The weight of criminal judicial evidence

Author(s):  
Mykola Ye. Shumylo ◽  
Valery P. Gmyrko ◽  
Vladyslav S. Rudei

The study is devoted to the current issue of the weight of criminal judicial evidence, which is understudied in the national doctrine. The legislator, having introduced this evaluative concept in 2012 (Paragraph 1, Part 11, Article 1 of 178 CCP), did not provide its normative definition. As a result, there is a conceptual uncertainty, which is inappropriate given the requirements of the rule of law (Article 8 of the Constitution of Ukraine, Article 8 of the CCP). Therefore, the purpose of study is to attempt to formulate a definition of the “weight of evidence”, to propose a scheme of work of a lawyer to determine the signs of this activity phenomenon in situations of making appropriate procedural decisions. The study is based on the activity methodology using a number of special methods – search and bibliographic; semantic; Aristotelian; hermeneutic; historical-legal; comparative-legal; functional analysis; generalisation. The study formulated the definition of the “weight of evidence” as an activity characteristic. The latter is the result of a pragmatic logical and legal evaluation of ad hoc evidence within its totality. Thus, certain evidence is prioritised due to the greater suitability attributed to it by the lawyer to serve as a convincing evidence base of the procedural decision. Therefore, the conclusion is substantiated that the “weight of available evidence” as its activity characteristic is “the fifth element” of the structure of “criminal judicial evidence” along with such characteristics as “credibility”, “admissibility”, “reliability”, and “sufficiency”. The study includes conclusion that the introduction by the legislator in 2012 of the “weight of available evidence” meets the requirements of the evidentiary practice of the modern national adversarial process and the ECHR

ICL Journal ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-69
Author(s):  
Eszter Polgári

AbstractThe present article maps the explicit references to the rule of law in the jurisprudence of the ECtHR by examining the judgments of the Grand Chamber and the Plenary Court. On the basis of the structured analysis it seeks to identify the constitutive elements of the Court’s rule of law concept and contrast it with the author’s working definition and the position of other Council of Europe organs. The review of the case-law indicates that the Court primarily associates the rule of law with access to court, judicial safeguards, legality and democracy, and it follows a moderately thick definition of the concept including formal, procedural and some substantive elements. The rule of law references are predominantly ancillary arguments giving weight to other Convention-based considerations and it is not applied as a self-standing standard.


2009 ◽  
pp. 139-150
Author(s):  
Javier de Lucas

- This paper focuses on migration, law and democracy in order to identify where risk lies. The author concentrates on studying a recent case, the Directive on the Return of so-called illegal immigrants (sans papiers) approved by the European Parliament on 18 June 2008. The usual point of view, that of the dominant discourse, maintains that today's migratory movements constitute one of the structural factors that justify the definition of our societies as the "Risk Society". According to this point of view, the migratory flows entail a risk for social cohesion and even a destabilising potential for both democracy and the rule of law. The risk is illustrated by the menacing image of invasion threatening at our doors, hence the classical argument of the "demographic bomb" as the resource of poor countries. The author's thesis sustains that it is precisely our responses, in the form of migratory policy tools, that constitute a risk factor. Some of these tools, including this Directive, have become destabilising elements of the rules of the game and, moreover, of the values of the rule of law and of democracy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kinnari Bhatt

AbstractOne way of understanding the exile of the Chagos Islanders and their inability to return to their ancestral land is through a reading of the case from a perspective of post-colonial legal scholarship. Chagossians have strong legal rights to land and remedies of compensation and return through a purposive application of the international legal definition of Indigenous, Magna Carta right to abode and international human rights law that could address their dispossession. Yet, the inability of those rights to be meaningfully applied has been constrained because of the post-colonial way they are legally interpreted, creating a legal vacuum in which basic fairness and substantive equality have been routinely compromised. Drawing attention to the continued legal denial of return in the context of decolonisation, ongoing colonialism and the rule of law makes sense of the legal record and explains the expulsion of the islanders despite the moral merits of return.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-301
Author(s):  
Ida Ayu Mas lndriani ◽  
Ni Made Jaya Senastri ◽  
Ni Made Puspasutari Ujianti

