Expert answer:Witnessing an international crime.
Solved by verified expert:Please choose Japan as the country of the international crime. Original papers only. I’ve attached some help from the chapter for this assignment.Dammer, H., & Albanese, J. (2014). Comparative criminal justice system (5th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.Assignment 2: International Crime Witness, Part 1Due Week 6 and worth 250 points Use the Internet to research criminal proceedings in one (1) of the six (6) model countries from the textbook. Imagine you are traveling abroad in your chosen country when you witness a local national committing a violent assault. The criminal is arrested and charged by the police. Upon returning to the United States, a professor in one of your criminal justice classes asks you to complete a written report on your experience. Write a three to five (3-5) page paper in which you:1.Determine the pertinent demographic, social, political, and economic factors about your chosen country.2.Examine the manner in which your chosen country’s criminal code would likely view the crime you witnessed. Provide a rationale for the response.3.Choose two (2) individual rights that the United States grants criminal suspects, such as search and seizure, right to counsel, etc., and analyze the country’s perspective on each right. Provide support for the analysis.4.Investigate the manner in which the police in your chosen country would likely treat the defendant. Provide justification for the response.5.Classify the fundamental similarities and differences between the police culture in your chosen country compared to the United States.6.Use at least four (4) quality references. Note: Wikipedia and other Websites do not qualify as academic resources. Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references must follow APA or school-specific format. Check with your professor for any additional instructions.Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in the required assignment page length. The specific course learning outcomes associated with this assignment are:Compare and contrast American perspectives on criminal law with those of other countries.Evaluate the nature of comparative policing and global law enforcement cooperation.Analyze the role of procedural law in the four (4) major legal traditions.Use technology and information resources to research comparative perspectives in criminal justice.Write clearly and concisely about criminal justice topics using proper writing mechanics and APA style conventions. Click here to view the grading rubric for this assignment. Erica ChatmanAdministrative Support Ameritek Industries Inc.5880 S. Pecos RoadLas Vegas, NV 89120Office: 702-888-3788Fax: 702-331-7563echatman@ameritekwater.comwww.ameritekwater.com Like Us on FACEBOOK Confidentiality note: This email and any attachments to it are intended only for the named recipients and may contain confidential information. If you are not one of the intended recipients, please do not duplicate or forward this email message and immediately delete it from your computer.
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7 The Courts and Legal Professionals
The Concept of a Court
Actors in the Legal Profession
Methods of Judge Selection in Our Model Countries and the United States
Career Paths of Legal Professionals
The Courts and Legal professions in Our Model Countries
Courts and the Legal Profession in England
Legal Education and Training for Lawyers in Our Model Countries and the United States
Courts and the Legal Profession in France
Courts and the Legal Profession in Germany
Courts and the Legal Profession in China
Courts and the Legal Profession in Japan
Courts and the Legal Profession in Saudi Arabia
Supranational Courts
Supranational Courts and Dates of Establishment
Summary
Comparative Criminal Justice at the Movies: Last King of Scotland (2006)
Critical Thinking Exercise: Questions about South Korea’s Constitutional Court
Discussion Questions
For Further Reading
Web pages for chapter
Key Terms and Concepts
adjudicators
advocates
court
courts of general jurisdiction
courts of limited jurisdiction
European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR)
indigenous courts
intermediate appeal
International Court of Justice (ICJ)
International Criminal Court (ICC)
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)
International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY)
internationalized courts
judicial impartiality
judicial independence
jus cogens
legal advisors
legal scholars
Rome Statute
tribunals
Chapter 7 Learning Objectives
Describe the roles of the four categories of legal professionals in developed societies.
Explore the differences between bureaucratically and politically oriented organizations.
Compare similarities and differences that occur in court structures and legal professions in our model nations.
Describe the major forms of supranational courts available in the world today.
Explain the advantages and challenges of supranational courts.
In a Haitian court, defense lawyers clashed loudly with a judge, shouting objections as he rang a small bell to
try and regain order. After a heated exchange, the defense lawyers tore off their robes and left the court. The
judge suspended the trail for the day but told the accused that if their lawyers did not return the following
morning that they would remain in jail waiting for the trial to continue for the next six months. The defense
lawyers returned the next morning (Bogdanich and Sontag, 2011).
The trial of Gu Kailai, wife of a Communist Party official in China accused of murdering a British
businessman, began and ended in single day, August 19, 2012, with the final verdict to be delivered later by the
Intermediate People’s Court at an unannounced date—a standard practice in a Chinese court case (Page, 2012).
