Professional Lawyers Research Articles

“Full Justice May Be Done Them”: The Case of Bill, Charles, Jupiter, Randolph, et al. v. William A. Carr in a Florida Freedmen’s Bureau Court

Immediately after the Civil War, freedmen and freedwomen faced an uncertain legal landscape, caught between former owners, reactionary state courts, and a still-potent federal military presence. A system of federal Freedmen’s Bureau courts provided many freedpeople with a forum to seek justice outside of often-hostile state courts. A remarkably complete set of documents from one Bureau Court in Leon County, Florida, reveals the extent to which freedpeople and local white legal elites used the new federal court for their respective benefits. The case of Bill, Charles, Jupiter, Randolph, et al. v. William A. Carr provides a new analytical framework to consider the post-Civil War legal landscape in the South. Not only were freedpeople eager to appear before these federal tribunals, but Southern white lawyers—facing immense political uncertainty in 1865 and 1866—were willing to practice in Bureau courts. Both groups’ legal arguments reflected the most pressing issues of the time: fair contracting and compensation for freedpeoples’ labor; the desire for societal order and stability; and competing notions of subjugation over a recently enslaved group versus justice and equality for them. The success of black people in gaining access to the legal system benefited local white communities and especially white professional lawyers through fees, career advancement, and reputation. Meanwhile, the success of white lawyers in forums like the Bureau courts benefited freedmen, presenting them with skilled allies in new judicial spaces where their rights and freedoms could be articulated, defended, and advanced.

'Full Justice May Be Done Them': The Case of Bill, Charles, Jupiter, Randolph, Et Al. V. William a. Carr in Florida Freedmen's Bureau Court

Immediately after the Civil War, freedmen and freedwomen faced an uncertain legal landscape, caught between former owners, reactionary state courts, and a still-potent federal military presence. A system of federal Freedmen’s Bureau courts provided many freedpeople with a forum to seek justice outside of often-hostile state courts. A remarkably complete set of documents from one Bureau Court in Leon County, Florida, reveals the extent to which freedpeople and local white legal elites used the new federal court for their respective benefits. The case of Bill, Charles, Jupiter, Randolph, et al. v. William A. Carr provides a new analytical framework to consider the post-Civil War legal landscape in the South. Not only were freedpeople eager to appear before these federal tribunals, but Southern white lawyers — facing immense political uncertainty in 1865 and 1866 — were willing to practice in Bureau courts. Both groups’ legal arguments reflected the most pressing issues of the time: fair contracting and compensation for freedpeoples’ labor; the desire for societal order and stability; and competing notions of subjugation over a recently enslaved group versus justice and equality for them. The success of black people in gaining access to the legal system benefited local white communities and especially white professional lawyers through fees, career advancement, and reputation. Meanwhile, the success of white lawyers in forums like the Bureau courts benefited freedmen, presenting them with skilled allies in new judicial spaces where their rights and freedoms could be articulated, defended, and advanced.

Do judges hate speculators?

Historically, people have often expressed negative feelings toward speculators, a sentiment that might have even been reinforced since the latest financial crisis, during which taxpayer money was warranted or spent to bail out reckless investors. In this paper, we conjecture that judges may also have anti-speculator sentiment, which might affect their professional decision making. We asked 123 professional lawyers and 247 law students in Germany this question, and they clearly predicted that judges would have an anti-speculator bias. However, in an actual behavioral study, 185 judges did not exhibit such bias. In another sample of 170 professional lawyers, we found weak support for an anti-speculator bias. This evidence suggests that an independent audience may actually perceive unbiased judgments as biased. While the literature usually suggests that a communication problem exists between lawyers and non-lawyers (i.e. between judges and the general public), we find that this problem can also exist within the legal community.

