acase@tulane.edu / Scholarship on premodern ruling elites tends to minimize the complexity of ancient politics and to focus on the decisions of individual kings and their charismatic swaying of entire populations. This dissertation departs from this tendency by investigating the exercise of power by the governments of premodern complex societies, or how ancient politicians organized their institutions. I argue the politics of ancient civilizations may best be studied by focussing on their regime: the political community which coalesced when rulers assembled their allies within the seat of government. This approach emphasizes practices of communication between a ruling body and its political network, as reflected by the exchange of information and goods. Among premodern complex societies ruled by divine kingship, the regime is best described as a royal court, whose architectural institution corresponds to a regal palace. In order to address this anthropological political model, I examine the multi-dimensional archaeological record of the regal palace of La Corona, a small polity of northwest Guatemala that emerged during the Classic Period of Maya civilization (AD 250-950). I rely on an assemblage of complementary datasets – architecture, macro-artifacts, hieroglyphic monuments, micro-artifacts, geochemical elements, and macro-botanical remains – to study how the La Corona royal court exercised political power. I study the last three construction phases of the north section of the La Corona regal palace and their two-century-long occupation to address a set of pragmatic questions. By examining residences, political stages, passageways, administrative space, ancillary buildings, and middens, I seek to understand how Classic Maya politicians relied on economic and ritualized exchanges to effectively manage their regime. In addition, thanks to the rich historical record of La Corona and to a fine-tuned architectural sequence, I explore how the changing historical and geopolitical contexts of this polity transformed its government. Through this rich diachronic empirical case-study, I build upon and contribute to an anthropological archaeology of politics, to ancient political economy, and to Classic Maya historical archaeology. In addition, I wish to highlight why the study of ancient politics may be relevant for us today, and perhaps, our near future. / 1 / Maxime Lamoureux-St-Hilaire

Statistics consistently show that minorities are overrepresented at each level of the juvenile justice system. However, while Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC) in the juvenile justice system is well documented, the cause is still unclear. Some have suggested that DMC is simply the result of disproportionate amounts of crime committed by minority youth, while others claim that racism, be it overt, subtle, individual or institutional, plays a significant role in DMC. Observation of juvenile court proceedings and interviews with juvenile court judges and lawyers, each coded for content analysis, were used to determine the effects of race in juvenile court decision making. In this research, I suggest that race plays a significant, yet subtle role as personal beliefs, political necessities and motives of both professional participants in the system and political and community civic leaders, result in racial stratification established within a racialized social framework.

No description available.

<p>By any standard, victim participation is a relatively new phenomenon in international criminal law proceedings. Incredible advances have been made in the effort to end impunity for crimes against&nbsp / umanity, war crimes, genocide and, more recently, aggression. As a result, great strides have been made in ensuring the direct participation of victims of grave violations of human rights&nbsp / in court proceedings against their perpetrators. Prior to this, grave violations of human rights committed during conflicts or periods of mass violence were either largely ignored or even if action&nbsp / was taken, victims of the crimes hardly had a &lsquo / say&rsquo / in the proceedings. With the advent of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)&nbsp / &nbsp / new dawn in the proceedings of international criminal law has emerged. The statutes that govern the ICC and ECCC have given a voice to victims in court proceeding buy ensuring&nbsp / victims participation.Despite these advances, scholars have criticized victim participation for being inconsistent in its application at the International Criminal Court.1 The criticism has come from&nbsp / scholars who have highlighted the unintended consequences of victim participation in court proceedings, arguing that their participation has resulted in the under- or misrepresentation of the&nbsp / actual experience of survivors of war, mass violence, or repression. These problems have arisen largely because the need to establish the guilt or innocence of the accused and to protect their&nbsp / due process rights, to abide by the rules of evidence and procedure, and to conserve judicial resources all cut against victim-witnesses'ability to tell their stories at these tribunals thereby&nbsp / resulting in a limited, and sometimes inaccurate, record of victims' experience.</p>

Statistics consistently show that minorities are overrepresented at each level of the juvenile justice system. However, while Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC) in the juvenile justice system is well documented, the cause is still unclear. Some have suggested that DMC is simply the result of disproportionate amounts of crime committed by minority youth, while others claim that racism, be it overt, subtle, individual or institutional, plays a significant role in DMC. Observation of juvenile court proceedings and interviews with juvenile court judges and lawyers, each coded for content analysis, were used to determine the effects of race in juvenile court decision making. In this research, I suggest that race plays a significant, yet subtle role as personal beliefs, political necessities and motives of both professional participants in the system and political and community civic leaders, result in racial stratification established within a racialized social framework.

