Judicial Power in Russia: Through the Prism of Administrative Justice

This article assesses the power of judges in Russia (on courts of general jurisdiction, arbitrazh courts, and military courts) in dealing with cases in which the government or one of its officials is a party. Power, that is, the resources of judges to make binding decisions, is understood as including jurisdiction, discretion, and authority to ensure compliance. The article analyzes the dramatic growth of jurisdiction and caseload in administrative justice in post-Soviet Russia to the year 2002 and examines how the courts have performed in handling the review of actions by officials (including in the military), tax cases, electoral disputes, and the legality of normative acts (both regulations and laws of lower governments), especially in the late 1990s. High rates of success for persons bringing suits against the government suggest that judges were able by and large to adjudicate fairly and rule against the state. To a considerable degree (but not always), those decisions were implemented (more often than were constitutional and commercial decisions). Interestingly, citizens who challenged the actions of officials in court had much more success than those who brought complaints to the Procuracy. Finally, the article develops an agenda for future research that would deepen understanding of the significance of administrative justice in the Russian Federation and the power of judges.     

Nonmission–Based Values in Results–Oriented Public Management: The Case of Freedom of Information

Since the 1940s, Congress and the federal courts have sought to make U.S. federal administration more responsive to democratic–constitutional values, including representation, participation, transparency, and individual rights. As manifested in the National Performance Review, the New Public Management emphasis on results may reduce attention to these values, which for most agencies are not intrinsically mission–based. Freedom of information illustrates the problem of protecting nonmission–based, democratic–constitutional values in results–oriented public management. Agencies' annual performance plans under the Government Performance and Results Act overwhelmingly ignore freedom of information, even though it is a legal requirement and performance measures for it are readily available. This study concludes that focusing on results may weaken commitment to democratic–constitutional values by default. It suggests that using a balanced scorecard approach in performance plans could enhance attention to freedom of information and other democratic–constitutional values.     

Operationalizing Social Capital: A Strategy to Enhance Communities'"Capacity to Concert"

This article addresses a concern increasingly being voiced in the donor establishment: fifty years of development assistance programs have failed to produce conclusive evidence that they can foster sustainable economic and social development in poor countries. The nature of donor programs is such that it emphasizes economic remedies and orients aid to finite projects. Yet recent evidence suggests that sustained development may be more a continued civic process whereby communities form their capacity to come to their own understandings about public ways of behaving and relating, whereby they develop their capacity to concert . This translates into a practical capability to pinpoint underlying problems, assess alternative approaches, and devise solutions most likely to be sustained. This micro capability may also have important macroeconomic implications in terms of institutional predictability and—through it—in terms of scale economies, transaction costs, transparency, incentive to innovate, and climate to implement public policies. The article suggests an alternative approach to development assistance and offers concrete recommendations to donors.     

Similar Facts in Civil Cases

This essay evaluates the recent restatement in O’Brienv Chief Constable of South Wales Police of the law on similarfacts in civil proceedings. The two-stage approach propoundedin O’Brien contains a number of conceptual problems. Apparentsimplicity was achieved by avoiding fundamental issues underlyingthis area. Prior to the Criminal Justice Act 2003, judges recognizedthat the common law similar facts rule had a role to play inboth civil and criminal trials; but they gave the rule a widerexclusionary scope in criminal than in civil cases. Adoptionof a moral perspective helps to explain this state of affairs.The rule, so it will be argued, protects the legitimacy of trialdeliberation by forbidding reliance on an assumption that disrespectsthe moral autonomy of the person whose conduct is being judged.This moral objection can arise in civil cases; but it arisesmore frequently and usually with greater force in criminal proceedings.Hence, while there is a need to reserve some judicial powerto disallow proof of similar incidents in the civil context,there is usually less reason for the exercise of that powerin civil cases than at criminal trials.     

Incidence of cannabinoids in medical examiner urine specimens

Cannabinoid use was studied in a nonspecific population of postmortem urine specimens in the State of Maryland. Of 500 sequential specimens screened for cannabinoids by enzyme multiplied immunoassay EMIT, 63 (13%) were initially positive and 58 (12%) were confirmed positive (92%). It was observed that geographic location and race did not correlate with cannabinoid prevalence. Cannabinoid use was observed to be strongly age related, with peak use by the 21- to 25-year-old age group where 22% of the cases were positive. Use of cannabinoids was also closely linked to homicides, which represented nearly half of the positive cases but only 13% of the total cases. When comparing manner of death, the greatest percent of confirmed positives was seen in homicide (26%) and drug-related (17%) deaths. The incidence of cannabinoid use was found to be more than 3 times as great in drug-related (17%) as compared to natural deaths (5%). The percent of cannabinoid-positive cases from vehicle-related accidents was low (6%) and that from nonvehicle-related accidents somewhat higher (10%). Other drugs appeared in cannabinoid-positive cases. Most prevalent was ethanol N = 18, followed by morphine (from heroin, N = 11), quinine N = 11, and cocaine N = 11. Phencyclidine (PCP) occurred twice and several other drugs were reported only once. Of the 25 homicide cases screened for drugs, 64% were positive for some drug including ethyl alcohol. Thus it appears that a high percentage of homicide cases are drug related. Males greatly outnumbered females (56:2) in positive cases, but the number of female specimens received was small.