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.     

'Where the Parents are of the Same Sex': Quebec's Reforms to Filiation

To advance debates on legal responses to parenting by gay andlesbian couples, this article introduces reforms enacted bythe legislature of Quebec, a civil law jurisdiction with a codifiedprivate law, in 2002. Quebec's pioneering regime permits twopersons of the same sex to register as a child's parents frombirth, not only by adoption. They may do so if they conceivedthe child as part of a ‘parental project’. Moreover,a person alone may have a child via a parental project. Thearticle identifies the policy choices reflected in the amendmentsand highlights weaknesses in the drafting, instructive to policymakers in civil law or common law jurisdictions. It emphasizesthe structural difficulty of amending the civil law's fundamentalinstitution of filiation to recognize two parents of the samesex. Comparing with ad hoc judicial developments from a Canadiancommon law province, it underscores the potential in systematiclegislative reform. Conservative scholars have resisted thenew regime as an inappropriate departure from the pursuit offiliation's biological vocation. The study reveals how selectivelyjurists may remember the past and how swiftly they may characterizeinnovations relating to parentage – such as the earlierabolition of illegitimacy – as natural. The mingling ofbiological fact and fiction in the new regime underscores thesimilar blending in more traditional forms of filiation.     

The Courtroom of the Future is Here: Introduction to Emerging Technologies in the Legal System

This introductory article overviews the articles in this special issue on emerging technologies in the legal system. The articles concern videotaped confessions, videoconferencing in criminal proceedings, animations and simulations, and immersive virtual environment technology. The article then highlights issues raised by the articles related to important policy and legal principles underlying our system of justice.     

Anchoring in the Courtroom: The Effects of Caps on Punitive Damages

Responding to the perception that civil damage awards are out of control, courts and legislatures have pursued tort reform efforts largely aimed at reigning in damage awards by juries. One proposed method for reigning in civil juries is to limit, or cap, the amount that can be awarded for punitive damages. Despite significant controversy over damage awards and the civil litigation system, there has been little research focusing on the process by which juries determine damages. In particular, there is a paucity of research on the possible effects of placing caps on punitive damages. The present research examines punitive damage caps and reveals an anchoring effect of the caps on both compensatory and punitive damages. A second experiment replicates this effect and examines the moderating effect of bifurcating the compensatory and punitive damage decisions.     

Intellectual Property and Global Health: From Corporate Social Responsibility to the Access to Knowledge Movement

Any system for the protection of intellectual property rights (IPRs) has three main kinds of distributive effects. It will determine or influence: (a) the types of objects that will be developed and for which IPRs will be sought; (b) the differential access various people will have to these objects; and (c) the distribution of the IPRs themselves among various actors. What this means to the area of pharmaceutical research is that many urgently needed medicines will not be developed at all, that the existing medicines will not be suitable for countries with a precarious health infrastructure or not target the disease variety that is prevalent in poorer regions. Such effects are commonly captured under the rubric of the “10/90 gap” in biomedical research. High prices will also restrict access to medicines as well endanger compliance to treatment schemes. IPRs are mainly held by multinational corporations situated in the developed world, which not only raises egalitarian concerns, but also severely limits the possibilities of companies in poorer countries to realize improvements on existing inventions, as they cannot financially afford to secure freedom to operate, which systematically shrinks the number of potential innovators. Those inequities lead to an enormous burden for the global poor and since no institution is willing to assume the responsibility to fulfil the right to health and the corresponding right of access to essential medicines, we have to analyse alternatives or additions to the actual intellectual property regimes in order to create new incentives to fill this gap.     

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.     

对法官庭外调查权的反思--从刑事诉讼价值角度的分析

基于对实体真实的追求 ,修改后的刑事诉讼法保留了法官的庭外调查权。但是 ,由于不具备基本的诉讼形态且与诉讼的基本原理相违背 ;法官的庭外调查不仅对实现实体真实有不利的一面 ,而且必然损害程序正义的实现。因此 ,建议取消法官的庭外调查权 ,相应地完善控辩举证制度。     

从运动到领域:21世纪“法律与发展”的多维面相

作为一场根植于美国本土的全球性法学运动,21世纪的法律与发展已经或是正在从运动转向领域,并至少呈现出四个维度的实践面相。政治维度的法律与发展政策是由西方法律援助产业所派生的,并以向广大受援国推行法律援助项目为目标。学术维度的法律与发展运动具有行动导向、学术自治、理论构建和科学考察的混合知识风格。理论维度的法律与发展研究正逐渐形成以宏观理论研究、中观经验研究、微观部门法和个案研究为主干的理论体系。科学维度的法律与发展评估集中表现为法律指标运动、法治评估运动和法律知识散播的前后相继。面对21世纪的法律挑战,南方国家的法律与发展学者有责任共同联手并努力探索符合各国发展实际的地方性法律知识。     

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.     

