An examination of social media's impact on the courts in Australia

In 2011, Joanne Fraill, a juror, was imprisoned for eight months because she chatted on Facebook with a co-accused from the trial that she participated in.1 Fraill’s case prompts questions about how social media affect courts, legal regulators and lawyers, as well as important legal principles. Those important legal principles are: (1) public confidence in the judiciary and the courts; (2) public confidence in the legal profession; (3) open justice; and (4) the right of an accused to a fair trial. This thesis offers an analysis and conclusions on those issues. It examines case law, legislation, academic articles and internet materials on social media. It is found that some Australian courts and legal regulators would benefit from doing more to adapt their procedures and rules to social media. The extent to which Australian courts and legal regulators adapt their procedures and rules to social media can have significant repercussions on the important legal principles considered. This thesis provides Australian courts, the judiciary, legal regulators and lawyers with information and recommendations about their social media use that may assist them. The author believes that this is the first scholarly work to consider the impact that social media has had upon all of these stakeholders, and the first scholarly work in this area to recommend appropriate actions to maintain or possibly increase confidence in the judiciary, the courts and the legal profession, improve open justice and ensure that accused receive fair trials, despite the possibility that jurors may use social media inappropriately

Premises Liability in Florida in Light of Walt Disney World Co. v. Goode: Confusing Legal Remedies with Good Samaritan Impulses

On August 11, 1977, Joel Goode, age four, visited Disney World for the first time with his mother

Should Australian courts give more witnesses the right to Skype?

Millions of people use Skype, a common form of social media that permitspeople to talk to each other over the internet. Courts in Australia havepermitted witnesses in at least a few instances to testify by Skype to date. Thisarticle examines whether Australian courts should permit witnesses to testifyby Skype more often. The article considers using videoconferencing, asopposed to Skype, and security issues associated with Skype. It alsoconsiders the impact that Skype may have upon considering witness credibility.Ultimately, it argues that Australian judicial officers may want to considerpermitting witnesses to testify by Skype if testifying by videoconference is notpossible, on a case by case basis. The authors believe that this is the firstscholarly article in Australia to focus on the issue of witnesses testifying bySkype

Wenn der Realitätsbezug zum Problem wird: „problematische“ Aufgaben und multiple Lösungen in der Primarstufe

Die Fähigkeit, realitätsbezogene Aufgaben zu lösen, ist eine wichtige Kompetenz, die national und international große Beachtung gefunden hat und im Unterricht weltweit vermittelt werden soll. Empirische Studien zeigen jedoch, dass Schülerinnen und Schüler bei Modellierungsaufgaben häufig direkte Rechenoperationen mit den gegebenen Zahlen durchführen, ohne den in der Aufgabenstellung gegebenen Realkontext angemessen zu berücksichtigen (Verschaffel et al., 2000). In der vorliegenden Untersuchung wurde der Einfluss der Aufforderung, eine zweite Lösung zu offenen Modellierungsaufgaben zu erstellen, auf diese ausgeprägte Neigung von Dritt- und Viertklässler (N=75) analysiert. Exemplarisch wird das Lösungsverhalten von Lernenden beim Bearbeiten einer spezifischen Modellierungsaufgabe, die in der Forschung als eine der so genannten Problematic Problems bekannt ist, betrachtet

Entropy of complex relevant components of Boolean networks

Boolean network models of strongly connected modules are capable of capturing the high regulatory complexity of many biological gene regulatory circuits. We study numerically the previously introduced basin entropy, a parameter for the dynamical uncertainty or information storage capacity of a network as well as the average transient time in random relevant components as a function of their connectivity. We also demonstrate that basin entropy can be estimated from time-series data and is therefore also applicable to non-deterministic networks models.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure