Judicial opinion

About: Judicial opinion is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 5300 publications have been published within this topic receiving 64803 citations.

Economic dealings with occupied territories

Abstract: In recent years, the international legality of economic activity in occupied territories has emerged as matter of significant debate, largely focused on Israeli-controlled territories. Some European officials, supported by prominent scholars and a wide range of NGOs, claim that international law requires limiting or prohibiting economic relations involving the Israeli-controlled West Bank and Golan Heights. Claims are increasingly being heard that international law requires a boycott of Israeli settlements, or at least the clear labeling of goods produced there.The question of the lawfulness of such activity has even greater salience and urgency with Russia’s annexation of Crimea and belligerent occupation of Eastern Ukraine. These areas have a significantly greater economic potential than most currently occupied territories, and Moscow is actively seeking foreign investment there.Discussions of these legal issues have proceeded largely along theoretical lines, ignoring the rich trove of relevant state practice from other occupied territories such as Western Sahara, Northern Cyprus, Nagorno-Karabakh and Abkhazia. The EU, the U.S. and other states have adopted a variety of formal positions regarding activities in these territories. Moreover, recent years have seen a proliferation of state practice and, for the first time, judicial decisions, involving these very questions.This article conducts a comprehensive survey of the relevant current state practice and judicial precedent regarding occupied territories, aside from the well-examined case of Israel. Much of this practice has never been considered by scholars, let alone examined holistically. Clear patterns emerge when state practice is examined globally, and the principles they suggest are in turn reaffirmed by recent path-breaking decisions of European national courts.State practice and decisions of important national courts support a fully permissive approach to economic dealings by third-party states or nationals in territories under prolonged occupation or illegal annexation. There is no obligation on third-party states to block such activity, or to insist on particular language on product labels, or to ensure that their foreign aid funds do not cross into occupied territory. That does not mean that third countries are prohibited from taking such actions for diplomatic, rather than legal, reasons – though given in the absence of a public law prohibition, WTO and other trade rules may actively bar third-country restrictions on such activity. Practice is most varied on the question of trade treaties extending to occupied territory, as this seems to depend more on the interpretation of the particular instruments, rather than general principles.

Expertise Fails to Attenuate Gendered Biases in Judicial Decision-Making:

Abstract: Although the influence of gender ideology on lay decision-making has been established, it is not known to what extent expertise may mitigate gendered biases and improve decision-making quality. In ...

Expert medico-legal reports: The relationship between levels of consistency and judicial outcomes in asylum seekers in the Netherlands.

Abstract: Introduction If asylum applicants need to prove that they have been persecuted in their home country, expert judgment of the psychological and physical consequences of torture may support the judicial process. Expert medico-legal reports can be used to assess whether the medical complaints of the asylum seeker are consistent with their asylum account. It is unclear which factors influence medical expert judgement about the consistency between an asylum seeker's symptoms and story, and to what extent expert medico-legal reports are associated with judicial outcomes. Methods We analysed 97 medico-legal reports on traumatised asylum seekers in the Netherlands. First, we evaluated the impact of trauma-related and other variables on experts' judgments of the consistency of symptoms and story. Second, we evaluated the effect of experts' judgments of symptom-story consistency on subsequent judicial outcomes. Results Gender, receipt of mental health care and trauma-related variables were associated with symptom story consistency. Positive asylum decisions were predicted by expert judgments about the presence of physical signs and symptoms of torture, and ill-treatment and their consistency with the refugee's story, but not psychological symptoms. Conclusion These results suggest that standardised procedures for the documenting of medical evidence by independent experts can improve judicial decision quality and the need to improve psychological and psychiatric assessments.