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Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence
Court Review: Volume 39, Issue 3 - Trial By Metaphor: Rhetoric, Innovation, And The Juridical Text, Benjamin L. Berger
Court Review: Volume 39, Issue 3 - Trial By Metaphor: Rhetoric, Innovation, And The Juridical Text, Benjamin L. Berger
Benjamin L. Berger
The judicial decision-making process is not one for which resolution arises from counting, measuring, or weighing. Rather, the courtroom is a field for debate about the interpretation and application of values as embodied in or reflected by the law. Decisions reached in court are judgments and not mathematical conclusions in that the inherently contestable nature of the issues at stake precludes an outcome that is selfevident to all. As such, although there is an element of factfinding that emerges in a judicial opinion, there is also always a subjective valuation of the principles at stake; to draw on Socrates, there …
Wrestling With Punishment: The Role Of The Bc Court Of Appeal In The Law Of Sentencing, Benjamin Berger, Gerry Ferguson
Wrestling With Punishment: The Role Of The Bc Court Of Appeal In The Law Of Sentencing, Benjamin Berger, Gerry Ferguson
Benjamin L. Berger
This article, one in a collection of articles on the history and jurisprudential contributions of the British Columbia Court of Appeal on the occasion of its 100th anniversary, looks at the role and the work of the court in the area of sentencing since the court was first given jurisdiction to hear sentence appeals in 1921. In the three broad periods that we canvass, we draw out the sometimes surprising, often unique, and frequently provocative ways in which the BCCA has, over its history, wrestled with the practice of criminal punishment and, with it, the basic assumptions of our system …