Search Results (7)

In recent years, the need to provide communication support for defendants with mental health conditions or learning disabilities in criminal cases has received increased attention in international, regional and domestic law. However, defendants in England and Wales have inconsistent access to this type of support. Furthermore, limited empirical research has examined this category of defendants’ experiences and the barriers that hinder their access to communication support in criminal court proceedings. This paper addresses this gap by investigating the experiences of former defendants in England and Wales and analysing the findings from a human rights perspective. Drawing on telephone and group interviews, it examines the extent to which these individuals accessed communication support and the barriers they encountered. Most participants reported receiving no communication support to help them understand what was happening or being said in court. Five key barriers were identified: professional knowledge gaps; stigma and discrimination; absence of a formal diagnosis; the speed of court proceedings; and inequalities in statutory provisions. Addressing these barriers is essential not only for ensuring equal access to justice in criminal courts in England and Wales but also for advancing the broader principles of inclusion and disability rights in legal systems worldwide. Full article

Under current Supreme Court doctrine under the First Amendment, constitutional complaints that a state university has selected its faculty on ideological grounds—that it has “cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom”, in the language of the court from 1967—face three barriers. States may claim that an ideologically uniform faculty is required for the efficient performance of government functions, that it represents the state’s own speech, or that faculty’s expression of ideology is part of their jobs, subject to an uncertain exception for “expression related to academic scholarship or classroom instruction”. This article looks at these claims from the perspective that the Court has used with increasing frequency: the meaning expressed by the text of the Fourteenth Amendment in its original 1868 context. While there are strong arguments that the Fourteenth Amendment does not apply the First Amendment’s meaning as of 1791 against states, the Fourteenth Amendment does require that citizens of all political and religious creeds receive the same civil rights as similarly situated fellow citizens. However, the “civil rights” covered by the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 excluded “political rights” to influence the government and serve on its behalf. State universities’ Fourteenth Amendment obligations of ideological neutrality thus run not directly to faculty, but to students. An ideologically slanted process of faculty selection violates students’ civil rights in the same way that a racially biased process of jury selection violates defendants’ rights to a fair trial. Full article

The introduction of ‘special measures’ within England and Wales (i.e., provisions for vulnerable and intimidated witnesses at court) marked a significant change in legal tradition and trial procedures such that victim and witness care was repositioned as a primary concern alongside the longstanding rights afforded to defendants. As public perceptions towards the legitimacy of criminal justice procedure remain a key concern among legal scholars and social scientists, this study aimed to examine individual differences in attitudes held towards the rights afforded to complainants and defendants within English courts. Adopting a cross-sectional study design, 114 UK adults were recruited to take part in an online survey. Questions centered around the importance of providing adequate witness care whilst protecting defendants’ rights to a fair trial. A new measurement tool was developed to allow these attitudes to be systematically assessed and understood, termed the Attitudes Towards Vulnerable Victims Scale (ATVVS). Results indicate that respondent age, gender, level of education, and belief in a just world are important determinants of public support for the use of special measures at trial as well as perceptions towards complainant and defendants’ rights. Taken together, findings indicate that misconceptions about vulnerable victims appear to underlie a lack of support for the use of special measures. Full article

The Indonesian Competition Supervisory Commission (ICSC) has the authority to investigate, prosecute, adjudicate, decide, and impose sanctions on business actors for violating Indonesian competition law. It also has the authority to establish procedural laws for the competition law enforcement procedures within its institution. This single role raises various issues in the current context, including the right to a fair trial and checks and balances. This article seeks to define the position of human rights, particularly the right to a fair trial, in competition law enforcement procedures. The result is that competition law enforcement procedures are subordinate to human rights, so they must be exercised in compliance with human rights standards, particularly the right to a fair trial. Based on the experience in Indonesia, this study finds that the ICSC’s single role is incompatible with human rights commitments in fair competition law enforcement procedures. As an alternative solution, this article encourages a modification and adjustment based on human rights commitments and checks and balances mechanism by limiting one of the ICSC’s authorities and broadening the interference of the Supreme Court in enforcing Indonesian competition law at the ICSC level. Full article

We analyze the cross-national and cross-temporal variation in the presence or absence of domestic compliance gaps for three different human rights: the right to a fair trial, children’s rights, and the right of workers to form unions. Besides constitutional provisions, which have been the focus of previous research on the de jure-de facto compliance gap, statutes, executive actions, and judicial decisions all can contain promises by domestic politicians to protect human rights. Our indicator of whether legal protection exists and how strong it is reflects the many ways states make human rights legal commitments to their citizens. Our findings show that (a) the probability of promise-keeping and the effects of combinations of accountability and capacity are different for each right; (b) strong laws are a necessary but not sufficient condition for effective protection of rights; (c) treaty participation does not affect the probability of promise-keeping for any right; (d) promise-keeping for one right predicted promise-keeping for other rights. For all rights, the number of countries with gaps grew between 1994 and 2008 and then declined between 2008 and 2019. An important inference from our findings is that international treaties may only be effective when ratifiers are willing to change their domestic laws to be consistent with international norms. One counterintuitive policy implication of our findings is that democratizing low-capacity authoritarian states may lead to more violations of some human rights. Full article

The minority in Western Thrace, Greece, has long enjoyed a special status where family and inheritance matters were subject to Sharia law and religious jurisdiction (Mufti). After judicial controversy for many years over the compulsory character of this “minority privilege”, the matter has been brought before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). In view of the hearing of the case of Molla Sali v. Greece before the Grand Chamber, the Greek Parliament voted for the possibility for the members of this minority to choose either religious or civil law and jurisdiction—a right for them to exit the minority community. Although a step forward, this right raises a serious challenge to the rule of equality before the law and the right to a fair trial. Therefore, the paper seeks its possible legal foundations in the international obligations of the Greek state to protect religious freedom and the minority community and stresses the need to be accompanied by the “right to voice”, meaning a true reform of the procedure before the Mufti and an effective constitutionality control of his decisions. Full article

In an area of increasingly widespread practices, the strengthening of the self through physical activities is exponentially reinforced by the inflexible laws of wild nature, now seen as a supreme judge. The knowledge of one’s personal limits and their overcoming through the verdict of an implacable, inscrutable but fair nature, allows access to the powerful source of meaning of green spirituality. This phenomenon is closely linked to an unprecedented imagery of nature. In contemporary Western society there is a widespread trend to sacralise nature, but in the terms of a “disneyfied” object—to paraphrase David Lyon. The ritual of “symbolically challenging death”—to say it with David Le Breton—through extreme sports, forces wild nature to manifest its transcendent properties: Getting out of this trial unharmed means being able to recognise one’s higher qualities. Challenging death and coming out unscathed means giving back to the disoriented contemporary individual a right and “nomized” cosmos—in the words of Peter Berger—capable of recognising the “chosen ones”, that is to say the ones that deserve salvation. I conclude that the growing phenomenon of extreme sports in the wilderness represents the attempt of experiencing an amplification of the self in order to “enter into resonance” with nature, to become “one” with it. Nature strengthens the ultimate meanings of experience, integrating them into a sort of green eschatology. Full article