Court Press Research Articles

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This essay describes a care team and family rallying around a young girl facing what seem to be insurmountable odds.

The Cup Whisperer

The Cup Whisperer

Advice for a New Sentencing Commission

Freshly stocked with members, the Sentencing Commission has the opportunity to push federal sentencing in the right direction. The Commission should press Congress to abolish mandatory minimum sentencing laws. Such provisions prevent judges from imposing individualized sentences, transfer authority from neutral judges to partisan prosecutors, and generate racial and economic disparities, with no particular crime control benefits. While bipartisan support for sentencing reform appears to be growing, “law enforcement lobby” (comprised of prosecutors, prison guards, and police unions) poses a substantial obstacle to significant change. Prosecutors often resist changes that would reduce their bargaining power and corrections officials and others with a stake in prison expansion often support mandatory sentencing laws. The Commission should use its influence to serve as a counterweight to this lobby, recommending changes to Congress that promote individualized sentencing. The Commission should also address the issue by holding hearings around the country and by working with community groups, scholars, and other interested parties. Such actions are entirely consistent with the Commission’s statutory mission and have the potential to make a real difference in improving the fairness, effectiveness, and efficiency of our criminal justice system. What is needed is a full court press.

Transparency and strategic promotion: How court press releases facilitate judicial agenda-building in Germany

Press releases disseminate selected information and promote particular issues. Although several courts regularly publish press releases on decisions, it is unclear which policy issues are more likely to be promoted by courts. This study argues that courts publish press releases to increase transparency and promote politically contested issues strategically. Using original data on the German Federal Constitutional Court, it assesses the role of press releases for judicial agenda-setting. Policy issues in 7114 court decisions between 1998 and 2019 were coded through supervised text classification. The results show that the press releases cover a greater range of policy issues than the Court’s decisions. They are more likely to be published for decisions that deal with politically contested issues. This study contributes to the policy agenda literature by adding a new case, the German Federal Constitutional Court, and court press releases as a new perspective.

Case of Guzmán Albarracín v. Ecuador (Inter-Am. Ct. H.R.)

Only parties to the ACHR may elect judges to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (the Court) and participate in the development of the jurisprudence of the Court, which to date comprises approximately 450 judgments. An unintended consequence of the lack of English-speaking judges on the Court, given the Court's limited resources, is a time lag in the translation of the Court's judgments into English. The Court's press release of October 6, 2021 indicated that, thanks to the assistance of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the Court was able to have seven of its judgments translated into English. The judgment in the case of Paola Guzmán Albarracín et al. v. Ecuador, issued on June 24, 2020, the subject matter of this introductory note, is one of the seven cases recently translated.

Full Court Press: International Legal Institutions and U.S. Newspapers at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Full Court Press: International Legal Institutions and U.S. Newspapers at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

To build a plasma cell.

To build a plasma cell.

Promoted Media Coverage of Court Decisions: Media Gatekeeping of Court Press Releases and the Role of News Values

ABSTRACT The present study focuses on the effect of court press releases on media gatekeeping, a field that has remained largely uninvestigated to date. Using original data on the German Federal Constitutional Court, the study analyzes when court press releases are reported on in the media. Certain news values (e.g., conflict, political power, continuity/familiarity) are assumed to increase the probability that a press release will be reported on in the news. By using an automated content analysis approach, this study assesses whether 584 press releases were reported on in German newspapers over a period of eight years (2010–2018). Only press releases that promote decisions are used as they are the official information subsidies that the Court disseminates to the public through the media. Findings indicate that only 18% of press releases are reported on in the news. Furthermore, the news values of conflict and political power are found to have no influence on the success of a press release, while press releases that promote decisions with an oral hearing are more likely to be picked up by journalists. Hence, issues that are familiar to the public are more likely to be covered.

Roundtable Discussion: How the AAMI COVID-19 Response Team Responded to Crisis.

Roundtable Discussion: How the AAMI COVID-19 Response Team Responded to Crisis.

Judicial public relations: Determinants of press release publication by constitutional courts

It remains unclear what institutional characteristics determine the publication of press releases by constitutional courts. Research has revealed that courts use press releases to disseminate information; however, little is known about when exactly courts choose to publish a press release on a ruling. By focusing on institutional elements, this study argues that press releases form a part of judicial public relations and are used to enhance openness and transparency surrounding specific court rulings. This argument is tested empirically via a novel dataset on the activities of the German Federal Constitutional Court. Based on 1131 senate rulings decided between 1996 and 2018, this study demonstrates that proceeding types and changes to the status quo are the main characteristics that determine the publication of court press releases, whereas intra-judicial and internal conflicts are revealed to be less influential.

