Citizen assessment of local criminal courts: Does fairness matter?

The article aims to compare the role that the International Criminal Court, as opposed to local courts is able to play in providing restorative justice in post-conflict societies. The author examines in detail the experience of the Rwandese ‘Gacaca’ courts, in order to demonstrate that local courts achieve better results than international or Western-biased criminal courts. The article further raises many useful insights that can throw some light on some of the current problems in Africa. While this traditional mechanism of the local court system demonstrates the wisdom that has sustained the local court systems, the modern African leaders appear to rebel against their roots through dictatorial rule that sentences the greater percentage of the population to a miserable life in pursuance of justice. It is within this perspective that the author noted that local tribunals of suspects can easily speed the trials which would cost the government dearly if international criminal courts were used. However, reconciliation and forgiveness remain pertinent challenges of local courts system because of the tensions that are eminent between victims, offenders and the community due to poor mechanism for reintegration for those found guilty. Key words: Grand coalition, rigging, Gacaca, toxic leaders, impunity, genocide, restorative justice, local tribunal, International Criminal Court, perpetrators.

Local Chinese courts commonly use responsibility systems (mubiao guanli zeren zhi, zeren zhuijiu zhi) to evaluate and discipline judges. Judges receive sanctions under these systems for a wide range of behavior, such as illegal or unethical dealings with parties and lawyers, inappropriate courtroom behavior, and neglect of duty.Many local court Chinese responsibility systems also discipline judges for simple legal error. Judges may face sanctions linked to the number of cases that are reversed on appeal, simply because the interpretation of law made by a higher court differs from that of the original trial judge. Sanctions include monetary fines and negative notations in a judge’s career file. Such practices violate Chinese Supreme People’s Court (SPC) judicial interpretations specifically barring the use of responsibility systems to sanction judges for simple legal error. Local Chinese courts, however, have continued to promulgate such systems.Court responsibility systems that discipline judges for simple legal error create a perverse set of incentives for Chinese judges. In order to avoid appellate reversal, lower Chinese judges rely on an ill-defined system of advisory requests (qingshi) to solicit the views of higher courts and judges regarding how to decide pending cases. As Chinese judges themselves note, excessive resort to qingshi practices has many negative effects. It undermines appellate review, since the court or judge who reviews the case on appeal can be the same one who responded to the initial qingshi request regarding how to decide the case in the first place. It creates a relatively passive Chinese judiciary reliant on top-down direction. Last, it contributes to an overload of higher-level judicial authorities forced to handle a myriad of requests for guidance from lower-level courts. Unsurprisingly, the SPC has made qingshi reform a key component of both the 2004–2008 and the 2009–2013 plans for court reform.So what is going on? Why do local Chinese courts continue to use internal disciplinary systems that violate Chinese law and negatively affect daily operations of the judiciary? Historically, the use of disciplinary sanctions to punish judges for cases of simple legal error reversed on appeal is deeply rooted in imperial Chinese legal practices dating back to the Qin dynasty. Politically, the disciplinary sanctions employed by modern Chinese court responsibility systems and their imperial analogues reflect a comprehensive governance strategy employed by generations of centralized, authoritarian Chinese rulers to address pervasive principal–agent problems in a sprawling bureaucracy. However, these policies are generating conflict with rule-of-law norms established in the post-1978 reform period, and incarnated in the 1998 SPC judicial interpretations.Existing literature on the post-1978 Chinese legal system has devoted significant attention to formal legal norms promulgated by central institutions such as the SPC and the National People’s Congress (NPC), but ignore the underlying incentive structures that can drive judicial behavior. Local court responsibility systems and the incentives they create for individual Chinese judges are “terra incognita in terms of published systematic studies.This article presents an overview of Chinese court responsibility systems and their disciplinary treatment of incorrectly decided cases (cuo’an), and analyzes the important practical problems created in the Chinese legal system as a result of official use of responsibility systems to discipline judges for legal error. It also identifies the extent to which the key elements of modern People’s Republic of China (PRC) court responsibility systems are firmly grounded in prior imperial precedent.

