Ideablawg’s Weekly Connections: Inside The Courtroom

Although criminal lawyers have an intimate knowledge of the courtrooms in which they practice, what do we really know about courtrooms elsewhere? We assume other courts would be all fairly similar but having practiced in Ontario and appeared in a myriad of courtrooms from Toronto, to Windsor, to Lindsay, and beyond, I can say courtrooms do differ. But how do courtrooms in other jurisdictions look? What about other countries? What goes on in them anyway? Well, thanks to the Internet, there are options and tools to help anyone peek into the inside of a court and to see, and perhaps understand more clearly, what exactly is going on inside.

1.   The International Criminal Court (ICC): I have written about the International Criminal Court in previous blogs, most notably here. This past week, the ICC trial chamber has been hearing the Ruto and Sang prosecution. William Samoei Ruto, the Deputy President of the Republic of Kenya and Joshua Arap Sang, head of operations of Kalenjin language radio station KASS FM in Nairobi, are charged with crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute. Ruto and Sang are being tried for their role in the ethnic violence ocurring after the 2007-2008 Kenyan elections. The ICC distributes a video summary of weekly cases in their video series called “In The Courtroom.” The Ruto and Sang matter is this week’s installment showing the courtroom and the various members of the court as well as excerpts of the testimony of a witness, whose identity is carefully protected through use of a pseudonym, facial pixilation, and voice distortion. After the hearing summary, there is a short explanation about the court process including the possible prison terms and where such a sentence would be served. Not only does this video give us an opportunity to experience a totally different kind of criminal court but it gives us a better appreciation of the difficulties surrounding the prosecution and defence of international crimes.

2.   You Be The Judge: This is a great online interactive tool created by the Ministry of Justice in the UK to explain how a judge sentences an accused. The website allows the viewer to observe various criminal cases and to make interactive decisions, based on various factors, to determine the length of incarceration. The viewer/player experiences the courtroom setting and benefits from a number of “asides” from the Bench explaining the process. Through polls taken during the hearing, the viewer can see, in a risk-free environment, if their decisions are consistent with other viewers and with the sentencing judge. I have used this website in my undergraduate criminal justice classes to show how a sentencing judge uses his or her discretion with the rule of law to come to an appropriate and fit sentence.

3.   The Model Court: In a previous blog, I wrote a short piece on the intersection of law and art based on readings from a group of essays in Thousand Eyes: Media Technology, Law and Aesthetics published by Sternberg Press. In the journal are photographs of the “Model Court,” which is a collaborative research project involving a group of artists, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Lawrence Abu Hamdan (who does some fascinating aural work in the area of the political role of voice in law called Aural Contract), Oliver Rees (he’s so supercool I can’t even describe what he does, so just check out his website) and architect, Lorenzo Pezzani. The project “uses the structure and technologies of the courtroom to interrogate the signifying and controlling role architecture plays in contemporary art and society.” By offering a “model court” as a container of ideas of “jurisprudence, evidence, and the hidden apparatuses that become the essential constituents of tribunals,” the project extends us beyond the courtroom into a representative space, which pushes the traditional four-wall envelope to give us an alternative view of justice. 

Ideablawg’s Weekly Connections: The Olympics Edition

Of course, this week is all about the Olympics and when sport and law sometimes intersect.

