OTHER JUDICIAL PERSONS AND THEIR INVOLVEMENT IN THE ACTIVITIES OF THE COURT IN CIVIL PROCEEDINGS ABSTRACT According to the § 3 Act No. 6/2002 sb. about the courts, judges, lay judges, the state administration of judges and about the changes of other acts in addition of judges, trainee judges, judge assistants, senior officers of justice, court secretaries and judicial executors are also involved in the decision-making and other court activities. The legislation about these other judicial persons is however inconsistent and could be found in several acts. The aim of this diploma thesis is to describe this fragmented legislation and to define the involvement of the other persons in the civil process. This diploma thesis is divided into three parts. The first part deals with the persons the law considered as the possible judge candidates. This includes a senior officer of justice, a judge assistant and a trainee judge. The second part deals with a court secretary and a judicial executor that are not considered as the possible judge candidates. The interpretation of each judicial person has the identical division which sequentially deals with the legislation regarding individual judicial persons, their legal status, responsibility, presumption of performance, activity in a civil process and their individual...

The specialized role of the solicitor general has been a topic of much discussion and research within the past, but the task of the solicitor as amicus curiae has been overlooked. A content analysis of Court majority opinions and their corresponding solicitor general amicus briefs for the terms of 1987, 1995, and 2003, allows us to examine the flow of language from brief to opinion, as well at its possible incorporation into legal doctrine and the creation of law. Through implementing Crawdad Text Analysis System© software, the percentage of identical language contained in each corresponding set of documents is reported in the form of a resonance score. Invitation amicus briefs, which are extremely rare and have not been present much within past literature, were also examined in the same manner. Findings show small to medium resonance scores between amicus and Court opinions, with averages between 26 to 33 percent. Invitation amicus have a higher percent of language overlap with averages from 31 to 43 percent. The way the Court implements language contained in amicus briefs shows that the Court might not be as independent as scholars such as Dahl had previously thought.

abstract: Over the last few decades, specialized courts have received an increasing amount of research attention. The existing literature mostly supports drug courts and demonstrates their effectiveness in reducing recidivism and substance abuse, more generally (Belenko, 1998; Bouffard & Richardson, 2007; Gottfredson, Najaka, & Kearley, 2003). Whether the drug court model “works” across offender subgroups remains an open empirical question. The current study uses data originally collected by Rossman and colleagues (2003-2009) for the Multi-Site Adult Drug Court Evaluation (MADCE) to examine the effect of drug court participation on recidivism among unique offender subgroups. First, a context-specific risk score is used to examine recidivism outcomes. Second, offender subgroups are statistically created using latent class analysis (LCA). Recidivism outcomes are then assessed by subgroup, with these results compared to the initial measure of risk. Both analyses are performed using the full sample of drug court participants and the comparison groups. Finally, the third model uses a split sample analysis by court participation to explore the full effects of drug court. The findings of the present study contribute to the theoretical literature and help inform future policy regarding risk assessment and the treatment of offenders in drug courts. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Criminology and Criminal Justice 2018

abstract: In recent decades, the United States has experienced a wave of immigration, an economic recession, and several terroristic attacks. In response, the government has scapegoated and blamed undocumented immigrants of color for recent social ills. As a result, a large share of government resources has been allocated to the enforcement and processing of immigration violations. Consequently, the number of immigration cases processed in U.S. federal courts has spiraled to nearly 50% of bookings and 34% of federal sentencing cases. Yet, immigration offenses have received little empirical attention in the courts and sentencing literature due in part to differences in the way immigration offenses are processed compared to other federal offense types, and relatedly, the empirical difficulties immigration offenses pose for analysis. Nevertheless, the increased representation of immigration offenses in federal courts, along with the punitive rhetoric and heightened social control targeting undocumented immigrants of color, warrants a comprehensive assessment of how immigration cases are processed in U.S. federal courts. Accordingly, this dissertation seeks to identify inequality in the processing of immigration cases by examining: 1) cumulative disadvantage within immigration cases; 2) contextual disparity and how social context interacts with ethnicity to influence multiple federal court outcomes within immigration cases; and 3) ethnic disparity within immigration cases over time. Data come from the Federal Justice Statistics Program Data Series, the U.S. Census, the Uniform Crime Reports, Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, the National Judicial Center, and the U.S. Department of Justice. The quantitative analysis addresses the first question by employing a cumulative disadvantage approach where multiple decision points are considered and the effects of prior stages on subsequent outcomes. The quantitative analysis proceeds to address the second question by using multilevel modeling for multiple court outcomes. The longitudinal analysis is separately conducted on sentence length for 18-year data, from 1994 through 2012, to assess racial and ethnic disparity over time. The results indicate that cumulative disadvantage is present within immigration cases, that social context influences certain decision points, and that ethnic disparity has diminished over time in some districts. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Criminology and Criminal Justice 2018

Magister Legum - LLM

Magister Legum - LLM / This research paper will examine whether the ICC should de lege ferenda be accorded jurisdiction in respect of the crime of corruption. Through this approach, the paper will contribute to the existing literature on corruption that argues in favour of an elevation of corruption to a crime under international law and, in addition, will proffer a specialised mechanism for addressing the problem.

