Imago Decidendi

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Goodrich
Keyword(s):  
Sustained Attention ◽  
Legal Decisions ◽  
Primary Mode ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Judicial Decisions ◽  
Dramatic Shift

The digitization of law and of law reporting has greatly facilitated the transmission and use of images in legal decisions. While advocates have long been aware of the persuasive value of graphs, photographs, film, animatrix, the manipulation of images in judicial decisions has received little sustained attention. This article reviews the literature on the visual turn in legal studies and applies its lessons, historical and theoretical, to the apprehension of the juristic value and precedential status of images in judgments. The visual apparatuses of law are increasingly becoming its primary mode not only of transmission but also of reasoning, authorizing and judging. Such a dramatic shift in forum and medium to the online and digital necessitates a comparable transfer of method, a movement to sensuous apprehension,ad apparentiam, by appearance, in place of the traditional hermeneuticad similia, or by analogy.

Introduction : Culture in tne Domains of Law

2005 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Howes
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Cultural Competence ◽  
Cultural Sensitivity ◽  
Law Enforcement Officers ◽  
Aboriginal Rights ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Judicial Decisions ◽  
Cultural Defense

In their introduction to Law in the Domains of Culture, Austin Sarat and Thomas Kearns write: “[l]aw and legal studies are relative latecomers to cultural studies. To examine [law in the domains of culture] has been, until recently, a kind of scholarly transgression.” The same could be said in reverse: cultural studies (including anthropology) are a relative latecomer to law and legal studies, but in the last few decades there has been a striking irruption of cultural discourse in the domain of law.It is as if the acquisition of some degree of “cultural competence” has become a duty in legal circles. Not only are there seminars and courses in “cultural sensitivity” for judges, lawyers, and law enforcement officers, but “the culture concept” now informs many judicial decisions regarding Aboriginal rights, and “the cultural defense” (while hotly contested by some, and still lacking official approbation) has become a feature of numerous criminal trials involving immigrants. Interestingly, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms refers to “the multicultural heritage of Canadians”, and makes the preservation and enhancement of this heritage a condition of its own interpretation.

scholarly journals Judicial Decision-Making, Ideology and the Political: Towards an Agonistic Theory of Adjudication

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafał Mańko
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
The Political ◽  
Judicial Decision ◽  
Legal Form ◽  
Judicial Decision Making ◽  
Legal Decisions ◽  
Judicial Decisions ◽  
Double Nature

AbstractThe present paper puts forward a first outline of a possible agonistic theory of adjudication, conceived of as an extension of Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic theory of democracy onto the domain of the juridical, and specifically, judicial decision-making. Mouffe’s concept of the political as the dimension of inherent and unalienable conflicts (antagonisms) which, nonetheless, need to be tamed for a pluralist democracy to function, creates an excellent vantage point for a critical theory of adjudication. The paper argues for perceiving all judicial decisions as having a double nature—juridical and political. Cloaked in legal form, judgments nonetheless decide on individual instances of on-going collective conflicts, opposing workers to employers, consumers to traders, tenants to landlords, moral progressives to traditionalists, minorities to majorities and so forth. Judges, when handing down judgments, enjoy a ‘relative sovereignty’, being always already inscribed into the institutional imperatives of the juridical, on one hand, and ideological influences, on the other, but at the same time called upon to decide in the terrain of the undecidable and contingent (after all, law does not ‘apply itself’ on its own). Indeed the determinacy of legal decisions is only relative: in many cases judges can, by performing a sufficient amount of legal interpretive work, reach a conclusion which will be different from the prima facie interpretation. The collective conflicts of a various nature (economic, ideological, socio-political), once they are juridified, become the object of judicial decisions which, in light of Mouffe’s theory, can be seen as temporary hegemonic fixations. The goal of critical legal scholarship is to destabilise such hegemonies in the name of justice. This can be done not only through an external critique of the law, but also through an internal one. The methodological approach advanced in the latter part of the paper emphasises the need for a critique of judicial decisions based on the consideration of all possible alternative decisions a court could have reached, and their evaluation in the light of conflicting interests and ideologies.