1.   The Dispute: How does the IOC (International Olympic Committee) decide which sports should be included in the games? Although the Olympics have come a long way since the Ancient Greeks competed in a handful of events, there are a number of sports not included in the games and a few, which have been dropped over the years. Baseball and softball were not on the roster for the London Olympics but considering Tokyo will be hosting in 2020, this may change. Wrestling was off and then on again.  The Olympic rules require all sports to be reviewed after every Olympics with sports to be added or dropped by a two-thirds majority vote. There are, of course, those sports, which have been added to the Olympic lineup, such as golf, rugby (reappearing) and kitesurfing (new) in the 2016 Olympics.   At Sochi there were new events such as team figure skating and the snowboard and ski slopestyle.  Women’s ski jump was a new event this year but not without some controversy. The quest for gender equality in the ski jump event evolved over time, culminating in a legal challenge by high-ranking women ski jumpers before the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and Paralympics. The British Columbia Court of Appeal, in dismissing the women’s case, found that the Charter could not apply to the selection of the 2010 events as and that even if the Charter did apply there was no breach of equality rights under s.15(1). Although, the question of whether VANOC or the Vancouver Olympic Committee was a government entity was easily answered in the negative, however the more difficult question was whether in organizing and staging the event VANOC was carrying out governmental activities. Even though there was governmental support for the Olympics, the Court found that this fact was not decisive on the issue of selection of Olympic events. In deed, neither VANOC nor the governmental agencies supporting the host City were involved in the selection of events. Thus, it could not be said that VANOC was the decision-maker and therefore the Charter could not apply.   Even so, the Court considered the reach of the equality s.15. In finding there was no breach the Court stated, “section 15(1) sets out constitutional guarantees of equality that are broad in scope, but it does not constitute a general guarantee of equality.  Rather, the section guarantees equality only in the way that the law affects individuals.  Where the law is not implicated in discrimination or inequality, is not engaged.” As the law or statutory authority was not engaged by the right or lack thereof to compete in the Olympics, s. 15 was not available and was not breached. A leave application to the Supreme Court of Canada was dismissed with costs. In the end, women’s ski jumping was approved for inclusion in Sochi. Unfortunately, none of the women who brought the court case won a medal in the sport, but what they did, in the end, win a victory for the sport.

2.   The Crime: Remember when Olympic scandals read like soap operas? If your memory needs refreshing, take a backward glance at the Tonya Harding – Nancy Kerrigan incident, when Kerrigan was attacked by a hammer to her knees, before the 1994 Olympics at the Women’s Championship and could not compete. That year Harding won and then lost as it was revealed that she was involved in the conspiracy to assault Kerrigan. But don’t worry, Nancy Kerrigan went on to perform in the Ice Capades while Tonya is now a professional boxer. Irony on ice?

3.   The Sabotage: What is it about skates? The Kerrigan/Harding incident did not stop some members of the American short track team from sabotaging Canadian Olympic gold medalist Oliver Jean’s skates in 2011. Despite this admission, the skater who did the deed accuses the coach for pressuring him to do it. The ISU or International Skating Union’s disciplinary commission considered the case last year and laid the blame for the incident squarely on the coach. This year at Sochi the Canadians were careful to check their skates before competing.

4.   The Dissent: Controversy swirled at the Olympics over the lack of gay rights in the host country and the lack of desire to meet with the Vancouver envoy supporting gay rights. But dissent escalated even further when Pussy Riot, the female punk rock activists, who were jailed last year after performing a “blasphemous” song in the Moscow Cathedral, were arrested but released in Sochi and then whipped by Cossacks – yes, there are still Cossacks. Read about their angry music video on the debacle entitled "Putin Will Teach You To Love Your Country" here. 

Ideablawg's Weekly Connections: From Pronouncing to Pronouncements

This week I looked at the dual nature of the word “pronounce.” Although in both meanings to “pronounce” is a speech word, the effects of the meanings are very different.

1. Pronounce: In this meaning – to make a sound of a word or letter with your voice – is something we do everyday. Even in this digital age, the speech act is integral part of being human. However, how we pronounce our words has developed over time and the dialect or way in which we pronounce a word has changed radically in the English language. For example, every teen is required to read Shakespeare, typically Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and Hamlet, but inevitably with present-day pronunciation. True we recognize the words and the grammatical structure differs from ours but few of us consider that pronunciation in the 1500s was quite different. Thanks to the linguist, David Crystal, Pronouncing Shakespeare, is possible. Listen here for the correct pronunciation (i.e. as Shakespeare would have pronounced them) in Romeo and Juliet. To follow along, the text is here. Just to connect Shakespeare to law, I remind everyone of the famous passage in Act 4, Scene 2 of Henry the IV, wherein Dick states "the first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers," which presages the disintegration of society and the beginning of anarchy.