In February 2011, the United Nations Security Council decided unanimously to refer a possible criminal
situation in Libya to the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor. On March 3, 2011, the ICC prosecutor
announced his decision to open an investigation in the situation in Libya, and in June 2011 the Pre-Trial
Chamber I of the ICC issued three warrants of arrest respectively for Muammar Mohammed Abu Minyar
Gaddafi, Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi, and Abdullah Al-Senussi for crimes against humanity (murder and persecution)
allegedly committed across Libya. In November 2011, Pre-Trial Chamber I formally terminated the case against
Muammar Gaddafi due to his death. The two other suspects remain at large (ICC, 2012).
Courts and courtrooms such as these provide a seemingly endless source of material for both fiction and
nonfiction for writers, news reporters, and media producers from around the world. There are many reasons for
our fascination with courts and court room drama. The element of suspense is certainly an ingredient: Will the
accused be acquitted or convicted? Does the trial appear to be conducted in a “fair” manner? What will surface
from witness testimony? Accounts of intrigue, violence, inequity, and lawlessness are of intense interest to
those who follow courtroom sagas.
More important than the drama, however, a public trial tends to affirm the community values that the
government seeks to protect and promote through the criminal process. As such, it provides vicarious
satisfaction that justice is being done, that those who choose to reject these values do not go unpunished. The
community is strengthened through this public repudiation of deviance, even if the accused is exonerated. In the
end, then, the court system provides us with a sense of security and a feeling that justice is highly valued in
society. As these three scenarios recount, the mechanisms of justice in courts around the world are quite diverse.
And if they were presented to a lawyer or law student in the United States, they might seem quite peculiar.
In this chapter, we consider the subject of courts in general, the legal professionals who work in courts
around the world, the organization of courts in our model systems, and a growing idea called supranational
courts. Although we will concentrate on criminal courts, we must remember that courts also handle noncriminal
(civil) disputes between individuals or between the government and individuals.
THE CONCEPT OF A COURT
What are courts, and what functions do they serve in a society? What is their role within the political framework
of a nation?
A simple definition of a court is that it is an agency with power to settle disputes in a society. The
word court is derived from the Latin term cohortus, later shortened to cohort or court, meaning “being together
in the same garden,” such as being in the garden of a medieval castle or courtyard (Adler, Mueller, and Laufer,
2009). One of the parties in a court case, the plaintiff, presents the facts of the case and explains how these facts
are related to some body of law or principles that are considered binding in the society. The other side, the
defendant, disputes these facts and tries to show that the person or issue before the court is not within the
jurisdiction of the proscribed law. The crucial word in this definition is “power.” The judicial power in a court,
whether it be a judge, a panel of judges, or a lay jury, is there to examine the truth and to determine whether the
law applies in the case and whether any damage has been done to the plaintiff.
Some voluntary agencies also mediate disputes and may on occasion be called courts, but a court by our
definition is an agency of government that has the coercive power of government behind it. The function of
courts is to settle, authoritatively and according to predefined legal norms, the many disputes that arise in a
society. In complex modern societies, disputes may be between two parties in a civil suit, or they may be
between the state and a party accused of a criminal violation. Some countries have separate courts to handle
civil and criminal matters and some handle both in the same courts. In societies where communal ties may be
strong enough to enable disputes to be settled in informal ways, indigenous courts have been formed.
Indigenous courts emphasize consensus and mediation with the goal of formalizing justice for persons who are
culturally and or geographically removed from the mainstream of society. They serve to make court processes
more culturally relevant for indigenous persons and to allow local leaders and citizens to become involved in
the justice process and build strong communities.
Although indigenous methods of meting out justice have surely existed in various forms since the formation
of communal living, there has been a recent trend in some countries to revitalize this form of court and justice
process. One example of a revived traditional justice system is in Rwanda, where gacaca courts (rhymes with
cha-cha) were reintroduced to deal with the over 120,000 Hum leaders and supporters who are incarcerated for
their part in the 1994 massacres in the Rwandan civil war. Gacaca courts have tried to bring those suspected of
genocide during the massacres to the villages where they allegedly committed the crime. The over
8,000 gacaca courts consist of local judges who pass sentences, with forgiveness emphasized, and reduced
sentences for those who confess (Gacaca Courts, 2010)
Another example is the case of Australia, which convened the first indigenous urban court in 1999 in Port
Adelaide, South Australia, and has since established others in other Australian regions. The processes of the
courts vary considerably, but they are similar in the following ways: The offender must be an indigenous person
and have entered a guilty plea, the offense must have occurred in an area covered by the courts jurisdiction, and
the charge is generally one that was heard in a lower-level court of first instance (Marchetti and Daly, 2004).
