Download or read book The Origins of Reasonable Doubt written by James Q. Whitman and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To be convicted of a crime in the United States, a person must be proven guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt.” But what is reasonable doubt? Even sophisticated legal experts find this fundamental doctrine difficult to explain. In this accessible book, James Q. Whitman digs deep into the history of the law and discovers that we have lost sight of the original purpose of “reasonable doubt.” It was not originally a legal rule at all, he shows, but a theological one. The rule as we understand it today is intended to protect the accused. But Whitman traces its history back through centuries of Christian theology and common-law history to reveal that the original concern was to protect the souls of jurors. In Christian tradition, a person who experienced doubt yet convicted an innocent defendant was guilty of a mortal sin. Jurors fearful for their own souls were reassured that they were safe, as long as their doubts were not “reasonable.” Today, the old rule of reasonable doubt survives, but it has been turned to different purposes. The result is confusion for jurors, and a serious moral challenge for our system of justice.
Download or read book Justice and Unjusticiability written by Ermanno Calzolaio and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2019 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book tries to identify the main contours of unjusticiability and non-justiciability from an historical and comparative perspective distinguishing between common law world and civil law tradition. In the light of a general overview, the aim of this publication is to reflect on the utility of paving the way for a much wider approach to unjusticiability. More precisely, some scholars have recently suggested that such a notion could embrace all the situations where a court does not decide a case, so that it is impossible for the plaintiff to have the case decided by a court. A first category covers the situations where the court refuses to judge because it does not want to judge. A second category is related to all the cases where there is an impossibility to reach a decision. Any case where the judge cannot or does not wish to make justice--si iudex non facit iustitiam--continues to indicate a series of new (and old) questions.
Download or read book Justice and mercy written by Philippa Byrne and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-06 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines one of the most fundamental issues in twelfth-century English politics: justice. It demonstrates that during the foundational period for the common law, the question of judgement and judicial ethics was a topic of heated debate – a common problem with multiple different answers. How to be a judge, and how to judge well, was a concern shared by humble and high, keeping both kings and parish priests awake at night. Using theological texts, sermons, legal treatises and letter collections, the book explores how moralists attempted to provide guidance for uncertain judges. It argues that mercy was always the most difficult challenge for a judge, fitting uncomfortably within the law and of disputed value. Shining a new light on English legal history, Justice and mercy reveals the moral dilemmas created by the establishment of the common law.
Download or read book Summistae written by Lidia Lanza and published by Leuven University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-15 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Aquinas’ Summa theologiae is one of the classics in the history of theology and philosophy. Beyond its influence in the Middle Ages, its importance is also borne out by the fact that it became the subject of commentary. During the sixteenth century it was gradually adopted as the official text for the teaching of scholastic theology in most European Catholic universities. As a result, university professors throughout Europe and the colonial Americas started lecturing and producing commentaries on the Summa and using it as a starting point for many theological and philosophical discussions. Some of the works of major authors such as Vitoria, Soto, Molina, Suárez and Arriaga are nothing more than commentaries on the Summa. This book is the first scholarly endeavour to investigate this commentary tradition. As it examines late scholasticism against its institutional backdrop and contains studies of manuscripts and texts unpublished, it will remain an authoritative source for the research of late scholasticism.
Download or read book A History of Law in Europe written by Antonio Padoa-Schioppa and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-08-03 with total page 823 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first English translation of a comprehensive legal history of Europe from the early middle ages to the twentieth century, encompassing both the common aspects and the original developments of different countries. As well as legal scholars and professionals, it will appeal to those interested in the general history of European civilisation.
