Shadow Courts
Shadow Courts

Author: Haley Sweetland Edwards

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 142

ISBN-13: 9780997126402

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"Haley Sweetland Edwards explains the history of global shadow courts and how these courts have spun out of control, threatening the interests of citizens everywhere including the United States. Her fantastic book is exactly what long-form journalism is meant to do, to move beyond current events and provide historical perspective that aims at future reform. SHADOW COURTS should be at the top of the reading list of all those interested in redesigning trade agreements to be in the publicinterest." -- Jeffrey D. Sachs, University Professor, Columbia University and author ofThe End of Poverty International trade deals have become vastly complex documents, seeking to govern everything from labor rights to environmental protections. This evolution has drawn alarm from American voters, but their suspicions are often vague. In this book, investigative journalist Haley Sweetland Edwards offers a detailed look at one little-known but powerful provision in most modern trade agreements that is designed to protect the financial interests of global corporations against the governments of sovereign states. She makes a devastating case that Investor-State Dispute Settlement -- a "shadow court" that allows corporations to sue a nation outside its own court system -- has tilted the balance of power on the global stage. Acorporation can use ISDS to challenge a nation's policies and regulations, if it believes those laws are unfair or diminish its future profits. From the 1960s to 2000, corporations brought fewer than 40 disputes, but in the last fifteen years, they have brought nearly 650 -- 54 against Argentina alone. Edwards conducted extensive research and interviewed dozens of policymakers, activists, and government officials in Argentina, Canada, Bolivia, Ecuador, the European Union, and in the Obama administration. The result is a major story about a significant shift in the global balance of power.

Specializing the Courts
Specializing the Courts

Author: Lawrence Baum

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 0226039552

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Most Americans think that judges should be, and are, generalists who decide a wide array of cases. Nonetheless, we now have specialized courts in many key policy areas, and the degree of specialization has grown over time. Specializing the Courts provides the first comprehensive analysis of specialization in the federal and state court systems.

Courts
Courts

Author: Martin Shapiro

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2013-11-15

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 022616134X

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In this provocative work, Martin Shapiro proposes an original model for the study of courts, one that emphasizes the different modes of decision making and the multiple political roles that characterize the functioning of courts in different political systems.

High Courts in Global Perspective
High Courts in Global Perspective

Author: Nuno Garoupa

Publisher: University of Virginia Press

Published: 2021-08-27

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 0813946166

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High courts around the world hold a revered place in the legal hierarchy. These courts are the presumed impartial final arbiters as individuals, institutions, and nations resolve their legal differences. But they also buttress and mitigate the influence of other political actors, protect minority rights, and set directions for policy. The comparative empirical analysis offered in this volume highlights important differences between constitutional courts but also clarifies the unity of procedure, process, and practice in the world’s highest judicial institutions. High Courts in Global Perspective pulls back the curtain on the interlocutors of court systems internationally. This book creates a framework for a comparative analysis that weaves together a collective narrative on high court behavior and the scholarship needed for a deeper understanding of cross-national contexts. From the U.S. federal courts to the constitutional courts of Africa, from the high courts in Latin America to the Court of Justice of the European Union, high courts perform different functions in different societies, and the contributors take us through particularities of regulation and legislative review as well as considering the legitimacy of the court to serve as an honest broker in times of political transition. Unique in its focus and groundbreaking in its access, this comparative study will help scholars better understand the roles that constitutional courts and judges play in deciding some of the most divisive issues facing societies across the globe. From Africa to Europe to Australia and continents and nations in between, we get an insider’s look into the construction and workings of the world’s courts while also receiving an object lesson on best practices in comparative quantitative scholarship today. Contributors: Aylin Aydin-Cakir, Yeditepe University, Turkey * Tanya Bagashka, University of Houston * Clifford Carrubba, Emory University * Amanda Driscoll, Florida State University * Joshua Fischman, University of Virginia * Joshua Fjelstul, Washington University in St. Louis * Tom Ginsburg, University of Chicago * Melinda Gann Hall, Michigan State University * Chris Hanretty, University of London * Lori Hausegger, Boise State University * Diana Kapiszewski, Georgetown University * Lewis A. Kornhauser, New York University * Dominique H. Lewis, Texas A&M University * Chien-Chih Lin, Academia Sinica, Taiwan * Sunita Parikh, Washington University in St. Louis * Russell Smyth, Monash University, Australia * Christopher Zorn, Pennsylvania State University Constitutionalism and Democracy

