Statistical Analysis on Dowry Cases in India

It has been seen from the last decade that the misuse of un-exempted provisions of dowry law been increasing and in result the other party is facing the world with great loss. A long delayed case of dowry has been pending in district courts just due to clashes of hard provisions of law and lack of evidences. Even just after the complaint a woman can claim and complaint of other additional things as a right of wife like maintenance which leads to makeable financial burden on man irrespective of his financial and social position. Women use the weapons called Section 498A and Dowry Act to file a false complaint so as to attack their husband. Section 498A of Indian Penal Code is a provision under which a husband, his parents, and relatives can be booked for subjecting a woman to cruelty to meet their unlawful demands (dowry). Generally, the husband, his parents, and relatives are immediately arrested without sufficient investigation and put behind bars on non-bailable terms. The NCRB’s ‘Crime in India’ report categorizes crimes various heads of the IPC. If one looks at the respective conviction rates of all the categories, cases registered under Sec 498-A (Cruelty by Husband & Relatives) have one of the lowest conviction rates. In 9 out of these 10 years, the conviction rate of Sec 498-A cases was in the bottom three. This study concentrates on the effects of misuse of dowry law on man which has always been neglected. In India the trial courts are just filling their duty by giving dates of hearing and due to this delay the husband and his family members are paying which deteriorates their life without any fault. This research aims to count the loss of man and his family on monitory and social term specially the cases pending long before the trial courts.

Victims and Prosecutors

This chapter explores crime victims’ experiences in U.S. trial courts in relation to the passage, application, and adjudication of state and federal victims’ rights legislation (VRL). It reviews victims’ current rights established through legislation and case law: to privacy, information, and notification; to be present; and to be heard in pre-trial hearings, in trials, in plea bargaining, and in victim impact statements. It reviews qualitative research documenting how and why prosecutorial discretion is often exercised to limit victims’ participation in trials and pleas, highlighting incentives for emotion management. It also reviews proposals, which are counter to this standard, designed to achieve greater victim participation and to produce higher quality testimony, including extensive pre-court preparation and courtroom intermediaries. It assesses the efficacy of practices to protect victims from secondary victimization in court, including shielding (close circuit video and screens) and support dogs. It explores use of private attorneys to (1) ensure that prosecutors and judges comply with VRL and (2) pursue victim-directed, private prosecution of sexual assault in the United States and elsewhere. It concludes that the promise of VRL—to provide therapeutic justice outcomes, achieve victim satisfaction, and enact procedural justice—is yet to be realized in the United States; however, an evidence-based approach toward prosecutorial practice would be advantageous for victims.

Here Come the Judges

We are Ohio state court judges with actual experience in imposing and/or reviewing criminal felony sentences. We are unaware of any expressed objection by Ohio’s judiciary to having more relevant information available to a sentencing court. Sentencing discretion is conferred upon trial courts by the General Assembly through its statutory enactments, and the trial courts have full discretion to impose a prison sentence that falls within the prescribed statutory range. With such wide-ranging discretion the database will provide additional information to a sentencing judge, which will result in a more informed sentence. Justice requires that judges get it “right.” Why prevent useful, relevant, and important information from being considered by trial judges in achieving this goal? Once the criminal sentencing database is in place, for the first time in the state’s history all stakeholders, including judges, will have access to relevant information that can inform their sentencing decisions while keeping biases, implicit or otherwise, in check. This will usher in a fairer, more transparent system that we should all support. As stewards of the greatest system ever designed to resolve disputes and, therefore, as those empowered to see that justice is achieved, we can’t afford to pretend that the problem doesn’t exist. We must seize this moment and take this long-overdue step for the betterment of our judicial system and, therefore, our society.

