限制与扩张:我国证人资格制度之历史嬗变

除传统之“亲不为证”外,我国古代对证人资格殊少限制,只是到了唐代,才将证人自身之作证能力纳入到了证人适格的考察范围。近代以来,受认识深化和外来文化的影响,并基于政策性、可靠性、客观性和公正性等因素的考量,关于证人资格的规定变化很大,实现了从重在证人的适格性审查到证言的真实性审查、从单向容隐到同居相隐再到特权容隐、从道德义务到法律义务再到道德义务和法律权利的结合体等几个转变。     

中国古代法律文化图鉴之礼法结合

礼法结合,是指传统的伦理道德规范与法律规范完全融为一体,法律的评判标准与道德的评判标准完全一致。这是中国古代法律文化最基本的特点。这种法律文化不仅与西方迥异,与东方其他国家也有区别。     

分离命题与法律实证主义

法律与道德的分离命题是法律实证主义的一项重要主张,它包含了弱的和强的两种分离命题。哈特主张的是弱分离命题,它主张在法律的合法性标准的外在方面法律与价值的必然分离。弱分离命题需要社会事实命题的支持,它没有资格作为法律实证主义的基础命题。而在合法性标准的内在方面,法律与道德存在必然联系。内在必要联系命题可以为法律的规范性提供合理说明,并为消除自然法与法律实证主义的对立和融合两者提供了新的理论前景。     

两种法理学之争:如何可能与发展

对"法律是什么"的不同回答,形成了两种不同性质的法理学。哈特"法理学"的特点是"描述性"与"中立性",是关于法律的"二阶"理论,其无涉道德评价;德沃金"法理学"的特点是"评价性"与"证立性",是关于法律的"一阶"理论,其关涉道德评价。哈特"法理学"的最大问题是,从法概念中剥离道德,导致不能为法律合法性提供辩护;德沃金"法理学"的关键问题是,用道德对法律合法性进行审查,易于消解法律的独立性,丧失法律的权威性。故此,为维护法律的合法性与独立性并存与统一,可借鉴富勒的"法律内在道德"观念,尝试性地区分法律的外在道德与内在道德,将法律的合法性审查标准限缩在法律的内在道德之中,并借鉴康德的"可普遍化检验"原理,将通过普遍化检验所形成的可普遍化原则作为法律的内在道德的判断标准。     

形式与实质的融合——公司登记案件的审查标准

公司登记案件审查标准的确立,应综合考虑登记制度的功能、法理与登记机关的法定职权和职务能力,从而定位于登记机关依法履行审查职责意义上的合法性标准较为妥帖。要以形式审查标准为原则,实质审查标准为补充,形式审查标准应贯穿公司登记案件审查的始终,发挥司法审查的导向性作用,鼓励和倡导登记机关严格遵循审慎的形式审查标准。实质审查标准应在确实存在登记错误时发挥其矫正正义之功效,对相对人被侵犯的合法权益采用法律的恢复性判决的方式予以保护。     

论婚姻家庭领域道德调整与法律调整的关系──兼谈对婚外恋的道德调整和法律调整

婚姻家庭关系的伦理性是道德调整和法律调整的客观基础。社会道德和法律共同规范着婚姻家庭关系。道德调整和法律调整的手段和领域不同。道德调整和法律调整在婚姻家庭关系中某些领域界限明确,可分别调整;但在另一些领域难以明确界定自己的调整范围,道德和法律可从不同层次加以规范。对婚外恋行为,道德和法律可分层调整,以实现道德调整和法律调整的效力。     

检察机关司法审查职能研究

在我国宪政体制和司法框架下,检察机关作为国家的法律监督机关对刑事侦查活动的司法审查权具有不可否认的法理基础.然而,检察机关现行审查逮捕、审查羁押延长职能存在程序不全、控制不严等问题,需要在正确定位和更新理念的基础上,进一步完善检察机关司法审查职能和程序,适当调整和扩大审查的范围.     

