Court Reports Research Articles

Neoliberalism and sustainability of higher education in Australia

This paper critically examines the influence of neoliberal policies on the direction of Australian universities in recent years. By examining publicly available sources, including media, court, and parliamentary reports, we contend that the internationalization of higher education in Australia is a strategic response to these neoliberal policies, which have reduced government funding for the sector. However, the excessive application of neoliberalism in funding and cost management of universities has led to notable issues, such as a persistent decline in service quality, unfair treatment of international students, and insufficient pay for casual academics. The paper concludes with recommendations for policy improvements.

Global Health Governance and International Law in India: A Socio-Legal Study

India is a culturally and historically rich nation. India has hosted several ancient civilizations that differed greatly from one another in many aspects of life due to its large geographic expanse, varied climate, and unique environmental conditions. India boasts a vast diversity and cultural ethos that is unmatched in comparison to other regions of the world, encompassing a wide range of faiths, dialects, cuisines, climates, cultures, and social systems. It is a well-established truth that health problems existed wherever there were humans. Given that India is the starting point of early organised communities and historical civilizations, it is evident that healthcare and health were prevalent there long before. Since the beginning of time, historical texts have been filled with references to a wide range of health-related topics. An attempt will be made to conduct a study on court rulings and reports of the Government of India in the proper places in order to support the proposed study and determine how the law pertaining to the right to health is being implemented. Thus, the study's technique, which is an analytical doctrinal approach, has been used.

Sharia Economic Bankruptcy Law (al-Taflis) and the Dualism of Court Competency in Indonesia

Since Religious Court Law was amended by Law No. 3 of 2006, every sharia economic case is stipulated as the competency of the Religious Court. Conversely, Bankruptcy Law No. 37 of 2004 has never been synchronized with the amended Religious Courts Law. Therefore, the competent court does not handle sharia economic bankruptcy (al-taflis) cases. This study aims to ensure that al-taflis can be examined based on sharia economic principles by the most appropriate judicial forum. It is normative legal research using primary and secondary legal materials such as court decisions, statutory, books, journals, reports, and internet sources, then analyzing and synchronizing to get an ideal formula regarding how al-taflis cases are settled in court. The result shows that al-taflis is appropriately stipulated as the absolute competence of Religious Courts. Case studies of al-taflis court decisions settled by the Commercial Court so far, also indicate that sharia principles are not sufficiently considered in the decisions, even ignored. Therefore, it is urgent to make synchronization efforts by amending the Bankruptcy Law until it can accommodate the settlement of al-taflis case through Religious Courts. Otherwise, it will be only a utopian sharia economic bankruptcy law

The Deposition: A Physician’s Nightmare

Allegation of negligence is a common occurrence in the daily practice of medicine and surgery and often leads to a lawsuit. A key component of a lawsuit is a deposition: the taking and recording of testimony of a physician under oath before a court reporter in a place away from the courtroom before trial. Physicians should understand the nuances of a deposition and the importance of listening and learning from the attorney defending them against the allegations of negligence. This article educates physicians about the nature, processes, and well-thought-out physician responses in a deposition. Several cases highlight the complexities of being deposed. Well-considered answers to complicated questioning are crucial for physicians defending their actions or omissions.

Formation of Social Ties in P. I. Potemkin's Embassy to France (1680–1682)

Based on the extant complex of Russian and French sources, this article analyses the mechanisms of the formation of social ties of the Russian embassy in France in 1681. The embassy had both foreign policy and diplomatic significance for the representation of tsarist power and Russian culture in France: the envoys had not only to inform Louis XIV about the events in Eastern Europe, but also to get an overview of the French position on the preparation of the Perpetual Peace of Russia with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the conclusion of the Russian-French trade treaty, and to ensure the recruitment of foreign specialists. The author examines the formation of relations in the context of the new diplomatic history, paying special attention to the problems of power representation, the personalities of diplomats and the cultural side of their mission. For the first time in historiography, the article characterises the whole complex of archival documents about the embassy, the peculiarities of the formation of social ties of the embassy participants necessary for the successful implementation of the tasks of the diplomatic mission. The study is based on French court reports on ceremonies, notes of courtiers, internal correspondence of Russian and French diplomatic departments, materials of the Parisian periodical press, and reports of Russian envoys. Conclusions are drawn on the peculiarities of the strategies of the envoy P. I. Potemkin in establishing social relations, their significance for the development of Russian diplomacy, foreign policy, and cultural contacts with Western Europe, as well as on the peculiarities of the reflection of these relations in the surviving sources.

