Eyewitness testimony

Eyewitnesses have always played a fundamental role in the legal process. However, eyewitness evidence is not always as reliable or as accurate as one might hope, given the weight that decision-makers often ascribe to it. In this article, we review some of the many factors that can determine the reliability of witness testimony, including factors that are, and those that are not, within the control of investigative and judicial processes. In doing so, we consider how policies might assist in ensuring that witness testimony can play the most effective and informative role in the legal process as possible.

Negotiating identities, striving for state recognition: Blacks in Córdoba, Argentina 1776–1853

Race in Argentina played a significant role as a highly durable construct by identifying and advancing subjects (1776–1810) and citizens (1811–1853). My dissertation explores the intricacies of power relations by focusing on the ways in which race informed the legal process during the transition from a colonial to national State. It argues that the State’s development in both the colonial and national periods depended upon defining and classifying African descendants. In response, people of African descendent used the State’s assigned definitions and classifications to advance their legal identities. It employs race and culture as operative concepts, and law as a representation of the sometimes, tense relationship between social practices and the State’s concern for social peace. This dissertation examines the dynamic nature of the court. It utilizes the theoretical concepts multicentric legal orders that are analyzed through weak and strong legal pluralisms, and jurisdictional politics, from the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries. This dissertation juxtaposes various levels of jurisdiction (canon/state law and colonial/national law) to illuminate how people of color used the legal system to ameliorate their social condition. In each chapter the primary source materials are state generated documents which include criminal, ecclesiastical, civil, and marriage dissent court cases along with notarial and census records. Though it would appear that these documents would provide a superficial understanding of people of color, my analysis provides both a top-down and bottom-up approach that reflects a continuous negotiation for African descendants’ goal for State recognition. These approaches allow for implicit or explicit negotiation of a legal identity that transformed slaves and free African descendants into active agents of their own destinies.

Histórias de adoção tardia: considerações a partir da analítica existencial heideggeriana

Adoption establishes a filiation status, resulting from a legal act, which attributes to the child and parents the rights and obligations associated with such condition, being legally irrevocable. Nevertheless, in practice there are adoptions that do not concretize and the child returns to justice during or even after the legal process is closed. Late adoption is the denomination of the adoption of children over two years and it is still permeated by myths and stigmas, leading to a frequent return of the child to justice in these cases. The late adoption involves a process of building a unique relationship with a child whose backstory is commonly marked by the dissolution of the relationship with the family of origin, due to violation of rights and, in some cases, the experience of institutional care. Given such a scenario, this research, based on the Existential Analytic proposed by Martin Heidegger, seeks to understand the experience of mothers and children in the process of late adoption, in order to obtain subsidies to psychological attention in this context. This is a qualitative, phenomenological study with a comprehensive focus. The participants were two mothers and two children who have gone through late adoption for about two years. The procedures of data generation contemplated narrative interviews with mothers and individual meetings with children, in which ludic resources were used as mediators of expression (free drawings, unfinished children's story and "Story-Drawings" on late adoption). The procedures were audiotaped and transcribed. Data analysis was grounded in Heidegger's hermeneutics. The late adoption process, permeated by historical, social and cultural determinants and the web of meanings that create the historical singularity of each person involved have proved to be complex as seen in the narratives. The construction of the meanings of parenthood and filiation has been developing in the families in the study, from the experience of being-with-the-other, caring and dwelling in their peculiar modes of expression. The family of origin and the adoptive family mingle and differentiate by means of the experience of children, especially because of the existence of biological siblings. Data point to the importance of psychological care to family core in late adoption processes

Stevens trial, May 12 - July 10, 1856, from Official Court records, 2nd District Court, Wash. Terr.

Prepared Feb. 17, 2001 by.Sherburne F. Cook, Jr. Proceedings of this trial are transcribed as they occurred on pp 112- 122, May 12- July 10, 1856.