2. Pronounce: Another aspect of pronouncing a word is to speak the word properly. In law, Latin words and phrases are common. Indeed, two such phrases come immediately to mind when I teach criminal law. The first is actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea, which means there is no guilty act without a guilty mind and from where the terms mens rea and actus reus, the essential elements of a crime, come. As an aside mens rea and actus reus are never used in the Criminal Code of Canada. The second Latin maxim is the causation concept of de minimis non curat lex or the law does not concern itself with trifles. Although the Latin language is liberally sprinkled throughout legal textbooks and case law, Latin is not a required course in law schools. But thankfully there are opportunities for self-study. Just buy Wheelock’s Latin and go online for the correct pronunciations. Your law professor will thank you for it.

3. Pronounce: The second meaning of the word is to declare or announce something formally or officially. A Judge, when he or she renders a decision, is making a pronouncement. How the Judge or trier of fact comes to a decision is a matter of much academic speculation and argument. Critical legal theorists spend much of their academic career trying to articulate this seemingly inarticulable process. Is decision making predictable? Is it based on preconceived views of the trier of fact? Is it random or guided by an innate sense of justice? These heady questions are still being deconstructed in legal jurisprudence. As a primer, read Benjamin Cardoza on The Nature of the Judicial Process for an enlightened view on the subject.

4. Hazmat Modine: to end this week’s connections, I decided to move completely away from my theme and leave you with some excellent music and an example of how our world seamlessly mixes all genres to produce new sound – kind of like how our pronunciations have changed over time. Enjoy!

Ideablawg Weekly Connections: From Twibel to Chaucer

This week, I surfed the Internet and did some reading the old-fashioned way – nothing like holding and having a book - so let’s look at the week in review:

1.   Google Glasses are being talked about and well they should! As the next step in computer/human interface, these glasses would really come in useful in the courtroom when you need to bring up that name of a case – you know that name! Google Glasses could tell you that. Of course, Google Glasses can also keep the lawyers busy as in the case of the California woman, who was charged with distracted driving while wearing her special specs. The California law makes it illegal to “drive a motor vehicle if a television receiver, a video monitor, or a television or video screen, or any other similar means of visually displaying a television broadcast or video signal that produces entertainment or business applications, is operating” and, as she was also speeding at the time, a puzzled police officer pulled her and her Glasses over. The Judge, however, acquitted the feckless (not specless) woman, as there was no evidence the Google Glasses were operating at the time of the incident. My only question is: how could you ever prove that? Maybe the police need some new technology? Can that laser catch speeders and readers?

2. Peter Ackroyd, a British writer, historian and biographer, has written numerous fiction and non-fiction books, mostly about his beloved London. I have read a number of his books, most notably London Under, about what is found under the city – you’d be surprised what’s there - and The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein, a fictionalized backgrounder to the good Doctor. I have recently read a raft of his biographies; some from his brief lives series, including Turner, Poe, Newton, and Chaucer. The Chaucer bio was fascinating as Geoffrey Chaucer was a minor Court official, who really only wrote as a side career. He also had some legal training and was used by the Kings (he survived more than one) for delicate diplomatic missions to France and Italy. Not only does Ackroyd give us non-fictional accounts but he usually ties these peregrinations to a fiction book as well. For instance, he did a marvelous re-working (or translation) of The Canterbury Tales and then re-worked them even more to write Clerkenwell Tales. I also recently read his fascinating biography on Charles Dickens. By the way, watch for the Dickens movie to be released with Ralph Fiennes as the venerable, and love-struck (read the book to see why – the movie is called The Invisible Woman) author. Of course, Dickens did work as a law clerk in Chancery Court when he was young and his novel, Bleak House, brings his past experience to life (or death as we are talking wills) with a comedic flare that is both cynical and heartwarming. I have written a couple of blogs on Dickens in the past here and here

3. Back to law and the Internet – this time law and the Smartphone as Courtney Love successfully defends against a defamation case caused by her tweeting that her attorney, in her Kurt Cobain estate case, was “bought off” not to represent her.  Apparently, the tweet was supposed to be “private” and the jurors agreed. A “private” tweet therefore was not considered “twibel,” which is a libelous tweet of course. Not only is this the first twibel case but, I think also the next word to make it as the Oxford Dictionary Word! Selfies is so last month!

