Shopping in the Public Realm: A Law of Place

Through a case study based in Bristol, this article explores how the ‘law of place’ has transformed multiple heterogeneous city centre spaces into a single homogeneous and commodified privately owned retail site. Drawing on de Certeau, Lefebvre, and humanistic geographers including Tuan, the article explores how law facilitates spatial and temporal enclosure through conventional understandings of private property, relying on techniques of masterplanning, compulsory purchase, and stopping up highways. It suggests that the law of place draws on binary spatial and conceptual distinctions to apparently separate places from spaces, applying different legal rules either side of an often invisible boundary line. The article questions this legally facilitated spatial and conceptual enclosure, particularly as it restricts spatial practices within the public realm. It concludes by rejecting an urban ‘right to roam’ as insufficiently transformative, calling for a broader interpretation of Lefebvre's ‘right to the city’ instead.     

The Place of Form in the Fundamentals of Law

The author explains that there is scope for a general theory about the nature and place of form in the fundamentals of law. Form organizes the institutions, rules and other varieties of law, and the system as a whole. All such constructs have non‐formal elements, too, but form unifies each construct and provides its criteria of identity. Appropriate form makes a system of law possible. It also tends to beget good content in the law. It is indispensable to the basic needs of a legal system, and when such an end is organizational, as with democracy, liberty, and the rule of law, form is end as well as means.     

Thinking About Law Schools: Rutland Reviewed

Thinking about law schools as institutions requires tools of analysis andthe questioning of some common assumptions. This paper applies some of the general ideas in the recent report on Legal Education in Xanaduto the Faculty of Law at the University of Rutland, with particular reference to institutional goals and functions, clientele, league tables, and who counts as a 'law student'.     

Anti-SLAPP Law Reform in Australia

The last 20 years has seen a growth in litigation against public participation in Australia and a broadening of the mechanisms used. Following changes to the defamation laws in 2005, commercial torts are increasingly being used against critics and protest groups. Australia's highest profile example, the so-called 'Gunns 20' case, brought the problems of such litigation into the public realm and provided a major impetus for law reform. One Australian jurisdiction has now adopted limited anti-Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation (SLAPP) legislation and SLAPPs are being raised in the context of national debates over a Human Rights Act. However, comprehensive anti-SLAPP law reform is still some way off.     

Law, Space, and Place: Reframing Comparative Law and Legal Anthropology

In her book Mapping Marriage Law in Spanish Gitano Communities (2006) , Susan Drummond challenges the disciplinary perspectives of comparative law and legal anthropology in her study of Gitano marriage practices. By reframing the way in which the "local" or "locale" is viewed—through an ethnographic study of Gitanos—she displaces the traditional boundaries ascribed to comparative law, with its focus on taxonomy and structure, and with legal anthropology's approach to culture. Her study not only elucidates how national and transnational law intersect, but highlights the complex interconnections between local law and the larger systems of law that attempt to regulate it. This detailed interdisciplinary depiction of the spatial and temporal dimensions of law demonstrates the importance of taking account of scale, projection, and representation that requires both comparative law and legal anthropology to rethink the nature of space and place and their relationship with law from both their macro- and microperspectives.     

IT and Law,and Law Schools

If 'computing and law' as a discipline is to push forward and develop, it will do so best within the context of the law school rather than as a joint enterprise between law and other disciplines. It is in the law school that the understanding of the nature of law is at its height. Yet there are problems here-law schools have a strained relationship with technology and their concept of the breadth of 'legal scholarship' can be limited by conventional (or ideologically-biased) views of law and an undergraduate-oriented view of the law school's purpose. There are also problems arising from the nature of communications between lawyers and computer scientists. In this article, I highlight these problems and also argue for a more developed and extended view of legal scholarship which will be able to incorporate study and research of the impact of the computer upon legal society as well as the legal control of the unwanted elements arising from these new technologies. Most writings on IT and the law school concentrate upon its use as an educational tool. My interest here is not so much in this side of things, but in the research culture of the law school. Whilst there is sometimes a view that the linkage of law school and IT is purely related to the use of technology in legal education, the remit is wider and includes the understanding of the link between substantive law and the context of the new computerized world and also the impact of the computer in the practice of law. This latter aspect is becoming increasingly important with the Woolf reforms and computerization of the procedural elements of law, but also in substantive law: for example, administrative systems are becoming more and more mediated by technology, and administrative law must be reviewed and re-worked in this context.     

Policing Schools: Examining the Impact of Place Management Activities on School Violence

The present study examines whether the presence of school resource officers (SROs) and their level of involvement in place management activities are associated with higher or lower rates of school-based serious violence. This study uses data from the 2010 School Survey on Crime and Safety (SSOCS) conducted by National Center for Educational Statistics. Propensity score matching is used to create a quasi-experimental design and isolate the influence of SROs and their level of involvement in place management activities on school-based serious violence. The analysis reveals that schools with a school resource officer are associated with higher rates of reported serious violence and those schools with SROs that participate in more place manager duties are also associated with higher rates of reported serious violence. These findings do not support the notion that SROs are acting as effective place managers and through this place management, reducing reported serious violence. Rather, it appears that the presences of a SRO and their execution of place manager duties is associated with an increase in the reporting of serious violence. Policy implications and limitations of the current research are also discussed.     

