Police Powers and Criminal Investigations

The Act of state doctrine essentially serves to truncate or end proceedings against a state in the court of another state for actions attributed to or owned by the first state. Originally, the actions against which the defense could be raised were wide and all encompassing. It included exercise of police powers, takings, maritime and commercial acts. However, starting with cases such as Bernstein, Dunhill and others, and goaded in part by legislation such as the second Hickenlooper Amendment in the US, a number of exceptions have been carved into the doctrine. It is such that some academics have called for the end of the doctrine. This paper argues that although the doctrine is now limited, compared to its original compass, it is resilient. That resilience, this paper contends, is predicated on its International law pedigree. It is further argued that the swings in the role of the state in economic matters accounts for the growth, downturn and upturn in the viability of the doctrine as a defense in international economic law.

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Upright Citizens in Criminal Records: Investigations in Cachoeira and Geremoabo, Brazil, 1780-1836

The Americas A Quarterly Review of Latin American History ◽

10.2307/980997 ◽

1981 ◽

Vol 38 (2) ◽

pp. 173-184 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Patricia Aufderheide

Keyword(s):

Criminal Justice ◽

Social Stress ◽

Criminal Records ◽

Social Deviance ◽

Criminal Investigations ◽

The Social ◽

Community Changes ◽

Power And Influence

Criminal justice records provide the historian with a wealth of data on social deviance, and on the role of the judiciary in defining and controlling it. They can as well comment on the most invisible group for the social historian: the “innocent bystanders,” the respectable folk who distinguish themselves neither by their power and influence nor by their deviance. This essay illustrates the value of one kind of judicial data, local criminal investigations in Brazil, to provide information on the working citizens of a community. Changes in the characteristics of that population may be indicative of wider social stress in the Brazilian Independence period.

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