As more and more nations prosecute copyright piracy cases, it is far from clear whether these nations, in seeking to protect legitimate copyright interests, will also recognize the need to achieve three goals in the sentencing of such cases. The first is honesty in sentencing: that is, avoiding situations in which the nominal sentence that a court initially imposes at sentencing may later be su...

In the Australian state of New South Wales judges have sat under the coat of arms of the British monarchy since the nineteenth century (figure 1). Having been accustomed to seeing this symbol over the course of many years doing research in New South Wales courtrooms I was surprised to notice, during some research into the physical form of courts in 2000, that a different coat of arms had appear...

The patent laws are in the U.S. Constitution dating back from 1790 to 1793 to promote, as articulated by one of the framers, Thomas Jefferson, and protect ‘any new and useful art, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new or useful improvement thereof ’. Although the U.S. Congress in 1952 replaced the word ‘art’ with the word ‘process’, the Congress, as well as the courts, have...

One of the earliest decisions on this subject opines that the “all or nothing” rule provides a “blanket release from liability for doctors and hospitals any time there was less than a 50 percent chance of survival, regardless of how flagrant the negligence.”7 Another more recent decision notes that the “all or nothing” approach “fails to recognize the common sense proposition that a loss of cha...

There are many views on how human decision makers behave. In this work, the Justices of the United States Supreme Court will be viewed in terms of constrained maximization and cognitivecybernetic theory. This paper will integrate research in such fields as law, political science, psychology, economics and decision making theory. It will be argued that due to its heavy workload, the Supreme Cour...

The government may deport an immigrant appealing a deportation order in federal court even before the court rules on the case, unless the court issues a stay of removal. In its 2009 decision in Nken v. Holder, the Supreme Court clarified that the legal standard for stays of removal is the same test courts use for preliminary injunctions. Yet Justice Kennedy expressed frustration that the Court ...

Adam Graycar Director The Australian Institute of Criminology has projects under way which attempt to fill a significant gap in our knowledge about the relationship between illicit drug use and criminal behaviour. Most Australian data relate to drug offences, but many other offences have a drug-related genesis. The existing judicial process does not appear to offer long-term solutions to drug-r...

The appointment in 1953 of Earl Warren as Chief Justice of the United States marked the beginning of a new era in the development of constitutional law. In the ensuing years changes of vast dimension and historic impact have taken place. Few men are better qualified to assess the significance of the decisions of the Warren Court than Archibald Cox, student of law, teacher of law and, from 1961 ...

Where do we go from here? While risk equalisation has been given legal backing by the Irish High Court and the European Court of First Instance, the Supreme Court judgment is still awaited, and it remains to be seen whether the Court of First Instance judgment will be appealed to the European Court of Justice. Further legal challenges are also pending in the Irish courts, and Sean Quinn, Chairm...