Law, Struggle, and Political Transformation in Northern Ireland

This article analyses the role of law as an element of the Republican Movement's violent and political struggle during the Northern Ireland conflict. The trials and legal hearings of paramilitary defendants, the use of judicial reviews in the prisons, and the use of law in the political arena are chosen as three interconnected sites which highlight the complex interaction between law and other forms of struggle. The author argues that these three sites illustrate a number of themes in understanding the role of law in processes of struggle and political transformation. These include: law as a series of dialogical processes both inside and outside a political movement; law as an instrumental process of struggle designed to materially and symbolically 'resist'; and the constitutive effects of legal struggle upon a social and political movement. The article concludes with a discussion as to whether or not Republicans' emphasis upon 'rights and equality' and an end to armed struggle represents a 'sell out' of traditional Republican objectives.     

Reconfiguring the Politics–Law Relationship in the Integration Project through Conflicts–Law Constitutionalism

This paper argues that the relationship between law and politics must be reconfigured within the European Union. Dissecting recent crises in economic, social and political organisation within Europe with reference to the three ‘fictitious’ commodities of Karl Polanyi, we find that law in Europe has contributed to de‐legalisation, de‐socialisation and disenfranchisement. Moving on to review the potential for law to respond to crisis through new paradigms of conflict resolution as suggested by Ralf Dahrendorf, we find that the steering capacity of law is nevertheless limited if it fails to establish a sustaining relationship with politics. Our conclusions are modest: conflict–law constitutionalism cannot solve Europe's many crises. However, it does represent a new paradigm of law within which relations between European law and European politics might be re‐established—a vital step to overcoming crisis.     

新权威主义、立宪政体与东亚法治转型

20世纪70年代东亚国家的新权威主义政体在政治集权、经济自由、开放意识形态的基础上实现了经济飞跃和社会发展。虽然新权威主义政体并不排斥民主和法治,且宪法均获得了名义上的权威,但由于经济发展和社会稳定的优先战略,东亚国家政治结构呈现出民主工具主义和"国家主义法治"的症状。在20世纪末期的第三波民主化浪潮中,东亚各国通过立宪主义的方式实现了民主主义的政治转型。     

End Impunity! Reducing Conflict‐Related Sexual Violence to a Problem of Law

Whilst sexual violence has been an offence associated both with war‐ and peacetime throughout history, its rise to the tables where international peace and security are negotiated, represents a significant shift. This article continues the scholarly conversation about conflict‐related sexual violence and its emergence as a “hot topic” on academic, political, and activist agendas. Specifically, we ask how and why criminal law constitutes the ultimately meaningful response to such violence. Building on frame analysis, we address how the fight against conflict‐related sexual violence has become the fight against impunity. We examine what imageries of victims and perpetrators, causes and consequences key actors within interstate diplomacy and human rights advocacy evoke to drive this development. We argue that these narratives shape the political discourse on conflict‐related sexual violence, which may in turn influence the perceived political maneuverability in the face of such harms.     

A Model for the ‘War Against Terrorism’? Military Intervention in Northern Ireland and the 1970 Falls Curfew

This paper questions the claim that British militarized security strategy in Northern Ireland offers a model for the global 'war against terrorism' by exploring the critically important (though neglected) 'Falls Curfew' episode. Part one explores the relationship between law, legitimacy, and the role of the military in democracies experiencing violent conflict. Part two examines the operationalization of the law on military intervention during the curfew, drawing on archival material and employing empirical studies. Part three draws overall conclusions, relating the contribution that the curfew made to the escalation of the conflict to its operational aspects and legal underpinnings. Failings are identified, and some general lessons drawn out about the dangers of a 'war' model in complex and violent political disorders.     

The Frontiers of Legal Analysis: Reframing the Transition in Northern Ireland

British constitutional legal discourse is structurally limited in its capacity to capture the complexity of the Good Friday Agreement. Rather than assessing the Agreement in narrow devolutionary terms, it should be seen as a hybrid domestic and international law instrument, making an important contribution to accepted international law norms in relation to self-determination. The Agreement transforms and partly transcends the Northern Ireland conflict by substituting political contestation for violent conflict, and by defining the modalities of conducting that contestation. This analysis complements classical international law perspectives, and opens up the application of legal discourses associated with 'transitional justice' to the legal and political transformation in Northern Ireland. These discourses focus on the problem of reconciling the demands of peace with the imperatives of justice. The Agreement sits squarely in this terrain with its provisions on 'dealing with the past' and 'institutional legacies'. The insights gained here challenge orthodox thinking about conflict-management and the ongoing political process.     

