ABSTRACT This article examines how evolving United States legal doctrine, particularly the rise of the Unitary Executive Theory and a series of recent Supreme Court rulings handed down by a conservative supermajority, have created conditions for the consolidation of strongman presidential power. Focusing on Donald Trump’s political trajectory and evolving use of executive power and political persona, the article explores how sport has been co-opted both symbolically and instrumentally to advance exclusionary nationalism, affirm hypermasculine identity, and normalise illiberal government across cultural, institutional, and legal arenas. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature from strongman politics, sport, gender studies, and US constitutional law, the article shows how Trump has strategically deployed sport to legitimise power through grievance politics. It also analyzes key legal decisions, to illustrate how judicial erosion of constitutional checks and balances, and expanded executive authority have enabled the institutionalisation of authoritarian politics through federal policymaking and administrative enforcement. Beyond charting the symbolic appropriation of sport, this article identifies how sport has become a functional policy arena for enacting strongman authoritarian goals under the guise of legal normalcy. It traces the convergence of executive directives, agency rulemaking, and constitutional reinterpretation that now facilitate cultural enforcement. The analysis situates these developments within the broader stakes facing sport organisations in the current political climate, with high-profile global events on the horizon as likely flashpoints for intensified state involvement and ideological contestation.

Mental disorder in the courtroom: Challenges for legal practice in low-resource criminal justice system: A qualitative analysis from Indonesia.

Current theories of punishment and legal decision-making provide useful frameworks for identifying mitigating and aggravating factors in sentencing. However, a key limitation is that these theories typically treat factors as either mitigating or aggravating, without accounting for variables that can function as both (e.g.,mental illness, pecuniary gain, or a history of abuse). At present, no comprehensive theoretical model explains why such factors are "context-dependent." This review addresses that gap by examining three independent theories: attribution theory, rational choice theory, and focal concerns theory. Each offers valuable insight into why its respective context-dependent factor may be perceived as mitigating or aggravating, yet none alone accounts for the broader range of context-dependent factors. Building on these insights, this review introduces an integrated model of decision-making to explain how context-dependent factors influence sentencing decisions.

ABSTRACT The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires that the annual goals included in the Individualized Education Program (IEP) be monitored to determine progress toward those goals. The IEP team is required to meet at least annually to review the IEP and to revise the IEP to address any lack of expected progress toward the annual goals. Due to the lack of a reasonable progress standard and guidance for evaluating the adequacy of the IEP, progress monitoring practices are inconsistent and often incongruent with the legislative intent. A qualitative, interpretive content analysis of legal decisions from state administrative, district and circuit court decisions was employed to explore the procedural and substantive violations of the progress monitoring IDEA requirements. The findings are presented in three themes, and recommendations for improving progress monitoring practices are offered.

Eyewitness testimony is a key component of legal decision-making, yet it is highly vulnerable to cognitive and psychological influences. While trauma has been associated with alterations in memory processes, its role in eyewitness suggestibility remains unclear. In particular, it is not well understood whether trauma influences suggestibility directly or through related mechanisms such as dissociation or memory accuracy. The present study aimed to examine the relationship between trauma level and eyewitness memory performance, with a specific focus on memory accuracy and susceptibility to suggestive questioning, as well as the roles of dissociation and emotional arousal. Participants were 104 undergraduate students categorized into low- and high-trauma groups based on their scores on the Posttraumatic Stress Diagnostic Scale (PDS). After viewing a traffic accident video, participants completed a 20-item post-event questionnaire consisting of yes/no questions designed to assess memory accuracy and susceptibility to suggestive questioning. The questionnaire included both accurate and misleading items. Correlational and mediation analyses were conducted as primary analyses using continuous trauma severity scores. Group-based descriptive comparisons were also conducted for exploratory purposes. Individuals with higher trauma levels demonstrated significantly lower memory accuracy compared to those with lower trauma levels. Trauma was positively associated with dissociation and modestly associated with suggestibility, while memory accuracy showed a strong negative relationship with suggestibility. However, trauma group differences were not significant for suggestibility or response bias. Mediation analysis revealed that memory accuracy fully mediated the relationship between trauma and suggestibility, consistent with a pattern of full indirect association between trauma severity and suggestibility via memory accuracy. In contrast, dissociation did not emerge as a significant mediator. Additionally, emotional arousal was not significantly related to trauma, memory accuracy, or suggestibility. These findings suggest that trauma-related vulnerability to suggestive questioning appears more strongly associated with cognitive factors, particularly memory accuracy, than with dissociative processes. The results highlight the importance of memory accuracy as a cognitive mechanism relevant to eyewitness reliability and underscore the value of considering individual differences in cognitive functioning when evaluating testimony from trauma-exposed individuals.

