Resistance Is Futile: The Right to Resist Unlawful Arrest in an Era of Aggressive Policing

2000 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 472-496 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Hemmens ◽  
Daniel Levin

The police are relying on more aggressive tactics in their effort to fight crime. A common complaint regarding these tactics is that innocent persons are sometimes subjected to unlawful arrest. At common law, there was a right to resist an illegal arrest. The modern trend, however, has been to eliminate the right to resist. Abrogation of the common law right is based on several factors, including the development of modern criminal procedure, the ability to seek redress via other means, and the belief that violence should not be encouraged. This article examines the history and current status of the right to resist an unlawful arrest. The authors argue that attacks on the common law right are based on a misunderstanding of the original justifications for the right and that there remains a great need for the right particularly as new police tactics increase the probability of arbitrary assertions of authority.

2011 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danwood Mzikenge Chirwa

AbstractThe 1994 Malawian Constitution is unique in that it, among other things, recognizes administrative justice as a fundamental right and articulates the notion of constitutional supremacy. This right and the idea of constitutional supremacy have important implications for Malawi's administrative law, which was hitherto based on the common law inherited from Britain. This article highlights the difficulties that Malawian courts have faced in reconciling the right to administrative justice as protected under the new constitution with the common law. In doing so, it offers some insights into what the constitutionalization of administrative justice means for Malawian administrative law. It is argued that the constitution has altered the basis and grounds for judicial review so fundamentally that the Malawian legal system's marriage to the English common law can be regarded as having irretrievably broken down as far as administrative law is concerned.


Author(s):  
Roman Sabodash

The paper shows how the publication of court decisions influenced the formation of a precedent. The author reviewed scientific works devoted to research the precedent in common and continental law. The research explains that the formation of precedent in England was accompanied by development of the judgment’s reviews and their prevalence among lawyers. Of course, publication of court decisions was not a major factor in setting a precedent, but it played a significant role in this. The paper also describes facts of the publication of court decisions in Italy, Germany, France and the Netherlands, as well as the admissibility of their citations at the court of cassation. The general idea of the paper is that convincing precedent exists and is used although the countries of continental law do not have a «classic» precedent. The paper gives a review of the importance of the state register of court decisions for setting a convincing precedent in Ukraine. The author analyzes the pros and cons of citing court decisions. It’s stated that, unfortunately, the quotations of court decisions is not always correct and sometimes amounts to rewriting the «right» legal position without comparing the circumstances of the case. The article concludes that the practice of applying a convincing precedent in Ukraine is only emerging and needs further improvement.          It has been found out that the publication of judgments of supreme courts is one of the factors that helped to establish precedent in common law countries. The publication of court rulings also created the conditions for a convincing precedent in civil law countries (especially in private law). At the same time, the formation of a “convincing precedent» in countries where court decisions are published in publicly available electronic court registers is much faster than in common law countries. Of course, the structure and the significance of the precedent in the common law and civil law countries are different, but one cannot dismiss that publication of court decisions as one of the factors for establishing the precedent.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (19) ◽  
pp. 118-127
Author(s):  
Nurli Yaacob ◽  
Nasri Naiimi

Good faith has been defined as justice, fairness, reasonableness, decency, taking no chances, and so on. The concept of good faith has long been rooted in contract law under the jurisdiction of Civil law, although the definition of it is still debated until today. However, the view of the Common Law tradition does not recognize the concept of good faith as long as the contract is entered into with the freedom of contract and both parties abide by the terms of the contract. Given that a franchise contract involves a long-term contract and always been developed, it is impossible to define both rights and responsibilities base on express terms only. As such, the franchise contract gives the franchisor the right to exercise its discretion in executing the contract. It is in this context that the element of good faith is very important to ensure that the franchisor does not take advantage of the franchisee and that the business continues to prosper. Therefore, the objective of this article is to discuss the concept of good faith in a franchise contract. The findings show that the common law system that initially rejected the application of the concept of good faith also changed its approach and began to recognize the concept of good faith as it is very important for relational contracts such as franchise contracts.


De Jure ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Melissa Lazarus ◽  
Dr Franaaz Khan

Marital privilege is founded on the biblical principles of the union between man and wife. Thus wives were not competent or compellable witnesses against their husbands. Over the years the privilege developed in English common law. South Africa codified the privilege through Section 198 of the Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977 which states that spouses cannot be compelled to testify against each other unless the crime for which the accused spouse is charged appears in the categories listed in Section 195 of the Act. There are many criticisms against affording a privilege to a particular class of persons - notably that the non-compellability exception given to spouses is unconstitutional as it violates the right to equality in terms of section 9 of the Constitution. Recent media coverage at the Zondo Commission highlighted this conundrum when the ex-minister's spouse was asked to testify. This article examines the merits of the unconstitutionality argument and concludes that spousal non-compellability fails to withstand the test against unfair discrimination on the basis of marital privilege. Finally, recommendations are proposed in this regard which examine the nature and evolution of spousal competence and non-compellability in South African law.


