Justice Policy Research Articles

Science, Technology, or the Examiner Experience: What Influences Jurors' Judgments About Forensic Science Testimony?

The impact of forensic science evidence on jurors’ judgments is critically important to the criminal justice system. The assignment of low or high weight to such testimony can be the difference between acquittal or conviction. Many of the traditional forensic sciences (e.g., fingerprints and bitemarks) draw their strength largely from the subjective judgments of examiners who testify about whether evidentiary prints or other markings are consistent with (or “match”) known markings from a person or object. In an online experiment (Experiment 1) and a realistic jury simulation using actual jurors or jury-eligible adults (Experiment 2), this paper investigates three factors that might affect how jurors think about and use forensic science evidence. These factors are (a) whether the forensic science method had been scientifically tested, (b) the forensic scientist’s background and experience, and (c) how sophisticated the forensic science technology is. The results show a strong and consistent effect for examiner background and experience on evidence strength judgments, no effect for forensic technology sophistication, and a limited and inconsistent effect for scientific testing (present in the online experiments, absent in the realistic jury simulation). These findings raise concerns about potential undue influence of examiner background and experience on jurors’ judgments, and lack of clear influence of scientific testing. The implications of our findings for criminal justice practices and policies are considered.

An initial scoping of transitional justice for global climate governance

ABSTRACTGeopolitical changes combined with the increasing urgency of ambitious climate action have re-opened debates about justice and international climate policy. Tensions about historical responsibility have been particularly difficult and could intensify with increased climate impacts and as developing countries face mounting pressure to take mitigation action. Climate change is not the only time humans have faced historically rooted, collective action challenges involving justice disputes. Practices and tools from transitional justice have been used in over 30 countries across a range of conflicts at the interface of historical responsibility and imperatives for collective futures. Central to this body of theory and experience is the need to reflect both backwards- and forwards-oriented elements in efforts to build social solidarity. Lessons from transitional justice theory and practice have not been systematically explored in the climate context. This article conceptually examines the potential of transitional justice practices to inform global climate governance by looking at the structural similarities and differences between the global climate regime and traditional transitional justice contexts. It then identifies a suite of common transitional justice practices and assesses their potential applicability in the climate context.POLICY RELEVANCEJustice disputes, including about historical responsibility and future climate actions, are long-standing in the climate context and could intensify with increased climate impacts and broadened mitigation pressures.Lessons from efforts to use transitional justice mechanisms could provide insight into strategies for balancing recognition of harms rooted in the past, while creating stronger future-oriented collective action.Several areas of transitional justice practice including: the combination of amnesties and litigation, truth commissions, reparations and institutional change could provide useful insights for the climate context.

Symposium on justice, the family, and public policy

Symposium on justice, the family, and public policy

Distributive Justice and Social Policy: Attempt As Convergence Study of Cultural Sciences and Social Science for Reasonable Welfare Discussions in Korean Society

Distributive Justice and Social Policy: Attempt As Convergence Study of Cultural Sciences and Social Science for Reasonable Welfare Discussions in Korean Society

Does Legitimacy Necessarily Tame Power? Some Ethical Issues in Translating Procedural Justice Principles into Justice Policy

This article examines some of the ethical dilemmas associated with research on procedural justice. Most of this research has involved surveys of the public, involving attitude measurement amongst random samples of adults. These tend not to give rise to the more common ethical dilemmas that criminological researchers encounter, to do with coerced consent and the preservation of anonymity and confidentiality. However, there are significant ethical issues in the application of this research to policy and practice. They relate largely to the risks in providing utilitarian justifications for the adoption of values, and in the use of low-visibility behavioural techniques to nudge people into compliance with the law. These ethical dilemmas offer ‘knowledge tools’ that could be misused in the pursuit of consent to authority – even if individual research subjects are not exposed to any harm in the research process. These – resolvable – dilemmas need to be surfaced and discussed.

Inferring Multi-Dimensional Ideal Points for US Supreme Court Justices

In Supreme Court parlance and the political science literature, an ideal point positions a justice in a continuous space and can be interpreted as a quantification of the justice's policy preferences. We present an automated approach to infer such ideal points for justices of the US Supreme Court. This approach combines topic modeling over case opinions with the voting (and endorsing) behavior of justices. Furthermore, given a topic of interest, say the Fourth Amendment, the topic model can be optionally seeded with supervised information to steer the inference of ideal points. Application of this methodology over five years of cases provides interesting perspectives into the leaning of justices on crucial issues, coalitions underlying specific topics, and the role of swing justices in deciding the outcomes of cases.

