Components of Legal Concepts: Quality of Law,Evaluative Judgement,and Metaphorical Framing of Article 8 ECHR

This paper looks at the use of metaphor and its effect on the interpretation of the ‘quality of law’ in Art. 8 cases of the European Court of Human Rights. It demonstrates the Court's reproduction of specific metaphorical frames ‐ a finding consistent with the use of metaphor in judgment experiments in cognitive linguistics. The Court employs metaphors conceptually coherent with those used in their cited precedent, in their representation of the successful pleadings within their judgments and insists (implicitly) on different metaphors in dissent. This paper argues that the use of congruent metaphors may be indicative of metaphor as a contributing factor in how judges reason. In the least, it is a significantly understudied phenomenon and this paper provides evidence for the salience of its approach for understanding judicial reasoning.     

Judicial Independence, Judicial Promotion and the Enforcement of Legislative Wealth Transfers—An Empirical Study of the New Zealand High Court

This paper investigates the Landes-Posner thesis on judicial independence using data on public law decisions in which the government was the defendant decided in the New Zealand High Court over the period 1958–2001. We use survival analysis to examine whether successive New Zealand governments have promoted judges from the High Court to the Court of Appeal (which stands above the High Court) on the basis of political considerations, the quality of the judge's decision-making or both. Our findings suggest that the quality of decision-making has generally been important. Consistent with the weak form of the Landes-Posner hypothesis we find no evidence that governments have used their powers to punish judges who decided cases against them. On the contrary, we find some support for the strong form of the Landes-Posner thesis that governments positively use their powers to secure judicial independence.     

Communicating Dissent in Judicial Opinions: A Comparative,Genre-Based Analysis

To date, there has been surprisingly little research on separate opinions in legal linguistics literature. Scarce attention has been paid to the linguistic and communicative aspects of how judges frame their disagreements. This paper serves as one of the early attempts to examine the institution of votum separatum, or separate opinion, from a comparative, cross-language perspective using a linguistic methodology. The evidence indicates a clear similarity in terms of how separate opinions are integrated within the respective macrostructures of the US SC opinions and the Constitutional Tribunal judgments. This study demonstrates how judges tend to employ highly formulaic expressions to signal their disagreement despite the absence of clear guidelines to communicate such stances. The analysis of their frequent phraseology demonstrates that declaring votum separatum and providing its justification are two different acts, not only legally but also linguistically, especially in terms of their formulaicity. The Polish and American justifications differ in the degree to which the frequent phraseology reveals peculiarities of judicial argumentation in addition to the presence of strong evaluative concerns.

     

裁判文书援引学说的基本原理与规则建构

学说的内容实质正当性及其约束法官自由裁量空间的外观进而增强裁判可接受性的功能,是裁判文书援引学说的基本原理,也是建构援引规则的出发点。学说根据其竞争力可以分为通说、主流说、少数说,法官既可以援引通说也可以援引非通说;援引非通说应当成为援引的主流。法官在援引学说时应尽量采用对话技术,尤其是在援引通说时应尽量避免对学说进行大篇幅的“复制与粘贴”;应尽量援引不同体裁的代表性作品以体现学说的数量优势外观。学者姓名承担了标识学术产品的质量担保功能、“商誉”功能与司法修辞功能,学说出处具有定位学者学说发展脉络等功能,援引学说须注明姓名与出处。裁判文书援引学术作品实质上是法官“购买”学术产品的行为,它将刺激处于供给侧的学者主动生产实务所需的产品,继而促成学术与实务的良性互动。最高人民法院可以考虑出台有关裁判文书援引学说的具体规则指引。     

Power,National Security and Transparency: Judicial Decision Making and Social Architecture in the Federal Courts

Even in a democratic society, the need for transparency must be balanced with an important countervailing interest: the occasional, legitimate need for government secrecy. This article, based on an examination of opinions in federal cases dealing with national security and transparency, explores how judges identified the main legal issues presented by a case and the legal factors or mode of legal interpretation used to reach or justify their conclusions. The article concludes that many of these opinions are as much about judges’ attempts to balance the judicial branch's power with the powers of the executive and legislative branches as they are about national security and transparency. Furthermore, the article contends these opinions have created an “architecture of power” that determines how national security information is controlled. The final section also suggests that judges should be mindful of the original architecture of power established by the Constitution and the First Amendment when writing their opinions.     

