Allen Steinberg brings to life the court-centered criminal justice system of nineteenth-century Philadelphia, chronicles its eclipse, and contrasts it to the system -- dominated by the police and public prosecutor -- that replaced it. He offers a major reinterpretation of criminal justice in nineteenth-century America by examining this transformation from private to state prosecution and analyzing the discontinuity between the two systems. Steinberg first establishes why the courts were the sources of law enforcement, authority, and criminal justice before the advent of the police. He shows how the city's system of private prosecution worked, adapted to massive social change, and came to dominate the culture of criminal justice even during the first decades following the introduction of the police. He then considers the dilemmas that prompted reform, beginning with the establishment of a professional police force and culminating in the restructuring of primary justice. Making extensive use of court dockets, state and municipal government publications, public speeches, personal memoirs, newspapers, and other contemporary records, Steinberg explains the intimate connections between private prosecution, the everyday lives of ordinary people, and the conduct of urban politics. He ties the history of Philadelphia's criminal courts closely to related developments in the city's social and political evolution, making a contribution not only to the study of criminal justice but also to the larger literature on urban, social, and legal history. Originally published in 1989. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

National civil justice systems are deeply rooted in national legal cultures and traditions. However, in the past few decades they have been increasingly influenced by integration processes at the regional, supra-national and international level. As a by-product of the emergence of economic and political unions and globalisation processes there is pressure to harmonise or even unify the way in which national civil justice systems operate. In an attempt to create a ‘genuine area of justice’, new unified procedures are being developed, which operate in parallel with national civil procedures, and sometimes even strive to replace them. As a reaction to the forces that endeavour to harmonise and unify procedural laws and practices, an opposing trend is gaining momentum: one that insists on diversity and pluralism of national civil procedures. This book focuses on the evolution of procedural reforms in various jurisdictions and the ongoing transformation of national civil justice systems.

Professor Sadat's book is a valuable "restatement" of international criminal law, discovering and delineating the process that led the United Nations from Nuremberg to the Rome Statute of an International Criminal Court. "With the establishment of the International Criminal Court we enter an exciting era in the development of internatonal criminal law. This well written and thoroughly researched work provides a comprehensive and insightful analysis and critique of the Rome Statute and the impact of prosecuting war criminals" -- Justice Richard Goldstone Published under the Transnational Publishers imprint.

James Donovan takes a comprehensive approach to the history of the jury in modern France by investigating the legal, political, sociocultural, and intellectual aspects of jury trial from the Revolution through the twentieth century. He demonstrates that these juries, through their decisions, helped shape reform of the nation's criminal justice system. From their introduction in 1791 as an expression of the sovereignty of the people through the early 1900s, argues Donovan, juries often acted against the wishes of the political and judicial authorities, despite repeated governmental attempts to manipulate their composition. High acquittal rates for both political and nonpolitical crimes were in part due to juror resistance to the harsh and rigid punishments imposed by the Napoleonic Penal Code, Donovan explains. In response, legislators gradually enacted laws to lower penalties for certain crimes and to give jurors legal means to offer nuanced verdicts and to ameliorate punishments. Faced with persistently high acquittal rates, however, governments eventually took powers away from juries by withdrawing many cases from their purview and ultimately destroying the panels' independence in 1941.

Fact-finding is at the heart of human rights advocacy, and is often at the center of international controversies about alleged government abuses. In recent years, human rights fact-finding has greatly proliferated and become more sophisticated and complex, while also being subjected to stronger scrutiny from governments. Nevertheless, despite the prominence of fact-finding, it remains strikingly under-studied and under-theorized. Too little has been done to bring forth the assumptions, methodologies, and techniques of this rapidly developing field, or to open human rights fact-finding to critical and constructive scrutiny. The Transformation of Human Rights Fact-Finding offers a multidisciplinary approach to the study of fact-finding with rigorous and critical analysis of the field of practice, while providing a range of accounts of what actually happens. It deepens the study and practice of human rights investigations, and fosters fact-finding as a discretely studied topic, while mapping crucial transformations in the field. The contributions to this book are the result of a major international conference organized by New York University Law School's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. Engaging the expertise and experience of the editors and contributing authors, it offers a broad approach encompassing contemporary issues and analysis across the human rights spectrum in law, international relations, and critical theory. This book addresses the major areas of human rights fact-finding such as victim and witness issues; fact-finding for advocacy, enforcement, and litigation; the role of interdisciplinary expertise and methodologies; crowd sourcing, social media, and big data; and international guidelines for fact-finding.

In this book, 15 contributors from the disciplines of law, politics, and sociology reflect on South Africa's transition to democracy and the challenges of transformation and nation-building that have confronted the country since the first democratic elections of 1994. The range of topics is expansive, in keeping with a broader-than-usual definition of transitional justice which, it is argued, is more appropriate for States faced with the mammoth tasks of reform and institution-building in a context in which democracy has never been firmly rooted and the existence of widespread poverty gives rise to the dual demands for both bread and freedom. In the case of South Africa, the post-apartheid era has been characterized by wide-ranging attempts at transformation and nation-building, from the well-known Truth and Reconciliation Commission to reforms in education and policing, the promotion of women's rights, the reform of land law, the provision of basic services to hundreds of thousands of poor households, a new framework for freedom of expression, and the transformation of the judiciary. In the light of South Africa's commitment to a new constitutional dispensation and to legal regulation, this volume focuses in particular, but not exclusively, on the role that law and lawyers have played in social and political change in South Africa in the post-apartheid era. It sets the South African experience in historical and comparative perspective and considers whether any lessons may be learned for the field of transitional justice. (Series: Transitional Justice - Vol. 15)

In a remarkable book based on prodigious research, Morton J. Horwitz offers a sweeping overview of the emergence of a national (and modern) legal system from English and colonial antecedents. He treats the evolution of the common law as intellectual history and also demonstrates how the shifting views of private law became a dynamic element in the economic growth of the United States. Horwitz's subtle and sophisticated explanation of societal change begins with the common law, which was intended to provide justice for all. The great breakpoint came after 1790 when the law was slowly transformed to favor economic growth and development. The courts spurred economic competition instead of circumscribing it. This new instrumental law flourished as the legal profession and the mercantile elite forged a mutually beneficial alliance to gain wealth and power. The evolving law of the early republic interacted with political philosophy, Horwitz shows. The doctrine of laissez-faire, long considered the cloak for competition, is here seen as a shield for the newly rich. By the 1840s the overarching reach of the doctrine prevented further distribution of wealth and protected entrenched classes by disallowing the courts very much power to intervene in economic life. This searching interpretation, which connects law and the courts to the real world, will engage historians in a new debate. For to view the law as an engine of vast economic transformation is to challenge in a stunning way previous interpretations of the eras of revolution and reform.