A History of Criminal Justice in England and Wales

A History of Criminal Justice in England and Wales
Author: John Hostettler
Publisher: Waterside Press
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2009-01-12
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1906534799

"An ideal introduction to the rich history of criminal justice charting all its main developments from the dooms of Anglo-Saxon times to the rise of the Common Law, struggles for political, legislative and judicial ascendency and the formation of the innovative Criminal Justice System of today."-back cover.

The Missing American Jury

The Missing American Jury
Author: Suja A. Thomas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2016-06-16
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1316666565

Criminal, civil, and grand juries have disappeared from the American legal system. Over time, despite their significant presence in the Constitution, juries have been robbed of their power by the federal government and the states. For example, leveraging harsher criminal penalties, executive officials have forced criminal defendants into plea bargains, eliminating juries. Capping money awards, legislatures have stripped juries of their power to fix damages. Ordering summary judgment, judges dispose of civil cases without sending them to a jury. This is not what the founders intended. Examining the Constitution's text and historical sources, the book explores how the jury's authority has been taken and how it can be restored to its rightful, co-equal position as a 'branch' of government. Discussing the value of juries beyond the Constitution's requirements, the book also discusses the significance of juries world-wide and argues jury decision-making should be preferred over determinations by other governmental bodies.

The Criminal Jury Old and New

The Criminal Jury Old and New
Author: John Hostettler
Publisher: Waterside Press
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2004
Genre: Criminal justice, Administration of
ISBN: 1904380115

"This book is an account of the evolution of the jury and jury trial from early times to the present day including changes brought in by the Criminal Justice Act 2003 that widen the categories of people undertaking jury service." "The Criminal Jury Old and New traces the genesis of the historic system of 'trial by peers' from its roots as a replacement for trial by ordeal through all its great legal and political landmarks. It shows how the jury changed and developed across the centuries to become a key democratic institution capable of resisting monarchs, governments, pressure and interference - and, on occasion, the plain words of the law. It also looks at such intriguing concepts as 'jury nullification', 'perverse verdicts' and 'pious perjury'."--BOOK JACKET.

Domestic and international trials, 1700–2000

Domestic and international trials, 1700–2000
Author: Rose Melikan
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2018-07-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1526137321

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Lawyers had been producing reports of trials and appellate proceedings in order to understand the law and practices of the Westminster courts since the Middle Ages, and printed reports had appeared in the late fifteenth century. This book considers trials in the regular English criminal courts in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It also considers the contribution of criminal lawyers in developing the modern rules of evidence. The book explores the influence of scientific and pseudoscientific knowledge on Victorian insanity trials and trials for homosexual offences, respectively. The British Trials Collection contains the only readily accessible and near-verbatim accounts of civil trials from the 1760s, 1770s, and 1780s, decades crucial to understanding how the rules of evidence developed. It might be thought that Defence of the Realm Acts (DORA) or its regulations would have introduced trials in camera. The book presents a comparative critique of war crimes trials before the International Military Tribunals at Nuremberg and Tokyo and the International Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda. The first spy trial by court martial after the legal change in 1915 was that of Robert Rosenthal, who was German. The book also considers the principal features of the first war crimes trial of the twenty-first century in terms of personnel and procedures, the alleged crimes, and issues of legality and legitimacy. It also speculates on the narratives or non-narratives of the trial and how these may impact on the professed aims and objectives of the litigation.

The Origins of Adversary Criminal Trial

The Origins of Adversary Criminal Trial
Author: John H. Langbein
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2003
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0199258880

The lawyer-dominated adversary system of criminal trial, which now typifies practice in Anglo-American legal systems, was developed in England in the 18th century. This text shows how and why lawyers were able to capture the trial.

True Stories of Crime in Modern Mexico

True Stories of Crime in Modern Mexico
Author: Robert Buffington
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
Total Pages: 454
Release: 2011-04-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 0826345301

Crime has played a complicated role in the history of human social relations. Public narratives about murders, insanity, kidnappings, assassinations, and infanticide attempt to make sense of the social, economic, and cultural realities of ordinary people at different periods in history. Such stories also shape the ways historians write about society and offer valuable insight into aspects of life that more conventional accounts have neglected, misunderstood, or ignored altogether. This edited volume focuses on Mexico's social and cultural history through the lens of celebrated cases of social deviance from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Each essay centers on a different crime story and explores the documentary record of each case in order to reconstruct the ways in which they helped shape Mexican society's views of itself and of its criminals.

The Making of a German Constitution

The Making of a German Constitution
Author: Margaret Barber Crosby
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2008-03-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1859738176

It is impossible to comprehend the political development of the United States, England, or France without considering the US Constitution, English common law or the Code Napoleon, respectively. Why then has legalism been neglected in the study of German politics? Drawing on constitutional and legal history, this book reconsiders the creation of the German state and the nature of the 'bourgeois revolution'. The author reviews the critical time period of 1814-1930 to demonstrate the links between the legal code and political evolution. She argues that German liberals perceived that the ends of revolution could be achieved legislatively; thus Germany was able to attain a modern political and social system while avoiding - or at least delaying - violent movements. This book provides a ... republican synthesis of German political development through time.

The Punisher's Brain

The Punisher's Brain
Author: Morris B. Hoffman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 373
Release: 2014-04-14
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1107038065

Using evidence and arguments from neuroscience and evolutionary psychology, Morris B. Hoffman describes how the judge and jury system evolved.

Rotten Bodies

Rotten Bodies
Author: Kevin Siena
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2019-05-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300233523

A revealing look at how the memory of the plague held the poor responsible for epidemic disease in eighteenth-century Britain Britain had no idea that it would not see another plague after the horrors of 1666, and for a century and a half the fear of epidemic disease gripped and shaped British society. Plague doctors had long asserted that the bodies of the poor were especially prone to generating and spreading contagious disease, and British doctors and laypeople alike took those warnings to heart, guiding medical ideas of class throughout the eighteenth century. Dense congregations of the poor--in workhouses, hospitals, slums, courtrooms, markets, and especially prisons--were rendered sites of immense danger in the public imagination, and the fear that small outbreaks might run wild became a profound cultural force. Extensively researched, with a wide body of evidence, this book offers a fascinating look at how class was constructed physiologically and provides a new connection between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries and the ravages of plague and cholera, respectively.