Indigenous courts are present in the United States on Native American reservations and in some remote areas.
For example, in Alaska most of the population is located in cities, but there are countless remote villages
throughout the state that consist largely of native Alaskans. Because of lack of resources to support a formal
criminal justice system, many of these villages establish local ordinances and rules and handle undesirable
behavior in their own informal manner. The rules and punishments are determined primarily by custom and
meted out by village councils or village chiefs. When a matter is of a serious criminal nature, or if the
perpetrator does not voluntarily submit to the rules of the jurisdiction, the case is handed over to local and state
law enforcement (National Tribal Resource Center, 2010). The formulation of indigenous courts has been
partially motivated by the increased sensitivity towards diversity in societies and also by the failure of
traditional courts to address the problem of crime and the limits of the justice system.
In the second half of the twentieth century, the role of the courts was expanded beyond national boundaries.
After World War II, the Nuremberg trials were held to try Nazi war criminals and to define how international
tribunals would handle atrocities of war. More recently, the United Nations has revived the idea of courts with
the power to adjudicate international crimes by countries and individuals. These courts have expanded the role
of courts in our individual societies to the larger global context. Later in this chapter, we will discuss in more
detail the background, purpose, and current status of these supranational courts.
Whatever the reality of court operations in a society, most people can agree that a court should have two
basic characteristics to function properly: (1) judicial independence and (2) judicial impartiality.
Judicial independence is a principle that holds that courts and judges are bound to the law and should make
decisions without being under the influence, direct or indirect, of other governmental or political agents. In
countries that have a democratic government structure, judicial independence is essential for maintaining
individual rights for all citizens. In authoritarian states, the independence of the judiciary is often nonexistent.
Judges on the side of those in power are there simply to enforce the law of the ruling party or leader in power.
For example, we have mentioned in previous chapters how China has eschewed judicial independence under the
rationale that it is “better for the society” that all legal decisions be in sync with Socialist ideals. To some
extent, Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia have adopted the same approach to fit their religious values.
Pure judicial independence, to be sure, is an ideal that hardly exists, as innumerable studies of courts,
including the U.S. Supreme Court, have shown. But blatant political influence on court operations can usually
be recognized, and we say that courts that choose, or are forced, to carry out governmental wishes have become
“politicized.” Likewise, a court may operate in a politicized manner in particular trials, and we usually call these
“political trials.” There are many shades of ambiguity surrounding the concept of judicial independence.
Nevertheless, it remains a basic ideal in most court structures.
The reality is that adjudicators do not live in a vacuum and are themselves shaped by the circumstances of
their society, as well as by their upbringing and training. But the ideal of fairness and independence in
accordance with a rule of law is a strong socializing influence and a societal norm that should provide a
framework for the work of adjudicators.
Judicial impartiality may be tied to judicial independence in some cases, but it is a broader concept that
calls for judicial authorities to treat parties in court as equals. “Equality before the law” is a cherished precept of
modern justice systems. A judge who distinguished among plaintiffs by race, creed, or social class would not be
practicing judicial impartiality. Of course, judicial impartiality, like judicial independence, is an ideal that often
is honored only in the breach. Thus, although these two concepts are important in studying and evaluating the
operations of courts, we cannot claim that they must be present for a court to exist.
ACTORS IN THE LEGAL PROFESSION
There are generally four categories of legal professionals in developed societies: adjudicators, advocates,
legal advisors, and legal scholars (Ehrmann, 1976, p. 56). Adjudicators are those individuals who decide the
outcome of legal disputes; more commonly, these legal professionals are called judges. Advocates represent
either the defendant or the prosecution in legal matters before the court. Legal advisors provide legal advice to
advocates and citizens outside the court. Legal scholars study the law and discuss it in legal commentaries and
professional journals. Advocates, legal advisors, and legal scholars are more generally called “lawyers,” which
is a comprehensive term used to describe anyone who gives legal advice, manages legal affairs, and pleads
cases in court. In this section, we discuss each of these legal professionals in some detail. It should be said here
however, that there is often not a clear distinction between the categories of the legal profession. It is not
uncommon for lawyers in different societies to fit into more than one of these categories.