Designing and implementing e-justice systems: an information systems approach to regional trial court case docket management in northern Mindanao, Philippines

Computer-based information systems for case management are still at an early stage of adoption in many trial courts in the Philippines. In most cases, information system implemented is the case docket using the official record book on which cases are written and inventory of cases and reports are generated. This is a standalone system that often face data processing, data security and case management challenges. However, there are examples of Information systems in overcoming these pitfalls and producing innovative solutions that surpass data management practices in in many trial courts in the country. One such case is the Regional Trial Court Branch 23 of Cagayan de Oro City in Northern Mindanao, Philippines. A project named Web-based Case Docket Information System (WCDIS) has been designed and developed for the court branch. This system uses a framework known as System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) which is a guide for the design and development. This paper also discusses the key system functionalities and the implementation methodology, including both the benefits and shortcomings of this approach, with the goal of applying lessons learned for future installations. Foremost among the successes of this project is its ability to increase efficiency and reliability in completing court transactions.

The Ethnographic Gaze on State Law in India

Rather than offering an exhaustive catalogue of anthropological and sociological writings on law in India in the last two to three decades, this review essay shows how the ethnographic gaze constitutes state law in this body of work. Locating ethnography in police stations, forensic laboratories, customary courts, or trial courts implies a rejection of the idea that appellate law exhausts state law. Emphasizing everyday processes of the law and providing accounts of subjection and resistance allows us to re-think the categories that are normalized in the doctrinal picture of law. Ethnographic descriptions of state and non-state law in different sites and temporalities do not merely rehearse Dean Roscoe Pound’s well-known distinction between law in books and law in practice. Rather, these works offer a compelling account of how law is localized, often ceasing to bear resemblance to itself.

Does Judicial Selection Affect Judicial Performance? Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Do judges selected by merit review commissions perform better than elected judges or those directly appointed by elected officials? This is a central question in both the academic study of state judicial institutions and the policy discourse about how to reform them. To address it, we take advantage of the variation in the means of the selection for trial court judges within Arizona, a state comprised of appointed, elected, and merit-selected trial court judges. This unique context allows us to use an objective measure of judicial performance – the reversal rate of trial court cases appealed to Arizona’s state appellate courts – to evaluate judges by their means of selection. We gather an original dataset on 2919 cases heard by 176 judges, estimating multivariate models that control for characteristics of cases and of judges. Overall, we find that elected judges have a lower reversal rate than merit-selected judges. Our findings question the conventional wisdom in the state courts literature in favor of merit selection and against judicial elections, and encourage further work on the effects of judges’ means of selection beyond state supreme courts to include state appellate and trial courts.

Are foreign copyright works protected in Nigeria?

Despite Nigeria's treaty obligations, Nigerian courts have, in the last quarter of a century, consistently but erroneously held that the Nigerian copyright statute does not protect copyright works of foreign persons. The purport of the decisions is that foreign persons cannot sue to protect their copyright in Nigeria. Given that the decisions of three trial courts and a Court of Appeal decision were never appealed to the Supreme Court, they arguably remain good precedent. The decisions suggest that foreign direct investors who need copyright protection are exposed in Nigeria. Relying on two of these cases, a leading intellectual property law text echoed this erroneous position. This article demonstrates that the decisions were reached in ignorance of applicable statute. As such, the decisions should not be followed by trial courts irrespective of the rule of binding judicial precedent. The article outlines various mechanisms within the copyright statute that extend the protection of the Nigerian copyright statute to foreign works. This article goes further than previous works. Unlike earlier works, this article suggests the path trial courts should tread, despite the rule of precedent, in distinguishing this line of cases to hold that foreign corporations incorporated in many treaty countries and foreign works emanating from many treaty countries are protected in Nigeria. Unlike earlier works, this article demonstrates that lower courts may refer this issue to higher courts for interpretation and guidance under the case stated procedure. Whilst other works made passing references to the Copyright (Reciprocal Extension) Order 1972 (the 1972 Order), that arguably extends copyright to foreign works under the Copyright Act 1970, none cited judicial authority that held that the 1972 Order made under the repealed Copyright Act 1970 is still valid under the current Copyright Act. None referred to the Interpretation Act that supports this judicial authority. Unlike previous work, this article reveals that if the Microsoft case that is the most significant of these cases is appealed to the Nigerian Supreme Court, the court will extend the time within which the Microsoft Corporation can appeal and reverse Microsoft and the line of cases identified in this article.