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This study aims to examine whether country of residence, sex trafficking attitudes, complainant gender, juror gender and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) influenced juror decision-making within a sex trafficking case.

Jury-eligible participants from the USA and the UK participated in an online juror experiment in which an independent group design was used to manipulate the complainant’s gender. Participants completed the juror decision scale, the sex trafficking attitudes scale and the RWA scale.

Sex trafficking attitudes predicted the believability of both the defendant and complainant. Greater negative beliefs about victims predicted greater defendant believability and lower complainant believability. US jurors reported greater believability of both the complainant and defendant, and RWA was associated with greater defendant believability. However, none of the other factors, including complainant and juror gender, predicted participants’ verdicts. The findings suggest juror verdicts in sex trafficking cases may be less influenced by extra-legal factors, although further research is needed, especially with a more ambiguous case.

This is one of the few cross-cultural comparison studies in the area of jury decision-making, specifically regarding sex trafficking cases. The findings indicated that US participants held more problematic attitudes about sex trafficking than their UK counterparts, although all participants held problematic attitudes about sex trafficking. However, those attitudes did not affect verdict formation about either a male or female complainant. Participants who were more knowledgeable about sex trafficking reported greater complainant believability, suggesting that educational interventions may provide greater support for victims in court.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how mock jurors’ experiences of deliberations are impacted by the defendant having a personality disorder.

This study used a qualitative approach to explore mock jurors’ experiences during the deliberations of a fictional defendant, Sarah Priest. Ten participants formed two mock juries, and each mock jury were given two case studies to deliberate. Case study one described Priest as having “Severe Personality Disorder, Borderline Pattern” whereas case study two described Priest as having “Complex Mental Health Problems”. There were no changes to the content of the case studies aside from the change in language used to describe the defendant.

An inductive thematic analysis identified two main themes relating to juror experience: “Interaction with Other Mock Jurors” and “Language as a Barrier to a Verdict”. Participants constructed that prosocial interactions with other mock jurors in the deliberations helped them make a verdict decision, but some of these interactions led to disagreements between participants due to a wide variation of opinion. Second, the different description of the defendant in each case study were constructed to have made the deliberations and decision-making difficult, but for different reasons. In case study one, a lack of knowledge surrounding BPD was the reason for this difficulty, and in case study two, participants thought that the applicability of diminished responsibility criteria were unclear, making it hard to reach a verdict.

The findings have key implications for the judicial system; common experiences can be identified and recorded to implement procedures to protect jurors from adverse experiences.

There is a lack of studies that have investigated juror experience in the UK, and the few studies available have used a quantitative methodology. The approach taken in the current study is, therefore, unique in a UK context. The findings have key implications for the judicial system; common experiences can be identified and recorded to implement procedures to protect jurors from adverse experiences.

This paper aims to elucidate the responsiveness of China’s judicial system in addressing the challenges of identifying online illegal fund-raising crimes that have emerged in recent years. This study systematically evaluates the efficacy and potential pitfalls of legal guidelines contained in judicial interpretations, such as holistic determination, sampling verification and presumption of the nature of funds. In addition, the research endeavors to propose pertinent recommendations for refining the existing judicial rules.

This research mainly uses a doctrinal methodology, focusing on the principal judicial interpretations formulated by the Supreme People’s Court and other central judicial entities in China. The scope encompasses the realm of online illegal fund-raising crimes as well as other cybercrimes. The analytical framework involves a comprehensive examination of these authoritative judicial documents, coupled with a theoretical and critical analysis of relevant academic materials.

This research underscores that while judicial interpretations serve as an effective legal strategy to confront the challenges posed by online illegal fund-raising crimes, their implementation introduces a nuanced landscape. These legal guidelines, often emanating from diverse judicial departments and tackling specific issues, carry the inherent risk of giving rise to new complexities and fostering inconsistency. Judicial authorities shall exercise prudence in both the formulation and application of these guidelines, ensuring their harmonization with existing legal norms and fundamental legal principles.

This research constitutes a critical and comprehensive examination of judicial interpretations in China pertaining to online illegal fund-raising crimes. It offers valuable insights into the country’s judicial interpretation system and its legal responses to financial crimes. The paper serves as a valuable resource for academics, law enforcement professionals, policymakers, legislators and researchers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the supervening loss of inter-organisational trust in long-term commercial contracts. The underlying research question is whether contract law – the legal institution regulating economic exchanges – should intervene and enable a party to a long-term commercial contract to extricate itself from a situation where a relationship of trust has broken down irretrievably.

