Municipal Court Research Articles

Public policy paradox in enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards in BRICS countries

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyze the specific legislative and judicial approaches of each of the BRICS countries toward recourse to public policy exception in the context of recognition and enforcement of foreign arbitral awards. Further, it points out the critical areas which need immediate attention to make these countries attractive destinations for parking of investments by international parties.Design/methodology/approachThe study is a conceptual paper that provides knowledge of the critical areas which needs immediate attention to make BRICS countries attractive destinations for parking of investments by international parties. The first part of the paper examines a guide map to the international business community to devise their dispute adjudication strategies before committing investments in any of BRICS economies. The second part examined the variegated notions of the concept of public policy exception and the existence of differences in judicial approaches. The next parts analyzed the specific legislative and judicial approaches of each of BRICS countries toward recourse to public policy.FindingsThe BRICS countries need to spell out the universal principles applicable to construing the notion of public policy. It would reduce conflicts between national laws and help the municipal courts in determining the issue of enforceability of foreign awards by reference to a common yardstick. Hence, until a harmonized approach to public policy toward foreign awards is developed at an international level, the BRICS countries may take initiative to set up an inter-regional arbitration council to resolve intricate cases occurring in the field of application of public policy exception to foreign arbitral awards.Originality/valueThe paper is an original work of the author.

Reasons Pro et Contra as a Debiasing Technique in Legal Contexts.

Although legal contexts are subject to biased reasoning and decision making, to identify and test debiasing techniques has largely remained an open task. We report on experimentally deploying the technique "giving reasons pro et contra" with professional ( N = 239) and lay judges ( N = 372) at Swedish municipal courts. Using a mock legal scenario, participants assessed the relevance of an eyewitness's previous conviction for his credibility. On average, both groups displayed low degrees of bias. We observed a small positive debiasing effect only for professional judges. Strong evidence was obtained for a relation between profession and relevance-assessment: Lay judges seemed to assign a greater importance to the prior conviction than professional judges did. We discuss challenges for future research, calling other research groups to contribute additional samples.

Investigation of the Collapse of a Building in the Final Stage of Its Construction

In 2009, the Municipal Court of the City of Čajetina, Republic of Serbia, issued an order to a Commission of court-appointed experts (Commission) to perform an analysis of the collapse of a building in the final stage of its construction. The Commission was appointed by the Faculty of Architecture, University of Belgrade. The study reveals the steps taken in the process of determining the cause of collapse and the problems that have led to it, the conclusions and findings. Poor design and bad execution led to the collapse of the building. The causes of collapse were structural defects in calculations and rebar detailing, disregard of the procedures related to technical supervision and the procedure of obtaining a building permit, violation of building codes and good practice. The cause was determined using the following methods: analysis of documentation, analysis of regulations and legislation, in situ observations, interviews with participants on the process, and structural analysis through three dimensional modelling. The study also shows that safety factors in the built construction elements were low and inadequate. This work summarizes the principles, conclusions and findings of forensic investigation.

Chief Justice William Howard Taft's Conception of Judicial Integrity: The Legal History of Tumey v. Ohio