The Expert Witness. Neither Frey nor Daubert Solved the Problem. What Can Be Done?

Expert testimony flawed by intent or ignorance, has compromised truth finding in American litigation, including in medical malpractice and in product liability cases, where scientific evidence is at issue. The Federal Rules of Evidence and the Supreme Court in Daubert and its progeny have established standards for testimony that include reliability and relevance, and established judges as gatekeepers. However, because of lack of understanding of scientific issues, judges have problems with this role, and juries have even more problems in sorting out scientific evidence. Professionals and the judiciary have made some advances in solving some of these problems, but a better system involving the court's use of neutral experts and a mechanism to hold experts accountable for improprieties is needed.     

Women in the Nigerian judiciary: considerable headway or organised progress?

ABSTRACT

Women have made considerable progress in terms of their entrance into the legal profession, such that they are advancing towards parity with men on the High Court benches in Nigeria. This study is a product of qualitative empirical data gathered from interviews with judges and information gleaned from government records and personal files of judges in the Archives of the judiciaries in Mid-Western Nigeria. It identifies reasons for the increase in the number of women on the High Court Bench in the area. Women entering the legal professions in Nigeria from the 1930s opted for a career in government legal service and the Magistracy with less financial remuneration but regular work hours, than in private legal practice that provides higher remunerations and irregular work hours. Findings reveal that the number of women judges increased when it became fairly established to tunnel 90% of appointments to the High Court from these channels. The preliminary conclusion therefore, is that, although women lawyers have made considerable headway as High Court judges, the increase in their numbers on the High Court bench was not as a result of any organised policy to increase the number of women judges in Nigeria.     

De-moralized: Glucksberg in the malaise

Ten years down the road, what is the enduring significance of the "assisted suicide" cases, Washington v. Glucksberg and Vacco v. Quill? The cases reflect an unusually earnest, but nonetheless unsuccessful, attempt by the Supreme Court to grapple with a profound moral issue. So, why was the Court unable to provide a more satisfying justification for its conclusions? This Article, written for a symposium on the tenth anniversary of Glucksberg, discusses that question. Part I examines some of the flaws in reasoning in the Glucksberg and Quill opinions and suggests that these flaws stem from the opinion writers' inability to recognize and articulate their underlying normative assumptions. More specifically, both the Justices and the lower court judges, on both sides of the issue, evidently attributed normative significance to something like a "natural course of life" (even when they denied doing so), but none were willing or able to make this attribution explicit. Part II discusses the modern separation of moral reasoning from the metaphysical or theological perspectives that might once have endowed "nature" with normative significance, and it suggests that the deficiencies in Glucksberg-Quill are evidence of how that separation renders moral reasoning problematic. The Conclusion wonders whether in this situation, a renewed emphasis on formalism or tradition might make legal reasoning less unacceptable.     

The expert witness. Neither Frye nor Daubert solved the problem: what can be done?

Flawed expert scientific testimony has compromised truth finding in American litigation, including in medical malpractice and in product liability cases. The Federal Rules of Evidence and the Supreme Court in Daubert and other cases have established standards for testimony that include reliability and relevance, and established judges as gatekeepers. However, because of lack of understanding of scientific issues, judges have problems with this role, and juries have difficulties with scientific evidence. Professionals and the judiciary have made some advances, but a better system involving the court's use of neutral experts and a mechanism to hold experts accountable for improprieties is needed.     

