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Judicial opinion

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


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Journal Article
TL;DR: The treating psychiatrist can change his initial clinical impression as a result of his ongoing relationship with the patient and his evaluation of response to treatment, and the psychiatric opinion offered is likely to be influential in determining the final decision.
Abstract: The treating psychiatrist can change his initial clinical impression as a result of his ongoing relationship with the patient and his evaluation of response to treatment. Such monitoring is difficult. if not impossible, in the usual practice of forensic psychiatry. Also, the legal consequences of judicial decisions based on psychiatric opinion may be quite serious. If the psychiatric opinion is to be influential in determining the final decision, it should be offered with as high a level of confidence as possible.

15 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the impact of caseload on judicial decision making was investigated in the Israeli judiciary and six senior registrars were appointed in two of the six magistrate's court districts, and they found that the reduction had a significant impact on the process and outcomes of judicial decision-making.
Abstract: What is the impact of caseload on judicial decision making? Is increasing judicial staff effective in improving judicial services? To address these questions, we exploit a natural, near‐randomized experiment in the Israeli judiciary. In 2012, six senior registrars were appointed in two of the six magistrate's court districts. The choice of districts was motivated by reasons unrelated to judicial performance. In these two districts, the civil caseload per judge was substantially reduced. We find that the reduction had a significant impact on the process and outcomes of judicial decision making. Judges working in courts with reduced caseload invested more resources in resolving each case. The effect is mostly to the advantage of plaintiffs, who were more likely to win, recover a larger fraction of their claims, and be reimbursed for litigation costs. We discuss the implications for judicial management and theories about judicial decision making.

15 citations

Book
01 Jan 1951

15 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: In this paper, a case study of the conflict between state legal norms and norms underlying popular beliefs is presented, where the authors examine how these disputes challenge judges to produce fair outcomes when legal cultures clash.
Abstract: I. INTRODUCTION Beliefs about the causation of life and death, fortune and misfortune, and good and evil change over time. Often, these beliefs are based on different concepts of human agency--concepts that have important implications for views on responsibility, culpability, and liability. As normative orientations change, societies undergo periods of profound transformation, and social and interpersonal tensions often develop in the process. One example of this phenomenon is the friction that results when norms underlying popular beliefs are at odds with emerging state legal norms. People might feel that new standards of behavior established by the courts are difficult to comprehend. They may sense that these rules apply retroactively without prior notification--in essence, they may perceive the standards as "foreign." During this transition period, judges face hard choices in establishing what is "fair" under such emerging legal norms. Examining judicial decisions where norms underlying popular beliefs clash with emerging state legal norms provides a window on how courts negotiate periods of major belief change. It is instructive to evaluate how judges in developing countries address these problematic issues, and to specifically identify the types of legal reasoning judges employ in attempting to integrate different value systems into a coherent rule of law. This article treats African disputes about witchcraft as a case study of the conflict between state legal norms and norms underlying popular beliefs. The aim is to examine how these disputes challenge judges to produce fair outcomes when legal cultures clash and to profile and explore responses judges have offered. This article questions how judges should address cases in which norms underlying popular beliefs conflict with state legal norms by specifically focusing on judicial reasoning in criminal cases involving witchcraft. (1) Parts II-IV examine how judges have addressed spectral evidence, witchcraft as the basis for a defense of provocation, and imputations of witchcraft. Part V summarizes the findings of the previous three Parts, and suggests, based on these findings, effective ways for judges to handle cases involving witchcraft. The author combed the law reports of several common law African countries for cases involving witchcraft. The author's original intent was to trace trends in the way judges decide these cases. Thus, the author initially sought to explore changes in the form of legal reasoning over time within several legal systems (specifically Botswana, Cameroon, Kenya, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe). Unfortunately, because law reporting has broken down in some of these countries and some new law reports are currently incomplete, it is difficult to clearly define these trends. Nonetheless, the available cases suffice for sketching the types of judicial reasoning employed in cases involving witchcraft. Across large parts of the African continent, beliefs in witchcraft have "run amuck." (2) According to Robert B. Seidman, "[i]n Africa, as in Europe, witchcraft superstition seemingly flourishes in times of social instability." (3) The appearance of cases involving witchcraft appear to have increased, and they illustrate one challenge many African countries face. Modern African states generally do not see witchcraft as legitimate, although they usually stop short of criminalizing popular beliefs in witchcraft. In contrast, legislative acts criminalizing the practice of witchcraft originate in the colonial era, and independent governments have not removed these statutes--and many continue to enforce them. For example, both South Africa and Zimbabwe's Witchcraft Suppression Acts make it a crime to accuse someone of being a witch. (4) According to Tanzania's Witchcraft Ordinance, anyone who is caught practicing witchcraft, or who possesses witchcraft materials, can be charged with an offense. …

15 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
202314
202242
202196
2020160
2019174
2018176