«Надо б в церкви, для крепости»: почему в 1920-е годы в Советской России продолжали венчаться

This article explores religious marriage in the USSR during the New Economic Policy (NEP). From the start, the Soviet authorities made great efforts to gradually eliminate religious beliefs within Soviet society. One of the first steps in that direction was the removal of marriage from Church jurisdiction. Moreover, Soviet power was constantly trying to compromise the tradition of religious marriage. However, many people still preferred to be married in church in addition to civil registration. A wide range of historical sources studied in this research (political and sanitary propaganda, communist and entertainment media, printed court reports) reveals that the new “civil” marriage was considered to be extremely unreliable by “ordinary” people, especially young girls of marriageable age and their parents. It was too easy to enter into such a marriage and to end it. It was associated with divorces, alimony suits, almost legalized cheating. The intention to marry in church at least meant a serious commitment, a willingness to take responsibility. Also, even many years later, during the Census of 1937, the majority of the population of the USSR considered themselves believers. This situation continued until a crucial change in ideology and social politics took place in the late 1920s, when most churches were closed. This study is focused on psychology of the “little man” in an epoch of global political and social changes.

Automating Intervention in Chinese Justice: Smart Courts and Supervision Reform

AbstractThis article examines how smart courts enhance the reform of judicial responsibility and the “trial supervision and management” mechanism. It holds that smart courts, while meant to provide better judicial services and improve access to justice, have the additional goal of enhancing the restructuring of accountability and power structures. It argues that automation and digitization help institutionalize and codify political supervision. Smart courts help resolve tension between the two opposing requirements of Chinese courts to maintain legal rationality and independent adjudication on the one hand, and the need for flexibility to allow intervention on the other. This article provides an account of the automation of “trial supervision and management” and explores the role of technology in enhancing political intervention in China’s legal system. This investigation draws on internal court reports and central and local judicial documents, supplemented with a review of Chinese empirical scholarship.

Written judicial discourse: mechanisms of discursive interaction between the author and the reader

In this article, the author examines the written judicial discourse of Great Britain. The subject of the study is the law report – a brief report on the judicial decision, published in open sources and judicial collections. These texts record the most important decisions of the highest courts. A detailed legal analysis and interpretation of the applicable sources of law in a court decision take the form of a compact, concise text, with an accurate and consistent presentation of the court's arguments. The texts of court reports are an example of a modern written legal language, in which the principles and norms of common law are updated again and again. As a unit of discourse, a judicial report is, on the one hand, a complex speech act, on the other hand, it is a text that carries a certain rhetorical (pragmatic) impact on the reader. Using the method of linguistic analysis, the author analyzes the representation of an event during argumentation and identifies various discursive mechanisms of interaction between the author and the reader. The author believes that such characteristics can be divided into retrospective and prospective, depending on their rhetorical impact on the reader. In particular, the author analyzes the functional status and pragmatic significance of such phenomena as indirect speech, subordinate clauses, verbs of epistemic modality. According to the author, the analysis of such characteristics can significantly complement the study of the intertextuality (dialogicity) of written judicial discourse, and accordingly expand our understanding of the formation and influence of the legal context.

Spatial–temporal analysis of suicide clusters for suicide prevention in Hong Kong: a territory-wide study using 2014–2018 Hong Kong Coroner's Court reports

This study aimed to (i) identify high-risk suicide-methods clusters, based on location of residence and suicide incidence; and (ii) compare the characteristics of cases and spatial units inside and outside clusters. Suicide data of 4672 cases was obtained from the Coroner's Court reports in Hong Kong (2014-2018). Monthly aggregated suicide numbers based on location of residence, and suicide incidence, were obtained in small tertiary planning units (STPUs). Community-level characteristics and population of STPUs were retrieved from 2016 Census. Retrospective space-time analyses were performed to identify locations with elevated suicide rates over specific time periods, i.e., spatial-temporal clusters. Clusters were evaluated for overall suicide (any method), as well as jumping, hanging, and charcoal burning methods, in location of residence and suicide incidence. Bi-variate analysis was performed to compare the characteristics of cases, and spatial units, inside and outside the clusters. Suicide clusters involving jumping and charcoal burning were identified, but no hanging clusters were found. The within-cluster distribution of types of housing was different from that of outside. For most of the overall suicide and suicide by jumping clusters, spatial units within the clusters were more socially disadvantaged compared to those outside. Clusters varied by suicide methods, location of residence and location of incidence. The findings highlighted the need for consistent and concerted support from different stakeholders within suicide clusters, to ensure appropriate design, implementation and sustainability of effective suicide prevention programs. General Research Fund (37000320) and seed fund from the University of Hong Kong (104006710).