On March 7, 1927, Chief Justice William Howard Taft wrote his younger brother Horace Taft, “I am going to deliver an opinion this morning in a very important alcohol prohibition act matter in Ohio.” Taft went on to explain that the Supreme Court’s decision did not address whether the so-called Volstead Act, which implemented the Eighteenth Amendment, was constitutional, but rather it addressed how Ohio’s system of prohibition enforcement violated due process. Ohio’s legislature had enacted a prohibition statute as an analog to the Volstead Act. Known as the “Crabbe Act,” Ohio’s law barred the possession of “intoxicating liquor.” After mailing his letter to his brother, Taft walked to the Supreme Court and assembled the Justices to announce the decision. Reported in newspapers across the country, the decision, captioned as Tumey v. Ohio, determined that Ohio’s downward delegation of prohibition enforcement to municipal courts failed to ensure due process. One day before writing to Horace, Taft wrote to his son Charles Phelps Taft II that the Court had unanimously determined that the Crabbe Act was “invalid under the Fourteenth Amendment” and then stressed that the Justices found the Ohio law repugnant to fundamental rights. Tumey has become a benchmark for assessing judicial impartiality, but the legal history of the decision, including how it was shaped, has hardly been written about. Professor Robert Post, in an article titled “Federalism, Positive Law, and the Emergence of the American Administrative State: Prohibition in the Taft Court Era,” placed Tumey as part of the Court’s authoritative – or “national” – expansion over the United States. Yet unlike decisions upholding Prohibition, Tumey placed restraints against its enforcement. Professor Post was not in error in analyzing Tumey in the context of Prohibition or the Court’s authoritative expansion, but to exclusively do so results in an incomplete historic analysis of the judicial intent underlying the decision. For instance, Tumey arose during Taft’s efforts to limit congressional attempts to govern the judiciary. The case was also decided at a time when Taft had been attacked as being beholden to corporate interests and therefore overly partial to wealthy litigants. Most importantly, Tumey was part of a line of cases and extrajudicial actions that Taft used to shape judicial ethics. A legal history centering on Taft’s conception of the duties and independence of judges, as well as constraints on judicial power, amplifies how he led a largely conservative, yet jurisprudentially diverse, Court to unanimously intervene in a state’s municipal court construct. While it may be correct, as legal historian Melvin Urofsky has pointed out, that during the period Taft sat as Chief Justice the justices limited their dissents in an effort to fend off Congressional efforts to narrow federal court jurisdiction, the justices did dissent in several appeals, particularly decisions involving criminal prosecutions. The unanimity underlying Tumey is also, in this light, a noteworthy element in analyzing Taft’s intent.

Municipal Court Immunity and the Eleventh Amendment

Municipal attorneys may be called upon to defend their judges and the municipal court itself. Municipal courts in many states enjoy sovereign immunity under the Eleventh Amendment and this defense may be available to municipal courts in all states under a growing line of federal cases. The Eleventh Amendment provides superior protection then the traditional Monell defense used in all other suits against a municipality and its agents. This paper briefly describes the traditional test for determining immunity and the test used to determine immunity for lower courts. The paper also surveys the states where the Eleventh Amendment defense is already established for municipal courts and other lower state courts.

William J. Novak’s The People’s Welfare and the New Historiography of the Early Federal State

It is a true honor to be able to contribute to these proceedings, which seek to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of, and take stock of the impact of William Novak’s The People’s Welfare: Law & Regulation in Nineteenth-Century America. In this short essay, I try to explain how Novak’s work identified a robust early American state at work through state and municipal courts and legislatures by purposefully turning his attention away from the activity of the federal government. Yet as I argue, The People’s Welfare has nonetheless fueled a historical and historiographical reassessment of the United States federal government. How and why this historiographic turn occurred suggests the great importance of The People’s Welfare as both a substantive study of statecraft and a how-to manual of legal and policy history. My sustained encounter with The People’s Welfare dates back to Novak’s seminar on the American state during my first year as a doctoral student at the University of Chicago in 2001-02. One chief task of the seminar was to demolish the “myth of American statelessness,” which Novak describes as the belief that “the essence of nineteenth-century government was its absence.”1 Thus seminarians read The People’s Welfare alongside recent works that become a new canon of nineteenth and twentieth-century histories of statecraft: works by Richard John, Theda Skocpol, Richard Bensel, Stephen Skowronek, Thomas Sugrue, and Michael Katz.2 But a recurring theme of the seminar was that a quiet but significant critique of the “myth of American statelessness” had also taken shape in preceding decades: Willard Hurst’s opus shaped generations of legal historians study of legal institutions and the Commonwealth School produced vigorous examinations of political economy and the role of government in the marketplace. The American state had always been there, hiding in plain sight.3

The legal consequences of sovereign insolvency – a review of creditor litigation in Germany following the Greek debt restructuring

This article analyses three seminal instances of bondholder litigation before German municipal courts following the Greek sovereign debt restructuring of 2012. While the haircut imposed on private bondholders led to a significant reduction of the country’s debt level in 2012, thousands of German investors subsequently challenged the Greek government’s decision before German courts. In this context, as this article highlights, even within a single jurisdiction, courts may hold very different views as to which debt management measures by a sovereign borrower ought to be considered ‘public’ legal acts – thus barring foreign bondholder suits – and which are ‘commercial’ legal acts, where litigation is a feasible legal avenue for disgruntled creditors to recover losses. In sum, however, German courts were reluctant to grant broad enforcement remedies to private bondholders, essentially vindicating the Greek government’s strategy of rewriting local law and retrofitting so-called ‘collective action clauses’ to increase bondholder participation in the restructuring. Against this background, this article discusses some of the decisions’ potential implications, such as the increased prospects for other crisis-stricken governments to successfully repeat a Greek-style debt restructuring as well as the future treatment of foreign and domestic-law public debt both by courts and market participants.