Legal immigration decisions in the current political climate are a quagmire. Rising tensions and changing policies around immigration in Canada have created an environment of heightened uncertainty and information gaps. Immigrant influencers represent a mechanism to overcome some challenges faced by potential migrants; however, they remain under-researched. This paper describes the professionalization journey of immigrant influencers in Canada. Using an interpretative phenomenological approach, twenty-one semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with Canada-based Latin American immigrant social media influencers. Their cultural rationales and outlooks provide evidence to construct a professional marketing journey. Implications, institutional impacts and future research are discussed.

Research suggests that there is, at least, a risk that problematic viewpoints about rape (and other serious sexual offences) (rape myths) are influencing decisions made by jurors in cases involving alleged sexual offending. Research has examined whether any impact of such viewpoints can be minimised through providing correct information to jurors, either through judicial directions or expert testimony. However, findings in this research appear inconsistent, and while existing evidence syntheses have noted this inconsistency, they have not explained it. In this paper, we adopt a new approach to evidence synthesis, integrating evidence relating to mechanism (e.g., mechanisms of belief updating) with literature directly examining relationships between interventions and decisions in the mock jury context, in order to explain apparent inconsistency in the existing literature and draw robust conclusions in relation to when interventions are likely to be effective. We find that short and superficial statements of fact are unlikely to influence juror decision making, and, as such, potential interventions tested in much of the existing associative literature are impoverished versions of the optimal intervention. However, we also find that interventions have the potential to be reliably effective when they include more detailed information, particularly when they target broad schemas of rape myths rather than individual beliefs. These findings have the potential to inform more effective intervention in the trial context to reduce the likelihood of rape myths feeding through into legal decision making. As such they may be helpful in improving the effective prosecution of rape and serious sexual offending. • Interventions should include strong informational cues. • Interventions should target schemas of beliefs rather than individual beliefs. • Short interventions targeting one belief are unlikely to be effective. • Mechanistic evidence informs a robust account of intervention effectiveness. • Optimal intervention has the potential to be reliably effective.

Age assessment in living individuals is an important question of legal and humanitarian decision-making when reliable identification documents are unavailable. The IOFOS Recommendations for Quality Assurance: Dental Age Assessment in Living Individuals were developed to provide standardized guidance for forensic dental age assessment and have undergone successive revisions over time in response to scientific, methodological, ethical, and legal developments. The most recent revision, completed in January 2026, reflects updated evidence, accumulated practical experience, and evolving international standards. These recommendations define minimum requirements for case documentation, clinical and radiological examination, method selection, use of population-appropriate reference data, uncertainty estimation, and reporting practices. Particular emphasis is placed on transparency, quality assurance, protection of individual rights, and the legal implications associated with age thresholds, especially the determination of minority or majority. The revised recommendations are intended to serve as an international reference framework for dental age assessment in living individuals, to be adapted and integrated into national legal and regulatory systems in accordance with jurisdiction-specific requirements.

