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...Open University's Law courses. After years of consultations and reports, the Scottish government is proposing to conduct a pilot to test out running rape trials with just a judge – and no jury. The conviction rate in Scotland for rape and attempted rate is woefully low. Only 51% of trials lead to a conviction, which is simply not acceptable in a modern justice system....

...Open University's Law courses. [A group of people engaged in a debate.] When the Scottish Government announced in 2015 that it had accepted a recommendation to commission research into the Scottish jury, an observer might have wondered why this was even necessary. In 2012, Dennis J Devine estimated that there had been 1500 jury research studies carried out by 2011. Is...

...Open University's Law courses. Twenty-six years ago, 19-year-old Scots drama student Amanda Duffy was murdered after a night out with friends. In a landmark trial in 1992, there was only one suspect in the case, Francis Auld. Despite forensic evidence that could link Auld to Amanda’s death, he received a “not proven” verdict, which meant the jury deemed there was...

...Open University’s third level module on international environmental policy (DU311: Earth in Crisis). Over a few days we met with various people with a professional or personal interest in the relationship between climate change, flooding and coastal erosion. They included professionals working for the Environment Agency, Swale Borough Council and the Royal Society for...