Official Decision Research Articles

An Occasional Amnesty. How the Siberian Bolsheviks Granted Amnesty to Kolchak Ministers

The article analyses the history of the amnesty granted by the Bolsheviks in 1921–1923 to nine Kolchak ministers led by P. I. Preobrazhensky, G. A. Krasnov, A. A. Gratsianov and N. Ya. Novombergsky, prominent figures of the anti-Bolshevik governments, convicted by the Extraordinary Siberian Revolutionary Tribunal at the open trial in Omsk on 20–30 May, 1920. Based on a wide range of archival sources, the authors have reconstructed the entire pardon process, from the improvements in conditions of detention to the official decision of the VTsIK. Amnesty is considered as a political tool of the Soviet power, which allowed the communist leadership of the country to effectively correct the cruel punitive policy, play the card of restoration of social justice, and win the victims over to its side. It is concluded that the pardon of the Kolchak ministers was an individual but significant component of the process of restoring civil peace in Russia at the end of the internal military-political confrontation. What made this amnesty unusual among the many similar acts announced by the Bolsheviks in 1922–1923 was that not the rank-and-file members of the anti-Soviet struggle were pardoned, but its immediate leaders. The main reason for the rehumanization of former enemies were their personal ties and contacts in the upper echelon of the Soviet leadership in Siberia, which were formed primarily in the course of joint activities. The main criterion for applying the amnesty was the high quality work of the Kolchak ministers in the economic departments of the Siberian Revolutionary Committee under the conditions of severe labor shortage.

Compulsory psychiatric admissions in the canton of Basel-Stadt between September 2013 and April 2022: Analysis of the cantonal database of the Health Department of Basel-Stadt.

According to federal and cantonal law, persons with an acute mental illness can be admitted to a psychiatric hospital or another suitable institution against their will, when other therapeutic options are not available or have been exhausted. In the canton of Basel-Stadt, this is the responsibility of public health officers employed by the division of Social Medicine of the cantonal Health Department. This study aims to elucidate which factors influence the decision-making of public health officers regarding compulsory admissions over the period from September 2013 to April 2022 in the canton of Basel-Stadt. Leveraging comprehensive clinical data from the health department of the canton Basel-Stadt (N = 5,'550), we estimated a mixed effects logistic regression model to identify factors contributing to the decision of public-health officers to compulsorily admit patients, while controlling for potential clustering effects among public health officers. The risk for compulsory admissions was most strongly predicted by the presence of potential self-harm. In comparison, while being a strong predictor, potential harm to others played a considerably lesser role. Furthermore, psychiatric syndrome, previous compulsory admissions, and the specific context of evaluation were significant predictors. Finally, we found no meaningful personal bias among public health officers. The results suggest that public health officers' decision-making regarding compulsory admissions focuses on preventing self-harm and, to a lesser degree, harm to others. This indicates that such measures are only used as a measure of last resort, which is in line with current evidence regarding the detrimental effects of compulsory measures on treatment outcomes in psychiatry. Our findings suggest that all relevant stakeholders, including the police, share this perspective. Decision-making regarding compulsory admissions was mostly free of personal biases, suggesting adherence to shared professional standards by public health officers.

Implementing problematic tax regulation: Hysteresis and bureaucratic revolutionaries within tax administrations

Worldwide emerging demands for additional and more sophisticated regulation are triggering regulatory changes at the national level that not all tax authorities are prepared to implement effectively. We examine this phenomenon through a single case study concerned with the implementation of the problematic transfer pricing rule by the Chilean tax authority. Drawing on semi-structured interviews, other qualitative sources, and inspired by the lesser used Bourdieusian constructs of hysteresis and bureaucratic revolutionaries, we unravel the emergence, persistence and resolution of hysteresis, i.e., a misalignment between tax administration practices and the expectations imposed on that organisation within the broader tax field. The paper finds that attempts to internationalise the tax system when regulators were inexperienced gave rise to hysteresis. It also explores how the standard of the rule, in conjunction with other structural conditions, influenced the decisions of senior tax officials, thus contributing to the persistence of hysteresis within the tax authority. Finally, it illustrates how one very senior tax official, with an interest in the regulation, acted as a bureaucratic revolutionary to resolve hysteresis and make the rule work in practice.

