Climate Change in Court: Overcoming Procedural Hurdles in Transboundary Environmental Cases

Climate change and its consequences will likely be the defining human rights challenge of the 21st Century. The European Court of Human Rights is well-placed to help shape the response to this looming crisis. Indeed, the first four applications concerning climate change have recently been filed before the Court. However, the applicants in these pending cases, as well as potential applicants in any future climate cases, will have to overcome significant procedural hurdles to ensure that the Court will hear their arguments on the merits. This article discusses some of the most significant issues that applicants seeking to bring climate cases will face, which include proving exhaustion of domestic remedies, establishing that the applicants have victim status, and demonstrating that the applicants face a significant disadvantage. This article considers how the Court can ensure that these admissibility hurdles do not preclude climate cases from receiving full consideration on the merits.

Who is worthy of help? Constructing the stereotype of the “ideal victim” of child sexual abuse

The stereotype of the “ideal victim” often determines who is considered deserving of victim status, especially in sexual violence cases. In this Chapter, we explore how is the so-called “ideal victim” stereotype constructed and what are the elements necessary for the perception of “ideal victimhood.” We use empirical data from an unmoderated anonymous Estonian online forum that hosts various topic threads from children and young people, including posts about personally experienced sexual violence (N=28) and replies to these posts (N=361). The data was analyzed by combining a discursive psychological approach with qualitative thematic analysis. Results reveal and illustrate how the stereotype is constructed from various elements and characteristics of social scripts, perceived gender roles, and misconceptions about sexuality. We unveil how these social constructions affect responses and attitudes towards sexual abuse victims to provide input for designing prevention efforts that support disclosure and help-seeking.

Perspectiva sociometrică în abordarea stimei de sine a elevului victimă a bullying-ului școlar

In this study we applied the sociometric research technique of the student class to identify the sociometric status of students characterized as victims of bullying. The sociometric position and the perception of the bullying victim status were tested by applying the sociometric test on a sample of 31 students in a humanities class (11th) of a high school in Brăila, Romania. The results of the self-esteem measuring instrument were also used by applying the Rosenberg technique. The results of the study showed that there was a visible difference between the rejected number 6 (Isp = 0.4), for which 2 votes and 14 rejections were expressed and the rejected number 2, chosen by 3 colleagues and rejected by 4 (Isp = -0.03). Also, the grouping of those with Isp = 0 in the category of the indi ff erent ones

Mechanisms of attaining the objectives of criminal procedure on preservation of victims’ rights, freedoms and legitimate interests and prevention of secondary victimization in pre-trial investigation

The study is devoted to the issue of legal mechanism of attaining the objectives of criminal procedure on preservation of victims’ rights, freedoms and legitimate interests and prevention of secondary victimization in pre-trial proceedings (initiation of criminal proceedings and pre-trial investigation). This mechanism is composed of the procedure of legal entitlement of a harmed person with procedural status of victim, which provides the opportunity to participate sub actively in criminal process and to take advantages from corresponding legal guarantees in the process; the procedure for providing victims with a written acknowledgement of their formal complaint by criminal justice system officials that ensures that victim’s claim on the assumption that he or she has suffered some sort of harm as a direct result of criminal offense had been committed, is considered as true and simultaneously is examined by providing pre-trial investigation; ensuring that victims have been provided with the opportunity to receive preservation and protection of their violated procedural rights, in particular by providing access to challenge in court in pre-trial investigation processdecisions, actions or actions of investigator, inquirer, prosecutor or investigating judge. The author states that the Criminal Procedural Code of Ukraine prescribe that entitling of a harmed person with victim status is made through autodynamic procedure and that the Code purposely does not lie the burden of proof for attest suffered harm on the victim, which he or she proclaimed in a complaint. The common legal Presumption of Integrity and good faith of the person is embodied in mentioned legal provision and, as the author pointed out, have led to the obligation of competent officers to use an Anticipatory Trust Doctrine in resolving the issue of deprivation of the procedural status of the victim. The burden of proof for absence of harm is lied on investigator or prosecutor according to the author’s interpretation of Part 5 Art. 55 of the Criminal Procedural Code of Ukraine. The Code purposely does not provide the procedure for deprivation of the procedural status of victim in the stage of Trial too. Court order of investigating judge on the cancellation of the prosecutor's decision on deprivation of the procedural status of victim, ipso facto, entitling the complainant with victim status, as it restores the normative provision of first paragraph of Part 2 Art. 55 of the Criminal Procedural Code of Ukraine. The author analyzed nationwide statistic of court orders of investigating judge in two-last-years period and concluded that, on the one hand, the harmed persons often believe that their procedural rights are violated or ignored in pre-trial proceedings (at the initiation of criminal proceedings and in pre-trial investigation), which is leading to increased risks of secondary victimization; on the other hand, the rates of satisfaction of victims' complaints by the investigating judge are high, which proves the effectiveness of the institution of challenging in correcting mistakes that were committed earlier. Keywords: secondary victimization, objectives of criminal procedure, victim, harmed person, anticipatory trust doctrine, presumption of victims’ integrity, preservation of rights, freedoms and legitimate interests of victims, legal entitlement with status of the victim, acquisition of the status of the victim, deprivation of the procedural status of victim, refusal to recognize the victim, challenging in pre-trial investigation.

