Magister Legum - LLM / In South Africa, as in most jurisdictions, the presumption of innocence is a guaranteed constitutional right. The rationale of the presumption lies in the protection which it offers, since a person charged with a criminal offence stands to lose dearly in personal liberty, in social life and psychological well-being. The presumption is, therefore, a pivotal element of a culture of democracy and human rights. This study is prompted by the realisation that the presumption of innocence, which ought to constitute one of the most fundamental rights in any criminal justice system, is being eroded steadily in South Africa. In this regard, a significant area of concern is the current bail laws which, in my estimation, make a big dent into the right to be presumed innocent. The bail laws are part of government’s policies directed at fighting crime. However, the pre-occupation with crime control measures threatens to reverse the hard-won rights of the accused and threatens to undermine individual liberty. Also, these measures are incompatible with the constitutional commitment to a culture of human rights.

Magister Legum - LLM / This paper attempts a comprehensive analysis of the offence of illicit enrichment in Zambia. It focuses on how the offence fits into the broader legislative framework in Zambia. More importantly, the paper addresses aspects of the offence related to the presumption ofinnocence, the protection against self-incrimination and the presumption of legality in the light of the Zambian Constitution to determine whether the concerns raised are legitimate. Also, considering the potential effectiveness of criminalising illicit enrichment by public officials, this study investigates whether the law in Zambia can be implemented to balance the constitutional rights of the accused and the right of society to recover illicitly obtained wealth. Finally, the research seeks to determine the possible challenges of implementing and prosecuting the offence, and its efficacy in the fight against corruption in Zambia.

This collection addresses the exposure created by a missing personal boundary. The confusion of psycho-personal interactions is explored as is the damage created by living without a protective shield. These poems explore emotional, physical, and social emergence, with nature as a silent, yet sentient witness. This exploration culminates in an awareness that natural life has stepped in to enable healing. The duality of a fractured upbringing between the New York City center and the isolation of farmland, as well as the paradox of extremes created, lead to a need to find solace in safe spaces. The gentle canopy created by outstretched branches act as a surrogate for the arms that did not protect or embrace through childhood. This collection of poems is a celebration of natural healing. Peel in the Garden is a deep dive into what was a forbidden area for so many years. The landscape left by trauma becomes a tangible experience that readers can hopefully grasp, digest and savor.

La cohabitation entre la révision en matière pénale et l’autorité de la chose jugée constitue la pierre angulaire de notre réflexion. En effet, en autorisant la remise en cause d’une décision définitive, la révision déroge au principe cardinal de l’immutabilité des décisions de justice une fois celles-ci revêtues de l’autorité de la chose jugée. Dès lors, en matière de révision, la difficulté consiste, pour le législateur et les juges, à trouver le bon équilibre entre ces deux impératifs afin d’organiser une révision qui concilie le respect dû à la chose jugée et l’exigence de justice liée à la réparation des erreurs de fait commises par les juridictions répressives. L’étude démontre qu’antérieurement à la réforme de la révision par la loi n° 2014-640 du 20 juin 2014, le choix de la logique oppositionnelle entre le pourvoi en révision et l’autorité de la chose jugée l’avait emporté. C’est ainsi qu’il était fait droit à une conception plutôt restrictive et fermée de la révision, orientation préjudiciable à l’éclosion des aspects pourtant libéraux de la loi n° 89-431 du 23 juin 1989. L’antagonisme entre le pourvoi en révision et l’autorité de la chose jugée est toujours perceptible dans le nouveau texte. Cette retenue n’est pas sans conséquences sur la qualité du texte et sur ses nouvelles prétentions. / The coexistence between the procedure of retrial in criminal matters and the authority of res judicata is the cornerstone of this analysis. Understood as an authorization to question a final decision, the procedure of retrial reflects an exception to the fundamental principle of immutability of the judgments which have gained the authority of res judicata. Therefore, the challenge for legislators and judges in matters of revision is to find the right balance between those two imperatives and to organize a review procedure which reconciles the respect of res judicata and the related necessity to repair justice errors made by the criminal courts. The study shows that prior to the reform of the retrial procedure by Act No. 2014-640 of June 20, 2014, the choice of understanding the retrial as opposed to the authority of res judicata had prevailed. Consequently it had granted a rather restrictive design to the review procedure, and had damaged by the same, the rather liberal aspects of Law No. 89-431 of June 23, 1989. However, the antagonism between retrial and the authority of res judicata is still noticeable in the new text. This restraint is not without consequences to the quality of that text and to any new claims referring to the latter.

