Criminal Trial Juries in Australia: From Penal Colonies to a Federal Democracy

The recent history of juries in Australia reveals an interesting clash between the endeavours of state and territory governments to reduce the costs associated with jury trial by various means and the determination of the High Court of Australia to reassert the traditional values and features of jury trial

Rough Justice: Establishing the Rule of Law in Post-Conflict Territories

Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

The Name and Nature of Translator Studies

A number of recent research tendencies in Translation Studies focus explicitly on the translator in some way, rather than on translations as texts. These trends might be grouped under the term “Translator Studies”. The article argues that this new focus is inadequately represented in Holmes’ classic map. Evidence of the recent trends is found especially in translation sociology, but also in translation history and in research into the translator’s decision-making processes. A broad outline of Translator Studies would cover sociology, culture and cognition, all looking at the translator’s agency, in different ways

UNaccountable? The United Nations, Emergency Powers, and the Rule of Law

For a body committed to the rule of law in theory, the applicability of the rule of law to the United Nations in practice remains oddly unclear. This Article will not consider the personal responsibility of UN officials, who generally enjoy personal or functional immunity from legal process in the territories where they work. Rather the focus of this Article is on the quasi-constitutional question of the liability of the organization itself. As the United Nations has assumed more state-like functions-in particular through the coercive activities of its Security Council--the question of what limits exist on the powers thus exercised has become more pressing. These powers may be compared to emergency powers within the domestic jurisdiction of states. Whereas a state of emergency is traditionally invoked in order to justify a departure from or stretching of the rule of law, here the existence of an emergency is a prerequisite to invoking the rule of law at all. At the same time, those promoting the rule of law generally lie beyond the reach of the jurisdiction in question--both during times of emergency and in times of quiet

Secrets and Lies: Intelligence Activities and the Rule of Law in Times of Crisis

This Article will consider generally the prospects for an approach to intelligence activities based on the rule of law, focusing on the problem of covertness. In particular, it will examine the debate over how law should deal with crises, epitomized by the ticking time-bomb hypothetical. On the one hand, some call for a pragmatic recognition that, in extremis, public officials may be required to act outside the law and should seek after-the-fact ratification of their extra-legal measures. On the other hand, others argue that the embrace of extra-legal measures misconceives the rule of law, underestimates the capacity of a constitutional order to deal with crises, and overestimates the ability and willingness of skittish publics to reign in officials. These two positions have recently become identified with the works of Oren Gross and David Dyzenhaus, respectively, although the debate is, of course, far older than these agonists of post-September 11 constitutionalism. As Dyzenhaus acknowledges, the question of whether the response of the executive in emergencies is constrained by law was an argument that Victorian jurist A.V. Dicey had with himself a century ago; Gross traces the essence of his own argument back two centuries further to John Locke\u27s theory of prerogative power

Post errorem

Six cases or case types are briefly presented, illustrating a number of loose ends in translation ethics. These cases are related to reactions by different agents or voices to a clear error, and the ethical implications of these reactions. Case 1 is invented; it raises questions of accountability. Case 2 concerns reactions to errors in the source text, and official guidelines in this respect. Case 3 problematizes a literary translator’s refusal to correct certain errors. Case 4 discusses the descriptivist scholar’s problem of how to deal with clear errors. Case 5 is about a creative reaction to a serious problem in court interpreting. And case 6 analyses the ethical dilemma of trying to change traditional interpretations of passages in a sacred text, for good utilitarian reasons. Loose ends include: the need to revise codes of ethics; the clash between contractual and utilitarian ethics; clashes between voices; and the relation between personal and professional ethics (e.g. in interventionist translation).Peer reviewe