Reducing Domestic Violence and Improving Outcomes for Children: Funding Civil Legal Aid to Maximize Impact

Domestic violence survivors and children in foster care often experience significant unmet civil legal needs. Legal aid services, when adequately funded, can help close the justice gap for these two populations while improving safety, stability, and court efficiencies. However, despite ample literature demonstrating how legal aid can improve outcomes, almost half of those seeking legal aid services are turned away due to lack of resources. This article reviews the research and data about how legal aid can improve outcomes for people in the domestic violence and child welfare contexts. It also discusses how several state‐administered federal funding opportunities—including the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) Victim Assistance Formula Grant Program, Title IV‐D child support funds, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) basic block grants—can fund the needed civil legal help.     

论胎盘的法律属性及其规制

人体胎盘是出生婴儿的相伴物,具有一定的价值性,时下的"人胎宴"引发了人们对胎盘的激烈争论,胎盘的法律属性在理论上尚有模糊,从民法理论及社会伦理角度对胎盘的法律属性、归属及其规制作一探讨.     

Legal Aid,Social Workers,and the Redefinition of the Legal Profession in Chile, 1925–1960

This article examines the history of the Chilean Legal Aid Service (Servicio de Asistencia Judicial) from the 1920s until the 1960s. It argues that with the emergence of the “social question”—the concern for improving the lower classes' working and living conditions to promote the nation's modernization and prevent political radicalization—the Chilean legal profession committed to legal aid reform to escape a professional identity crisis. Legal aid allowed lawyers to claim they had a new “social function” advocating on behalf of the poor. However, within legal aid offices, lawyers interacted with female social workers who acted as gatekeepers, mediators, and translators between the lawyers and the poor. This gendered professional complementarity in legal aid offices helped lawyers to put limits on their new “social function”: it allowed them to maintain legal aid as a part‐time activity that did not challenge the structure of the legal system as a whole.     

Lawyers,CABx and the Community Legal Service: A new dawn for social welfare law provision?

This article explores the prognosis for social welfare law provision in the light of the government's plans for the Community Legal Service. It considers whether the involvement of both the advice sector and the traditional legal profession can provide the basis for stable and comprehensive provision of social welfare law. I conducted in-depth interviews with CAB workers and local solicitors in the large conurbation served by two CABx who participated in the non-solicitor franchise pilot in 1997. The research focused on the relationships between the legal service providers and the impact of the franchise operation on the CAB. Although harmonious relationships were found to be largely intact at a local level, the franchise raised considerable tension within the CABx that must serve as a cautionary note to any optimism about 'establishing the Community Legal Service'.     

Family Relationship Centres: partnerships with Legal Assistance Services

In June 2009, the Commonwealth Attorney General in Australia announced a Family Relationship Centres/ Legal Assistance Partnerships Program, (the “Better Partnerships” program). Its aim was to assist separated or separating families, “by providing access to early and targeted legal information and advice when attending Family Relationship Centres” (McClelland, 2009). After contextualizing this significant shift in policy and practice, the present paper reports on largely positive key results of an evaluation of the program by the Australian Institute of Family Studies. The paper concludes with reflections on future challenges and possibilities regarding ongoing collaboration between Australia's legal and family relationship sectors.     

Intraprofessional Competition and Earnings Inequalities Across a Professional Chasm: The Case of the Legal Profession in Québec,Canada

Intraprofessional rivalry has a long history. This article examines earnings disparities as a dimension of intraprofessional competition among avocats and notaires in the civil law system of Québec, Canada. Drawing on two large‐scale surveys and in‐depth interviews with legal professionals, I examine three competing perspectives of earnings inequalities: human capital, social‐symbolic capital, and organizational‐structural explanations. Through this analysis I seek to examine whether similar causal processes shape earnings across the two spheres of legal practice in Québec. The findings of this study clearly demonstrate that these two professional groups are equipped with differential stocks of capital, and conversion rates differ drastically. Avocats receive greater exchange on their investments in human and social‐symbolic capitals. These disparities are most pronounced in sectors of the profession where jurisdictional frictions abound: among notaires and avocats working as solo practitioners and in small firms within competitive urban contexts. The article concludes with a discussion of theoretical extensions and future directions for the study of legal professionals in civil law systems and blended jurisdictions.     