Intellectual property rights including industrial designs. The idea of ​​industrial design safety is based on the belief that human imagination, taste and initiative are closely linked to industrial design. The state grants protection against new industrial designs. The definition of the rule of law used in the legal protection of industrial designs is based on Law No. 31 of 2000. One of the components in this case is the protection of human rights which is the guideline for the legal protection of industrial designs. There are two forms of industrial design legal protection, which include preventive legal protection and repressive legal protection. This study aims to examine the form of legal protection for industrial designs based on Law No. 31 of 2000 and analyze the legal implications if the design rights holder does not register their industrial designs. This research was designed using normative research with a conceptual approach. The data used are primary and secondary data obtained through documentation and recording. The results of the study indicate that preventive legal protection is contained in the Act which is used to prevent violations and a description of the implementation of obligations while repressive legal protection is security in the form of sanctions for violations that have been committed. In view of this and considering the existence of protection in the form of the industrial design law, the designer can prevent the occurrence of plagiarism of his industrial design by registering his industrial design.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosolino A. Candela

AbstractHow did the evolution of the rule of law become stunted in Sicily during the 19th century? The work of economist Yoram Barzel, particularly his property-rights approach to understanding the political economy of state formation, is uniquely suited to understanding the failure of Italy's unification process to secure the rule of law in Sicily during the 19th century. This failure can be explained by a lack of a credible commitment to the rule of law in the state formation process. I argue that this lack of credible commitment manifested itself in the abolition of previously existing parliamentary institutions as an independent collective action mechanism, as well as prior constitutional agreements that existed in the Kingdom of Sicily. The resulting uncertainty over the security and legal definition of property rights over land raised the transaction costs of competing for resources through productive specialization and market exchange. In turn, it reduced the relative costs of competition for land ownership and the use of enforcement through other means, such as rent seeking or organized crime.


2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maxwell A. Cameron

AbstractScholarly attention has increasingly shifted from diminished subtypes of democracy to hybrid regimes, particularly competitive authoritarianism. Such regimes retain democracy’s formal features while failing to meet its minimum standards. When properties of distinct concepts like democracy and authoritarianism are combined, however, confusion, inaccuracy, and mischaracterization of cases may occur. By disaggregating political systems into electoral institutions, surrounding rights and freedoms, constitutionalism, and the rule of law, this article complicates the binary distinction between a midrange definition of democracy and competitive authoritarianism. A number of Andean cases are found to fall on the spectrum of defective democracies between these categories. Defective democracies break down when rulers violate the conditions necessary for institutionalized alternation in power by means of public participation and loyal opposition in an electoral regime. Given leaders’ reliance on electoral legitimacy, however, even defective democracies may prove surprisingly resilient.


Author(s):  
Michael J. Pfeifer

This introductory chapter discusses how the origins of American lynching can best be understood as a national, and a transnational, process of cultural and legal formation. Diverging significantly from England and western Europe, the United States' transition to a capitalist economy was not accompanied by the emergence of a strong, centralized national state that claimed and enforced an exclusive monopoly over violence and the administration of criminal justice to secure the rule of law. Rather, American criminal justice developed along a distinctive path that emphasized local authority and opinion, self-help and ad hoc law enforcement practices, and the toleration of extralegal violence. Lynching was an important aspect of this distinctive American trajectory from the late eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 1001-1009
Author(s):  
Vitaliy Hudyma

