Reimagining Administrative Justice


Book Description

"In their beautifully written book, O'Brien and Doyle tell a story of small places - where human rights and administrative justice matter most. A human rights discourse is cleverly intertwined with the debates about the relationship between the citizen and the state and between citizens themselves. O'Brien and Doyle re-imagine administrative justice with the ombud institution at its core. This book is a must read for anyone interested in a democratic vision of human rights deeply embedded within the administrative justice system."--Naomi Creutzfeldt, University of Westminster, UK This book reconnects everyday justice with social rights. It rediscovers human rights in the 'small places' of housing, education, health and social care, where administrative justice touches the citizen every day, and in doing so it re-imagines administrative justice and expands its democratic reach. The institutions of everyday justice - ombuds, tribunals and mediation - rarely herald their role in human rights frameworks, and never very loudly. For the most part, human rights and administrative justice are ships that pass in the night. Drawing on design theory, the book proposes to remedy this alienation by replacing current orthodoxies, not least that of 'user focus', with more promising design principles of community, network and openness. Thus re-imagined, the future of both administrative justice and social rights is demosprudential, firmly rooted in making response to citizen grievance more democratic and embedding legal change in the broader culture. Margaret Doyle is a Visiting Research Fellow with the UK Administrative Justice Institute, University of Essex, UK, and an independent mediator. Nick O'Brien is an Honorary Research Fellow at Liverpool University, UK. He was formerly Legal Director of the Disability Rights Commission.--




Reimagining Administrative Justice


Book Description

‘In their beautifully written book, O’Brien and Doyle tell a story of small places – where human rights and administrative justice matter most. A human rights discourse is cleverly intertwined with the debates about the relationship between the citizen and the state and between citizens themselves. O’Brien and Doyle re-imagine administrative justice with the ombud institution at its core. This book is a must read for anyone interested in a democratic vision of human rights deeply embedded within the administrative justice system.’—Naomi Creutzfeldt, University of Westminster, UK 'Doyle and O'Brien's book makes an important and timely contribution to the growing literature on administrative justice, and breaks new ground in the way that it re-imagines the field. The book is engagingly written and makes a powerful case for reform, drawing on case studies and examples, and nicely combining theory and practice. The vision the authors provide of a more potent and coherent approach to administrative justice will be a key reference point for scholars, policymakers and practitioners working in this field for years to come.'—Dr Chris Gill, Lecturer in Public Law, University of Glasgow 'This immensely readable book ambitiously and successfully re-imagines adminstrative justice as an instrument of institutional reform, public trust, social rights and political friendship. It does so by expertly weaving together many disparate motifs and threads to produce an elegant tapestry illustrating a remaking of administrative justice as a set of principles with the ombud institution at its centre.’—Carolyn Hirst, Independent Researcher and Mediator, Hirstworks /divThis book reconnects everyday justice with social rights. It rediscovers human rights in the 'small places' of housing, education, health and social care, where administrative justice touches the citizen every day, and in doing so it re-imagines administrative justice and expands its democratic reach. The institutions of everyday justice – ombuds, tribunals and mediation – rarely herald their role in human rights frameworks, and never very loudly. For the most part, human rights and administrative justice are ships that pass in the night. Drawing on design theory, the book proposes to remedy this alienation by replacing current orthodoxies, not least that of 'user focus', with more promising design principles of community, network and openness. Thus re-imagined, the future of both administrative justice and social rights is demosprudential, firmly rooted in making response to citizen grievance more democratic and embedding legal change in the broader culture./div/div




Administrative Competence


Book Description

This book reimagines administrative law as the law of public administration by making its competence the focus of administrative law.




Reimagining Courts


Book Description

In their timely and topical book, Reimagining Courts, Victor Flango and Thomas Clarke argue that courts are a victim of their own success. Disputes that once were resolved either informally in the family or within the community are now handled mainly by courts, which strains government agency resources. The authors offer provocative suggestions for a thorough overhaul of American state and local courts, one that better fits the needs of a twenty-first century legal system. Reimagining Courts recommends a triage process based upon case characteristics, litigant goals, and resolution processes. Courts must fundamentally reorganize their business processes around the concept of the litigant as a customer. Each adjudication process that the authors propose requires a different case management process and different amounts of judicial, staff, and facility resources. Reimagining Courts should spark much-needed debate. This book will be of significant interest to lawyers, judges, and professionals in the court system as well as to scholars in public administration and political science.




The Oxford Handbook of Administrative Justice


Book Description

"The core animating feature of administrative justice scholarship is the desire to understand how justice is achieved through the delivery of public services and the actions, inactions, and decision-making of administrative bodies. The study of administrative justice also encompasses the redress systems by which people can challenge administrative bodies to seek the correction of injustices. For a long time now, scholars have been interested in administrative justice, but without necessarily framing their work as such. Rather than existing under the rubric of administrative justice, much of the research undertaken has existed within sub-categories of disciplines, such as law, sociology, public policy, politics, and public administration. Consequently, although aspects of the topic have attracted rich contributions across such disciplines, administrative justice has rarely been studied or taught in a manner that integrates these areas of research more systematically. This Handbook signals a major change of approach. Drawing together a group of world-leading scholars of administrative justice from a range of disciplines, The Oxford Handbook of Administrative Justice shows how administrative justice is a vibrant, complex, and contested field that is best understood as an area of inquiry in its own right, rather than through traditional disciplinary silos"--




Reimagining Child Soldiers in International Law and Policy


Book Description

Child soldiers are generally perceived as faultless, passive victims. This ignores that the roles of child soldiers vary, from innocent abductee to wilful perpetrator. This book argues that child soldiers should be judged on their actions and that treating them like a homogenous group prevents them from taking responsibility for their acts.