This paper uses doctrinal methodology and theoretical conceptualisation to answer the underlying research question. The legal instrument chosen for analysis purposes is the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts. This paper also draws on extant literature on inter-organisational trust (including conceptual and empirical studies) to support the arguments and propositions. Furthermore, this study proceeds to assess the substantive justifiability of the proposed remedial measure using four normative values: legal certainty and predictability, protection of the performance interest, economic efficiency and the preservation of the relation.

The central argument put forward in this paper is the reformulation of draft Article 6.3.1 proposed by the UNIDROIT Working Group on Long-Term Contracts, which confers a novel right to terminate for a compelling reason. This paper presents a multidimensional model of inter-organisational trust that would serve as the conceptual framework for the proposed reformulation of the provision and establishes a coherent juridical basis for the legal solution that would accord with the Principles of International Commercial Contracts’ general remedial scheme. As for the normative assessment, this paper demonstrates that the proposed remedial measure would significantly promote efficient outcomes and positively serve the norms of legal certainty, protection of the performance interest and the preservation of the relation.

This paper addresses the lacuna in current legal scholarship in relation to the adverse socio-economic effects following trust violation and deterioration in inter-organisational relationships. Additionally, the propositions and findings should contribute to the workings of the UNIDROIT in adopting new rules and principles that would serve the special requirements of cross-border trade.

Judiciary plays a pivotal role in the overall development of a nation's economy and its involvement assures process transparency and impartiality. However, litigation is often expensive, uncertain and prone to delays. Notwithstanding such inherent challenges associated with litigation, it is observed that parties in construction disputes do resort to litigation. This study attempts to understand the potential paths triggering litigation of contractual disputes in construction. While extant researchers have identified focus areas or factors influencing litigation, the underlying paths connecting these focus areas, leading parties to litigation, is explored in this study.

Considering the framework of Rachlinski's “framing theory of litigation” and the mixed-methods approach (qualitative and quantitative approaches), this study proposes and validates a model that identifies the paths to litigation of contractual disputes in construction.

The results of in-depth interviews, followed by validation through structural equation modelling (SEM), reveal four critical paths, namely positional focus (PF) – contract and dispute characteristics (CDC) – decision to litigate (DTL), milieu influence (MI) – CDC – DTL, MI-PF-DTL and CDC-DTL.

The identified paths highlight the areas policymakers can consider while developing policy interventions to mitigate litigation.

Researchers have identified factors causing litigation in construction. However, attempts to examine the existence of multi-factor “paths” on the decision to litigate (DTL) have hitherto received a muted response, so this study focuses on identifying the project-level path(s) leading to the litigation of contractual disputes in construction.

This paper aims to analyze the legal framework of land degradation in Asia and provide market shared liability as a new theory to solve a problem regarding the difficulty for judges to determine the percentage of compensation for corporations responsible for land degradation. This paper aims also presents a theory to solve the problem of the vacuum of legal responsibility theory, which can make corporations proportionally responsible in terms of causing land degradation.

This was done through legal research methods, mainly with systematical interpretation. The approach used in this paper is conceptual, statute and comparative approach.

By analyzing the related legal norms, it can be understood that in Asian countries, such as Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia, there are regulations regarding land degradation. However, the regulations in these countries are not specific and tend to focus on nature conservation, which has an impact on handling land degradation. Therefore, it needs special regulation to deal with land degradation. One of the things that need to be regulated about land degradation is a market shared liability.

This research is limited to regulation in the Asia region. By analyzing the regulation, this paper will provide an analysis about the land degradation regulation mechanism in Asia and give an analysis about market shared liability as one of the solution to handling land degradation. Having the same ground rules will create synergies between countries in Asia to handle land degradation.

This paper is the first systematic legal research comparing regulations from three nations in Asia on land degradation and the first paper to provide market shared liability as a solution to handling land degradation.

This study aims to investigate whether accounting-related litigation is associated with a break in the client’s earnings string and the auditor’s response to a break in the earnings string.

The authors use regression models on a sample of publicly-traded USA companies with earnings strings.

