My dissertation project seeks to understand when and how do national judges play an active and significant role in how international legal orders do or do not affect their polities. Specifically, I look at when and how British judges play a role in how European Union law through the European Court of Justice and European human rights law through the European Court of Human Rights affect the British polity. These international legal orders contain both vertical and horizontal aspects. Vertical aspects include the highest court and its judges defined by the treaty, which operates as the international, hierarchical authority on the treaty and is tasked with ensuring the compliance of the member states of the treaty. Horizontal aspects include member state courts and judges who interact with other member state courts and judges as equals voluntarily to share an understanding of the law. Britain is interesting because it may seem like a counterintuitive place to find such dynamics. Britain has a strong resistance to international authority, a deeply entrenched idea of Parliamentary Supremacy, and a dualist legal tradition where Parliament translates international law into domestic law prior to its use by the courts, which contributes to a lack of expectation of British judges engaging in international judicial activism, making Britain a hard case. In this context, we should expect that international law only matters to the extent that domestic actors are forced to incorporate it by a strong international legal order with vertical supremacy and unambiguous authority. To the contrary, my dissertation shows that British judges are quite active in many international legal orders in ways that do not merely reflect the degree of established vertical legal authority. Through dynamics that are quite autonomous from British politicians' difficult interactions with international authority, British judges play a very active role in managing and integrating international law into British politics. To see these dynamics and understand how international law has affected British politics, we must pay special attention to horizontal legal integration. Horizontal legal integration occurs when judges intentionally and selectively borrow legal concepts and precedents from other national or international jurisdictions.

This research study explores the experiences of adolescent girls testifying in a criminal court in cases of sexual abuse and rape in South Africa. Private and public narratives, such as the participants’ experiences in court, the court support system and the court process, were reported using conversations, collages and written letters. These were interpreted from a narrative perspective, within a social constructionist paradigm. Social constructionism posits that all behaviour is understood within a social context and people create their reality and world through social interaction, which in this study is the legal system. Narratives are constructions of the experiences of the participants during the preparation and testifying process. Their stories reflect both positive and ambivalent experiences, such as fear and relief, joy and sadness. The most noteworthy findings of the research were the following: • Support from court personnel and NGOs is important for adolescents when they are testifying. • The friendly environment and activities of the NGO contrasts favourably with the cold and adult environment of the court in which the NGO is based. • The court preparation programme is essential to help adolescents cope when testifying in a criminal court through addressing fears such as seeing the accused in court, not understanding the proceedings, and having to address adults in court. • The National Prosecuting Authority seems to be taking child witnesses more seriously through collaboration with outside organisations. / Dissertation (MA (Counselling Psychology))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Psychology / unrestricted

Le présent mémoire consiste en une étude des caractéristiques du cinéma de court métrage, pratique ayant sa poétique propre, laquelle exige précision, concision, efficacité, rigueur et… créativité. Il se divise en deux volets, soit un scénario de court métrage, intitulé Les jours heureux, suivi d’un essai, Petite histoire du court métrage au Québec. Des origines à l’an 2000. Dans un premier temps, le scénario Les jours heureux explore les possibilités narratives particulières offertes par le court métrage. Outre sa brièveté – et parce que, la plupart du temps, le réalisateur d’un court métrage en est aussi le scénariste – le court métrage s’avère très dense sur le plan symbolique. La luminosité, la colorimétrie, les mouvements de caméra, le cadrage, le montage : tout est prévu avec un soin méticuleux, soin essentiel à la sémantique du film. Si l’intrigue demeure simple (du moins en apparence), la narration, en revanche, se doit d’être élaborée, et réglée telle une horloge. Dans ce scénario, une attention particulière est accordée aux indications de mise en scène, de mise en cadre, de narrativité et de musicalité, lesquelles porteront à un niveau supérieur une histoire simple sur l’altruisme et la poursuite des rêves. En ce qui a trait à la seconde partie, soit l’essai Petite histoire du court métrage québécois. Des origines à l’an 2000, il vise à situer sommairement la naissance et la maturation du court métrage au Québec, tant dans sa version documentaire que dans sa version fictionnelle, les deux étant intimement liées dans notre contexte. Le cinéma québécois se voit abordé dans les grandes étapes de son évolution, ses différentes esthétiques, ses principaux réalisateurs et leurs œuvres marquantes. Mais l’exposé porte surtout sur le court métrage, depuis sa véritable fondation vers la fin des années 1950 jusqu’aux années 2000. Enfin, un retour critique sur le scénario Les jours heureux est effectué, afin de l’inscrire dans un rapport de filiation avec les courts métrages qui l’ont précédé dans l’exploration des possibilités spécifiques à cette pratique filmique.

It is the purpose of this dissertation to examine in detail those types of dramatic performances in the period 1580-1660 which were not conditioned by the exigencies of a regular theatre and a paying audience, academic and, to a certain extent, court productins have been omitted in order to concentrate attention on less thoroughly investigated branches of the subject.

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The thesis examines court sentencing decisions in theft cases within the context of a proportionality-based sentencing framework. Whilst relatively little is known of the magistrates’ court and Crown Court interpretations of proportionality, such as the impact that various aggravating and mitigating factors may have on the sentencing decision, the thesis examines those factors (relating to both the offence and the offender) that appear to have the greatest impact on the sentencing decision. Additionally, it was accepted here that the courts may rely (to some extent) on a number of other sentencing justifications, particularly crime prevention through rehabilitation, deterrence and incapacitation. The thesis finds that only a small number of factors individually appear to affect the sentencing decision. In other cases, a number of factors work together to increase the seriousness of the offence and consequently inform the sentencing decision. The thesis also finds that whilst proportionality considerations may dominate the sentencing decisions in some cases, in others the courts appear to have high regard to the need to prevent crime, particularly where an offender has a demonstrated pattern of offending due to a drug addiction. Whilst in some cases these crime reduction aims may be used within the confines of proportionality, the courts’ desire to prevent crime may eclipse proportionality constraints, ultimately leading to an apparently disproportionate sentence.

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The purpose of this study was to compare two groups of males in Arizona Department of Corrections (ADJC) custody with regard to three factors. The first group consisted of youth sentenced to ADJC who later received criminal charges for which they were transferred to the adult court system, ("Transferred" group), and the second group involved youth sentenced to ADJC who did not receive any additional criminal charges for which they were transferred, ("Non-Transferred" group). The variables examined were: youth with versus without a special education disability diagnosis, most serious level of offense for which the youth was imprisoned, and ethnicity. Due to the lack of prior research in this area, only null hypotheses were formulated. The first hypothesis was there would be no significant differences between the two groups on the observed versus expected frequencies of each of the variables studied. The second hypothesis was that there would be no significant association between the two groups with regard to their disability status on each of the variables.The results showed that regarding disability status, the null hypothesis was not rejected. The frequency of disabilities represented in both groups and the proportion of youth eligible to receive special education services was not different. Regarding the seriousness of offense level, the null hypothesis that both groups were identical was not rejected; indicating that the Transferred group was not significantly different from the Non-Transferred group in frequency of most serious offense level. In terms of disability status, and level of offense committed, the null hypothesis was also not rejected. Finally, regarding ethnic representation, no significant associations were found for the groups.The groups studied showed a larger percentage of youth receiving special education services, in comparison to the percentage of youth receiving special education services within the whole educational system. The groups also had a larger percentage of minorities compared to the latest Arizona census information on ethnic backgrounds of children under age 18. The results highlight the similarities between the Transferred and Non-Transferred groups and discuss the implications of the findings, future research directions, and the study's limitations.

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No description available.