Nekaltumo prezumpcija – pamatinis ir visuotinai pripažįstamas baudžiamosios teisės principas, įtvirtintas tarptautiniuose teisės tiek nacionaliniuose teisės aktuose. Šio principo postulatas reikalauja asmenį laikyti nekaltu, jei neįrodoma priešingai ir suponuoja būtinų procesinių taisyklių laikymąsi nustatant tam tikras proceso dalyvių teises ir pareigas. Tačiau nekaltumo prezumpcijos principas turi tam tikrų prieštaravimų, kurių esminis yra tai, kad baudžiamajame procese greta nekaltumo prezumpcijos egzistuoja jos antipodas - kaltumo prezumpcija. Jei tokios nebūtų, būtų neįmanomą prieš asmenį pradėti baudžiamąjį procesą ir taikyti jam procesines prievartos priemones. Vadinasi nekaltumo prezumpcija nėra ir negali būti suabsoliutinama baudžiamajame procese, tačiau visgi ji būtina kaip asmens teisių garantas. Šiuolaikinėje baudžiamojoje teisėje, nors ir suvokiama nekaltumo prezumpcijos svarba žmogaus teisių užtikrinimo kontekste ir vienų mokslininkų laikoma objektyvia ir visuotinai privaloma teisine nuostata, visgi yra manančių, kad nekaltumo prezumpcija yra viso labo tik fikcija, neturinti praktinės reikšmės. Be to nekaltumo prezumpcija nebegalioja tik nuo to momento kai įsiteisėja kaltumą konstatuojantis teismo nuosprendis. Vadinasi kol vyksta ikiteisminis tyrimas, ar teismo procesas, daugelis aplinkybių dar nėra pilnutinai ištirtos, taigi nesibaigus teisminiam nagrinėjimui išlieka didėlė tikimybė nekaltai apkaltinti asmenį. Todėl praktikoje dažnai kyla nekaltumo prezumpcijos... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / The presumption of innocence is the fundamental and general principle in the criminal law which is recognized both: internationally and nationally. The presumption of innocence - is the principle that one is considered innocent until proven guilty. This principle implies that there should be the certain and strict rules followed in the process while settling the rights and obligations of the participants of the criminal procedures. However this principle has some contradictions with other principles. The essential contradiction is with the presumption of guilt. Without the presumption of guilt there would be impossible to start the criminal proceedings and to impose coercive measures against any person. So the presumption of innocence is not and can not be considered as absolute principle, but the one which guarantees the implementation of certain rights of the person in criminal proceedings. Even though in modern criminal law the importance of the presumption of innocence to ensure human rights is realized and principle is considered as universally binding legal provision by many researchers, some researches express the opinion that presumption of innocence is pure fiction and that it has no practical significance. The presumption of innocence proceeds until someone is found guilty by final and valid court decision. Taking into the consideration mentioned above during the pre-trial investigation or during the trial many factors have not yet been fully explored and... [to full text]

« La simplicité » est un principe essentiel de l’esthétique de George Sand, ce goût permanent marque non seulement la vie réelle de l’écrivain, mais aussi ses œuvres, surtout la série de romans champêtres et socialistes (1840-1853), dont le décor principal est la campagne berrichonne. Nous allons étudier successivement, en trois grandes parties, la notion de simplicité chez George Sand et son sentiment de la nature, la simplicité en tant que constituant de la nature humaine et enfin la simplicité considérée comme le comble de l’art. Les personnages sandiens, paysans ou aristocrates, s’unissant dans une vie idyllique, sont souvent empreints de la même caractéristique se présentant sous diverses facettes : rejet de l’affectation, absence de duplicité et de prétention, refus des artifices, goût pour le naturel et la transparence, ou sublime, naïveté, ingénuité, sincérité, candeur, etc.. Sur le plan esthétique, la simplicité signifie le non composé, le non apprêté, l’originel, le primitif, l’élémentaire, le caractère d’un ensemble formant une entité harmonieuse pouvant être saisie par une intuition synthétique. Tout cela se voit dans la musique populaire et les objets d’art créés par des artistes naïfs. La simplicité sandienne se présente aussi dans d’autres domaines comme les mœurs rustiques, la société et la politique, mais cela restera notre travail post-thèse. / Simplicity is a fundamental principle of George Sand’s aesthetics.The taste for simplicity has also not only pervaded the writer’s life but her whole work, and notably the socialist and country novels (1840-1853) taking place in the Berry landscape.Our purpose is to analyse firstly, Sand’s concept of simplicity and the way she perceives nature, then simplicity as a component of humanity and finally simplicity revealing consummate artistry. Sand’s characters, either peasants or aristocrats sharing an idyllic life, often show this same psychological characteristic under different features: reject of affectedness, absence of duplicity, taste for naturalness and openness, longing for sublimity, innocence, ingenuousness, genuineness, naivety, etc.Aesthetically speaking, simplicity refers to all that is not composed, not prepared, and, positively, to that what is genuine, primitive, and elemental. Simplicity is also accomplished in any harmonious whole perceptible through synthetic intuition, like popular music pieces and naif works of art.Sand’s concept of simplicity also operates in other fields like rural customs and habits and society and politics, as we will show in our subsequent research.

