Despite unquestionable achievements over the past 25 years, the Inter-American, European, African, and UN systems all face tremendous obstacles in translating their verdicts into change on the ground. In many cases, landmark decisions have not yielded meaningful reform. This report by the Open Society Justice Initiative reviews the implementation of judgments across the world's four human rights systems. Working from empirical data as well as interviews conducted with court personnel, human rights advocates, and academics, authors David C. Baluarte and Christian M. De Vos provide a comprehensive review of the dynamics involved in putting international commitments into practice. The report provides recommendations tailored to each system, while also pulling together common points of concern in its final chapter.--Publisher description.

From Amanda Knox to O.J., Casey Anthony to Kyle Rittenhouse, our justice system faces scrutiny and pressure from the media and public like never before. Can the bedrock of “innocent until proven guilty” survive in what acclaimed Seattle attorney and legal analyst Anne Bremner calls the age of judgement? When unscrupulous Italian prosecutors waged an all-out war in the media and courtroom to wrongly convict American exchange student Amanda Knox for a murder she didn’t commit, family and friends turned to renowned Seattle attorney and media legal analyst Anne Bremner to help win her freedom. The case was dubbed the “trial of the decade” and would coincide with the explosion of social media and a new era of trying cases in public as much as the courtroom. While Italian prosecutors, the press, and online lynch mobs convicted Knox in the court of public opinion, Bremner would draw upon her decades in the courtroom and in front of the camera to turn the tide with a new kind of defense in pursuit of justice. In Justice in the Age of Judgement, Anne Bremner and Doug Bremner take us inside some of the biggest cases of recent times and offer their expert, thought-provoking insights and analysis as our legal system faces unprecedented forces fighting to tip the scales of justice their way. Why couldn’t prosecutors convict O.J. Simpson despite all of the evidence seemingly proving he killed his wife Nicole? Could a jury remain unbiased in the face of overwhelming public pressure in the trial of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd? Why was Kyle Rittenhouse exonerated after shooting three people (killing two) with an assault rifle at a violent rally despite widespread media reports seemingly proving his guilt, and national calls for his conviction? Justice in the Age of Judgement is an unparalleled and unflinching look at the captivating cases tried on Twitter and TV, where the burden of proof and fundamental legal tenet of “innocent until proven guilty” is under assault from the court of public opinion.

Good Judgment, based upon the author's experience as a lawyer, law professor, and judge, explores the role of the judge and the art of judging. Engaging with the American, English, and Commonwealth literature on the role of the judge in the common law tradition, Good Judgment addresses the following questions: What exactly do judges do? What is properly within their role and what falls outside? How do judges approach their decision-making task? In an attempt to explain and reconcile two fundamental features of judging, namely judicial choice and judicial discipline, this book explores the nature and extent of judicial choice in the common law legal tradition and the structural features of that tradition that control and constrain that element of choice. As Sharpe explains, the law does not always provide clear answers, and judges are often left with difficult choices to make, but the power of judicial choice is disciplined and constrained and judges are not free to decide cases according to their own personal sense of justice. Although Good Judgment is accessibly written to appeal to the non-specialist reader with an interest in the judicial process, it also tackles fundamental issues about the nature of law and the role of the judge and will be of particular interest to lawyers, judges, law students, and legal academics.

Since publication in 1957 the importance of Bohannan's study of judicial institutions and procedures among the Tiv has been widely recognized. It has contributed widely to the continuing discussion concerning the objectives and methods to be followed in the anthropological study of law and the contribution this makes to comparative jurisprudence. the work describes and defines Tiv ideas of 'law' as expressed in the operations of their courts known as Jir. The analysis is based on and illustrated by numerous cases which the author attended and discussed with leaders in the Jir.