Informal Application of Islamic Rules in Turkey: The Imposition by RTÜK of Islamic Ethics on Television Broadcasting

ABSTRACT This article studies Islamisation in Turkey by analysing some performances of the Supreme Council of Radio and Television (RTÜK), the state agency with the duty of licensing and supervising the various media organizations. As the article demonstrates, Islamisation at RTÜK occurs with its informal incorporation of Islamic ethical principles in its professional decisions. This instance of Islamisation is significant, for it operates informally by engaging Islamic rules directly. RTÜK demonstrates neatly how a state agency can reference Islamic principles in the very act of justifying the rationale of its official decisions about the content of the media organ under its review. It is with such analyses that this article aims to propose a more rigorous conceptualisation and explanation of Islamisation in Turkey than the ones commonly available in the literature: It provides an in-depth analysis of Islamisation in the news media, a field that Islamist political actors know full well to be strategic in the transformation of a society; and by demonstrating that Islamisation endeavours in Turkey are not confined to the obvious organs of propagandisation like the news media, but they penetrate informally also the supposedly neutral statutory rules and regulations.

Suspicious places make people suspicious: Officers’ perceptions of place‐based conditions in racialized drug enforcement

AbstractResearch SummaryPlace‐based conditions are well‐established predictors of police behavior, but the literature lacks nuanced examinations of how place‐based factors influence officer decision making, especially by citizen race/ethnicity and from officers’ perspectives. We investigate officers’ accounts regarding how they weigh place‐based factors into their arrest decisions of Black, Hispanic, and White drug suspects in Newark, New Jersey from 2011 to 2016. Our analysis of 438 filed drug arrest reports revealed that most arrestees, especially Black Americans, became susceptible to heightened police scrutiny because of their presence in stigmatized, criminalized areas. Although place‐based stigma and individualized prohibited behavior coalesced to guide police contacts with Hispanic and White residents, officers made contacts with Black Americans based on a lower legal basis, often irrespective of their individualized behavior in stigmatized places.Policy ImplicationsOfficers’ differential, racialized reliance on place‐based conditions supports the need for effective, evidence‐based, community‐centered social services that reduce crime, overreliance on police, and opportunities for discriminatory policing.

Exploring a Craft Learning Model for Reviewing Patrol Officer Decision-Making in Encounters with the Public

Since the 1960s, police departments have turned to rules and procedures to help control how patrol officers, as legal decision-makers, exercise their discretionary authority. The logic of the administrative rulemaking model depends on the development and enforcement of bureaucratic rules and regulations. The public outcry over high-profile incidents of police abuses of authority has renewed interest in this approach. This article conceptualizes a complementarycraft learning modelto supplement rulemaking. This model harnesses patrol officers’ knowledge and skills, learned through experience, to the development of criteria for assessing and guiding how they use their discretion in less dramatic encounters with the public. Using in-depth interviews with thirty-eight patrol officers reacting to a video clip of a fairly routine and low-key neighbor dispute, we derive seven evaluative standards (accountability, lawfulness, problem diagnosis, repair of harm, economy, fairness, and safety and order). We then explore how these standards could be used by first-line supervisors to structure reviews of patrol officer decision-making through a process of reflection-in-action. Our purpose is to imagine a reform strategy that tries to account for the complex technical and normative dimensions of everyday police work to facilitate more deliberate, transparent, and principled decisions.

Globalization of National Culture and the Legal System: A Comparative Perspective of the Indonesian Legal System and the British Common Law System

Indonesia is a country that adheres to a multi-legal system because it is influenced by a multi-ethnic society and different cultures from Sabang to Merauke. In its development in Indonesia, a set of laws and regulations from colonial countries were adapted to the principles of Pancasila. National legal policies are challenged to realize the ideals of functioning the rules as a force of renewal, encouraging changes in the form of local communities. One of the recognized legal systems in Indonesia which is a cultural transplant of the local community is the customary law system (common law). If it is associated with legal culture, then moral and ethical norms are part of the transplantation of the Indonesian legal culture system. English law never 'accepted' Roman law as Roman law was accepted in civil law countries. English law also creates prerogative written court provisions (certiori, mandamus, and prohibition) which allow objections to administrative decisions of state organs and officials, thus there is no need to create a separate administrative court as other countries have developed. civil law.