4. I have also been reading some law and imagery articles and I have been particularly struck with articles written by Peter Goodrich, who is the Director of the Law and Humanities program at the Cordozo School of Law. His writing is witty, vivacious, and thought provoking. Try reading his article on Specters of Law: Why the History of the Legal Spectacle Has Not Been Written, which speaks of the visible and the not so visible legal tradition that lawyers have constructed. 

The Ideablawg Connections Of The Week

This week, I am launching a new segment on my blog, The Ideablawg Connections Of The Week, wherein I will recommend items, some law related and some not, connecting them to other areas of interest. These items may be Internet based or print based (yes, there is still such an animal) and may be for viewing, reading, listening, or creating. This week, I recommend the following:

1. A film about Walter Benjamin, philosopher, critic, and prolific writer, whose critical thinking and sharp analysis of the world around him modernized the essay genre. Walter Benjamin, a German Jewish intellectual, committed suicide when he was turned back from a border crossing with Spain and France during the German occupation of France in WWII. This film is nuanced and provocative. For further reading of Walter Benjamin, read his magnum opus entitled The Arcades Project, a blinding riff on life, the universe, and everything inspired by the shopping arcades of Paris, or a compilation of his essays in Illuminations, edited with a forward by Hannah Arendt, which is reason enough to read this. Then read Hannah Arendt’s, Eichmann In Jerusalem, her controversial series of articles for The New Yorker, covering Eichmann’s trial and decide for yourself what “banality of evil” means. To help you decide, read Deborah Lipstadt’s concise analysis of it in The Eichmann Trial and then watch the 2012 biopic, which may mean an Oscar nomination for Barbara Sukowa. For a law connection, read articles on Hannah Arendt as an International Criminal Law theorist.
2. And now for something completely different: A NPR article of an interview John Rizzo, counsel to the CIA after 9/11, who has just written a memoir entitled Company Man: Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA, in which he discusses, among other things, his views on “enhanced interrogation techniques” or what we would call “torture.” Look for his last word on the subject of “waterboarding,” which he states, “…if the Justice Department had concluded — that these techniques constitute torture, we would never have done them. So I can't say they were torture. I didn't concede it was torture then, and I don't concede that it's torture now.” Really? Tell that to a group of Toronto lawyers, who called for Dick Cheney’s arrest for war crimes based on these interrogation techniques, when he was in Toronto in October 2013. Let’s also reflect on the Queen’s Bench of Alberta Justice Yamauchi’s decision in Simpenzwe, that “it is not just a dental drill or waterboarding that extracts confessions out of people. Equally sinister are the “more subtle, veiled threats that can be used against suspects.”
3. Totally unrelated is this article on the 10 “must have” apps for 2014. I like mailbox.
4. Atlantic Cities regularly has articles of interest to the committed urbanite. They also have a number of articles on crime and, although US-centric, they nevertheless remind us of the Canadian experience. The article on “Nearly 50 Percent of Black Men Have Been Arrested by 23” is sobering. Although, Canada does not compile such data, read the consistently excellent and relevant reports issued by the Canada’s Correctional Investigator, Howard Sapers,  and his recent report on “A Case Study of Diversity in Corrections: The Black Inmate Experience in Federal Penitentiaries.”
5. Finally, go see American Hustle, the Hollywood version of the 1980s ABSCAM – remember those grainy videotapes of payoffs by fake Sheiks – well watching it in Technicolor is so much satisfying and entertaining, including Christian Bale’s not well-disguised impression of the Mel Weinberg, a Bronx fraudster and confidence man. Is it just me or is Bale channeling Rob Reiner’s “Meathead” in All In The Family?