abstract: Neuroimaging has appeared in the courtroom as a type of `evidence' to support claims about whether or not criminals should be held accountable for their crimes. Yet the ability to abstract notions of culpability and criminal behavior with confidence from these imagines is unclear. As there remains much to be discovered in the relationship between personal responsibility, criminal behavior, and neurological abnormalities, questions have been raised toward neuroimaging as an appropriate means to validate these claims. This project explores the limits and legitimacy of neuroimaging as a means of understanding behavior and culpability in determining appropriate criminal sentencing. It highlights key philosophical issues surrounding the ability to use neuroimaging to support this process, and proposes a method of ensuring their proper use. By engaging case studies and a thought experiment, this project illustrates the circumstances in which neuroimaging may assist in identifying particular characteristics relevant for criminal sentencing. I argue that it is not a question of whether or not neuroimaging itself holds validity in determining a criminals guilt or motives, but rather a proper application of the issue is to focus on the way in which information regarding these images is communicated from the `expert' scientists to the `non-expert' making decisions about the sentence that are most important. Those who are considering this information's relevance, a judge or jury, are typically not well versed in criminal neuroscience and interpreting the significance of different images. I advocate the way in which this information is communicated from the scientist-informer to the decision-maker parallels in importance to its actual meaning. As a solution, I engage Roger Pielke's model of honest brokering as a solution to ensure the appropriate use of neuroimaging in determining criminal responsibility and sentencing. A thought experiment follows to highlight the limits of science, engage philosophical repercussions, and illustrate honest brokering as a means of resolution. To achieve this, a hypothetical dialogue reminiscent of Kenneth Schaffner's `tools for talking' with behavioral geneticists and courtroom professionals will exemplify these ideas. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Biology 2014

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Thesis(Ph.D. (Translation Studies and Linguistics)) -- University of Limpopo, 2019 / People rely on language for the purposes of trade and communication. However, due to the proliferation and differences of languages and cultures, they experience barriers. These barriers may be costly when communicating in courtrooms. Interpreters seldom fail to provide accurate renditions from the source language to the target language. It often occurs that during court proceedings, the accused and the witness persons are African while all the other court officials, except the interpreter, are non-Africans. The researcher has noted with grave concern the extent to which justice is miscarried as a result of inaccurate or imperfect interpretation of evidence of the African witnesses and accused persons. This state of affairs may have disastrous effects causing the presiding officers to arrive at an unjust resolution or verdict.The aim of the study is to evaluate loss of meaning in courtroom interpreted testimony in the linguistic and culturally diverse magistrate courtrooms of Mpumalanga province in South Africa. The researcher was guided by the descriptive and explanatory methods to use qualitative research method to be able to gather necessary data in order to verify, synthesise and establish facts that defend or refute the researcher's hypothesis. Through a field work carried out in 15 magistrate courts of Mpumalanga the study used semi-structured questionnaires and observation sheets. Fifteen court interpreters, fifteen magistrates and fifteen court managers were involved in the study. Collected data was analysed by using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and Nvivo software. Results showed that inadequate education, lack of professional interpreting skills, language and linguistic barriers contribute to loss of meaning in courtroom interpreting. / NIHSS

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Notre recherche a pour objet des interrogatoires médiatisés par interprète, en tant que pratiques langagières et discursives situées dans un contexte institutionnel donné, à savoir le tribunal. Parmi les divers contextes de nos sociétés contemporaines où les interprètes sont partenaires de l’échange au sein de dialogues effectifs, nous avons ciblé le contexte judiciaire, dont le caractère institutionnel et les enjeux en font un lieu formel et au fonctionnement normé : les interrogatoires s’y déroulant sont des échanges réglés et codés. Nous avons fait alors l’hypothèse que peut fonctionner à double titre la tension qui se crée ainsi entre les normes à l’œuvre au tribunal et la présence de sujets en interaction dont les enjeux et représentations peuvent considérablement différer : elle fonctionne d’une part comme loupe grossissante sur certains phénomènes qui, lorsqu’ils se produisent malgré la normativité ambiante, sembleraient alors relever de ce qui ne peut ne pas se produire en présence d’un interprète ; elle fonctionne d’autre part comme déclencheur