The attrition problem: The role of police officer's decision making in rape cases

AbstractRape offences in England and Wales garner incredibly low levels of convictions. The policing stage of a complaint experiences high levels of case discontinuances. The aim of this research is to explore police officer's decision making in rape cases and how that shapes the attrition of cases. The method employed in this study is qualitative interviews, with retired or serving police officers, with the use of vignettes. This study found that police officers prioritise and continue with cases that they predict to be most likely to reach a conviction. Such predictions are guided by assessments over the strength of the evidence in cases, informed by a range of legal and extra‐legal factors. An overarching prediction employed is how likely a jury would be to convict a case. However, the participants reported that they find it incredibly difficult to accurately predict jury verdicts, making such decisions premised on a flawed logic.

Al-Qasr Mosque in Baghdad: A Study of its General Conditions until the Mongol’s Occupation in (656 AH / 1258 AD)

Al-Qasr Mosque in Baghdad is one of the most prominent mosques that were built in Baghdad during the Abbasid era. It was distinguished by its official position and its privileged location in relation to the Abbasid Caliphate. The mosque represented the official channel of the Abbasid state, especially during the last three centuries of the Abbasid era. In addition, the official decisions of designation to caliphs, sultans and judges as well as other caliphate decisions related to economic were all announced in it. The mosque also witnessed some incidents that often reflected the objections of public opinion against the Abbasid state at that time. Through all of that, the mosque had a prominent position among the places of worship in Baghdad. The mosque continued to play an intellectual role until the Mongol occupation of Baghdad in (656 AH / 1258 AD), when its role became less effective than before.

Realism and Positivism

ABSTRACT Several scholars advance the ‘LR-LP thesis’: the claim that American Legal Realism presupposes Legal Positivism. Brian Leiter and Frederick Schauer, prominent scholars of Realism, delimit that thesis to a Razian version of Exclusive Legal Positivism (‘ELP’). This article nevertheless argues that Leiter and Schauer’s respective accounts of Legal Realism are difficult to square with Razian ELP. Indeed, the Realist hypotheses about alternative drivers of official decision, concerning ‘working’ rules, ‘real’ rules, and ‘situation-types’, if correct, actually threaten Razian ELP. Problems arise for the LR-LP thesis (as delimited to Razian ELP) irrespective of whether those three Realist alternative drivers are classified as legal or non-legal norms. If they are non-legal, merits-based norms, then (a) those alternative drivers do much more work within official decision than ELP suggests is the case for those sorts of norms, and (b), Inclusive Legal Positivism may better, and might even be required, to explain them. Alternatively, if those Realist alternative drivers are better understood as source-based legal norms, then they cannot fulfil (or even be claimed by the law to fulfil) certain core functions that ELP attributes to legal norms.

Viewing Firearm Danger Through the Lens of Police Officers

Despite danger being an integral part of officer decision-making during potentially lethal encounters (see Graham v. Connor), the study of officers’ perceptions of danger is scarce. Using a survey of over 800 police officers located in a large metropolitan police department, this study assesses officers’ perceptions of danger in different types of armed citizen situations involving various levels of citizen resistance. It also identifies various contextual factors and officer characteristics in relation to danger. The findings are used to inform future research, departmental policy, officer training, and the “objective reasonableness” standard put in place by the Supreme Court.

Przestępstwa udaremniania lub utrudniania wykonania rozstrzygnięcia urzędowego w prawie czechosłowackim, słowackim i czeskim na tle rozwiązań polskich. Część druga

In this study, the authors summarize the considerations contained in the first part of the article concerning the regulations in force in Slovakia and the Czech Republic relating to preventing or obstructing the execution of various official decisions, and also compare these regulations with Polish solutions and formulate conclusions resulting from this comparison.

Legal positions of the European Court of Human Rights on the right to a reasonable period of criminal proceedings and their application in Russian law

The subject of the study within the framework of the designated topic is the judicial decisions of Russian and foreign law enforcement officers in order to determine the correctness of understanding the essential content of the provisions on the reasonableness of the duration of the criminal proceedings. The statistical data of appeals to the European Court of Human Rights in the period from 1959 to 2020 by Russian citizens is analyzed. The peak period was 2013, when two complaints about the length of the trial in a criminal case in Russia really found their confirmation. At the same time, Russian courts annually consider about 100 complaints about "procrastination" or "red tape". Such complaints and relevant decisions have become the subject of this article. The authors came to the conclusion that out of a significant number of applicants' complaints about the violation of international rules on the reasonableness of the terms of the criminal process, only a few were real. This, on the one hand, indicates the absence in Russian judicial practice of a clear understanding of the consistency of the provisions of article 6 of the Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. On the other hand, it allows us to draw a conclusion about the independent position of the Russian courts when considering criminal cases on the merits and the impossibility of imposing European standards for the application of Russian law. At the same time, the authors have identified the main elements of the realization of the right to a reasonable period of criminal proceedings based on the analysis of the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights recognized by Russia, which can contribute to the optimization of Russian judicial practice and serve as a promise for improving legislative techniques in the field of criminal jurisdiction.