Medical assistence to die, and law.

On October 24, 2018 the Italian Constitutional Court held that the absolute ban on assisted suicide provided for by Art. 580 of the Italian criminal code is unconstitutional under certain conditions. On the one hand, this Article «serves the purpose of protecting interests that are worthy of protection by the legal system» (p. 6), such as life and the protection of weak and vulnerable people. On the other hand, in specific situations like the one in the DJ Fabo's case, the assistance to die «may seem to the sick person to be the only way out of being kept alive by artificial methods that are no longer desired, and which he or she has the right to refuse» (p. 8). In particular the Court has set four conditions under which the absolute prohibition of suicide assistance can turn to be unconstitutional, and namely in those cases in which «assisted persons are (a) affected by an illness that is incurable and (b) causes physical or psychological suffering, which they find absolutely intolerable, and who are (c) kept alive by means of life support treatments, but remain (d) capable of making free and informed decisions» (p. 8). In such a situation the absolute ban on suicide assistance obliges the patient to «undergo a slower process, in a scenario that corresponds less well to the patient's vision of a dignified death and which is marked by more pain and suffering for the people close to the patient» (p. 9). Being aware of the impact and scope of its remarks and of the values at stake, the Court decided not to immediately declare the unconstitutionality of art. 580 of the criminal code, but rather to postpone the official discussion of the questions of constitutionality to the hearing on September 24, 2019. In a «"collaborative" and "dialogical"» perspective, the Court thus called upon the Parliament to regulate a subject which is at the «intersection between values of primary importance, the balancing of which presupposes, in a direct and immediate way, choices that the legislator is, first of all, authorized to make» (p. 11). As already known, the Parliament has not passed a law on assisted suicide so far; the Court will therefore decide at the hearing on September 24 how to amend what has already defined as a «unconstitutional regulatory scheme» (p. 11). Against this background and considering the reasoning of the Court in December 2018, the Authors of this Document - legal scholars and professionals with long-standing experience in these topics - decided to open an interdisciplinary discussion on the main legal end-of-life issues. Starting from the Order but without limiting the analysis to it, the Working Group met on a monthly basis at the University of Trento and with the support of the Jean Monnet BioTell Project, addressing and studying in depth the large number of tricky issues raised by the Order of the Constitutional Court and linked to a possible Parliament decision. The results of these discussions have been gathered and developed in the Document together with some operational proposals, offering a "constitutionally oriented" and scientific grounded understanding of end-of-life issues. The Working Group thus aimed to contribute to the public debate suggested by the Court, which must be truly informed and plural due to the impact on institutional choices. On September 25, the Constitutional Court ruled the impunity of those who foster the suicide under the conditions expressed in the Court press release reporting the Court's judgment.