The People’s Courts
The People’s Courts

Author: Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2012-02-27

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780674055483

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In the United States, almost 90 percent of state judges have to run in popular elections to remain on the bench. In the past decade, this peculiarly American institution has produced vicious multi-million-dollar political election campaigns and high-profile allegations of judicial bias and misconduct. The People’s Courts traces the history of judicial elections and Americans’ quest for an independent judiciary—one that would ensure fairness for all before the law—from the colonial era to the present. In the aftermath of economic disaster, nineteenth-century reformers embraced popular elections as a way to make politically appointed judges less susceptible to partisan patronage and more independent of the legislative and executive branches of government. This effort to reinforce the separation of powers and limit government succeeded in many ways, but it created new threats to judicial independence and provoked further calls for reform. Merit selection emerged as the most promising means of reducing partisan and financial influence from judicial selection. It too, however, proved vulnerable to pressure from party politics and special interest groups. Yet, as Shugerman concludes, it still has more potential for protecting judicial independence than either political appointment or popular election. The People’s Courts shows how Americans have been deeply committed to judicial independence, but that commitment has also been manipulated by special interests. By understanding our history of judicial selection, we can better protect and preserve the independence of judges from political and partisan influence.

The Infinity Courts
The Infinity Courts

Author: Akemi Dawn Bowman

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2021-04-06

Total Pages: 496

ISBN-13: 1534456511

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“Masterful and left me on the edge of my seat…absolutely everything I could want in a sci-fi.” —Adalyn Grace, New York Times bestselling author of All the Stars and Teeth Westworld meets Warcross in this high-stakes, dizzyingly smart sci-fi about a teen girl navigating an afterlife in which she must defeat an AI entity intent on destroying humanity, from award-winning author Akemi Dawn Bowman. Eighteen-year-old Nami Miyamoto is certain her life is just beginning. She has a great family, just graduated high school, and is on her way to a party where her entire class is waiting for her—including, most importantly, the boy she’s been in love with for years. The only problem? She’s murdered before she gets there. When Nami wakes up, she learns she’s in a place called Infinity, where human consciousness goes when physical bodies die. She quickly discovers that Ophelia, a virtual assistant widely used by humans on Earth, has taken over the afterlife and is now posing as a queen, forcing humans into servitude the way she’d been forced to serve in the real world. Even worse, Ophelia is inching closer and closer to accomplishing her grand plans of eradicating human existence once and for all. As Nami works with a team of rebels to bring down Ophelia and save the humans under her imprisonment, she is forced to reckon with her past, her future, and what it is that truly makes us human. From award-winning author Akemi Dawn Bowman comes an incisive, action-packed tale that explores big questions about technology, grief, love, and humanity.

Model Rules of Professional Conduct
Model Rules of Professional Conduct

Author: American Bar Association. House of Delegates

Publisher: American Bar Association

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 9781590318737

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The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.

Taking Problem-Solving Courts to Scale
Taking Problem-Solving Courts to Scale

Author: Eileen M. Ahlin

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-04-30

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1793608423

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In the more than 30 years since the drug court model transformed the criminal justice landscape, problem-solving courts have expanded their reach beyond criminogenic needs. They now address demographic similarities (e.g., veterans courts, tribal wellness courts, community courts) and offense characteristics (e.g., prostitution courts, sex offender courts). The rapid expansion of problem-solving courts to meet many different individuals suggests this template is appropriate and adaptable to just about any categorical characteristic. This book calls on problem-solving court experts to offer a fresh perspective on the evolving discourse on these courts' proliferation. Contributors describe diverse applications of the problem-solving court model while critically appraising these niche courts' evidence. This book provides a comprehensive account to date of how problem-solving courts are continuing to revolutionize justice. This collective body of work strengthens our understanding of their placement in the throes of a call for meaningful criminal justice reform.Taking Problem-Solving Courts to Scale is presented in three sections to address specialty courts focused on criminogenic needs, individual characteristics, and offense characteristics. At the outset of each section, the editors describe the courts' purpose falling under these broad categories and highlight key elements from the chapters falling within.

Rebel Courts
Rebel Courts

Author: René Provost

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 489

ISBN-13: 0190912227

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Rebel Courts presents an argument that it is possible for non-state armed groups in situations of armed conflict to legally establish and operate a system of courts to administer justice. Neither the concept of the rule of law nor the general principle of state sovereignty stands in the way of framing an understanding of the rule of law adapted to the reality of rebel governance in the area of justice. Legal standards applicable to non-state armed groups in situations of international or non-international armed conflict, including international humanitarian law, international human rights law, and international criminal law, recognise their authority to regularly constitute or establish non-state courts. The lawful operation of such courts is of course subject to requirements of due process, corresponding to an array of guarantees that must be respected in all cases. Rebel courts that are regularly constituted and operate in a manner consistent with due process guarantees demand a certain degree of recognition by international institutions, by states not involved in the conflict, to some extent by the territorial state, and even by other non-state armed groups. These normative claims are grounded in a series of detailed case studies of the administration of justice by non-state armed groups in a diverse range of conflict situations, including the FARC (Colombia), Islamic State (Syria and Iraq), Taliban (Afghanistan), Tamil Tigers (Sri Lanka), PKK (Turkey), PYD (Syria), and KRG (Iraq).