Unlawful Intimacy: The Criminalization of Interracial Relationships in Progressive-Era Chicago

This article shows how Progressive-Era state actors in Chicago employed open-ended, low-level criminal charges directed at regulating the moral health of the community to criminalize interracial relationships—even though interracial marriage had been legal in Illinois since 1870. Capacious legal definitions of offenses like vagrancy, disorderly conduct, adultery, and fornication allowed police officers and judges to delineate moral and immoral relationships along racial lines. Using newspaper articles, writing from contemporary social reformers, and court reports, this article reconstructs the treatment of interracial couples in the Chicago legal system to show how discretion in criminal law can reinforce racial hierarchy. I offer three historical arguments: first, that individual arrests and prosecutions of interracial couples labeled lawful, interracial relationships as a form of unlawful “vice,” second, that large-scale raids on spaces for interracial socialization reinforced the criminality of interracial intimacy in a segregated city, and third, that singling out interracial couples allowed the state to exercise control through intrusive forms of punishment like probation and institutionalization.

Comments on the European Court of Auditors’ Special Report on the Leader Programme

Abstract Concerning the efficiency of the different development methods, especially the definition of added value, neither science nor practice has so far established a universally accepted opinion. A special report of the European Court of Auditors in July 2022 on the “other values” of the LEADER/CLLD development method also pointed out which factors that are closely linked to added value might be missing from an EU evaluation. These factors are the conditions that, in a highly logical correlation, can guarantee the success of a development method. The study, while presenting the most important conditions for the efficiency of the LEADER method, evaluates and responds to the Court of Auditors’ Special Report, which does not sufficiently address these issues. In doing so, it contributes to a multi-faceted presentation of the role of the LEADER method in development policy and to the formulation of the reader’s own, independent judgement.

Reimagining Probation Practice: Re-forming Rehabilitation in an Age of Penal Excess. By BurkeL.,CarrN., CluleyE., CollettS. and McNeillF. (eds) (Routledge, 2022, 247pp. £34.99 pbk)

Twenty authors have contributed to this collection of 13 essays. They are drawn from every branch of the ‘probation’ community—practitioners, inspectors, academic analysts and teachers. So, unsurprisingly, the quality of the expositions varies a good deal and, somewhat surprisingly, one voice is almost completely absent: that of offenders. Apart from a short quote from a bemused participant in a group work programme—a participant who clearly cannot see how he’s going to escape the traps surrounding him (p. 59)—the offender voice is absent. A bit of ‘lived experience’ would have leavened this sometimes ritualistically worthy loaf. The core message, around which all the contributors have mustered, is a plea, clearly set out in the editors’ introductory manifesto, that probation practitioners strive to retain and develop a commitment to the serious ambition of encouraging offender desistance. This objective is easier said than done given the context within which probation services are now delivered. Indeed, a mood of scarcely concealed desperation occasionally surfaces in the editors’ account. For the backcloth to probation work, be it the preparation of court reports, the supervision of community orders, the delivery of offender programmes or the resettlement of prisoners, is a scarred landscape of: gross and worsening social and economic inequality; increasing and deepening poverty; a housing rental market geared to ownership and inheritance of wealth rather than public utility; employment practices increasingly characterized by zero hour contracts and insecurity of tenure; and the partial collapse of major national and local authority public services whose remit includes the redress of the multiple trauma—childhood, familial, medical and military—which lies behind most serious offending.

21st Century Graffiti Dialog

Case studies with photos from 2012-2016 police and court reports tracked Dallas, Texas metropolitan area transit graffiti incidents. Comprised of primarily strings of Roman alphabet letters resulting in incoherency, graffiti engaged with and resulted in various law enforcement responses. These art forms were compared with global graffiti interpretations ranging from anti-language to multiculturalism. Graffiti writers set up dialog with society.

Unfinished Business? Informal Privacy and the Private at the Perpetual Construction Site of the First Christiansborg Palace (1740-1794)

On 26 November 1740 the Danish royal family took up residence in the new Christiansborg Palace, located at the center of Copenhagen. As was the case for many other European court residences, construction, especially on the interiors, continued well after the inauguration of the palace. In this paper we look at examples of different notions of privacy and how the spatial organization of the first Christiansborg Palace contributed to the living experiences of the residents. While the surviving floor plans show a magnificent residence, the actual living situation must have differed considerably from the ideal evoked by these widespread drawings. The inventories depict a residence that is only partly used, with empty rooms and unfinished spatial sequences. The most ceremonial routes in particular,  including the great hall or the king’s staircase, were incomplete. The hierarchical structure established by the succession of rooms was hence nullified by shortcuts and actual accesses and connections. Court instructions and reports of foreign visits give more insight into these accesses that were ad hoc or improvised.