The impact of entrepreneurial firm social purpose on bank loan officer decisions: a study of loan covenant violations

PurposeLoan officer decisions are of particular importance to entrepreneurial firms which rely heavily on debt financing as a primary source of capital. The authors investigate whether social purpose in these firms impact loan officer response to the violation of a debt covenant and whether there is a differential response in decision making between loan officers that work at local banks and those that work at national banks.Design/methodology/approachIn total 332 loan officers from cities in the South and Midwest United States participated in a quasi-experiment comparing entrepreneurial firms that violated their debt covenants. The loan officers were asked to evaluate loan materials and decide whether they would enforce loan covenant provisions of renegotiated interest rate and by what magnitude. In the treatment group, the loan officer evaluated loan materials of an entrepreneurial firm that included information related to the firms social purpose within their community. In the control group, the evaluation materials did not include this information.FindingsConsistent with social capital theory, the results suggest that loan officers view community involvement as beneficial to entrepreneurial firm value. Loan officers were less likely to increase interest rates among firms that demonstrated social purpose. Loan officers that decided to increase interest rates punished socially purposeful firms less severely than non-socially purposeful firms. Additionally, loan officers at community banks were less likely to increase interest rates than those at national banks.Originality/valueWhile the prior literature examines loan covenant violations, the authors focus on the impact of loan officer decision making in entrepreneurial firms specifically around covenant enforcement. Loan officer decisions have important implications for debt financing but are typically not observable to researchers. Prior work examining the relationship between social purpose and debt financing focuses on large public firms. This study recognizes that social purpose in entrepreneurial firms is less formalized and explicit and thus should be studied separately from large firms.

Содержание патентных прав на служебные изобретения, служебные полезные модели, служебные промышленные образцы

Introduction: the paper considers the study of the specifics of patent rights for official results of intellectual activity in the scientific, technical, artistic, and design spheres. Methods: the methodological framework for the research is the dialectical method of cognition, as well as such general scientific methods as analysis, synthesis, induction, and deduction. Among the specific scientific research methods, comparative-legal, normative and dogmatic methods are used. Results: the study analyzes the features of patent rights for service inventions, service utility models, service industrial designs, as guarantees provided by the state for the performance of legally significant actions concerning these objects. The list of patent rights for service developments, their main characteristics is defined. Special attention is paid to the personal non-property rights of the author; the current legislation and the opinions of civilists on the scope of the right to a name are analyzed. Conclusions: it is established that the issue of ownership of the right to the name of the author of the invention, utility model, and industrial design is not regulated at the legislative level, which may entail the infringement of legal authorities exercised by the author of official decisions. As a result of the study, the legislative consolidation of the right to a name in the list of patent rights is proposed, as an absolute subjective legal authority of the author of an invention, utility model, industrial design, whose scope should be considered equally as a legally secured opportunity for the author to require the indication of his name, and the ability to remain anonymous in publications about the protected decision.

‘We handle it, I guess you’d say, the East Texas way’: Place-based effects on the police decision-making process and non-arrest outcomes

ABSTRACT Informal law enforcement approaches to crime problems are largely hidden from the public domain. Non-urban communities are often absent from the literature on police decision-making, but many characteristics of ‘the rural’ – such as lack of supervision, diminished access to resources, and more – expand police discretion and increase the use of informal policing methods. While most research on police discretion focuses on the decision to arrest, the current study utilizes semi-structured focused interviews with law enforcement officers in rural Texas to address non-arrest decision-making and the informal policing of youth. Specific informal responses, as well as factors that influence officer decision-making, are discussed. The findings suggest that the structural, cultural, and situational context of a rural setting uniquely affects police decision-making, highlighting the significance of geographic and sociocultural environment in use of discretion. The qualitative approach and analysis provide extensive detail regarding place-based effects on the police decision-making process, including officer motivations and how officers attribute meaning and contextually filter information in an encounter with youth. By illuminating the gray area of policing, these findings have implications for rural law enforcement training and practices and provide future direction for broader agency policy research.

