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Articles on Legal system

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Felicity Huffman leaves federal court with her husband William H. Macy, left, and her brother Moore Huffman Jr. rear center, after she was sentenced in a nationwide college admissions bribery scandal, Sept. 13, 2019, in Boston. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer

Felicity Huffman: White is the colour of remorse

The fallout from the Huffman case has been intense, with much anger centered on the light punishment meted out to a white A-list celebrity versus the excessive charges levelled at Black defendants.
An exterior view of the Indonesian Constitusional Court building in Jakarta. Bagus Indahono/EPA

Prabowo challenges Indonesia’s poll result at Constitutional Court but doubts its impartiality. New research confirms the court’s fairness

Providing the first empirical analysis of the court’s performance in high-profile cases between 2004 and 2016, our research indicates that its independence from the government remains intact.
George Pell’s lawyer, Robert Richter, said he will appeal the guilty verdict. DAVID CROSLING/AAP Image

How an appeal could uphold or overturn George Pell’s conviction

George Pell’s conviction has opened a rift in Australian society, with many people questioning the guilty verdict. Pell’s lawyer has said he will appeal. On what grounds could he do that?
A 69-year-old man is in jail for encouraging his wife to commit suicide so he could get the $1.4 million from her life insurance policies.

Encouraging suicide or committing manslaughter?

A 69-year-old man is in jail for encouraging his wife to suicide but some have wondered why he wasn’t charged with a more serious offence.
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh used baseball to explain his judicial philosophy during his Senate confirmation hearing. Reuters/Alex Wroblewski

Kavanaugh’s ‘judge as umpire’ metaphor sounds neutral but it’s deeply conservative

Kavanaugh thinks judges ‘must be an umpire – a neutral and impartial arbiter.’ So does Chief Justice Roberts. But more liberal jurists believe that the application of the law is inherently subjective.
False beliefs about language and speech underlie legal precedents that allow jurors to be “assisted” by unreliable transcripts of forensic audio. The Everett Collection/Shutterstock

Legal precedent based on false beliefs proves hard to overturn

Not all false beliefs arise from malicious misinformation. Some legal precedents rest on the status of everyday ‘common knowledge’, since shown to be false, but embedded in our law nonetheless.
Debbie Baptiste, the mother of Colten Boushie, enters the Court of Queen’s Bench as the jury is in deliberation in the trial of Gerald Stanley, the farmer accused of killing her 22-year-old son, in Battleford, Sask., Friday, February 9, 2018. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Liam Richards)

How racial bias likely impacted the Stanley verdict

Racial bias likely played a role in the Gerald Stanley case. This article explains how racial dynamics and process failures enabled systemic racism to play a part in Stanley’s acquittal.
In a case last year, the Supreme Court of Canada grappled with trial delays. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick)

Dealing with trial delays without ending prosecutions

The idea that courts should routinely grant stays of proceedings in the event of trial delays is largely unique to Canada. There are ways to address trial delays without terminating prosecutions.

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