Local Chinese courts commonly use responsibility systems (mubiao guanli zeren zhi, zeren zhuijiu zhi) to evaluate and discipline judges. Judges receive sanctions under these systems for a wide range of behavior, such as illegal or unethical dealings with parties and lawyers, inappropriate courtroom behavior, and neglect of duty.Many local court Chinese responsibility systems also discipline judges for simple legal error. Judges may face sanctions linked to the number of cases that are reversed on appeal, simply because the interpretation of law made by a higher court differs from that of the original trial judge. Sanctions include monetary fines and negative notations in a judge’s career file. Such practices violate Chinese Supreme People’s Court (SPC) judicial interpretations specifically barring the use of responsibility systems to sanction judges for simple legal error. Local Chinese courts, however, have continued to promulgate such systems.Court responsibility systems that discipline judges for simple legal error create a perverse set of incentives for Chinese judges. In order to avoid appellate reversal, lower Chinese judges rely on an ill-defined system of advisory requests (qingshi) to solicit the views of higher courts and judges regarding how to decide pending cases. As Chinese judges themselves note, excessive resort to qingshi practices has many negative effects. It undermines appellate review, since the court or judge who reviews the case on appeal can be the same one who responded to the initial qingshi request regarding how to decide the case in the first place. It creates a relatively passive Chinese judiciary reliant on top-down direction. Last, it contributes to an overload of higher-level judicial authorities forced to handle a myriad of requests for guidance from lower-level courts. Unsurprisingly, the SPC has made qingshi reform a key component of both the 2004–2008 and the 2009–2013 plans for court reform.So what is going on? Why do local Chinese courts continue to use internal disciplinary systems that violate Chinese law and negatively affect daily operations of the judiciary? Historically, the use of disciplinary sanctions to punish judges for cases of simple legal error reversed on appeal is deeply rooted in imperial Chinese legal practices dating back to the Qin dynasty. Politically, the disciplinary sanctions employed by modern Chinese court responsibility systems and their imperial analogues reflect a comprehensive governance strategy employed by generations of centralized, authoritarian Chinese rulers to address pervasive principal–agent problems in a sprawling bureaucracy. However, these policies are generating conflict with rule-of-law norms established in the post-1978 reform period, and incarnated in the 1998 SPC judicial interpretations.Existing literature on the post-1978 Chinese legal system has devoted significant attention to formal legal norms promulgated by central institutions such as the SPC and the National People’s Congress (NPC), but ignore the underlying incentive structures that can drive judicial behavior. Local court responsibility systems and the incentives they create for individual Chinese judges are “terra incognita in terms of published systematic studies.This article presents an overview of Chinese court responsibility systems and their disciplinary treatment of incorrectly decided cases (cuo’an), and analyzes the important practical problems created in the Chinese legal system as a result of official use of responsibility systems to discipline judges for legal error. It also identifies the extent to which the key elements of modern People’s Republic of China (PRC) court responsibility systems are firmly grounded in prior imperial precedent.

How do Chinese courts punish corruption? This paper demonstrates how China strategically leverages its court system to signal anti-corruption resolve by transferring high-level corruption cases to local courts in distant jurisdictions. Assigning cases to distant courts insulates the judiciary from local political interference through geographic recusal and prevents the formation of a focal point for elite coordination by creating uncertainty about which court will be designated. Using an original dataset of high-ranking officials convicted of corruption since the 18th Party Congress, this paper finds that: 1) during the court designation stage, the more severe the case, the more distant the court, and the specific location of the court cannot be easily inferred from previous assignment records or case profiles; and 2) at the conviction stage, given the same case severity, courts that are farther away tend to impose longer sentences. These findings suggest that despite the prevalence of local judicial capture and protectionism, the local court system can still be strategically employed as an institutional tool for punishing corruption.

Public trust in government depends largely on the belief that institutions are fair and respond to the will of the governed. We expand on past research on the relationship between public opinion and state courts by studying how selection methods for both state and local courts influence popular attitudes about the judicial branch. Employing individual-level survey data on the responsiveness and fairness of state supreme courts and local trial courts, we find that respondents in states using elections to choose judges for state courts believe the judicial system is fairer. Further, the use of non-partisan elections for local trial courts has a positive effect on public evaluations of judicial fairness. However, views on judicial responsiveness are unaffected by means of selection at either the state or local level. Thus, nonpartisan or even partisan judicial elections do not have a negative effect on our measures of trust; indeed, when elections do have an effect, it is a positive one.

International officials — Claims against officials' organization — Time-limits for bringing claims — Dismissal for misconduct — Conviction by local criminal court — Effect of local amnesty.

