论犯罪事实的性质

在刑事诉讼过程中,司法机关最终确认的犯罪事实是一种什么性质的事实,主要存在着客观真实说与法律真实说的竞争。客观真实说与法律真实说的对抗并非两种刑事诉讼证明标准之间的对抗,而是对刑事司法程序中确认的认识论犯罪事实的两种不同定性。法律真实说之所以更为恰当,是因为法律真实说尊重现实,可以为认识论犯罪事实的可谬性找到逻辑上的根据,有利于程序优先司法理念的确定,并且符合司法特质。     

Native American Identity and the Limits of Cultural Defence

This article concerns itself with the phenomenon of the cultural defence as it exhibits itself in the US juridical context. Recent socio-legal discussions about this phenomenon reveal three prevalent positions: the illegality of cultural defence on constitutional grounds, the necessity of cultural defence as a matter of discretionary justice, and the intermediary position of working cultural defence into a legal doctrine. By problematizing the operative concept of culture, the author suggests that the idea of cultural defence should be understood in terms of foreignness. This suggestion is supported on the basis of the phenomenological theory of the alien (xenology). In order to illustrate the juridical limits of the cultural defence I examine the history of constructing the Native American as a cultural legal subject. Hence the question that primes this examination: is there a possibility of the traditional cultural defence for the American Indians? After a provisional answer that there is no such possibility, I conclude with the discussion of hospitality as a way to an ethically necessary and legally acceptable idea of culture.     

The Public Trust as an Evolutionary Doctrine: How the Trust can be Used to Allege an Injury Under Standing

The public trust doctrine provides protection of public access to resources, such as navigable waterways, protected under the public trust. The doctrine has evolved over time to protect natural resources such as tidelands, submerged waterbeds, wildlife, and climate change. Juliana v. United States is a groundbreaking trust case that moves the application of the trust to the management of climate-change regimes. Although the doctrine has been criticized as a façade, forestalling real recourse for change, it can be used to show standing for current and future generations. Accordingly, Juliana outlines how this doctrine is not just evolutionary it is also revolutionary.     

试论行政处罚证据制度

行政处罚证据是一类不同于其它证据制度的证据。当场行政处罚应当采用以事实为根据和排除滥用职权的证明标准 ;行政机关工作人员看见或感知了违法事实全过程但不当场处罚的案件 ,应当采用以事实为根据和排除合理怀疑的证明标准 ;非当场行政处罚 ,应当采用以证据为根据和排除合理怀疑的证明标准。由于以事实为根据标准的采用 ,要求在行政诉讼中对行政机关认定事实采取尊重的态度。行政处罚证据收集应当在行政处罚决定作出以前 ,作出决定之后收集证据意义不大 ;行政处罚应当采用非法证据排除规则、直接言词证据和案卷排他性原则等规则     

Why Must Legal Ideas Be Interpreted Sociologically?

Sociology of law and socio-legal studies are sometimes declared unable to give insight into the nature of legal ideas or to clarify questions about legal doctrine. The idea that law has its own 'truth'– its own way of seeing the world – has been used to deny that sociological perspectives have any special claim to provide understanding of law as doctrine. This paper tries to specify what sociological understanding of legal ideas entails. It argues that such an understanding is not merely useful but necessary for legal studies. Legal scholarship entails sociological understanding of law. The two are inseparable.     

The idea of a trust in Zoroastrian law

There is hardly any legal institution which better characterizes the thinking and everyday practice of the common law family than the legal institution of the trust. The English common law developed it during the Middle Ages, and it remains popular to this day. The institution of the trust is a unique phenomenon of the common law. Surprisingly, the Zoroastrian community of the Sassanian period in Persia developed some legal techniques which are very close to the common law trust. In this paper I will show the peculiarities and history of what I call the Zoroastrian trust, and hope to establish the basic similarity between the two. What makes this comparison easier is the fact that the two legal institutions developed independently from each other, since there is no possibility of historical interactions between Sassanian Persia (third–seventh centuries AD) and England during the Middle Ages. It is also impossible to speak about common or similar religious, cultural and legal backgrounds.     

证据法若干基本问题的法哲学分析

通过对证据法中的三个基本问题进行历史的和辨证的分析，作者认为：关于诉讼证明要求，近几年兴起的“法律真实说”并不是完善的学说，而传统的“客观真实说”只要按照辩证唯物主义的认识论加以修正，就仍然有其存在的价值；关于证据调查的方式，当前的任务不是仅仅从口头上强调当事人举证，限制法官查证，而是正确地划分当事人举证与法官查证各自的范围，并完善相应的保障和约束机制；关于司法证明方式，全盘接受自由心证制度或法定证据制度中的任何一种都不是理性的选择，应结合我国的具体国情和两大法系证据规则的特点，在证据制度的不同方面，分别借鉴两种模式中的有益部分。     

Can the Public Trust Doctrine Save the High Seas?