Schopenhauer’s Ethics: A Metaphysics in Action

Disputations whether Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) assent to a certain normative system of Ethics in his philosophy has been an interminable topic. Despite his dispiriting claim that philosophy can never ‘guide conduct’ as well as the determinability of character raises the question of how there exists a moral dimension in his works. Indeed, he states explicitly that his views on morality are entirely in the spirit of Christianity, as well as being consistent with the doctrines and ethical precepts of the sacred books of India (The World as Will and Representation, Section 68). Through this, by way of synoptic assessment, many works on Schopenhauer focused on compassion as the basis of his ethics. This paper will then seek to underscore a different vantage point on the grounding of his ethics, i.e., one which is emerging from metaphysics and achieves its embodiment in action. Hence, the principal intent of this paper is to ascertain a possible normative exposition of Schopenhauer’s moral philosophy. This entails an elucidation on whether there is a framework of Ethics embedded in his metaphysics and a critical analysis on the plausibility of this moral philosophy.
 References
 Atwell, J. Schopenhauer: The Human Character, Philadelphia: Temple University Press 1990.
 __________. Schopenhauer on the Character of the World, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
 Cartwright, David. “Scheler’s Criticisms of Schopenhauer’s Theory of Mitleid,” in Schopenhauer–Jahrbuch, (62), 1981.
 Cartwright, David E. Schopenhauer: A Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
 Copleston, Frederick. Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher of Pessimism. London: Barnes and Noble, 1975.
 Hamlyn, D.W. Schopenhauer. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.
 Hübscher, Arthur, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer in Its Intellectual Context: Thinker Against the Tide. Translated by Joachim T. Baer and David E. Cartwright. Lewiston, N.Y : Edwin Mellon Press, 1989.
 Jacquette, Dale, ed. Schopenhauer, Philosophy, and the Arts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
 Janaway, Christopher, ed. Willing and Nothingness: Schopenhauer as Nietzsche’s Educator. Oxford; Clarendon Press, 1998.
 Jonas, Hans. The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
 Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith. London: Macmillan, 1929.
 _______________. Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H. J. Paton. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1964.
 Madigan, Timothy J. Nietzsche & Schopenhauer On Compassion. Retrieved from https://philosophynow.org/issues/29/Nietzsche_and_Schopenhauer_On_Compassion, 2000.
 Magee, Bryan. The Philosophy of Schopenhauer. Oxford: Carendon Press, 1983.
 Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Idea, 3 Vols., translated by R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd, 1883.
 _______________. The World as Will and Representation, Vols. I and II, translated by E. F. J. Payne, New York: Dover Publications, 1969.
 _______________. The World as Will and Presentation, Vol. I, translated by Richard Aquila in collaboration with David Carus, New York: Longman, 2007.
 _______________. The World as Will and Representation, Vol. I, translated by Judith Norman, Alistair Welchman, and Christopher Janaway, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
 _______________. On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Translated by E.F.J. Payne. LaSalle: Open Court Press, 1997.
 ___________. On the Basis of Morality. Translated by E.F.J. Payne. Indianapolis: The Bobbs Merrill Company, 1965.
 ___________. On the Will in Nature. Translated by E.F.J. Payne. New York: Berg Publishers, 1992.___________. The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims. Translated by T. Bailey Saunders. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 1995.
 Taylor, Richard. “Schopenhauer”. Journal of Philosophy 61 (9),pp.288-289: 1964.
 Troxell, Mary. Arthur Schopenhauer. Retrieved on February 11, 2017 from Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophyhttp://www.iep.utm.edu/schopenh/#SSH2bii 2011
 Young, Julian, Willing and Unwilling: A Study in the Philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987.

Full Court Press: Mississippi State University, the Press, and the Battle to Integrate College BasketballThe Road to Madness: How the 1973–74 Season Transformed College Basketball

Book Review| April 01 2018 Full Court Press: Mississippi State University, the Press, and the Battle to Integrate College BasketballThe Road to Madness: How the 1973–74 Season Transformed College Basketball Peterson, Jason A. Full Court Press: Mississippi State University, the Press, and the Battle to Integrate College Basketball. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2016. Pp. 262. Photographs, illustrations, notes, index. $65.00, hb.Walker, J. Samuel, and Randy Roberts. The Road to Madness: How the 1973–74 Season Transformed College Basketball. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016. Pp. x+172. Photographs, notes, index. $25, hb; $24.99, eb. Charles H. Martin Charles H. Martin University of Texas at El Paso Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Sport History (2018) 45 (1): 126–128. https://doi.org/10.5406/jsporthistory.45.1.0126 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Charles H. Martin; Full Court Press: Mississippi State University, the Press, and the Battle to Integrate College BasketballThe Road to Madness: How the 1973–74 Season Transformed College Basketball. Journal of Sport History 1 January 2018; 45 (1): 126–128. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jsporthistory.45.1.0126 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of Sport History Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2018 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2018 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Book Reviews You do not currently have access to this content.

