			Home About us Contact

Legal Decisions (legal + decision)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Psychology	30%
Humanities and Social Sciences	20%

Selected Abstracts

The Strategic Use of Formal Argumentation in Legal Decisions

RATIO JURIS, Issue 4 2008
HARM KLOOSTERHUIS
In legal decisions standpoints can be supported by formal and also by substantive interpretative arguments. Formal arguments consist of reasons the weight or force of which is essentially dependent on the authoritativeness that the reasons may also have: In this connection one may think of linguistic and systemic arguments. On the other hand, substantive arguments are not backed up by authority, but consist of a direct invocation of moral, political, economic, or other social considerations. Formal arguments can be analyzed as exclusionary reasons: The authoritative character excludes,in principle,substantial counterarguments. Formal arguments are sometimes used to conceal value judgements based on substantial arguments. This paper deals with reconstructing problems regarding this strategic use of formal arguments in legal decisions, with a focus on linguistic argumentation. [source]

Justification as a Process of Discovery

RATIO JURIS, Issue 4 2000
Rauno Halttunen
Legal decision-making interests theoreticians in our discipline largely in terms of how a legal decision is justified. In his book, Bruce Anderson (1996) has posited a distinction between how a decision is arrived at, on one hand, and how it is justified, on the other. Anderson seems to be suggesting that legal theory should set out to continue the work of the American realists, that is, to develop legal decision-making as a process of discovery towards a solution. In my presentation, I will be looking at legal decision-making as a process of finding or discovering knowledge. What I mean by "discovery," however, is the discovery of new scientific knowledge. (The theory of science draws a distinction between proving and discovering knowledge.) I submit that for a justification to be valid the arguments comprising it ought to fulfill the logical conditions stipulated for the discovery of knowledge. In the present paper, I also hope to share with you the main ideas of a book I am currently writing on the subject. [source]

Sexual abuse at a Swedish daycare centre: allegations, confessions and evaluations

ACTA PAEDIATRICA, Issue 8 2000
F Lindblad
In September 1997, sexual abuse at a Swedish daycare centre was disclosed. The suspect, a male member of the staff, admitted having abused six children. A total of 30 children were included in the police investigation. In this study, these cases were evaluated individually using a child psychiatric method. Information was collected from the police investigation and from interviews with parents. The conclusions,categorized as "abuse likely", "abuse conceivable" or "abuse uncertain",were compared with the children's own reports, the legal evaluations and the confessions of the suspects. Conclusions: The correspondence of child reports with child psychiatric evaluations was fairly high, indicating that child reports may serve as a good screening indicator of abuse. There was little agreement between child psychiatric evaluations and legal decisions, which were based on the reports of suspects. Some differences may be explained by varied methodology, definitions and criteria. Others reflect real differences in opinion. Our study illustrates the need to establish legal criteria for statements from pre-schoolers if such evidence is to constitute the basis of a ruling without a confession. Studies comparing professional psychological assessments of children's statements about sexual abuse with independent data stand out as an important line of research for the future. [source]

Articulating the Nexus of Politics and Law: War in Iraq and the Practice within Two Legal Systems

INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1 2008
Philip Liste
Does law rule foreign affairs in the democratic state? Basically, one might expect that democratic executives operate on the ground of what is called the Rechtsstaat, and that in a political system with checks and balances operations,especially those eventually dropping out of that ground,are subject to judicial review. However, legal systems are more often than not willing to abstain from a legal governance of its countries' foreign policy,because of "political reasons." Moreover, democracies obviously vary according to their legal operations. At least in the area of foreign affairs, the relationship of democracy and law does not take up a necessary character. Facing this contingency, the article engages in the discursive construction of a politics and law nexus in the course of the operations of two legal systems, in the United States and Germany. For that reason, it will proceed by deconstructing two legal decisions related to the war in Iraq. Building upon the premise that legal practices are intertwined into a larger web of (legal) text, the article argues that the possibility of a judicial abstention in cases bearing reference to foreign policy issues depends on meaning produced in the course of the signification and positioning of discursive elements like "politics" and "law." Thus, speaking law is a politico-legal practice. [source]

Analysis of recent incidents of on-field violence in sport: legal decisions and additional considerations from psychology

AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR, Issue 1 2009
John H. Kerr
Abstract This article focuses on two recent incidents of serious on-field violence in sports and the legal consequences for those involved. The two incidents occurred in Dutch football (soccer) and became infamous owing to the nature of the violent incidents and widespread media coverage. The legal outcomes of these two incidents are described, and some of the difficulties that legal authorities face in considering assaults on the sports field are discussed. A new way of categorizing such violent incidents and the motivation behind them, based on an established psychological theory [reversal theory, Apter, 1982, 2001] is proposed. Taken along with the other points made in this article, being aware of when and how individuals cross the boundaries between play and anger, power or thrill violence may provide an additional perspective to making informed decisions about illegal violent acts on the sports field. Aggr. Behav. 35:41,48. 2009. © 2008 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]