d’événements particuliers et uniques propres au contexte, aux personnes concernés, aux enjeux spécifiques liés aux thèmes traités, aux dialogues ponctuels. L’analyse de dialogue que nous pratiquons consiste aussi bien à spécifier préalablement le cadrage externe de l’événement communicatif qu’à décrire comment la situation est perçue et évaluée par les participants à travers l’élaboration conjointe du sens. Notre problématique vise ainsi à dégager la relation existant entre les conventions socio-discursives propres à cette sphère d’activité et certains traits interactionnels et discursifs, engendrés par la participation du "tiers/interprète" à l’interrogatoire. L’approche discursive et dialogique a permis d’entreprendre une démarche analytique prenant en compte : un plan interlocutif, concernant la dynamique compositionnelle des échanges et les rapports de places, dialogal ; un plan énonciatif et dialogique concernant à la fois la présence des sujets dans leurs dires et la façon dont les discours sont élaborés par des mouvements interprétatifs qui peuvent être plus ou moins directement accessibles, notamment à travers ces réaménagements de sens que sont les reformulations inter-linguistiques de l’interprète. Les voix qui parcourent l’espace discursif en le rendant hétérogène peuvent par-là être identifiées. Ces pratiques d’interactions médiatisées peuvent alors être pensées sur un continuum de dispositifs allant des stratégies d’effacement énonciatif que l’interprète met en œuvre - afin de créer des discours objectivés -, aux procédés variés qui l’inscrivent dans le discours d’autrui, jusqu’à la prise en charge de ses propres discours en tant que locuteur/énonciateur à part entière. Enfin, les propriétés qui caractérisent les interrogatoires interprétés dans le contexte du tribunal s’avèrent propres non seulement au genre de discours institutionnel et juridique concerné mais également à la présence du "tiers", apte à influencer l’événement discursif "interrogatoire" à tous les niveaux pris en compte par l’analyse. Il semble alors que cela pourrait permettre d’appréhender ces dialogues comme un type, ou sous-genre, particulier du discours juridique. / Our research focuses on interpreter-mediated examinations as situated oral exchanges and discursive practices in a specific institutional context, i.e. the courtroom. In contemporary societies, among the various situations where interpreters act and dialogue in face-to face interactions, the judiciary context proves to be one of those institutional domains where highly formal and normative practices take place. Examinations are very coded exchanges. Starting from the hypothesis that the tension which develops between laws and norms at work in this frame and the discursive productions by speakers directly dialoguing and interacting, whose representations and goals may consistently differ, may have a double effect on the interpreter-mediated event, we further investigate how : some specific interactional and discourse patterns realize in a such ritualized and normative context, attempting to understand if they are typical of interpreter-mediated interactions in general or of the specific examinations we observe ; and speakers’ identities, institutional roles, their personal goals and the specific themes concerned have an influence on these practices, producing very peculiar and singular patterns of sense-making. Hence, focusing on face-to-face interpreting practices, the dialogical and discourse approach we adopt allows to take into account : from one side, what relates to the dialogal dimension of the interaction, pertaining to a dialogue between two (or more) co-present interlocutors and the definitions of their identities, from what pertains to the dialogical one, having to do with dialogism or dialogicality in the more abstract senses. Given that understanding is related to responding, interpreters are seen as speakers actively involved in dialogue. The ways speakers leave traces of their presence in the utterances they produce, while they’re doing the interacting, and, particularly, the way in which the interpreter’s presence is sensed through thar interlinguistic reformulation of the other’s words which is translation gives access to the way in which sense-making is jointly created in the framework of a highly ritualized activity type such as examinations in the courtroom. In the end, interpreted-mediated examinations may be thought of as changing practices on a more/less continuum, going from : the cases where the interpreter translates as a reporter using the 1st person, using linguistics strategies allowing him/her to assume full responsibility for the words uttered without showing it; to all those cases of variation on the expected pattern which, at different degrees, let emerge his/her presence in the interpreting process; to the production of discourses for which s/he is entirely responsible, acting as a an autonomous speaker. These collectively constructed events may therefore suggest that there is a dynamic relation between expected practices in the discourse context and their actual realization. Interpreter-mediated examinations prove to be per se speech events, namely very specific exchanges with their often hybrid dynamics, within which all interlocutors - including the interpreter – dialogically contribute to understanding and to the creation of meaning.