Lessons from Ferguson on Individual Defense Representation as a Tool of Systemic Reform

This Article investigates the relationship between the decisions by lawmakers to use municipal and criminal systems to generate revenue and the lack of access to individual defense representation by using the Ferguson, Missouri, municipal court as a case study. The Article chronicles the myriad constitutional rights that were violated on a systemic basis in Ferguson’s municipal court and how those violations made the city’s reliance on the court for revenue generation possible. The Article also documents how the introduction of individual defense representation, even on a piecemeal basis, played a role in altering Ferguson’s system of governance. Using this case study, the Article examines the way litigating individual cases and seeking the enforcement of constitutional rights can alter the cost-benefit of using courts to generate funds by both increasing system expenses and decreasing revenues. Further, individual case litigation alters the cost-benefit of using courts as revenue generators by forcing officials to take a public position on municipal court practices, thereby informing and changing the public debate on crime policy. The Article posits that while individual defense representation will have the greatest systemic effects in systems like Ferguson’s, where there is a significant dependence on the courts for revenue, a pattern of unconstitutional activity, or the targeting of economically vulnerable communities, individual defense representation should be broadly understood as a tool for systemic reform. The Article also raises theoretical and normative implications from the Ferguson experience regarding whether constitutional criminal procedural rules or local government controls over procedure serve as a better check against systemic abuses, and regarding the repercussions of a politically and doctrinally myopic focus on access to counsel as a solely constitutional, as opposed to political, matter.

A(n) (Im)Possibility of Justice in the Case of Conservation of Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction

The advent of biotechnology in 1980 profoundly changed the attitude of scientists, and more recently of lawyers working with international marine environmental law, as well as in the fields of science and technology, and intellectual property and patent law, towards biological diversity in far-off marine areas, including the deep seabed. The extraordinary protection and adaptation properties of the deep seabed organisms seem to represent invaluable material for the pharmaceutical innovation, and especially life-saving drugs. Bioprospecting, a technique that consists of exploring the ocean biodiversity by identifying and harvesting commercially valuable bio-resources, ended up alerting the need, at the global scale, for greater legal certainty in this area. Namely, bioprospecting and further bio-remediation, and numerous pharmaceutical applications trigger the debate about the extent of ownership rights over these discoveries; as well as which discoveries, and to what extent, represent inventions, hence also involving questions of patent deposition. The mere assumption that the deep seabed should be exploited, and possibly appropriated, necessitates a serious discussion. In 2015, the United Nations (UN) members launched the consultative process on a global agreement on the conservation and sustainable use of the marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJs). To date, the negotiation positions are various. Some countries focus on the exploitation of marine genetic resources and the rights to those resources on a first-come-first-served basis; few see these resources’ conservation and sustainable use as a priority; many are those discussing a fair, equitable and transparent risk and benefits-sharing related to the resources in those areas through the system of patents. In March 2017, two ground-breaking domestic decisions, namely, a bill in New Zealand and a municipal court’s ruling in India, have recognised the ecosystems in question (the rivers, in the case at hand) as living entities, thus giving them a legal personality, including standing in court proceedings. The Indian court’s decision has in particular implied that any harm, including pollution, to the rivers will be legally equivalent to harming a living human. These newest environmental law developments suggest that harming, especially through pollution that may be induced by the bioprospecting, the biodiversity of the deep seabed where forms of life with valuable genes live, might amount in not so distant future to a legal offense. This might put most of the agenda of the new instrument defending the exploration and exploitation of marine genetic resources on quite a precarious perch. This article aims at: (i) outlining and unpacking the multilayered legal space that currently and prospectively governs marine biodiversity of ABNJs, and (ii) mapping out the more discursive and narrative space that has impacted the legal mechanisms at play and that also dominates current consultations and future negotiations in the field. The study discusses together UNCLOS, CBD and WTO TRIPS in an attempt to move further the debate about the nexus between conservation and justice. Overall, the objective is to analyse relevant present contestations and likelihoods, and ultimately expose to what extent, in terms of justice, the existing theory, instruments, agenda, and course for action are based on differing, and oftentimes simply irreconcilable projects. Lastly, the article discusses alternative visions of justice beyond present bifocal projects ‘man-nature’. While drafting this article, some of such visions have even become reality, as, for example, granting representation to such non-human entities as rivers.

