Recent Judicial Decisions Relating to Education

Extraneous factors in judicial decisions.

Are judicial rulings based solely on laws and facts? Legal formalism holds that judges apply legal reasons to the facts of a case in a rational, mechanical, and deliberative manner. In contrast, legal realists argue that the rational application of legal reasons does not sufficiently explain the decisions of judges and that psychological, political, and social factors influence judicial rulings...

Judicial Politics and Sentencing Decisions∗

Racial and gender disparities are prevalent in the criminal justice system, but the sources of these disparities remain largely unknown. This paper investigates whether judge political affiliation contributes to these disparities using data on over 500,000 federal defendants linked to sentencing judge. Exploiting random case assignment, we find that Republican appointed judges sentence black de...

Evidence-Based Medicine in judicial decisions concerning right to healthcare

OBJECTIVE To analyze, from the examination of decisions issued by Brazilian courts, how Evidence-Based Medicine was applied and if it led to well-founded decisions, searching the best scientific knowledge. METHODS The decisions made by the Federal Courts were searched, with no time limits, at the website of the Federal Court Council, using the expression "Evidence-Based Medicine". With regard...

relatIng to eportfolIo practIce In hIgher educatIon

The contemporary context of education is one of a rapidly changing learning environment that effectively challenges many of the assumptions of years past. Siemens argues that ePortfolio growth has been fuelled by ‛the dynamics of functioning in a knowledge economy, the changing nature of learning, and the changing needs of the learner’ (Siemens, 2004, p. 2), as outlined in the discussion on the...

Recent Decisions