Проблемы реализации академических свобод преподавателя при подготовке профессиональных юристов

Проблемы реализации академических свобод преподавателя при подготовке профессиональных юристов

The Twilight of Legality

This paper argues that juridification has become the enemy of legality. By 'juridification' is meant the proliferation of legal norms and legally recognized norms. By legality is meant conformity with the ideal of the rule of law. The paper begins with the most obvious ways in which juridification threatens legality. Too much law makes the law on any subject hard to discover, hard to remember, and hard to follow. It also makes us too dependent on the discretion of petty officials, who are therefore not sufficiently constrained by law. But the paper looks beyond the discretion of petty officials and argues that, in a way, the biggest threat to legality of our age comes from the proliferation of contractual norms, and the increasing diversion of contractual dispute-resolution into arbitration (and other ADR processes). The paper argues that those who rely on the law to recognise contracts should be subjected to an non-excludable jurisdiction of the courts in respect of all questions of law arising under those contracts, including their proper legal meaning. A compulsory arbitration clause, in other words, should be valid only subject to extensive judicial review of the arbitrator’s decisions. It is argued that contractual arbitration (and other ADR) that does not meet this condition is free-riding on the work of courts and professional lawyers, and should be regarded as antisocial – and that this is true even when it does more perfect justice between the parties.

Do Judges Hate Speculators?

Historically, people have often expressed negative feelings toward speculators, a sentiment that might have even been reinforced since the latest financial crisis, during which taxpayer money was warranted or spent to bail out reckless investors. In this paper, we conjecture that judges may also have anti-speculator sentiment, which might affect their professional decision making. We asked 123 professional lawyers and 247 law students in Germany this question, and they clearly predicted that judges would have an anti-speculator bias. However, in an actual behavioral study, 185 judges did not exhibit such bias. In another sample of 170 professional lawyers, we found weak support for an anti-speculator bias. This evidence suggests that an independent audience may actually perceive unbiased judgments as biased. While the literature usually suggests that a communication problem exists between lawyers and non-lawyers (i.e. between judges and the general public), we find that this problem can also exist within the legal community.

The Austrian Human Rights Institute under its founding director Franz Matscher

Abstract The Austrian Human Rights Institute is based in Salzburg since 1987. Its foundation goes back to a Council of Europe recommendation of 1979 to establish national centres for the study of human rights and their dissemination. Franz Matscher was its director from the start until 2003 – an excellent posting since, at that time, he already combined the functions of a professor of law and of a judge at the European Court of Human Rights. The author describes the founding process of the Institute and its various fields of activity under the guidance of its head. These include the dissemination of human rights thinking and the law, giving legal advice to professional lawyers (on the Strasbourg Court system), the human rights training of various groups of the population such as students, judges, executive officers, etc. Emphasis is also laid on documentation with a focus on the case law of the Human Rights Court, which is of particular interest for domestic professional circles and academics. This is reflected in the Institute’s renowned periodical, the Newsletter Menschenrechte, which mainly offers short versions of leading cases in German translation. A third sphere of activities was the convening of conferences and lectures on topical issues of the protection of human rights. This was greatly helped by Franz Matscher’s excellent contacts all over the world. In 2014 the Institute was affiliated to the University of Salzburg with positive effects on its infrastructure. When the Institute celebrated its first 30 years of existence in December 2017 everybody could see that it was prospering and that the spirit of Franz Matscher is still present there.

Business English in the Process of Training Professional Lawyers

Business English in the Process of Training Professional Lawyers

Europa 1777 r.: od humanitarnej krytyki prawa obowiązującego po budowę nowych kodeksów karnych

In the year 1777 in Europe (Switzerland and France) a few important public competitions on projects of a reform of the criminal law and criminal procedure, were conducted. The following years brought a bunch of significant works on codifications in this area. The paper presents state of the humanitarian literature circa 1777, as well as course of the competitions and authors of the projects. It emphasizes the thesis – based on the author’s own research and the newest achievements of science – that, after a period of critique of the existing criminal law, a new era of searching legislative solutions, appeared. During this era, a leading role was played by professional lawyers. This final stage of the humanitarian literature remained important even after the beginning of The Great French Revolution. The author is on the opinion, that now is an appropriate moment, to prepare a comprehensive history of a whole humanitarian reform movement. This work should not be limited only to mainstream of the humanitarian doctrine, strong in Italy, France and Germany, but it have to also include countries as Spain, Great Britain and Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Медіація як технологія запобігання конфліктам у професійній діяльності юристів

