Suchergebnisse

Research in law and literature often uses the term "narrative" as a shorthand for various kinds of motivated legal reasoning, indicating that facts, doctrines, and the relations among them have been chosen and arranged for a particular purpose. Alternatively, speaking of "narrative" may be a way of conveying that one is concerned with interpretation, and may be a signal that the discussion will focus on images, symbols, representations, or ideologies, even if their narrative features play little or no role in the analysis. This article shows how research on narrative might help to clarify aspects of trial strategy and legal doctrine. The first section considers omniscient narration as a way of understanding the effects of various defense strategies, in a criminal trial. The second section considers the role of omniscient narration in the development of the "fellow- servant" rule in the nineteenth century. The law of evidence provides an especially fruitful area for such investigations, but questions of narrative form and technique can help to clarify many other aspects of forensic argumentation and analysis, in both procedural and substantive contexts.

The Supreme Court of Canada's decision in R v Marakah attempted to resolve the privacy status of text messages under section 8 of the Charter, but offered an incomplete solution because it failed to address the normative basis for protecting such communications. Despite the complexity of section 8 analysis (which itself is a product of multiple and inconsistent tests used to answer the same questions), the privacy of text messages allows for a relatively simple analysis. Normatively speaking, letters, email, and text messages all attract the same basic privacy interest, and should be treated analogously. However, if the police have objective grounds for believing that particular individuals have been exchanging text messages in furtherance of a crime, reasonable suspicion may justify a limited search, aimed solely at obtaining those messages. This approach protects the public from random and baseless police searches while giving the police access to these communications when there are objective grounds to believe they will disclose evidence of crime.