Police Officer Responses to Deadly Encounters with the Public: Understanding Situational Characteristics that Impact Decision-Making

Abstract In the USA, police officer–citizen encounters are routine, and while rare, high-profile shootings underscore the acute strains that exist between the police and communities when force is inappropriately applied. This collaborative partnership explored the situational contexts that impact officer decision-making in deadly force encounters in order to inform training and practice initiatives. In this study, we analysed 39 officers’ responses to 233 simulated encounters with the public using a firearms training system. We coded participants’ performance into one of the five possible outcomes (pass, missed target, suspect shot first, shot victim, and shot too soon). The most commonly occurring outcome was pass (44.6%), followed by suspect shooting first (29.6%), and missed target (12.9%). Content analysis of self-identified situational factors revealed that across all scenarios, the officers’ decision was most commonly informed by suspect cues, environmental factors, and the presence of a firearm. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Enforcement of low-level warrants in the City of St. Louis: Officer decision making and implications for policy and practice

Abstract Warrants are commonplace in the USA, especially bench warrants issued for non-compliance with court orders. Although warrants compel arrest, in practice, officers exercise discretion when enforcing low-level warrants; yet, this discretion goes undocumented and data on warrant enforcement are limited. This collaboration between St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department and the University of Missouri—St. Louis addresses these gaps. Using arrest data, we find that warrant arrests in St. Louis declined from 2002 to 2019. One-third of arrests involve a bench warrant, primarily stemming from traffic violations, and many involve no new charges. Racial disparities in warrant enforcement exist, but data are needed to uncover why. Informal focus groups and meetings with St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department personnel held from 2018 to 2021 provide insight into the role of warrants in officer decision making. We argue that reducing resources devoted to warrant enforcement and racial disparities requires collaboration between police and other stakeholders.

‘Appeasement Gone Mad’: The Riga Ghetto Case and the Politics of British War Crimes Trials

This article examines the British Foreign Office decision to abandon a British-run war crimes trial after the Second World War against suspected perpetrators of the Holocaust in Latvia and the efforts of a Holocaust survivors’ organization to seek justice. Faced with repeated inquiries from The Association of Baltic Jews in Great Britain and their parliamentary allies, the Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin repeated a lie told to him by his subordinates that Holocaust victims were imprecise in their testimony, making them unreliable witnesses and justifying the release of several suspected war criminals. Although very few German and Latvian perpetrators saw the inside of the courtroom, survivor advocacy countered the prevailing silence about the Holocaust in Eastern Europe during the Cold War.

Evolution of the Institution of Judicial Control over Pre-Trial Proceedings in the Republic of Moldova

Judicial control is understood as control over the compliance of the activities and decisions of lawenforcement agencies and officials with the requirements established by law. The legal procedure for exercisingjudicial control in the Russian Federation has been criticized. Since 2015, Russia has seen intensification of a discussionabout the establishment of a special subject, namely an investigating judge who would exercise judicial controlover pre-trial proceedings. Some states have experience in exercising judicial control over pre-trial proceedings byinvestigating judges. One of these states is the Republic of Moldova. The paper presents the results of the studyof the regulatory model of the institution of judicial control over pre-trial proceedings in the Republic of Moldova.The purpose of the work is to study the evolution of the institution of judicial control in the Republic of Moldova. Toachieve the formulated goal, it is necessary to solve the following tasks: 1) to determine the concept and appointmentof a judge for criminal prosecution; 2) to highlight the stages of development of judicial control over pre-trialproceedings in Moldova; 3) to designate the range of basic powers of a judge in criminal prosecution. Historicaldiachronic, logical-dogmatic and comparative-legal methods are used in the research. An analysis of the regulatoryprovisions concerning the implementation of judicial control over pre-trial proceedings allows us to conclude thatit is sufficiently elaborated in the criminal procedure legislation of the Republic of Moldova. The advantages of theinstitution under study are: the establishment of a special entity exercising judicial control over pre-trial proceedings;systemic regulation of his powers; lack of duplication of norms; consistent adjustment of the institution.