Police participation in structured plea negotiations

This article examines the participation of police officers in structured felony plea negotiations. The data were collected during the testing of pretrial settlement conferences conducted in Dade County, Florida. The police officers were relatively active in the plea discussions, and their presence affected both the structure of the discussion and the relative influence of the various parties. The data also indicate that police participation and influence were affected by the presence of either the victim or the defendant.While the presence of the police did not affect the processing (settlement/trial rate) or the disposition (sentence severity, use of incarceration or restitution), the officers who attended the conference were more satisfied with both the court process and the disposition. This finding is significant in the light of the demoralizing effects of traditional plea negotiations on police attitudes and the spill over of these negative attitudes into the criminal justice system.     

论票据抗辩中的欠缺行为能力抗辩

依现有票据抗辩理论,欠缺行为能力的抗辩被视为对物抗辩的一种类型,属于不受限制的抗辩。本文认为,不论是从民法理论的角度,还是从票据法理论的角度来看,欠缺行为能力的抗辩都应是一种可限制的抗辩。在此基础上,本文着重讨论了限制的具体情形及效力问题。     

Analysing and exemplifying forensic conclusion criteria in terms of Bayesian decision theory

There is ongoing discussion in forensic science and the law about the nature of the conclusions reached based on scientific evidence, and on how such conclusions – and conclusion criteria – may be justified by rational argument. Examples, among others, are encountered in fields such as fingermarks (e.g., ‘this fingermark comes from Mr. A's left thumb’), handwriting examinations (e.g., ‘the questioned signature is that of Mr. A’), kinship analyses (e.g., ‘Mr. A is the father of child C’) or anthropology (e.g., ‘these are human remains'). Considerable developments using formal methods of reasoning based on, for example (Bayesian) decision theory, are available in literature, but currently such reference principles are not explicitly used in operational forensic reporting and ensuing decision-making. Moreover, applied examples, illustrating the principles, are scarce. A potential consequence of this in practical proceedings, and hence a cause of concern, is that underlying ingredients of decision criteria (such as losses quantifying the undesirability of adverse decision consequences), are not properly dealt with. There is merit, thus, in pursuing the study and discussion of practical examples, demonstrating that formal decision-theoretic principles are not merely conceptual considerations. Actually, these principles can be shown to underpin practical decision-making procedures and existing legal decision criteria, though often not explicitly apparent as such. In this paper, we will present such examples and discuss their properties from a Bayesian decision-theoretic perspective. We will argue that these are essential concepts for an informed discourse on decision-making across forensic disciplines and the development of a coherent view on this topic. We will also emphasize that these principles are of normative nature in the sense that they provide standards against which actual judgment and decision-making may be compared. Most importantly, these standards are justified independently of peoples' observable decision behaviour, and of whether or not one endorses these formal methods of reasoning.     

Power and fairness in negotiations

This paper reports the results of a laboratory experiment on power (specifically, authority) on negotiation process and outcomes. The experiment found that when given a goal to appear fair, high authority negotiators take less of the resources than when not given a goal to appear fair. Furthermore, this paper predicted and found that the relationship between authority imbalance and concern for fairness on negotiation outcomes is a multiplicative relationship. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed within the context of negotiations in intraorganizational relationships.This paper is based on a dissertation by the author, entitled Authority, Dependency, and Fairness in Negotiations. This work was completed while the author was a student at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University.     

Risk taking in civil law negotiations

The decision to negotiate a civil law dispute involves little risk, whereas the decision to go to trial is a risky alternative.Prospect theory predicts that when individuals must choose between such alternatives, they will either (a) be biased toward the risk-free alternative in again frame (i.e., when they perceive both prospects as gains), or (b) be biased toward the risky alternative in aloss frame. The decision of the plaintiff to either continue negotiations or go to trial is typically done in a gain frame; the defendant has to choose between losses. Thus, it was hypothesized that plaintiffs are risk aversive and defendants risk seeking in negotiations. Alternatively, it was hypothesized that parties who expect to prevail at trial are risk aversive, and parties who expect to lose are risk seeking. In four experiments, with both laymen and law students as subjects, the first hypothesis received some support, and the second hypothesis was strongly supported.     