“We Just Looked At Them As Ordinary People Like We Were:” The Legal Gaze and Women’s Bodies

Abstract This Article analyzes the struggles of two female musicians who became caught up in the criminal justice system because they revealed their bodies. Using archival research and personal interviews, I tell the story of punk rocker Wendy O. Williams' 1981-1984 obscenity and police brutality court battles. I also relay the life of Lorien Bourne, a disabled and lesbian rock-n-roller charged with disorderly conduct in Bowling Green, Ohio, in 2006. I examine how legal actors, including courts and jurors, viewed Williams and Bourne using classist, ableist, sexist, and homophobic optics. In so doing, I extend my previous work on legal gazes, or what I have called the legal practice of peering. I end the Article by looking to the women's art and lives as correctives to oppressive manners of legal seeing. PRELUDE: TWO TALES OF FEMALE NUDITY AND THE COURTS prosecutors are the guys doing this for money. These guys are the real whores, (1) Mohawked and leather-clad (2) Plasmatics frontwoman Wendy O. Williams shouted to jurors in the Cleveland Municipal Court (3) in April 1981. They had just rendered a not-guilty verdict on an obscenity charge Williams faced after a sexually explicit January 20 show at the city's Agora club. (4) During the performance, Williams had probably sung her politically uproarious songs while chainsawing a guitar and sledgehammering a television (5)--energetic outrages that proved all the more remarkable since only two nights before she had been beaten and arrested for obscenity by police after a Milwaukee concert. (6) Yet the Cleveland authorities (7) seemed less interested in Williams' Dionysian treatment of property or her out-of-state scandals than in her wearing little over her breasts but shaving cream and fondling her microphone (8) at the Agora. During the trial, Cleveland prosecutor Patrick Roche showed the jury a film of the Plasmatics' show, (9) which revealed Williams' half-nude dancing as well as the cuts and bruises she'd weathered during the January 18 Milwaukee arrest. This was provocative stuff, but the five-man, three-woman jury (10) did not respond to these visuals with disdain. They acquitted her after only three hours. (11) Williams' and the Plasmatics' luck with the courts held throughout 1981. (12) Several months after the Cleveland acquittal, Plasmatics manager Rod Swenson appeared in Milwaukee to face the charges of obstructing justice he had earned when trying to save Williams from the police's January 18 beatings. (13) The defense put on a hugely enlarged photograph of Williams being dogpiled by local police as evidence of Swenson's justification for assaulting the officers who attacked her. (14) Once again, the jury acquitted, and one interviewed juror said that they did so because they saw the Plasmatics as ordinary people just like they were. (15) Three years later, however, Williams' life and legal fate saw a different turn. Now a struggling rock star with an arrest for battery on her record, (16) she traveled with her band back to Milwaukee to sue its police department on a civil rights claim based on her January 18, 1981 arrest. (17) During this trial, the Milwaukee jury was offered two images that hailed from those difficult three days: City Attorney Scott Ritter, who defended the police officers, made sure that the jurors saw a blown-up still photograph of Williams covered in shaving cream, an image that resembled the video (sans bruises) that the Cleveland jurors had studied when deciding that she had not committed obscenity. (18) The plaintiffs' attorney, in turn, submitted the photograph of Williams being attacked by the police officers, which had persuaded the 1981 Milwaukee jury that Rod Swenson had not obstructed justice when he had come to Williams' aid. (19) Yet while those images had helped convince the 1981 Cleveland and Milwaukee jurors of Williams' Cleveland innocence and Milwaukee peril, they now helped induce the jury to find that the Milwaukee officers had not sexually assaulted her, not used excessive force, and not been guilty of violating her civil rights. …

Ustrój sądowy Prus, II Rzeszy i Republiki Weimarskiej (1815–1871 i 1918–1933)

