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Utopia, a term first coined by Sir Thomas More in the sixteenth century, referred to a place of unattainable social perfection. But the appeal of a concept that embraces rather than mocks the imagination has broadened its meanings and uses. In the early twentieth century, Anatole France wrote, “Out of generous dreams come beneficial realities. Utopia is the principle of all progress, and the essay into a better future.” In contemporary vernacular, utopia has come to refer not only to imagining perfection but cures for imperfection. By this definition, any struggle for rights could be conceived as utopian to the extent that it represents a desire to make the world a better place for the would-be beneficiaries. The utopianism of rights envisions conditions in which human dignity can be ensured and vulnerability minimized.

In a country where judicial institutions are known to be inefficient and where activists have traditionally not engaged in legal mobilization, what explains the emergence of NGO strategic litigation? The author argues that a change in the legal opportunity structure impacts how activists interact with the legal system. Comparing two states in Mexico, the author demonstrates that the introduction of private prosecution rights opened the door for activists to litigate femicide cases. The emergence of strategic litigation has helped improve compliance with international human rights law and has had a demonstration effect on how to use the law to press for accountability.

Prosecutors are politically elected officials entrusted with the sensitive responsibilities of prosecuting law violators. The strength and admissibility of evidence is tantamount to a successful prosecution, not politics, personal views, or other outside influences. And, the Supreme Court has ruled that prosecutors must ensure justice is achieved for crime victims and criminal defendants alike. However, outside influences, personal views, and other factors may influence a prosecutor’s leadership and decision making in some criminal cases. Since the office of prosecution is an elected position, their success is based on convictions whether achieved through plea bargaining or a guilty verdict at trial. This chapter examines criminal cases in which prosecutorial leadership strategies and decisions have circumvented justice in the name of politics or political correctness. The lack of evidence or withholding of evidence in these cases suggests that some prosecutors are more interested in personal or political interests rather than justice.

This chapter examines the delicate balance achieved by apex courts in new democracies when dealing with impunity for rights violations during times of transitional justice. While international law has clearly rejected amnesties for past rights violations, domestic politics sometimes incorporate amnesties as part of larger peace settlements. This puts courts in the difficult situation of balancing the competing demands of law and politics. Courts have achieved equipoise in this situation by adopting substantive interpretations and procedural approaches that use international law’s rights-based language but without implementing international law’s restrictions on amnesties. In many cases, courts do this without acknowledging the necessarily pragmatic nature of their decisions. In fact, oftentimes courts find ways of avoiding having to make any substantive decision, effectively removing themselves from a dispute that could call into question their adherence to international legal norms that transcend politics. In doing so, they empower political actors to continue down the road toward negotiated peace settlements, while at the same time protecting the courts’ legitimacy as institutions uniquely situated to protect international human rights norms – including those they have effectively deemphasized in the process.

Purpose – To assess how well varied policy initiatives address rape survivors’ difficulties participating in criminal prosecution.

Method – The evaluation takes a victim-centered perspective, rejecting the assumption that retraumatization is a necessary or inevitable by-product of prosecution. It accepts decision-making powers granted to law enforcement and prosecution practitioners to “found,” charge, prosecute, and plead cases, but questions the means adopted to achieve immediate goals. The evaluation considers legislative, procedural, and extra-criminal proposals such as restorative justice (RJ) conferencing and prosecutorial behavior modification. The evaluation draws on empirical investigations of case attrition, law enforcement, and prosecutorial decision-making, interorganizational collaboration in case processing, RJ, and survivors’ experiences with criminal prosecution.

Findings – Many of rape survivors’ difficulties with criminal prosecution stem from legal actors’ lack of knowledge about survivors’ purposes for participation and strategies to maintain ownership of a conflict that has been appropriated by prosecution, the conflicts survivors’ preexisting social relations pose, how lack of information about and experience with courtroom roles and norms produces anxiety and defensive behavioral strategies, and how survivors interpret and experience inconsistent messages about their role in and power over prosecution. The criminal justice process can directly reduce the causes of retraumatization and achieve procedural justice in ways that have positive implications for better substantive outcomes.

Practical implications – Instituting practices accommodating users’ behavioral orientations should increase the perception that reporting and prosecuting are viable options. Following Taslitz (1999), improving the effectiveness of rape survivors’ communication will increase gender equity generally.