A network approach to understand co-occurrence and relative importance of different reasons for suicide: a territory-wide study using 2002–2019 Hong Kong Coroner's Court reports

Suicide is a complex and multifaceted issue, and suicidal behaviors are often driven by multiple, interacting factors. It has been challenging to identify reasons for suicide using existing scientific methodologies. This study aims to identify critical reasons for suicide and suicidal behaviors through the application of novel network science methods. Based on cases investigated by the Hong Kong Coroner's Court from 2002 to 2019, we modelled identified reasons for 13,001 suicide cases as a co-occurrence network, and calculated each reason's eigencentrality to determine their respective relative importance. We then analyzed the temporal and demographic changes in the structure and eigencentrality of the network. We further conducted simulation studies based on the United Nations population projection to assess potential burden of different reasons for suicide on the population in the coming years. School-related issues had the highest eigencentrality (eigencentrality=0.49) for individuals younger than 20 years of age. Financial issues were crucial for adults aged 20-59 years, but their importance differed between males (eigencentrality=0.51) and females (eigencentrality=0.14). Physical illness (eigencentrality=0.80) was the core concern for adults over 60 years. Across the Hong Kong population, the reasons for suicide appear to have shifted from financial issues in the early 2000s (eigencentrality=0.46) to issues related to physical illnesses since 2011 (eigencentrality=0.58). Simulation findings indicate that, by 2050, most suicides in Hong Kong will be due to physical illness-related issues (eigencentrality=0.69) due to the rapidly aging population. There have been important sex and age differences over time, in reasons for suicide. Given the projected increasing age of the Hong Kong population over the next decades, older adults with physical illnesses appear to be the highest contributors to suicide cases in the overall population. This novel network analysis approach provides important data-driven information upon which to base effective proactive public health suicide prevention strategies and interventions. Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, Collaborative Research Fund (C7151-20G), and General Research Fund (17606521).

Women and the Rwandan gacaca courts: gender, genocide and justice

AbstractThis article examines the gacaca trials of women accused of perpetrating the Rwandan genocide, asking whether and how ideas about their gender impacted their defences, testimonies and experiences as defendants. It uses court reports of the trials of 91 accused women; a set of sources that provides novel insights into the role of gender in an African transitional justice system. These sources reveal that ideas about gender – particularly female peacefulness and passivity – were commonly invoked by both accused women and wider trial participants. These gendered ideas not only helped women to achieve acquittals, but they also contributed to the Rwandan state's construction of a ‘truth’ narrative that ordinary Rwandan women are not capable of genocide violence. Additionally, women's trials reveal a further function of the gacaca process: as a political tool that made moral judgements about contemporary Rwandan women's domestic roles and place within the household.

ЭВОЛЮЦИЯ И ИСТОЧНИКИ ПРАВОВОГО РЕГУЛИРОВАНИЯ ODR В США

Introduction:the article explores the history of formation and development of online dispute resolution (ODR) in the USA. The author analyzes the basic concepts and characteristics of these technologies and gives examples of their use in the practice of private ODR providers and U.S. courts. The main sources of legal regulation of ODR in the USA are the rulings of state courts based on the ‘ODR Standards’ of international organizations, including UNCITRAL, NCTDR, ICODR, etc., as well as scientific works of American scientists and practitioners. Purpose: to provide an insight into the emergence and development of online dispute resolution (ODR) in the practice of private ODR providers and the practice of U.S. courts by analyzing court reports, international acts, and academic sources. Methods: theoretical methods of formal and dialectical logic; empirical methods of comparison, description, interpretation; special scientific methods such as legal-dogmatic and the method of interpretation of legal norms. Results: the study found that there is currently no legal definition of ODR in the United States; governmental bodies (including courts) and private ODR pro-viders rely on their own vision and understanding of ODR, using non-binding documents from international organiza-tions as well as academic studies developed by U.S. scholars and practitioners. There is also no common doctrinal defi-nition of ODR. Conclusions: 1) The U.S. National Center for State Courts, on its website, defines judicial (court-related) ODR as ‘a public facing digital space in which parties can convene to resolve their dispute or case’. 2) Scholars define judicial ODR as a method of ADR (alternative dispute resolution) aimed at resolving civil disputes using online plat-forms attached to a court rather than face-to-face hearings, mediation, or arbitration. 3) Barriers to the use of ODR in U.S. courts are: a) continuing transition from paper to electronic documents; b) complicated registration on ODR plat-forms; c) lack of ‘intuitive’ options for working with documents on the platform and finalizing the ODR process; d) lack of reference documents. 4) The experience of U.S. state courts in implementing ODR pilot programs as well as non-binding documents of international (UNCITRAL, ICODR) and U.S. ODR standards compliance organizations (NCTDR, ABA) can be used to improve Russian legal acts.

