Indigenous Courts, Self-Determination and Criminal Justice

Indigenous Courts, Self-Determination and Criminal Justice
Author: Valmaine Toki
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2018-04-09
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1351239600

In New Zealand, as well as in Australia, Canada and other comparable jurisdictions, Indigenous peoples comprise a significantly disproportionate percentage of the prison population. For example, Maori, who comprise 15% of New Zealand’s population, make up 50% of its prisoners. For Maori women, the figure is 60%. These statistics have, moreover, remained more or less the same for at least the past thirty years. With New Zealand as its focus, this book explores how the fact that Indigenous peoples are more likely than any other ethnic group to be apprehended, arrested, prosecuted, convicted and incarcerated, might be alleviated. Taking seriously the rights to culture and to self-determination contained in the Treaty of Waitangi, in many comparable jurisdictions (including Australia, Canada, the United States of America), and also in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the book make the case for an Indigenous court founded on Indigenous conceptions of proper conduct, punishment, and behavior. More specifically, the book draws on contemporary notions of ‘therapeutic jurisprudence’ and ‘restorative justice’ in order to argue that such a court would offer an effective way to ameliorate the disproportionate incarceration of Indigenous peoples.

Socio-Legal Struggles for Indigenous Self-Determination in Latin America

Socio-Legal Struggles for Indigenous Self-Determination in Latin America
Author: Roger Merino
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2021-05-16
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1000387240

This book is an interdisciplinary study of struggles for indigenous self-determination and the recognition of indigenous’ territorial rights in Latin America. Studies of indigenous peoples’ opposition to extractive industries have tended to focus on its economic, political or social aspects, as if these were discrete dimensions of the conflict. In contrast, this book offers a comprehensive and interdisciplinary understanding of the tensions between indigenous peoples’ territorial rights and the governance of extractive industries and related state developmental policies. Analysing the contentious process pushed by indigenous peoples for implementing pluri-nationality against extractive projects and pro-extractive policies, the book compares the struggle for territorial rights in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru. Centrally, it argues that indigenous territorial defenses against the extractive industries articulate a politics of self-determination that challenges coloniality as the foundation of the nation-state. The resource governance of the nation-state assumes that indigenous peoples must be integrated or assimilated within multicultural arrangements as ethnic minorities with proprietary entitlements, so they can participate in the benefits of development. As the struggle for indigenous self-determination in Latin America maintains that indigenous peoples must not be considered as ethnic communities with property rights, but as nations with territorial rights, this book argues that it offers a radical re-imagination of politics, development, and constitutional arrangements. Drawing on detailed case studies, this book’s multidisciplinary account of indigenous movements in Latin America will appeal to those with relevant interests in politics, law, sociology and development studies.

Aboriginal Justice and the Charter

Aboriginal Justice and the Charter
Author: David Milward
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2012-11-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0774824581

Aboriginal Justice and the Charter examines and seeks to resolve the tension between Aboriginal approaches to justice and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Until now, scholars have explored idealized notions of what Aboriginal justice might look like. David Milward strikes out into new territory by asking why Aboriginal communities seek reform and by identifying some of the constitutional barriers in their path. He identifies specific areas of the criminal justice process in which Aboriginal communities may wish to adopt different approaches, tests these approaches against constitutional imperatives, and offers practical proposals for reconciling the various matters at stake. This bold exploration of Aboriginal justice grapples with the difficult question of how Aboriginal justice systems can be fair to their constituents but still comply with the protections guaranteed to all Canadians by the Charter.

Indigenous Legal Traditions

Indigenous Legal Traditions
Author: Law Commission of Canada
Publisher: UBC Press
Total Pages: 189
Release: 2008
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0774855770

The essays in this book present important perspectives on the role of Indigenous legal traditions in reclaiming and preserving the autonomy of Aboriginal communities and in reconciling the relationship between these communities and Canadian governments. Although Indigenous peoples had their own systems of law based on their social, political, and spiritual traditions, under colonialism their legal systems have often been ignored or overruled by non-Indigenous laws. Today, however, these legal traditions are being reinvigorated and recognized as vital for the preservation of the political autonomy of Aboriginal nations and the development of healthy communities.

Indigenous Criminology

Indigenous Criminology
Author: Chris Cunneen
Publisher: Policy Press
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2016-07-27
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1447321758

Indigenous Criminology is the first book to explore indigenous peoples' contact with criminal justice systems comprehensively in a contemporary and historical context. Drawing on comparative indigenous material from North America, Australia, and New Zealand, it both addresses the theoretical underpinnings of a specific indigenous criminology and explores this concept's broader policy and practice implications for criminal justice at large. Leading criminologists specializing in indigenous peoples, Chris Cunneen and Juan Tauri argue for the importance of indigenous knowledge and methodologies in shaping this field and suggest that the concept of colonialism is fundamental to understanding contemporary problems of criminology, such as deaths in custody, high imprisonment rates, police brutality, and the high levels of violence in some indigenous communities. Prioritizing the voices of indigenous peoples, this book will make a significant and lasting contribution to the decolonizing of criminology.