In the late 18 th and 19 th centuries, Prussia has initiated a change in the system of courts of general jurisdiction. The final separation of the judiciary from the administration was their first result. Furthermore, there was a gradual elimination of the patrimonial courts and separate municipal courts. The ultimate goal was to adapt the organization of the judiciary to the division of the country, while creating exclusive judicial system of the state. The Royal Decree of 1849 and subsequent laws from 1851 to 1852, which together have put uniform system of common courts in Prussia brought the new system of Prussian justice. The new organization of the judiciary, already for the Second Reich was composed of official courts, national courts operating in regions, and the Court of the Reich, based in Leipzig. In addition to courts of law, the courts and the special offices functioned, often associated with them, both in the Second Reich and the Weimar Republic. Almost each of the analyzed courts and the offices of the Second Reich, and later the Weimar Republic, was indirectly connected to the administrative judiciary. It occurred, at the same time, only in its most important federal states, e.g. Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony.

„Zaprzysięganie na śmierć” w praktyce sądu miejskiego z Krzemieńca w XVIII w.

Before Poland was partitioned, there had been different laws for each group of society. Gentry, townspeople and peasants had their own laws. In the gentry law (land law) there was a rule that the accused could not be sentenced to death if the private accuser with several other people did not swear that the accused deserves death penalty. The practice of such a swearing existed until 1768. Current researches indicated the lack of such a rule in a municipal law. However, in the city of Krzemieniec in Wolyn the practice was different. Local municipal court required the oath of a claimant in most criminal cases. It is possible to suppose that it was an example of imitating the land law by the municipal law. We do not know if it was an only example of such a practice or whether there were similar situations in other cities of eastern Republic of Poland. This problem requires further researches.

Problems of different territorial jurisdiction of the authorities of social and legal protection of children (OSPOD) and courts regarding the provision of the protection of the rights of minor children

The Czech Republic, as a signatory of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, has vested the practice of state administration in the field of care for minor children to the authorities of social and legal protection of children (OSPOD). The purpose of such legal establishment is to provide complex care for minor children on the lowest administrative instance (according to the Act on Social and Legal Protection of Children). Territorial jurisdiction of OSPODs is determined by Act No. 359/1999 Coll., on the Social and Legal Protection of Children, and is therefore established according to the official permanent residence of each child. The real decision-making regarding the protection of the rights of minors is the responsibility of municipal courts. These courts appoint OSPODs as “collision representatives” who protect the interests of minor children in court proceedings. However, the territorial jurisdiction of these courts is determined by Act No. 292/2013 Coll., on Special Court Proceedings. According to this latter act, the court that is eligible to carry out proceedings is the general court of the minor, and in fact it is typically the court where the minor resides. The real place of residence and the place of official permanent residence are not always identical. The aim of this paper is to assess the complex legislation on the issue in theory, and to point out the practical impact and possible problems derived from the different territorial jurisdiction of OSPODs and courts. Additionally, qualitative research has been carried out, based on structured interviews. The respondents are nine municipal court judges who specialize in family law, and nine leading employees of OSPODs. The respondents in both groups are selected in matching pairs, so that their responses reflect the mutual positional relation of the judges in the territory of the court and the local OSPODs. On the theoretical level, the research concerns the evaluation of judicial scholarly writings and court decisions in the field and defines and identifies the problems derived from the different territorial jurisdiction of the bodies. In the interviews, all respondents said that they found the different jurisdictions highly problematic. The wider impact of the issue has also been assessed in terms of guaranteeing the participation of collision representatives in the decision making of courts regarding minor children.

Constitutionalism and local remedies rule as limitations on investor-state arbitration: perspectives from Ghana

ABSTRACTThe question of the legal and normative limitations on the competence of states to agree to a mechanism that enables foreign investors to bypass the jurisdiction of municipal courts, using legal rules that do not apply in municipal law, and thereby enabling arbitral tribunals to override municipal courts (the jurisdiction of which is original, appellate and final) has not been explored in the literature. I address this question with particular reference to Ghana. I dispute the conventional supposition that municipal courts are incapable of resolving investor-state disputes and question the justification for direct access to investor-state arbitration in customary international law. I argue that the local remedies rule and fundamental principles of Ghana’s legal system—in which the courts have jurisdiction over all legal disputes and persons, and in which separation of powers, rule of law, transparency and accountability are constitutionally entrenched—limit the state’s competence to agree to investor-arbitration.

Justice involvement among homeless individuals with mental illnesses: Are self-report and administrative measures comparable?