Much of the data about physician harassment and discrimination come from self-report surveys or qualitative data. We used publicly available sources to systematically identify physician-originating sex- and gender-based harassment and discrimination reported over a 5-year period. We performed systematic searches of Canadian news outlets (Canadian Newsstream), legal decisions (Canadian Legal Information Institute), and regulatory body notifications (websites of colleges of physicians and surgeons) to identify instances of harassment and discrimination involving a physician reported from Aug. 1, 2019, to July 31, 2024, in Canada. Data extraction was performed in duplicate. We performed comparative case analysis to generate insights related to physician-originating sex- and gender-based harassment and discrimination. We found 1437 records that described 208 physician respondents involved in concerns of sex- or gender-based harassment or discrimination during the study period. Of the estimated 689 victims, 585 were women or girls (84.9%) and at least 40 were children (5.8%). Sexual-boundary violations or sexual misconduct was the most common category (n = 75, 36.1%) followed by sexual assault (n = 65, 31.3%). A police complaint occurred for 72 cases (34.6%), and 29 physicians were convicted (65.9% of trials). Comparative case analysis generated several important themes, including physicians not self-reporting criminal convictions, resulting in no practice restrictions; news media being an important mechanism for additional complainants to come forward; and a substantial proportion of physician respondents having had a previous complaint (29.8%). In our study, most victims of physician-originating sex- or gender-based harassment or discrimination in Canada were women or girls, and many physician respondents were not restricted in their practice. Gaps in remediation and monitoring of physicians with previous complaints are apparent; analysis of current regulatory practices would be more feasible if data reporting by Canadian regulatory bodies were more transparent.

The large number of legal complaints has led to a need to develop systems that can assist in efficient legal analysis and classification. In this paper, an intelligent system is proposed to analyze user complaints and predict the relevant sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS). The proposed intelligent system is based on a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) approach, where Sentence Transformers are used to generate semantic embeddings of user complaints and perform a similarity-based retrieval from a structured Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita dataset. The retrieved candidate sections are further processed using a generative AI model to select the most suitable sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. The proposed intelligent system also includes a feature of Named Entity Recognition (NER) to extract important information such as persons, locations, and time. The proposed intelligent system also includes a feature of multimodal input using handwritten text extracted through image-based processing. The proposed intelligent system can assist law enforcement agencies in faster and more consistent legal decisions.

ABSTRACT This study examines how displaced persons conceptualise home and evaluate the possibility of return after the cessation of refugee status and the narrowing of mobility options. Drawing on fieldwork with first-generation Liberians in the defunct Oru Refugee Camp in south-west Nigeria, it analyses how shared histories of violence, prolonged exile, and the withdrawal of legal protection shape return decisions long after the formal end of conflict. Although the international refugee system promotes repatriation as the preferred durable solution, Liberia is no longer considered by many interlocutors as a viable future homeland following the termination of their refugee protection. Home is sustained through everyday social life in exile, while return is assessed through comparative and forward-looking judgements about safety, trust, and the durability of peace within a defunct camp environment characterised by long-term social continuity alongside legal and political precarity. This paper demonstrates that the loss of refugee status, when combined with decades of camp-based exile, recasts return from a presumed resolution into a strategic and frequently rejected outcome, providing a lens for understanding mobility decisions in other post-cessation settings where protection ends without secure pathways to belonging.

Existing research suggests that a defendant's displays of remorse, frequently used to make attributions about their character, can act as valuable evidence for decision-makers in legal contexts. However, assessing remorse is a subjective process implicitly limited by human cognition, often stemming from expectations about how remorse should be expressed and whether some individuals are even capable of feeling it. This can lead legal decision-makers to potentially misread and discount a defendant's true feelings of remorse as disingenuous. Recent empirical work suggests that this social cognitive phenomenon, known as remorse bias , can lead to adverse outcomes for some defendants in the legal system—especially for those with personal characteristics that are commonly socially stereotyped or quite different from decision-makers’ backgrounds. This article provides an overview of the concept of and recent empirical literature surrounding remorse bias in the legal system, including its impacts on decision-making and potential implications.

The case Indi Gregory constitutes a testing ground for pediatric clinical ethics in decisions concerning end-of-life care. The child, afflicted with a severe degenerative genetic disease, became the subject of a heated conflict between the parents and the medical staff regarding the discontinuation of life-sustaining therapies. The controversy, resolved in court, highlighted the central role of the principle of best interest of the child as a guiding criterion in clinical and legal decisions, overcoming divergences between parental will and medical assessments. The British context, with similar cases such as those of Alfie Evans and Charlie Gard, has underscored the importance of a multidisciplinary approach that considers not only medical prognosis but also the quality of life to be guaranteed to the minor. The ethical analysis emphasizes the delicate balance between parental autonomy, medical paternalism, and legal protection, highlighting the risk of excessive objectification that could harm the dignity of the person. The case confirms the necessity of strengthening pediatric palliative care as a compassionate and respectful response in the terminal phase. In conclusion, the experience of Indi Gregory calls for a critical and thorough reflection on how to structure ethical, transparent, and participatory decision-making processes capable of harmonizing the various interests involved and firmly affirming the respect for the most vulnerable person: the child.