The article is devoted to the theoretical analysis of the mediation possibilities in the conflicts prevention. The determination of the mediation as ultra vires procedure of the conflict management by the way of the discussion with the help of one or more conciliators (mediators) has been given. The models of mediation which have the form of abstract theoretical constructions and they have reflected the procedural peculiarities of the mediation through the characteristics of its main components: the basement of the submission to the mediation, the degree of the integration of the judiciary of the country, as the conversation between the sides with the combination of the meditative technique of the conciliator and the capacity of his competency during the realization of the disposal of the conflict have been considered. It has been stated that the mediation owns the triple peace efforts: to prevent the conflicts, to solve the conflicts, to preventthe conflict renewal. The possibilities which have been given with the mediation in the sphere of professional judge’s, lawyer’s, scrivener’s and corporative lawyer’s activity have been executed. The professional lawyer’s activity in the sphere of the collaborative law as willing, structured and uncompetitive approach to the problems solving, based on the collaboration, collective work, sociability, honesty, personal involvement, appreciation and polite cooperation so the sides of the conflict as the juridical consultants have been distinguished. All things considered, the responsibility for the informing and educating the citizens due to the possibilities of the methods usage of the alternative solving the arguments, especially mediation take the professional lawyers. It has been stressed, the nowadays challenges in relation with the juridical sphere demand the determination of the new role of the all its representatives, consequently the modification of the existing traditional system of the arguments resolution. We strongly believe that the basement of the mediation and the methods of the alternative conflict management have to become the part of the professional education of the law schools students and the lawyers of the different specialization.

Mekanisme Pemberian Bantuan Hukum Bagi Masyarakat Miskin Di Pengadilan Negeri Samarinda

ABSTRACT
 The court is a space or a last fort for people to get justice but in this case a problem which seek the court is not easy and with little expense but rather the cost to be incurred for example using the services of professional lawyers prohibitively expensive while not all people can afford to pay. However, Indonesia as a legal state as mentioned in the Constitution of 1945 in Article 1 point (3) "Indonesia is a legal state" the state must guarantee equality of each citizen both before the law and protect all the rights to be treated before the law, and with the Legal aid society, especially in the city of Samarinda, in this case, it helps people, especially the underprivileged in right of defending their rights and being protected from discrimination apparatus or elements which are not responsible and the process of case investigation encountered can occur as supposed to be. Thus, the law agencies is indispensable for the people belonging to the poor economy.

International Courts Improve Public Deliberation

Public deliberation is essential for democracy to flourish. Taking decisions away from elected bodies and transferring them to courts seems to diminish deliberation. The damage appears even greater when decisions are taken away from domestic bodies and given to international courts — organizations considered to be completely independent from the public. But this view is mistaken. It stems from perceiving courts as saying the last word on the issues on their agenda. International courts are in fact engaging in a dialogue with the public, with governments, and with an elite of professional lawyers. International courts can spark a debate instead of silencing it. This paper explains how international courts shape public discourse by supplying legal arguments to the public and by building networks of activists, how these courts interact with governments, and how they form an international community of lawyers. Considering all this, the paper concludes that international courts improve public deliberation.

Emotions, Power and Popular Opinion about the Administration of Justice: The English Experience, from Coke’s ‘Artificial Reason’ to the Sensibility of ‘True Crime Stories’

This article discusses emotions and power in the administration and representation of criminal justice in early modern England. In the early seventeenth century, professional lawyers insisted that only they were competent to understand the ‘artificial reason’ of the common law; and lay opinion was associated with unreliable emotional engagement with the protagonists in trials. ‘Popular jurisprudence’ received renewed impetus from the post-Reformation emphasis on conscience and divine providence, however, and this kind of common sense interpretation often featured in popular accounts of law proceedings. Moreover, the ‘low law’ administered at grass roots level by JPs was less professionalised because most magistrates were not lawyers. The development of popular and emotional jurisprudence is demonstrated in the eighteenth century by analysis of judges’ charges, popular novels, and the reportage of ‘true crime’. Ultimately, and despite further ‘lawyerisation’ of trials, this article argues that the rise of the novel and increased press reporting of criminal justice generated more vicarious engagement with the administration of justice. And this was emotional engagement: eighteenth-century popular jurisprudence represented justice as variously awesome, theatrical and unreasonably oppressive.