后现代法学方法论的理论光谱

后现代法学方法论发展了哲学诠释学的相对主义观点,与科学主义法学形成了尖锐的对立,动摇了法治主义的认识论基础。在后现代法学方法论中,存在着反基础主义、解构主义、新实用主义等几种主要的法律思维形式,它们对法律知识的客观有效性持怀疑的态度,否认法律体系中存在着一以贯之的普遍性标准,也不承认法律可以从某些超越性的道德价值中推导出来,而将法律看作是政治权力角力后的结果,法律的阐释者正是政治权力的体现者。     

Emerging combatants, war crimes and the future of international humanitarian law

The purpose of this paper is to examine the traditional paradigm of international law that regulates warfare and defines criminal behavior,and examine how the emergence of new actors has changed the environmentof armed conflict. The existing paradigm takes into account state actorsand insurgents who have recognizable political goals. All such combatantshave some stake in the existing international political system and somemeans are available (military intervention, war crimes trials) to compeltheir compliance with the law. However, new categories of combatants areemerging. They are not connected to states, may have no political goalsand are difficult to reach or persuade with time-tested methods.Compelling or persuading them to better compliance with the law is essential to protect vulnerable populations from their depredations.The paper concludes by identifying some contributions that criminologistscan make toward understanding these groups and devising strategies to meetthe challenge of war crimes. Those contributions by criminologists wouldbe equally valuable in dealing with the problem of war crimes and ``traditional' combatants.     

Hazardous waste,distributional conflict,and a trilogy of failures

Environmentally dangerous but profitable hazardous waste disposal is an instance of market failure. Tort law has failed as a social mechanism to sanction powerful corporations for such crimes against the environment. The federal Superfund hazardous waste cleanup program, a regulatory system created to fill this void, is also marked by failure. This article makes the case that the inability to resolve Superfund-engendered distributional conflicts has precluded the efficient and equitable outcomes that characterize a socially beneficial market, tort, or regulatory response. A political economy of regulation that links conflict, conflict resolution, and Superfund failure is examined.     

Making War on Terror? Global Lessons from Northern Ireland

In place of the simple modelling employed in anti-terrorist legal discourse, this article posits an interactive model of the relationship between the state and violent political actors, exploring law's role in both the repression and mobilisation of challengers. Drawing on social movement theory, it hypothesises a process of 'legally implicated mobilisation' which takes account both of law's presence and its partial absence in 'legal grey zones' during violent conflict, and it suggests how law may impact upon key elements of the mobilisation process. The hypothesis is applied to qualitative data from Northern Ireland on violent challengers. The data point to the importance of 'messaging' about law in the state of exception, supporting claims that law can have a 'damping' effect on violent conflict. The relationship between repression and violence is partly symbiotic, and in the global 'war on terror,' prisoner-abuse may have a mobilising effect on violent challengers.     

The Legal Characterization of the Armed Conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq: Implications for Protection

This article explores the implications for the protection of civilians and other vulnerable persons, of the requalification of a conflict downwards from international to non-international, focusing in particular on the changes in the characterization of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2001 and 2003 respectively.

Determining the legal character of an armed conflict is rooted in an inherently political interpretation of black letter treaty law. It is generally agreed that when the United States and its coalition allies entered the wars in Afghanistan in 2001, and Iraq in 2003, their operations in those countries were initially subject to the laws of international armed conflict. However the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has determined that the conflict in Afghanistan became noninternational with the establishment of the United States’ backed government of Hamid Karzai on 19 June 2002 and that the conflict in Iraq became non-international with the establishment of the Iraqi Interim Government on 28 June 2004. The basis for this requalification is Article 2 of the Geneva Conventions read in conjunction with an interpretation of the meaning of ‘state’ (and of its power to authorize a foreign intervention in its own territory) that is inherently, and possibly inevitably, political.

Changes in the legal characterization of a war have profound implications for the protection of both non-combatants and combatants under international humanitarian law, in particular for humanitarian access; for the protection of non-nationals from deportation; for the protection of detainees; for the conduct of hostilities; and for the protection of persons transferred into the hands of local authorities. The practical consequence of a requalification of an armed conflict downwards to non-international is a marked loss of protection for persons that were protected by the Geneva Conventions in the earlier stages of the conflict.

     

The Dead, the Law, and the Politics of the Past

This article explores the role of law in cultural and political disputes concerning dead bodies. It uses three interconnecting legal frameworks: cultural and moral ownership, commemoration, and closure. It begins with a critique of the limitations of the private law notion of 'ownership' in such contexts, setting out a broader notion of cultural and moral ownership as more appropriate for analysing legal disputes between states and indigenous tribes. It then examines how legal discourses concerning freedom of expression, religious and political traditions, and human rights and equality are utilized to regulate the public memory of the dead. Finally, it looks at the relationship between law and notions of closure in contexts where the dead have either died in battle or have been 'disappeared' during a conflict, arguing that law in such contexts goes beyond the traditional retributive focus of investigation and punishment of wrongdoers and instead centres on broader concerns of societal and personal healing.     