Poetic Justice: An Interpretation of Lawyers’ Reactions to Verse Judgments

This article offers an interpretation of lawyers’ reactions to verse judgments, being judicial decisions rendered in rhymed poetry form. While, in recent history, there has been an unexplained break in the close historical connection between poetry and law, some judges nevertheless continue to render their judicial decisions in verse. This has met strong criticism from fellow judges, inevitably, but also from lawyers. However, there is no evidence in academic writing of anyone attempting to explain why lawyers are having these reactions. Endeavouring to fill that void, this research employs hermeneutics to offer an interpretation of lawyers’ reactions to verse judgments. The article analyses the varied opinions uncovered in five qualitative interviews with lawyers of different backgrounds, and contends that a movement of poetry back towards its utilitarian origins would see lawyers change their reaction to verse judgments, instead viewing them as an appropriate form of judicial expression.     

论英国的犯罪信息公开制度——以加拉格尔案为切入点

在英国,犯罪信息公开制度一直是一个备受争议的话题。《欧洲人权公约》第8条规定,每个人都享有隐私权,任何侵犯隐私权的行为必须以“合法”和“必要”为前提。2019年初,在加拉格尔系列案的上诉程序中,犯罪记录披露措施是否违反《公约》第8条规定成为英国社会关注的焦点。在该案判决中,英国最高法院虽然支持了前科被披露人员的请求,驳回了上诉,但是,法官们对于犯罪信息公开制度是否符合合法性和必要性标准却存在明显的分歧。通过对该案的基本案情、主要争议点、英国最高法院法官的不同意见的分析,可以为发展和完善我国犯罪记录登记和查询机制提供参考依据。     

The highest Dutch courts and the preliminary ruling procedure: Critically obedient interlocutors of the Court of Justice

Little is known about the motives of national courts to request a preliminary ruling from the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) or their satisfaction with and implementation of answers. This article aims to fill this empirical gap on the basis of an analysis of judgments complemented with interviews with judges of the highest courts in the Netherlands. This article shows that judges extensively use the procedure and follow its outcome almost without exception, despite some dissatisfaction. This discontent has surprisingly not affected the courts' willingness to refer in future. The findings also downplay the bureaucratic politics and judicial empowerment theses emphasising strategic motives to refer. Instead, legal‐formalist considerations and the desire to contribute to the development of EU law explain most of the references of the Dutch Supreme Court. The decision (not) to refer of the three highest administrative courts is primarily based on practical and pragmatic considerations.     

论我国司法鉴定人出庭作证制度的完善

司法鉴定人出庭作证对法官采信正确鉴定意见、消除当事人对鉴定意见的怀疑、提高鉴定质量都有重要作用。但目前由于种种原因,司法鉴定人出庭作证率极低,需要我们认真分析其原因,完善司法鉴定人出庭作证制度。     

The Landed Estates Court,Ireland

The Landed Estates Court was the successor to the Incumbered Estates Commission, which had been established in the hope of providing a solution to the problems in Ireland which arose from the ownership and occupation of land. Initially controversial, the Commission had proved in the long run successful. The Landed Estates Court continued the work of the Commission, but unlike its predecessor was established as a permanent tribunal. This article aims to explain how the Court came into being, to consider the work it carried out, and to afford some understanding of the judges who sat in the Court and the issues with which they had to contend.     

What judges maximize:toward an economic psychology of the judicial utility function

Posner proposes that federal appellate judges' income from judicial work and moonlighting is maximized within the constraint of time spent on leisure: he argues that judges' voting behavior be conceptualized as consumption, and that judges avoid the hard work and hassle involved in writing opinions. I propose that the terms entering the judicial utility function be simplified to judicial and non-judicial income, and consumption, some of which is enjoyed during leisure time but a proportion of which is enjoyed in working time (voting, reputation, avoidance of criticism, etc.) Moreover, the extent to which a judge experiences judicial work as laborious and hassling depends upon his cognitive style: adaptors and innovators are expected to conceptualize and experience the detailed work of opinion writing in different ways and thus to have distinct preferences for competing sources of utility. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

TRIAL COURTS' RESPONSES TO SUPREME COURT POLICY CHANGES

This is an exploratory study focusing on the response of federal district courts to Supreme Court changes in three policy areas: economic regulation, civil liberties, and criminal justice. An analysis of federal district court opinions published in the Federal Supplement before and after the Supreme Court decisions announcing the policy changes indicated that opinion-writing patterns of federal district judges changed in a manner consistent with the Supreme Court's new direction. Further study of the federal district courts' role in the policy process is recommended and suggestions for such research are made.     

