Legal Regime and Contractual Flexibility: A Comparison of Business's Organizational Choices in France and the United States during the Era of Industrialization

We compare the law governing business organizational forms inFrance and the United States during the nineteenth century andfind that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the contractingenvironment in the U.S. was neither freer nor more flexiblethan in France. U.S. businesses had a more limited menu of organizationalchoices and also much less ability to adapt the basic formsto meet their needs. Moreover, American law did not evolve anymore readily in response to economic change than French law.In both nations, major changes in the rules governing organizationalforms required the passage of new statutes.     

合理期待原则下的美国股东权益救济制度及其启示

正视封闭公司股东所面临的不同于公众公司的现实，美国公司法律实践日益信赖股东合理期待，常常以小股东权益为中心来界定压制行为，创设和发展了以股东合理期待为基础的股东权益救济制度，并逐渐形成了较为成熟的合理期待认定标准，尽可能地为受到不公平待遇的股东提供广泛的救济，以有效地保护受侵害股东的权益。基于合理期待落空而对股东权益进行救济的美国公司法理念与法律实践值得我们借鉴以完善我国股东权益救济制度。     

From Hyderabad to Harvard: how US law schools make it worthwhile to clerk on India's Supreme Court

Since the 1990s, judges of the Supreme Court of India have hired law clerks to help them perform some of their routine tasks. However, while clerkships on the U.S. Supreme Court are considered very prestigious and are extensively written about, clerkships on India's Supreme Court are considered to be of significantly lower value by the local legal profession and teaching market in India. Instead, ironically, clerkships on the Supreme Court of India are often pursued by students interested in getting an advanced law degree (usually an LL.M.) at a U.S. law school. Relying on interviews conducted with law clerks and interns who have served on the Supreme Court of India, and using India as a case study, this paper argues that ambitious Indian law students are adopting strategies to “Americanize” themselves in order to culturally arbitrage U.S. law schools' misunderstandings of the global legal profession.     

The Intensionality behind Legal Concepts and Their Extensional Boundaries: Between Conventionalism and Interpretivism

This article constitutes an attempt to reexamine a crucial issue of legal theory from the perspective of philosophy of language and of social ontology: by analyzing a jurisprudential case recently decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, we explain how Searle's account on rules in The Construction of Social Reality constitutes an important starting point for the clarification of the old jurisprudential debate between conventionalism and interpretivism. In a nutshell, we show that Searle's framework, while strictly conventionalist, makes it possible to conceive of the distinction between the semantic content of rules (their intended purpose) and their extension, by drawing a parallel with the idea of “deep conventions” (and “essential rules”) as well as with the semantic conventions in natural language. The paper thus touches on the broader problem of the relations between legal concepts and nonlegal values (law and morality).     

Toward an integration of economic and sociological approaches?

This article answers the question whether sociology of law and law and economics can be unificd into one integrated science. First, it is argued that an integration process inside law and economics has taken place, integrating most schools and partial analyses into one mainstream law and economics. Second, it is argued that there are no natural barriers against an integration of sociology and economics. Purely economic theories cannot and do not exist. What is calledeconomic analysis of law is basically a mixture of, for instance, 70 percent economics, 10 percent sociology, 10 percent psychology, and 10 percent other sciences. In addition, there is no such a thing as a purely sociological concept; concepts are sociological only in the sense that they are invented by people who call themselves sociologists.Nevertheless one should not expect that such a richer social science will lead to fundamentally different predictions and policy recommendations than those derived from the current simplistic economic analysis of law. The aspects studied by sociologists but assumed away by legal economists to date have in most cases no influence on the determination of (optimal) legal rules or on the long-run effects of legal rules.     

Blind Insights? The Limits of a Reflexive Sociology of Law

Is there a danger that sociological approaches to law end up creating law in their own image? Can they set their own limits? Could they help further rather than hinder the process by which law becomes more technocratic? Continuing a debate with Roger Cotterrell, this paper offers an examination of Cotterrell's suggestion, in the last issue, that these dangers can be avoided provided that sociological interpretation of legal ideas recognizes an allegiance to law rather than to academic sociology. By contrast, I propose a reflexive strategy intended to invite sociology to examine the ways in which its discourses and practices are both similar to but also different from those of law.     