A Jew in a Court-room: The newspaper Moskovskiye Vedomosti on Arkady Kovner Process

In 1875, Arkady Kovner, journalist, bank clerk and later in his career a civil servant in Congress Poland, forged a payment order for 168000 rubles from St. Petersburg Loan and Account Bank to the Moscow Merchant Bank. In the article, I focus on rhetorical, discursive and ideological issues of the process media coverage. Tracing court reports published in Moskovskiye Vedomosti, I analyse antisemitic prejudices with which the text is saturated and which dehumanise the person in the dock. The prosecutor as well as the reporter explain every single Kover’s step–not only in his professional, but also private life–through egoism, malice, contempt for acknowledged social values and generic predisposing to criminal activities. Kovner as a real person is substituted with a literary image of a Jew – an natural materialist interested exclusively in profiteering off the native population. The substitution results in the negation of Kovner’s explanations, when they contradict the conventional interpretative frame. The process and its media coverage show a desire for common ground between an assimilating Jew and Russian society. The Kovner process is far away from any politics, thus in this case we see how popular anti-Jewish sentiment affect the interpretation of how Jews act, think and feel.

Between harm and sensationalism: Court reporters negotiating objectivity when reflecting on ethical dilemmas in the Submarine Murder Trial

Abstract The trial of amateur submarine builder Peter Madsen for the murder of the Swedish journalist Kim Wall was one of the most publicised trials in recent Danish history. Through in-depth interviews with ten prominent Danish reporters who covered the trial, this study examines how court reporters negotiate and struggle with ethical dilemmas related to objectivity as both an institutional ideal and an ethical rule under the Media Liability Act. I demonstrate how reporters negotiate and strategise to maintain objectivity in relation to facts, relevance, the telling of both sides, and the avoidance of prejudging. I further highlight the dispute between fact-based reporters and a minor group endorsing interpretive and narrative reporting and advocating for a more pragmatic approach to objectivity. A core finding is how technological advancements and massive public interest have paved the way for new ethical practices, referred to here as “strategic ritual 2.0”.

Forensic-Correctional Psychiatric Services in Abu Dhabi: Lessons From a Descriptive Analyis of the Attributes of a Sample of Service Users.

Forensic-correctional psychiatric services are an important component of the public mental health services that provide care to offenders with mental illness in the criminal justice system and conduct psycho-legal assessments. Although forensic-correctional psychiatric services have evolved in Abu Dhabi, more work is needed in providing adequate mental health care for offenders. This study provides a situational analysis of forensic-correctional psychiatric services in Abu Dhabi. We included a descriptive analysis of the data collected on service users admitted for psycho-legal assessments and treatment in the forensic-correctional units and those reviewed in the medical board units for issuing court reports. The study spanned the period between January 2019 to October 2020. A total of 398 males were included in the study. The participants' mean age was 35.3 (SD 9.27) years and were predominantly single, unemployed and high school graduates. The most prevalent diagnosis was schizophrenia spectrum disorder, (n=129, 31.6%). The mean length of stay in the forensic-correctional unit was 11.07 days. As many as 82.4% of the participants were referred for evaluation. The most common type of crime was categorized as "abnormal behaviour" under the code of practice number 511 of the list of crimes as per the general prosecutor of the United Arab Emirates followed by violence. Considering the level of demand for services and the limited number of forensic-correctional health professionals, there is a need for more resources to develop expertise, clinical services and infrastructures to expand the practice of forensic-correctional psychiatry. The creation of a universal database for all forensic-correctional psychiatric services is needed to better understand the unmet mental health needs. An additional investment of resources for research to inform mental health policy, laws and practice is indicated. Optimally, the lessons highlighted in this study can guide action plans for improving forensic-correctional mental health services in comparable settings.