Indigenous Peoples in International Law

Indigenous Peoples in International Law
Author: S. James Anaya
Publisher:
Total Pages: 414
Release: 2004
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780195173505

In this thoroughly revised and updated edition of the first book-length treatment of the subject, S. James Anaya incorporates references to all the latest treaties and recent developments in the international law of indigenous peoples. Anaya demonstrates that, while historical trends in international law largely facilitated colonization of indigenous peoples and their lands, modern international law's human rights program has been modestly responsive to indigenous peoples' aspirations to survive as distinct communities in control of their own destinies. This book provides a theoretically grounded and practically oriented synthesis of the historical, contemporary and emerging international law related to indigenous peoples. It will be of great interest to scholars and lawyers in international law and human rights, as well as to those interested in the dynamics of indigenous and ethnic identity.

Indigenous People, Crime and Punishment

Indigenous People, Crime and Punishment
Author: Thalia Anthony
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2013-07-24
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1134620489

Indigenous People, Crime and Punishment examines criminal sentencing courts’ changing characterisations of Indigenous peoples’ identity, culture and postcolonial status. Focusing largely on Australian Indigenous peoples, but drawing also on the Canadian experiences, Thalia Anthony critically analyses how the judiciary have interpreted Indigenous difference. Through an analysis of Indigenous sentencing remarks over a fifty year period in a number of jurisdictions, the book demonstrates how judicial discretion is moulded to dominant white assumptions about Indigeneity. More specifically, Indigenous People, Crime and Punishment shows how the increasing demonisation of Indigenous criminality and culture in sentencing has turned earlier ‘gains’ in the legal recognition of Indigenous peoples on their head. The recognition of Indigenous difference is thereby revealed as a pliable concept that is just as likely to remove concessions as it is to grant them. Indigenous People, Crime and Punishment suggests that Indigenous justice requires a two-way recognition process where Indigenous people and legal systems are afforded greater control in sentencing, dispute resolution and Indigenous healing.

The Oxford Handbook of Criminal Law

The Oxford Handbook of Criminal Law
Author: Markus D Dubber
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 1294
Release: 2014-11-27
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0191654604

The Oxford Handbook of Criminal Law reflects the continued transformation of criminal law into a global discipline, providing scholars with a comprehensive international resource, a common point of entry into cutting edge contemporary research and a snapshot of the state and scope of the field. To this end, the Handbook takes a broad approach to its subject matter, disciplinarily, geographically, and systematically. Its contributors include current and future research leaders representing a variety of legal systems, methodologies, areas of expertise, and research agendas. The Handbook is divided into four parts: Approaches & Methods (I), Systems & Methods (II), Aspects & Issues (III), and Contexts & Comparisons (IV). Part I includes essays exploring various methodological approaches to criminal law (such as criminology, feminist studies, and history). Part II provides an overview of systems or models of criminal law, laying the foundation for further inquiry into specific conceptions of criminal law as well as for comparative analysis (such as Islamic, Marxist, and military law). Part III covers the three aspects of the penal process: the definition of norms and principles of liability (substantive criminal law), along with a less detailed treatment of the imposition of norms (criminal procedure) and the infliction of sanctions (prison law). Contributors consider the basic topics traditionally addressed in scholarship on the general and special parts of the substantive criminal law (such as jurisdiction, mens rea, justifications, and excuses). Part IV places criminal law in context, both domestically and transnationally, by exploring the contrasts between criminal law and other species of law and state power and by investigating criminal law's place in the projects of comparative law, transnational, and international law.

The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
Author: Ben Saul
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 1358
Release: 2014-03
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0199640300

"One purpose of this book is to respond to this shift: to look beyond the more abstract and ideological discussions of the nature of socio-economic rights in order to engage empirically with how such rights have manifested in international practice". -- INTRODUCTION.

Militant Democracy

Militant Democracy
Author: András Sajó
Publisher: Eleven International Publishing
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2004
Genre: Civil rights
ISBN: 9077596046

This book is a collection of contributions by leading scholars on theoretical and contemporary problems of militant democracy. The term 'militant democracy' was first coined in 1937. In a militant democracy preventive measures are aimed, at least in practice, at restricting people who would openly contest and challenge democratic institutions and fundamental preconditions of democracy like secularism - even though such persons act within the existing limits of, and rely on the rights offered by, democracy. In the shadow of the current wars on terrorism, which can also involve rights restrictions, the overlapping though distinct problem of militant democracy seems to be lost, notwithstanding its importance for emerging and established democracies. This volume will be of particular significance outside the German-speaking world, since the bulk of the relevant literature on militant democracy is in the German language. The book is of interest to academics in the field of law, political studies and constitutionalism.