Few state courtrooms in the United States have integrated information technology (IT) in court trials. Despite jurors' beliefs that using courtroom technology improves their abilities to serve as jurors, the attitudes and experiences among attorneys and judges toward the utility of IT continue to pose barriers. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore and describe the experiences of attorneys and judges in the State of Virginia with regard limited use of IT in state courtrooms. The conceptual framework included Davis, Bagozzi, and Warshaw's (1989) technology acceptance model; Rogers's (2003) diffusion of innovation theory; and Venkatesh, Morris, Davis, and Davis's (2003) unified theory of acceptance. A snowball sample of 22 attorneys and judges were interviewed using in-depth, semistructured questions. Data were analyzed using open coding techniques to identify themes and patterns with findings supporting the need for improved and expanded courtroom technology. Finding showed that attorneys and judges believed courtroom technology could be useful; however, the lack of training and the cost to implement technology limited their use of technology in courtrooms. Implications for positive social change include increasing the adoption rate of courtroom technology to support courtroom processes and empowering courts to improve the quality of justice through technology in an efficient and effective manner, thereby benefiting everyone in the judicial system and the public.

This thesis investigates verbal insults recorded in judicial protocols in the Swedish university townUppsaladuring the 1630s. The aim of the study is to analyze insults as linguistic formulations and social acts in Early Modern Swedish society. The methodology of the study is guided by speech act theory and ethnography of communication in order to examine the lexical realizations of insults and verbal action in different speech communities. From a total of 652 protocols in two series of records from the city court and the university council inUppsalain the 1630s, sections of text were excerpted that registered insults. The material under investigation comprises 179 cases that contained 276 insults. The descriptive meta-linguistic expressions for insults are rich as well as varied, and the performed insults are reported with or without invectives and as direct or indirect speech. Clear patterns emerged in the investigation by performing various semantic-, pragmatic-, and discourse-level analyses of the judicial records. Insults among city people were commonly interpreted as truth-conditional representative speech acts and thereby were viewed as false accusations of various kinds. In the academic world, however, the truth value of the insult was of minor importance. The speech act was regarded mainly as an expressive utterance of anger and frustration. Through a comparison of the city and university judicial records, it is shown that the patterns of insults reveal a general semantic process in which primarily concrete, objective meanings come to fulfill increasingly interpersonal and pragmatic speech functions.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-26T20:20:26Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Andre Guilherme Lemos Jorge.pdf: 1065796 bytes, checksum: 5c16bdbb62ff0cff1d40c31b1e32d299 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-10-03 / The current work serves the primary purpose of demonstrating the undeniable obligation of enforcement, on behalf of Administrative Courtrooms, of the Federal Constitution when the process is submitted to them. The progressive broadening of state-owned activity, notably managed by The Executive, leads to bias conditions between the private interest and public agents who are eager for power. As one of the most aggressive tools to maintain and widen unbalance, taxation finds in Administrative Courtrooms which in most cases are appointed by The Executive, fertile grounds to advance over assets and individual rights. Aimed at assuring taxpayers equal, non-confiscatory and reasonable treatment on behalf of the tax collector, the Federal Constitution must be applied to its highest attribution, meaning to assure the exercise of democracy and preserve dignity of the human being. Under such context, we must bring the concept of system as the centerfold of the debate, taking the work of Mario Losano as cornerstone, so that law enforcement can be applied in full under the Federal Constitution to every and any conflict of interest to avoid play stages of exceptions subsidizing the perpetuation of the concentration of power. A brief analysis of the evolution of the State, specialized in typical and atypical functions, serves to demonstrate the direction of its development. Furthermore, the process, as a tool to nullify controversies, and above all, as a guarantee of the participation of each party, would bring