The Determinants of Capital Structure: Evidence from Chinese Listed Companies

This paper attempts to investigate the determinants of the capital structure of a sample of 972 listed companies on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and Shenzhen Stock Exchange in China in 2003. Various theories, namely, the trade-off, pecking order and agency theories, are deployed to explain and predict the signs and significance of each factor identified by Ragan and Zingales (1995) and Booth et al. (2001). Furthermore, we include institutional shareholdings, including state agency shareholdings, state-owned shareholdings and privately owned shareholdings, as corporate governance variables to examine the effects of corporate structure on the debt financing behaviours. As well documented, we find that profitability is negatively related to capital structure at a highly significant level. The size and risk of the firms are positively related to the debt ratio – but only in term of market value measures of capital structure. The years of the companies being listed on stock markets are positively related to capital structure, indicating the access of the firms to debt finance is more easily judged by book value. Tax is not a factor in influencing debt ratio. Ownership structure has a negative effect on the capital structure. The firms with higher institutional shareholdings tend to avoid using debt financing, a behaviour that can be explained by entrenchment effects. A further classification of the institutional shareholders reveals that, among the three groups of institutional shareholding, the state institutions, including state agency and state-owned institutions, were more averse to debt financing, particularly for state-owned institutions. There is no strong evidence indicating debt-averse behaviour by domestic institutional shareholders.     

ON CASES AGAINST CORPORATE MANAGERS FOR BREACHING THEIR DUTY OF LOYALTY AND/OR DUTY OF DILIGENCE IN CHINA

The statistics of 137 cases from 14 provinces or municipalities of China concerning the disputes of corporate managers’ duty of loyalty and duty of diligence shows that the majority of companies involved in such cases are those whose shares are not publicly traded (mainly limited liability companies and all sorts of foreign invested enterprises). Joint stock limited companies (including listed companies) rarely file lawsuit against their directors, supervisors, or senior officers. The duty of loyalty has been the center of most cases. Many cases pertain to issues that are not within the list of prohibited acts in the Company Law of the People’s Republic of China to directors, supervisors, and senior managers. Therefore, courts frequently make their judgments according to one of the general provisions of the Company Law. Courts conduct different forms of legal interpretations in their decisions. On one hand, in the majority of cases, courts tend to procedurally examine the questions of facts and to literally apply the law. Actually, the duty of loyalty and duty of diligence have been applied by many courts as “the duty of compliance with law.” On the other hand, a few decisions demonstrate that some courts examine cases under the doctrine of substance-over-form, showing their creative interpretations of the law. The focus of the judicial practice in this type of cases today in China is on how courts should explain and apply the general provisions in Article 148 (1) and Article 149 (1.8) of the 2005 Company Law of China (amended in 2013).     

Specialised domestic violence courts in Canada and the United States: Key factors in prioritising safety for women and children

ABSTRACT

This paper reviews the response of specialised domestic violence courts in Canada and the United States to contact disputes where there are allegations of domestic violence. It begins with a discussion of legal reforms responding to domestic violence in Canada and the United States, including the different types of DV courts and their rationales, key features, merits and drawbacks. Evaluations of Integrated DV courts in the United States and Canada are then reviewed. The research shows that although IDV courts hold more promise to deal with contact disputes given their inclusion of family law matters, there are few studies analysing the impact of IDV courts on these disputes, and some suggest these courts may actually increase contact and hence the potential for safety issues to arise. The final section discusses the strengths and weaknesses of IDV courts in relation to contact disputes, identifying the factors that make these specialised courts more or less successful in prioritising safety and minimising harm for women and children.     

Conundrums with penumbras: the right to privacy encompasses non-gamete providers who create preembryos with the intent to become parents

To date, five state high courts have resolved disputes over frozen preembryos. These disputes arose during divorce proceedings between couples who had previously used assisted reproduction and cryopreserved excess preembryos. In each case, one spouse wished to have the preembryos destroyed, while the other wanted to be able to use or donate them in the future. The parties in these cases invoked the constitutional right to privacy to argue for dispositional control over the preembryos; two of the five cases were resolved by relying on this right. The constitutional right to privacy protects intimate decisions involving procreation, marriage, and family life. However, when couples use donated sperm or ova to create preembryos, a unique circumstance arises: one spouse--the gamete provider--is genetically related to the preembryos and the other is not. If courts resolve frozen preembryo disputes that involve non-gamete providers based on the constitutional right to privacy, they should find that the constitutional right to privacy encompasses the interests of both gamete and non-gamete providers. Individuals who create preembryos with the intent to become a parent have made an intimate decision involving procreation, marriage, and family life that falls squarely within the the right to privacy. In such cases, the couple together made the decision to create a family through the use of assisted reproduction, and the preembryos would not exist but for that joint decision. Therefore, gamete and non-gamete providers should be afforded equal constitutional protection in disputes over frozen preembryos.     