Life Imprisonment from Young Adulthood


Book Description

This book analyses the experiences of prisoners in England & Wales sentenced when relatively young to very long life sentences (with minimum terms of fifteen years or more). Based on a major study, including almost 150 interviews with men and women at various sentence stages and over 300 surveys, it explores the ways in which long-term prisoners respond to their convictions, adapt to the various challenges that they encounter and re-construct their lives within and beyond the prison. Focussing on such matters as personal identity, relationships with family and friends, and the management of time, the book argues that long-term imprisonment entails a profound confrontation with the self. It provides detailed insight into how such prisoners deal with the everyday burdens of their situation, feelings of injustice, anger and shame, and the need to find some sense of hope, control and meaning in their lives. In doing so, it exposes the nature and consequences of the life-changing terms of imprisonment that have become increasingly common in recent years.




Trafficked Children and Youth in the United States


Book Description

Trafficked children are portrayed by the media—and even by child welfare specialists—as hapless victims who are forced to migrate from a poor country to the United States, where they serve as sex slaves. But as Elzbieta M. Gozdziak reveals in Trafficked Children in the United States, the picture is far more complex. Basing her observations on research with 140 children, most of them girls, from countries all over the globe, Gozdziak debunks many myths and uncovers the realities of the captivity, rescue, and rehabilitation of trafficked children. She shows, for instance, that none of the girls and boys portrayed in this book were kidnapped or physically forced to accompany their traffickers. In many instances, parents, or smugglers paid by family members, brought the girls to the U.S. Without exception, the girls and boys in this study believed they were coming to the States to find employment and in some cases educational opportunities. Following them from the time they were trafficked to their years as young adults, Gozdziak gives the children a voice so they can offer their own perspective on rebuilding their lives—getting jobs, learning English, developing friendships, and finding love. Gozdziak looks too at how the children’s perspectives compare to the ideas of child welfare programs, noting that the children focus on survival techniques while the institutions focus, not helpfully, on vulnerability and pathology. Gozdziak concludes that the services provided by institutions are in effect a one-size-fits-all, trauma-based model, one that ignores the diversity of experience among trafficked children. Breaking new ground, Trafficked Children in the United States offers a fresh take on what matters most to these young people as they rebuild their lives in America.




Reimagining Restorative Justice


Book Description

"Restorative justice theory has largely failed to keep pace with the rapid expansion of restorative practices worldwide – indeed, it is remarkable how much support RJ has when so few advocates can even define what it is. As such, this insightful and comprehensive new contribution from two of the top scholars on the frontlines of restorative justice research is hugely welcome." Professor Shadd Maruna, Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Manchester "Reimagining Restorative Justice is a reflective and balanced reconsideration of restorative justice. It deftly sweeps across the large literature on the subject, putting it in perspective, seeing anew through its wide-angle lens. Empowerment and accountability provide a fertile framework for this richly reimagined justice." Professor John Braithwaite, Australian National University "David O'Mahony and Jonathan Doak have made a significant contribution to the confusing and over-complicated field of restorative justice theory. They do so through their use of empowerment theory to bring conceptual and operational clarity to the concepts of agency and accountability in restorative processes and outcomes. As a result they develop a convincing argument for face to face dialogue between victim and perpetrator within the core of the criminal justice system. Their emphasis upon ethical and skilful practice is a welcome riposte to the rapid spread of 'restorative justice lite' driven by managerialism and the need to cut costs." Tim Chapman, Lecturer at the University of Ulster. "O'Mahony and Doak convincingly argue that rapid developments in the practice of restorative interventions have outstripped restorative justice theory. They provide both an outstandingly helpful review of the literature and a fresh theoretical approach based on empowerment theory. Everyone seriously interested in restorative justice will want to reflect carefully on the authors' conclusions." Anthony Bottoms, Emeritus Wolfson Professor of Criminology at the University of Cambridge. In recent years, restorative-based interventions have expanded rapidly and are increasingly viewed as a legitimate, and even superior means of delivering justice. The result of this swift but piecemeal development has been that restorative justice practice has outpaced the development of restorative justice theory. This book takes up this challenge by 'reimagining' a new framework for the operation of restorative justice within criminal justice. In essence, it is contended that the core empowering values of 'agency' and 'accountability' provide a lens for reimagining how restorative justice works and the normative goals it ought to encompass.




Administrative Justice in Context


Book Description

This book comprises a definitive collection of papers on administrative justice, written by a set of very distinguished contributors. It is divided into five parts, each of which contains articles on a particular aspect of administrative justice. The first part deals with the impact of 'contextual changes' on administrative justice and considers the implications of changes in governance and public administration, management and service delivery, information technology, audit and accounting, and human rights for administrative justice. The second part deals with conceptual issues and describes a number of competing approaches to the administrative justice. The third part deals with the application of administrative justice principles to private law disputes while the fourth part deals with the distinctive characteristics of administrative justice in three other jurisdictions. The final part deals with current developments in administrative justice and the book concludes with a discussion of legislative and policy developments in the UK. The general approach of the book is socio-legal and interdisciplinary. The chapters adopt a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including those derived from political science, public policy, social policy, accounting and information technology as well as from law. Although most of the contributors are academics, some are practitioners. For these reasons, the book should be of interest to lawyers, particularly those with interests in administrative law, and to social scientists, particularly those with interests in public administration, public policy and public management.