美国刑事诉讼中基于种族歧视的追诉

在美国的刑事诉讼中,种族歧视很早就存在并且受到了司法的关注。美国司法以此类诉讼为基础,建立了基于种族的选择性起诉理论。基于种族歧视的选择性起诉在20世纪末伴随着民权运动和"肯定性行动",曾经一度出现了抗辩的高潮,但"9.11事件"后重新陷入低谷。     

法国法中犯罪行为引起侵权损害赔偿之司法救济

当犯罪行为与民事侵权行为竞合时,法国法规定的刑事受害人损害赔偿救济制度,赋予受害人选择刑事途径提起刑事附带民事诉讼或单独提起民事诉讼的权利。这种制度模式允许受害人在刑事诉讼过程中提出民事赔偿的请求,由刑事审判组织在解决被告人刑事责任的同时,解决因被告人的犯罪行为对受害人所造成的损害赔偿问题。它将民事诉讼放在刑事诉讼中附带提出,为诉讼提供了便利,提高了诉讼效率,节约了司法资源。此外,法国还允许受害人通过民事索赔之诉发动公诉,以充分保护被损害的当事人的利益。     

论刑事诉讼中被害人的权利救济

在我国当前的刑事附带民事诉讼中,被害人的权利往往不能得到有效救济。列举被害人权利救济时出现的三个问题:侵财型犯罪的被害人的权利难得救济、被害人无法在刑事附带民事诉讼中提起精神损害赔偿,司法实践中的"先刑后民"原则存在的问题,并提出一些立法建议及完善措施。     

刑事附带民事公益诉讼之否定

民事公益诉讼是近年来民事诉讼发展的新生有益制度,在公共利益受损但缺少救济机会时可以发挥重要作用。在司法实践中,由于犯罪必然侵犯公共利益的特性,可否提起刑事附带民事公益诉讼成为了新生问题。民事公益诉讼与刑事诉讼在针对抽象公共利益救济上的制度设计具有重叠、竞合关系,且人民检察院针对具体、特定的国家、集体财产利益受侵害而提起的附带民事诉讼已经能够救济具体公共利益受到的损害,故而实无必要设置刑事附带民事公益诉讼,以免导致制度剩余和不相容的问题出现。     

多层次民事司法救济体系探索

民事纠纷解决分为诉讼与诉外或司法与非司法两大途径。所谓"司法最终救济原则"是指司法对于事项都保留"最终"救济权,但司法救济的具体方式既包括通过起诉启动的"司法初审救济",也包括经由诉外途径解决后再通过不同法定渠道进入司法程序的"司法事后救济"。"可诉性"要件包括积极要件与消极要件,前者是根据诉讼客体自身特征确定的获得任何方式的民事司法救济均须满足的前提条件;消极要件是根据种种政策性考量而对司法初审管辖权即起诉权设置的一些限制性条件。诉外途径的事后司法救济应与具体纠纷类型及其诉外途径的自愿性与强制性等不同特征相匹配,确定不同层次的司法审查标准和程序,与初审司法救济一并构成多类型、多层次的民事司法救济体系,并与基层亲民性司法与中高级法院专业性司法的司法职能分层目标相吻合。     

新疆智障“包身工”民事救济的几点思考

一、民事救济的司法途径选择 是通过刑事附带民事诉讼还是通过单独提起民事诉讼更快捷、更有利于智障“包身工”的权利保护？笔者认为还是刑事附带民事诉讼更有利。首先，刑事附带民事诉讼更高司法效率。根据刑诉法规定，被害人由于被告人的犯罪行为而遭受物质损失的，在刑事诉讼过程中，有权提起附带民事诉讼，即该附带民事诉讼可以在刑事诉讼过程中一并处理。     