Standard Form Contracts as Transnational Law: Evidence from the Derivatives Markets

This paper uses new research into the derivatives markets to develop our understanding of standard form contracts as transnational law and to show how transnational law theory may be usefully informed by empirical work. Traditionally, it has been assumed that international business communities seek to avoid the courts. However, the paper shows that the national courts play a prominent role in adjudicating disputes involving derivatives. Basing the discussion on the detail of these decisions by the English courts, the paper demonstrates that adjudication does not necessarily undermine widely used standard form contracts, and that it may even reinforce practices that underpin them. This is particularly the case where there is imperfect co‐incidence between a trade association's members and a standard form contract's users. Having explored recent cases, the paper reconciles its findings with a more open and imaginative account of the role of national courts within transnational law theory.     

Efficient,Fair, and Incomprehensible: How the State “Sells” Its Judiciary

Socio‐legal scholars often approach dispute resolution from the perspective of the disputants, emphasizing how the resources on each side shape the course of conflict. We suggest a different, “supply‐side,” perspective. Focusing on the state's efforts to establish centralized courts in place of local justice systems, we consider the strategies that a supplier of dispute resolving services uses to attract disputes for resolution. We argue that state actors often attempt to “sell” centralized courts to potential litigants by insisting that the state's services are more efficient and fair than local courts operating outside direct state control. Moreover, we argue that state actors also invest significant energy in claiming that the local courts are incomprehensible. Thus, in its efforts to introduce and advance centralized courts, the state argues not only that it offers the best version of what the citizenry wants, but also that it is impossible to conceive that people would want something other than what the state offers. We illustrate our argument and explain its significance by examining judicial reform in New York, where there has been a decades‐long effort to displace local justice systems.     

Judicial Power in Russia: Through the Prism of Administrative Justice

This article assesses the power of judges in Russia (on courts of general jurisdiction, arbitrazh courts, and military courts) in dealing with cases in which the government or one of its officials is a party. Power, that is, the resources of judges to make binding decisions, is understood as including jurisdiction, discretion, and authority to ensure compliance. The article analyzes the dramatic growth of jurisdiction and caseload in administrative justice in post-Soviet Russia to the year 2002 and examines how the courts have performed in handling the review of actions by officials (including in the military), tax cases, electoral disputes, and the legality of normative acts (both regulations and laws of lower governments), especially in the late 1990s. High rates of success for persons bringing suits against the government suggest that judges were able by and large to adjudicate fairly and rule against the state. To a considerable degree (but not always), those decisions were implemented (more often than were constitutional and commercial decisions). Interestingly, citizens who challenged the actions of officials in court had much more success than those who brought complaints to the Procuracy. Finally, the article develops an agenda for future research that would deepen understanding of the significance of administrative justice in the Russian Federation and the power of judges.     

Preemption of local smoke-free air ordinances: the implications of judicial opinions for meeting national health objectives.

Elimination of state laws that preempt local antismoking ordinances is a national health objective. However, the tobacco industry and its supporters have continued to pursue state-level preemption of local tobacco control ordinances as part of an apparent strategy to avoid the diffusion of grassroots antismoking initiatives. And, an increasing number of challenges to local ordinances by the tobacco industry and persons supported by the tobacco industry are being decided in state supreme courts and courts of appeals. The outcomes of seemingly similar cases about the validity of local smoke-free air ordinances vary significantly by state. This paper examines the common and unique aspects of the decisions and the potential implications of court rulings on preemption for future state tobacco control efforts and achievement of national health objectives around the elimination of preemption. Using a search strategy developed for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's State Tobacco Activities Tracking and Evaluation (STATE) System, cases where a state or federal appellate level court made a finding on the validity of a local smoke-free air ordinance or regulation were identified in 19 states. In contrast to previous studies, we found that cases in approximately half of states were decided for local governments. We also found that across the states, courts were considering similar factors in their decisions including the extent to which: (1) the local government possessed the authority to pass the ordinance, (2) the ordinance conflicted with the state constitution, and (3) state statutes preempt the ordinance.     