Abortion laws in African Commonwealth countries

This paper provides an overview of the range of current (1981) abortion laws in the African Commonwealth countries, traces the origins of the laws to their colonial predecessors, and discusses legal reform that would positively provide for legal termination of pregnancy. The authors claim that the range of these laws demonstrates an evolution that leads from customary/common law (Lesotho and Swaziland) to basic law (Botswana, The Gambia, Malawi, Mauritius, Nigeria's Northern States and Seychelles) to developed law (Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria's Southern States, Sierra Leone, and Uganda), and, finally, to advanced law (Zambia and Zimbabwe). The authors call for treating abortion as an issue of health and welfare as opposed to one of crime and punishment. Since most of the basic law de jure is treated and administered as developed law de facto, the authors suggest decriminalizing abortion and propose ways in which to reform the law: clarifying existing law; liberalizing existing law to allow abortion based upon certain indications; limiting/removing women's criminal liability for seeking an abortion; allowing hindsight contraception; protecting providers treating women in good faith; publishing recommended fees for services to protect poor women; protecting providers who treat women with incomplete abortion; and punishing providers who fail to provide care to women in need, with the exception of those seeking protection under a conscience clause. The authors also suggest clarifying the means by which health services involving pregnancy termination may be delivered, including: clarification of the qualifications of practitioners who may treat women; specification of the facilities that may treat women, perhaps broken down by gestational duration of the pregnancy; specifying gestational limits during which the procedure can be performed; clarifying approval procedures and consents; and allowing for conscientious objections to performing the procedure.     

Tensions in the Regulation of Abortion in Britain

This article discusses policy and practice in abortion provision, paying particular attention to the provision of counselling before abortion. It discusses the way the Abortion Act 1967 constructs the woman seeking abortion, the reasons for the development of a policy about abortion counselling in the 1970s, and that policy's relationship to the assumptions about women underlying the statute. The ways in which policy has developed since 1977 are considered, and how policy and practice have come to view women seeking abortion in a way that contrasts with the construction of them that emerges from the law. Thus, the article argues, given that the 1967 Act and other rules that regulate abortion provision seem to rest on contradictory assumptions, the law should be reformed in line with policy and practice.     

Third Way Regulation? Community Legal Service Partnerships

This article examines recent changes in the civil legal aid scheme in England and Wales (now called the Community Legal Service) and the creation of Community Legal Service Partnerships in particular. The article explores three main interests: it illustrates how third way thinking has been applied to the reform of the legal aid scheme under the Access to Justice Act 1999; it explores how partnership fits within theories of public regulation; and it illustrates how professionalism is being re-shaped by a combination of new public management, contractualism and partnership. It points to important limitations in new public law theories of extended accountability and democratised governance as manifested in partnerships.     

中国法治进程中的法律资源分享问题

法律资源分享状况体现着社会成员在推行法治过程中的生存状态。我国法律资源的配置与分享存在着失衡现象。政治权力、物质财富以及其他社会势力以不同的方式并在不同程度上影响和趋导着法律资源的配置。由此不仅放大了社会分化的负面效应,对法治的核心价值也有一定的损伤。为此,我国推行法治的重心应从创造法律资源转向公平、合理地配置法律资源,并通过调整相关的权力关系,以及为部分弱势社会成员运用法律资源提供更多的便利等措施,完善我国法律资源配置与分享机制。     

法律援助:中国刑事诉讼制度发展的瓶颈

我国的刑事法律援助在实践中华而不实,已引起社会的广泛关注乃至严厉的批评。国务院近期出台了《法律援助条例》,试图提高法律援助的质量,但经过分析发现,其制度夙愿也许并不能转化为现实。笔者以我国当代刑事诉讼制度对律师的依赖、法律援助对诉讼制度的影响为切入点,通过揭示刑事法律援助在整个司法改革中的重要地位,进而探讨完善法律援助的思路。同时还说明,如果整个刑事辩护执业环境不改变,即使法律援助本身完善到极致,保护被告人与被害人诉讼权利的目的也无法实现。     

What Is Legal Philosophy?

Abstract.  This paper argues that legal philosophy is a social practice undertaken by participants whose views have primacy over non-participants. This social practice is dynamic, constructive and based on understanding and explanation, in order to meet normative expectations. Legal Philosophy should include Legal Ontology, Legal Epistemology and a Theory of Justice. It is usually claimed that legal philosophy is a branch of a genus called philosophy, but there is no one single definition of it. In this paper it is argued that as a starting point there is a need to choose between three basic traditions in philosophy.     

Shaping the Structure of Legal Opportunities: Environmental NGOs Bringing International Environmental Procedural Rights Back Home

Research on legal opportunity structures has focused on how existing law, standing rules, and the costs of litigation shape the likelihood that social movement groups will mobilize the law. Yet there has been relatively little research on how and why legal opportunity structures change over time. This article focuses on a case study of the mobilization of procedural environmental rights contained within the Aarhus Convention. It addresses the following empirical puzzle: how did rights that were designed to help Eastern Europeans achieve environmental democracy eventually contribute to a reshaping of the structure of legal opportunities in Britain? Through a two‐step historical process‐tracing analysis that relies on a social constructivist theoretical approach, this research shows that environmental groups mobilized Aarhus rights in a number of ways and across different judicial venues, resulting in an evolution over time of the meaning of access to justice so that it included being “not prohibitively expensive.” This research builds on previous work to show that civil society agents are not passive agents situated within legal opportunity structures but instead are strategic actors who can develop and shape access to justice through policy entrepreneurialism and litigation.     

