Assessing the Impact of the Violence Against Women Act

The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) has been hailed as the federal government's signature legislation responding to gender-based violence. VAWA, passed in 1994 and reauthorized three times since then, has created several new programs and protections for victims of gender-based violence. VAWA is, however, primarily a funding bill and what it primarily funds is the criminal legal system. But the criminal legal response to gender-based violence has not been effective in decreasing rates of gender-based violence or deterring violence. A VAWA that discontinued funding for the criminal legal system and instead focused on economics, prevention, and community-based resources—a noncarceral VAWA—could better meet the needs of victims of gender-based violence and target the underlying causes of that violence.

Pandemic: Legal and Social Response

The Covid-19 pandemic changed the world and accelerated processes that could have taken decades without a pandemic. In this paper, the authors discuss the public and government responses to the new normal, nowadays reality, and most importantly, the legal regulations that have been enacted in different countries in response to the challenges. The paper discusses in detail issues related to security measures, social distance, gender issues, abortion, education and student mobility, employment, and entrepreneurship. A pandemic that has survived more than a year needs to be addressed. The decision-makers made efforts to create a provision for the influenza virus after it became prominent in society. The intention is not to be pessimistic but to be optimistic enough to create provisions for the future. Countries are aiming to achieve their commitments to recover from the pandemic. A pandemic demands a legal response as well as a social response. The research paper aimed to divert the attention of the readers to the untouched aspects of the law that are related to emergency situations, including pandemics. In the paper, we discuss the paradox of the pandemic, lockdown, and post-lock- down situations, as well as protests/riots, gender-based violence, healthcare, and education topics related to the changes that have taken place due to the pandemic.

Problem of criminal legal qualification of domestic violence in law enforcement practice

Domestic violence is a phenomenon that can take the form of a socially dangerous act and be qualified as a crime under Art. 126-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine and other articles of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. It is the correctness of the criminal legal qualification of domestic violence that became the subject of our study. The lack of systematic interpretation of Art. 126-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine leads in practice to the fact that the courts decide completely differently on the qualification of actions of a person. After all, domestic violence can be a manifestation of both an administrative offense and a criminally punishable act. That makes it impossible to further apply the restrictive measures of a criminal legal nature, enshrined in Art. 91-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. Such situation has already become the basis for resolution in the order of review by higher courts and formation of a position on the most problematic aspects by the Supreme Court of Ukraine. In particular, in order to avoid the prohibited double conviction or punishment, the proceedings must be combined on a comprehensive basis and form a single whole. This means not only that the goal and the means used to achieve it must complement each other in nature and be linked in time, but also that the possible consequences of such legal response to appropriate behavior must be proportionate and predictable. for the persons to whom they relate. Thus, the purpose of our study is to form a list of issues for the correct criminal legal qualification of actions under Art. 126-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, for the correct separation from the administrative offense under Art. 173-2 of the Code of Administrative Offenses, as well as from other criminal offenses related to domestic violence. The task is to study the conclusions of the Supreme Court of Ukraine, to analyse the case law, to analyse the research conducted by non-governmental international organizations, as well as to analyse the positions of the doctrine of criminal and criminal procedure law on this issue.

Emergency Law Responses and the Covid-19 Pandemic (Global State of Democracy Thematic Paper 2021)

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, governments have implemented a variety of extraordinary legal and policy measures to protect lives, mitigate the spread of the virus, and prevent health systems from breaking down. These measures have often included curbing some human rights, restricting travel, shuttering up classrooms, suspending government services, ordering the temporary closure of businesses, controlling or curtailing news reporting, and sometimes delaying elections. To do this, many governments have activated emergency legal frameworks that provide for the assumption of emergency powers by the executive and, in some cases the weakening or setting aside of ordinary democratic checks and balances. It is helpful to understand the different types of laws relied upon (or not) by governments to justify their assumption of emergency powers and their imposition of emergency measures. This paper examines and compares different types of legal bases for emergency powers, built-in safeguards and constraints specific to each type of emergency regime, the factors that may influence choices about which emergency legal response to apply, and the associated advantages and risks

