Justice in practice: South Sudan

There is no question that the administration of justice in South Sudan can and must be improved. Indeed there are ongoing efforts by government, practitioners, civil society groups and international agencies to promote access to justice. But in this evolving and plural legal environment, we also need better information about everyday experiences of justice

The Veil of Ignorance in Rawlsian Theory

As part of his effort to answer the question What is the best conception of justice for a democratic society? philosopher John Rawls constructed a thought experience called the original position. In the original position, representativs of members of society choose principles of justice for society in light of limited interests and with limited information. Situated behind the veil of ignorance, the parties in the original position have no knowledge about particular facts that could lead them to prefer principles of justice partial to those they represent. The veil of ignorance is thus an important part of Rawls\u27s argument that his conception of justice-justice as fairness-is the best conception for a democratic society

TOWARDS A COMPASSIONATE AND COST-EFFECTIVE DRUG POLICY: A FORUM ON THE IMPACT OF DRUG POLICY ON THE JUSTICE SYSTEM AND HUMAN RIGHTS

This is a transcript from the the first of three panels on drug policy and the impact of drug policy on the justice system and human rights. Don Johnson of the New York Society for Ethical Culture and Tom Haines the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Partnership for Responsible Drug Information introduced the moderator Kathy Rocklen. Judge Sweet of the Southern District of New York is joined by experts on drug policy from the medical and academic worlds, private foundations and other interested organizations, who will give their views on the impact of drug policy on the justice system and on human rights. Judge Sweet believes the current policy of criminalizing the use and the commerce of particular mind-altering substances has failed of its purposes, has weakened the justice system, and impinged upon human rights. Judge Sweet believes that criminal sanctions should be removed and our society should be educated about the use of drugs, all drugs, and that to the extent that drugs create a problem for the society, that problem be considered an issue of public health. Judge Sweet’s remarks are followed by a question and answer period in which panelists and the audience will participate, as well. The panelists are Ernest Drucker, Professor of Epidemiology and Social Medicine at Montefiore Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine; Robert Gangi, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York; Julie Stewart, who is the founder and president of Families Against Mandatory Minimum; Richard Stratton, the editor-in-chief of “Prison Life” magazine; and Carol J. Weiss, addiction psychiatrist and Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Public Health at Cornell Medical Center

The Role of Abusive Supervision and Interactional Justice in Employee Information Security Policy Noncompliance Intention

Employee information security noncompliance behaviors may ruin an organization’s reputation; thus, much scholarly effort has been devoted to reducing deviating behaviors in organizations. We attempt to determine what motivations may contribute to the formation of an employees’ noncompliance behavioral intentions. The proposed research model links the relationship between abusive supervision and policy noncompliance intention in an information security context. Drawing on organizational justice research, this work explores the role of abusive supervision in employees’ noncompliance with information security policy from an interactional justice perspective and further proposes that the effect of interactional justice on noncompliance intention is moderated by the certainty and severity of sanctions based on general deterrence theory. We present a theoretical foundation for this investigation and an empirical design for exploring this research question. We also propose a plan for a research design and data collection, with results to be presented in the future

Prison libraries, intellectual freedom and social justice in Nigeria

This paper deployed a systematic review to examine prison libraries and intellectual freedom towards attaining social justice in Nigeria. Information resources used cover the periods of 2010 and 2020 to articulate the necessary development in prison libraries, intellectual freedom and social justice in Nigeria. Search engines such as Google scholar, Semantic Scholar, and RefSeek were used to retrieve information and through different queries yielded several results but very few of them were selected to fit in the study due to limited studies directed to address the focus of this study particularly in the Nigeria scenario. Information obtained were subjected to content analysis following relevant themes of the research questions and relevant information obtained were subjected to analysis using a systematic review approach of relevant articles and information to achieve the major objectives of the study. Results were presented with respect to the research question of the study. The findings revealed that prison inmates in Nigeria have several information needs which include current affairs, legal information, religious information, health information, psychological information, recreational information, vocational information, educational information. recreational information and also financial needs. Despite the huge needs of these inmates, prison libraries provide very few, restricting access to majority to inmates. This could pose significant effect on inmates in the long run particularly in the prison and after serving their prison punishment hence, affecting the attainment of social justice society in Nigeria and also the attainment of SDG. To this end, the study recommends that various information needs are to be considered and met by prison libraries towards ensuring intellectual freedom and ensuring a social justice community and prison libraries should be provided with several needed facilities and funds that could make it possible to meet the intellectual freedom of inmates towards ensuring a social justice society

Autism Spectrum Disorder and the Criminal Justice System: An Interdisciplinary Study

The purpose of this study was to advocate and raise awareness of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to SIU law students and to inform communication disorders and science (CDS) students of some basic facts about the criminal justice system in the United States. To accomplish this, an interdisciplinary session was conducted in which three CDS students taught ten law students about characteristics of ASD and three law teacher assistants taught thirteen CDS students about disability law and other intricacies of the justice system. Fifteen question pre-surveys were distributed to the participants upon arrival. CDS students answered questions about court proceedings and defendant rights and law students answered questions about various ASD characteristics. Each group of students were divided into three groups (six groups total) and were taught information pertaining to the questions in the surveys in a collaborative manner. Afterwards, all participants took a post-survey identical to the pre-survey. Post-survey results of the law students increased in accuracy by 19.35% (average 4.7 question increase). Post-survey results of the CDS students increased in accuracy by 15.9% (average 2.38 question increase). The interdisciplinary session succeeded in raising law students’ awareness of autism spectrum disorder and in increasing CDS students’ knowledge of the criminal justice system