Individuals with mental illnesses who experience homelessness have frequent interactions with the criminal justice system. Correctly measuring this involvement is essential to develop and evaluate the efficacy of intervention programs. Criminal justice involvement is typically assessed through administrative records or self-reported accounts. The aims of this study are to: 1) assess agreement between self-report and administrative data related to court appearances, and 2) identify individual characteristics that affect discrepancies between sources. Participants were 468 homeless persons with mental illness from the Montreal site of the At Home/Chez Soi randomized controlled trial, in Canada. Self-reported data was collected through an interviewer-administered questionnaire. Administrative data was collected through provincial and municipal court databases. Overall, agreement was good. Discrepancies were more common among those with a diagnosis of mood disorder with psychotic features, and those with a criminal history. Increased age and interviewer’s perception of sincerity and interest increased likelihood of concordance. Generally, high agreement between self-report and administrative data suggests that either source can provide reliable information. Further work to understand predictors of discrepancies could further enhance the quality of data collected through these different sources.

PRAWO I SĄDY NA LITWIE W 1812 ROKU W ŚWIETLE „DZIENNIKA CZYNNOŚCI TYMCZASOWEGO RZĄDU LITEWSKIEGO”

THE LAW AND THE COURTS IN LITHUANIA IN 1812 IN THE LIGHT OF THE OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF THE ACTIVITIES OF THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF LITHUANIASummaryAt the very beginning of his Russian campaign of 1812 Napoleon created a somewhat complicated structure for the new administration of Lithuania. A key element in it was the Commission of the Provisional Government of Lithuania, a surrogate Lithuanian government. Virgilijus Pugačiauskas has recently published the Commission’s official journal, Dziennik czynności Komisji Tymczasowego Rządu Litwy, for the period from 2 July 1812 to 30 July 1813 from the manuscript. In the light of this invaluable resource, we can see the Commission’s efforts to build a new administration and revenue services, create a Lithuanian army, and ensure supplies for Napoleon’s forces. One of the important tasks undertaken by the Commission was to restore the judiciary, which had been disorganised by the war, and to ensure the normal administration of justice and the restoration of full power to the Statute of Lithuania, which had been in use under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and had already been partially supplanted by Russian law following the Partitions of Poland-Lithuania. An act which was of fundamental importance in this respect was the institution of a set of regulations for the judiciary Prawidła dla sądownictwa, adopted by the Commission on 29 July, 1812. Under this act the courts were temporarily to resume their activities only in criminal cases, on the grounds of Lithuanian law and using Polish as the official language. The Commission reserved the right to approve death sentences and – as may be seen from the minutes – actually used this power. The contents of the protocols indicate that the courts actually resumed operations in early August 1812. In October 1812 the Commission adopted a measure on the new organisation of the Vilnius municipal courts.

Myths and Realities in ‘Self-Executing Treaties’

There appears to be very few doctrines in contemporary international law that are in such a problematic state as the doctrine of self-executing treaties. It would appear that its usefulness is more in the debate it engenders than in its actual relevance to understanding the interface between international law and municipal legal systems. This is so because the term is variously applied to different circumstances and ascribed with varied meanings. One of the many meanings ascribed to self-executing treaties is that they are treaties that apply in the municipal realm on their own force, discoverable from the intent of the makers as expressed in the language of the treaty. This article queries that understanding and argues that, other than by municipal law, there is no mystical authority by which treaties are imposed on municipal legal systems and indeed municipal courts. We argue that any search for the authority of treaties in the municipal realm, ultimately leads to municipal law as the first point of focus.Key termsSelf-executing, treaties, non-self-executing, constitution, municipal law, international law, monism, dualism.

ANALYSIS OF THE PRACTICE OF CRIMINAL CASE DISMISSAL UNDER THE ARTICLE 25 OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION CODEOF CRIMINAL PROCEDURE

This article analyzes the practice of dismissal of criminal cases
 in connection with the reconciliation of the parties (Article 25 of
 the Russian Federation Code of Criminal Procedure) in federal
 district and municipal courts of the Samara region. The author
 observed that the dismissal of criminal cases in connection with
 the reconciliation of the parties is placed in more dependency on
 additional, not provided by law conditions specific circumstances
 of the crime, data on the identity of the defendant, extenuating
 circumstances. At the same time determination of similar additional
 conditions in the case permits some judges to dismiss a criminal
 case, and the other to refuse dismissal. The author has tried to
 examine the reasons for the lack of uniformity in the judicial
 practice of criminal cases dismissal in connection with the
 reconciliation of the parties.

