Narratives of Force: The Presence of the Writer in International Legal Scholarship

Netherlands International Law Review - In this article I use the notion of ‘plot’ to uncover where in their texts international legal scholars are ‘present’, directing...     

Teaching public law in a comparative paradigm: virtues and vices

Comparison in legal education matters. In its mission statement, the International Society of Public Law suggests that, “a full explication and understanding of today’s ‘constitutional’ [law] cannot take place in isolation from other branches of public law or in a context that is exclusively national”. Not only is comparative content of itself enlightening, but this paper argues comparison as a teaching method has at least four virtues. First, teaching in a comparative paradigm better prepares graduates for an interconnected and global legal marketplace. Second, it helps illuminate curriculum content. Third, it makes for good citizenry. And, fourth, it enhances the research/teaching nexus. In so doing, this paper explores the use of comparative law as a teaching methodology in core public law subjects rather than by way of additional curriculum content. As with all things, however, where there are virtues, there are also vices. In this context, such vices include questions of relevance and threats to space, time and coherence in legal education. To that end, the disadvantages of comparative approaches in teaching public law are also considered.     

Issues in Anti‐Corruption Law: How Can Code of Conduct Laws Be Drafted in Order to Reduce Corruption in a Public Sector like Romania's

International organisations, like the UN and EU, have encouraged their Member States for years to increase civil servants' compliance with particular codes of conduct. Romania represents probably one of the most advanced countries in attempting to legislate on civil servant ethics through its Code of Conduct Law. Yet, the Romanian Code of Conduct Law possesses significant weaknesses, emanating both from the inherent difficulties of using hard law in a soft law area (like civil servants' ethics) and the Law's silence as to specific procedures, which government agencies should use in implementing the Law. Given these weaknesses, Romanian government agencies should adopt regulatory instruments that compensate for these weaknesses at the legislative level. In this paper, we present the provisions—particularly related to the establishment of agency‐level ethical doctrines—which regulatory drafters can use to implement these codes of conduct in a civil law system without running afoul of the basic requirements of civil law jurisprudence for clarity and predictability. We discuss the legal basis in Romanian administrative law for the elaboration of specific ethics‐related doctrines and the ways in which such a ‘doctrinal approach’ to administrative ethics can help achieve the objectives of the flawed Code of Conduct Law. We specifically discuss the ways in which Romanian governments can adopt such regulatory instruments and the types of provisions that should be included in order to help overcome the flaws of the Code of Conduct Law.     

国际环境损害责任的私法化

在国际环境损害问题上追究国家责任的不可行性 ,使国际环境损害责任制度呈现出越来越明显的私法化趋势已多年。但是 ,由于国际法学界在相当长的时期内囿于传统的法律模式和思维方法 ,对这一问题的法律阐释和编纂始终没有取得突破性进展。直到最近 ,联合国国际法委员会的报告才突破了这一问题。从理论上对国际环境损害责任私法化的内容和法学方法论问题进行系统的分析、探讨 ,对发展国际环境法具有重要意义。     

国际通信法:界域、主体及架构

国际通信法是现代国际法专业化发展的产物,其界域包括两类通信领域的国际事务:一是国际通信活动的规制,二是通信制度的国际协调;其主体具有鲜明的多元化特征,被国际通信法赋予国际人格并参加国际通信法律关系的实体,不仅有国家和政府间国际组织,还有法人和个人。国际通信法是一个庞大的法律体系,其规范具有普遍性、区域性和双边性三个不同层次,分属国际电信联盟、万国邮政联盟、世界贸易组织等众多国际体制,归于国际通信通道法、国际通信服务法和国际通信行为法三个不同板块,由此形成了国际通信法的立体网络架构。我国通信事业的发展非常迅速,但有关通信的立法相对滞后。因此,有必要熟悉通信领域的国际规则,加强国际通信法的研究。     

Reflecting on 25 Years of Teaching Animal Law: Is it Time for an International Crime of Animal Ecocide?

2019 marked the 25th anniversary of the introduction of Animal Law to the law degree at Liverpool John Moores University. This article examines changes in the legal protection of animals during this time and the impact this will have on research and scholarship in the law relating to animals. We examine whether the overall international treatment of animals has improved and how far the approach to the Animal Law curriculum should be influenced by the growth in concerns around climate change. In this context, we examine the development of the law of ecocide and the extent to which it addresses concerns around animal welfare across the globe. We suggest that those involved in the development of Animal Law, ethics and policy might usefully engage in a new vision of ecocide, which incorporates a clearer notion of ‘animal ecocide’. This new approach would enhance the international and national focus on animals in their own right, would recognise increasing knowledge of animal sentience and would move our responsibilities to them beyond anthropocentric approaches to environmental protection. We argue that the inclusion of a more specific reference to animal ecocide would contribute to the development of Animal Law and would lead to an enhanced relationship between Animal Law and attempts to protect the environment.

     

对国际私法调整对象的法理思考

在法学界,对于国际私法的调整对象见解不一。实际上,如果从法理学上正确把握法律关系和社会关系的含义以及国际私法解决法律冲突的方式,就能够理解国际私法调整对象的双重性,即国际私法的调整对象既包括涉外民事关系又包括涉外民事法律关系。只有准确理解国际私法的调整对象及其相对独立性,才能推动国际私法的学科研究。     

Willingness to innovate in family law solicitor practice in England and Wales: a qualitative study

This paper analyses interview data from 24 long-qualified family law solicitors working in private practice traditional settings in the Midlands and North of England. Experiences and perceptions of change are explored in order to contribute to contemporary understandings of practitioner willingness to innovate in the new legal services landscape, particularly as family law solicitors have been called upon to adopt new practices such as unbundling to survive. Three ‘types’ of emergent identities are identified amongst the sample respondents. These are linked to attachment to traditional role orientations, values and boundaries, as well as practice settings and perception of opportunities and threats.     