The unwary purchaser: Consumer psychology and the regulation of commerce in America

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES, Issue 4 2007
Michael J. Pettit
Starting in the 1870s, American jurists deciding cases of trademark infringement began advancing arguments that the ordinary purchaser was an unwary one, easily deceived by imitations. Embedded within their legal decisions was a vision of the typical consumers' habitual behavior and cognitive ability. In response to legal critics who argued that the presumed psychology of the consumer was unevenly deployed, applied psychologists developed laboratory-based experiments and scales for determining the likelihood that the "average" purchaser would be confused. Although these psychologists failed in their goal of securing regular legal patronage, this commercial context and the resulting experiments were constitutive of the delineation of "recognition" as a distinct mental process. Furthermore, this case study complicates the scholarly consensus about the role of standardization and personal responsibility in the liberal administration of mass society. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source]

The Relative (Un)Importance of Rehnquist Court Decisions

POLITICS & POLICY, Issue 5 2010
ROBERT ROBINSON
The Rehnquist Court took conservative positions more often than its immediate predecessors. Less clear, however, is the degree to which its decisions actually impacted the legal framework. Given studies that suggest that ideological heterogeneity within Supreme Court majority coalitions and systematic trends of "institutional thickening" hinder the creation of legally important decisions, I hypothesize that the decisions of the Rehnquist Court should be less legally important relative to prior courts, and should create more important liberal legal decisions than expected. Employing measures of legal importance developed through the network analysis of Supreme Court precedent, I find that Rehnquist Court decisions are less legally important than decisions from prior eras. Furthermore, I find that in the most salient legal subject areas, the Rehnquist Court's liberal and conservative decisions are of roughly equal importance. Given these findings, the Rehnquist Court's ideological impact on precedent is more modest than its critics charge. La Corte de Rehnquist tomó posiciones conservadoras más a menudo que sus predecesores inmediatos. Sin embargo, el grado en el que sus decisiones en realidad impactaron el marco legal es menos claro. Determinados estudios que sugieren que la heterogeneidad ideológica dentro de las coaliciones de mayoría de la Suprema Corte y las tendencias sistemáticas de "robustecimiento institucional" dificultan la formulación de decisiones legalmente importantes, planteo que las decisiones de la Corte de Rehnquist serán legalmente menos importantes en comparación con cortes previas, y formularán decisiones legales liberales más importantes de lo esperado. Utilizando medidas de la importancia legal desarrolladas a través del análisis de red de los precedentes de la Suprema Corte, descubro que las decisiones de la Corte de Rehnquist son legalmente menos importantes que las decisiones de las eras previas. Además, encuentro que en las áreas legales más importantes, las decisiones liberales y conservadoras de la Corte de Rehnquist son aproximadamente de una importancia similar. Dado estos hallazgos, el impacto ideológico de la Corte de Rehnquist sobre precedente es mucho más modesto de lo que sus críticos la acusan. [source]

The Strategic Use of Formal Argumentation in Legal Decisions

Judicial Review and Deliberative Democracy: A Circular Model of Law Creation and Legitimation

RATIO JURIS, Issue 4 2001
Mark Van Hoecke
In this paper the author discusses the legitimation of judicial review of legislation. He argues that such a legitimation is not just a moral matter but is to be considered more generally in terms of societal acceptability, since it is based on a wide range of reasons including moral, social and pragmatic concerns. Moreover, the paper stresses that the legitimation of judicial decisions should be properly viewed in a circular perspective, so that the relationship between legislators and judges cannot be reduced to an absolute supremacy of those who are democratically elected over those who apply the law. On the contrary, the law is constantly made, adapted and developed in legal practice and legal decisions are basically legitimated through several processes of deliberative communication. [source]

Anticipatory injustice among adolescents: age and racial/ethnic differences in perceived unfairness of the justice system,

BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES & THE LAW, Issue 2 2008
Jennifer L. Woolard Ph.D.
The present study examines age differences in anticipatory injustice, or the expectation of unfair or discriminatory treatment in the legal system. 1,393 adolescents and young adults from the community or from detention centers and jails were interviewed regarding demographic and justice system experience, intelligence, expectations about fair treatment, and legal decisions. African Americans and Latinos and those with more system experience expected greater injustice across multiple legal contexts. Anticipatory injustice increased with age among African Americans and those with the most system experience. It also predicted choices about police interrogation, attorney consultation, and plea agreements. Anticipations of injustice during adolescence may affect future interactions with court officials as well as more general constructs of legal socialization. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]