Review, Revenge and Retreat

The article deals with a wide-ranging legal and political conflict of considerable constitutional significance, the attempt by UK ministers to restrict formal challenge of asylum decisions using a variety of devices and the fierce and partly successful opposition that this engendered. The article examines the legal and administrative roots of the controversy; the anatomy of the government's generalised counter-attack or 'revenge package'; the main juridical elements in the resulting public furore; and the character of the government's eventual retreat. In so doing, it raises, and elaborates on, a series of linked themes: the powerful dynamics of judicial review in this policy domain; the historical sense of a gathering storm in relations between ministers and judges; the practical interplay of rule of law arguments with developments in common law constitutionalism; and an expanded role for legal elements in the political process.     

行政审判依据间的冲突及选择的操作分析

行政诉讼中的法律冲突有合法与非法之分.合法冲突是法律允许存在的冲突,只需按照冲突的一般解决规则选择适用法律即可.非法冲突即法律不允许并存的冲突,只能是承认一方有效,另一方无效.非法冲突表现多样,危害法律权威和行政、司法公正,其产生有立法观念、立法体制、立法技术等法律方面原因,为提高诉讼效率,尽量减少法律冲突带来的危害,我国需要确立一些可操作的选择适用规则.     

The "Compliance" Trap: The Moral Message in Responsive Regulatory Enforcement

Simple deterrence will often fail to produce compliance commitment because it does not directly address business perceptions of the morality of regulated behavior. Responsive regulation, by contrast, seeks to build moral commitment to compliance with the law. This article shows that a regulator can overcome the deterrence trap to improve compliance commitment with the skillful use of responsive regulatory techniques that "leverage" the deterrence impact of its enforcement strategies with moral judgments. But this leads it into the "compliance trap." The compliance trap occurs where there is a lack of political support for the moral seriousness of the law it must enforce, such as is the case with cartel enforcement in Australia. In these circumstances, business offenders are likely to interpret the moral leveraging of responsive regulation as unfair or stigmatizing, and business perceptions of regulator unfairness are likely to have a negative influence on long-term compliance with the law. Moreover, big businesses that perceive regulatory enforcement as illegitimate are also likely to actively lobby for the political emasculation of the regulator. In these circumstances, most regulators are likely to avoid conflict by taking the easy option of enforcing the law "softly," and therefore ineffectively.     

市民社会与政治国家:法治的基础和界限

市民社会与国家的分离和互动发展 ,奠定了法治运行的基础 ,即普遍利益与特殊利益的冲突与协调导致了法律至上 ;多元社会权利对国家权力的分享与制衡提供了权利保障 ;市民社会多元利益的冲突、互动与整合衍生了理性规则秩序 ;具有自由理性精神的公民意识构成了法治的非制度化要素。中国要真正走向法治 ,就必须重构国家与市民社会的关系 ,确立多元权利基础、公权力权威和良法之治 ,并实现依法治国与市民社会理性规则秩序的回应与契合。     

中国区际警务执法合作的建构过程与特征初探

中国的区际警务执法合作是在四个互不隶属的法域、三种不同的法系、两种不同的政治社会制度中进行,尽管各法域的历史过程有所不同形成了文化区别,但都植根于中华文化文明,所以,构建过程中依赖共同文化底蕴和民族生存与发展的需要。经过30多年努力地孕育和开拓,从相互隔绝到接触、碰撞、磨合,达到今天的互信,构建了具有中国特色的区际警务执法合作机制,并基本适应了维护各地社会治安稳定的需要。     

弱势群体权利保护国际立法初探

就弱势群体的生存现状、法律的发展演进、各国立法与研究现状进行了较全面的介绍之后 ,深入分析了弱势群体权利保护所面临的问题和法律发展趋势 ,以期能引起人们对弱势群体权利保护状况的关注与重视 ,并努力改善之。作者指出 ,某些民族和宗教的固有传统由于与现代人权观念相冲突而成为改善弱势群体人权状况的最大障碍之一。文章最后深刻指出了弱势群体权利保护的三个发展趋势 ,即对弱势群体权利保护的加强、相关法律的趋同化、国际社会本位观念的贯彻执行。     

我国环境冲突研究回顾及未来展望——基于CSSCI文献(1998-2020)的可视化分析

环境冲突是社会冲突的主要类型之一,环境冲突的有效治理是防范化解由环境问题引致的社会冲突的关键。本文借助Citespace软件,以1998-2020年间中文社会科学索引(CSSCI)数据库收录的135篇环境冲突相关文献为研究样本,综合采用文献计量和知识图谱分析两种方法对样本进行分析。研究发现,我国环境冲突文献发表数量各年份起伏较大,产生了高产学者和发文量较多的科研机构,关键词聚类分析确定了环境冲突的4个主题,邻避冲突是环境冲突领域研究的重点。未来应加强环境冲突研究领域研究者共同体、研究机构共同体建设以及多学科的融合,加强对大数据、区块链技术融入环境冲突治理等前沿问题的研究。