Abstract

The high seas is one of the last remaining commons on the planet, but comprehensive efforts to save this area beyond national jurisdiction have not been successful. This article examines the feasibility of applying the public trust doctrine to the high seas by first evaluating tools that are currently in place to protect biodiversity then analyzing the public trust doctrine in its traditional application in the United States and other countries. With this foundation, the article examines the possibility and methodology of applying the public trust concept to protect the high seas.     

Joint Criminal Enterprise: Possibilities and Limitations

The Joint Criminal Enterprise (JCE) doctrine has made an impressiveappearance on the stage of the International Criminal Tribunalfor the former Yugoslavia. However, the initial enthusiasm hasfaded somewhat recently as doubts about the doctrine's broadapplicability have started to dominate the discussion. In thisarticle, the author argues that we should not deplore the partialdemise of the doctrine. The simple truth is that the doctrinedoes not entirely dovetail with the gloomy reality of the modernbureaucracies that engage in systematic crime. Rather than tryingto curb reality in order to fit our legal concepts, we mightinstead search for alternative modes of criminal responsibility.Functional perpetration may be such an alternative as it takesthe function of the accused as point of reference for an inquiryinto his responsibility and forges more direct links betweenthe perpetrator and the crime. The JCE doctrine still has auseful function to serve in (modestly) extending the responsibilityof participants in mob violence and in portraying the collectiveefforts of those who can properly be qualified as the auctoresintellectuales of system criminality.     

“Critical Legal Histories Revisited”: A Response

The author responds to comments reappraising “Critical Legal Histories” (CLH) (1984). CLH critiqued “evolutionary functionalism,” the idea that law is a functional response to a typical modernizing process. CLH argued that “society” was partly constituted of legal elements and that law was too indeterminate to have reliably regular functional effects. CLH has been misinterpreted as calling for a return to internal histories of “mandarin” doctrine: all it said was that some doctrinal histories were valuable, without privileging them. This response clarifies that the relations of law to society and social change, and of high‐level official law to everyday local law are distinct issues. CLH is mostly moot today, since social‐legal historians have incorporated its insight that legal concepts are embedded in everyday social practice. But other fields have revived deterministic Whiggish accounts of progressive development and of law functional to it—to which CLH's critique still seems relevant.     

对“法律真实”证明标准的质疑

无论是刑事实体法律规范还是刑事程序法律规范都不具有判定案件事实是否真实的功能。“法律真实”所陈述的基本内容与判定证据是否充分的标准重复 ,所以“法律真实”证明标准是不能成立的 ,“法律真实”这个概念是一个伪概念。“客观真实”标准是判定证据是否真实和是否充分的有机统一 ,对传统“客观真实说”作一些必要的限定之后 ,客观真实标准仍然是刑事诉讼证明的基本标准。     

The concept of free will and forensic psychiatry

This text examines how conceptions of free will impact on legal systems and forensic psychiatry: free will is generally regarded as a prerequisite for responsibility, criminal responsibility included, while forensic psychiatry to a large extent deals with the limits imposed on responsibility by mental disorder. First we discuss the question of whether there is and has been such an impact. The answer is yes: different conceptions of free will have inspired different systems of law and forensic psychiatry, as becomes clear when looking at the accountability doctrine as compared to the unique Swedish system rejecting this doctrine. However, there is no necessary connection between doctrines of responsibility and conceptions of free will, since the former primarily says something about when someone should be held responsible and the latter says something about when someone really is free in a sense relevant to responsibility. This leads to the second question: should conceptions of free will have an impact on law and forensic psychiatry? We argue: that they should not, given the implausibility the normative theory retributivism, which posits a direct connection between free will and punishment. More importantly, questions of free will are complicated and unresolved philosophical issues that are better left out of the everyday decision-making incumbent on the legal and psychiatric systems. Instead, we recommend using an empirically useful and gradual conception of autonomy to facilitate the determination of legal responsibility. This autonomy conception, being neutral on the question of free will, eliminates the need to take a stand on it.     

Marr v Collie: The Ballooning of the Common Intention Constructive Trust

The decision in Marr v Collie represents a significant expansion of the common intention constructive trust doctrine. Unsupported by authority, it relaxes the requirement that the property be acquired for a ‘domestic’ purpose, and widens the doctrine to encompass all property, whether real or personal. The decision's abrogation of the ‘purpose’ restriction redraws the line between the common intention constructive trust doctrine and the presumed resulting trust doctrine and expands the former to the greatest possible extent. This exacerbates a doctrine already apt to adversely affect both individual litigants and the justice system as a whole, and which creates incongruous theoretical divisions within the law of intentionally created trusts. As the doctrine is reliant on the proposition, unsupported by authority or legislation, that conveyance of a title to land into joint names necessarily gives rise to a trust, it is hoped that a future apex court will reconsider the doctrine's proper scope.     