Legal aid reform: its impact on family law

This paper seeks to give an overview of the Legal Aid reform leading to the enactment of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (“LASPO”). It provides a context for the reforms heralded by consultation in 2010, and discusses the interplay with the simultaneous Family Justice Review. The paper goes on to look at the structural and constitutional changes brought about by the LASPO Act 2012, the impact on the Courts, and the removal of many cases from the 'scope' of public funding leading to the increase in the numbers of Litigants in Person. The paper discusses the ‘exceptional’ cases, the cases in which children are joined as parties, and mediation. The article looks briefly at the impact on the legal profession brought about by the legal aid reforms together with the reduction in fees under the Family Advocacy Scheme (also introduced in 2011).     

作为社会共同体建构技术的法律修辞

法律不是一种纯粹客观的物质性力量,其对社会治理的参与,需要借助于社会共同体所分享的共识发挥作用。就此而言,法律可被理解为一种想象的力量。法律作为社会共同体的想象而获得力量,同时也通过生产想象而作用于社会共同体的建构,在实践中表现出建构社会共同体的技术。法律修辞通过将话语组织起来的方式,在社会中生产关于法律的想象共识,从而成为一种社会共同体的建构技术。法律修辞既能通过叙事来指引关于共同生活经验的想象,以历史和现实中所分享的共同经验形成认同,从而建构社会共同体;又能通过论证来指引关于共同价值观念的想象,使彼此激烈冲突的不同价值观借助修辞的软化而达成某种程度的共识,并通过关于价值判断的认同建构社会共同体。法律修辞的这些特点,使之在形成共识时所达成的更多是相对共识而非绝对共识,表现出模糊的特征,从而达成不完全理论化合意来回应现代社会中价值判断的多元分歧,更有利于社会共同体的建构。     

Legal abortion: the impending obsolescence of the trimester framework

Women who wish to terminate a pregnancy, and physicians willing to perform abortions, are subject to increasing harassment from groups which challenge the constitutional abortion right upheld by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade. Their vulnerability, in fact, parallels the vulnerability of the abortion right. This Article analyzes the inherent weakness and impending obsolescence of the trimester framework established in Roe. Present medical evidence of maternal health risks and fetal viability demonstrates that the trimester framework is inconsistent with current medical knowledge, and will likely be rendered obsolete by developments in medical technology. The Article suggests that adoption of an alternative constitutional basis for legal abortion is necessary to preserve the abortion right, and explores the utility of two arguments grounded in the equal protection doctrine. Finally, it discusses means of preserving legal abortion within the confines of the trimester framework established in Roe v. Wade.     

Legal Constraints on the Use of Race in Biomedical Research: Toward a Social Justice Framework

This article addresses three questions concerning the legal regulation of the use of race as a category in biomedical research: how does the law currently encourage the use of race in biomedical research?; how might the existing legal framework constrain its use?; and what should be the law's approach to race-based biomedical research? It proposes a social justice approach that aims to promote racial equality by discouraging the use of "race" as a biological category while encouraging its use as a socio-political category to understand and investigate ways to eliminate disparities in health status, access to health care, and medical treatment.     

论法律传统的功能

法律传统并不意味着是过去的东西,而是同人们的现实法律生活须臾不可分离,发挥着较显著的功能。这些功能具体可包括以下方面:提供法律文明不断进步的基础、预示法律文明发展的基本方向、进行社会整合与社会控制、为法制创新提供借鉴、指引与评价人们的法律行为以及满足人们的精神需求等。了解法律传统的这些功能,对于我们明确实现法律传统的现代性创新与发展是我国社会主义法治建设基本路向的认识具有十分积极的意义。     

试论当代中国的“部门法哲学”概念

通过语义辨析来尝试澄清部门法哲学概念的混乱状况,可以建议使用法律科学与法律哲学这对界定比较清晰的范畴来讨论问题。法律科学是指探究法律现象的普遍规律和普遍解释的思想活动,作为法律科学的下位概念,可以区分一般法律科学和特殊(领域的)法律科学;法律哲学是指以法律思想本身为对象的反思和批判活动,它们都探究法律是什么这个根本性问题。部门法哲学就是指以特殊领域的法律思想为对象的反思和批判活动。造成部门法哲学概念混乱基于两个虚假前提,即混淆知识成果和思想活动以及学科分立天然正当。     

Neil MacCormick's Second Thoughts on Legal Reasoning and Legal Theory. A Defence of the Original View

This paper offers a diachronic reconstruction of MacCormick's theory of law and legal argumentation: In particular, two related points will be highlighted in which the difference between the perspective upheld in Legal Reasoning and Legal Theory and the later writings is particularly marked. The first point concerns MacCormick's gradual break with legal positivism, and more specifically the thesis that the implicit pretension to justice of law proves legal positivism false in all its different versions. The second point concerns MacCormick's acceptance of the one‐right‐answer thesis and the consequent thinning of the differences between MacCormick's theory of legal reasoning and that of Ronald Dworkin and of Robert Alexy. The intent, however, is not only to describe this change in MacCormick's thought, but also to attempt a defence of the original view that we find in Legal Reasoning and Legal Theory.