The Effect of ‘Stabilization’ in the Mandates and Practice of UN Peace Operations

Netherlands International Law Review - In the last decade UN peace operations have begun to explicitly seek ‘stabilization’ in the states to which they are deployed. Despite the term...     

试论国际私法涉外标准之认定

所谓国际私法的涉外性,是指民事关系具有涉及外国法适用的因素,而非民事法律关系的涉外。我国目前的国际私法的涉外性标准采取的是以民事法律关系的主体、客体以及产生、变更、消灭民事法律关系的法律事实涉外为标准。该标准过于宽泛,内容有待完善。只有依据冲突规范连接点的内容才能找出某一具体的民事关系中的有效涉外因素,进而结合案件事实才能最终确定外国法的适用。     

The Paradox of American Critical Legalism

Duncan Kennedy's essay is a reprint from his recently published book. We hope to draw attention to Kennedy's work among students of European integration since we believe his analysis to be relevant both to the specific debate on the impact of European integration upon private law and to comparative legal study in general. European legal scholarship has only recently begun to examine the problems of private legal integration. The late appearance of private law in the integration arena is due to a primarily instrumental understanding and strategic use of law in the European market-building project: only once legal ‘barriers to trade’ were eliminated and national regulatory law replaced by Europeanised norms, did the degree to which the core institutions of ’private‘ law had been (indirectly) affected by the integrationist logic become apparent. Comparative legal research, however, has benefited from this awakening of interest. European Commission projects have widened the scope of and intensified comparative studies in Europe. Equally, experience gained from the ‘Integration Through (Public) Law’ project has led to a new private legal debate on the impact of national traditions, the concept of legal cultures and the social functions of private law. Accordingly, whilst Duncan Kennedy's deliberations on the history of American legal thought and the differences between American and European legal cultures are generally to be commended for their sensitive treatment of the specificities of the civil law system and the common law heritage, they are equally of particular topical concern since in addition to highlighting America's ‘utter faith and utter distrust in law,’ they also investigate the fundamentally different approaches adopted towards ‘the project law’ within each of the member states of the EU. If European private lawyers are to come to terms with the problems of integration and convergence, they must first tackle these deep-seated divergences between their own national legal cultures.     

关于环境法体系问题的几点思考

环境法体系是法律体系意义上的概念,不是立法体系意义上概念。环境法是独立的法律部门,应区别环境法概念的广义与狭义。从狭义环境法的角度来看,环境民法、环境刑法不属于环境法。环境法体系可分为基本法与具体法,其中具体法又可分为事务法和手段法。狭义环境法的确定对于规范环境法学研究,推动环境法制建设具有积极意义。     

The Law and the Statuesque

Law and literature, an exemplary product of the textual turn in the study of culture, has found itself challenged by the more recent visual turn in critical thought. However, debate hitherto has been largely based on a two-dimensional approach to the visual. By going beyond the metaphor of the ‘legal screen’ in favour of a theory of the ‘statuesque’, this essay adds a new dimension to the way we think about the force of law in culture. Drawing on eighteenth-century and contemporary aesthetic theory, and twentieth- and twenty-first-century public art, the article presents an account of the political aesthetics of law in which a place for the possibility of justice may be made.     

Rich man’s solution? Climate engineering discourses and the marginalization of the Global South

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics - Numerous recent studies project that ‘climate engineering’ technologies might need to play a major role in the...     

The Meaning and Protection of ‘Cultural Objects and Places of Worship’ Under the 1977 Additional Protocols

Netherlands International Law Review - This article addresses R. O’Keefe’s 1999 publication entitled ‘The Meaning of “Cultural Property” under the 1954 Hague...     

我国国际民事程序法"国家本位"秩序价值初探

在目的价值定位方面,我国国际民事程序法存在着"国家本位"秩序观倾向.秩序总是必要的,更具根本性的,但秩序的类型亦是可以多元的.在中外民商法律秩序形成过程中,我国的国际民事程序法除必须体现国家意志之外,理应涵纳更多的当事人自主意思以及国际本位理念的成分,这也是修订我国民事诉讼法、仲裁法等程序法律时所要考虑的一个基本层面.     

A Quasi-Contract Theory of Political Obligation

Law and Philosophy - Whether there is a general moral obligation to obey the law, often referred to as ‘political obligation’, is an enduring question in contemporary legal and...     

Animal Dignity and the Law: Potential,Problems and Possible Implications

Liverpool Law Review - This article aims to assess the suitability of the concept of ‘animal dignity’ as a normative principle for the legal approach towards animals. Through an...     

A Memorial for jeremy bentham: memory,fiction, and writing the law

At a moment when the European Union and globalisation are, in their different contexts, bringing systems of traditional law (like the Common Law), whose texts are presented as monuments to historical legal cultures, into confrontation with systems of written law which claim to be rational embodiments of universal principles of liberal justice, how might we remember Jeremy Bentham, the pioneer of the critique of the former in the name of the latter? This essay in ‘law-and-literature’ looks at the relation between memory, fiction and writing in both the Common Law and in the two last projects for which the radical legal positivist sought to be remembered: the Constitutional Code for the Use of All Nations and All Governments Professing Liberal Opinions (1830) and Auto-Icon: Or, Farther Uses of the Dead to the Living (published posthumously in 1842). By examining Bentham’s linguistic theory and practice, the article raises questions about the relations between the ‘law’ of writing and the writing of law.