The Maastricht-Urteil: Sovereignty Now

Abstract: The sovereignty issue in European law, which was recently raised again before the highest national courts, poses a challenge to legal theory. The supremacy of EC law should not be regarded as imposing a strict hierarchy within a monistic legal system. A pluralistic and interactive analysis of the relations between the legal systems of the Member States and their common system of EC law suggests instead that the highest court within each system retains interpretative competence-competence. Although pluralist legal theory therefore supports the claim that sovereignty has not passed to the organs of the Union, the same analysis confirms that sovereignty has not remained with the individual Member States either: a more subtle understanding of the meaning of sovereignty and its locus is necessary.     

The Privatization of Public Legal Rights: How Manufacturers Construct the Meaning of Consumer Law

This article demonstrates how the content and meaning of California's consumer protection laws were shaped by automobile manufacturers, the very group these laws were designed to regulate. My analysis draws on and links two literatures that examine the relationship between law and organizations but often overlook one another: political science studies of how businesses influence public legal institutions, and neo-institutional sociology studies of how organizations shape law within their organizational field. By integrating these literatures, I develop an "institutional-political" theory that demonstrates how organizations' construction of law and compliance within an organizational field shapes the meaning of law among legislators and judges. This study examines case law and more than 35 years of California legislative history concerning its consumer warranty laws. Using institutional and political analysis, I show how auto manufacturers, who were initially subject to powerful consumer protection laws, weakened the impact of these laws by creating dispute resolution venues. The legislature and courts subsequently incorporated private dispute resolution venues into statutes and court decisions and made consumer rights and remedies largely contingent on consumers first using manufacturer-sponsored venues. Organizational venue creation resulted in public legal rights being redefined and controlled by private organizations.     

Legal Intermediaries: How Insurance Companies Construct the Meaning of Compliance with Antidiscrimination Laws

Existing empirical research suggests that human resource officials, managers, and in‐house counsel influence the meaning of antidiscrimination law by communicating an altered ideology of what civil rights laws mean that is colored with managerial values. This article explores how insurance companies play a critical and, as yet, unrecognized role in mediating the meaning of antidiscrimination law through Employment Practice Liability Insurance (EPLI). My analysis draws from, links, and contributes to two literatures that examine organizational behavior in different ways: new institutional organizational sociology studies of how organizations respond to legal regulation and sociolegal insurance scholars' research on how institutions govern through risk. Through participant observation at EPLI conferences, interviews, and content analysis of insurance loss prevention manuals, my study bridges these two literatures and highlights how the insurance field uses a risk‐based logic to construct the threat of employment law and influence the form of compliance from employers. Faced with uncertain legal risk concerning potential discrimination violations, insurance institutions elevate the risk and threat in the legal environment and offer EPLI and a series of risk‐management services that build discretion into legal rules and mediate the nature of civil rights compliance. My data suggest that insurance risk‐management services may sometimes be compatible with civil rights goals of improving equality, due process, and fair governance in workplace settings, but at other times may simply make discrimination claims against employers more defensible.     

法律社会学及其中国研究进路的初步思考——一般理论与本土问题的知识建构

法律并不仅仅是一套法条或规则系统,用以安排、测量和调整社会关系,而且它还是一种社会现象,而这种社会现象附带着法律以外的理想、权力和诸种诉求,法律构成了个人生活哲学与社会理念之间关系的折射镜。当下中国本土秩序问题的存在构成了法学知识增量的前提性条件;法律社会学并不止于对规则功效问题的对策式讨论,它还要求对构成了中国法律发展的结构性基础进行知识反思。     