Scandal! Early Supreme Court News Coverage and the Justice-Journalist Divide

In January of 1900, United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Henry Brown (author of Plessy v. Ferguson) had apparently just about had it with the press. He gave what was called “[t]he principal address” before members of the New York State Bar Association in Albany and focused not principally on law, but on what he called journalism’s sensationalistic methods. “Ugly stories are told,” he told the gathered attorneys, “of spies put upon houses to unearth domestic scandals or upon the steps of public men to ferret out political secrets,” including early reports of court decisions. The greatest of the cruelties done by journalists, in Justice Brown’s estimation, were their “assaults upon private character.” The worst of the publications, he complained, were those newspapers that published Sunday editions. The spying and the invasions of privacy of which Justice Brown complained presumably included incidents involving members of the Supreme Court and others who were well-placed politically. “No man,” Justice Brown complained during his talk, “occupies a political position . . . who cannot be driven from it by a combined attack of two or three influential journals.” Brown’s media-focused speech must have been at least somewhat personal. Not only did the literally and figuratively colorful Sunday editions of newspapers annoy him (“[i]f there be another worse than these, the mind of man hath not hitherto conceived them”), but the papers’ use of illustrations was a particular irritation. “The next step in their downward career,” he complained, included the use of “[p]ictures of current events, of battles, of murders and sudden deaths, sometimes copied from photographs, oftener drawn from imagination.” Much of his talk before New York’s gathered attorneys seemed to echo language and arguments from The Right to Privacy, the influential Harvard Law Review article written by Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis that similarly condemned newspaper sensationalism and had been published a decade before. But he also seemed directly inspired by the push-the-envelope Pulitzer newspapers of the day, known for their sensationalism; their use of color and other illustrations; and, notably, their Sunday supplements. Pulitzer used the Sunday editions to experiment with “new features and approaches,” including an insert that smelled of perfume. Pulitzer newspapers were also some of the very first to focus on scandal and celebrity. Justice Brown’s anti-media speech received coverage in multiple newspapers, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Baltimore Sun. The Sun perhaps put it best when it reported simply that the Justice had “severely denounced what he termed sensational journalism.” Biographers would later call Brown a “reflexive social elitist,” and his opinions regarding the journalism of the day seem to be in line with that description. The common person may have enjoyed the Sunday supplement’s sensationalism; Justice Brown did not. The Justice-journalist divide during this period was not limited to Justice Brown’s harangue outside the courtroom. It was a time when he and the other Justices had very precise rules for those who covered the Supreme Court’s proceedings from inside the Court. First, it was suggested that no one observing the Supreme Court, including journalists themselves, could take notes on what was being said. Second, and foreshadowing today’s refusal to allow cameras in the courtroom, it was also suggested that no one was allowed to sketch the Justices as they sat during oral argument. The punishment for those who disobeyed must have been severe. As a Chicago paper explained, “Woe be to you if you violate any of the rules.” The Justices apparently so valued their privacy during the turn of the twentieth century that they even attempted to veto the now larger courtroom because it would accommodate a larger audience. Given that sort of history, it is not surprising that Justice Brown would find the more Court- and Justice-interested journalism of the day utterly unsatisfactory and invasive. This Essay explores some of that early press coverage of the Supreme Court, particularly of its Justices, and it attempts to explain what could have so provoked Justice Brown. The story is personal to Justice Brown, who was of some interest to journalists of the time, but it is also much broader. A Supreme Court press corps that had once been at least somewhat compliant and respectful of the Court became more critical of both the Justices and their decisions, and more interested in them as personalities. Ultimately, this Essay argues that such a history — one that began with at least partial quiet deference and turned distinctly toward sensationalism — laid the groundwork for Justice Brown’s anti-journalism speech and the distrust shown to media by today’s Justices.

Comprehensible legal texts - utopia or a question of wording? On processing rephrased German court decisions

This paper presents a study on the comprehensibility of rephrased syntactic structures in German court decisions. While there are a number of studies using psycholinguistic methods to investigate the comprehensibility of original legal texts, we are not aware of any study looking into the effect resolving complex structures has on the comprehensibility. Our study combines three methodological steps. First, we analyse an annotated corpus of court decisions, press releases and newspaper reports on these decisions in order to detect those complex structures in the decisions which distinguish them from the other text types. Secondly, these structures are rephrased into two increasingly simple versions. Finally, all versions are subjected to a self paced reading experiment. The findings suggest that rephrasing greatly enhances the comprehensibility for the lay reader.

Book Review: Jason A. Peterson, Full Court Press: Mississippi State University, the Press, and the Battle to Integrate College Basketball

Book Review: Jason A. Peterson, <i>Full Court Press: Mississippi State University, the Press, and the Battle to Integrate College Basketball</i>

Full Court Press: Mississippi State University, the Press, and the Battle to Integrate College Basketball by Jason A. Peterson

Full Court Press: Mississippi State University, the Press, and the Battle to Integrate College Basketball by Jason A. Peterson

Critical Cities volume 3

Inequality is a matter of everyday life and cities are places where inequality is experienced more violently. As Deepa Naik and Trenton Oldfield argue, cities, particularly large metropolises are sites to generate and reproduce inequalities, a similar process seen in different parts of the world. They suggest this is a result of what they call the “urban industry”. Critical Cities Volume 3—the third in a series published by “This Is Not a Gateway” (TINAG) platform—is an attempt to explore various urban inequalities. The editors, Naik Deepa and Trenton Oldfield, are actively involved in bringing forward various forms of inequalities related to cities. They formed the platform, which organizes the annual festival bringing together a wide variety of people working on and interested in urban issues. They also run Myrdle Court Press, an independent publishing house, and organise “Salons” to discuss urban and spatial issues. In addition, Deepa Naik and Trenton Oldfield also advise various cultural and not-for-profit organisations, charities, private businesses, independent publishers and organises courses, produces articles for a range of publications, prepares lectures, and presents research findings at various conferences, festivals and similar events.