Enotourism – more than a life style

Enotourism is a relatively new form of sustainable tourism. But is more than a lifestyle. The Douro landscape reflects its ancient and deep connection with the culture of wine, creating a picture of Man and Nature working side by side in search of the perfect wine. Lifestyle typically reflects: an individual's attitude, a way of life, values, or world view. Practical implications - the results suggest that there is scope for developing wine tourism products to attract tourists and which could be used to promote the Douro Valley region as a centre for enotourism. The beautifully unique landscape of the Douro was one of the reasons that made it a World Heritage site in 2001. There isn´t in Portugal an autonomous strategy process to define enotourism. Is a legal problem when we try to analyse the process or a data base to find information about enotourism players. So, how do winery operators, particularly those running small or family businesses, cope with the new developments occurring in the world of wines? The present study examines these issues from the perspective of a group of Portuguese winery operators. Our proposal in this research, is to analyse how many wineris or enotecas are hable to develop enotourism with a legal process. The results of the study reflect the level of education of employees, the seasonal nature of tourism, the improvements in its promotion and the need for greater support from local government. A key aspect is respect for the people who call the location home, the culture and customs of the area, and the socio-economic system. Design/methodology/approach - The methodology employed for this study consisted of a combination of surveys, interviews and field observations with the suppliers in the traditional wine‐producing region, Douro Valley, or Porto wine region, in the north of Portugal. The results of this investigation are almost analisys made inside the villages and also us wineries and enotecas. From the 30 winemakers that we visited, only 2 have an enotourism service acording to legislation and have a certificate that allows to pratices. It was very hard but it is an open field to future researchs (TOMÁS López‐Guzmán,et al, 2011). From the 30 wineries we have analysed only 2 were enotourism with a legal basis. Enotourism is on the travel agencies department and most of the wineries don´t have the legal licenses. Despite of most tourism agencies see enoturism as a segment of the industry with tremendous growth potential, stating that in some regions, it's only functioning at 20% of its full potential. Enotourism development guidelines and management practices are applicable to all forms of tourism in all destination types, including mass tourism and the various niche tourism segments.

Mediação Penal e Justiça Restaurativa

Projeto de Graduação apresentado à Universidade Fernando Pessoa como parte dos requisitos para obtenção do grau de licenciada em Criminologia

False Anglicisms in Legal and Business English as a Lingua Franca (ELF): A Process of Back-borrowing

False Anglicisms are words which technically are not part of the English language, but "seem" English, due to their shape or resemblance to English words. These are usually the result of new creations/coinages in other languages and/or semantic shifts. Due to the use of English as a Lingua Franca, it is becoming quite common to come across these words in English with the "re-imported" shape and meaning they bring from other languages.

Reforma administrativa e marco legal das organiza????es sociais no Brasil: as d??vidas dos juristas sobre o modelo das organiza????es sociais

O modelo brasileiro das organiza????es sociais representa uma das respostas poss??veis ?? crise do aparelho do Estado no ??mbito da presta????o dos servi??os sociais. Essas entidades s??o percebidas como uma forma de parceria do Estado com as institui????es privadas de fins p??blicos (perspectiva ex parte principe) ou, sob outro ??ngulo, uma forma de participa????o popular na gest??o administrativa (perspectiva ex parte populi). No texto s??o tematizadas as diferen??as e semelhan??as entre o marco legal das organiza????es sociais e das entidades de utilidade p??blica no Brasil, as notas distintivas entre a disciplina dos servi??os privados de interesse p??blico e dos servi??os p??blicos, bem como o que distingue juridicamente o modelo das organiza????es sociais de processos de privatiza????o e terceiriza????o. Em todos esses temas os juristas aparecem como protagonistas na determina????o dos limites do modelo das organiza????es sociais, evidenciando que processos de reforma normativa exigem, para serem eficazes, uma concomitante reforma na mentalidade dos agentes p??blicos.

Legal and political regulation of higher education in Portugal: an evolutionary perspective on the current policy issues and the problem of order