The authors find that clients’ earnings string breaks are associated with increased accounting litigation risk and audit fees. The results are more prevalent for larger breaks.

The findings suggest auditors anticipate string breaks by clients which implies that audit fee research should consider earnings string characteristics in the fee models.

The auditor’s access to private information allows them to anticipate string breaks and potential increase in litigation risk.

An earnings string break represents a convergence of concerns highly relevant to the auditor: more users relying on the financial statements with greater expectations, increased likelihood of losses to those users, an environment where the likelihood of misstatement may increase, and explicitly stated professional responsibilities in response to the latter. Despite that, and a rich earnings string literature, prior studies have not directly examined auditors’ response to a client’s string break.

In the case of Poiret & Anor v Seychelles Pension Fund & Anor (2022), the Court of Appeal, the highest court in Seychelles, took judicial notice of the fact that “[c]ommon law relationships are more prevalent in our society than those between married persons.” In this chapter, the author discusses the law relating to common law marriages in Seychelles by focusing on the following issues: the right to form a family (as a background to understanding common law marriages); requirements for a valid common law marriage; and the rights of parties in a common law marriage. These rights include “court granted” rights and “statutory rights” such as property rights (parties invoking the claim of unjust enrichment in the 1979 Civil Code and property orders and succession under the 2021 Civil Code at the dissolution of common law marriages). I also deal with the remedy of unjust enrichment in the context of the 2021 Civil Code; marital privilege (in case where one of the parties in a common law relationship is accused of committing an offence); and termination of a common law marriage. The author demonstrates the measures taken by courts and the legislators to protect some of the rights of people in common law marriages. The author suggests ways in which courts can interpret the relevant provisions of the 2021 Civil Code. Where necessary, the author highlights how courts or legislators in some African countries such as Kenya, Mauritius, Malawi, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Zambia, South Africa, Namibia, Rwanda, and Uganda have approached some of the issues above.

The purpose of the paper is to investigate how judges and the general population formulate judgments on legal cases, considering both legal and extralegal factors, with a focus on the significance of the defendant’s sex.

The first experiment aimed to determine if non-lawyers’ judgments are affected by the defendant’s sex, using brief excerpts from indictments with the defendant’s sex interchanged. Study 2 aimed to verify if this effect applies to future lawyers, suggesting a peculiar approval granted by men to women displaying illegal sexual behaviour towards young men.

The findings showed that the sex of the offender only influenced judgments in sexual offences, with male participants being more lenient towards female offenders.

The originality/value of the paper lies in its examination of the influence of the defendant’s sex on judgments made by both judges and the general population, specifically focussing on non-lawyers’ judgments. While previous studies have shown that judges tend to be more lenient towards women in certain cases, this paper adds novelty by investigating whether a similar effect is observed among non-lawyers. Moreover, the research sheds light on the relevance of the defendant's sex in cases of sexual offences and identifies a gender-specific leniency towards female offenders, particularly among male participants. The study also explores how this effect might extend to future lawyers, providing insights into societal attitudes regarding illegal sexual behaviour involving women and young men. Overall, the paper contributes valuable information to the understanding of how sex-based biases can influence legal judgments and decision-making processes.

This study aims to first analyze the inhibiting factors for cross-border asset recovery and, second, analyze the solutions to any barriers to cross-border asset recovery.

This study was normative legal research with legal materials collected by document studies and literature studies. This study used a statute approach and a conceptual approach

First, the inhibiting factors for cross-border asset recovery are regulation-related issues, lack of mutual legal assistance and extradition treaties, differences in legal systems and the interests of the country, where the assets are placed. Second, the solutions to the barriers to cross-border asset recovery are regulatory reforms and diplomacy strengthening.

This study found some barriers and solutions to cross-border asset recovery. These can provide inspirations for subsequent studies to be reviewed in more depth.

This study will be very useful for the Indonesian Government to formulate effective and efficient policies related to cross-border asset recovery.

With effective and efficient policies related to cross-border asset recovery, it can prevent criminals from hiding their criminal assets abroad.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, until now, there has been no study that comprehensively discloses the barriers and solutions related to the failure of the Indonesian Government to conduct cross-border asset recovery. Therefore, it is expected that this study will be very useful for the Indonesian Government and other researchers to conduct further studies on this issue.