusses the origins of thedivision between employees and the self-employed, and considerswhether the rediscovery of the worker concept in the 1990s hasprovided the hoped-for solution to problems concerning the coverageof employment legislation. More generally, it seeks to takeup Freedland's challenge to reconceptualise the employment relationshipas a ‘personal employment contract’ covering bothemployees and the dependent self-employed.     

Can Law Account for the Past? Law and the Road from Oblivion to Memory

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique -     

Brave New Fathers for a Brave New World? Fathers as Caregivers in an Evolving European Union

This article focuses on the role that fathers play when it comes to family responsibility, in particular the care of young children, and how EU policy and legislation have contributed to it. This is important for several reasons. From a theoretical perspective, access to care for fathers represents the other side of the access to paid employment for mothers debate, and completes the deconstruction of the two‐sphere structure. From a more practical point of view, including fathers in the work/family life reconciliation debate is essential for the achievement of important EU policies, such as employment and gender equality. Although society is ready for a change, the legislator has been slow to address it, thus fathers are still missing from the EU's reconciliation policy and legislation. Against this background, the decision of the Court of Justice in Roca Álvarez has, potentially, laid down the basis for a new model of fatherhood.     

Law school accreditation in the New Independent States of the former Soviet Union: what steps for the future?

Legal education reform has recently emerged as a key component in the rule of law promotion in the former Soviet Union republics,1 1. See Jane M. Picker & Sidney Picker, Jr, Educating Russia's future lawyers—any role for the United States? (2000) 33 Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law 17, 18–19, arguing that the core building block of the rule of law rests on legal education. See John M. Burman, The role of clinical legal education in developing the rule of law in Russia (2002) Wyoming Law Review at 90, 101, stating that reform of the legal education is the most effective way of creating a culture of law. See Peter J. Sahlas & Carl Chastenay, Russian legal education: post-communist stagnation or revival? (1998) 48 Journal of Legal Education 194 at 194, arguing that “a system of legal education can do more than teach the society's rules to successive generations: it can inspire values of justice and promote social progress”. See also Mark Dietrich, Three foundations of the rule of law: education, advocacy and judicial reform, in: Law in Transition (London, EBRD, Autumn 2002), at p. 57, available at: http://www.ebrd.com/ pubs/law/lit/english/aut02.pdf. The author points out that reform of legal education is the single most important reform to be undertaken in the NIS region. If law students are not taught how to think critically, question authority and be guided by the ethical values of the profession while in law school, it is difficult to expect that they will become honest advocates, judges or prosecutors in the future. View all notes now sovereign and independent states collectively known, for the purpose of this paper, as the New Independent States (NIS). Scholarly articles and international forums2 2. See Europe and Central Asia Division of the Legal Department, World Bank, Selected Issues (2001) Challenges and Strategies. The World Bank Forum on Legal and Judicial Reform in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union 33; see also Dietrich, op. cit., at 58. View all notes suggest that legal education reform could be advanced by developing and implementing accreditation procedures for law schools, updating law school curricula, establishing transparent and rigorous grading standards, and retraining the law faculty. This paper discusses just one of these measures, namely the development and implementation of quality evaluation and accreditation procedures for law schools in the NIS region. In order to explore this issue in detail, the paper has been structured into six parts.

?Part I provides a brief overview of legal education in the Soviet Union, thus placing the issues tackled in this paper into a historical perspective. Part II describes the main changes occurring in the higher education system in general and legal education in particular in the NIS region after 1991, emphasising new challenges that privatisation of the higher education sector posed to the quality of legal education, thus triggering an urgent need for quality-assurance and accreditation mechanisms. The currently existent NIS practices of licensing, evaluation and accreditation of academic institutions, including law faculties within multi-disciplinary academic institutions, as well as separate law schools, are described in Part III. Parts IV and V adopt a comparative approach to accreditation by providing an overview of accreditation procedures in the United States, and the recent initiative and trends in quality evaluation and accreditation in Western Europe. Drawing upon the information provided in Parts I–V, Part VI offers concrete suggestions and recommendations for improving the implementation of accreditation procedures in the NIS region. The materials contained herein represent the opinions of the author and editors and should not be construed to be the view of either the American Bar Association or the Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative. The views expressed herein have not been approved by the House of Delegates or the Board of Governors of the ABA and, accordingly, should not be construed as representing the policy of the ABA. Nothing contained in this report is to be considered as the rendering of legal advice for specific cases, and readers are responsible for obtaining such advice from their own legal counsel. This report is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Research performed on Westlaw country of West Group. View all notes     

Why Reflective Equilibrium? III: Reflective Equilibrium as a Heuristic Tool

In A Theory of Justice (1971), John Rawls introduces the concept of “reflective equilibrium.” Although there are innumerable references to and discussions of this concept in the literature, there is, to the present author's knowledge, no discussion of the most important question: Why reflective equilibrium? In particular, the question arises: Is the method of reflective equilibrium applicable to the choice of this method itself? Rawls's drawing of parallels between Kant's moral theory and his own suggests that his concept of “reflective equilibrium” is on a par with Kant's concept of “transcendental deduction.” Treating these two approaches to justification as paradigmatic, I consider their respective merits in meeting the reflexive challenge, i.e., in offering a justification for choice of mode of justification. In the first part of this enquiry (Eng 2014a), I raised the issue of the reflexivity of justification and questioned whether the reflexive challenge can be met within the framework of A Theory of Justice. In the second part (Eng 2014b), I outlined a Kantian approach that represents a paradigmatic alternative to Rawls. In this third and final part, I shall argue that Rawls's reflective equilibrium cannot justify the choice of itself and that in the broader perspective thus necessitated, we cannot escape the metaphysical issues integral to the Kantian approach.     

Environmental Reporting as a Communications Tool: A Question of Enforcement?

This article examines the effect of mandatory corporate environmentalreporting in the context of corporate accountability. It asksthe question whether such reporting can be an effective communicationstool, both internally and externally and whether this will leadto a greater awareness of environmental issues throughout anorganisation, resulting in improved corporate decisions, practicesand outcomes. In order to answer this question, the author drawson longitudinal research examining the performance of the top100 Australian companies. The article then looks at the roleof the regulator, arguing that mandatory environmental reportingshould be coupled with guidance and enforcement by a regulatingauthority. The lack of this enforcement in Australia has resultedin the quality of the reporting being less than optimal. Throughoutthe article, the author has compared the Australian experiencewith that of Norway, which has similar mandatory corporate environmentalreporting laws.     

Safeguarding Children's Welfare in Non‐Contentious Divorce: Towards a New Conception of the Legal Process?

This article considers the working of the current procedure intended to ensure the welfare of children when their parents divorce but are not seeking any orders relating to them. It shows that the process is ineffective in safeguarding children's welfare and is not geared to ensuring that their wishes and feelings are taken into account. It argues that the focus of policy should shift away from assuming that the legal system can handle the problems of divorce, towards using the legal process as a point of contact through which families can be offered the full range of services they may need during relationship breakdown.     

Improving the Law for Animals: a Campaigning Lawyer’s Perspective

Liverpool Law Review - The protection which the law gives animals is based on a fundamentally different philosophy to that it gives people. With people, causing significant physical harm is nearly...