资本约束制度的进化和机制设计——以中美公司法的比较为核心

我国学者常常将美国公司法上的资本制度称之为授权资本制,并将其与大陆法相对,作为物种多元的样本,同时也作为比较法研究的时候,进行理论折中的一端。本文从进化的角度揭示出,在其他国家历史上也存在着和我国、大陆国家类似的法定资本制度,但随着社会生活的发展和法律规制技术,乃至于法律理论和理念的变化,这些僵化而无效的制度被不断的扬弃,而代之以宽松的资本规制+趋严的诚信义务(fidu-ciaryduty)的方式。具体表现为:(1)从政府通过法律强行性规范直接限制,进化到股东、公司、董事和债权人之间的相互制约;(2)从注重公司资本的起点,进化到以破产为核心标准来进行规制;(3)从公司和股东之间的不当交易及其方式的事前限制,进化到对诚信义务的事后责任分配。     

中国的法律社会学研究

中国的法律社会学研究自1980年代复兴以来,学者们建立起了法律社会学的基本理论框架,并结合社会实践开展了一系列研究,取得了较为丰硕的成果。法律社会学与社会学法学存在称谓之争,但近期研究以法律社会学的提法为主流。法律社会学的基本理论包括法律社会学的定义、研究对象、理论特征、研究框架、研究的意义等,学者们就此进行了深入探讨,对法律社会学的方法论更是投入了较多的精力。应当有重点地加强新时期的法律社会学研究。     

对欧美“法律东方主义”的反思与超越

法律东方主义是欧美社会想象与误读中国法的结果,表现为欧美学者以西方法治标准来理解检验中国法。欧洲法律东方主义影响到美国,导致美国社会与学术界对中国法产生各种偏见与自负。1882年美国排华法案与民国时期美国驻沪法院"治外法权"的存在是美国法律东方主义的体现,是美国法制历史变迁中的阴影部分。美国学者络德睦对美国中国法研究中的传统思维定式进行了反思,指出美国法学学术界对中国法的认知存在很多偏见与自负。后殖民法学理论作为后现代法学理论的分支,依附与从属于美国的主流法学,美国学者反思法律东方主义是为了消除美国法律历史上的阴影,为主流法学的发展提供参鉴。中国法学面临的现实问题与美国有所不同,各自的司法背景也迥异,后殖民法学理论有其学术价值,但吸纳判例教义学体系的精髓才是学习美国法的优先选项。     

You have the right to understand: The deleterious effect of stress on suspects' ability to comprehend Miranda

Miranda v. Arizona (384 U.S. 436, 1966) required that suspects be explicitly warned of the right to avoid self-incrimination and the right to legal representation. This research was designed to examine whether stress, induced via an accusation of wrong-doing, undermined or enhanced suspects' ability to comprehend their Miranda rights. Participants were randomly assigned to either be accused (n = 15) or not accused (n = 15) of having cheated on an experimental task in a two-cell between-subjects experimental design. Results supported the hypothesis that stress undermines suspects' ability to comprehend their Miranda rights. Participants who were accused of cheating exhibited significantly lower levels of Miranda comprehension than participants who were not accused of cheating. The theoretical processes responsible for these effects and the implications of the findings for police interrogation are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Max Weber on the Labour Contract: Between Realism and Formal Legal Thought

Although Max Weber's review essay of the first part of Philipp Lotmar's The Labour Contract may appear peripheral to his overall contribution to legal sociology, it contains important insights on the relationship of law to economics, the utility of sociological empirical research for jurisprudence, the epistemological gap between 'legal dogmatics' and the sociology of law, and the fundamental distinction between state and non-state law in properly understanding the developmental logic of labour law.
In the review, far from appearing as a rigid partisan of positivistic legal formalism, Weber admits of a kind of 'legal pluralism' as a necessary path to the sociology of law, and allows some measure of realism, when celebrating Lotmar's analysis of the social facts of law as a precondition for proper juristic treatment of the labour contract. Nevertheless, Weber remained distrustful of legal realism which, for him, was founded on an epistemological confusion between 'is' and 'ought'.     

