Suchergebnisse

The traditional Swedish monocentric and uniform legal model is challenged by an increasingly diverse contemporary legal situation associated with the development of a multicultural and pluralistic society. How Swedish criminal courts handle this in terms of understanding and framing minority legal culture is addressed by looking into what role is given to this culture in the courts' construction of facts and in sentencing. A particularly interesting case in this regard is the national minority Roma, seen as an example of a Swedish group that brings other normative systems into the state legal system through their distinct legal culture. Through an investigation of written verdicts, it is demonstrated that accounts of Roma legal culture face 'legal silencing' by the court – it is either not given significance or is given a form of attention that essentializes and alienates the culture. An analysis into why this legal silence occurs and into the possibilities for taking legal culture into account is provided. It is argued that there are structural barriers hampering the courts from taking legal culture into account but also that these structures can be changed for betterment to ensure equality before the law and hence legitimacy in a multicultural society.

Considerable efforts by leading experts and funds from around the world are put into restructuring the West Bank justice and security sector (JSS). This is an effort done in a highly contested environment, with an ongoing Israeli occupation and weak local trust in the Palestine Authority (PA). This article analyzes the understandings by local Palestinian non-government organizations and international bodies aiding in building the JSS of what a legitimate development of the JSS is and should be, and whose voices become dominant in the discussions and implementations of it. The argument made is that Western legal knowledge, with its focus on security and technocratic solutions, have been dominant at the expense of core political solutions in regard to the Israeli occupation and the workings of the PA, and that it has downplayed the local context, local voices and their understandings of a legitimate JSS.

Considerable efforts by leading experts and funds from around the world are put into restructuring the West Bank justice and security sector (JSS). This is an effort done in a highly contested environment, with an ongoing Israeli occupation and weak local trust in the Palestine Authority (PA). This article analyzes the understandings by local Palestinian non-government organizations and international bodies aiding in building the JSS of what a legitimate development of the JSS is and should be, and whose voices become dominant in the discussions and implementations of it. The argument made is that Western legal knowledge, with its focus on security and technocratic solutions, have been dominant at the expense of core political solutions in regard to the Israeli occupation and the workings of the PA, and that it has downplayed the local context, local voices and their understandings of a legitimate JSS.

How to deal with differences based on culture, ethnicity and race, has become a key issue of policing. This edited collected explores everyday, often mundane interactions between police officers and migrantised actors in European countries and asks how both sides deal with perceived differences. The contributions reflect that such differences are not just 'out there' but are being situationally (re-)produced in police-citizen encounters. By taking a comparative approach, the book develops a distinctly European perspective on these questions. The book contains 12 ethnographies from ten European countries, based on new and often innovative empirical research, two theoretical contributions, an introduction and a postface