"(Thesis) submitted to the School of Advanced Graduate Studies of Michigan State University of Agriculture and Applied Science ... 1960."

Magister Legum - LLM

This dissertation develops and empirically tests a theory of interaction between the federal appellate courts and the bureaucracy with regard to bureaucratic prosecution. Modeling the bureaucracy as a forward-looking and risk-averse institution and assuming that there is no uncertainty at the district court level, I posit that institutional uncertainty created by appellate courts' random assignment of judges and cases affects the likelihood of bureaucratic prosecution. Given that the decision from a specific panel of a circuit court can be estimated by its median judge's policy position and that the bureaucracy does not know which panel will hear the case, there exists institutional uncertainty at the appellate court level in terms of ideological differences among panels represented by their median judges. I contend that increasing ideological heterogeneity within an appellate court measured by its ideological variance among judges increases institutional uncertainty with respect to the bureaucracy's policy position, which in turn discourages bureaucratic prosecution. My examination of the Antitrust Division's prosecution record from 1950 to 1994 demonstrates that ideological variance within the federal circuit courts has a significant impact on the likelihood of prosecution by the agency. The Antitrust Division is less likely to prosecute when facing a circuit court with large ideological variance among judges. Studies of judicial decision-making and judicial control of the bureaucracy have not fully examined the implication of appellate courts' institutional practice of randomly assigning judges and cases. The development of ideological variance among circuit judges, in this project, as a measure of the institutional uncertainty created by the random assignment process suggests that the courts' unique institutional practice can now be fully incorporated into future studies of the interaction between the judiciary and the bureaucracy.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2010. / Title from title page screen (viewed on July 20, 2010). Thesis advisor: John Scheb. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2009. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 237-258).

The Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has taken steps to define and develop its prosecution policies. Review of these policies reveals that the OTP prefers to act on referrals of situations by states and the Security Council, rather than to employ its proprio motu investigatory powers. While the OTP has effectively defined the threshold for the gravity of the crimes that it will prosecute, a number of other discretionary criteria that inform the OTP's exercise of jurisdiction remain undefined. Additionally, the OTP's acceptance of state 'waivers of complementarity' moves in the direction of establishing a quasi-exclusive jurisdiction for the OTP. This thesis will critically evaluate these policies, and propose a recasting of the OTP's prosecution strategy towards the promotion of domestic war crimes prosecutions. It posits that the ICC OTP can act as a catalyst for domestic war crimes prosecutions, by serving in an advisory and support role. The OTP thus has the opportunity to breathe life into the complementarity regime and advance the global struggle against impunity.

Thesis (M. Sc.), Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1998. / Bibliography: leaves 56-59.

Using an ethnomethodological approach, this research sought to describe how Restorative Justice is integrated into the daily world of the prosecution. This was achieved through the use of in-depth interviews with ten Crown attorneys from different sites in Eastern Canada alongside limited periods of participant observation. This research described how Crown attorneys inhabit a world in which it is necessary to perform an in-depth analysis of the defendant, their characteristics and how much blame can be accorded to them in order to then consider what sanction, if any, is required. Their world also demonstrated that protection of the victim and of society are paramount. Nevertheless, issues such as delay and the reputation of the criminal justice system were shown to be an important factor to also consider as a competent member of the prosecution. Through these methods, participants described a world in which Crowns embody a quasi-judicial role by evaluating and deciding on the proper course of action in regards to a criminal file. When applied to the use of Restorative Justice, these factors helped demonstrate that Crown attorneys thought of it as something which allowed victim and defendant to communicate with one another regarding the consequences of a crime. Restorative Justice was able to be justified through certain factors mentioned above; however, certain other aspects did not find support through them. Indeed Crowns appreciated such a process because they felt it would not endanger victims, that it might contribute to the safety of the public, and because it does not supersede the criminal justice system. Furthermore, for some, it might reduce delay. However, aspects such as attaining victim and or defendant satisfaction did not easily align with the aforementioned factors despite the positive manner in which these potential consequences of Restorative Justice were described by most participants. It was hypothesized then that Restorative Justice is used in a seemingly appropriate manner due to the ways in which it can respond to issues which are important to the prosecution. Other potential positive consequences are simply viewed as beneficial but not offering strong justification for the use of such programs on their own. Indeed, through Restorative Justice, Crowns stay in some measure of control over proceedings while it may also help bolster the legitimacy criminal justice system by responding to certain criticisms levelled against it. Thus, to a certain degree, Crowns are able to reconcile the two different approaches by highlighting the benefits it brings to the criminal justice system while not drawing attention to the ways it does not.

Most legal expert systems to date have been purely rule-based. Case-based reasoning is a methodology for building legal expert systems whereby profiles of cases contained in a database, rather than specific legal rules, direct the outcomes of the system. Frame-based knowledge representation in legal expert systems involves the use of frames to represent legal knowledge. Case-based reasoning and frame-based knowledge representation offer significant advantages over purely rule-based legal expert systems in case-based law. These advantages are realizable by using the deep structure approach to knowledge representation. This involves searching beneath law at the doctrinal level for underlying fact patterns and structures which explain decisions in cases. This is demonstrated by the Malicious Prosecution Consultant, a legal expert system which operates in the domain of the tort of malicious prosecution. The Malicious Prosecution Consultant confirms the results of earlier research at The University of British Columbia, Faculty of Law that it is possible to build legal expert systems in unstructured areas of case-based law with relatively cheap commercially available expert system shells by using the deep structure approach to knowledge representation. / Law, Peter A. Allard School of / Graduate