The rule excluding evidence of opinion is traditionally stated in broad and general terms, subject to a more or less closed list of exemptions. Stephen says that a witness’s opinion is “deemed to be irrelevant”. A witness may depose to the facts which he has observed, but he may not ordinarily state any inferences which he has drawn from those facts, or opinions founded upon facts of which he has no personal knowledge. The general rule is that the evidence of opinion or belief of a witness is irrelevant because it is the function of a court to draw inferences and form its opinion from the facts; the witnesses give evidence as to the facts and the court forms its opinion from those facts. The opinion of an expert is admissible if it is relevant. It will be relevant if the witness’s skill, training or experience enables him materially to assist the court on matters in which the court itself does not usually have the necessary knowledge to decide. Where the topic is such that an ordinary judicial officer could be expected to be able, unassisted, to draw an inference, expert evidence is superfluous. In principle, there is no rule that a witness cannot give his opinion on an issue that the court has to decide ultimately. It is not experts alone who may give their opinions on ultimate issues but, in practice, there is a strong tendency to regard the evidence of lay persons on ultimate issues as constituting prima facie evidence only. If such lay testimony remains unchallenged, it may be of greater significance. It is generally true that relevant evidence is admissible and irrelevant evidence is inadmissible. At this stage the following question may be posed: is the opinion of any witness – whether from an expert or lay person – admissible evidence? Should an opinion be admitted for purposes of persuading the court to rely on it in deciding the issue at hand? The basic answer is that relevance remains the fundamental test for admissibility. Certain issues simply cannot be decided without expert guidance. Expert opinion evidence is therefore readily received on issues relating to ballistics, engineering, chemistry, medicine, accounting and psychiatry, to mention only a few examples. The problem which arises is this: what is the best way of cross-examining the expert witness? Although the concept of skilful cross-examination conjures up the image of the crossexaminer destroying the expert witness in the witness box, total annihilation of expert evidence in court occurs only rarely. In reality, lawyers who are expected to cross-examine experts are often at a disadvantage in that they do not possess sufficient in-depth knowledge of the specific field of expertise to enable them to cross-examine the witness. Despite the expert nature of the evidence, it is suggested that the true basis of crossexamination should not be abandoned when dealing with experts. The effectiveness of crossexamination is enhanced by keeping the number of questions to a minimum as well as opening and concluding with good strong points. At the outset it should be mentioned that there is a distinction between matters of scientific fact and matters of mere opinion. On matters of scientific fact experts seldom differ but within the province of opinion one encounters difficulties. Lengthy cross-examination concerning expert’s theoretical knowledge is usually inefficient and should rarely be attempted. Cross-examination should be directed at pure logic or scientific analysis. The cross-examiner should always have relevant authority with him in court so as to confront the expert with these. The whole effect of the testimony of an expert witness can also be destroyed by putting the witness to test at the trial as to his qualifications, his experience and his ability and discriminations as an expert. A failure to meet this test renders his evidence nugatory.

The presence of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the Constitution of Canada has transformed the historic discourse about what types of people should be appointed to the Supreme Court and the manner in which they should be selected. During the period between 1949, when the Supreme Court replaced the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in Britain as Canada's highest appellate body, and the Charter's entrenchment in 1982, the debate centered almost exclusively on questions of federalism. Specifically, the provinces argued that in a federal country, it is inappropriate that the status and composition of the court of last resort be left to the sole discretion of the central government. The Charter, with its enumeration of a variety of social categories, has produced new demands that the Court be more socially representative. Feminist legal scholars and women’s advocacy groups claim that a more representative judiciary in general and Supreme Court in particular would perform both symbolic and instrumental functions, while ethno cultural organizations have to date concentrated almost solely upon the symbolic dimension. By contrast, claims for self-government and separate justice systems illustrate that many aboriginal leaders believe their peoples’ grievances can best be met through disengagement from, rather than further integration into, Canadian political and legal processes. The Charter's presence also has conditioned demands for are formed appointment process. Now that the Court is to serve as the arbiter of citizen-state relations, many suggest, it is improper for the state to have sole control over who is appointed to that body, and therefore a more participatory and pluralistic appointment process is advocated. Clearly, these two broadly-defined reform agendas can conflict with one another. While the provinces demand more diffuse government involvement in the appointment of judges, those concentrating on the Court's Charter responsibilities believe that the state already unduly dominates the process. However, the current debate has further, largely unexplored consequences for potential reform. The failure of most participants in the debate, be they governments, scholars or advocacy groups, to articulate coherent approaches to questions of jurisprudential theory, combined with the difficulties inherent in applying the concept of representation to a judicial body, renders their critiques less valuable as guides to reform. Worse, their inadequate treatment of these issues often results in such critics undermining the legitimacy of the institution whose reform they seek. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