Learning from Lived Experience: Australia’s Legal Response to Forced Marriage

Since the criminalisation of forced marriage in Australia in 2013, the number of cases reported to Australian authorities has risen sharply. This article draws on a qualitative study with eight survivors of forced marriage in Australia to explore survivors understanding of the legal concepts of forced marriage and family violence; experiences of coercion and control in the lead up to, and within, a forced marriage; the obstacles survivors encountered when they sought help; their reflections on justice and the limitations of legal responses to forced marriage; and how survivors can shape law and policy reform. The findings of this study underline the need to reframe Australia’s response to forced marriage to address the complex processes of coercion and control which lead to forced marriage and to create meaningful opportunities for survivors to shape the design, implementation and evaluation of legal and policy responses to forced marriage.

Constitutional Challenges in the Algorithmic Society

New technologies have always challenged the social, economic, legal, and ideological status quo. Constitutional law is no less impacted by such technologically driven transformations, as the state must formulate a legal response to new technologies and their market applications, as well as the state's own use of new technology. In particular, the development of data collection, data mining, and algorithmic analysis by public and private actors present unique challenges to public law at the doctrinal as well as the theoretical level. This collection, aimed at legal scholars and practitioners, describes the constitutional challenges created by the algorithmic society. It offers an important synthesis of the state of play in law and technology studies, addressing the challenges for fundamental rights and democracy, the role of policy and regulation, and the responsibilities of private actors. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Extraordinary Measures in Extraordinary Times: Legal Response to the COVID-19 Crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly affected all aspects of people’s daily lives. In response to the pandemic, many countries declared a state of emergency. Extraordinary measures have been implemented to reduce the spread of the new coronavirus. Some of these measures require significant restrictions of fundamental rights and freedoms, such as the right to privacy, freedom of movement, freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, religious freedoms etc. In Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), the BiH and entity authorities adopted decisions to provide a legal basis for implementation of extraordinary measures. The paper deals with the restrictive measures implemented during the COVID-19 crisis in BiH and their impact on human rights realization. The relevant decisions of the Constitutional Court of BiH are also analysed, including the decision in case AP-3683/20 according to which certain restrictive measures are contrary to the right to respect of private life and the freedom of movement.

Measures Introduced in the Slovak Republic in Response to the Public Health Crisis Caused by the COVID-19 Pandemic

The SARS-Cov-2 pandemic outbreak in the Slovak Republic in March 2020 required rapid legal response to protect lives and health of inhabitants and new complex challenges emerged. The objective of this paper is an analysis and critical assessment of measures adopted in the field of health law. As most significant problem fields in Slovakia arose: 1/ Legality and hierarchy of measures limiting everyday life and exercise of citizen rights and freedoms; 2/ the scope, proportionality, extent and duration of measures; 3/ adherence to the measures by the public and law enforcement issues. The pandemic unraveled need to innovate the legal framework of contagious diseases control, for example, constitutional emergency regimen, or powers of the Public Health Authority. Established rule of law framework served to safeguarding against some disproportionate or unwanted effects of anti-pandemic measures, however, future development of more sophisticated legal tools to control the pandemic is needed.

Peculiarities of consideration of domestic violence cases by a jury: problems and perspectives

The article analyzes the question of the optimal composition of the court for resolving domestic violence cases as a means to ensure more effective protection of victims of family violence and an appropriate legal response to this phenomenon. Special attention is paid to the peculiarities of consideration of such cases by the jury. The author attempts to observe the advantages and disadvantages of this type of legal proceedings in domestic violence cases, taking into account the peculiarities of the procedural form itself, as well as the substantive legal characteristics of crimes committed in the domestic context. The analysis was conducted through the prism of the criteria of the courts impartiality, the specifics of evidentiary process and of the judicial review of the final judgments rendered in such cases. As a result, it was concluded that, although the features of the procedural form in question impose certain restrictions on the participants in criminal proceedings, the consideration of domestic violence cases by a jury, as an alternative to a professional judge, has undoubted advantages and prospects for its more common use.