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Full-Text Articles in Law
Dispute Settlement Under The African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement: A Preliminary Assessment, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe
Dispute Settlement Under The African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement: A Preliminary Assessment, Olabisi D. Akinkugbe
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The African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement (AfCFTA) will add a new dispute settlement system to the plethora of judicial mechanisms designed to resolve trade disputes in Africa. Against the discontent of Member States and limited impact the existing highly legalized trade dispute settlement mechanisms have had on regional economic integration in Africa, this paper undertakes a preliminary assessment of the AfCFTA Dispute Settlement Mechanism (DSM). In particular, the paper situates the AfCFTA-DSM in the overall discontent and unsupportive practices of African States with highly legalized dispute settlement systems and similar WTO-Styled DSMs among other shortcomings. Notwithstanding the transplantation of …
Deciding, ‘What Happened?’ When We Don’T Really Know: Finding Theoretical Grounding For Legitimate Judicial Fact-Finding, Nayha Acharya
Deciding, ‘What Happened?’ When We Don’T Really Know: Finding Theoretical Grounding For Legitimate Judicial Fact-Finding, Nayha Acharya
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The crucial question for many legal disputes is “what happened,”? and there is often no easy answer. Fact-finding is an uncertain endeavor and risk of inaccuracy is inevitable. As such, I ask, on what basis can we accept the legitimacy of judicial fact-findings. I conclude that acceptable factual determinations depend on adherence to a legitimate process of fact-finding. Adopting Jürgen Habermas’s insights, I offer a theoretical grounding for the acceptability of judicial fact-finding. The theory holds that legal processes must embody respect for legal subjects as equal and autonomous agents. This necessitates two procedural features. First, fact-finding processes must be …
Evidence, Rollie Thompson
Evidence, Rollie Thompson
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“Evidence” is what, in our adversary system, the parties attempt to place before the neutral factfinder in order to prove their case (or disprove their opponent's case). We follow the principle of party-presentation: parties determine what specific items of evidence are offered for proof, while the impartial judge or decision maker will determine which items are “admissible” evidence, in accordance with principles of law. At the end of the trial or hearing, the fact-finder (jury, judge, tribunal, decision maker) will determine which of those admissible items of evidence are believed or not, in formulating “fact-guesses” or “findings of fact”.
Mr. Big And The New Common Law Confessions Rule: Five Years In Review, Adelina Iftene, Vanessa Kinnear
Mr. Big And The New Common Law Confessions Rule: Five Years In Review, Adelina Iftene, Vanessa Kinnear
Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press
The Supreme Court of Canada released its decision of R v Hart in July of 2014. The decision provided a two-prong framework for assessing the admissibility of confessions obtained through the undercover police tactic known as “Mr. Big”. The goal of the framework was to address reliability concerns, to protect suspects from state abuse, and to reduce the risk of wrongful convictions. The first prong of the test created a new common law evidentiary rule, under which Mr. Big obtained confessions are now presumptively inadmissible. The second prong revamped the existing abuse of process doctrine. In this article, the authors …
Mr. Big And The New Common Law Confessions Rule: Five Years In Review, Adelina Iftene, Vanessa Kinnear
Mr. Big And The New Common Law Confessions Rule: Five Years In Review, Adelina Iftene, Vanessa Kinnear
Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press
The Supreme Court of Canada released its decision of R v Hart in July of 2014. The decision provided a two-prong framework for assessing the admissibility of confessions obtained through the undercover police tactic known as “Mr. Big”. The goal of the framework was to address reliability concerns, to protect suspects from state abuse, and to reduce the risk of wrongful convictions. The first prong of the test created a new common law evidentiary rule, under which Mr. Big obtained confessions are now presumptively inadmissible. The second prong revamped the existing abuse of process doctrine.
In this article, the authors …