Statutory Findings and Insider Trading Regulation

Insider trading has presented some of the most unsettled and contentious issues of corporate law. These issues have been particularly difficult because often it has not even been clear whether the law forbids those who possess material nonpublic information to trade securities. Even as commentators have debated whether insider trading ought to be forbidden, the courts have disagreed on the more basic question of when and whether such trading is, in fact, forbidden. The law governing insider trading has been unclear because the scope of the SEC\u27s authority to regulate insider trading has been unclear. For a while, courts uniformly held that section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act (the Exchange Act ) authorizes the SEC to forbid trading by those in possession of misappropriated material nonpublic information, and that section 14(e) of the Exchange Act authorizes the Commission to forbid trading on the basis of any material nonpublic information about tender offers. However, two circuit courts of appeal subsequently rejected this precedent and held that the Commission could not forbid trading on the basis of misappropriated information or prohibit informed trading in the context of tender offers. Earlier this year, in United States v. O\u27Hagan, the Supreme Court held that (1) a person who trades securities for personal profit using confidential information misappropriated in breach of a fiduciary duty to the source of the information violates section 10(b) and rule 10b-57 and (2) at least insofar as the question had been presented to the Court, the SEC did not exceed its rulemaking authority under section 14(e) when it adopted rule 14e-3,8 which establishes a sort of parity-of-information regime for trading in connection with tender offers. Although the Court\u27s opinion in O\u27Hagan strongly endorsed the SEC\u27s regulation of insider trading, it left several important questions unanswered. For example, it is not entirely clear what sort of confidential relationship creates a duty of loyalty protected by section 10(b). Defendants presumably will argue that the breach of a noncommercial confidential relationship, such as that between a therapist and patient or between family members, does not suffice to establish securities fraud. In addition, the Court explicitly refrained from deciding whether rule 14e-3 is valid insofar as it prohibits trading in advance of a tender offer. A final question is whether the Court\u27s holding was correct. Two courts of appeal had construed section 10(b) and rule 14e-3 much more narrowly, as had numerous academic commentators. Moreover, three justices dissented from parts of the majority\u27s opinion in O\u27Hagan, and Justice Thomas, joined by the Chief Justice, strenuously argued that neither the misappropriation theory nor rule 14e-3 was consistent with the Exchange Act. This Article is about a provision of the Insider Trading and Securities Fraud Enforcement Act of 1988 ( the 1988 Act ) that directly addressed the validity of rule 14e-3 and the misappropriation doctrine, and the parameters of the latter. In the 1988 Act, Congress declared its finding that the rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934... governing trading while in possession of material, nonpublic information are, as required by such Act, necessary and appropriate in the public interest and for the protection of investors. The statute further provided that the SEC had enforced such rules and regulations vigorously, effectively, and fairly. Inasmuch as the Exchange Act authorizes the SEC to promulgate necessary and appropriate rules and the 1988 Act says that the SEC\u27s insider trading rules are necessary and appropriate, on first reading these findings seem to settle the matter and establish that the SEC\u27s insider trading initiatives are within its statutory authority. Surprisingly, however, they have not figured at all in the debate over the validity of the SEC rules. Thus, one purpose of this Article is simply to highlight their existence

The Court of Justice of the European Union. College of Europe Research Paper in Law 02/2014

The Court of Justice of the European Union is one of the institutions of the Union. Praised by some as the relentless and steady motor of European integration and attacked by others as an example of a clearly biased institution, more ink has perhaps been spilled over the years on discussing the (de)merits of the Court of Justice than any other Union institution. In face of such considerable literature coming from legal, political science, sociological, and more recently also historical quarters, this chapter cannot but scratch the surface of the vast topic by providing a concise introduction into selected institutional themes in a legal1 and, where possible, diachronic perspective: the structure of the Union courts located in Luxembourg; basic information about the type of judicial business the Court of Justice carries out; the composition of the Court of Justice, including the recent changes made to the way in which judges and advocates-general are selected; the often discussed style and structure of the judgments; and, finally, the even more frequently discussed and recurring question of the legitimacy of the Court of Justice

Saturns and Rickshaws Revisited: What Kind of Employment Arbitration System has Developed?

[Excerpt] In this article, we examine a new, more detailed dataset of employment arbitration cases administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA), which includes information on many important aspects of these cases that are not included in the California Code of Civil Procedure disclosure requirements. With the availability of this new data, we are able to revisit Estreicher\u27s argument and look at the question of whether employment arbitration has become a new Saturn system of justice providing better access to employees and to what degree it is different from the Cadillac-Rickshaw system of justice in employment litigation. We begin by describing our new data and then turn to examining what it tells us about employment arbitration as a system of justice providing access to employees

Rise of the Machines: Justice Information Systems and the Question of Public Access to Court Records over the Internet

Professor Silverman discusses the machines that have been taking up positions in the court houses for more than a quarter of a century. These machines are becoming an integrated network integral to the workings of the court. With the assistance of the machines, the myriad and diverse members of the justice and public safety communities together with the public will evolve into a single complex whole that could dedicate itself to creating a more humane and just society comprised of better informed individuals to whom they are genuinely accountable. There are those who fear the machines, afraid that personal privacy is doomed with public access to court records. Professor Silverman explains how this fear is unwarranted. In the first part of the article he introduces the reader to this technology (Part II) and its likely role in evolving justice information systems (Parts I and III). In the second half of the article, Professor Silverman explores the debate over whether the public should be permitted access to court records over the Internet. After explaining the origins, history, and principal sides of this debate (Part IV), he argues, first, that when used properly, XML permits the public to have access to court records over the Internet while promoting public safety and protecting personal security (Part V) and, second, that the presence of discrediting and embarrassing facts in a case file does not justify limiting public access to court records over the Internet while permitting unlimited public access at the courthouse (Part VI)