论法律形式与法律渊源的界分

法律形式与法律渊源的关系比较复杂,但是我国学者一般将之作为等同的概念使用。这种观点导致了某些学术上的混乱,也导致法律形式和法律渊源各自的作用没能够充分发挥。正确界定法律渊源和法律形式,是实现二者区分的逻辑起点。法律形式是法律文本的表现方式;法律渊源是裁判规范的集合体,法官从中发现裁决案件所需要的裁判依据和裁判理由。由此可以得出二者之区分:从实践来看,法律渊源之法是指司法之法,法律形式之法是指立法之法;从内容来看,法律渊源之法是具有一定开放性的规则体系,而法律形式则是具有一定封闭性的规则体系;从路径来看,法律渊源之法是在司法适用过程发现和寻找的,法律形式之法是立法中形成的。司法适用之法完全局限于制定法之时,二者会出现种属统一,但是其概念内涵依然有着重大区别。     

Comparative Sociology of Law: Legal Fields, Legal Scholarships, and Social Sciences in Europe and the United States

This article attempts to gain a better understanding of the sociology(ies) of law in a comparative perspective through a structural and comparative explanation of the American and the French legal fields. It is argued that comparative sociology of law will not be able to explain the difference among countries, scholars, movements, and schools of thought in short, it will not be able to compare—as long as it avoids the analysis of some social and cultural presuppositions related to the context in which these differences take place. It focuses mainly on two of these presuppositions. First, legal fields, with their history, their internal structure, and their power relations, and second the type of relation between the legal field and the state. The empirical examination provided in this article explicitly seeks to offer insights for the reconstruction of Bourdieu's structural theory of the legal field.     

A “good fit”: Client sorting among nonprofit,private, and pro bono immigration attorneys

Existing scholarship finds that having an attorney in immigration legal proceedings increases the chances of a favorable outcome. This work, however, often acknowledges that the representation effect is underexplained: selection may explain outcomes, and variation among attorneys is difficult to assess. Through 103 interviews with attorneys who practice immigration law in three organizational environments (nonprofit legal services, private firms, and corporate law firm pro bono programs) in two East Coast areas, this paper argues that attorneys' sorting of clients between different types of legal organizations helps explain the representation effect. Attorneys define what type of case is a “good fit” for their representation, selecting cases they think they can help increase the probability of a favorable outcome. However, what they define as a “good fit” varies by attorneys' practice environments, and centers not only on the facts or characteristics of a client and their case, but also attorneys' organizational constraints. By documenting the central role of practice environment variation and its organizational constraints on attorneys' case selection, this paper helps explain the representation effect and its implications for increasing vulnerable immigrants' access to legal representation in the United States.     

法律社会学的定位问题:Max Weber与Hans Kelsen的比较

德国社会学家韦伯(Max Weber,1864-1920)与奥地利法学家凯尔森(Hans Kelsen,1881-1973)对"法律社会学"(Rechtssoziologie,sociology of law)的定位存在异同。他们一个从社会学家的立场,一个从法学家的立场,探讨了"法律社会学"在19世纪末叶跟着社会学(Soziologie)一起诞生的时候,究竟应该如何对这新兴的学问加以定位的问题。他们两位都是法学家出身,同样受到当时哲学思潮新康德主义(Neukantianismus)的影响,主张划分"实然"(Sein)与"应然"(Sollen),也同样对促进德语世界法律社会学的诞生有积极贡献的"自由法学派"(Freirechtle-hre)与奥地利法律社会学家艾利希(Eugen Ehrlich,1862-1922)提出了批评意见,但是他们对于"法律社会学"这门新兴的学科,却还是有不完全相同的定位。     

法律原则在法律推理中的地位和作用——一个比较的研究

我国关于法律原则的讨论一般集中在立法过于笼统与立法所规定的法律基本原则这两个方面。这种意义上的法律原则与德沃金所说的法律原则存在重要区别。德沃金关于法律原则的讨论其目的是强调法律的确定性 ,而我们关于法律原则的讨论却在强化法律的模糊性。法律原则的讨论主要涉及法律推理过程中原则与规则之间的关系。基于法治的原因 ,法律推理必须坚持将法律规则作为法律推理的大前提 ;在法律规则含义不明确、模糊或者相互矛盾时 ,可以使用法律原则 ,但是 ,必须经过一定的法律原则的认定程序。