The higher education system in Europe is currently under stress and the debates over its reform and future are gaining momentum. Now that, for most countries, we are in a time for change, in the overall society and the whole education system, the legal and political dimensions have gained prominence, which has not been followed by a more integrative approach of the problem of order, its reform and the issue of regulation, beyond the typical static and classical cost-benefit analyses. The two classical approaches for studying (and for designing the policy measures of) the problem of the reform of the higher education system - the cost-benefit analysis and the legal scholarship description - have to be integrated. This is the argument of our paper that the very integration of economic and legal approaches, what Warren Samuels called the legal-economic nexus, is meaningful and necessary, especially if we want to address the problem of order (as formulated by Joseph Spengler) and the overall regulation of the system. On the one hand, and without neglecting the interest and insights gained from the cost-benefit analysis, or other approaches of value for money assessment, we will focus our study on the legal, social and political aspects of the regulation of the higher education system and its reform in Portugal. On the other hand, the economic and financial problems have to be taken into account, but in a more inclusive way with regard to the indirect and other socio-economic costs not contemplated in traditional or standard assessments of policies for the tertiary education sector. In the first section of the paper, we will discuss the theoretical and conceptual underpinning of our analysis, focusing on the evolutionary approach, the role of critical institutions, the legal-economic nexus and the problem of order. All these elements are related to the institutional tradition, from Veblen and Commons to Spengler and Samuels. The second section states the problem of regulation in the higher education system and the issue of policy formulation for tackling the problem. The current situation is clearly one of crisis with the expansion of the cohorts of young students coming to an end and the recurrent scandals in private institutions. In the last decade, after a protracted period of extension or expansion of the system, i. e., the continuous growth of students, universities and other institutions are competing harder to gain students and have seen their financial situation at risk. It seems that we are entering a period of radical uncertainty, higher competition and a new configuration that is slowly building up is the growth in intensity, which means upgrading the quality of the higher learning and getting more involvement in vocational training and life-long learning. With this change, and along with other deep ones in the Portuguese society and economy, the current regulation has shown signs of maladjustment. The third section consists of our conclusions on the current issue of regulation and policy challenge. First, we underline the importance of an evolutionary approach to a process of change that is essentially dynamic. A special attention will be given to the issues related to an evolutionary construe of policy analysis and formulation. Second, the integration of law and economics, through the notion of legal economic nexus, allows us to better define the issues of regulation and the concrete problems that the universities are facing. One aspect is the instability of the political measures regarding the public administration and on which the higher education system depends financially, legally and institutionally, to say the least. A corollary is the lack of clear strategy in the policy reforms. Third, our research criticizes several studies, such as the one made by the OECD in late 2006 for the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education, for being too static and neglecting fundamental aspects of regulation such as the logic of actors, groups and organizations who are major players in the system. Finally, simply changing the legal rules will not necessary per se change the behaviors that the authorities want to change. By this, we mean that it is not only remiss of the policy maker to ignore some of the critical issues of regulation, namely the continuous non-respect by academic management and administrative bodies of universities of the legal rules that were once promulgated. Changing the rules does not change the problem, especially without the necessary debates form the different relevant quarters that make up the higher education system. The issues of social interaction remain as intact. Our treatment of the matter will be organized in the following way. In the first section, the theoretical principles are developed in order to be able to study more adequately the higher education transformation with a modest evolutionary theory and a legal and economic nexus of the interactions of the system and the policy challenges. After describing, in the second section, the recent evolution and current working of the higher education in Portugal, we will analyze the legal framework and the current regulatory practices and problems in light of the theoretical framework adopted. We will end with some conclusions on the current problems of regulation and the policy measures that are discusses in recent years.

Participatory mapping in the design process of a spatial data infrastructure SDI: a case study in the Biosphere Reserve Rio Platano (Honduras)

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies.

Legal europeanization as legal transformation : some insights from Swiss 'outer Europe'

The "Europeanization" of non-EU countries' laws is predominantly seen as an "export" of the EU acquis, especially in the case of so-called "quasi-member" states such as Switzerland. Based on an examination of the Swiss experience, this paper highlights the flaws of this conceptualization: the Europeanization of Swiss Law is a highly differentiated phenomenon, encompassing several forms of approximation to EU Law. All of these forms fall short of an "export" of norms, and result in the creation of something new: a "Europeanized law" that is similar to, but qualitatively different from, EU Law. Another drawback of the "export" metaphor is the emphasis it places on the isomorphism of positive legislation. Europeanization goes deeper than that. As shown in this paper, it is a process of transformation involving not only positive law, but also legal thinking. The Swiss case demonstrates how significant such deeper transformations can be: the Europeanization of positive law has induced an alteration of the traditional canon of legal interpretation. It also demonstrates how problematic such transformations can be: the above-mentioned alteration has not given rise to a new and universally accepted canon of interpretation. This reflects the tension between the need for clear "rules of reference" for EU legal materials - which are required in order to restore coherence and predictability to an extensively Europeanized legal system - and the reluctance to give a legal value to foreign legal materials - which is rooted in a traditional understanding of the concept of "law". Such tension, in turn, shows what deep and difficult transformations are required in order to establish a viable model of legal integration outside supranational structures.

The role of institutions in the contractual process

Human beings increase their productivity by specializingtheir resources and exchanging their products. Theorganization of exchange is costly, however, becausespecialized activities need coordination and incentiveshave to be aligned. This work first describes how theseexchanges are organized in an institutional environment.It then focuses on the dual effect of this environment-as with any other specialized resource, institutions maybe used for expropriation purposes. They enjoyspecialization advantages in safeguarding exchange butthey also make possible new forms of opportunism,causing new costs of exchange. Three perverse tendenciesare identified:In the legal field, there is a surplus ofmandatory rules and, at the same time, a deficit in default rules. Second, courts activity is biased againstthe quasi-judicial role of the parties and the market. Third, Market enforcement is based on reputationalassets that are badly exposed to opportunism.