Reproduction de : Thèse d'exercice : Pharmacie : Nantes : 2009. / Bibliogr.

This research examines the Supreme Court's agenda setting behavior. Specifically, I examine the impact of the external environment on the Supreme Court's certiorari process. It is hypothesized that the Court's behavior during this process is conditional upon: 1) its ideological relationship to Congress and the public, and 2) the types of issues before the Court. I argue that the Court behaves strategically, and that as the Court's ideological distance from other actors increases, it will be more likely to structure its agenda in favor of issues that fall within the Court's domain. Conversely, it is argued that the Court would be less likely to focus on issues within the congressional domain as this distance increases. The results indicate that the Court is engaging in strategic behavior in that the agenda setting process is contingent upon issue type, the Court's relationship to Congress, and the Court's relationship to the public.

No description available.

<p>By any standard, victim participation is a relatively new phenomenon in international criminal law proceedings. Incredible advances have been made in the effort to end impunity for crimes against&nbsp / umanity, war crimes, genocide and, more recently, aggression. As a result, great strides have been made in ensuring the direct participation of victims of grave violations of human rights&nbsp / in court proceedings against their perpetrators. Prior to this, grave violations of human rights committed during conflicts or periods of mass violence were either largely ignored or even if action&nbsp / was taken, victims of the crimes hardly had a &lsquo / say&rsquo / in the proceedings. With the advent of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)&nbsp / &nbsp / new dawn in the proceedings of international criminal law has emerged. The statutes that govern the ICC and ECCC have given a voice to victims in court proceeding buy ensuring&nbsp / victims participation.Despite these advances, scholars have criticized victim participation for being inconsistent in its application at the International Criminal Court.1 The criticism has come from&nbsp / scholars who have highlighted the unintended consequences of victim participation in court proceedings, arguing that their participation has resulted in the under- or misrepresentation of the&nbsp / actual experience of survivors of war, mass violence, or repression. These problems have arisen largely because the need to establish the guilt or innocence of the accused and to protect their&nbsp / due process rights, to abide by the rules of evidence and procedure, and to conserve judicial resources all cut against victim-witnesses'ability to tell their stories at these tribunals thereby&nbsp / resulting in a limited, and sometimes inaccurate, record of victims' experience.</p>

The focus of this research was to provide descriptive research on the social phenomenon of Mental Health Courts (MHC). This thesis begins with a description of how a community in Northwestern Ontario developed a MHC to assist in reducing the involvement of mentally disordered individuals with the criminal justice system. This initiative was done without additional funds and was a unique response to a growing community issue. This research describes the demographic characteristics of the clients with the MHC in Kenora compared with those clients not involved in MHCs to determine if involvement with MHCs reduces mentally disordered individuals’ involvement with the criminal justice system. This comparison study examined the characteristics of individuals involved within the Mental Health Diversion & Court Support (MHD&CS) program at the Canadian Mental Health Association, Kenora Branch in 2005 and compared them with characteristics of individuals who were involved in the program in 2010 who were also involved in the MHC in Kenora. The results from this analysis indicated that the following demographic characteristics yielded statistically significant differences between 2005 and 2010: if participants had residence support and to what level, if participants were presenting with anxiety symptoms, and if participants were presenting with depressive symptoms The results indicated those individuals from 2010 who were involved with the MHC reoffended less than those from 2005 who were in the regular court stream. Therefore, it could be concluded that individuals’ participation in the MHC may have influenced recidivism rates of individuals involved in the MHD&CS program. The results for readmission to hospital indicated a lower percentage of participants in 2010 who were readmitted to hospital compared to participants in 2005. Therefore, it could be concluded that having individuals participate in the MHC may have influenced individuals being readmitted to hospital. When examining which of the significant descriptive variables were statistically significant with either re-offence rates or readmission to hospital rates within their prospective years, there was only one variable that was statistically significant; this was the variable in the 2010 sample of whether participants were experiencing symptoms of depression and if they were readmitted to hospital. The chi-square results indicated that there was an association between participants exhibiting signs of depression in 2010 and being readmitted to hospital. Therefore, it appears that those individuals with symptoms of depression who were part of the MHC were more likely to be readmitted to hospital.