Civil Justice: Lay Judges in the EU Countries

<p>Lay judges fulfill important functions for the justice system of a country. In the European Union member states, scholars have analysed the use of lay judges in criminal cases. However, little is known about lay participation in civil justice. The paper introduces commonly cited reasons to have lay judges as well as the principal forms of lay participation and then surveys the EU countries for its implementation in civil cases. Mixed tribunals, involving lay judges under the leadership of a professional judge, are relatively frequent. Several countries have special labour courts or commercial courts with lay members and others have single lay judges, or all-lay judge panels. Roughly a third of the 28 EU member states have no lay participation in civil justice but only three of those have no lay judges in any branch of the courts. Almost all the reasons for including lay decision makers are served somehow by the existing forms, including providing different experiences and perhaps expert knowledge. The article concludes, citing non-EU states and lay participation in criminal and administrative courts as further evidence, that lay judges in one form or another are an element of European legal systems.</p> <hr /><p>Los jueces legos cumplen funciones importantes para el sistema de justicia de un pa&iacute;s. En los Estados miembro de la Uni&oacute;n Europea, acad&eacute;micos han analizado el uso de jueces legos en casos criminales. Sin embargo, se sabe poco acerca de la participaci&oacute;n de los legos en la justicia civil. El art&iacute;culo presenta las razones que habitualmente se citan para tener jueces legos, as&iacute; como las formas principales de la participaci&oacute;n de legos, para a continuaci&oacute;n medir su implementaci&oacute;n en casos civiles en los pa&iacute;ses de la Uni&oacute;n Europea. Son relativamente frecuentes los tribunales mixtos, en los que participan jueces legos, bajo la direcci&oacute;n de un juez profesional. Varios pa&iacute;ses tienen tribunales laborales especiales o tribunales comerciales con miembros legos y otros cuentan con jueces legos individuales, o jurados de jueces legos. Aproximadamente un tercio de los 28 Estados miembros de la UE no tienen participaci&oacute;n de legos en la justicia civil, pero s&oacute;lo tres de ellos no tienen jueces legos en ninguna secci&oacute;n de los tribunales. Casi todas las razones para incluir responsables legos se basan de alguna manera en las formas existentes, incluyendo ofrecer diferentes experiencias y, tal vez, el conocimiento de expertos. Citando Estados de fuera de la UE y la participaci&oacute;n de legos en tribunales penales y administrativos como evidencia, el art&iacute;culo llega a la conclusi&oacute;n de que los jueces legos, en una u otra forma, son un elemento de los sistemas legales jur&iacute;dicos europeos.</p> <p><strong>DOWNLOAD THIS PAPER FROM SSRN</strong>: <a href="http://ssrn.com/abstract=2665612" target="_blank">http://ssrn.com/abstract=2665612</a></p

"Law is an Odd Thing" - Liberalism and Law in the TV-series "The Good Wife"

The public also receives information on law and the legal professions from fictional entertainment, which has become part of every-day discourse on crime. The American high-gloss television series The Good Wife since 2009 not only dramatizes work and private lives of lawyers but also responds to recent events and debates. With its overall message, The Good Wife joins the liberal camp in the legalpolitical debate

Anomalous transport in biased ac-driven Josephson junctions: Negative conductances

We investigate classical anomalous electrical transport in a driven, resistively and capacitively shunted Josephson junction device. Novel transport phenomena are identified in chaotic regimes when the junction is subjected to both, a time periodic (ac) and a constant, biasing (dc) current. The dependence of the voltage across the junction on the dc-current exhibits a rich diversity of anomalous transport characteristics: In particular, depending on the chosen parameter regime we can identify so termed absolute negative conductance around zero dc-bias, the occurrence of negative differential conductance and, after crossing a zero conductance, the emergence of a negative nonlinear conductance in the non-equilibrium response regime remote from zero dc-bias.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