Download or read book Textual and Visual Representations of Power and Justice in Medieval France written by Rosalind Brown-Grant and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thoroughly interdisciplinary in approach, this volume examines how concepts such as the exercising of power, the distribution of justice, and transgression against the law were treated in both textual and pictorial terms in works produced and circulated in medieval French manuscripts and early printed books. Analysing texts ranging from romances, political allegories, chivalric biographies, and catalogues of famous men and women, through saints’ lives, mystery plays and Books of Hours, to works of Roman, canon and customary law, these studies offer new insights into the diverse ways in which the language and imagery of politics and justice permeated French culture, particularly in the later Middle Ages. Organized around three closely related themes - the prince as a just ruler, the figure of the judge, and the role of the queen in relation to matters of justice - the issues addressed in these studies, such as what constitutes a just war, what treatment should be meted out to prisoners, what personal qualities are needed for the role of lawgiver, and what limits are placed on women’s participation in judicial processes, are ones that are still the subject of debate today. What the contributors show above all is the degree of political engagement on the part of writers and artists responsible for cultural production in this period. With their textual strategies of exemplification, allegorization, and satirical deprecation, and their visual strategies of hierarchical ordering, spatial organization and symbolic allusion, these figures aimed to show that the pen and paintbrush could aspire to being as mighty as the sword wielded by Lady Justice herself.
Download or read book The Development of the Criminal Law of Evidence in the Netherlands France and Germany between 1750 and 1870 written by Ronnie Bloemberg and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-05-25 with total page 554 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes the development of the criminal law of evidence in the Netherlands, France and Germany between 1750 and 1870. In this period the development occurred that the so-called system of legal proofs was replaced with the (largely) free evaluation of the evidence. The system of legal proofs, which had functioned since the late middle ages, consisted of a set of strict evidentiary rules which predetermined when a judge could convict someone. In this book an explanation is given of the question why between 1750 and 1870 the strict evidentiary rules were replaced with the free evaluation of the evidence. The thesis of this research is that the reform was induced by a change in the underlying epistemological and political-constitutional discourses which together provided the ideas which inspired a significant reform of the criminal law of evidence.
Download or read book European Law in the Past and the Future written by R. C. van Caenegem and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: R. C. van Caenegem considers the historical reasons behind European legal diversity.
Download or read book La Conscience du juge dans la tradition juridique europ enne written by Jean-Marie Carbasse and published by FeniXX. This book was released on 1999-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Le juge a-t-il une conscience ? ou plutôt, a-t-il le droit d'en avoir une ? Entre loi et justice, droit strict et équité, conscience professionnelle et conscience morale, la tradition juridique de l'Occident n'a cessé d'approfondir ce thème à partir des sources bibliques, de la philosophie grecque, du droit romain. « Copyright Electre »
Download or read book Evaluation of Evidence written by Mirjan Damaška and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Well-chosen negative legal proof rules can be useful procedural safeguards. They existed in both pre-modern and modern criminal procedures.
Download or read book European Rules of Civil Procedure written by Astrid Stadler and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2023-11-03 with total page 785 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: European Rules of Civil Procedure sets out a clear examination of the rules adopted by UNDROIT and the European Law Institute in 2020. Presented within a systematic structure to aid enhanced academic understanding, it precisely showcases the substantial comparative knowledge of its authors.
Download or read book Lying and Perjury in Medieval Practical Thought written by Emily Corran and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-05 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thought about lying and perjury became increasingly practical from the end of the twelfth century in Western Europe. At this time, a distinctive way of thinking about deception and false oaths appeared in the schools of Paris and Bologna, most notably in the Summa de Sacramentis et Animae Consiliis of Peter the Chanter. This kind of thought was concerned with moral dilemmas and the application of moral rules in exceptional cases. It was a tradition which continued in pastoral writings of the thirteenth century, the practical moral questions addressed by theologians in universities in the second half of the thirteenth century, and in the Summae de Casibus Conscientiae of the late Middle Ages. Lying and Perjury in Medieval Practical Thought argues that medieval practical ethics of this sort can usefully be described as casuistry - a term for the discipline of moral theology that became famous during the Counter-Reformation. This can be seen in the origins of the concept of equivocation, an idea that was explored in medieval literature with varying degrees of moral ambiguity. From the turn of the thirteenth century, the concept was adopted by canon lawyers and theologians, as a means of exploring questions about exceptional situations in ethics. It has been assumed in the past that equivocation, and the casuistry of lying was an academic discourse invented in the sixteenth century in order to evade moral obligations. This study reveals that casuistry in the Middle Ages was developed in ecclesiastical thought as part of an effort to explain how to follow moral rules in ambiguous and perplexing cases.
