Before Supreme Court nominees are allowed to take their place on the High Court, they must face a moment of democratic reckoning by appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Despite the ...potential this holds for public input into the direction of legal change, the hearings are routinely derided as nothing but empty rituals and political grandstanding. In this book, Paul M. Collins and Lori A. Ringhand present a contrarian view that uses both empirical data and stories culled from more than seventy years of transcripts to demonstrate that the hearings are a democratic forum for the discussion and ratification of constitutional change. As such, they are one of the ways in which 'We the People' take ownership of the Constitution by examining the core constitutional values of those permitted to interpret it on our behalf.
The focal concerns framework is widely used in research on sentencing, although the empirical validity of the framework itself is seldom directly evaluated. To fill this gap, we use survey data from ...134 trial court judges to examine two basic questions about the focal concerns framework: (1) How and to what extent do judges consider the original focal concerns of blameworthiness, community protection, and practical constraints in their sentencing decisions? (2) To what extent is perceived rehabilitation potential, or "redeemability," considered by judges and should it become a fourth focal concern? Results based on open-ended survey questions reveal that judges continue to rely on the original focal concerns, but they operationalize these concerns in a variety of ways. Results further show that most judges are concerned about the rehabilitation potential, or "redeemability," of defendants. Based on these results, we conclude that the focal concerns framework continues to be of value but that future research using the framework should consider adding redeemability/rehabilitation potential as a fourth focal concern. We caution, however, that some of the factors judges consider in connection with rehabilitation potential/redeemability could increase sentencing disparities.
Explores the life of groundbreaking attorney, Elreta Melton Alexander Ralston. In 1945 Alexander became the first African American woman to graduate from Columbia Law School; in 1947 the first ...African American woman to practice law in North Carolina; and in 1968 the first African American woman to become an elected district court judge.
Women judges are playing increasingly prominent roles in many African judiciaries, yet there remains very little comparative research on the subject. Drawing on extensive cross-national data and ...theoretical and empirical analysis, this book provides a timely and broad-ranging assessment of gender and judging in African judiciaries. Employing different theoretical approaches, the book investigates how women have fared within domestic African judiciaries as both actors and litigants. It explores how women negotiate multiple hierarchies to access the judiciary, and how gender-related issues are handled in courts. The chapters in the book provide policy, theoretical and practical prescriptions to the challenges identified, and offer recommendations for the future directions of gender and judging in the post-COVID-19 era, including the role of technology, artificial intelligence, social media, and institutional transformations that can help promote women’s rights. Bringing together specific cases from Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria, Zambia, Tanzania, and South Africa and regional bodies such as ECOWAS and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and covering a broad range of thematic reflections, this book will be of interest to scholars, students, and practitioners of African law, judicial politics, judicial training, and gender studies. It will also be useful to bilateral and multilateral donor institutions financing gender-sensitive judicial reform programs, particularly in Africa.
Recent literature on procedural justice has consistently shown positive organizational outcomes resulting from fair and just treatment by supervisors. This study expands the current literature by ...assessing the beneficial effect of being treated fairly and justly by supervisors in court settings. Based on survey data from Chinese judges, this study analyzes the direct linkage between supervisor procedural justice and judges’ perceived tensions with litigants and their indirect relationship through trust in litigants and external procedural justice. The results of structural equation modeling indicate that supervisor justice is positively related to trust in litigants and external procedural justice and negatively associated with tensions with litigants. The indirect connection between supervisor justice and tensions with litigants is mainly through external procedural justice. Female and seasoned judges are more willing than their male and less-experienced counterparts to treat litigants in a procedurally just manner.
Este trabajo presenta una primera aproximación al perfil profesional, académico, personal y político de los primeros jueces del Tribunal Supremo americano y del Tribunal Constitucional de Austria, ...así como de los Tribunales Constitucionales de Alemania e Italia en la Postguerra Mundial, y el de España durante la transición política. A pesar de las diferencias entre los contextos históricos y los sistemas de jurisdicción constitucional, el hecho de ser todos ellos tribunales creados en momentos fundacionales de un nuevo régimen, en los que desempeñaron una función política y cultural, incidió en el perfil de sus miembros. El estudio comparado permite constatar algunas características comunes: ser hombres con alguna formación jurídica, con vinculaciones y militancias políticas, experiencia institucional, y a menudo con implicación en los trabajos constituyentes y legislativos previos a la creación del Tribunal.