中国法治与行政立法改革

法治可以分为广义的法治和狭义的法治。狭义法治的要素是 :立法必须遵循程序性规则 ;法律体系具有透明度 ;法律必须具有前瞻性 ,相对清楚、统一和稳定 ;执行法律公正 ;法必须为民众合理接受。广义的法治则融入了政治道德的因素 ,它可分为自由民主法治、国家社会主义法治、集体主义法治等几种类型。中国的法治属于社会主义法治的类型 ,并朝着狭义法治标准的方向前进。中国要实现法治有许多工作要做 ,其中改革行政立法就是重要方面之一 ,它包括限制对行政立法的授权 ;约束行政机关制定行政法规与规章的权力 ;制定统一的行政程序法 ;设立违宪或专门审查机构解决立法的不统一问题 ;扩大司法审查的范围等等。     

中国古典法律解释的形上智慧——说明立法的合法性

中国古代在法律和法律解释中,对法律合法性的阐述被置于对“天人”之关系的追问中,及“通古今之变”的追求中。中国古代追求通过法律解释和法律调整中人们的“身心之和”,通过两造的道德内省实现对两造的道德约束。“求实质公平”为中国古典法律解释的结果旨归。     

WTO规制下中国司法审查制度的再思索

司法审查制度在WTO体系中和我国的法律体系中是重要的组成部分,比对WTO在司法审查方面的具体要求,我国现有的司法审查制度在审查主体、审查范围、审查标准上是基本符合的,但仍有差距。缩小这些差异的必然性和合理性是我国司法审查制度的未来发展方向。要真正做到与WTO的接轨,必须从四方面做起:理顺行政权与司法权的关系,给予司法行政机关实质性的独立权;拓宽受案范围,为更多的行政行为提供司法审查的机会;扩大诉讼权的保护范围,让更多人享受法律救济;明确司法审查标准,保证司法审查的透明、客观和公正。     

Bhartṛhari and Maṇḍana on Avidyā

The concept of avidyā is one of the central categories in the Advaita of Śaṇkara and Maṇḍana. Shifting the focus from māyā, interpreted either as illusion or as the divine power, this concept brings ignorance to the forefront in describing duality and bondage. Although all Advaitins accept avidyā as a category, its scope and nature is interpreted in multiple ways. Key elements in Maṇḍana’s philosophy include the plurality of avidyā, individual selves as its substrate and the Brahman as its field (viṣaya), and the distinction in avidyā between non-apprehension and misapprehension. A closer investigation shows that Maṇḍana is directly influenced by Bhartṛhari’s linguistic non-dualism in developing the concept of avidyā. This study also compares other key constituents such as vivartta and pariṇāma that are relevant to the analysis of avidyā. As the concept of counter-image (pratibimba) emerges as a distinct stream of Advaita subsequent to Maṇḍana, this study also compares the application of pratibimba in the writings of Bhartṛhari and Maṇḍana.     

Immigration,intermarriage and the changing face of Europe in the post war period

In this article we compare the propensity to intermarry of various migrant groups and their children who settled in Germany, France, England, Belgium and the Netherlands in the post-war period, using a wide range of available statistical data. We try to explain different intermarriage patterns within the framework of Alba and Nee's assimilation theory and pay special attention to the role of religion, colour and colonial background. We therefore compare colonial with non colonial migrants and within these categories between groups with ‘European’ (Christian) and non-European (Islam, Hinduism) religions. First of all, religion appears to be an important variable. Migrants whose faith has no tradition in Western Europe intermarry at a much lower rate than those whose religious backgrounds correspond with those that are common in the country of settlement. The rate of ethnic endogamous marriages in Western Europe are highest in Hindu and Muslim communities, often regardless if they came as guest workers or colonial migrants. Whereas differences in religion diminish the propensity to intermarry, colour or ‘racial’ differences on the other hand seem to be less important. This is largely explained by the pre-migration socialisation. Furthermore, the paper argues that the attention to institutions, as rightly advocated by Richard Alba and Victor Nee, needs a more refined and layered elaboration. Institutions, often as barriers to intermarriage, do not only emanate from the receiving society, but also—be it less formalized—within migrant communities. Especially religions and family systems, but also organized nationalist feelings, can have a profound influence on how migrants think about endogamy. Finally, strong pressures to assimilate, often through institutionalized forms of discrimination and stigmatization, not only produce isolation and frustrate assimilation (with resulting low intermarriage rates), but can also stimulate assimilation by 'passing' mechanisms. These factors, together with a more comparative perspective, are not completely ignored in the new assimilation theory, but—as this study of Western European intermarriage patterns stresses—deserve to be included more systematically in historical and social scientist analyses.     