Justice and power in civil law negotiations

The relationship between power and justice in civil law negotiations is discussed. It is argued that the concept of power is essential to understand justice behavior in civil law negotiations. Distributive justice appears to be hardly relevant in civil law disputes and should be replaced by retributive justice to understand the behavior of the parties. The analysis leads to the observation that justice is more likely to be relevant for the powerless party in civil law disputes than for the power-holder. I conclude that both the relative power and justice behavior cannot be studied without taking into account the perception by individuals of both the relevant norms and the salient characteristics of the interaction.     

Africa in the global climate change negotiations

The African Group of Negotiators (AGN) has become a much more significant bargaining coalition in the global climate change negotiations. It has been participating more proactively and on a much more significant scale, and, as a result, it has had a greater impact on bargaining outcomes, notably in Nairobi, Copenhagen and Durban. Yet, at present, the group remains poorly understood by both scholars and policymakers. Compared to other groups in the climate negotiations, such as the Group of 77 and Alliance of Small Island States, it has received relatively little attention. This paper fills this gap by tracking the evolution of the AGN over the course of the climate change negotiations. In the early years after the Earth Summit, it shows that the AGN faced tremendous difficulties pursing regional objectives effectively, largely due to a number of “internal” barriers to participation, which compounded the structural barriers that the continent faced by making it difficult to use “low-power” negotiating strategies such as coalition building, agenda-setting and persuasion. However, in recent years, the group has become much more proactive as a result of greater access to material, ideational and institutional resources. These have relieved, somewhat, the internal barriers that the group faced, making it possible for the AGN to negotiate much more confidently and effectively than before.     

Abolition of plea bargaining in the coast guard

In the administration of criminal justice, the abolition or restriction of plea bargaining has raised many issues. Of primary concern is the impact on court systems and case dispositions. This research note looks at the Coast Guard military justice system and its 1975 decision to abolish pretrial agreements, effectively eliminating plea bargaining in that system. Studying criminal cases from 1973 to 1978, we determine if that intervention in a time series exhibits any potency. Specifically, what difference did the abolition of plea bargaining make? We find that the abolition of plea bargaining did not make much of a difference to the Coast Guard military justice system, similar to the conclusions drawn from studies of civilian courts.     

A historical sketch of plea bargaining

Plea bargaining is one of the most emotional and controversial topics in the field of criminal justice. Not only is it defined and documented poorly, its origins also are much disputed. Pro-plea bargainers like to trace plea bargaining to Cain and Abel's classic struggle. Anti-plea bargainers cite the post-American Civil War era as the beginning point for plea negotiation. The truth lies somewhere in between. This paper investigates primary and secondary sources from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries in an effort to pin down the specific initiation of plea bargaining and its antecedents. This work demonstrates that prejudice has distorted the study of plea bargaining's origin and encourages further research in this area.     

Certainty of punishment and sentence mitigation in plea behavior

Mitigation of sentence severity has been cited as a primary factor underlying defendant decisions to plead guilty. It has been studied extensively and it has been assumed, but rarely examined, that few defendants plead guilty in the absence of significant benefits. This paper examines the relationship between sentence benefits and plea behavior. A crime-specific analysis reveals that some defendants frequently plead guilty in the relative absence of significant benefits; conversely, others plead not guilty even though significant benefits are available for guilty pleaders. Applying several decision theory constructs to justice system processing, the defendant's desire to reduce uncertainty is discussed and offered as a tentative explanation for the phenomenon of pleading guilty in the relative absence of significant benefits.     