THE United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a federation established in 1971 of the seven Emirates of Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras Al Khaimah, Sharjah, and Umm Al Quwain. (1) Abu Dhabi is the Federal capital of the UAE. The UAE has approximately eight percent of the world's proven oil reserves and the Emirate of Abu Dhabi commands one of the wealthiest sovereign investment funds in the world. The UAE has one of the highest incomes per capita in the world. Concerns about regional security have made the UAE a major purchaser of defense technology. By one estimate, the UAE is the fourth largest importer of arms in the world. (2) Because of the UAE's very strong financial standing regionally and internationally, it has attracted businesses from around the world to do commerce there. As a necessary part of doing commerce, all parties to the transaction are served by an agreed forum to hear and resolve disputes that may arise if they cannot resolve those disputes themselves. There is a strong need for a mechanism that is governed by rules that are known and understood and that can lead to a binding and, perhaps most importantly, enforceable result. Foreign arbitration clauses are probably the most common means of achieving these ends, and contracts between foreign defense contractors and UAE counterparties, for example, often include foreign arbitration clauses. If an arbitration clause is invalid in the UAE (and enforcement abroad is not an option), the only option is to seek enforcement in the courts in the UAE. If a party has concerns about the prospect of an existing arbitration clause being deemed unenforceable, it could (i) seek to amend the clause by mutual agreement with the other party, or (ii) file suit in the local courts. I. Brief Overview of Local Court System The UAE Constitution provides for a Federal court system, but permits each Emirate to opt out of the Federal court system and maintain an independent court system. Currently, the Emirates of Ajman, Fujairah, Sharjah and Umm Al Quwain participate in the Federal court system. The Emirates of Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Ras Al Khaimah each maintain separate court systems. (3) Rules of evidence and court procedure are governed by Federal laws, which apply in all seven Emirates. The UAE is a civil law jurisdiction, and the doctrine of binding judicial precedent is not followed. (4) Court decisions are often indicative of how other courts may act in the future, but are not binding on such courts. Moreover, not all court decisions are published. There are no juries, and cases are heard by a single judge or a three-judge panel, depending on the nature of the dispute. Cases proceed on the basis of written pleadings submitted by advocates at a series of hearings conducted in Arabic. All evidence submitted to the court must be in Arabic or be translated into Arabic by a translator certified by the UAE Ministry of Justice. Laws in the UAE are made both at the Federal and individual Emirate level. The existence of different court systems means that the interpretation of UAE Federal law may vary. For example, the courts in the Emirate of Dubai may interpret UAE Federal law differently than the Federal courts or the courts in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. II. Important Elements in any Foreign Arbitration Clause When incorporating a foreign arbitration clause into a contract, there are certain essential elements that should exist in every clause. The language of the arbitration is important. One of the reasons foreign companies want to avoid the local courts in the UAE is the fact that all proceedings there must be in Arabic. Thus, any arbitration clause should include an agreement on the language by which any arbitration will be conducted. Parties are also free to select the venue of such arbitration. Generally, the parties will agree on a venue that favours neither party; i.e. neutral territory. Recognize, however, that the parties will bear the travel expenses of the arbitrator selected by the arbitral body to hear the case in that location. …

IntroductionDefining ‘fairness’ in the agro-food sector is a challenging task. There is no single definition of fairness and the literature does not provide a complete conceptualization from the consumer's point of view. The current research seeks to explore the consumers' interest in fairness and ethics in the agro-food chain by exploring (i) a comprehensive theoretical framework to conceptualize fairness from a consumer perspective, and (ii) the consumers' perceived importance of different food attributes as fairness-related aspects.MethodLiterature review and focus groups allowed for the creation of the final survey to be submitted to consumers. 529 valid responses from a predominantly Italian female sample were collected. Data were elaborated with Exploratory Factor Analysis and ANOVA test.ResultsThe research identified five dimensions of fairness: Fair price, environment, networking, short chain, and working condition. Also, it emerged that age influences consumers' perceived importance of products with fair attributes.DiscussionThis research contributes to the development of a fairer and more sustainable food system by identifying perceptions of agro-food chain fairness and establishing a link with food shopping intentions. The research provides companies with suggestions on how to expand sales by reaching a greater number of consumers.