Download or read book Rethinking Historical Jurisprudence written by Samuel, Geoffrey and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2022-10-18 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This stimulating book considers the ways in which historical jurisprudence deserves to be rethought, arguing that there is much more to the history of legal thought than the ideas, and ideology, of the nineteenth and early twentieth century jurists, such as Karl von Savigny and Sir Henry Maine.
Download or read book Custom Law and Monarchy written by Marie Seong-Hak Kim and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-07 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancien régime France did not have a unified law. Legal relations of the people were governed by a disorganized amalgam of norms, including provincial and local customs (coutumes), elements of Roman law and canon law, royal edicts and ordinances, and judicial decisions. All these sources of law coexisted with little apparent internal coherence. The multiplicity of laws and the fragmentation of jurisdiction were defining features of the monarchical era. Legal historians have focused on popular custom and its metamorphosis into customary law, which covered a broad spectrum of what we call today private law. This book sets forth the evolution of law in late medieval and early modern France, from the thirteenth through the end of the eighteenth century, with particular emphasis on the royal campaigns to record and reform customs in the sixteenth century. The codification of customs in the name of the king solidified the legislative authority of the crown, which was an essential element of the absolute monarchy. The achievements of legal humanism brought custom and Roman law together to lay the foundation for a unified French law. The Civil Code of 1804 was the culmination of these centuries of work. Juristic, political, and constitutional approaches to the early modern state allow an understanding of French history in a continuum.
Download or read book The Many Faces of Credulitas written by Stefania Tutino and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-09-06 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about the relationship between belief, credibility, and credulity in post-Reformation Catholicism. It argues that, starting from the end of the sixteenth century and due to different political, intellectual, cultural, and theological factors, credibility assumed a central role in post-Reformation Catholic discourse. This led to an important reconsideration of the relationship between natural reason and supernatural grace and consequently to novel and significant epistemological and moral tensions. From the perspective of the relationship between credulity, credibility, and belief, early modern Catholicism emerges not as the apex of dogmatism and intellectual repression, but rather as an engine for promoting the importance of intellectual judgment in the process of embracing faith. To be sure, finding a balance between conscience and authority was not easy for early modern Catholics. This book seeks to elucidate some of the difficulties, anxieties, and tensions caused by the novel insistence on credibility that came to dominate the theological and intellectual landscape of the early modern Catholic Church. In addition to shedding light on early modern Catholic culture, this book helps us to understand better what it means to believe. For the most part, in modern Western society we don't believe in the same things as our early modern predecessors. Even when we do believe in the same things, it is not in the same way. But believe we do, and thus understanding how early modern people addressed the question of belief might be useful as we grapple with the tension between credibility, credulity, and belief.
Download or read book Majority Decisions written by Stéphanie Novak and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-30 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the most complete set of analytical, normative, and historical discussions of majority decision making to date. One chapter critically addresses the social-choice approach to majority decisions, whereas another presents an alternative to that approach. Extensive case studies discuss majority voting in the choice of religion in early modern Switzerland, majority voting in nested assemblies such as the French Estates-General and the Federal Convention, majority voting in federally organized countries, qualified majority voting in the European Union Council of Ministers, and majority voting on juries. Other chapters address the relation between majority decisions and cognitive diversity, the causal origin of majority decisions, and the pathologies of majority decision making. Two chapters, finally, discuss the counter-majoritarian role of courts that exercise judicial review. The editorial Introduction surveys conceptual, causal, and normative issues that arise in the theory and practice of majority decisions.