The article reveals and researches the basic principles of the formation of the judiciary in Ukraine. It is established that judicial corps should be understood as an appropriate number of civil servants who hold the relevant positions as judges in the judicial bodies of Ukraine. It has been proved that judges make universally binding decisions, which determine, for example, other processes of maintaining law and order in the state. It is determined that the legislation lacks a clear definition of the term “judiciary” and lacks the primary grounds and principles by which the process of formation of the judicial corps in Ukraine should take place. It is established that the principles of formation of the judiciary in Ukraine should be based on the requirements for candidates for the position of judges, which are defined by Article 69, “Requirements for candidates for the position of the judge” of the Law of Ukraine “On Judiciary and the Status of Judges”. It is proved that one of the components of the procedure for the formation of the judiciary in Ukraine is the qualification assessment of candidates for the position of judges. It was found out that the qualification assessment of judges by the criterion of professional competence should be based on the principle of specialization and instance. It is established that the main principles based on which the appointment of judges-candidates for the positions of members of the Supreme Council of Justice are: the principle of the rule of law; the principle of professionalism; the principle of publicity; the principle of political neutrality. It is determined that one of the critical principles of formation of the judiciary in Ukraine should be the principle of non-political influence, namely its essence is revealed in the fact that entities that will participate both directly and indirectly in the formation of the judiciary should not, in any case, have any relation to the political sphere. It is noted that the prospects for further research in this area are the study of the holistic system and features of the formation of the judiciary in Ukraine.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-253
Author(s):  
Prianter Jaya Hairi

In 2017, Constitutional Court has received three calls for judicial reviews regarding treachery (makar) article in the Criminal Code. These articles deemed to be contradicting with the principle of legal certainty and freedom of expression. This study analyzes the important issue that is being debate in those judicial reviews. One of those is about the argument which says that the absence of the definition of treachery in the Criminal Code has caused a violation of legal certainty. Besides, the rule of treachery in the Criminal Code has also considered to have caused a violation of freedom of expression which has been guaranteed by Constitution. Analysis shows that the absence of treachery definition in the Criminal Code is not something that instantly becomes a problem in its application that causing the loss of legal certainty. Law enforcer, especially judge, in enforcing the rule of law must always use the method of law interpretation which appropriate with legal norm. With systematic interpretation, treachery can be interpreted according to the sentence of the rule as a unity of the legal system. In this case, the term treachery as regulated in Article 87 of the Criminal Code can be systematically interpreted as the basis for Article 104-Article 108 of the Criminal Code, Article 130 of the Criminal Code, and Article 140 of the Criminal Code which regulates various types of treason and their respective legal sanctions for the perpetrators. Further, on the argument that the articles of treachery in the Criminal Code also can not necessarily be said to limit the freedom of expression, because every citizen’s freedom has limitation, including the limitation of law and human rights. AbstrakPada tahun 2017, Mahkamah Konstitusi telah menerima tiga kali judicial reviewterhadap pasalpasal tindak pidana makar dalam Kitab Undang-Undang Hukum Pidana (KUHP). Pasal-pasal ini dipandang bertentangan dengan prinsip kepastian hukum dan kebebasan berekspresi. Tulisan ini menganalisis substansi yang menjadi perdebatan dalam perkara judicial review tersebut. Di antaranya perdebatan mengenai tidak adanya definisi istilah makar dalam KUHP yang menyebabkan persoalan kepastian hukum. Selain itu, pengaturan tindak pidana makar dalam KUHP juga dinilai melanggar kebebasan berekspresi yang telah dijamin oleh konstitusi. Analisis terhadap persoalanpersoalan tersebut menunjukkan bahwa ketiadaan definisi kata “makar” dalam KUHP bukanlah merupakan sesuatu yang serta merta langsung menjadi persoalan dalam penerapannya sehingga menyebabkan hilangnya kepastian hukum. Penegak hukum, terutama hakim, dalam menegakkan peraturan hukum selalu menggunakan metode penafsiran hukum yang sesuai dengan kaidah ilmu hukum. Dengan penafsiran sistematis, makar dapat dimaknai sesuai kalimat dari peraturan sebagai suatu kesatuan sistem hukum. Dalam hal ini, istilah makar yang diatur dalam Pasal 87 KUHP, secara sistematis dapat ditafsirkan sebagai dasar bagi Pasal 104-Pasal 108 KUHP, Pasal 130 KUHP, dan Pasal 140 KUHP yang mengatur tentang jenis makar beserta sanksi hukumnya masing-masing bagi para pelakunya. Selain itu, mengenai argumen bahwa pasal-pasal makar dalam KUHP berpotensi melanggar HAM dan dipandang bertentangan dengan konstitusi dapat dikatakan tidak beralasan. Sebab kebebasan HAM setiap orang tidak tanpa batas, di antaranya dibatasi nilai-nilai agama, keamanan, dan ketertiban umum.


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