Cross-cultural competence as a necessary constituent of professional training lawyers

Cross-cultural competence as a necessary constituent of professional training lawyers

Legal Education and Its Outcomes: Digging Deeper into the Successes and Failures of India's National Law Schools

Law is often claimed to be the world’s oldest ‘profession’, and due to this legacy, legal education systems have always grappled with the dichotomy between professional and liberal training. In India, this debate has been particularly under the limelight in the last twenty-five years, since the inception of the National Law School experiment – a model that was meant to impart socially relevant education and produce social engineers. Keeping in mind the worldwide expansion of the legal profession and its interaction with neo-liberal forces, this project seeks to investigate the successes and failures of this model, based on the perceptions of key stakeholder groups, namely faculty, employers and students. It first explored the discourse on the establishment of the first National Law School, in order to understand the rationale for this move and the vision that it embodied. This provided the foundation for the primary part of the project – a qualitative analysis of the performance of this model on various parameters, as perceived by students, faculty and employers, at NLSIU and NALSAR. These two schools were chosen for their reputation, but more importantly, for their ability to provide evidence spanning at least a decade of existence. Finally, the data was linked with the findings from the discourse to understand how success is perceived in this context, by graduates as well as by the institutions. The results corroborated previous literature in greater detail, but also revealed some further information. They confirmed, first, that the National Law Schools were meant to be professional schools, producing professional lawyers – the liberal part of the education was important, but still secondary. In fact, there appeared to be a strong emphasis on the specific outcomes that graduates of these schools were meant to pursue – the Bar and the bench. But despite the strength of their mission, it was found that these schools could not resist the forces of liberalisation and globalisation. Secondly, stakeholders unanimously felt that these schools are suffering from several issues which need to be addressed. Poor quality of faculty and curriculum, and lack of adequate practical training were identified as the biggest of these. It was also found that many of these factors have together increased the corporatisation of outcomes at these schools. Finally, while the legal profession has expanded significantly, it appeared that the institutional vision of the National Law Schools has stagnated, resulting in a mismatch between expectation and reality. Fortunately, simple solutions to address many of these problems did emerge. However, many of these are only likely to provide short-term relief and all stakeholders expressed a dire need for rethinking in the long term.

Psychology of Interaction between Professional Lawyers and Juvenile Victims of Sexual Violence: Pressing Problems

Abstract Provision of constructive interaction with juvenile victims of sexual violence is one of the burning problems in legal psychology. The issues under consideration are the specifics of two groups of interaction between professional lawyers and juvenile victims (conditioned by both the specific personality of the victim and that of the lawyer communicating the victim); advantages and disadvantages of a professional psychologist's involvement in this process; research into foreign experience (scholarly works by German scientists) and ways to solve this problem in today's Russia (the system for additional training of investigators, judges and psychologists participating in investigations and examinations of criminal cases of sexual violence against juvenile victims).

An Evolving Landscape: From Information Gatekeeper to Knowledge Professional

AbstractThis paper is based on a presentation of the same title given by Jane Bradbury, Head of Knowledge and Information at the law firm Slaughter and May, at the inaugural seminar of the BIALL Knowledge Management Group on 9th May 2016. The article has been compiled by the other two authors, Jon Beaumont and Tim Barlow, and so not all of the opinions expressed are attributable to Jane. The authors are also indebted to Anne Ashdown, of recruitment firm tfpl, who presented at the same seminar on the subject of recruitment for legal knowledge management (KM) roles and whose observations are also incorporated in the article. The paper considers the increasing impact of KM on the work of library and information professionals in law firms. It discusses the related role of professional support lawyers (PSLs), the knowledge “hot topics” which are driving evolution of the profession, the transferability of information skills, and opportunities for development and career progression beyond the traditional boundaries of library and information management.

Law and lawyers in a world after virtue

David Kennedy has been one of the central figures in the discipline of Critical Legal Studies for almost four decades and—for political scientists like me, who tend to see the law as just another way of doing politics—a seminal figure in wresting monopolistic control over interpreting the law’s purpose and meaning away from professional lawyers and legal scholars. Pivotal to this contribution has been Kennedy’s willingness to confront trade-offs, to see the darker underbelly of any pursuit of justice, moral, legal, social or otherwise, and yet to remain committed to the possibility of moving human affairs in a broadly progressive direction. He is an anti-utopian in this sense, an anti-sacraliser, a myth-buster, a realist but with an ethical core. The antinomies of modernity must be confronted but need not be ethically disabling. In some of his best known works, The Rights of Spring and The Dark Sides of Virtue, he has even drawn on and problematised his own experiences of being an expert legal scholar and, if not quite an activist, then certainly an engaged and concerned participant in the fields of human rights and humanitarian law.1 In A World of Struggle, he reflects more systematically on his many encounters with experts and expertise, including his own experiences at Davos.2 This distillation of experience and contemplation focuses on the question of what lies at the ethical heart of law and lawyering. This, as Kennedy shows at length, is the core of modernity’s challenge.