论构建检察机关提起民事公诉制度的适当性——以“民事督促起诉”为视角

实践中,民事违法行为损害国家利益、公共利益的现象客观存在,而此类案件由于诉讼主体的缺位或者诉讼主体怠于起诉使得受损的利益难以救济。目前,一些地方检察机关民事督促起诉的做法,是灵活运用法律进行的一种工作机制上的创新,虽然也取得了良好的法律效果和社会效果,但是由于其自身的局限性注定它只能作为一种治标之策。因此,在治标的同时更应该重视治本,即建立检察机关作为公共利益的代表提起民事公诉制度。     

诉讼要件与我国民事起诉条件研究

"衙门口朝南开,有理没钱莫进来",流传于民间的这句俗语反映了人们对于司法状况的不满,尤其反映了存在于我国现行民事诉讼中"起诉难"的问题。造成这一现状的原因是多种的,首当其冲的是民事诉讼法对于当事人提起诉讼设置了严格的条件和审查制度。法院在这个过程中可以按自己的意愿接受或者拒绝当事人保护权利的请求。这一状况与民事诉讼救济权利的制度目的有根本冲突,这就需要从理论上探讨我国现行起诉     

人权视野下民事起诉制度

司法实践中“起诉难”问题的立法根源即在于我国《民事诉讼法》第108条规定“高阶化”的起诉条件,裁判请求权作为公民程序性人权要求我国必须降低起诉条件以保障公民获得司法救济的权利从而保障其合法权益,因而从人权的视角出发变革我国的民事起诉制度、转变立法和司法观念才能真正改变目前“起诉难”的现状。     

对"违反法律规定,管辖错误"作为再审理由的思考

本文认为新修订的<中华人民共和国民事诉讼法>将"违反法律规定,管辖错误"作为提起再审的理由之一,值得商榷,因为其对民事诉讼的既判力产生了过度的破坏,不利于法院生效裁判的稳定性与权威性;民事诉讼法对管辖错误已经规定了一些相应的救济措施,并能起到有效的救济,若再将再审作为其救济的途径,势必是对司法资源的一种浪费,有违诉讼效益的原则.所以文中从既判力原则.诉讼效益、管辖错误等三个方面提出了反对的理由.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.”     

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.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Anyathākhyāti</Emphasis>: A Critique by Appaya Dīkṣita in the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Parimala</Emphasis>

In this paper, the problem of illusory perception, as approached by the Nyāya and Advaita Vedānta schools of philosophy, is discussed from the standpoint of the Parimala. This seminal work belonging to the Bhāmatī tradition of Advaita Vedānta was composed in the sixteenth century by the polymath Appaya Dīk?ita. In the context of discussing various theories of illusion, Dīk?ita dwells upon the Nyāya theory of anyathākhyāti, and its connection with jñānalak?a?apratyāsatti as a causal factor for perception, and closely examines if such an extraordinary (alaukika) perception is tenable to explain illusory perception. He then proceeds to point out the deficiencies of this model and thereby brings to the fore the anirvacanīyakhyāti of Advaitins as the only theory which stands scrutiny.     

Monks Who Have Sex: Pārājika Penance in Indian Buddhist Monasticisms

In the study of Buddhism it is commonly accepted that a monk or nun who commits a pārājika offence is permanently and irrevocably expelled from the Buddhist monastic order. This view is based primarily on readings of the Pāli Vinaya. With the exception of the Pāli Vinaya, however, all other extant Buddhist monastic law codes (Dharmaguptaka, Mahāsāṅghika, Mahīśāsaka, Sarvāstivāda and Mūlasarvāstivāda) contain detailed provisions for monks and nuns who commit pārājikas but nevertheless wish to remain within the saṅgha. These monastics are not expelled. Rather, they are granted a special status known as the śikṣādattaka. In this paper I explore the rules. concerning pārājika penance and the śikṣādattaka with specific regard to monastic celibacy. Given that five out of six extant law codes recognise this remarkable accommodation to the rule of celibacy, I argue that we must look to Vinayas other than the Pāli Vinaya if we are to arrive at a nuanced and representative view of Indian Buddhist monasticism.

Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet. Augustine of Hippo (354–430 C.E.)