死刑的废止不需要终身刑替代

终身刑与无期徒刑并非等同概念；终身刑是侵害人格尊严、比死刑更为残酷的惩罚方法，不应成为死刑的替代刑；死刑的削减与废止不依赖于终身刑的设置；终身刑未具备刑罚的正当化根据，无助于刑罚体系的完善，没能顺应刑罚的发展趋势，不符合行刑的合理目标，因而不应成为-种刑罚措施；当前，我国应当在削减与废止死刑立即执行的同时，合理运用现行刑法规定的死缓与无期徒刑。     

死刑改革的重要进展——以《刑法修正案(九)》为视角

《刑法修正案(九)》在《刑法修正案(八)》首次削减13个罪名的死刑基础上,进—步削减了9个罪名的死刑,且不像《刑法修正案(八)》那样仅限于经济性、非暴力犯罪的死刑罪名,而是扩大到军职罪和不严重的暴力犯罪.同时,《刑法修正案(九)》还提高了死缓执行死刑的门槛,增设了死缓执行的期间重新计算制度;并将绑架罪、贪污罪和受贿罪的绝对确定死刑修改为相对确定死刑.这些修改拓展了中国死刑改革的视野,为下一步继续推进死刑改革提供了积极信号.     

死刑限制论的一个切入--以故意杀人罪为线索的展开

在死刑限制论成为我国刑法理论现实选择的情况下,在立法上有必要取消部分罪名的死刑刑种配置,根据故意杀人罪的不同情况,配置其罪刑系列,同时将被害人过错的酌定从轻情节法定化;在司法上适用死刑应该"慎重谦抑";在解释论上有必要通过实质解释为削减死刑做出贡献.     

减少死刑的设想及理由

笔者主张,此次修改刑法,应当大幅度地削减现有罪名的死刑规定,严格限制保留死刑犯罪的死刑适用条件,把逐渐废除死刑作为我们的立法思路和追求目标,使修改后刑法中的死刑罪名控制在十四五种以内(不含军职罪中的死刑),具体设想是: 1.反革命罪改为危害国家安全罪后,死刑罪名可合并减少到2种。即暴乱罪(内乱罪),包括颠覆政府、     

对《中华人民共和国刑法修正案（八）（草案）》的几点意见

《中华人民共和国刑法修正案（八）》（草案）提出了一系列值得关注的理论和实务问题,本文针对草案提出了十三点建议,包括应当明示罪名;《刑法修正案》不宜自公布之日起生效;对老年人犯罪还可增加不适用无期徒刑的规定;对于增加危险驾驶、恶意欠薪等民生犯罪要慎重;＂死刑太重＂的说法是对的,所以应当削减死刑,但＂生刑太轻＂的提法需要警惕。     

美国宪法修正案与其死刑制度改革

联邦体制之下的美国死刑立法与制度改革,并非简单的州际立法取舍与司法适用标准变革问题,而是历时经久、事关宪法效力的根本问题。美国死刑改革作为世界死刑多元化改革模式中一个独立而有益的范本,其发展经历了以立法改革为中心向以司法控制为中心的转变。宪法确立的"二元联邦"制、最高法院的违宪审查权,是宪法修正案影响美国死刑变革的制度基础。20世纪70年代以来,联邦最高法院通过对宪法第八修正案"禁止残酷与不寻常刑罚"条款进行"进化中的伦理标准"解释,不断调整死刑适用程序与实体标准,构建出以程序上的"双阶程序"、实体上削减与引入法定加重情节限制为核心的死刑裁量制度,开创了死刑立法与司法改革的双向互动局面。     

美国司法型死刑控制模式与中国借鉴

美国司法型死刑控制模式形成于美国特有的政治法律制度与文化传统中,是立法废止死刑难达统一目标情况下做出的一种积极选择。美国司法型死刑控制模式集程序上的"双阶程序"与实体上的严格死刑标准、削减死刑范围以及引入法定加重情节限制死刑适用与一体,由联邦最高法院借助违宪审查制度解释宪法,并通过判例制度创建而成。司法型死刑控制模式对中国死刑改革具有积极的借鉴价值。     

杀人偿命？——死刑问题的民意分析

死刑问题尤其是死刑存废问题已成为中国刑事领域的热点话题之一。死刑的存废与增减根本上受制于民意，这种民意的重要体现就是“杀人偿命”的观念。中国历史上既广泛存在着“杀人者死”的法律规则，也大量存在着“杀人偿命”的观念、意识。实际上西方社会也有“杀人者死”的报复刑观念。因此，要废除死刑，民意是一个绕不过的山，必须向老百姓宣传、并逐渐普及实行死刑的弊端，使老百姓不再处于对死刑的迷信与狂热之中，从而理性地、平心静气地接受废除死刑的理念。     

死刑合宪性解释:从立场到路径的比较与反思

站在宪法的立场上考察死刑妥当性问题,对于死刑的存废具有终极的社会意义.世界上主要存在着4种死刑合宪性解释的路径,但都或多或少存在着不可避免的局限性.人权具有普世价值,在生命权的保护上不应该存在任何例外,以人权作为死刑合宪性解释的立场对于形成一种尊重生命和人格的文化,引领公众对死刑树立起理性的认识发挥着不可替代的作用.废止死刑本身并不是目的,其真正目的在于增加所有国民的人权.政府应以此作为设定政策和措施的出发点,重新审视死刑在控制犯罪中的意义.从削减和废止死刑、保障人权的角度考虑社会的防卫才是合适的社会演进之方向.     

再论我国死刑制度的存废

自贝卡里亚提出了废除死刑的观点之后,死刑保留论和废除论的争论一直未停止。国际上很多国家已经废除了死刑或者严格限制死刑的适用。我国可以适用死刑的罪名在刑法修正案(八)之后削减了13个,但仍有55个之多。我国历史上死刑适用泛滥,受传统历史的影响,并根据我国国情的实际情况,废除死刑的目标仍然可望而不可即。但是废除死刑是大势所趋,我国在立法和司法过程中应当在保留死刑制度的前提下,减少刑法中规定的死刑罪名的数量,限制死刑适用的范围,缩减死刑适用的对象,严格贯彻死刑的执行程序,使死刑制度朝着健康文明的方向发展,并最终逐渐走向废止。     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.)

     

What similes in Sāṃkhya do: a comparison of the similes in the Sāṃkhya texts in the Mahābhārata, the Sāṃkhyakārikā and the Sāṃkhyasūtra

In Sāṃkhya similes are an important means to communicate basic philosophical teachings. In the texts similes are frequently used, especially in the Sāṃkhya passages in the Mahābhārata, in the Sāṃkhyakārikā and in the Sāṃkhyasūtra. This paper compares the similes in these three texts and analyses changes in the philosophy as revealed in the similes. A comparison of the similes of Sāṃkhya texts produced over more than one thousand years reveals changes in the emphasis in this philosophical system. The purpose of the similes in the Sāṃkhya passages of the Mahābhārata is to produce an intuitive understanding of the separateness of puruṣa and prakṛti. The similes are designed to lead the listener to understand this basic dualism. In the Sāṃkhyakārikā the most difficult issues are the relationship between prakṛti and puruṣa and the idea of prakṛti working for the salvation of puruṣa. One whole chapter of the Sāṃkhyasūtra is devoted to similes.