This Action study was established in 1997 by the Society because of our concerns about the sharp increase in the use of custody for chi ldren and young people aged under 18 in England and Wales since 1992. was selected as the site for the enquiry because the local Courts have an established pattern of using high levels of custody for juveniles. The research also took place during a period when the Justice Process in England and Wales was being reformed and reorganised via the Crime and Disorder Act (1998). MUltiple methods and sources were used to gather data and produce information. The sources included the views and experiences of serious and/or persistent young offenders and key decision-makers such as Magistrates and Judges. This action research study was designed as an intervention which would challenge and influence decisions within the local Justice System. The project is in the process of developing realistic and viable alternatives to custody for local Courts through Restorative JusticelVictim-Offender Mediation. The evidence of need for this type of intervention was established within the study. Introduction Aim of the Study This study about Youth Crime and the Use of Custody on Teesside was established by The Children's Society as a national and regional response to the substantial increase in the use of custody for young people in England and Wales since 1992. was selected as the area where the study should be undertaken because it is one of the locations within England and Wales where there is a pattern of using high levels of custody for young people. is locked into a cycle of high levels of crime and high levels of incarceration as a response to offending behaviour by young people. This cycle is underpinned by significant levels of socio-economic disadvantage and social exclusions. Research for Change explored ways of breaking the Criminal Justice aspects of this cycle from a wide range of perspectives. The study was a qualitative action research investigation which used multiple methods and sources to gather data and produce information. The sources included the views, experiences Munro, Change, Crime and Custody and perceptions of those who are the subjects of the Criminal Justice process along with those who administer it. The aim of the research was to begin the process of effecting positive change for and with young people at risk of custody on Teesside. The Children's Society believes that local neighbourhood and communities can benefit from reductions in recidivism amongst young people when counter productive custodial sentences are replaced by viable community based alternatives to The mission statement of the Children's Society is: To be a positive force for change in the lives of children and young people whose circumstances make them particularly vulnerable. The Children's Society position with regard to the use of custody for children and young people is: All children and young people experience just processes and retain their liberty unless containment is necessary to protect themselves and others from serious harm. Those under 18 should not be held in prison custody. The Children's Society describes itself as a Christian, Social Justice, Child-centred organisation which works in a multi-cultural and multi-faith society. The preparations for the enquiry began in January 1998 and the fieldwork was undertaken between June 1998 and November 1998. CONTEXT OF THE STUDY The National Context Since the mid 1980's and the failure of the short, sharp, shock response to young offenders by the first and second Thatcher led Conservative Governments, there had been a steady decline in the use of incarceration as a response to offending behaviour by young people in England and Wales since 1985. This fall reflected the figures for reported crimes in England and Wales. There was a significant decline in the rates of offending behaviour by children and young people (per 100,000 of the population) in England and Wales between 1985 and 1996. Although there have been reductions since 1985 in the known offending rate for most offence groups, increases have occurred for violence against the person (including common assault) , robbery and drug offences.

Lately, experts have turned to historical evidence to uncover the default mode of our sleep pattern. Even though there are some notable exceptions, most historians use a qualitative methodology based on scattered evidence in diaries, letters, novels, medical treatise and other literary sources. To provide fresh perspective in the debate, the present article develops a more quantitative approach. Drawing fresh evidence from early modern criminal records - viz the eyewitness reports of the Hoge Vierschaer or the local criminal court in Antwerp - we are able to debunk some classic stereotypes about premodern sleep patterns. Data reveal that most 18th -century Antwerpers slept fewer hours than we would expect, slumbered in a monophasic way and rarely if ever took a nap during the day. Moreover, the start and end of sleep were less attuned to the solar cycle than we would imagine. Last but not least, the pattern also shows some fascinating weekly and seasonal variations.

Drawing evidence from the proceedings of the Antwerp hoogere Vierschaer (the local criminal court), the article challenges some key features from Jan de Vries’ hypothesis of the Industrious Revolution. Mesmerised by an endless variety of fashionable and exotic consumer goods, eighteenth-century people would have slashed their leisure time in a variety of ways. Labour input would have been forced up on a daily, weekly and annual base. However, time-budget analysis of Antwerp labour rhythms evidences a much more complex picture, which does not really hint at an industrious revolution but rather reveals invariable industriousness.

Indians and State Law examines the history of state and territorial policies, laws, and judicial decisions pertaining to Native Americans from 1790 to 1880. Belying the common assumption that Indian policy and regulation in the United States were exclusively within the federal government's domain, the book reveals how states and territories extended their legislative and judicial authority over American Indians during this period. Deborah A. Rosen uses discussions of nationwide patterns, complemented by case studies focusing on New York, Georgia, New Mexico, Michigan, Minnesota, Louisiana, and Massachusetts, to demonstrate the decentralized nature of much of early American Indian policy. This study details how state and territorial governments regulated American Indians and brought them into local criminal courts, as well as how Indians contested the actions of states and asserted tribal sovereignty. Assessing the racial conditions of incorporation into the American civic community, Rosen examines the ways in which state legislatures treated Indians as a distinct racial group, explores racial issues arising in state courts, and analyzes shifts in the rhetoric of race, culture, and political status during state constitutional conventions. She also describes the politics of Indian citizenship rights in the states and territories. Rosen concludes that state and territorial governments played an important role in extending direct rule over Indians and in defining the borders and the meaning of citizenship.