1999 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth J Keith

The Right Honourable Sir Kenneth Keith was the fourth speaker at the NZ Institute of International Affairs Seminar. In this article he describes and reflects upon the role of courts and judges in relation to the advancement of human rights, an issue covered in K J Keith (ed) Essays on Human Rights (Sweet and Maxwell, Wellington, 1968). The article is divided into two parts. The first part discusses international lawmakers attempting to protect individual groups of people from 1648 to 1948, including religious minorities and foreign traders, slaves, aboriginal natives, victims of armed conflict, and workers. The second part discusses how from 1945 to 1948, there was a shift in international law to universal protection. The author notes that while treaties are not part of domestic law, they may have a constitutional role, be relevant in determining the common law, give content to the words of a statute, help interpret legislation which is in line with a treaty, help interpret legislation which is designed to give general effect to a treaty (but which is silent on the particular matter), and help interpret and affect the operation of legislation to which the international text has no apparent direct relation. 


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Motonori Yamaguchi

The need of typewriting skill is ever increasing in our lives. The prevalence of personal computers and mobile devices has transformed the way people communicate with each other. Although many different types of human interfaces have been introduced over the decades, the dominant form of computer interface remains to be that of typing on a keyboard. [...] Whilst typing has become one of the common everyday skills within the last two decades, experimental psychologists have been studying it as a research subject for more than a hundred years. [...] Apart from its practical importance in the modern lifestyle, the act of typing involves the right amount of complexity as well as well-defined and measurable actions. These features of typewriting makes it an ideal testbed to gain our understanding of the control and acquisition of complex skills. This review article first presents a brief overview of the classic studies of typewriting skill in the early 20th century, discusses the developments that took place after the mid-20th century, and concludes with the current status and issues that remain for future investigations in the 21st century.


1976 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriela Shalev

Chapter 4 of the new Israeli Contracts (General Part) Law, 1973, introduces the concept of a contract in favour of a third party, while granting express recognition to the right of a third party beneficiary. Even those, (including the author) who maintain, that the right of a third party beneficiary could and should be derived, even before the commencement of the new Law, from the general principles and premises of the old Israeli law of contract, cannot fail to see in the above-mentioned chapter an important innovation in the Israeli legal system.This paper is a comparative analysis of the institution of third party beneficiary. The analysis will consist of a presentation and critical examination of the central concepts and doctrines involved in the institution under discussion, and it will be combined with a comparative survey of the arrangements adopted in various legal systems. The choice of this approach stems from the particular circumstances of the new legislation.While in most countries, comparative legal research is a luxury, in Israel it is a necessity. The new legislation in private law is inspired to a great extent by Continental codifications. As far as the law of contract is concerned, Israel is now in the process of becoming a “mixed jurisdiction”: departing from the common law tradition and technique, and heading towards an independent body of law, derived from various sources, mainly Continental in both substance and form.


Author(s):  
Stannard John E ◽  
Capper David
Keyword(s):  

This chapter focuses on breach of condition. The first situation in which termination will be available is where the other party has broken a ‘condition’. A condition is a stipulation in a contract, be it a contract of sale or some other contract, the breach of which gives rise to the right to ‘treat the contract as repudiated’. When is a term a ‘condition’? A term can be made a condition either by express stipulation or by implication. The chapter then distinguishes condition from various other concepts with which it may appear to have similarities, but which work in different ways. It also looks at time stipulations and the divergent approaches of the common law and equity to time stipulations.


2013 ◽  
pp. 21-41
Author(s):  
Gillian S. Howard

The English legal system is based on the common law. The common law system in England and Wales developed from the decisions of judges whose rulings over the centuries have created precedents for other courts to follow and these decisions were based on the ‘custom and practice of the Realm’. The system of binding precedent means that any decision of the Supreme Court—the new name for the former House of Lords (the highest court in the UK)—will bind all the lower courts, unless the lower courts are able to distinguish the facts of the current case and argue that the previous binding decision cannot apply, because of differences in the facts of the two cases. However, since the UK joined the European Union (EU), the decisions of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) now supersede any decisions of the domestic courts and require the English national courts to follow its decisions. (Scotland has a system based on Dutch Roman law, and some procedural differences although no fundamental differences in relation to employment law.) The Human Rights Act 1998 became law in England and Wales in 2000 (and in Scotland in 1998) in order to incorporate the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law. The two most important Articles applicable to employment law are Article 8(1), the right to respect for privacy, family life, and correspondence, and Article 6, the right to a fair trial.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document