Nation and its shadow: Quebec's non-French speakers and the courts

This article is a revised version of a paper given at the Critical Legal Conference, Glasgow, September 7, 1991. The author wishes to express her appreciation for discussions concerning the issues in this article, and comments on earlier drafts, to Tony Carty, William Lucy and Dylan Griffiths. Responsibility for the final result is nonetheless that of the author alone.     

Chaos in The Courtroom Reconsidered: Emotional Bias and Juror Nullification

A widespread presumption in the law is that giving jurors nullification instructions would result in "chaos"-jurors guided not by law but by their emotions and personal biases. We propose a model of juror nullification that posits an interaction between the nature of the trial (viz. whether the fairness of the law is at issue), nullification instructions, and emotional biases on juror decision-making. Mock jurors considered a trial online which varied the presence a nullification instructions, whether the trial raised issues of the law's fairness (murder for profit vs. euthanasia), and emotionally biasing information (that affected jurors' liking for the victim). Only when jurors were in receipt of nullification instructions in a nullification-relevant trial were they sensitive to emotionally biasing information. Emotional biases did not affect evidence processing but did affect emotional reactions and verdicts, providing the strongest support to date for the chaos theory.     

The Jury Persuaded (and Not): Computer Animation in the Courtroom

In two experiments, we examined the persuasiveness of computer animation on juror decision making by comparing animation to diagrams in two mock trials—a plane crash case and a car accident case. The persuasiveness of the animation on verdicts was dependent on the case; in the plane crash case, participants rendered verdicts in favor of the side presenting the animation. In the car accident case, the animation had no effect on verdicts. The role of familiarity with the depicted scenario is discussed as a possible explanation for the differing impact of animation. Additionally, jurors' expectations about the persuasiveness of animations were discrepant with the animations' actual influence on jurors' verdicts.     

Insider Gang Knowledge: The Case for Non-Police Gang Experts in the Courtroom

Drawing on data from surveys and interviews administered to non-police gang experts, the authors argue that police gang detectives are often erroneous in their definition of gang membership and gang-related crime. Police gang experts often mistake signs of urban youth culture for gang membership and criminal conspiracy. Evidence is presented on the ways in which knowledge about gangs is often determined by the social position of the gang expert. Former gang members and community workers may demonstrate a more nuanced and accurate knowledge of gangs than gang detectives. We see the admission of non-police gang expert testimony to the courtroom as a viable way of countering social perceptions that view aspects of gang membership and racial membership interchangeably and possibly help counter disproportionate prison sentences bestowed upon black and Latino youth.     

The German Courtroom Film During the Nazi Period: Ideology, Aesthetics, Historical Context

This essay examines the films of the Nazi period concerned with questions of justice and the administration of the law. It traces the ways in which law films developed prior to the Nazi era. It notes the apparent paradox of the Nazi obsession with questions of justice, law, and legality which are found in their strictly controlled film output. The use of film as a mass propaganda weapon affected legal subjects and this can be seen as a means of creating consensus. This centred on the role of the state in creating a system which allowed the individual to be integrated into the mythical folk community. Those who threatened this social cohesion were depicted as threats to the common sense of ordinary people and this stretched from propaganda films into comedies.     

The Impact of Prejudice Screening Procedures on Racial Bias in the Courtroom

The current study examines the impact of the challenge for cause procedure and its effectiveness in curbing racial prejudice in trials involving Black defendants. Participants were provided with a trial summary of a defendant charged with either drug trafficking or embezzlement. The race of the defendant was either White or Black, with participants in the Black defendant condition receiving (prior to the trial presentation) either no challenge, a close-ended standard challenge, or a modified reflective pretrial questioning strategy. Overall, the results revealed an anti-Black bias in judgments. While the closed ended challenge did little to reduce this bias, the reflective format demonstrated a reduction in racial bias. Theoretical and applied implications of these findings are discussed.