Punishing the Alien: The Sentencing of Foreign Offenders in Slovenia The authors examine the question of foreignness, which appears in many shades; citizenship is thus just one of the many aspects contributing to society's stance on 'foreignness'. After sketching the current prison situation in Europe, the authors analyse the situation of foreigners in the Slovenian criminal justice system. On the one hand, we can perceive a general turn towards harsher treatment of foreign offenders-there have been more convictions and more foreigners in prison recently. However, a more detailed analysis shows that with regard to cases of homicide, foreigners may even be receiving more lenient sentences compared to Slovenian citizens. KEY WORDS: foreigners, prison, criminal justice, court, sentencing IZVLEČEK Kaznovanje tujcev: Kaznovanje tujih storilcev kaznivih dejanj v Sloveniji Avtorja se uvodoma ukvarjata z vprašanjem »tujosti«, ki se pojavlja v več intenzitetah: državljanstvo posameznika je le eden od dejavnikov, ki vplivajo na njegovo družbeno sprejemanje ali zavračanje. Po pregledu stanja v evropskih zaporih avtorja v osrednjem delu analizirata položaj tujcev v slovenskem kazenskopravnem sistemu, kjer je mogoče zaznati zaostrovanje pri obravnavi tujcev-več obsodb in več tujcev v zaporih v zadnjih letih. Temu nasprotne rezultate pa pokaže podrobnejši pregled kaznivega dejanja umora (in uboja), v katerem avtorja ugotavljata, da je kaznovanje tujcev celo manj punitivno kot kaznovanje domačih državljanov in za to ponudita nekaj morebitnih razlag.

Recent years have seen a growing volume of research on citations between courts from different countries. This article fills a gap in the current literature by presenting and analysing cross-citations between the highest domestic courts responsible for matters of private law in the EU from 2000 to 2018. It addresses two main questions: first, to what extent do judges cite foreign case law in their decisions? Second, what may explain the varying levels of engagement of supreme courts with foreign case law? Our findings offer a mixed result as to the nature and frequency of such cross-citations. Overall, we identify 2984 cross-citations; yet, only in few instances do we find a reciprocal relationship between the supreme courts of two countries, while more generally an asymmetric picture emerges. The article also discusses whether problems with the ease of access to court decisions may partly be responsible for limitations in the use of cross-citations.

AFTER McCann and Others v the United Kingdom (Application no. 18984/91) (1995) ECHR 31, in which the European Court of Human Rights first read into Article 2 the procedural obligation of effective investigation, Mustafa Tunç and Fecire Tunç (Application no. 24014/05), 14 April 2015, is perhaps one the most interesting decisions on the nature of the obligation to conduct an effective investigation in the Court's recent history. The Court, through its case law, has clarified that, when individuals have been killed by the state or a private party, the Contracting Parties have to undertake an investigation under Article 2, which has to be independent, adequate, prompt, and publicly scrutinised. It has been unclear, however, whether the element of independence had to meet criteria similar to those under Article 6, which guarantees a fair trial, or whether a lower standard was sufficient for an investigation to be considered effective in the context of Article 2. The Strasbourg court went back and forth on the issue (even adopting an absolutist approach in Al-Skeini and Others v the United Kingdom (Application no. 55721/07) (2011) ECHR 1093) and it was not until Mustafa Tunç that the issue of independence under Article 2 was addressed head-on.

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