Litigants-in-person as intruders in court
The common saying that “the lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client”1 conveys the view held by many legal professionals. Self-represented litigants experience many difficulties, which range from having to manage various administrative tasks and legal matters to standing before court and interacting with legal professionals and witnesses. Yet many lay people do choose to represent themselves and self-representation is especially common in divorce cases and small claims cases. Litigants opt for self-representation even in high-profile cases. The list of some of the notorious cases from the USA and UK is very versatile: John Allen Muhammad v. the Commonwealth of Virginia in 2003 (after presenting his opening speech, the defendant agreed to being represented by an attorney); Farhad v. United States in 1998-1999; USA v. Zacarias Moussaoui in 2002-2006 (the defendant was ordered to proceed with a court appointed attorney later in the course of the trial); Colin Ferguson v. USA in 1994; Kolender v. Lawson in 1983; David Irving v. Pinguin Books Ltd and Deborah Lipstadt in 2000; McDonald’s Corporation v. Helen Steel and David Morris in 1994-1996. There have also been cases with pro se litigants before International Criminal Tribunals2: a former president of Serbia and Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, represented himself in 2002-2004; the first president of the Republic of Serbia, Radovan Karadžic, represented himself in 2008-2009. Social, educational and financial background of the above-mentioned selfrepresented litigants widely varies; their reasons for representing themselves
Say and stancetaking in courtroom talk: a corpus-assisted study
Approached as an interactional phenomenon, stance is realised through varied linguistic devices and practices which need not be overtly evaluative. Say, the basic communication verb which indicates the source of knowledge and, thus, perspectivises the information imparted by speakers, is one such resource. Its stancetaking potential is exploited, among other settings, in the courtroom or in the police interview room, where institutional authority is exerted and the facts of legal stories are ‘fixed’ and formulated (Holt and Johnson, 2010; and Johnson, 2014). Combining corpus and discourse-analytic perspectives (Partington et al., 2013), this study explores the patterns of use and distribution of the verb say in a libel trial, demonstrating its role in the interactional co-construction of stance. It also provides insight into how more powerful participants use say as a means of claiming epistemic priority and asserting authority – or more broadly, to position themselves towards less powerful speakers. The ...
Adolescent sexual offenders: incidence of childhood maltreatment, serious emotional disturbance, and prior offenses.
Adolescents incarcerated for sexual offenses were compared to those incarcerated for other crimes on measures of prior child abuse and neglect, serious emotional disturbance, and involvement in child welfare and the juvenile justice system. Sexual or physical abuse was more common than neglect among sexual offenders with fewer than three prior maltreatment reports. Sexual offenders were twice as likely to be receiving special education services for severe emotional disturbance, and were usually incarcerated later than other offenders. Implications for research and practice are discussed.