Adjudicators
Many countries rely on professional judges who are trained and paid to be adjudicators of legal matters. In other
countries, as in the popular (mixed) system discussed in Chapter 6, lay judges, jurors, or a combination of lay
and professional judges handle the adjudicatory functions of the courts. More formally
defined, adjudicators are professional judges or magistrates, “full- and part-time officials authorized to hear
civil, criminal and other cases, including in appeal courts, and make dispositions in a court of law. Lay judges
and magistrates are persons who perform the same functions as professional judges or magistrates but are not
considered as career members of the judiciary” (Aromaa et al., 2003).
There are three primary methods, and their various permeations, for how judges are employed. The most
common method, especially in the Common Law tradition, is by appointment. After gaining experience as a
lawyer, the prospective judge is selected by an individual within the executive branch of the government or by a
special committee. In England and Wales, judicial appointment above the magistrate level has been the result of
a process that comes from the Judicial Appointments Commission since 2006.
The second method of judge selection is by career choice path, whereby individuals decide on their own to
become judges either during or immediately after their legal training. Exams and extensive apprenticeships
follow the decision to become a judge. This kind of career choice system is found in many Civil Law countries
and some Islamic Law countries, such as Saudi Arabia. It may seem odd, especially to Americans, for legal
actors to decide so early in their careers to become judges before gaining any real legal experience. The need for
legal experience may be necessary in the Common Law legal tradition, which necessitates that judges be more
knowledgeable so as to better handle the many legal subtleties of the tradition. But in the Civil and Islamic legal
cultures, the interpretation of law is limited because of the nature of the law itself. Judges are asked not to make
law or even to interpret law, but only to apply the law.
Finally, a less common method of judge selection involves citizen elections. Although this method has been
criticized as highly political, it has been adopted by a number of local jurisdictions, counties, and even some
states in the United States. Some states have adopted a combination method called the Missouri Plan, which
requires judicial candidates to be selected by a committee and then, after some time in office, to face the
electorate. For a summary of the methods of judge selection in our model countries, see the box on next page.
Advocates
Advocates are expected to be partisan, and a lack of zeal in pursuing the interests of their client is a serious
violation of the norms of this category of legal actor. This is so even in Socialist systems, in which the interests
of the state are considered paramount and may influence the degree of advocacy that can be
exercised. Advocates are legal representatives, usually lawyers, who present the evidence and the arguments
that allow adjudicators to make their decisions. Advocates work for the state (prosecution) or the criminally
accused (defense). As we have mentioned many times before, advocates working on behalf of the government
are called prosecutors or procurators, although their roles vary considerably from country to country (see
Ambos, 2000).
Efforts have been made on the international level to ensure the quality of legal assistance throughout the
world by standardizing the duties and responsibilities of lawyers and others providing legal assistance. To assist
nations around the world with the proper development of lawyers, the United Nations has developed the UN
principles on the role of lawyers. The Principles address issues such as qualifications and training, duties and
responsibilities, and disciplining lawyers.
Like adjudicators, advocates are subject to economic, social, and political pressures that affect their work. In
two of our model countries, Saudi Arabia and China, advocates for both the prosecution and the defense are
under considerable pressure to conform to forces beyond the courtroom. In Saudi Arabia, advocates must be
schooled in classic Islamic Law because there is no distinction between religious and secular offenses. In China,
lawyers must be approved by the Ministry of Justice and are expected to protect the rights of their clients while
also promoting the interests of the state.
Methods of Judge Selection in Our Model Countries and the United States
▪
England: Appointed in magistrates’ courts, local committees are responsible for appointments; since
2006, in other courts the Judicial Appointments Commission appoints judges.
▪
Germany and France: Self-selected candidates undergo an extensive apprenticeship period and then face
rigorous civil service examinations.
▪
China: Elected and appointed. The heads of the courts, called presidents, are elected by the
corresponding people’s congresses while all other judges are appointed by the corresponding standing
committee of the particular court.
▪
Japan: Self-selected and then promoted by merit. After passing a national-level judicial examination,
candidates train for two years at the Legal Research and Training Institute and then move up through the ranks
based on merit.
▪
Saudi Arabia: Self-selected. Candidates must first qualify for this position and then go through a period
of apprenticeship before being allowed to decide cases.
▪
United States: Usually elected …
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