Special and Differential Treatments provisions in the TRIPs negotiations

Legal context: This article reviews the current status of World Trade Organization(WTO) negotiations on Special and Differential Treatments (S&DT)of developing countries in TRIPs, referred to here as the agreementon compulsory licensing. Key points: The main thrust of the article is that, although the negotiationshave reached equilibrium, there are still some open questionswhich may prove problematic in the future. Practical significance: The most important remaining question to be borne in mind bypractitioners is how the results reached might be incorporatedin TRIPs and made permanent, this impacting future pratice.     

Trade and environment negotiations in the WTO: Asian perspectives

For developing countries, aid cannot replace trade. Mutually supportive trade and environmental policies should contribute to the realization of sustainable development. The purpose of this paper is to identify the negotiating position of selected Asian developing countries on the World Trade Organization (WTO) Committee on Trade and Environment (CTE). This paper reviews their submissions and suggestions for the CTE with regard to its mandate on trade and environment. In addition, using key trade statistics, it explores the relationship between their negotiating positions and changes in the structure of international trade in Asia. While the CTE has brought about no specific results concerning its mandate, the negotiating positions of developing countries are changing sharply. In particular, Asian developing countries now participate proactively in CTE negotiations. This paper shows the diversity of views held by Asian countries on trade and environment. In some cases, their views are opposed to each other. It can also be observed that the negotiating position of each Asian country at the CTE is closely related to its own trade structure. In accordance with national patterns of trade structure, NIEs, China and India have their own distinct negotiating positions whereas Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries have not taken the same stance in the CTE negotiations. Each member of ASEAN presents separate views depending on the nature of the issue.

Grade related changes in young people's reasoning about plea decisions

The present study examined the development of young people's ability to reason about legal issues involved in a plea decision in a criminal matter. Forty-eight subjects in each of grades 5,7, and 9, and 48 young adults participated in a semistructured interview containing four vignettes, each depicting a young person who had committed a criminal offense was charged, and retained a lawyer. Subjects received information regarding the charge and the prosecution's evidence (weak in half of the vignettes and strong in the other half). Subjects were asked to decide what they would plead if they were in the defendant's shoes, and to justify their choices. Contrary to prediction, a majority of even the Grade 5 subjects based their plea decisions on legal rather than moral criteria. Nonetheless, there were significant grade-related changes both in legal reasoning scores and in the use of guilt-based plea justifications. In addition, according to a panel of lawyers, subjects' plea choices were rated as more reasonable when the evidence against the story character was strong (and thus congruent with “moral” guilt) than when it was weak. This difference, diminished with grade as subjects became better able to separate moral from legal issues in their decision making.     

Technology transfer negotiations: Determinants of MNEs' bargaining power

Technology is, perhaps, the most desirable attribute of multinational enterprises (MNEs) to the less developed countries (LDCs) and constitutes their primary source of bargaining power. Similarly, the attractiveness of a market to the MNEs constitutes LDCs' principal source of negotiating strength in dealing with MNEs on such matters as the conditions for investment and technology transfer. What is unclear is how these independent variables are most successfully utilized. The aim of this paper is to identify and examine the bargaining power variables and their level of influence in technology transfer negotiations. The result shows that though technology is always a source of negotiating strength to MNEs, locational attractiveness may not always be a significant source of bargaining power to LDCs in all negotiations with multinational enterprises.     

Civil commitment and the criminal insanity plea in Israeli law

In Israeli jurisprudence there is a substantial difference towards mentally ill patients between the civil and penal law systems that goes well beyond differences required by their separate objectives. Mentally ill people dangerous to others due to their illness belong in the hospital, not in the community or in jail. The data gathered especially for this paper make it hard to escape the conclusion that contemporary practice in Israel does not accord with this objective. On the civil front, inaccuracy in predicting who is dangerous may lead to involuntary commitment of people who are not dangerous. On the criminal side, too few people are sent to the hospital in Israel and correspondingly too many to jail. Comparison with US data and practice shows that on the civil side prediction has been improved by using actuarial methods, while on the penal side more up to date definitions of mental illness have been adopted. Whatever the appropriate solution for Israel, surely the first requirement is recognition of the problem.