Transforming Land‐Taking Disputes in Socialist Asia: Engaging an Authoritarian State

Few studies have responded to the calls by sociolegal scholars to explore how disputes evolve. This article takes up the challenge by examining how intermediaries in socialist Asia resolve land‐taking disputes that are intractable for administrative appeals and courts. Exploring alternatives to state‐based dispute resolution is a pressing issue for conflicts that pit citizens against authoritarian regimes. Using in‐depth interviews, this article investigates how intermediaries such as retired state officials navigate in and around authoritarian regimes, flattening power asymmetries between citizens and land officials. This analysis draws from, links, and advances three literatures that examine dispute resolution in different ways: the sociolegal “naming, blaming, and claiming” literature examines the trajectory of disputes, regulatory studies use legitimacy expectations to analyze how disputants evaluate and prioritize competing regulatory frameworks, and the collective identity literature analyzes how communities respond to disputes. This article contributes to the literature by developing a theoretical framework that explains how intermediaries circumvent conceptual differences and transform disputes. The findings compel researchers to consider the use of intermediaries as an alternative to state‐sponsored dispute resolution in authoritarian settings.     

The impact of cuts in legal aid funding of private family law cases

The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) made deep cuts to legal aid in the UK from April 2013, withdrawing state aid from almost all private family law cases. The paper is based on the findings of a micro-study of solicitors and Citizens Advice Bureaux (CABx) in Kent and London to investigate the impact of LASPO cuts on their work. The findings suggest that: legal aid firms have closed or merged; legal aid work is often partially carried out in solicitors’ own time; ‘unbundled’ services for litigants in person (LIPs) are increasingly common; and family cases are being complicated and extended by the new ubiquity of the LIP. Respondents suggest that litigants may increasingly be ‘giving up’ on pursuing their cases, with clear implications for financial justice and contact with children. Further research is needed into the financial and affective impact of the cuts and the distribution of losses and difficulties between genders. The study, however, suggests the likelihood of post-separation poverty, debt and capital losses increasing in the post-LASPO environment, and that firms and CABx are having to find various methods of dealing with clients abandoned by the state.     

群体性纠纷的构成与法院司法政策的选择

就中国法院处理群体性纠纷的司法政策，学界存在大相径庭的评价。通过观察我国当前群体性纠纷的构成，可以发现，我国群体性纠纷呈现明显的多元化特征，各类纠纷对于纠纷处理机制的要求和对法院的挑战也不同。而无论是法院现行司法政策的设计还是学者对此种司法政策的批评，莫不体现了一种一元化的思维方式。在未来的制度建设和理论研究当中，需要摈弃这种思维方式，倡导一种“类型化处理”的思路。     

论诉讼与仲裁关系中的既判力问题

在诉讼与仲裁的关系中,涉及既判力的主要有两个问题:仲裁庭是否受到法院判决的约束,或者法院是否受到仲裁裁决的约束。在国内仲裁中,判决与裁决的相互约束已为许多国家的法律及司法实践所肯定。在国际仲裁中,如何协调诉讼与仲裁的关系,实践及理论认识中还存在分歧。为避免裁决与判决之间的冲突,法院可依《纽约公约》承认仲裁裁决来认可外国仲裁裁决的既判力;仲裁庭也应尽量尊重他国法院判决的既判力,毕竟法院对仲裁庭的管辖权及仲裁裁决拥有司法最终决定权。比较和研究各国的立法例、判例,剖析我国法律中的相关规定,有助于厘清诉讼与仲裁的关系。     

论构建我国民事诉讼中的自足性审前程序——审前程序和庭审程序并立的改革观

传统的审前程序是为庭审作准备而存在的 ,其工具性价值成为惟一的功利追求 ,审前程序的功能因此而受到限制。这种功能观也制约了审前程序的模式设置 ,我国审前程序的过分职权化的倾向是与审前程序功能单一化期待有密切联系 ,其结果便造成了审前程序的可有可无及其机能萎缩。我国民事诉讼程序结构应当改变绝对的庭审中心主义 ,要彰显审前程序所具有的化解纠纷和分流讼源的功能 ,将法院实体审判权前移 ,使之贯穿始终 ,只要案件处在成熟的可审判状态 ,法院均应相机行使实体审判权 ,从而化解纠纷     

Exploring the Limits of the Judicialization of Urban Land Disputes in Vietnam

Economic and legal reforms have triggered waves of conflict over property rights and access to urban land in Vietnam. In this article I develop four epistemic case studies to explore the main precepts and practices that courts must negotiate to extend their authority over land disputes. Courts face a dilemma: Do they apply state laws that disregard community regulatory practices and risk losing social relevance, or apply community notions of situational justice that undermine rule formalism? I conclude that reforms designed to increase rule formalism in the courts may have the unintended consequence of reducing the capacity for judges to find lasting solutions to land disputes.     