Why Requiring Parents to Pay for Postsecondary Education is Unconstituional and Bad Policy

For divorced parents, the question of who should pay for their child's college tuition is very difficult, especially when the issue was never addressed in their separation agreement. Consequently, some states allow judges the discretion to extend child support duties for noncustodial parents after considering certain factors. Such factors may lead to the requirement of parental contributions to their child's postsecondary education. While many states have amended their statutes to encompass extended child support, Pennsylvania is the only state to have found their statute unconstitutional. Based on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision in Curtis v. Kline, this Note argues that, in order to diminish inequalities between divorced and nondivorced parents, as well as between children of divorced and nondivorced parents, all states should amend their child support statutes to declare that no parent is obligated to pay for his/her child's postsecondary education, unless voluntarily agreed to, in writing, prior to the child entering college.     

Judicial empowerment expanded: Political determinants of national courts' cooperation with the CJEU

Scholars in EU studies have developed diverse justifications for explaining why national judges cooperate with the Court of Justice of the European Union. In this regard, judicial empowerment theories have stressed the strategic importance of cooperation for empowering national courts vis‐à‐vis high courts and political actors. Nevertheless, these explanations have been restricted to the use of preliminary references by lower courts. This contribution expands the explanatory power of these approaches by exploring other potential scenarios and instruments that national judges can use to challenge the position of their governments and judicial superiors, for example, by emphasising the importance of CJEU precedent for their strategic behaviour. By offering new data collected from case‐law and surveys, this article offers a more systematic assessment of the relevance of cooperation for national judges to reinforce their authority against other institutions. The findings call for a revision of the traditional understanding of judicial empowerment theories.     

Contradictions in Judicial Support for Capital Punishment in India and Bangladesh: Utilitarian Rationales

India and Bangladesh share a common history, and each has developed somewhat similarly since partition. However, while both countries now have relatively low murder rates, India has seen a decline in the rate of executions, while Bangladesh continues to impose death sentences and carry out executions at a higher rate. There have been challenges to the death penalty in India, restricting its use to exceptional cases. The same has not occurred in Bangladesh. Yet in both countries, systemic flaws in the criminal process are evident. This article draws on two original empirical research projects that explored judges’ opinions on the retention and administration of capital punishment in India and Bangladesh. The data expose justice systems marred by corruption, incompetence, abuses of due process, and arbitrary and inconsistent treatment of defendants from arrest through to conviction and sentencing. It shows that those with the power to sentence to death have little faith in the integrity of the criminal process. Yet, a startling paradox emerges from these studies; despite personal knowledge of its flaws, judges have trust in the death penalty to deter crime and to realise other sentencing aims and feel retention benefits society. This is explained by reference to utilitarian values. Not only did our judges express strongly utilitarian justifications for sentencing people to death, in terms of their erroneous belief in its deterrent effect, but some also articulated utilitarian justifications for misconduct in pre-trial processes, suggesting that it was necessary to break the rules to secure convictions when the system was dysfunctional and ineffective.

     

United Nations Mission to Kosovo: in Violation of the Right to Life?

International organisations are expected to abide to human rights standards in the course of their operations. However, to what standards are transitional regimes held accountable? Should the UN exercising executive powers be held accountable to the same or higher standard than a national government? In this article, the author discusses the legal basis relied upon by a UN internal human rights mechanism, the Human Rights Advisory Panel (HRAP), that declared the UNMIK in violation of its positive obligation to investigate enshrined in Article 2 of the EHRC. A closer look at the opinions issued by the HRAP reveals that it might have misapplied the standard set forth in the relevant jurisprudence of the European Court for Human Rights, and thereby held UNMIK accountable under stricter requirements.