Drizzling sympathy: Ideal victims and flows of sympathy in Swedish courts

By connecting sociological perspectives on sympathy with the concept of ‘ideal victims’, this article examines how sympathy forms and informs legal thought and practices in relation to victim status in Swedish courts. In its broadest sense, sympathy can be understood as an understanding and care for someone else’s suffering and in many contexts victimization and sympathy are densely entangled. However, since ideals of objectivity and neutrality prevail in court, emotional norms are narrow and sympathy is met with suspicion. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Swedish courts, I argue that while sympathetic feelings are mostly backgrounded, they are still a central part of court proceedings and deliberations. The main findings suggest that prosecutors and victims’ counsel use ‘sympathy cues’ to evoke the judges’ concern for the complainants and to facilitate their empathic imagination of the complainant’s situation. In relation to this finding, judges engage in emotion work in order to not be affected by these sympathy cues. The study also shows that in encounters with ‘ideal victims’ who perform a playful resistance to their victimization, legal actors show sympathy more freely and accept moments of temporary relief from the normal interaction order in court.

‘I Wouldn’t Call the Cops if I was Being Bashed to Death’: Sex Work, Whore Stigma and the Criminal Legal System

Discourse on sex work is replete with narratives of risk and danger, predominantly focused on violence and disease. However, the risks instigated by police, maintained by the criminal justice system and sanctioned by the state—criminal laws, licensing laws and targeted policing—receive far less attention. This paper responds to this gap in three ways. First, we examine how stigma manifests in sex workers’ experiences of Australian policing, which act to disincentivise sex workers from accessing criminal legal mechanisms. Second, we illustrate how sex workers are denied victim status as they are seen by law as ‘irresponsible citizens’ and blamed for their experiences of crime. Third, we argue that these factors create conditions in which sex workers must constantly assess risks to access safety and legal redress while structural sex work stigma persists unabated. We conclude that ‘whore stigma’ is entrenched in the criminal legal system and requires a systematic response that necessitates but goes beyond the decriminalisation of sex work.

Introducing Victim Impact Statement in India: Reconceptualizing Victim Status

The right to fair trial is inherent in the concept of due process of law, which now forms part of Article 21 of Indian Constitution after the Maneka Gandhi judgement. Pertinently attached with the same comes the responsibility of the criminal system to treat victims with increased awareness and sensitivity. However, the established convention shows that in planning and developing administration of criminal justice, proper attention is not given to the victims of crime in achieving goals of criminal justice; the major cause of it being that a victim is heard only as a witness not as a victim. A credible response to the said issue has emerged in the form of victim impact statement (VIS) in the modern legal system across the world. With that being said, the researchers through this article try to deduce the need for incorporating a VIS in India through the various jurisprudential understandings of what it means to be a victim, including the gap between the subjective experience of the sufferer and the interpretation of the same by others, and what restorative justice would mean to heal a victim. Establishing upon the same premise of victim status, the researchers try to suggest that the introduction of VIS, with the primary purpose of it being a therapeutic tool and not an instrument of changing the course of justice, will serve to make us reconsider our contours of a ‘victim’.

PREVENTION OF CRIMINAL OFFENSES COMMITTED AGAINST FOREIGNERS AS AN OBJECT OF CRIMINOLOGICAL RESEARCH

The article describes the migration processes that significantly affect crime, outlines the current state and the main trends of this phenomenon; the complex of questions concerning etiological and phenomenological features and regularities of commission of criminal offenses concerning foreigners in Ukraine is considered; study of the nature, tendencies and features of victimization and victimhood of foreigners; prevention of such illegal actions. A set of theoretical and practical issues related to the development of organizational and legal measures to combat crime against foreigners is covered. Foreigners are a specific object for criminological research. They are less likely than nationals to commit crimes, but are more likely to be victims of criminal encroachment. In 70 % of criminal offenses against foreigners there are pronounced victimogenic factors. Considering the peculiarities of the processes of victimization and victimization of foreign citizens in Ukraine, it is worth talking about the existence of a victim-generating multifactorial complex, which determines the specifics of such encroachments, based on the characteristics of victim status at both individual and group levels. The specificity of the process of victimization of foreigners is due to the specifics of its status, which is the most victimized and is characterized mainly by a low level of education; awareness of being abroad or staying illegally in the host country; ignorance of the requirements of the current legislation of the host country; language barrier; low sense of social justice and self-esteem; group and individual conformity in an anonymous way of life; ethnopsychological features; distrust of state bodies; social maladaptation of the individual. Such factors determine the specifics of the process of individual and group victimization. Implementation of scientific and developed methods, the study of victims of crimes and victimological prevention of crimes is, of course, not the only way of practical application of victimological knowledge.