Allegations of child sexual abuse (CSA) in family law cases, such as child custody, child visitation, and child protection proceedings, present complex and sensitive challenges for legal and psychological decision-making. This scoping review synthesizes key findings from 47 empirical studies examining the prevalence, substantiation, and legal consequences of CSA allegations as well as typical case characteristics in this context. The empirical literature falls into three main clusters: Canadian studies using large national datasets from the late 1990s and 2000s; Australian court-based studies primarily from the 2010s; and U.S. research spanning several decades with diverse methodologies. Overall, we found a mean CSA allegation prevalence of 8.9%, and indications that CSA allegations occur less frequently than allegations of other maltreatment types. Substantiation rates vary across studies but average around 43%, with only marginal evidence suggesting slightly lower substantiation when only custody and visitation disputes were analyzed. Deliberate false allegations are seemingly rare; most unsubstantiated claims appear to arise from genuine but mistaken concerns. Limited findings on legal consequences indicate that substantiated allegations usually lead to suspended contact between the accused parent and child. When allegations lack sufficient clarity, courts respond more variably, sometimes restricting contact despite non-substantiation. Significant research gaps remain, particularly regarding the timing and context of allegations, the association of substantiation with legal outcomes, and specific allegation constellations within families. Further empirical research, especially from European and non-Western jurisdictions, is essential to informing evidence-based, child-centered practice.

The Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) is widely used in forensic and clinical contexts, yet its reliability in high-stakes legal settings remains uncertain. In Sweden, it is routinely applied in court-ordered assessments for life-sentenced prisoners seeking commutation, making score consistency crucial. Sturup et al. (2014) found lower interrater reliability in this context compared with controlled research studies. This study examines whether reliability has increased since their publication and evaluates the incremental contribution of these assessments to structured professional judgment risk classifications. Due to increased training and experience, we expected improved reliability compared with that of Sturup et al.'s study. We estimated interrater reliability of PCL-R total and facet scores using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) for 76 life-sentenced prisoners (75 males, one female) who had participated in 217 risk assessments by the Swedish National Board of Forensic Medicine (2013-2023). Associations between PCL-R, Historical-Clinical-Risk Management-20, and structured professional judgment risk classifications were tested with ordinal mixed-effects models. The results mirror those of Sturup et al., indicating no substantial improvement in interrater reliability over the last decade. Specifically, the PCL-R total score had an ICC = .73, and the facet-level ICCs were .88 (antisocial), .65 (interpersonal), .59 (affective), and .59 (lifestyle). Only 27% of score differences between assessments fell within one standard error of measurement, indicating more variability than expected based on the manual. Moreover, Historical-Clinical-Risk Management-20 scores were better predictors of the risk classification than the PCL-R scores, indicating limited incremental value of the latter. Reliability of the PCL-R in Swedish forensic assessments has not improved over the past decade and remains moderate. Moreover, structured violence risk factors may weigh more heavily in final judgments than psychopathy ratings. While this reliance may limit the impact of variability in PCL-R scoring, caution is warranted when using psychopathy assessments in high-stakes legal decisions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Digital Footprint: Can Social Media Data Influence Legal Decisions? A Comprehensive Research Review

Abstract This special issue presents cases where the courts and civil society have attempted to link ecological, social and political approaches to environmental protection through a new, eco-centric paradigm of nights of nature. Rights of nature builds from an indigenous cosmovision that recognizes nature as an entity with rights and the need to restore the balance between ecosystems and human communities. This paradigmatic shift in legal thought, situates the natural world not only as a matter of environmental concern but as a bearer of intrinsic rights. Rights of Nature gives civil society groups a mechanism to bring cases before the courts and engage directly in river protection and restoration, as the cases in this special issue show. However, there are challenges in implementation – ontological, practical and legal. A multi-level governance system is required, that links scientific with local knowledge, legal decisions with environmental remediation, and local monitoring with state sanctioning power. We illustrate a successful case of river restoration, the Rouge River in the US, to show how an effective multi-level governance system can work. For rights of nature to be effective, we need the state to play more than a role as judge in the courts. Scientific knowledge, environmental remediation and enforcement require the state to exercise its sanctioning power and financial support. Otherwise, rights of nature could be a rhetorical empty promise.