Cette thèse est consacrée à la Septante et s’inscrit dans le courant de recherche qui étudie son vocabulaire et son style. Si des études ont été menées sur différents thèmes, il n’existe pas cependant d’étude systématique sur le vocabulaire de la droiture et de l’innocence dont l’impact sur le langage religieux chrétien postérieur est pourtant remarquable. Cette thèse qui se veut une contribution à ce courant de recherche en abordant un champ lexical négligé par la recherche antérieure, limite l’enquête à trois livres sapientaux, à savoir, les livres des Psaumes, Proverbes et Job. La démarche consiste à établir l'équivalence entre la LXX et le Texte Massorétique, la LXX et la littérature grecque, la LXX et la littérature juive hellénistique en se penchant sur l'arrière-fond des termes, les similitudes et les écarts dus à l'environnement culturel, dans l’objectif de comprendre le sens et le choix des termes grecs mobilisés. / This thesis is dedicated to the Septuagint and is part of the current of research that studies its vocabulary and style. While studies have been conducted on different themes, there is no systematic study of the vocabulary of uprighteousness and innocence, which has had however an impact on later Christian religious language. This thesis which is intended as a contribution to this current of research by addressing a lexical field neglected by previous research limits the investigation to three sapiential books, namely, the books of Psalms, Proverbs and Job. The approach consists in establishing the equivalence between the LXX and the Masoretic Text, the LXX and the Greek literature, the LXX and the Hellenistic Jewish literature by examining the background of the terms, the similarities and the differences due to the cultural environment, in order to understand the meaning and the choice of the Greek terms mobilized.

Critics of Edith Wharton frequently discuss the material culture that pervades her work, but the trend in doing so has been to rush past the things themselves and engage in abstracted conversations of theory. I would like to suggest that a closer scrutiny of the individual objects being presented in Wharton’s novels can highlight Wharton’s own theoretical approaches to material culture. Working from Bill Brown's distinction between objects and things, I want to argue that Wharton firmly situates the material culture in The Age of Innocence in the background of her characters' lives as objects which they utilize as extensions of the self; but she brings the thingness of material culture to the forefront in Twilight Sleep, where the material culture in the novel alternately stands out and malfunctions, as characters attempt—and fail—to construct coherent and livable identities for themselves in the face of a 1920s New York that Wharton depicts as a paradoxically over-furnished wasteland. I will ultimately argue that things, problematic as they are, become a matter of survival strategy for her characters in Twilight Sleep when they utilize them to reconstruct the social relations that have become increasingly threatened from the world of The Age of Innocence. / text

Thèse numérisée par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

This thesis examines the processes the American and Norwegian press go through when identifying (or not) private citizens who are suspected of or arrested for a crime. Four central principles are explored in detail and elaborated upon as they relate to the press and individuals in the criminal justice system: the public's right to know, the right to privacy, protection of reputation, and presumption of innocence. Three Norwegian newspaper editors and an independent consultant to the Norwegian Institute of Journalism elaborated on how identification of criminal suspects is determined in Norway. The Norwegian case study provides an alternative approach to identification. Both legal and ethics solutions are proposed as a way to help protect the privacy, reputation, and presumption of innocence of private individuals suspected of or arrested for a crime but without unconstitutionally intruding on press freedom.