In the face of conflict and despair, we often console ourselves by saying that history will be the judge. Today’s oppressors may escape being held responsible for their crimes, but the future will condemn them. Those who stand up for progressive values are on the right side of history. As ideas once condemned to the dustbin of history—white supremacy, hypernationalism, even fascism—return to the world, threatening democratic institutions and values, can we still hold out hope that history will render its verdict? Joan Wallach Scott critically examines the belief that history will redeem us, revealing the implicit politics of appeals to the judgment of history. She argues that the notion of a linear, ever-improving direction of history hides the persistence of power structures and hinders the pursuit of alternative futures. This vision of necessary progress perpetuates the assumption that the nation-state is the culmination of history and the ultimate source for rectifying injustice. Scott considers the Nuremberg Tribunal and South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which claimed to carry out history’s judgment on Nazism and apartheid, and contrasts them with the movement for reparations for slavery in the United States. Advocates for reparations call into question a national history that has long ignored enslavement and its racist legacies. Only by this kind of critical questioning of the place of the nation-state as the final source of history’s judgment, this book shows, can we open up room for radically different conceptions of justice.

Reproductive justice theory made real through re-imagining critical cases addressing pregnancy, parenting, and the law's treatment of marginalized women.

Merely Judgment uses affirmative action in government contracting, legislative vetoes, flag burning, hate speech, and school prayer as windows for understanding how Supreme Court decisions send signals regarding the Court’s policy preferences to institutions and actors (such as lower courts, legislatures, executive branches, and interest groups), and then traces the responses of these same institutions and actors to Court decisions. The lower courts nearly always abide by Supreme Court precedent, but, to a surprising degree, elected branches and other institutions avoid complying with Supreme Court decisions. To explain the persistence of unconstitutional policies and legislation, Sweet isolates the ability of institutions to derail the litigation process. Merely Judgment explores the mechanisms by which litigants and their peers have escaped from the clutches of litigation and thus effectively ignored, evaded, and trumped the Supreme Court.

Fast paced legal thriller and powerful urban drama from Frederic Block, the Brooklyn based federal judge who sentenced Peter Gotti of the Gambino crime family. Based partly on fact and seething racial tensions and political corruption, it doesn't get any more "New York" than Race to Judgment! Race to Judgment is a "reality-fiction" debut novel loosely based on a number of high-profile cases handled by its author, a federal trial court judge, over his 23 years on the federal bench in Brooklyn-such as the Crown Heights riots and the Peter Gotti trial. It tracks the rise of the fictional African-American civil rights protagonist Ken Williams (in real life, the recently deceased Brooklyn DA Ken Thompson) from his days as an Assistant United States Attorney through his meteoric rise to unseat the long-term, corrupt Brooklyn DA because of a spate of phony convictions against black defendants, including another one of the judge's real cases (JoJo Jones in the book) for the murder of a Hasidic rabbi. Williams' dramatic courtroom antics (with the aid of his colorful private eye) results in JoJo's exoneration after 16 years behind bars. In addition, Williams defends a young black guidance counselor accused of killing the rabbi's son many years ago, and champions the cause of a young Hasidic woman raped by her father. As a hobby, Williams plays jazz piano and writes country songs written by the author-which are reproduced in the book and can be heard on e-books and the Internet.

U.S. Marshal Jake Taylor has seen plenty of action during his years in law enforcement. But he'd rather go back to Iraq than face his next assignment: protection detail for federal judge Liz Michaels. His feelings toward Liz haven't warmed in the five years since she lost her husband--and Jake's best friend--to possible suicide. How can Jake be expected to care for the coldhearted workaholic who drove his friend to despair? As the danger mounts and Jake gets to know Liz better, his feelings slowly start to change. When it becomes clear that an unknown enemy may want her dead, the stakes are raised. Because now both her life--and his heart--are in mortal danger.

By re-writing US Supreme Court opinions that implicate critical dimensions of racial justice, Critical Race Judgments demonstrates that it's possible to be judge and a critical race theorist. Specific issues covered in these cases include the death penalty, employment, voting, policing, education, the environment, justice, housing, immigration, sexual orientation, segregation, and mass incarceration. While some rewritten cases – Plessy v. Ferguson (which constitutionalized Jim Crow) and Korematsu v. United States (which constitutionalized internment) – originally focused on race, many of the rewritten opinions – Lawrence v. Texas (which constitutionalized sodomy laws) and Roe v. Wade (which constitutionalized a woman's right to choose) – are used to incorporate racial justice principles in novel and important ways. This work is essential for everyone who needs to understand why critical race theory must be deployed in constitutional law to uphold and advance racial justice principles that are foundational to US democracy.