Human Rights Law: Australia and Slovenia

The human rights legal framework of Australia and Slovenia are vastly different. This article explores the evolution of human rights laws of Slovenia and Australia. While the study and comparison of Australia and Slovenia is uncommon, and not often used as an example to highlight aspects of human rights, both states have a long history of cooperation. The first Slovenian reportedly arrived in Australian in 1855. Since then, and particularly following World War Two, there has been a steady stream of Slovenian’s migrating to Australia. Slovenia upon independence prepared a new constitution that reflected the democratic human rights of the European Union, in 1991, and ratified the European Convention on Human rights in 1994. This article highlights how the opportunity Slovenia had to develop a new constitution, they were able to include many human rights that are often found in legislation. Australia’s constitution came into effect in 1901. Being more than 100 years old, there has been no attempts to revise the Australian constitution and expand the current express human rights. This article will determine whether the European Union’s human rights laws have not only influenced Slovenia’s human rights laws, but also Australia’s. This article suggests that Australia has much to learn from the Slovene experience, but is constrained by its constitution and region. This article highlights how a state formed in recent times, has had the opportunity to develop a constitution that reflects modern day human rights while an older state with longer established democracy has fallen behind in its protection of human rights.     

No Place in the Law: The Ignominy of Criminal Libel in American Jurisprudence

The application of the Sullivan standard to the crime of libel was a mistake. There is no common law affiliation with or legal justification for the existence of criminal libel in a democracy. Its existence is antithetical to the First Amendment's guarantees of equality of speech, as well as to the broader constitutional guarantees of equality of speaker. The crime has become almost completely indistinguishable from the tort of libel, both in form and function, as a result of its evolution in America-from the importance of truth as a defense to the audience's responsibility for its own reaction to the speech, violent or not. And the American experience demonstrates clearly and ignominiously that the abuse of prosecutorial discretion, and even the mere threat of prosecution, results in the suppression of constitutionally protected speech.     

新三板市场的法律适用与“新三板监管法”的制定

新三板是经国务院批准,依据《证券法》设立的全国性证券交易场所。但是,除《证券法》第39条提到了其他证券交易场所外,《证券法》对新三板并没有具体规定。我国现行《证券法》遵循了主板逻辑和公开发行逻辑,而新三板市场不是主板,它具有特殊性。因此,新三板市场难以适用《证券法》,甚至一旦适用了《证券法》的某些条款,可能会阻碍新三板市场的正常发展。《证券法》对新三板市场的某些制度(尤其是做市商制度)的运行还存在一定的法律障碍,这是行政法规或规章克服不了的。我国应该通过修改《证券法》以及制定一部单行的证券法特别法——《全国股转系统监督管理法》,为新三板市场的相关制度运行提供法律依据。但从长远看,我国《证券法》应以多层次资本市场逻辑和交易逻辑取代主板逻辑和公开发行逻辑,以实现逻辑的转换。     

Ranking the Law Schools: The Reality of Illusion?

This article examines the problems inherent in any endeavor to rank law schools on a qualitative basis. Analysis of possible ranking criteria forces the conclusion that attempting to assign specific rankings based on objective criteria is a futile task. However, objective tests are suggested which indicate, on application to available data, that about 40 of the approximately 165 ABA-AALS-accredited law schools are of superior quality and differ among themselves only as to an image of prestige.     

市场法

一、什么是市场法? 首先,对多数人而言市场法的概念是陌生的,在理论界也只有个别学者零星地提到它.[1]市场关系作为法的调整对象更多地体现在经济法的概念中.但经济法是一个相当模糊的概念,学界对它存在许多不同的理解.[2]有人将经济法看作是企业的法,[3]或将调控法视为经济法的核心,[4]也有人从法律发展的角度理解经济法,把经济法视为私法批判的最重要词汇加以使用,称之为私法在实证运用中的新发展.[5]     

Party Autonomy in the Choice of Law: Some Insights from Australia

Liverpool Law Review - The party autonomy doctrine represents a very central component of international commerce. According to this doctrine, the parties to an international contract have the...     

Law Schools and Paper Jams

The intranet as a tool for institutional integration has the potential to change Universities and their structures. The means to not only think the unthinkable but actually do it. The Intranet College Information System (ICIS) project at the Law School, Queen's University of Belfast, has demonstrated this to be both possible and acceptable to staff and to students. Technological innovation can be done within a non-technical environment, it can be achieved on a low budget and it can stimulate a new culture, above all it can and should happen now.     

Regulatory Threats to the Law Degree: The Solicitors Qualifying Examination and the Purpose of Law Schools

Two major regulatory changes are affecting the provision of undergraduate legal education in England and Wales. On the one hand, the Qualifying Law Degree is being deregulated, meaning law schools are free to make significant changes to how and what they teach. On the other hand, higher education in England has seen a significant overhaul through the creation of the Office for Students, which treats students as consumers. Now more than ever, law schools need to ask themselves existential questions which will not only test their continued relevance or indeed viability within the ‘market’ for higher education, but also the status of the discipline of law as a whole. The regulatory landscape may indeed present a significant threat, but it is also an opportunity to reflect on what law schools are for, and consequently what changes could result from the academic freedom that comes with deregulation. Whilst different law schools will interpret their mission differently, they should caution against either generalised inertia or succumbing to an outcomes-oriented provision that simply prepares students for the new Solicitors Qualifying Examination. Instead, law schools will find their proper purpose in critical reflection and academic self-grounding, providing undergraduate students with a ‘question everything’ mentality, and showing them that law is something to be experienced and not merely learnt.