Pedagogic approaches to using technology for learning: literature review

This literature review is intended to address and support teaching qualifications and CPD through identifying new and emerging pedagogies; "determining what constitutes effective use of technology in teaching and learning; looking at new developments in teacher training qualifications to ensure that they are at the cutting edge of learning theory and classroom practice and making suggestions as to how teachers can continually update their skills." - Page 4

Agreements for Cooperation in Criminal Cases

In criminal prosecutions, both state and federal, closely negotiated agreements for immunity and lenient plea bargaining in return for co- operation have acquired considerable importance. These agreements are an ancient practice now wearing sophisticated modern dress. They may arise in complex white-collar crime cases, organized crime cases, narcotics prosecutions, and, from time to time, in other prominent major felony cases. They constitute a phenomenon that differs in important ways from the run-of-the-mill guilty pleas that characterize our metropolitan courts and recently have preoccupied students of the criminal system. Unlike the ordinary guilty plea, the suspect or defendant in co- operation agreements offers more than just a quick result that saves public resources; in this kind of case that limited consideration often would not be attractive enough to induce leniency since the government may be quite willing to spend time and money in prosecuting. In cooperation agreements the defendant trades information and testimony, with the promise of enabling the State\u27 to make a case against other defendants who, for one reason or another, are regarded as most deserving of the severest form of prosecution.\u27 Again, unlike the great run of guilty pleas, the deal made in more complex criminal cases cannot be sealed with a chat in the hall just before entering the courtroom. Compacts for cooperation may involve contested issues that must be negotiated, sometimes for months, and that eventually are embodied in letter agreements that range from the fairly straightforward to the extremely complicated. Most important, in these cases the State cannot speedily conclude the deal with a plea and a sentence and still protect its interests. The cooperator makes a set of promises and assumes potentially onerous and protracted obligations. These will at least include interviews and debriefings and may involve undercover action or observation and reporting back. The cooperator\u27s obligations will probably continue into more formal stages with grand jury and trial testimony and, perhaps, testimony at retrials years later. The State must find a way, therefore, to keep the immunity grant or plea bargain contingent on the cooperator\u27s substantial performance of the promised obligations. The usual sequence of plea and sentencing, with the consequent engagement of the double jeopardy clause, would render these long-term cooperation agreements worthless unless the State carefully drafts the agreements to avoid this hazard. For these reasons, deals involving promises to cooperate are sharply different from the general phenomenon of plea bargaining. They are exotic plants that can survive only in an environment from which some of the familiar features of the criminal procedure landscape have been expunged. A way must be found to prop open the double jeopardy lid; sentencing (if it is a plea agreement rather than an immunity grant) must be postponed, perhaps for years; immunity (if it is an immunity deal) must be contingent and not irrevocable. The prosecutor must retain the power to enforce the cooperation agreement for as long as necessary. In the end the disposition will be dictated by the terms that were negotiated and by the prosecutor\u27s ability to hold the defend- ant to those terms

Administrative Subpoenas and the Grand Jury: Converging Streams of Criminal and Civil Compulsory Process

Litigation depends on information. In the last few decades, discovery in civil cases has been dramatically extended in order to move toward a position in which litigants\u27 files are open to other parties with very few restrictions.\u27 This movement in civil cases has been relatively smooth, for its merits in terms of economy and efficiency can be fortified by pointing to its even-handed mutuality and reciprocity. In criminal cases, by contrast, courts at one time thought that any considerable expansion in discovery must be rejected because the constraints of the Fifth Amendment\u27s self-incrimination clause would bar the exercise of compulsion against the defendant,\u27 while the unilateral imposition of greater discovery duties on the government would upset the adversarial equipoise. A narrower understanding of the protections afforded by the Fifth Amendment has dulled this objection, and discovery in criminal cases consequently has been substantially broadened. The scope of civil discovery remains considerably wider than discovery in criminal cases, but the gap has been narrowed.\u27 Discovery is the acquisition of information by one party from another after an issue has been joined in litigation. Discovery rules govern the flow of information between parties formally defined as adversaries and represented by counsel. But access to information is also vital in pre-litigation settings. In the criminal context, the government may suspect that a crime has been or continues to be committed; outside the criminal area, government may suspect that regulations are being violated in a way that could lead to a civil penalty or some other administrative sanction. Or government simply may wish to probe a regulated activity in order to review the propriety of operations in that area. What powers should government have to investigate a suspicion or merely to probe at random before litigation is launched or an administrative sanction imposed? Is there or should there be a counterpart in this context to the civil-criminal dichotomy that has long dominated and still influences the discovery process? - If the initial scent is a criminal one, government may follow two classical paths. The first possibility, procuring a search warrant, is restricted by the Fourth Amendment\u27s requirement of showing probable cause before a magistrate. A search warrant thus is unsuitable in cases of mere suspicion. Furthermore, by its nature, a warrant is confined to the seizure of goods, effects, and papers and cannot be used to compel testimony. In addition, a search warrant may seem too harsh and intrusive a means of obtaining information from third parties (not themselves targets of the investigation) who may be willing to surrender documents or objects on demand

Response to Professor Marshall Cohen

At trial, a civil disobedient may appeal to his reasonable belief in the unconstitutionality of the law that he violated. However, he cannot appeal to any technical difficulties that would require him to lie about his performance of the act in question, or about the role of his conscience in motivating his action