The Dig

The Dig Steve Clay (bio) Granary Books Steve Clay, Publisher. http://www.granarybooks.com. Many of my favorite publishers have reprinted important and under-appreciated books over the years. For example, Dick Higgins at The Something Else Press published facsimile editions of Dada Almanach (1920) edited by Richard Huelsenbeck and New Musical Resources by Henry Cowell, as well as several Gertrude Stein reprints, including The Making of Americans, Geography and Plays, and Lucy Church Amiably. Judicious reprinting, particularly for a small publisher, helps to keep significant cultural information alive while supporting the press’s lineage and identity. Since 1995, I’ve published no fewer than twenty such books, which in retrospect seem to fall into three categories: documentary collections, facsimile editions, and reprints. My first experience recovering and reprinting a lost book occurred in 1995, following my encounter with issue no. 11 of New Wilderness Letter, a little magazine edited by Jerome Rothenberg. No. 11, co-edited by Rothenberg and David Guss and titled The Book, Spiritual Instrument, was published in 1981 and includes contributions by an impressive range of artists, poets, and scholars, including Alison Knowles, Karl Young, Herbert Blau, Dick Higgins, and David Meltzer. Having published my first trade book, Johanna Drucker’s The Century of Artists’ Books, that same year, I felt that The Book, Spiritual Instrument would be an interesting intellectual compliment to Drucker’s work while adding an anthropological, philosophical, if not spiritual perspective to the field of writings about artists’ books. New Wilderness Letter no. 11 proved to be quite elusive in the days before Abebooks.com; despite my searches, I was unable to locate more than one copy. Rather than produce a straight reprint by photographing the original pages, we reset the type, which meant keyboarding the full contents of the book. Becky Cohen’s photographs of poet’s reading from their own books were carefully reproduced in gatefolds as in the original publication. The cover incorporates a photograph by Michael Gibbs, which accompanies his translation of Mallarmé’s essay referenced by the book’s title. When republishing The Book, Spiritual Instrument, the idea of an expanded edition of this seminal work was not far behind, and within a few years, I was working with Jerome Rothenberg to co-edit a sort of sequel, A Book of the Book: Some Works & Projections About the Book & Writing, which was published in 2000. A Secret Location on the Lower East Side by me and Rodney Phillips, The Angel Hair Anthology edited by Anne Waldman and Lewis Warsh, A Book of the Book, Doings: Assorted Performance Pieces 1955–2002 by Jackson Mac Low, and A Purchase in the White Botanica by Piero Heliczer edited by Gerard Malanga and Anselm Hollo are in some sense documentary anthologies that gather together often obscure and out-of-print works and recast them for a new audience, sometimes with the addition of new material, whether an introduction, commentary, or bibliography. For example, Doings (see above) presents a comprehensive collection of Mac Low’s handwritten, drawn, typographic, and musical notations—works composed through non-intentional methods and that operate simultaneously as visual art, literature, and scores for performance. The book includes detailed performance instructions and notes on the procedures of composition, gatefold reproductions of the poet’s original visual scores, as well as a CD of both live and studio archival recordings. We’ve reprinted several works by Joe Brainard, including his classic, I Remember. Full Court Press first gathered and published all of the original installments as a single volume in 1975. Penguin picked up the edition in 1995, and Granary followed, redesigning and reprinting the book in 2001. I Remember is our bestselling title, having gone through six printings and selling over 20,000 copies. Click for larger view View full resolution Granary Books Logo The Vermont Notebook, Joe Brainard’s collaboration with John Ashbery, was first published by Black Sparrow Press in 1975. The Granary Books reprint in 2001 had a new cover while the text pages were photographed and printed from the Black Sparrow edition. In 2012, Granary reprinted Bean Spasms by Ted Berrigan, Ron Padgett and Joe Brainard, which was conceived as a facsimile of the...

Tribunal Verite: Documenting Transitional Justice in Sierra Leone

In 2006, the Special Court for Sierra Leone arrested former Liberian President Charles Taylor for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The trial is currently underway in The Hague, but human rights observers have questioned the relevance of a trial held such a distance from Sierra Leone. This article examines the tensions inherent in communicating justice from within international courts; in particular, how various judicial prohibitions challenge transparency and the public's right to know. Based on empirical evidence gathered by the author while producing video outreach documentaries for the Special Court press office, this article seeks to contribute to research on mechanisms of both justice and communication.