Unraveling the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Kāvyaprakāśa</Emphasis>: Jayadeva Pīyūṣavarṣa’s idiosyncratic sequence of topics in the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Candrāloka</Emphasis>

In his twelfth century alaṃkāraśāstra, the Candrāloka, Jayadeva Pīyūṣavarṣa reverses the sequence of topics found in Mammaṭa’s Kāvyapr-akāśa, an earlier and immensely popular work. With such a structural revisionism, Jayadeva asserts the autonomy of his own work and puts forth an ambitious critique of earlier approaches to literary analysis. Jayadeva investigates the technical and aesthetic components of poetry in the first part of the Candrāloka, prior to his formal semantic investigations in the latter half of the text, thus suggesting that aesthetic evaluations of poetry beneficially inform scientific investigations of language. Jayadeva’s organization of his chapters on the semantic operations, moreover, intimates that the study of suggestive and metaphoric functions of language clarifies our understanding of denotation, which is conventionally understood to be the primary and direct path of verbal designation.     

Turning a Madhyamaka Trick: Reply to Huntington

Huntington (2007); argues that recent commentators (Robinson, 1957; Hayes, 1994; Tillemans, 1999; Garfield and Priest, 2002) err in attributing to Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti a commitment to rationality and to the use of argument, and that these commentators do violence to the Madhyamaka project by using rational reconstruction in their interpretation of Nāgārjuna’s and Candrakīrti’s texts. Huntington argues instead that mādhyamikas reject reasoning, distrust logic and do not offer arguments. He also argues that interpreters ought to recuse themselves from argument in order to be faithful to these texts. I demonstrate that he is wrong in all respects: Nāgārjuna and Candrakīrti deploy arguments, take themselves to do so, and even if they did not, we would be wise to do so in commenting on their texts.     

Best practices for structuring a family court parenting plan evaluation under the 2022 AFCC Guidelines

Evaluation appointment orders provide enforceable scaffolding for conduct of family court parenting plan evaluations, and use of the evaluator's reports, feedback, file, and testimony. Unlike a contract, a stipulated or adjudicated appointment order is directly enforceable by the family court. It unambiguously positions the evaluator as the family court's appointee – answerable directly to the court and, in some jurisdictions, protected by quasi-judicial immunity from damages claims. A well-crafted appointment order governs the roles and expectations of the court, the evaluator, the parties, the lawyers, and the collateral witnesses. An appointment order mandates the legal duties, rights, powers, and responsibilities of the professionals, the parties, and the collateral witnesses. At minimum, an appointment order articulates the legal basis for the appointment, the purpose and scope of the evaluation, compensation of evaluator, and the duty of the parties to participate in the process. A written evaluation protocol or procedures statement discloses in advance the methods of investigation and assessment that the evaluator intends to use. Together, the appointment order and written protocol help the evaluator, lawyers, parents, and judge manage the complexity of the evaluation process.     

Illumination,Imagination, Creativity: Rājaśekhara,Kuntaka, and Jagannātha on <Emphasis Type="Italic">Pratibhā</Emphasis>

Sanskrit poeticians make the visionary faculty of pratibhā a necessary part of the professional poet’s make-up. The term has a pre-history in Bhartṛhari’s linguistic metaphysics, where it is used to explain the unitary perception of meaning. This essay examines the relation between pratibhā and possible theories of the imagination, with a focus on three unusual theoreticians—Rājaśekhara, Kuntaka, and Jagannātha Paṇḍita. Rājaśekhara offers an analysis of pratibhā that is heavily interactive, requiring the discerning presence of the bhāvaka listener or critic; he also positions pratibhā in relation to Bildung (vyutpatti) and practice. For Kuntaka, pratibhā, never an ex nihilo creation by a poet, serves as the basis for the peculiar forms of intensified insight and experience that constitute poetry; these may also involve the creative scrambling and re-articulation of the object in terms of its systemic composition. At times, Kuntaka’s pratibhā comes close to a strong notion of imaginative process. But the full-fledged thematization of the imagination, and of pratibhā as its support and mechanism, is best seen in the seventeenth-century debates preserved for us by Jagannātha. A link is suggested between the discourse of poetic imagination in Jagannātha and similar themes that turn up in Indo-Persian poets such as Bedil.     

