This article presents a commentary on "Making the Most of Information-Gathering Interviews With Children," in which, according to Jones, Larsson and Lamb provided a helpful overview on memory retrieval and communicative ability and on ways these may be fostered in interviews with children. They explored three interview protocols that have been…

The purpose of this article is to persuade legal studies teachers of the benefits of using works from other disciplines to illustrate the rationales for law, the greater context in which the legal order operates, and the relationship between law and society. The tangential benefits of using works from other disciplines are the enhancement of the…

Contrary to the dominant discourse metanarrative, this dissertation explores, re-exposes, and updates the generally hidden realities of what is actually taking place in the current operation of the American criminal justice system. The government/dominant discourse benefits from the amorphous ambiguity of the law in conjunction with its usage of…

Child sex abuse cases have been the target of considerable psycho-legal research. The present paper offers an analysis of psychological constructs for jury selection in child sex abuse cases from the defense perspective. The authors specifically delineate general and case-specific jury selection variables. General variables include…

The purpose of this sequential mixed methods study was to examine and determine the level of incivility in the workplace as a growing problem from the perceptional views of graduate students enrolled in accelerated degree programs for graduate studies in Business Administration, Criminal Justice Administration, Gerontology, Health Management, and…

Fitness for trial constitutes the most frequent referral to forensic assessment services. Several approaches to this evaluation exist in Canada, including the Fitness Interview Test and Basic Fitness for Trial Test. The following article presents a review of the issues and a method for basic fitness for trial evaluation.

Beyond reasonable doubt represents a probability value that acts as the criterion for conviction in criminal trials. I introduce the membership function (MF) method as a new tool for measuring quantitative interpretations of reasonable doubt. Experiment 1 demonstrated that three different methods (i.e., direct rating, decision theory based, and…

This paper focuses on issues related to the misuse and abuse of the technologies, or "cybermisconduct" directed toward students and teachers such as online harassment, cyberbullying and internet defamation. Since some forms of cyberbullying may be criminal acts under the Criminal Code, Canadian courts are voicing serious concerns about…

Several states in the United States of America and countries in Europe punish parents when their minor child commits a crime. When parents are being punished for the crimes committed by their children, it should be presumed that parents might be held responsible for the deeds of their children. This article addresses the question whether or not…

The most effective pedagogies are those that foster students' metacognition and their learning effectiveness. This paper presents a new model of activity-based learning in which students construct knowledge using practices that include constructs of engagement, motivation, and affect that drive deeper processing and higher levels of metacognitive…

Previous research has demonstrated that judicial instructions on the law are not well understood by jurors tasked with applying the law to the facts of a case. The past research has also shown that jurors are often confused by the instructions used in the sentencing phase of a capital trial. The current research tested the effectiveness of a…

In this volume the authors document examples of programmes/courses/activities that are designed intentionally to build students' capacity to be integrative thinkers and learners. In doing so they try to analyse and name the learning that is taking place, and so make it visible to the reader. The work is intended as a resource for all those…

Minimal information is available regarding the frequency with which practitioners conduct evaluations of capacity to waive Miranda rights or what approaches they use in doing so. Grisso's Instruments for Assessing Understanding and Appreciation of Miranda Rights are the only published instruments designed specifically to assist practitioners in…

This research empirically examines the difference that type of counsel, public or private, makes in the bail amount set for Hispanic defendants. Data were collected on all felony defendants assigned to the district court in a midwestern county. Specifically, the authors hypothesized that Hispanic defendants who retain the assistance of private…

This qualitative research study examined the effectiveness of law school education in preparing new attorneys to practice law from the view point of novice criminal law attorneys. A debate has existed over the past few decades between legal academia and the practicing bar as to what are the most effective learning processes and strategies of…