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The County Courts in Antebellum Kentucky
Although an important part of local government, particularly in the South, in their early years the county courts have not been thoroughly investigated. This book offers the first comprehensive examination of the county courts during the antebellum era in one southern state Kentucky, placing them in the context of its constitutional and political structure. More administrative than judicial in function, the courts were the means of providing most services of government for the people. This range of activity is fully discussed here, from road building to tax collecting to caring for the poor.
Robert M. Ireland also explores the political aspects of the courts as well as their sometimes complex relationship with the state legislature and with the growing towns and cities. The courts, however, often failed in performing their duties, and the justices, being appointed, became a self-perpetuating oligarchy who seldom consulted the wishes of the people. Elected officials and the voters themselves thus grew increasingly alienated by the working of the courts. Their resentment culminated finally in a constitutional reform that in 1850 created an elective system of county government in Kentucky.
eBook
Canada's Trial Courts
Featuring distinguished contributors from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds,Canada's Trial Courtsoffers a comprehensive and up-to-date examination of an important but neglected issue that ultimately has a profound impact on the quality of justice that Canadians experience.
eBook
Misdemeanor Disenfranchisement? The Demobilizing Effects of Brief Jail Spells on Potential Voters
This paper presents new causal estimates of incarceration’s effect on voting, using administrative data on criminal sentencing and voter turnout. I use the random case assignment process of a major county court system as a source of exogenous variation in the sentencing of misdemeanor cases. Focusing on misdemeanor defendants allows for generalization to a large population, as such cases are very common. Among first-time misdemeanor defendants, I find evidence that receiving a short jail sentence decreases voting in the next election by several percentage points. Results differ starkly by race. White defendants show no demobilization, while Black defendants show substantial turnout decreases due to jail time. Evidence from pre-arrest voter histories suggest that this difference could be due to racial differences in exposure to arrest. These results paint a picture of large-scale, racially-disparate voter demobilization in the wake of incarceration.
Journal Article
The Women of CourtWatch
Houston was a terrible place to divorce or seek child custody in the 1980s and early 1990s. Family court judges routinely rendered verdicts that damaged the interests of women and children. In some especially shocking cases, they even granted custody to fathers who had been accused of molesting their own children. Yet despite persistent allegations of cronyism, incompetence, sexism, racism, bribery, and fraud, the judges wielded such political power and influence that removing them seemed all but impossible. The family court system was clearly broken, but there appeared to be no way to fix it. This book recounts the inspiring and courageous story of women activists who came together to oppose Houston's family court judges and whose political action committee, CourtWatch, played a crucial role in defeating five of the judges in the 1994 judicial election. Carole Bell Ford draws on extensive interviews with Florence Kusnetz, the attorney who led the reform effort, and other CourtWatch veterans, as well as news accounts, to provide a full history of the formation, struggles, and successes of a women's grassroots organization that overcame powerful political interests to improve Houston's family courts. More than just a local story, however, this history of CourtWatch provides a model that can be used by activists in other communities in which legal and social institutions have gone astray. It also honors the heroism of Florence Kusnetz, whose commitment to the Jewish concept of tikkun olam (\"repairing and improving the world\") brought her out of a comfortable retirement to fight for justice for women and children.
eBook
Praxis and Paradox: Inside the Black Box of Eviction Court
In the American legal system, we typically conceive of legal disputes as governed by specific rules and procedures, resolved in a formalized court setting, with lawyers shepherding both parties through an adversarial process involving the introduction of evidence and burdens of proof. The often-highlighted exception to this understanding is the mass, assembly-line processing of cases, whether civil or criminal, in large, urban, lower-level courts. The gap left unfilled by either of these two narratives is how \"court\" functions for the average unrepresented litigant in smaller and nonurban jurisdictions across the United States.
Journal Article
Tekoh v. County of Los Angeles
The US court case Tekoh v. County of Los Angeles is discussed. The Ninth Circuit denied the petition for rehearing en banc, leaving intact the panel's holding that using an un-Mirandized statement at trial gives rise to section 1983 liability. Though the Ninth Circuit correctly denied en banc rehearing, the dissent's demotion of Miranda warnings from \"constitutionalize[d]\" to\"prophylactic\" is unjustified and risks restricting constitutional remedies at the Supreme Court and beyond.
Journal Article
Decisions to Imprison
This book presents empirical analyses of the normative and ideological structures of courts' decisions to imprison in the daily handling of criminal cases. It explores the ways in which the courtroom decision-making process upholds decisions as legally valid, whilst at the same time also allows decision-making to reflect wider and more contextual factors.
eBook
Online Parenting Education for Divorcing and Separating Parents: Understanding Who Participates in Court-Affiliated Programs
Parenting programs provided through the court system aim to reduce interparental conflict while teaching parents appropriate strategies to help their children through the divorce or separation. However, families often fail to start and/or complete recommended programming. We examined data from 221 separating and divorcing parents in initial court cases in [county, state, masked for review]. Parents were court-ordered, using randomization, to a no program control condition or to complete one of two online parenting programs, Two Families Now (TFN) or Children in Between (CIB). Each program averaged three hours in length. We conducted a series of conditional regression analyses exploring predictors of program participation among those assigned to a parenting program (
N
= 151). Seventy percent (
N
= 105) of parents assigned to a program participated in the program (i.e., all who started a program also completed it). Parents who reported statistically significantly more years of education, were divorcing versus unmarried, and who had significantly less time since their separation from the other parent were more likely to participate in the program, all with small odds ratios. Our findings indicate that courts and program developers should consider ways to best increase program participation rates, particularly among parents with fewer resources (e.g., decreasing logistical barriers and program burden), along with offering the program close to the time of separation.
Highlights
Researchers evaluated predictors of participation in court-ordered brief online parenting programs among separating and divorcing parents.
Parents with more education, who were divorcing (vs. unmarried), and who had had been separated fewer years were more likely to participate in a program.
Courts and program developers should consider ways to further decrease barriers to brief online parenting program participation.
Journal Article