Minimal Semantics and Legal Interpretation

In this paper I will tackle three issues. First, I aim to briefly outline the backbone of semantic minimalism, while focusing on the idea of ‘liberal truth conditions’ developed by Emma Borg in her book ‘Minimal Semantics’. Secondly, I will provide an account of the three principal views in legal interpretation: intentionalism, textualism and purposivism. All of them are based on a common denominator labelled by lawyers ‘literal meaning’. In the paper I suggest a novel way of viewing this common denominator as almost identical to the Borgian ‘liberal truth conditions’, at least at a conceptual level. In the third section I will focus on the conceptual similarities between the two ideas. I intend to depict that, although legal theorists do not admit it explicitly, they treat literal legal meaning as minimal propositional content that can be ascribed liberal truth conditions. There are two main objections to liberal truth conditions: their under-determinacy and unintuitive character. Both objections can be applied to ‘literal meaning’. However, the idea of liberal truth conditions gives an adequate account of what lawyers call literal meaning and is helpful in explaining the mechanism of understanding of provisions and reasons leading to the necessity of statutory interpretation.     

期待可能性理论初探

期待可能性是指根据行为时的具体情况,能够期待行为人实施合法行为的可能性。期待可能性理论有其人性基础,体现了刑法的谦抑。期待可能性在犯罪论中的地位应置于责任论中,责任能力、违法性的意识的可能性和期待可能性都是责任要素。期待可能性理论的引进,可以使我国刑法理论中的许多问题得到合理的解释,对刑事司法的指导意义也是明显的。     

Lies and Free Speech Values

In the short time since Seana Shiffrin published Speech Matters, ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative facts’ have become full-blown phenomena, and various forces have destabilized the line between truth and falsity. Now more than ever, Shiffrin’s project is one of urgent importance. This essay examines Chapter Four of Speech Matters, which asks the crucial question: when and how may the law regulate lies? Shiffrin concludes that the law could regulate lies much more often than it does, though sometimes it ought not to for pragmatic reasons. For all of Shiffrin’s masterful explication, there is perhaps more to say in the space between Chapter Three’s moral account of free speech and Chapter Four’s legal one. Setting existing doctrine aside, how would a society translate the moral principles of Chapter Three into a system of law? Which worries are intrinsic to free speech, and which are purely pragmatic? In other words, what does a thinker-based account of law look like?

     

A Theory of Frustration and Its Effect

One of the key legal questions that COVID-19 has raised relates to the status of the traditional contractual doctrine of frustration. The pandemic and the ongoing lockdowns across the globe have made it difficult for many contracts to perform. At the same time, there is a deep doctrinal and conceptual confusion with respect to the very essentials of this doctrine and its remedy - i.e., what happens after an adjudicative tribunal declares that a given contract has been frustrated. The paper offers a unified conceptual account of the frustration doctrine and claims that both the doctrine and its remedy crystallize a single unifying idea.

     

科学与法律领域的真相

审判过程并非仅仅是为了"查明真相"。自从美国的法律系统开始使用科学证人以来,法律领域就面临着混乱的局面。自从Frye规则到Daubert标准再到Kumho Tire标准,乃至发展为修改后的《联邦证据规则》702条,尽管法律系统经历了上述诸多努力,人们仍然不会相信法律系统能够从科学信息中获得预期的收益。科学主张和理论或真或假,它们的真或假是一个客观的问题。法律裁决可以断定法律真理为真,也可以断定"所谓的科学真理"为真。只有科学命题所描述的自然界现象和事件的性质——而非有关证据可靠性的法律裁决,也非法庭上的论证和交叉询问——能够证明真的科学命题为真,证明假的科学命题为假。     

医疗责任保险的思考

大力发展医疗责任保险,对医疗执业过失给患者造成的损害进行充分赔偿,在保障患者和医疗机构及其医务人员的合法权益,优化医疗环境和医疗公共秩序方面有重要的促进作用。由于我国医院主体是公立医院,侵权法人身损害赔偿相对于综合医院尚未到重大程度,并且综合性医院每年发生的医疗过失案件基本确定,选择满足面临危险的医院财务安全需要的医疗责任保险模式,如医疗责任保险信托等,才能促进医疗责任保险的发展。实践表明,商业性医疗责任保险不宜成为我国医疗责任保险的主体。建立独立的医疗过失纠纷调解鉴定机构,才能保证医疗责任保险顺利开展。     

论法律真理

一般人们认为,法律不是真理,法律与真理是分离的。但从历史的维度看,法律与真理分离的时间非常短暂。20世纪中叶之后,随着"事实与价值分离"观念的倒塌,"法律真理"这一观念不证自明起来。但何谓法律真理?是"符合论"意义上的,还是诠释学意义上的?由于"符合论"法律真理理论遇到了诸多难题,导致了法律真理的异化,因此,法律真理应是诠释学意义上的真理。法律真理是人的存在状态,是人展现自我、规划自我的一种方式,是人为实现自身本质而进行的一种制度安排。理解法律真理的路径在于法律实践。