In the legal system of the United States, there exists a traditional form of judicial remedies that serve to combat juror biases caused by news coverage.
The First Amendment of the United States forbids the government from censoring and restraining the freedom of expression, which allows the ever-expanding news media to influence the legal process.
The entangled relationship between mass media and the legal system presents challenges to the Sixth Amendment that guarantees the rights of criminal defendants to receive fair trials.
This legal maxim was first enunciated by William Blackstone: "It is a settled and invariable principle in the laws of England, that every right when with-held must have a remedy, and every injury its proper redress.
The legal remedy originates from the law courts of England and is seen in the form of a payment of money to the victim, commonly referred to as damages or replevin.
[7] Courts give declaratory remedies about many different kinds of questions, including whether a person has a legal status, who the owner of a property is, whether a statute has a particular meaning, or what the rights are under a contract.
[7] While these are three basic categories of remedies in common law, there are also a handful of others (such as reformation and rescission, both dealing with contracts whose terms need to be rewritten or undone).
Compensatory damages are paid directly to the claimant to compensate for loss and injury when the defendant is proven to be liable for breach of duty or committing wrongful acts.
However, the court takes into account when the non-breaching party makes savings or profits because he or she is involuntarily relieved from the responsibilities specified in a broken contract.
[6] Injunction is a court order that coerces the defendant to take specific acts or refrains him or her from engaging in certain actions, e.g., breaching a contract.
[9] This type of equitable remedy is limited in scope because in contract laws for example, issuing specific performance would require the property that gives rise to the lawsuit to be unique, or that it is more practical for the defendant to compensate the plaintiff by paying for compensatory damages.
Declaratory remedies serve to affirm the validity of the claims and requests made by the plaintiff, accompanied by injunction in selective cases at the discretion of judges or juries.
[10] Declaratory remedies are a component of preventive adjudication because in cases that demand only declaration, no actual harm or loss has been incurred by the plaintiff.
[7] Pretrial publicity can lessen the effectiveness of jurors in ways such as presenting incriminating information or arousing blind emotions, which significantly influence the outcome of trials and damage their fairness.
[11] As technologies develop, the prevalence of mass media makes legal information more accessible and thus poses a larger threat to the process of adjudication.
[2] Voir dire, which means "tell the truth" in French, refers (only in the US) to a process in which attorneys and judges conduct interviews with potential jurors to discover their bias and rule out the ones who cannot be impartial.
The delay also results in the defendant spending additional time in jail or that it may attract more media attention and drive up the publicity of the case.
By giving a panel of jurors instructions such as make verdicts solely based on the evidence presented in the court, the judge seeks to diminish the influence of mass media.
However, punitive damages are not applicable in the legal systems of the U.K. and Japan or the contractual cases in Australia and occupy a limited but expanding scope in the People's Republic of China.
Such a remedy must be accessible, binding, capable of bringing perpetrators to justice, provide appropriate reparations, and prevent further violations of the person's rights.