Social justice and disability policy in Southern Africa

Social justice means different things to different people. This has resulted in diverse meanings and interpretations despite some commonalities, such as a focus on marginalised groups including women, people living in rural areas, persons with disabilities, children, racial minorities, and refugees, among others. In Nancy Fraser's interpretation of social justice, these and other marginalised groups are subject to maldistribution, misrecognition, and misrepresentation. This paper examines Fraser's theory in relation to disability policy in Southern Africa. It begins by outlining core concepts in Fraser's theory of social justice before examining regional and national policy measures designed to improve the lives of people with disabilities in Southern Africa guided by the question: how might Fraser's perspective on social justice enhance disability policy in Southern Africa? From this analysis, the authors conclude that Fraser's notion of redistribution is pivotal to policy implementation supported by recognition and representation of people with disabilities in Southern Africa. Keywords: Disability, social policy, social justice, Southern Africa

From Juvenile Delinquency to Adult Crime: Criminal Careers, Justice Policy, and Prevention

From Juvenile Delinquency to Adult Crime: Criminal Careers, Justice Policy, and Prevention

Characteristics of Homicide-Suicide in Australia: A Comparison With Homicide-Only and Suicide-Only Cases.

Homicide-suicide represents one of the rarest forms of lethal violence but often precipitates calls to revise social, health, and justice policies. However, there is little empirical information about this type of violence. The current study uses two unique data sets to examine a wide range of individual and situational characteristics of homicide-suicide, with particular emphasis on establishing whether and how homicide-suicide differs from homicide-only and suicide-only. Findings suggest homicide-suicide may have unique characteristics that set it apart from both homicide-only and suicide-only, as well as sharing certain other characteristics with those two types of events.

Iranian foreign policy and discourse of divine justice

Abstract Iran nuclear negotiations, which resulted in an agreement in Vienna on the 14 July 2015 after signing The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and its aftermath is one of the key topics of inquiry in recent decade. The density of the debate is primarily emanating from concerns related to the security questions of the Middle East and to the sensitivity of Israeli security situation. Moreover, it arises from the complexity of the whole negotiation process. Such issues like Supreme Leader’s Ali Khamene’i’s fatwa designating sinfulness to the nuclear capacity, his after-deal speech, calling for the enmity between Iran and the United States, Iran’s declared aim to implement global justice and other cases are not customary acts of the state and the study of Iranian foreign policy is not substantive using customary instruments of analysis of International Relations. The article refers to the problem of knowledge production on Iran, and suggests that it mainly resulted from the lack of exchange between International Relations and Middle Eastern studies. This article aims to point at the authority of the ideas in Iran’s foreign policy that Islam or Islamic ideologies like Khumaynism produce. Therefore the article focuses on the main narratives of the First Supreme Leader Ruhullah Khumayni’s concept of justice in order to, first, explain the key points in Iran’s position during negotiations and its aftermath and, second, to introduce the study of the concept of justice as a productive source of information and an approach for further analysis of Iranian foreign policy.

Book Review: New Deal Ruins: Race, Economic Justice, and Public Housing Policy

Book Review: New Deal Ruins: Race, Economic Justice, and Public Housing Policy

Do aging societies reduce intergenerational justice and increase pro-elderly policy bias?

Wide across the Western world, people are living longer lives and having fewer children. This has led to larger shares of elderly voters, who, many fear, are becoming an immensely powerful political pressure group. But what are the effects of population aging on public policy? This article reviews the state of the art in comparative political science and social policy. Adopting a political lens provides insights that are more theoretically refined than the increasingly shrill and alarmist assertions being voiced recently about ‘gerontocratic’ welfare states dominated by unholy baby boomer alliances of ‘greedy grey’ voters and ‘myopic’ or populist politicians.

The Policy for Realizing of Restorative Justice in the Practices of Probation

In 2005, the Protection Law for Crime Victims was passed. A paradigm shift to putting more focus on protection of victims followed. Restorative justice is the most common phrase used worldwide to describe alternative ways of responding to crime. This study explores the introduction of restorative justice into korean penal system, and the relationship between restorative justice and probation. The first task of this study is to define the boundaries of probation and restorative justice. The next task is defining the concept of probation and the policy of restorative justice in the practices of probation. Victim Offender Mediation & Dialogue(VOMD, Criminal Reconciliation) is a policy that aims to solve criminal problems through the reconciliation of offender and victim through compensation and apology. Restitution and reconciliation are practical principles for realizing the ideology of restorative justice. Restorative justice is seen as a judicial model that may overcome the limitation of (traditional) criminal justice system and has immensely influenced the judicial practice of various countries. This study will analyze the legislation of probation and restorative justice and find whether VOMD can be suitable for korean criminal justice. As it is likely that restorative judicial practice will be also introduced to Korea, there is a need to find its concrete system. Currently, there is only unofficial criminal consent, thus VOMD should be legislated in Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure Act to protect the victims' rights. Restorative justice is currently practiced partially in Korea. The examples of the Restorative Justice are as follows: encountering programs between offenders and victims to prevent school violence, programs inviting victims of traffic accidents to the offenders-training spot, and conference between victims and offenders of sexual violence. The purpose of restorative justice are crime control and offender-rehabilitation. This may be achieved by restoring the relationship among victims, offenders and local community. Keywords: Human trafficking Language: ko