我国群体诉讼的立法与司法实践

我国大多数群体纠纷被法院分案受理,既有制度本身的问题,又与司法实践中存在着影响法院积极适用代表人诉讼的诸多因素和司法政策有关。由于群体纠纷本身就需要根据案件的具体情况,采取多元化的方式处理,所以,法院通过其他一些诉讼形式解决群体纠纷是无可非议的。但是,在多元化群体纠纷解决机制中,代表人诉讼制度是必不可少的,其独特的价值和功能是不可能被现在各地法院所尝试的其他替代性诉讼方式所完全取代的。     

论法院处理环境纠纷案件中的司法能动

司法能动是法院在案件审理中,不因循先例和遵从成文法的字面含义进行司法解释的一种司法理念以及基于此理念的行动。我国法院在发挥司法能动性,处理环境纠纷案件方面作出了大量努力,为经济社会发展提供了司法保障。但法院在发挥司法能动性处理环境纠纷案件中仍然存在较大的问题。解决这些问题,必须把握法院在环境纠纷案件处理中司法能动的向度,落实司法独立,引导法官正确行使自由裁量权,努力培养环境司法专业人才,发挥法官适用法律的能动性。     

浅析军事法院的角色定位——以民事案件的管辖权为视角

军事法院试行审理军内民事案件,引发了一些争议。从军事法院的职能看,军事法院审理军内民事案件是可行的。但是,不宜将审理军内民事案件作为军事法院的主要职能。为了突出专门法院的特点,有必要对军事法院的角色进行重新定位,以实现司法资源的优化配置。建议将军事法院现有的一般审判职能向地方人民法院转移。具体而言,在平时,或者撤销军事法院,将其现有审判职能完全转移至地方人民法院;或者军事法院专属管辖军事行政诉讼案件。     

Gated Communities in Law's Gaze: Material Forms and the Production of a Social Body in Legal Adjudication

This article focuses on the legal geography of gated communities. Sociolegal research has paid comparatively little attention to how specific material forms fare within legal contexts. Drawing on work in legal geography and in science and technology studies, this article isolates judicial decisions that deal with the borders of gated communities from other cases involving private homeowner associations. By focusing on these boundary disputes in which outsiders are excluded from the area, this article finds that courts are resisting the localism presented by gated communities and are instead articulating a social imaginary in which the landscape flows uninterrupted by the exclusionary presence of gates. In contrast to the privatopia literature, this article finds that courts are not complicit in promoting neoliberal visions of community. The social imaginary being developed by courts resists the spatial differentiation of gated communities, producing in its place a thoroughly modern polity in which legal, economic, and political relations flow easily between those inside and outside the gate.     

Copyright in custom code: Who owns commissioned software?

Legal context: When software is commissioned, it is important that the partiesagree what rights are being acquired and what rights retained.Copyright is the most important such right, but moral rightsand database rights must also be considered. When there is noexplicit agreement on these rights, the courts are often facedwith claims that there is an implied term that they should vestin the client (or be waived in the case of moral rights). Thisarticle examines the issues that arise in such cases. Key points: The article outlines the development of case law dealing withimplied terms as to ownership of commissioned works. It explainshow the courts have applied older principles to the new areaof commissioned software, and how those principles have evolvedto make it more difficult for a client to establish an impliedterm in their favour. The article examines in particular issuesarising from code reuse, the disclosure of source code, andthe application of database rights and moral rights to software.It also considers case law where clients have claimed to bejoint authors of software by virtue of their involvement inits design and testing. Practical significance: There are an increasing number of cases where software is commissionedon an informal basis and disputes later arise as to the ownershipof that software. This article provides a framework for consideringsuch disputes.     

REEVALUATING WHERE WE STAND: A COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY OF AMERICA'S FAMILY JUSTICE SYSTEMS

The call for court reform remains critical in the face of the growing complexity of burgeoning family law cases nationwide. Many states have restructured their court systems using the unified family court model, resolving legal, personal, emotional, and social disputes with the aim of improving the well‐being of families and children. Other states utilize the traditional approach, resulting in cases being handled in a fragmented, time‐consuming and expensive manner. In this article, Professor Barbara A. Babb presents the results of her nationwide survey regarding how each state handles family law matters. The survey is a follow‐up to her comprehensive 1998 survey and her 2002 survey update. The results of the recent analysis reveal that a total of thirty‐eight states now have either statewide family courts, family courts in selected areas of the state, or pilot or planned family courts, representing seventy‐five percent of states. The number of states without a specialized or separate system to handle family law matters has decreased from seventeen states in 1998 to thirteen in 2006. These changes are significant when one considers the complexities involved in court reform. The need for court reform remains an urgent one, as family law cases occupy a significant percentage of court dockets across the country. Families and children deserve a court system where justice is effective and efficient and where their legal, personal, emotional, and social needs are resolved in a therapeutic and holistic manner.