Extradition, the Mormons, and the Election of 1843

IN JUNE 1843, A SPECIAL TERM OF THE DAVIESS COUNTY, Mis souri, Circuit Court indicted leader Joseph Smith for treason against state of Missouri during Mormon War of 1838.1 After learning of charge from Missouri governor Thomas Reynolds, Illinois governor Thomas Ford issued a warrant for Smith's arrest on June 17, directed that he be delivered to custody of Jackson County, Missouri sheriff Joseph H. Reynolds, whom Governor Reynolds had appointed to convey Smith to Missouri.2 Six days later, on June 23, Harmon T. Wilson, deputy sheriff of Hancock County, Illinois, Sheriff Reynolds arrested Smith near Dixon, Illinois-some 130 miles northeast of Smith's home in Illinois-while he his family were visiting his wife's relatives who lived in area.1 News of arrest touched off a massive rescue effort in Nauvoo that ended with Reynolds Wilson, much against their will, riding with Smith into Nauvoo on June 30 surrounded by his friends supporters. The Nauvoo Municipal Court formally discharged Smith from arrest at a habeas corpus hearing following day, by which time Reynolds Wilson, feeling that they had been deprived of their prisoner illegally, had gone to Carthage, Illinois, to petition Ford to send a detachment of state militia to arrest Smith.4 Ford denied request, Smith remained a free man.5Six weeks later, on August 7, 1843, elections were held in Hancock County (where Nauvoo was located) for U.S. representative for sixth district congressional seat various county offices. During weeks leading up to election, many in area thought Mormons would vote for Whig congressional candidate Cyrus Walker, a lawyer who had helped represent Smith at July habeas corpus hearing in Nauvoo who had received Smiths personal pledge of in upcoming election. Two days before election, however, Smiths brother Hyrum reportedly told a crowd of church members that had revealed to him that Mormons must support Joseph P. Hoge, Walkers Democratic opponent.6 The following day-the day before election-Smith told a similar gathering that he had just learned of Hyrum's testimofnjy that it will be better for this people to vote for hoge, that he never kn[e]w Hiram say he ever had a revelation & it faild. Smith reiterated his personal promise to vote for Walker, but effectively threw behind Hoge: Let God speak, he told congregation, and all men hold their peace.7 The following day Hoge reportedly received about three thousand votes-considered an overwhelming majority by one source-and won election by a mere 574 ballots.8 The Mormons' apparent political capriciousness was not without its consequences. Whig papers were quickly loaded with accounts of wickedness, corruptions, enormities of Nauvoo, Ford remembered, the whigs generally, a part of democrats, determined upon driving Mormons out of State.9Basing their narrative on two main sources, several historians have argued that Mormons' (and especially Smith's) initial pledge to Cyrus Walker Whigs in this election, last-minute switch to Joseph Hoge Democrats, were both a result of events associated with earlier effort to extradite Smith to Missouri. According to this argument, Walker had agreed to represent Smith after his arrest in Dixon in exchange for Smith's in upcoming election. The Mormons later threw their behind Hoge Democrats when they heard that Ford, a Democrat, might send militia to arrest Smith after his release in Nauvoo (as Wilson Reynolds had requested) unless they did so.10 The two sources upon which this interpretation relies are History of Church, written compiled by various clerks historians between June 1839 August 1856, Thomas Ford's 1854 History of Illinois. …

A critical examination of the British municipal court rulings on cases of international immunity: Revisiting the imperatives of politics of international law

AbstractThe interpretation or ruling on international immunity cases are often surrounded by controversies, sometimes leading to inconsistencies. The British municipal court rulings on international immunity cases are not exception, and in fact are embodiments of inconsistencies. The judgements have been consistently inconsistent. The rulings are not just characterized by controversies; they swim in controversies. Perhaps, these inconsistencies have not been more visible than in cases involving granting of sovereign immunity to political subdivisions or federating units. This was the case in the municipal court decision to deny a serving Governor of a state in Nigeria immunity from jurisdiction. The contention of this paper is that these inconsistencies are, primarily or fundamentally, due to susceptibility of British municipal courts to British national interest, and thus, not primarily due to controversial nature of international law. The paper therefore interrogates the interface between international ...