法院地国家国内法中的冲突规则与国际条约的关系

法院地国家国内法中的冲突规则和已对该国生效的国际条约中的冲突规则同属该国国际私法的渊源。多数国家的国际私法制定法均有优先适用国际条约中的冲突规则的规定,但其国际私法分则对国际条约中的冲突规则的处理方式则主要有三种不同的立法模式。在裁判涉外民事案件的实践中,实体法解决办法有别于冲突法解决办法,仅在案件不符合国际统一实体私法条约的适用条件的情形下,才能依法院地国家国内法的冲突规则确定准据法。涉外合同的双方当事人选择已对法院地国家和其他缔约国生效的国际条约并不等于选择了合同准据法。而如果涉外合同的双方当事人选择了尚未对法院地国家生效、但已对两个或两个以上其他国家生效的国际条约,则只能视为对无法律约束力的“非国家规则” 的选择。由于“程序问题适用法院地法”,涉外民事案件的程序事项既不适用冲突规则,也不适用实体私法规则。法院地国家国内法的冲突规则不会同国际条约中的国际民事程序法规则发生抵触。     

我国人民法院应当设立劳动法庭

劳动争议案件具有不同于民商事案件的特点,无论从审判理念、审判模式、法律适用、审理效果等方面分析,由民事法庭审理劳动案件具有多方面不妥.我国劳动争议数量巨大,司法审判任务重.可以参照德国、以色列等国劳动法院的经验,在中国的人民法院设立专门的劳动法庭,待条件成熟后设立作为特别法院的劳动法院,专司劳动案件审判.劳动法庭宜聘请雇主、工会相关人士与法官共同组成合议庭,更专业地审理劳动案件.     

Stolen Art Restitution Claims and the Exhaustion of Local Remedies: How Foreign-Based Plaintiffs are Able to Succeed Under the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act

Stolen art restitution claims under the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act (“FSIA”) present unique procedural issues that implicate the history, purpose, and objectives of the FSIA. At the forefront of these issues are how foreign-based plaintiffs are able to bring suits against foreign governments or foreign citizens in US Federal Courts. Whether these foreign-based plaintiffs must exhaust local remedies in their country of origin is another issue that these kinds of suits typically have courts resolve. This article provides answers to these issues through a historical discussion of the implementation of the FSIA and an analysis of recent case law.     

澳大利亚联邦法院对专家证据的采纳

I. Introduction
The opinion evidence of experts is an exception to the general rule that witnesses can only give evidence of that which they have seen or heard and may not give evidence of inferences which arise from their observations and from that which they have heard.     

Dicey and the Brick Maker: An Unresolved Tension Between the Rational and the Reasonable in Common Law Pedagogy

Liverpool Law Review - In his inaugural address as the Vinerian Professor of English law in 1883, Albert Venn Dicey laid down the vision for a new pedagogy for the common law to replace the...     

Enforcing English ancillary relief orders in Jersey: principles and pitfalls

The long running and unhappy divorce litigation between Mr andMrs Mubarak has finally reached a reasonably happy conclusionin the Royal Court of Jersey. In a well reasoned decision, theDeputy Bailiff has set out the guiding principles to be appliedwhen considering whether orders made by a foreign Court oughtto be enforced or given effect to in Jersey. Whilst undoubtedlyhelpful, the guidance also provides a salutary warning to foreignlitigants seeking access to assets within Jersey trusts thatthey are in for a bumpy ride.     

The Rule of Law and the Rule of Empire: A.V. Dicey in Imperial Context

The idea of the rule of law, more ubiquitous globally today than ever before, owes a lasting debt to the work of Victorian legal theorist A. V. Dicey. But for all of Dicey's influence, little attention has been paid to the imperial entanglements of his thought, including on the rule of law. This article seeks to bring the imperial dimensions of Dicey's thinking about the rule of law into view. On Dicey's account, the rule of law represented a distinctive English civilisational achievement, one that furnished a liberal justification for British imperialism. And yet Dicey was forced to acknowledge that imperial rule at times required arbitrariness and formal inequality at odds with the rule of law. At a moment when the rule of law has once more come to license all sorts of transnational interventions by globally powerful political actors, Dicey's preoccupations and ambivalences are in many ways our own.     