assurance of justice and balance before the State / O presente trabalho tem por finalidade primordial demonstrar a indeclinabilidade, por parte dos tribunais administrativos, de aplicação da Constituição Federal aos casos a estes submetidos. A progressiva ampliação da atividade estatal, notadamente por intermédio do Poder Executivo, acarreta um desequilíbrio entre a situação do particular frente aos agentes públicos, cada vez mais ávidos de poder. Como um dos instrumentos mais ferozes de manutenção e ampliação do desequilíbrio, a tributação encontra nos tribunais administrativos, no mais das vezes nomeados pelo Poder Executivo, campo fértil para avançar sobre o patrimônio e as liberdades individuais. A fim de garantir aos contribuintes o tratamento isonômico, não confiscatório e razoável por parte do ente arrecadador, a Constituição Federal deve ser aplicada em sua mais elevada atribuição, a de assegurar o exercício da democracia, para preservação da dignidade da pessoa humana. Neste contexto, traz-se para o centro do debate o conceito de sistema, tendo como marco teórico a obra de Mario Losano, para que o Direito seja aplicado à luz da Constituição Federal, a todo e qualquer conflito de interesses, sem que haja palcos de exceção a subsidiar a perpetuação da concentração do poder. Uma breve análise da evolução do Estado, com a especialização em funções, típicas e atípicas, serve para demonstrar a direção de seu desenvolvimento. Ademais, o processo, como instrumento apto a dirimir controvérsias, mas, sobretudo, como garantia de participação das partes, seria a certeza da justiça e do equilíbrio frente ao Estado

Post-occupancy evaluations represent an important missed opportunity. While POEs are often used to inform design guides, and to support facility management, they are seldom used to support design decision-making. While there are several technical, methodological, and cultural impediments to the ongoing use of POE results in design, characteristics of POE data and data structure is an important, and often overlooked, impediment. Some evaluators have attempted to resolve this problem by involving actively as consultants in design teams or involving users, such as Placemaking or Process Architecture. Recent advances in conceptual data modeling provide another strategy to interface POE findings and design decision-making. This thesis uses EXPRESS modeling language to develop a conceptual data structure for POE data, and integrate POE data with as-built building descriptions. While this effort has the potential to develop an improved way to structure POE data and make it more useful, it is also an extension of ISO-STEP. This study develops a data structure based on post-occupancy evaluations of state and federal trial courtrooms conducted by the researcher. Thirty-one courtrooms were evaluated, resulting in usable data from 93 courtroom users in 26 courtrooms. An EXPRESS-G schema was developed and was translated into a relational database for holding data and running queries. The investigator illustrated a range of query-generated outcomes to support decision-making during design and design review. Such outcomes include exploring existing courtrooms, comprehending the types of design decisions implemented across federal and state courtrooms, identifying design decisions that have been rated favorably or otherwise by courtroom users, rating design decisions based on evaluation data from existing courtrooms, and predicting a designed environments supportiveness to task performance. Further, multivariate analysis of the POE data provides the first scientific investigation of courtrooms as work settings. Finally, eight key performance indicators of courtrooms were developed based on the POE data.

Reaching shared understanding during court hearings is a prerequisite to ensure a fair trial and maintaining legal certainty. Every month between 2,000 and 3,000 court hearings in Sweden make use of interpreters. Interpreter-mediated conversations involve an extra discourse compared to monolingual conversations which increases the risk of misunderstandings. Using methodology of conversation analysis the study explores how bilingualism is expressed during interpreter-mediated court hearings, at which occasions the Spanish-speaking laymen switch to Swedish and what function the codeswitching fulfills. The study identifies patterns in codeswitching and categorizes them into six different types. Furthermore the ideology of monolingualism in court is challenged and the advantages and disadvantages of codeswitching is discussed. The analysis concludes that even though certain types of codeswitching lead to delays in the conversation, the interaction is mostly favored by the Spanish-speaking party understanding some Swedish. Court proceedings would benefit from being more permissive toward bilingualism and the types of codeswitching that favor intersubjectivity.