ABSTRACT Literature on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the judiciary is expanding rapidly. However, a comprehensive overview of which practical judicial applications stand to benefit from AI technologies remains absent. To address this gap, we conduct a systematic literature review (SLR) of 138 high-quality peer-reviewed journal articles identified through Scopus and Web of Science. In addition to a bibliometric analysis of temporal, geographical, and publication outlet trends, we apply a thematic and cascading synthesis approach to extract deeper insights. Our results show that research converges around two primary domains: (1) applications at the level of the internal management and organization of judiciaries, and (2) applications at the level of legal decision-making. These findings clarify the current landscape of practical AI applications in the judiciary. Additionally, we highlight some key challenges for judicial professionals and researchers seeking to initiate or assess AI implementation projects in judicial settings.

Digital platform organisations are often portrayed as globally scalable, yet national institutional environments shape their structures and strategies. Drawing on institutional theory, this study examines how Uber Technologies Inc. adapts its business model, governance, and organisational boundaries across contrasting regulatory regimes. The paper compares the firm's responses in the United States and Turkey, two contexts characterised by different regulatory trajectories. Using qualitative document analysis of legal decisions, regulatory texts, corporate disclosures, and media sources, the study analyses adaptation across four dimensions: regulatory strategy, platform governance, labour intermediation, and organisational positioning. The findings show that adaptation is contingent rather than uniform. In the U.S., prolonged regulatory ambiguity enabled continued operation and organisational learning through reframing, boundary renegotiation, and the gradual integration of regulatory expectations into contractual and technological systems. In contrast, Turkey's centralised intervention-imposed constraints prompted strategic retrenchment and role redefinition, with Uber abandoning labour intermediation and repositioning itself as a digital interface for licensed taxi drivers. The study highlights retrenchment and organisational reconfiguration as underexamined forms of platform adaptation in restrictive institutional environments.

Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another (FDIA), formerly known as Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, is a rare form of abuse where parents induce or fabricate symptoms in their child, exposing them to unnecessary and potentially harmful medical treatments. In over 90% of cases, the perpetrators are mothers. A father was put on trial for the murder of his three-month-old daughter and was eventually convicted of repeatedly inducing respiratory crises, ultimately causing her death. Investigations began after multiple visits to the Emergency Department for respiratory episodes reported by the father but not confirmed by physicians: the attending paediatrician first hypothesized FDIA. A medico-legal autopsy excluded diseases justifying prolonged hospitalization or independently causing death; the only relevant post-mortem findings were massive pulmonary congestion with minute subpleural petechiae and hemosiderin-laden intra-alveolar macrophages, indicating nonspecific acute respiratory failure. Forensic psychiatric evaluation of the father revealed a rigid personality, excessive conformity and interpersonal immaturity. Publicly, the father appeared caring and deeply involved with his daughter. He exhibited a propensity to develop somatic symptoms and a tendency towards reality distortion. These traits aligned with FDIA, later confirmed by judicial reconstruction of events. The multidisciplinary approach led to the establishment of the judicial truth: a case of paternal infanticide by asphyxiation. In Italy, FDIA is not a mental illness excluding criminal responsibility, though the diagnosis may influence sentencing. The first-instance judgment classified the act as preterintentional homicide, considering Munchausen by proxy. The final verdict, however, convicted the father of intentional homicide. This case highlights the intrinsic diagnostic dilemma at the clinical–forensic interface, where psychiatric assessment and judicial interpretation may align or diverge, underscoring the need for caution in translating psychiatric diagnoses into legal conclusions.