Fragments of a blog
Fragments of a blog
In the previous post, I suggested that a criminal trial in the Netherlands, and by analogy in other inquisitorial systems, could be regarded as a critical discussion of key documents in the pre-trial dossier, with both the defense and, ideally,…
Legally speaking, the MH17 trial should focus on the defendants’ guilt or innocence as well – if guilt is established – on the fitting sanctions on the offenders and compensation for the victims. In order to convict, however, the court…
The joint investigation team working on the case of Flight MH17, the civilian plane downed in Eastern Ukraine five years ago, has charged four people with the murder of the plane’s 298 passengers. Three of the accused are Russian nationals;…
David Papineau, Professor of philosophy of science at King’s College London, writes in Aeon: Imagine that 100 prisoners are exercising in the prison yard, and suddenly 99 of them attack the guard, carrying out a plan that the 100th prisoner…
Late in April, Rwanda’s Supreme Court struck down a law criminalizing “defamation, insults and cartooning public officials” but upheld the clause that made insulting the president a crime. (In addition, the court refused to decriminalize adultery.) Specifically, Article 154 criminalizes…
From Tuesday’s press release by the ECHR: In today’s Chamber judgment in the case of Navalnyy v. Russia… the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been: a violation of Article 5 (right to liberty and security),…
The ECHR’s Grand Chamber published its final judgment in Navalnyy v. Russia yesterday. The Russian opposition leader (whose last name is more often transliterated as Navalny, without the extra “y”) complained that his arrest, detention and administrative conviction on seven…
Streetwise Professor (Craig Pirrong) explained spoofing on electronic exchanges in this post three years ago. Yesterday, he wrote about the US Department of Justice (DOJ) indicting a group of traders for alleged spoofing. The stunning part of the indictment is…
It’s hard to argue against Lee Kovarsky‘s position that DNA fingerprinting offers a cognitive method so powerful that no sane person, not even a judge, can honestly ignore all the discoveries made through its application. It’s likewise impossible to accept…
The late US Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia was infamous, among other things, for writing (in Herrera v. Collins, 1993, concurring): There is no basis in text, tradition, or even in contemporary practice (if that were enough), for finding in…
The appeals court has published its ruling in the Tommy Robinson case. The summary is particularly helpful but the full opinion is worth giving a good look as well. (Also see the discussions at Tim’s blog, here and here.) The appellate…
Shaun Walker reports from Moscow for The Guardian: A Moscow court has sentenced a former Russian economy minister to eight years in a high-security prison for corruption, in a verdict that is likely to send chills through the Russian elite……