This chapter examines whether the view of the jury in cases involving forensic evidence can be changed from that of “naïve automatons” to that of “sophisticated decision makers”; whether the defense and prosecution must provide the jurors with information to help them develop a schema upon which to evaluate the forensic evidence; and whether to remove decision making from the expert forensic scientist and return it to the jury. The chapter uses secondary sources of information collected from criminal cases, the current federal law, as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court dealing with expert testimony, studies of how to enable juries confronted with forensic evidence, as well as a framework of learning theory and persuasion games. I argue that expert forensic scientists make errors. Juries are capable of making decisions based on complex forensic evidence if provided the knowledge within which to develop schema to evaluate that evidence. Competition between the defense and prosecution in presenting interpretations of scientifically valid evidence, as well as providing schema to enable the jury to evaluate the information, provides juries with the ability to arrive at a full information decision. Expert nullification of jury decision making should be halted and decision making returned to the jury. The value of this chapter is to integrate learning theory from cognitive psychology with one-shot and extended persuasion games to evaluate the roles of the jury and the expert forensic scientists within the criminal justice system.

The old year has gone, leaving its trail of never‐to‐be‐forgotten memories of strife and turbulence, calamity, disaster, and a huge burden of worries for us to face in the New Year. Few if any will not be deeply grateful to see the passing of 1985. Except for the periods of calm there cannot be a year within living memory to equal it in terms of violence, unparalleled in times of “peace”, collosal in terms of soaring social and public expenditure and financial loss, and in disasters in the world beyond the shores of these islands. It would not be an exaggeration to state that the enormous indebtedness which the year has heaped upon the people will never be wiped off, and it has got to be done mainly by those innocent of any misconduct, and their descendants. The unprecedented scale of street and community violence, the looting, thieving and general crime committed behind the screen of it.

Consideration of the fast‐growing number of food hygiene prosecutions up and down the country, almost all of them of a most serious nature, shows that it is the food preparing room, the kitchen, which is indeed the hub of the matter. Most of the charges result from its condition and the practices carried on within its walls, all‐too‐often enclosing a cramped space, ill‐equipped and difficult to keep clean. Its state in many prosecutions clearly contrasts badly with the soft lights and alluring elegance of the dining rooms in hotels and catering establishments. Yet, who would say that the kitchen is not the most important room in the home, in the hotel and every food‐preparing place? It has been so from time immemorial. House design has suffered severely with the need to cut building costs and the kitchen has suffered most; in small houses, it seems little more than a cupboard, a box‐room, an alcove. Is it surprising, then, that age‐old kitchen arts have degenerated? In the farmhouse, the country homes of the affluent, the “downstairs” of the town house, the kitchen was among the largest rooms in the house, as befitted all the activity that went on there. In the USA, the modern, comfortable home even of relatively humble folk the kitchen is phenomenally large; room for everything and everyone.

The pattern of food prosecutions in more recent times has remained relatively unchanged. Most have been taken under Section 2, Food and Drugs Act, 1955, even for foods which have obviously been unfit for human consumption. The Section because of its wider application has distinct procedural advantages. A few local authorities routinely use Section 8 successfully; it probably depends upon a more liberal interpretation and understanding by local justices. The five‐year study of food prosecutions, (BFJ 1971, 73, 39), separated them into a number of well‐defined groups and showed that those for the presence of foreign material were the majority and remained fairly constant throughout the period; mouldy foods increased during the five years and then remained steady as the second largest single group. The foods most commonly affected and the foreign matter commonly present could be seen; neither changed much during the period of the survey.

In those frightening years between the two Wars and governments in France came and went with dismal frequency, it used to be said that any French Government which permitted food prices to rise had no chance whatever of surviving, and the result was that food was bountiful and incredibly cheap. Times have changed dramatically but not the attitude of people to the price and availibility of food and, in particular of political control; this is very much the same as always. Mostly, it revolves around the woman and what she sees as an abuse, greed and taking mean advantage of prevailing conditions and, make no mistake, this will be reflected in the political field; in the way she votes. It has happened in previous elections; it will happen in even greater degree in the next election and, although not decisive, it can have a not insignificant impact. None know better than the housewife how meaningless is the smug talk of the politicians when it comes to food prices. Their attitude may not have been the main factor in throwing out the last Conservative Government; this was undoubtedly the fear that their continuance in office would result in widespread strikes and the serious effect these upheavals have on food prices (and other household necessit ies), but the votes of woman were an unimportant contribution. As it was, it mattered little to the muscle men of the trade unions which party is in power. Women's talk around the shops and supermarket's, up and down the High Street to‐day is one long grumble and disillusionment with politicians generally.