Drawing upon ethnographic research and an analysis of judgments at the Special Anti-Prostitution Court in Mumbai, Chapter 4 shows how rescued women’s testimony is only one (albeit significant) factor shaping the outcomes of trials against the accused. The chapter illustrates how these trials are primarily shaped by the priorities of Indian law, its interpretation by the police and prosecutors, and the possibilities that requirements for “respectable” witnesses both in the ITPA and in Indian procedural law open up for NGOs. It reveals that anti-trafficking NGOs’ participation in the Special Court is neither entirely dependent on victim-witness testimony, nor on proving sex trafficking. Overall, the chapter shows how evidence and testimony at this Special Court is presented to prove prostitution rather than sex trafficking, and how NGOs, police, and other witnesses participate in what the author refers to as the choreography of these trials. Beyond victim-witness testimony, it examines how the testimony of other prosecution witnesses (police officers, NGO workers, and decoy customers), forms of material evidence (cash, packets of condoms and tissues), and medical reports shape ITPA cases and their outcomes at the Mumbai Special Court.

This chapter clarifies the theoretical arguments through discussion of issues and questions that may arise in conceptualizing, testing, and evaluating not only comprehensive deterrence theory (CDT) but also, more generally, that can arise in deterrence research. For example, it discusses the nature of punishment. Deterrence scholarship understandably has examined the idea that punishments may deter. What has not been systematically theorized or empirically studied is punishment itself. Historical accounts exist, of course. And numerous scholars certainly have detailed many aspects of certain types of punishment, such as the death penalty. However, deterrence scholarship lacks a coherent foundation for predicting the effects of a wide variety of legal punishments, or how to distinguish when one type of punishment meaningfully differs from another. Similarly, there is a great deal of confusion about legal vs. extralegal punishment as well as specific vs. general deterrence. The chapter examines these and other issues with an eye towards clarifying CDT and charting directions for improving deterrence scholarship.

This chapter of the handbook examines the sanctioning doctrines within Anglo-American criminal law and explores similarities and differences between criminal blame and ordinary social blame. The chapter explores the legal notion of actus reus in the context of intended but incomplete transgressive conduct, the distinction between intended and unintended outcomes, as well as questions of recklessness and the role of a transgressor’s character in ordinary and legal blame. It also explores the possibility that a fundamental human motivation to punish those with bad character can influence perceptions of legal questions such as consciousness of risk. Intuitions about the role of moral character in legal blame have produced legal rules restricting the consideration of prior misdeeds. At the same time, these rules and their interpretation ultimately rest on political and moral judgments, rather than psychological insights. The chapter concludes by briefly exploring some remaining questions of criminal law and intuitive blame, such as the role of cultural commitments on motivations to impose legal blame.

This chapter examines if the systems of evidence in annulment, failure to act proceedings, and actions for damages, are designed to support private parties’ access to and participation in actions brought directly before the EU courts. Against the backdrop of evidence theory and the so-called procedural abilities doctrine, this chapter argues that, in the context of direct actions, the principle of effective judicial protection receives a restrictive reading. As a result, the requirements that private parties must meet to launch those actions do not, in practice, give way to broad procedural abilities and an unhindered access to the Union courts. These requirements thus seem designed to uphold a (strong) presumption of lawfulness of the EU legislature’s normative action, seeking to preserve the stability and coherence of EU law, rather than to ensure an effective access to, and exercise of the legal remedies included in the EU Treaties’ system of procedures.

This chapter discusses different types of evidence that conversation analysts use to ground their claims about social action. We begin by reviewing the epistemological perspective of CA, which demands that evidence reflect participants’ orientations; as a critical part of understanding the terms ‘participant orientation’ and ‘relevance,’ here we also discuss two ways in which CA’s position and emphasis on them are commonly misunderstood. The bulk of this chapter then reviews and illustrates a range of types of participant-orientation evidence. We organize our presentation of types of evidence roughly by sequential position vis-à-vis the focal action about which the analyst is making claims, including evidence to be found in: (i) next-turn, (ii) same-turn (e.g., same-TCU self-repair, accounts), (iii) prior turn or sequence, (iv) third turn/position (e.g., repair after next turn, courses of action/activity), (v) fourth turn/position, and (vi) more distal positions. We also discuss other forms of evidence that are not necessarily defined by sequential position, including: (i) third-party conduct, (ii) reported conduct, (iii) deviant cases, and (iv) distributional evidence. We conclude by offering some brief reflections on bringing different types and positions of evidence together toward the construction of an argument.

We explore the necessarily comparative nature of CA’s methodology. We focus less on cross-linguistic comparisons, comparisons between talk-in-interaction in different settings, and comparisons between speakers from diverse speech communities. Instead, we consider the micro ways in which analysts work comparatively, ways that generally go unnoticed in accounts of CA’s methodology but which underpin our approach in data sessions, to building collections of phenomena, and even our research strategies when exploring certain linguistic or interactional forms. We demonstrate what can be learned from comparisons to be found in data, for example between the different responses by different participants to the same observation or question, or between different speakers’ versions of events, or from the different forms used by speakers when referring to the ‘same’ thing but in different action environments. We highlight the significance of speakers’ production of different versions of the ‘same’ something in their self-corrections. Finally, we illustrate the utility of a research strategy in which comparisons are made between speakers’ use of a certain reference form at one point in an interaction and the form they use at other points in the same interaction. In short, we explore the methodological significance of endogenous comparisons in data.

This chapter argues that Collingwood’s “logic of question and answer” (LQA) can best be understood in the light of contemporary argumentation theory. Even if Collingwood quite often describes LQA in terms of inner thinking and reasoning, as was still usual in his time, his insistence on the normative (“criteriological”) character of LQA, paired with his attack on the pretensions of psychologists to describe logic (as well as other normative endeavours) in a purely empirical manner, makes clear that LQA has the same aspirations as the rising discipline of formal (mathematical) logic. The concise exposition of the form, content, and application of LQA is supported by references to all the relevant passages in Collingwood’s oeuvre as well as illustrated by means of a concrete example of his way of doing history. Although a recent and still developing discipline, contemporary argumentation theory was born as an attempt to describe and analyze argumentative texts as guided by norms constitutive of our argumentative practices in a way that completely escapes formal logic. It thus provides a place for LQA that has so far been lacking.

An inquest is an inquisitorial process, and this has an impact on the roles of the advocates and the jury, if there is one. This chapter explains their roles, and also when a professional may require separate legal representation, with some further tips on giving evidence from the perspective of an advocate.

This chapter gives an understanding of the court setting and proceedings, and practical tips on to prepare for the day and give evidence effectively.