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Author: Anthony Gray
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498554113
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209
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Book Description
This book explains the historical significance and introduction of the presumption of innocence into common law legal systems. It explains that the presumption should be seen as reflecting notions of moral comfort around judgment of others. Specifically, when one is asked to make a judgment about the guilt or otherwise of a person accused of wrongdoing, the default position should be to do nothing. This reflects the very serious consequences of what we do when we decide someone is guilty of wrongdoing and is not a step to be taken lightly. Traditionally, decision makers have only taken it when they are morally comfortable with that decision. It then documents how legislators in a range of common law jurisdictions have undermined the presumption of innocence, through measures such as reverse onus provisions, allowing or requiring inferences to be made against an accused, redefining offenses and defenses in novel ways to minimize the burden on the prosecutor, and by dressing proceedings as civil when they are in substance criminal. Courts have too easily acceded to such measures, in the process permitting accused persons to be convicted although there is reasonable doubt as to their guilt, and where they are not guilty of sufficiently blameworthy conduct to attract criminal sanction. It finds that the courts must be prepared to re-assert the prime importance of the presumption of innocence, only permitting criminal sanctions to be imposed where they are morally certain that the accused did that of which they have been accused, and morally comfortable that the conduct being addressed is worthy of the kind of criminal sanction which prosecutors seek to impose. Courts must be morally comfortable about the finding of guilt, and the imposition of the criminal penalty in a given case. They have lost sight of this moral underpinning to criminal law process and substance, and it must be regained.
Author: Anthony Gray
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1498554113
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 209
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book explains the historical significance and introduction of the presumption of innocence into common law legal systems. It explains that the presumption should be seen as reflecting notions of moral comfort around judgment of others. Specifically, when one is asked to make a judgment about the guilt or otherwise of a person accused of wrongdoing, the default position should be to do nothing. This reflects the very serious consequences of what we do when we decide someone is guilty of wrongdoing and is not a step to be taken lightly. Traditionally, decision makers have only taken it when they are morally comfortable with that decision. It then documents how legislators in a range of common law jurisdictions have undermined the presumption of innocence, through measures such as reverse onus provisions, allowing or requiring inferences to be made against an accused, redefining offenses and defenses in novel ways to minimize the burden on the prosecutor, and by dressing proceedings as civil when they are in substance criminal. Courts have too easily acceded to such measures, in the process permitting accused persons to be convicted although there is reasonable doubt as to their guilt, and where they are not guilty of sufficiently blameworthy conduct to attract criminal sanction. It finds that the courts must be prepared to re-assert the prime importance of the presumption of innocence, only permitting criminal sanctions to be imposed where they are morally certain that the accused did that of which they have been accused, and morally comfortable that the conduct being addressed is worthy of the kind of criminal sanction which prosecutors seek to impose. Courts must be morally comfortable about the finding of guilt, and the imposition of the criminal penalty in a given case. They have lost sight of this moral underpinning to criminal law process and substance, and it must be regained.
Author: Anthony Gray
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1509920242
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 487
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Book Description
The scope of vicarious liability has significantly expanded since its original conception. Today employers are being found liable for actions of employees that they did not authorise, and never would have authorised if asked. They are being held liable for an employee's criminal activity. In the related strict liability field of non-delegable duties, they are being held liable for wrongdoing of independent contractors. Notions of strict liability have grown increasingly isolated in the law of tort, given the exponential growth in the tort of negligence. They require intellectual justification. Such a justification has proven to be elusive and largely unsatisfactory in relation to vicarious liability and to concepts of non-delegable duty. The law of three jurisdictions studied has now apparently embraced the 'enterprise risk' theory to rationalise the imposition of vicarious liability. This book subjects this theory to strong critique by arguing that it has many weaknesses, which the courts should acknowledge. It suggests that a rationalisation of the liability of an employer for the actions of an employee lies in more traditional legal doctrine which would serve to narrow the circumstances in which an employer is legally liable for a wrong committed by an employee.
Author: Anthony Gray
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1509941010
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 287
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Book Description
Gradually, the law of tort has shifted away from a strict-liability approach to one where fault predominates. This book charts important case law documenting this shift. It seeks to understand how and why it occurred. Given that the Rylands v Fletcher decision is typically seen as a prime exemplar of strict liability, it focusses particularly on that case, as part of the historical development of tort law. It considers the intellectual arguments made in favour of strict liability, and for fault-based liability. Having done so, it then focusses on particular areas of the law of tort, including nuisance, defamation and trespass. It is somewhat anomalous that though most would view these as examples of torts of strict liability, fault considerations have become prominent in their application. This presents an uneasy compromise, where torts that are notionally strict in nature are infused with fault considerations, often through exceptions or defences. This book advocates for further development in the law of tort to better reflect a primarily fault-based approach to liability, at least in the common law. This would make the law of tort more coherent.