This symposium essay contends that the image of the common law drawn by the Supreme Court in the Confrontation Clause context is both distorted and incomplete. In particular, the Court and scholars defending originalist positions rely almost entirely on English sources in their reconstruction of the common law basis for the Confrontation Clause, thereby neglecting the diversity of American common laws from the time of the Founding, a diversity that has already been unearthed by a number of legal historians. By drawing on hitherto untapped sources to furnish a bottom-up reconstruction of how testimony was treated in local criminal courts within mid- to late-eighteenth-century New Jersey, this essay demonstrates that, in at least some jurisdictions, the originalist vision of common law did not apply. The common law cannot, therefore, furnish a univocal answer to questions about the original meaning of the Confrontation Clause.

Dear members of the ESRS, Dear readers of JSR, Let me welcome you to the first issue of JSR in the year 2021. First of all, let me wish you a Happy New Year 2021 and let's be optimistic, hoping that the worldwide COVID-19 health crisis will be overcome in the near future. It should be mentioned here that this volume 30 of JSR reflects the third decade of existence of the Journal of Sleep Research – time to celebrate! The first issue of JSR in 2021 encompasses a variety of topics ranging from sleep and COVID-19 to the history of sleep, chronobiology and sleep and several aspects of insomnia. I would like to highlight a few of the manuscripts in this issue for you: Partinen et al. (2021) summarize the initiative of many European researchers and clinicians called ‘The International Covid-19 Sleep Study (ICOSS)’. This group has developed a set of questionnaires leading to a harmonized survey that is recommended to be used in sleep and COVID-19 studies. The harmonized questionnaire will be used in anonymous cross-sectional surveys and the instruments within the questionnaire may also be used in prospective and clinical studies. The questionnaire survey by the end of 2020 has already been used in studies in Austria, Canada, China, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Norway, Poland, Sweden, the UK and the USA. We congratulate the authors for their efforts and for trying to harmonize and structure sleep and sleep disorders research on the very important topic of the COVID-19 pandemic. Verhoeven (2021) came from a historical perspective and investigated sleep behaviour by looking at early modern criminal records from the local criminal court in Antwerp during the 18th century. This approach is based on the fact that seemingly many eyewitnesses report to some extent sleep, sleep times or sleep disorders. This article, when published, led to a controversy and discussion with Professor Roger Ekirch from Virginia. Professor Ekirch is an eminent historian who was the first author, upon inspection of many historical sources, to report about segmented sleep and claim that in preindustrial times people had a first and second sleep, which was interrupted around midnight. But read for yourself: there is this original paper and there are three letters to the editor, two by Roger Ekirch and one response by Verhoeven. Another main topic of this issue is insomnia. Henry et al. (2021) ran a sub-analysis of participant data from two large randomized controlled trials of a digital sleep intervention. The question is whether insomnia could be a mediating therapeutic target for depressive symptoms. Having over 3,000 datasets, the data analysis shows that digital interventions significantly improved insomnia but also depressive symptoms at post-intervention. It also was concluded that improvements in insomnia symptoms at mid-intervention mediated 87% of the effects on depressive symptoms at post-intervention. This is an extremely important result, because up to now it has been mainly postulated that insomnia treatment may prevent depression, but only a few original studies looking at this have been published. The authors are to be congratulated for their approach and for the publication of these extremely important data for psychiatry and psychotherapy. Another paper I would like to highlight comes from Sedov et al. (2021) from Canada. The authors performed a meta-analysis of insomnia symptoms during pregnancy. It was possible to incorporate 24 studies with more than 15,000 participants in the analysis. It became clear that insomnia symptoms are very frequent during pregnancy, with a rate of 38.2%. Insomnia prevalence was higher in the third trimester compared to the first and second trimesters. This raises the urgent question of how to especially treat insomnia in this population. As of now, it seems that CBT-I (cognitive behavioral treatment of insomnia) will be the first-line therapy, as generally it is not advised to administer hypnotics during pregnancy.

Positive attitudes towards factors such as the perceived fairness of the tax system are considered to play an important role in the level of tax compliance within a country (Strumpel, 1968). The tax literature indicates that not only knowledge but an understanding of the tax system may have an effect on taxpayers' perceptions of fairness and attitudes towards compliance. This study examines the linkages between an increase in tax knowledge on perceptions of fairness and tax compliance attitudes by using students enrolled in an introductory taxation course in a New Zealand tertiary institution. Contrary to prior research, the results indicated that an increase in tax knowledge did not have a significant impact on perceptions of fairness and tax compliance attitudes.