Legal doctrine, scientific community and government: some questions of correlation and interaction

Problem Setting . Legal doctrine is an integral part of any developed legal system, where class of professional lawyers has been formed, complex of special legal texts has been created and there are professional legal practices secluded from other spheres of social activity. At the same time, the degree, forms and a legal doctrine intensity of influence on processes of state and law-making, the development of society as a whole depend on the state of the development of the legal system, existing legal traditions and the character of the sources of law system. As known, the legal doctrine is created, reconstituted, developed as the result of intellectual and creative efforts of the professional community of lawyers (primarily scientists-lawyers), that always are in the specific economic, legal, cultural and political conditions. Substantial filling of the results of scientific researches, necessity in them and implementation in legal practice one way or another depend on power, in particular, the existing state and political regime. These and relevant to them questions have not been investigated sufficiently till now in Ukrainian jurisprudence, are acquiring actuality for the Ukrainian legal system, large-scale reforms of which are to be provided on the scientific grounds. This, in its turn, causes the necessity in revision or reconsideration of the role and significance of scientific legal community in contemporary national state and society. The actuality of the topic. The main purpose of the article is conducting analysis of foreign and domestic (Soviet) experience of the interaction between the scientific community and power, revealing of peculiarities (intensity, form) of influence of the latter on a legal doctrine formation. The purpose of the article. On the European continent attitude to public authorities and the scientific community legal doctrine has not always been positive: it had been changing from recognizing doctrine at the official level as source of law, for example, in Ancient Rome, until its denial in some periods. Sometimes authoritarian regimes had been trying to control, or even subordinate the development of scientific thought, educational and cultural space. At last, conclusions from the negative experience have been done and came the realization that such a policy is not only harmful but also dangerous. Today, in the western law orders the results of scientific research have been accepted by the state and legal practice in connection with deep, thorough and objective cognition of the essence of the state-legal phenomena and processes and revealing of regularities of their origin and development. The basis of such researches are methodological pluralism, real scientific discussion, free exchange of ideas, which is a prerequisite of working out of effective and useful to society scientific conclusions and proposals. Only a productive dialogue between the authority and lawyers, the existence of a free market of ideas, freedom of scientific creativity, independence of the academic community which is to be recognized and protected by the state and it is under such conditions working out of effective and useful to society scientific provisions is possible. Such dialogue, as it is known, is possible only in the case when subjects interact on an equal partnership footing, excluding the service function of legal science and the implementation of it by representatives of «political orders». Conclusions. If you analyze the Soviet period, the interaction between the scientific community and power, which has always strictly controlled all spheres of socio-political and legal life (except for short phase of liberalization of state policy), resembling moving of one-way street. From time to time the street name has been changed, but the rules and basic approaches were without any changes. Adding, that government dictated (most frequently) to the science and its representatives which questions and problems must be investigated, what to be criticized and what ideas are to be supported and which to be denied and rejected. Therefore, we can make the conclusion that, as a whole, the legal doctrine under such conditions was just being created by power but by the «hands» of lawyers

La vinculación como técnica de enseñanza y aprendizaje del Derecho. Derechos Humanos, universidad y Poder Legislativo

Mexico is currently carrying out the implementation of a set of major reforms that are changing the paradigms that rule the national legal system. Nonetheless, programs and methods of study in law schools have not progressed at the same rate as changes to the legal system. In order to have professional lawyers capable of tackling contemporary issues, Mexican universities will require updating teaching tools and methods for the study of an updated and dynamic law. The aim of this paper is to propose a method of teaching and learning law by linking universities with the legislature. This idea would contribute to understand the dynamic nature of law as object study and would allow achieving unity and coherence in the system, and to strengthening the principles of universality, interdependence, indivisibility and progressiveness of human rights.