Alors que la connaissance de l’alimentation à la cour des ducs de Bourgogne de la maison de Valois s’est surtout limitée à l’étude des grands banquets à entremets, ce travail, fondé sur l’exploitation de sources comptables, en particulier des écrous de la dépense, complétées par les ordonnances de l’hôtel et les récits des mémorialistes et chroniqueurs « bourguignons », a cherché à prendre en considération l’ensemble de la « chaîne alimentaire » au sein de l’hôtel de Philippe le Bon et Charles le Téméraire, tant lors des repas quotidiens qu’à l’occasion des festins qui y étaient organisés. Après un chapitre dévolu à l’analyse codicologique des écrous, trois parties ont été consacrées aux structures institutionnelles, humaines et matérielles permettant de nourrir les membres de la cour. Ensuite les mécanismes choisis afin de garantir l’approvisionnement alimentaire ont été passés en revue, ce qui a permis de mettre en évidence l’importance du recours au marché, et notamment à des « pourvoyeurs » avec lesquels l’hôtel ducal passait contrat. L’examen de la consommation alimentaire a permis de faire la part entre ce qui relevait des contraintes et ce qui était imputable au goût culinaire des médiévaux. Enfin les deux derniers chapitres ont consisté à explorer le rôle joué par l’alimentation dans la mise en scène de la hiérarchie sociale et du pouvoir princier. Au total, a été reposée la question du « modèle bourguignon », où il est apparu que tant dans les moyens mis en œuvre pour assurer la nourriture du prince et de son entourage, que dans les goûts à la mode ou dans les usages politiques des repas, la cour de Bourgogne était dans une large mesure une « cour française ». / Whereas what we know of food at the court of the dukes of Burgundy of the house of Valois is especially limited to the study of huge “banquets à entremets”, this work, founded on the exploitation of accounting sources, in particular of the “escroes de la despense”, supplemented by the ordinances of the hotel and the accounts of “Burgundian” memorialists and chroniclers, is attempting at taking into account the whole of the “food chain” within the hotel of Philippe the Good and Charles the Bold, both for daily meals and feasts. Starting with a chapter devoted to the codicological analysis of the “écrous”, the next three parts investigate the institutional, human and material structures that made it possible to feed the members of the court. Then our study goes through the mechanisms which were selected in order to guarantee the food supply. That allows us to highlight the importance of the recourse to the market, and in particular to “pourvoyeurs” with whom the ducal hotel signed contract. The examination of food consumption makes it possible to distinguish between what concerned the constraints and what was ascribable to the culinary taste of the medieval people. The two final chapters consist in exploring the part played by food in order to stage social hierarchy and princely power. On the whole, the question of the “Burgundian model” is asked again, and it seems that as well as in the structures at work to ensure the food of the prince and his entourage, as in the culinary tastes or the political uses of the meals, the court of Burgundy was a “French court”.

On June 26th, 2015 the United States Supreme Court handed down a much anticipated decision answering whether or not the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution requires a State to license a marriage between two people of the same sex.[1] In a divisive 5-4 decision, the majority ruled that marriage as a fundamental liberty applies to same-sex couples. Although, Obergefell v. Hodges was facially related to the LGTBQ movement, in reality, this case was pivotally about the Supreme Court's role in our society. Obergefell was a fisticuff battle between liberal and conservative jurisprudence over the Court’s influence on the democratic process in America. This paper will attempt to show that the majority’s ruling, and the reasoning they used to reach it, was inconsistent with the Framers’ wishes for the role of the Court in our constitutional democracy. [1] "Obergefell v. Hodges." Oyez, 3 Dec. 2017, www.oyez.org/cases/2014/14-556.