论外国商事仲裁裁决司法审查的适度性

关于法院对外国裁决的司法审查,国内学者提出了程序审查论和全面审查论,但都有其局限。仅审查程序不能保证外国仲裁裁决的公正,全面审查又扩大了司法审查的范围,应建立适度性司法审查原则。法院应对外国裁决的程序和实体内容进行审查,但对实体内容的审查应限定在一定范围内,反对法院对实体内容过度干预。对裁决的实体审查仅限于两种情况:一是当事人协议约定审查裁决的实体内容;二是裁决确有明显实体错误,法院可依职权审查。     

从《纽约公约》在亚洲国家的实施看国际商事仲裁中的公共秩序

《纽约公约》第5条第2款的规定为各国法院适用公共秩序拒绝适用国际商事仲裁裁决提供了依据,然而公共秩序存在着多种解释,自公约实施以来,参加公约的亚洲各国法院提出了各种主张并在实践中有了各种做法,本文对中国、新加坡、日本、印度尼西亚等国的理论与实践进行了分析,对各国法院的做法进行了总结。     

法院变更起诉罪名之研究

目前国外对法院变更指控罪名问题研究已较成熟,英美法国家以法院不能变更指控罪名为原则,以变更指控罪名为例外.而大陆法系国家的法律规定,法院依职权审判,在事实审判上需要受制于起诉指控的范围,而在法律适用和罪名确定上法院可以自主行动.我国在该问题上虽已有法律规定,但太笼统,简单,面对一些实际问题该法律规定似嫌无能为力.法院应该享有变更指控罪名权,只是要在法院行使该权力时给予必要的规范.法院对指控事实的认定和检察院并无二致,只是在罪名认定上有分歧时可以直接在判决书中将指控罪名加以变更,该变更必须未对被告人辩护权造成实质影响且对其有利;如果指控罪名不当,法院如欲变更会恶化被告人的处境,不宜直接变更,须与检察机关协商后按照一定的程序加以变更.     

Brexit and Parliamentary Sovereignty

This note addresses the implications of R (Miller) v Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union for the legal principle of parliamentary sovereignty, and argues that the strong restatement of the latter is the most significant feature of the decision. The aim here is to show how traditional principle in the Dicey tradition has been strongly applied against the competing claims of EU law, the royal prerogative, the referendum and devolution. However, the note also argues that the claims relating to parliamentary sovereignty could have produced a different result and that the most compelling feature of the case was the argument that was not forcefully put by the Government, namely that Parliament had already provided sufficient authority for the triggering of Article 50.     

我国民事简易程序的反思与发展进路

我国法院目前适用简易程序审理的案件,实际上已经包含了国外第一审程序所有的三种类型案件,即普通程序、简易程序和小额诉讼程序。三种诉讼标的数额差别很大的案件适用同一种程序,与国际上公认的按照案件的类型设置民事纷争的处理程序的原理发生了明显的冲突。笔者认为,此次《民事诉讼法》修改,首先应将目前按照简易程序审理的案件按照一定的数额标准一分为三;其次,在基层法院要专门设立简易诉讼法庭、小额诉讼法庭,以防止不同类型案件审理上的混同;最后,简易、小额诉讼程序的设置要有助于人们接近司法,有助于法治社会的形成。     

JUDGING WITHOUT CONSENSUS: The Diplock Courts in Northern Ireland

This article examines nonjury trials for political/terrorist offenses in Northern Ireland. It traces the origins of the current troubles; the breakdown of the jury system; the work of the royal commission, chaired by Lord Justice Diplock; and the establishment of courts, known as Diplock Courts, in which a single judge tries cases using modified rules of evidence and lowered standards for the admission of confessions. Finally, the article evaluates the work of the Diplock Courts, and suggests their wider relevance to future policy-making. In doing so, it touches upon a fundamental role of governing through courts—the maintenance of the ability to govern, particularly in a society that has neither political nor judicial consensus.     

Trans-Regional Courts in China: A Study of Establishment Models and Jurisdictional Rules

The trans-administrative regional (trans-regional) court was created as part of China’s judicial reforms in 2014. Thus far, only two trans-regional courts have been established, namely the Shanghai No. 3 and Beijing No. 4 Intermediate People’s Courts. An important reason for this slow pace is that the trans-regional court has transcended the current structural framework under the Organic Law of the People’s Courts in that (1) it is neither a specialized court that hears certain types of cases, (2) nor a local court established completely in keeping with administrative divisions. Therefore, the legal nature and status can only be clarified and justified when there is a clear definition of this new court system in the Organic Law of the People’s Courts. Several models, namely the independent set-up model, full reshuffling model and limited transformation model, have been proposed for the establishment of trans-regional courts. The most practical and efficient among these models is the limited transformation model, aiming to reconstruct the existing railway transportation courts. The trans-regional courts may have exclusive, alienage, or supplemental jurisdiction. Each form addresses particular types of special and major trans-regional cases, and other cases based on the theory of consolidation.     