Author: Barry C. Feld
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 147987129X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 408
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Book Description
Winner, 2020 ACJS Outstanding Book Award, given by the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences A major statement on the juvenile justice system by one of America’s leading experts The juvenile court lies at the intersection of youth policy and crime policy. Its institutional practices reflect our changing ideas about children and crime control. The Evolution of the Juvenile Court provides a sweeping overview of the American juvenile justice system’s development and change over the past century. Noted law professor and criminologist Barry C. Feld places special emphasis on changes over the last 25 years—the ascendance of get tough crime policies and the more recent Supreme Court recognition that “children are different.” Feld’s comprehensive historical analyses trace juvenile courts’ evolution though four periods—the original Progressive Era, the Due Process Revolution in the 1960s, the Get Tough Era of the 1980s and 1990s, and today’s Kids Are Different era. In each period, changes in the economy, cities, families, race and ethnicity, and politics have shaped juvenile courts’ policies and practices. Changes in juvenile courts’ ends and means—substance and procedure—reflect shifting notions of children’s culpability and competence. The Evolution of the Juvenile Court examines how conservative politicians used coded racial appeals to advocate get tough policies that equated children with adults and more recent Supreme Court decisions that draw on developmental psychology and neuroscience research to bolster its conclusions about youths’ reduced criminal responsibility and diminished competence. Feld draws on lessons from the past to envision a new, developmentally appropriate justice system for children. Ultimately, providing justice for children requires structural changes to reduce social and economic inequality—concentrated poverty in segregated urban areas—that disproportionately expose children of color to juvenile courts’ punitive policies. Historical, prescriptive, and analytical, The Evolution of the Juvenile Court evaluates the author’s past recommendations to abolish juvenile courts in light of this new evidence, and concludes that separate, but reformed, juvenile courts are necessary to protect children who commit crimes and facilitate their successful transition to adulthood.
Author: Brandon Garrett
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674970993
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 343
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Book Description
An awakening -- Inevitability of innocence -- Mercy vs. justice -- The great American death penalty decline -- The defense lawyering effect -- Murder insurance -- The other death penalty -- The execution decline -- End game -- The triumph of mercy
Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on Courts, Civil Liberties, and the Administration of Justice
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Civil rights
Languages : en
Pages : 1280
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Book Description
Author: Raymond Bonner
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307948544
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
From Pulitzer Prize winner Raymond Bonner, the gripping story of a grievously mishandled murder case that put a twenty-three-year-old man on death row. In January 1982, an elderly white widow was found brutally murdered in the small town of Greenwood, South Carolina. Police immediately arrested Edward Lee Elmore, a semiliterate, mentally retarded black man with no previous felony record. His only connection to the victim was having cleaned her gutters and windows, but barely ninety days after the victim's body was found, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. Elmore had been on death row for eleven years when a young attorney named Diana Holt first learned of his case. With the exemplary moral commitment and tenacious investigation that have distinguished his reporting career, Bonner follows Holt's battle to save Elmore's life and shows us how his case is a textbook example of what can go wrong in the American justice system. Moving, enraging, suspenseful, and enlightening, Anatomy of Injustice is a vital contribution to our nation's ongoing, increasingly important debate about inequality and the death penalty.
Author: James Q. Whitman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300116004
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 286
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Book Description
To be convicted of a crime in the United States, a person must be proven guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt.” But what is reasonable doubt? Even sophisticated legal experts find this fundamental doctrine difficult to explain. In this accessible book, James Q. Whitman digs deep into the history of the law and discovers that we have lost sight of the original purpose of “reasonable doubt.” It was not originally a legal rule at all, he shows, but a theological one. The rule as we understand it today is intended to protect the accused. But Whitman traces its history back through centuries of Christian theology and common-law history to reveal that the original concern was to protect the souls of jurors. In Christian tradition, a person who experienced doubt yet convicted an innocent defendant was guilty of a mortal sin. Jurors fearful for their own souls were reassured that they were safe, as long as their doubts were not “reasonable.” Today, the old rule of reasonable doubt survives, but it has been turned to different purposes. The result is confusion for jurors, and a serious moral challenge for our system of justice.
Author: R. H. Helmholz
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226326603
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
Levy, this history of the privilege shows that it played a limited role in protecting criminal defendants before the nineteenth century.
Author: Berenika Drazewska
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004432566
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 391
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Book Description
This book offers the first comprehensive scholarly analysis of the current meaning and scope of military necessity – a key concept in the international legal framework for the protection of cultural heritage during armed conflicts since the adoption of the 1954 Hague Convention. Academic discussions commonly view military necessity uniquely through the lens of international humanitarian or international criminal law. In her book, Berenika Drazewska presents a more comprehensive perspective, examining developments across various strands of international law arisen since 1954. This novel approach demonstrates how international cultural heritage law affords a particularly strict meaning to military necessity. As a result, the relative waiver will only be available to belligerents very rarely, in truly extraordinary circumstances. Drazewska’s Military Necessity in International Cultural Heritage Law engages a significant issue in this rapidly evolving field of international law, the inclusion of necessity in regulation of the protection of cultural heritage during armed conflict after 1945. Its very inclusion was viewed as a major concession, which is only multiplied because of the difficulties of its application on the ground. This thorny issue has come to the fore again with large-scale cultural losses inflicted during recent armed conflicts. Elegantly written and scholarly in its approach, this book places this question and possible answers to it within the broader sweep of international law and recent developments not only in international humanitarian law, but state responsibility, international criminal law and international criminal law. It offers a significant and timely reexamination and reconceptualization of this important topic. Prof. Ana Filipa Vrdoljak (UNESCO Chair in International Law & Cultural Heritage, Faculty of Law, University of Technology, Sydney)