Legalism: Rules, Categories, and Texts

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernanda Pirie
Keyword(s):  
Sustained Attention ◽  
Social Form ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Legitimate Power ◽  
General Rules ◽  
Repeated Use ◽  
Abstract Categories ◽  
The Rich

Laws, rules, and texts, this chapter argues, deserve more sustained attention by legal anthropologists. They have tended to turn their backs on doctrine and texts, but law and legal phenomena have taken legalistic forms practically since the invention of writing. Historical and anthropological examples indicate that legalism – that is, the use of general rules and abstract categories – is typical of law as a social form. Paying attention to this aspect of law helps to explain legal phenomena that have long puzzled anthropologists, in particular, an enduring fascination with law, despite its repeated use to enact and legitimate power. A focus on legalism, moreover, allows scholars to compare diverse empirical examples from the rich corpus of historical legal studies with more contemporary ethnographic work in order to reflect upon the nature of law as a social form.

Case Law Update for 1997 This edition of Points of Law summarises some important legal decisions made in the courts or reported during 1997.

1998 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-83
Author(s):  
Guinevere Tufnell
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Child Mental Health ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Health News ◽  
Legal Decisions ◽  
Work Related ◽  
Judicial Decisions ◽  
Codes Of Practice ◽  
Legal Context ◽  
Made In

The editor of Points of Law welcomes articles on topics related to the legal context of work related to child mental health, news about recent legal developments (new laws, official codes of practice, important judicial decisions), commentaries on these, and suggestions of topics for coverage in future issues.

SHOULD LIKE CASES BE TREATED ALIKE?

Legal Theory ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrei Marmor
Keyword(s):  
Analogical Reasoning ◽  
Similar Case ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Legal Decisions ◽  
Judicial Decisions

It is a familiar slogan in legal circles that “like cases should be treated alike.” This idea is often confused with two others: the rationale of analogical reasoning in adjudication, and the value of coherence. I would like to keep these three issues separate, at least for a while. What is unique about idea of treating like cases alike? I would suggest that the interesting cases (and by “cases,” I do mean judicial decisions, to which this essay is confined) are those in which legal decisions are not entirely determined by reasons. If two similar cases are actually determined by the reasons that apply to them, then there is no need for the principle of treating like cases alike: The determining reasons would do all the work of justifying similar rulings. This is what makes the principle of treating like cases alike uniquely problematic and separate from the questions of analogical reasoning and coherence. In analogical reasoning, for example, the assumption is that if there is a good reason that determines a decision X under circumstances C1, and we now face a similar case C2, then the reason that determines X in C1 may also determine (or support) the decision X under C2. In other words, analogical reasoning typically appeals to the reasons that underlie the previous decision(s) and extends the application of those reasons to the new case. (I will qualify this account of analogy in the last section.)

Speeded Paper-Pencil Sustained Attention and Mental Speed Tests

2008 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 205-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Krumm ◽  
Lothar Schmidt-Atzert ◽  
Kurt Michalczyk ◽  
Vanessa Danthiir
Keyword(s):  
Sustained Attention ◽  
Time Pressure ◽  
Factor Model ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Perceptual Speed ◽  
Speed Factor ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Task Processing ◽  
Order Factor

Mental speed (MS) and sustained attention (SA) are theoretically distinct constructs. However, tests of MS are very similar to SA tests that use time pressure as an impeding condition. The performance in such tasks largely relies on the participants’ speed of task processing (i.e., how quickly and correctly one can perform the simple cognitive tasks). The present study examined whether SA and MS are empirically the same or different constructs. To this end, 24 paper-pencil and computerized tests were administered to 199 students. SA turned out to be highly related to MS task classes: substitution and perceptual speed. Furthermore, SA showed a very close relationship with the paper-pencil MS factor. The correlation between SA and computerized speed was considerably lower but still high. In a higher-order general speed factor model, SA had the highest loading on the higher-order factor; the higher-order factor explained 88% of SA variance. It is argued that SA (as operationalized with tests using time pressure as an impeding condition) and MS cannot be differentiated, at the level of broad constructs. Implications for neuropsychological assessment and future research are discussed.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document