Preventing Homelessness for System‐Involved Youth

Too many youth and young adults find themselves on the streets, couch‐surfing with friends, in emergency shelters or worse, after exiting the child welfare and juvenile justice systems. In some circumstances, youth have had court hearings until their exit from the legal system, but those hearings have not focused on long‐range plans of youth and emergencies youth may encounter. In other circumstances, there has been little or no planning prior to discharge, especially for young people who leave the juvenile justice system. Courts can and should prevent, alleviate or end youth homelessness for youth who appear before them through strategies that are enumerated in the recently‐passed NCJFCJ resolution. This article expounds on three of these strategies – coordinating transition and re‐entry plans, insisting on effective legal representation of youth, and utilizing sound judicial leadership. It also describes the concurrent efforts of the Coalition for Juvenile Justice and the American Bar Association's Homeless Youth Legal Network to remove legal barriers and improve outcomes for youth and young adults experiencing homelessness.     

The Supreme Array Scripture: A New Interpretation of the Title “Gaṇḍavyūha-sūtra”

This article argues for a new interpretation of the Sanskrit compound gaṇḍa-vyūha as it is used in the common title of the Mahāyāna text the Gaṇḍavyūha-Sūtra.The author begins by providing a brief history of the sūtra’s appellations in Chinese and Tibetan sources. Next, the meanings of gaṇḍa (the problematic member of the compound) are explored. The author proposes that contemporary scholars have overlooked a meaning of gaṇḍa occurring in some compounds, wherein gaṇḍa can mean simply “great,” “big” or “massive.” This general sense is particularly common in the compound gaṇda-śaila (a “massive rock” or “boulder”) and is found in such texts as the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, the Harivaṃśa and the Harṣacarita. Following the discussion of Gaṇḍa, the author examines the term vyūha (“array”) as it is used in the Gaṇḍavyūha-sūtra. The article concludes with the suggestion that a more appropriate translation of the Gaṇḍavyūha-sūtra would be “The Supreme array Scripture.”     

The Mūlāvidyā Controversy Among Advaita Vedāntins: was Śaṅkara Himself Responsible?

The concept of avidyā or ignorance is central to the Advaita Vedāntic position of Śȧnkara. The post-Śaṅkara Advaitins wrote sub-commentaries on the original texts of Śaṅkara with the intention of strengthening his views. Over the passage of time the views of these sub-commentators of Śaṅkara came to be regarded as representing the doctrine of Advaita particularly with regard to the concept of avidyā. Swami Satchidanandendra Saraswati, a scholar-monk of Holenarsipur, challenged the accepted tradition through the publication of his work Mūlāvidyānirāsaḥ, particularly with regard to the avidyādoctrine. It was his contention that the post-Śaṅkara commentators brought their own innovations particularly on the nature of avidyā. This was the idea of mūlāvidyā or ‘root ignorance’, a positive entity which is the material cause of the phenomenal world. Saraswati argues that such an idea of mūlāvidyā is not to be found in the bhāṣyas (commentaries) of Śaṅkara and is foisted upon Śaṅkara. This paper attempts to show that although Śaṅkara may not have explicitly favoured such a view of mūlāvidyā, his lack of clarity on the nature of avidyā left enough scope for the post-Śaṅkara commentators to take such a position on avidyā.     

Evaluation of six presumptive tests for blood, their specificity, sensitivity, and effect on high molecular-weight DNA

Luminol, leuchomalachite green, phenolphthalein, Hemastix, Hemident, and Bluestar are all used as presumptive tests for blood. In this study, the tests were subjected to dilute blood (from 1:10,000 to 1:10,000,000), many common household substance, and chemicals. Samples were tested for DNA to determine whether the presumptive tests damaged or destroyed DNA. The DNA loci tested were D2S1338 and D19S433. Leuchomalachite green had a sensitivity of 1:10,000, while the remaining tests were able to detect blood to a dilution of 1:100,000. Substances tested include saliva, semen, potato, tomato, tomato sauce, tomato sauce with meat, red onion, red kidney bean, horseradish, 0.1 M ascorbic acid, 5% bleach, 10% cupric sulfate, 10% ferric sulfate, and 10% nickel chloride. Of all the substances tested, not one of the household items reacted with every test; however, the chemicals did. DNA was recovered and amplified from luminol, phenolphthalein, Hemastix, and Bluestar, but not from leuchomalachite green or Hemident.