New Deal Ruins: Race, Economic Justice, and Public Housing Policy

New Deal Ruins: Race, Economic Justice, and Public Housing Policy

Book Review: International Relations: Justice and Foreign Policy

Book Review: International Relations: Justice and Foreign Policy

The Guantánamo-isation of Belgium

Features of the American global war on terror, with its Guantánamo Bay and other secret prisons, where captured detainees are kept outside the national rule of law and international conventions, are being emulated by European democracies, which introduce similar illegal concepts and practices into their penal policies. Now an enthusiastic partner of the US in the war on terror, the Belgian state, fractured internally by the linguistic and regional divide and incapable of finding solutions to the economic crisis, has followed the US in its justice and penal policies. The author charts the erosion of liberal principles within justice policies, from the abandonment of Belgium’s law on universal jurisdiction to the introduction of anti-terror laws and measures; a cooperation agreement with Morocco; and the cavalier attitude to evidence extracted under torture. He examines the significance of the extradition to the US of Tunisian national Nizar Trabelsi. Belgian penal policy has U-turned, especially since the moral panic over child molester and killer Marc Dutroux, and now prisons are massively overcrowded as punishments are ratcheted up. The author argues that the reason for Belgium’s apparent subservience to the US and NATO, and its move to punitive prison policies, lies in its wish to retain its central role within European institutions as it struggles to maintain economic and political stability.

Between Order and Modernity

Egypt’s Revolution of 1952 presented a major historical change to its political and economic structure, its society, and its institutions. This paper examines how Nasser’s regime operated through the state apparatus to exhibit features of modernity. Under the pretext of modernization, renovating Cairo’s authentic urban fabric was one of the channels that displayed the new ambitions to unveil a centralized system of governance and ideologies of socialism. The paper particularly looks at the city’s resurgence attempts, promoted by upgrading practices that displayed Western ideals of planning. Eventually, the contradictory planning legislative system introduced by the government raised early alarms at the problems encountered in the planning institution that was not only unable to liberate Cairo’s urban districts from its long-rooted decay, but also struggled to implement the regime’s flagship policy of social justice in a context wherein it was much needed.

Justice and Foreign Policy: A Reply to My Critics

<i>Justice and Foreign Policy</i>: A Reply to My Critics

The Authority of the Arbitrator

The authority of the decision-maker, whether arbitrator or judge, lies at the heart of the decision-making process — its nature and character, its efficacy, and its resonance with underlying conceptions of fairness and justice that inhere in any civilized legal order of dispute resolution. An examination of the nature of that authority in a transnational context assists in understanding the theoretical foundation of the developing arbitral legal order and the method of development of guiding international legal principle. The topic also throws into some relief the deeply important relationship between arbitration and the courts in a relevant jurisdiction. Also, perhaps because I am a judge, I may be able to elaborate on some things that arbitrators may be reluctant to enunciate — things about their power, and how in human terms it can be exercised. I do not propose to examine the different national provisions or arbitral rules to dissect the different expressions of arbitral authority. Rather, I wish to explore some of the underpinning values and informing norms of arbitration as an incident of international commerce; and to explore their relationship with the authority of the arbitrator. An examination of the authority of the arbitrator illuminates a number of issues of great importance to the practice, and theory, of international commercial arbitration: the efficiency and speed of the process, the fairness of the hearing, the concept of public policy and inhering notions of fairness and justice, the relationship between the arbitral process and the supervising court and the legal system of the 'supervising jurisdiction', and the place of ad hoc and institutional arbitration. In particular, aspects of the authority of the arbitrator reveal what can be a close and nourishing relationship between the values of the supervising legal system (especially reflected in the skill and efficiency of the prevailing …

A Study on the Policy of Justice and Development Party(JDP) toward Alevi in Turkey

A Study on the Policy of Justice and Development Party(JDP) toward Alevi in Turkey