Expert Evidence,Judicial Reasoning,and the Family Courts Information Pilot

The Family Courts Information Pilot took a modest step towards open justice in Children Act cases by publishing 161 judgments of the County Courts and Family Proceedings Courts. Combining socio‐legal and philosophical analysis on lines inspired by the work of Habermas, this article examines the epistemology of expert testimony implicit in the judgments. What emerges is a form of reasoning based on ‘inference to the best explanation’: judges seek to show that the best explanation for experts saying what they do is that they have good reasons for their opinions. While this approach is not blindly deferential, it has serious limitations in cases where the only experts are local authority social workers and the guardian, and an awareness of these limitations is one reason for the courts' willingness to allow other experts to be instructed. The article also criticizes the analysis of the courts’ use of experts by the recent Family Justice Review.     

人民法院在学位撤销案件中如何进行审查——基于司法审查强度的裁判反思

通过对1998年至2020年我国各级人民法院公开发布的学位撤销案件进行爬梳可以发现,高校撤销学位的事由主要集中在学历证明伪造和科研论文造假,兼有学术性和非学术性;法院对高校撤销学位决定的司法审查强度基于事实认定、法律适用和法律程序的不同而存在差异性的界分。为了维系学术自由与司法审查之间的平衡,并实质性地解决教育行政争议,人民法院应根据学术性事由和非学术性事由、正式程序和非正式程序的区分来建构二元化的事实认定审查标准,强化对学位撤销构成要件审查的释法说理,并审慎对待学位撤销决定的程序违法、审慎适用撤销判决,避免"程序空转"和"虚置诉讼"。     

Can Online Courts Promote Access to Justice? A Case Study of the Internet Courts in China

The right to access the courts is a basic human right in civilised societies, but the current legal system is unfriendly and often unaffordable for the victims of e-commerce disputes and copyright infringements seeking access to justice. Therefore, how to design a judicial system that is more accessible for the aforementioned victims has become a critical legal point of contention in the digital economy era. In particular, it is not easy to provide solid evidence of consumer disputes or copyright infringements on the Internet because the electronic evidence stored on the current centralised database has data security and trust problems. In response to this challenge, China established three Internet Courts in 2017 to move dispute resolution for e-commerce disputes and copyright infringements from the physical courts to the Internet. All the proceedings in these Internet Courts are conducted on the Internet, so the time and expenses of the litigants can be largely reduced. Most notably, these Internet Courts accept the use of blockchain as a method of securing evidence, to overcome the risks that evidence stored on the Internet can be hacked or falsified. The notion of an Internet Court, which substantially enhances popular access to justice, is a significant judicial innovation. It is of special significance for those lawsuits with small value claims and online evidence, and in which the parties are separated by long distances. However, these Internet Courts leave much to reflect on, including whether due process can be guaranteed, whether public trial can be fully implemented, and whether blockchain-based evidence is absolutely admissible. Even so, this article argues that true justice is not only to pursue absolute correctness of judgements, but that true justice should also strike a balance between the correctness and efficiency of trials. For this reason, Internet Courts may yet establish a new judicial paradigm to pursue a balance between correctness, time, and cost.     

Must Legalistic Conceptions of the Rule of Law Have a Social Dimension?

Abstract.  The article considers the nature of legalistic, or formal, conceptions of the rule of law, focusing particularly on the work of Joseph Raz and Albert Venn Dicey. It asks how such apparently narrow conceptions are generated, and how far they can resist including broader social claims. It concludes that the rationale behind legalistic conceptions compels them to address issues of poverty and the literacy of the law's subjects. However, legalistic conceptions of the rule of law can still avoid sliding into the wider non-legalistic models advanced by writers such as T. R. S. Allan.     

Reviews

Books reviewed:
Skelton Restitution and Contract
Slaughter, Sweet and Weiler (eds) The European Courts and National Courts – Doctrine and Jurisprudence
Tasioulas Law, Values and Social Practices
Macauley Social Power and Legal Culture: Litigation Masters in Late Imperial China
Various Diritto Privato 1997: III L'abuso del diritto
Duff Philosophy and the Criminal Law
Stein Roman Law in European History     

Work-Product Protection and Experts' Documents: The Ninth Circuit Strengthens the “Because of” Standard and Extends Protection to Dual Purpose Documents

Since the Supreme Court applied the work-product privilege to documents created by an attorney's representatives, so long as the documents were created in anticipation of litigation, the lower courts have attempted to interpret this application. The various circuit courts have addressed this issue as it relates to documents serving both litigation and nonlitigation purposes. Most recently, in November 2003 the Ninth Circuit joined the First, Second, Third, Seventh, Eighth, Eleventh, and D.C. Circuits when it adopted the rule that an expert's documents may be protected when they are prepared “because of the prospect of litigation.” In contrast, the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Circuits, Tenth and D.C. District Courts have constructed a stricter interpretation. Further, the Ninth Circuit's recent holding in United States v. Torf (In re: Grand Jury Subpoena) 350 F. 3d 1010 (9th Cir. 2003) sheds some more light on the scope of the work-product protection as it applies to environmental consultant's documents created in anticipation.