Magnetic flux in mesoscopic rings : capacitance, inertia and kinetics

We consider mesoscopic non-superconducting rings with an effective capacitance. We propose a Hamiltonian model describing magnetic flux in such rings. Next we incorporate dissipation and thermal fluctuations into our kinetic model. We consider kinetics in limiting regimes of strong and weak coupling to thermal bath

Driven binary mixtures: Clustering and giant diffusion

We study noise-assisted transport in a binary mixture of overdamped interacting particles. As one species (termed “active”) is subject to a weak dc drive, the other one (termed “passive”) can be dragged along due to the clustering of particles of both species. On increasing the external drive, clusters of different size fragment at different thresholds that depend on the mixture temperature, the inter-particle interaction strength, and the densities of both species of particles. Moreover, normal self-diffusion of both species at the fragmentation thresholds undergoes a giant enhancement simultaneous with a markedly negative cross-diffusion coefficient.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/58110/2/epl_73_4_513.pd

Copper(II) complexes of functionalized 2,2’:6’,2’’-terpyridines and 2,6-di(thiazol-2-yl)pyridine : structure, spectroscopy, cytotoxicity and catalytic activity

Six new copper(II) complexes with 2,2’:6’,2’’-terpyridine (4’-Rn-terpy) [1 (R1 = furan-2-yl), 2 (R2 = thiophen- 2-yl), and 3 (R3 = 1-methyl-1H-pyrrol-2-yl)] and 2,6-di(thiazol-2-yl)pyridine derivatives (Rn-dtpy) [4 (R1), 5 (R2), and 6 (R3)] have been synthesized by a reaction between copper(II) chloride and the corresponding ligand. The complexes have been characterized by UV-vis and IR spectroscopy, and their structures have been determined by X-ray analysis. The antiproliferative potential of copper(II) complexes of 2,2’:6’,2’’-terpyridine and 2,6-di(thiazol-2-yl)pyridine derivatives towards human colorectal (HCT116) and ovarian (A2780) carcinoma as well as towards lung (A549) and breast adenocarcinoma (MCF7) cell lines was examined. Complex 1 and complex 6 were found to have the highest antiproliferative effect on A2780 ovarian carcinoma cells, particularly when compared with complex 2, 3 with no antiproliferative effect. The order of cytotoxicity in this cell line is 6 > 1 > 5 > 4 > 2 ≈ 3. Complex 2 seems to be much more specific towards colorectal carcinoma HCT116 and lung adenocarcinoma A549 cells. The viability loss induced by the complexes agrees with Hoechst 33258 staining and typical morphological apoptotic characteristics like chromatin condensation and nuclear fragmentation. The specificity towards different types of cell lines and the low cytotoxic activity towards healthy cells are of particular interest and are a positive feature for further developments. Complexes 1–6 were also tested in the oxidation of alkanes and alcohols with hydrogen peroxide and tert-butyl-hydroperoxide (TBHP). The most active catalyst 4 gave, after 120 min, 0.105 M of cyclohexanol + cyclohexanone after reduction with PPh3. This concentration corresponds to a yield of 23% and TON = 210. Oxidation of cis-1,2-dimethylcyclohexane with m-CPBA catalyzed by 4 in the presence of HNO3 gave a product of a stereoselective reaction (trans/cis = 0.47). Oxidation of secondary alcohols afforded the target ketones in yields up to 98% and TON = 630

Reliability of fluctuation-induced transport in a Maxwell-demon-type engine

We study the transport properties of an overdamped Brownian particle which is simultaneously in contact with two thermal baths. The first bath is modeled by an additive thermal noise at temperature $T_A$. The second bath is associated with a multiplicative thermal noise at temperature $T_B$. The analytical expressions for the particle velocity and diffusion constant are derived for this system, and the reliability or coherence of transport is analyzed by means of their ratio in terms of a dimensionless P\'{e}clet number. We find that the transport is not very coherent, though one can get significantly higher currents.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure