¿Por qué prevalece el estado de derecho? una aproximación comparada a las explicaciones centradas en la cultura de la legalidad

The objective of this paper is to analyze the relation between the concept of the Rule of Law and the culture of legality from a compared approach in order to establish the scope and limitations of explanations that are based in cultural factors. More specifically, we are interested in comparing the scope and limitations of culture-based explanations on why the Rule of Law prevails in certain countries: these explanations are centered in the construction of wide agreements between social actors and the control by civil society. Also we consider equally important the comparing of different definitions of culture of legality and the strategies and instruments that allow its construction. For this purpose we will center, specially, in the experiences of Hong Kong, Palermo and Bogotá.     

New perspectives on crime,violence and insecurity in Latin America

This article introduces a Crime, Law & Social Change special issue on rethinking organised crime, collective violence and insecurity in contemporary Latin America. The five contributions, which among them cover the cases of Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico, address the puzzle of why and how in the midst of the world’s most serious crime and violence crisis ‘stability’ and ‘political order’ are nonetheless maintained. Taking a critical distance to conventional scholarship on these problems, the present collection of papers shifts the focus from one on how democratic regimes and formal institutions of the state are affected to a broader one that puts the spotlight on the ‘real politics’ and ‘real governance’ of crime and violence in the region. Cultural aspects of the ‘collapse of legality’, the holding power of informal institutions and the workings of ‘crimilegal orders’ and ‘criminalized electoral politics’ are explored through variegated conceptual and methodological approaches drawn from political science, criminology, sociology, social psychology, cultural studies and investigative journalism.     

Legality Policies and Theories of Legality: From Bananas to Radbruch's Formula*

Abstract. In this paper I shall take an inferential approach to legality (legal validity), and consider how the legality of a norm can be inferred, and what can be inferred from it. In particular, I shall analyse legality policies, namely, conditionals conferring the quality of legality upon norms having certain properties, and I shall examine to what extent such conditionals need to be positivistic, so that legality is only dependant on social facts. Finally, I shall consider how legality is transmitted from norm to norm and whether the ultimate legality policies (the rules of recognition) of a legal system need to be constituted by social facts.     

The Fourteenth Amendment and symbolic legality

This article examines several key tensions in thesymbolic legality or social representation of our society's core legal values. It argues that present Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence ignores the realities of contemporary social life and serves up ineffective due process protections as poor substitutes for genuine or meaningful equal protection remedies. By documenting the importance situation and context and verifying the limits of due process, social science data underscore the rift between social reality and equal protection rhetoric and thereby increase existing tensions in the symbolic legality.     

判例法的“溯及力困境”及其制度性克服

＂奥斯丁困境＂的起因是法官在司法过程中适用社会规范引起的合法性问题。＂奥斯丁困境＂的提问方式及其问题可以转化为：通过什么样的判例法上的制度性操作能够缓解＂溯及力困境＂并达成司法判决的公正性。德沃金和哈特关于＂社会规则理论＂的争论使我们认识到社会命题在决定判例法规则方面的重要性,而普通法已经发展起来的司法基本原则、标准、推理模式和制度性原则则为＂溯及力困境＂及判决的公正性问题的解决提供了较为全面的制度实践上的保障。     

Social and legal alienation: The case of aboriginal peoples in Canada

The concept ‘alienation’ has become a relatively common expression in contemporary society, the usage of which often belies the varied meanings it has had historically and in contemporary literature. Using the sociology of knowledge, an historical analysis of the use of ‘alienation’ in law, the social sciences, and religion reveals a rich and varied tradition. ‘Alienation’ arose with a positive religious meaning and subsequently became a cornerstone for the new property rights of an emerging capitalist economic order. In this new industrial order, social critics gave a negative meaning to ‘alienation’ that became the basis for the social scientific concept. The legal freedom to alienate property has arguably led to the marginalization of certain segments of society. A specific example of this process can be found in the struggles of Aboriginal peoples against their colonizers. Through the process of legal alienation, Aboriginal peoples lost not only their land, but their culture and self-worth. In recent years, Aboriginal peoples have attempted to reduce their social alienation through a variety of de-alienation strategies, including social, political, and legal struggles. One tactic has been land claim litigation. Therefore, through efforts to obtain legal alienation of land, Aboriginal peoples strive to reduce their social alienation and oppression.     

Radical Transactionalism: Legal Consciousness,Diverse Economies,and the Sharing Economy

This article proposes an original theoretical approach to the analysis of community‐level action for sustainability, focusing on its troubled relationship to the sharing economy. Through a conversation between scholarship on legal consciousness and diverse economies, it shows how struggles over transactional legality are a neglected site of activism for sustainability. Recognizing the diversity of economic life and forms of law illuminates what we call ‘radical transactionalism': the creative redeployment of legal techniques and practices relating to risk management, organizational form, and the allocation of contractual and property rights in order to further the purpose of internalizing social and ecological values into the heart of economic exchange. By viewing sharing‐economy initiatives ‘beyond Airbnb and Uber’ as sites of radical transactionalism, legal building blocks of property and capital can be reimagined and reconfigured, helping to construct a shared infrastructure for the exercise of collective agency in response to disadvantage sustained by law.     

The Legal Standing of Soviet Collegia of Attorneys

Protection of the rights of citizens is the task not only of the Soviet national state but of a number of social organizations. The collegium of defense attorneys is a social organization set up and functioning specifically to conduct comprehensive defense of citizens' rights by juridical means. Defense of the individual's rights against any infringements, the struggle for legality, and assistance to socialist administration of justice make the rewarding and humane work of the attorney of major state significance. Its role increases as democratic institutions are broadened and the guarantees of the rights and freedoms of Soviet citizens are strengthened.     

Mental disorder and criminality in Canada

This article examines the relationship between mental disorder and criminality in Canada from the colonial period to the landmark 1992 Mental Disorder Amendments that followed the passing of Bill C-30. The history of this relationship has been shaped by longstanding formal and informal systems of social regulation, by the contests of federal–provincial jurisdiction, by changing trends in the legal and psychiatric professions, and by amendments to the federal Criminal Code. A study of these longer-term features demonstrates that there has been no linear path of progress in Canada's response to mentally unwell offenders. Those caught in the web of crime and mental disorder have been cast and recast over the past 150 years by the changing dynamics of criminal law, psychiatry, and politics. A long historical perspective suggests how earlier and more contemporary struggles over mental disorder and criminality are connected, how these struggles are bound by historical circumstance, and how a few relatively progressive historical moments emerging from these struggles might be recovered, and theorized to advantage.     

The Cultural Power of Law and the Cultural Enactment of Legality: The Case of Same-Sex Marriage

This paper examines the legal consciousness of same-sex couples with respect to marriage. Data from an interview-based study of 71 members of same-sex couples reveal strong consensus on the desirability of having samesex relationships legally recognized, and considerable variation in couples'attempts to enact marriage culturally through various practices, including the use of marriage-related terminology and public commitment rituals. I argue that some of these efforts to enact marriage culturally should also be read as attempts to enact legality in the absence of official law. The findings from this study challenge the idea that marginalized social actors will tend toward a resistant legal consciousness: Rather than seeking to avoid and evade legality in their everyday lives, most same-sex couples seem to embrace legality for its practical and symbolic resources, even as they stand "against the law" in their opposition to the exclusion of same-sex couples from the institution of legal marriage. Approaching marriage from the perspective of same-sex couples, this research demonstrates that the legal and cultural aspects of marriage are deeply intertwined. Cultural enactments of marriage enact legality even in the absence of official law, and many actors ascribe to law a cultural power that transcends its specific benefits and protections, the power to produce social and cultural equality.     

Morality, social norms and the rule of law as transaction cost-saving devices: the case of ancient Athens

The importance of the institutional framework for economic development is widely accepted today and it is duly stressed in the economic literature. The protection of property rights, the enforcement of contracts and an efficient legal system are the pillars of the contemporary rule of law. However, formal institutions cannot function without being internalized by the citizens and without the strong backing of social norms. Morality and social norms are the major elements of the informal institutional structure, the social capital, which is also critical for social welfare and economic development. In this paper we will discuss both the formal and the informal institutional framework of Ancient Athens, which was a free market society with economic problems similar to contemporary market societies. Athenians developed a highly sophisticated legal framework for the protection of private property, the enforcement of contracts and the efficient resolution of disputes. Such an institutional framework functioned effectively, cultivating trust and protecting the security of transactions. This entire system however was based on social norms such as reciprocity, the value of reputation and widely accepted business ethics. Conformity to social norms as well as moral behavior was fostered by social sanction mechanisms (such as stigma) and moral education. The Athenian example is a further proof of the importance of morality and social norms as transaction cost-saving devices even in quite sophisticated legal systems. Their absence or decline leads inevitably to the need for more regulation and litigation and to a growing preference for clear-cut rules instead of discretionary standards. Athenian law was pioneering in the development of rules and institutional mechanisms suitable for the reduction of transaction costs, many of them surviving in the most complex contemporary legal systems.     

哈特/德沃金之争与法律实证主义的分裂——基于“分离命题”的考察

哈特与德沃金之争及其所开放出来的问题构成了当今英美法律哲学研究的理论坐标。哈特/德沃金之争的核心在于法律与道德有无必然的关联,哈特认为法律与道德不存在必然的关联;而德沃金认为,承认规则既无法识别原则也不是一个社会规则,法律与道德存在必然的关联。法实证主义在回应德沃金的批判时,在承认规则识别法律之判准的内容上发生了分歧,分裂为排他性与包容性的法实证主义。     

New Legislation in the Union Republics with Respect to the Legal Profession

The Soviet legal profession occupies a place of honor in the system of government and public organizations whose duty it is to protect the rights and liberties of Soviet citizens and to strengthen socialist legality and order. In performing the function of defense in criminal trials and in providing other legal services to citizens, enterprises, institutions and organizations, and by vigorous activity to educate the people with respect to Soviet law, lawyers promote the defense of the rights and legal interests of the citizenry, their training in a spirit of respect for Soviet laws, prevention of crime, strengthening of socialist legality, and proper administration of justice.     

Sumptuary administration: How contested market actors shape the trajectory of policy when regulated under fragmented governance

In contemporary society, sumptuary laws regulate contested markets by delegating enforcement responsibilities to the private sector. This can decouple the intention behind policies from the practices to implement them. When state interests do not align concerning the legality of a market, can policy and practice recouple, and if so, how? This article reports on a case study of commercial cannabis in the United States to answer this question. Interviews with 56 cannabis industry stakeholders in California, Arizona, and Texas reveal that policy and practice recoupled through a patterned process that I call sumptuary administration. In each state, regulators drew on a unique set of schemas, or “framework of accountability,” that prioritized a subset of cannabis market participants during the policy-making process. This resulted in missing or ambiguous sumptuary laws. To address business challenges that were tethered to this regulatory environment, cannabis businesses drew on similar schemas to identify appropriate practices. I show how grounding practices in these frameworks legitimized the preferences of the cannabis industry in the eyes of state authorities and influenced specific program policy revisions. Sumptuary administration represents a novel mechanism for understanding the social construction of legality in markets that are regulated under fragmented governance.     

中国共产党执政合法性的法哲学思考

加强党执政的合法性研究,对于加强党的执政能力,巩固党的执政地位,意义重大。所谓合法性,其直接含义是一种合法律性,其第一要旨是社会公众对统治权力的一种认可、认同或赞同。中国共产党执政是历史和人民的选择,具有实质的合法性,但是,无庸讳言,由于社会转型期各种矛盾的凸现,党执政面临着合法性的种种挑战。因此,为了保持党执政的合法性,必须做到:维护宪法权威,保证党执政的合宪性与合法律性;坚持人民主权原则,保证党执政的实质合法性;以“三个代表”重要思想为指导,巩固党执政的价值合法性;完善程序性民主的制度性安排,保证党执政的形式合法性;加强对权力的监督和约束,有效地遏制腐败,消解党执政的合法性危机。     

The myth of popular justice under communism: A comparative view of the USSR and Poland

This paper describes two ‘popular justice’ institutions which exist in both the USSR and Poland: people's assessors and social courts (workers' courts and residential tribunals). An attempt is made to assess these developments in light of the official national ideology. In addition, these institutions are placed within the context of contemporary Western debates on popular justice in order to test the applicability of Western ideas to the reality of Soviet-style communism. While the paper does not attempt to assess the adequacy of the critical Western voices which warn against the dangers or illusory advantages of community justice in Western democracies, it demonstrates that these ideas are indeed validated when tested within the communist reality. The social courts tend not only to reflect the authoritarian relations prevailing in the communist economy, but also serve to perpetuate them. The lay assessors who accompany judges in ordinary courts are extremely passive and their influence on the process and outcome of the adjudication seems to be minimal. Above all, they cannot influence the law itself or the legal structures in which they are participating.     

Beyond Inclusive Legal Positivism*

In this essay, I characterize the original intervention that became Inclusive Legal Positivism, defend it against a range of powerful objections, explain its contribution to jurisprudence, and display its limitations and its modest jurisprudential significance. I also show how in its original formulations ILP depends on three notions that are either mistaken or inessential to law: the separability thesis, the rule of recognition, and the idea of criteria of legality. The first is false and is in event inessential to legal positivism. The second is inessential to legal positivism. The third is likely inessential to law. I then characterize the central claim of ILP in a way that relies on none of these: ILP is the claim that necessarily social facts determine the determinants of legal content. I show that ILP so conceived leaves the central debates in law largely untouched. I suggest how the most fundamental of these—the question of the normativity of law—at least can be usefully addressed. The essay closes by suggesting that even though one can distinguish the social from the normative dimensions of law, a theory of the nature of law is necessarily an account of the relationship between the two: It is a theory either of the difference that certain distinctive social facts make in normative space, or it is an account of the distinctive normative difference that law makes, and the social and other facts that are necessary to explain that difference. One can distinguish between but one cannot separate the social from the normative aspects of legality.     

Crime Data,the Internet,and Free Speech: An Evolving Legal Consciousness

Digitization and open access to governmental data have made criminal justice information incredibly easy to access and disseminate. This study asks how law should govern access to criminal histories on the Internet. Drawing upon interviews with crime website publishers and subjects who have appeared on websites, I use legal consciousness theory to show how social actors interpret, construct, and invoke law in a nascent and unregulated area. The analysis reveals how both parties construct legality in the absence of positive legal restrictions: Website publishers use legal justifications, while those appealing to have their online record cleared resort to personal pleas, as opposed to legal remedy. Ultimately, I show how current data practices reinforce structural inequalities already present in criminal justice institutions in a profoundly public manner, leaving website subjects with little recourse and an inescapable digital trail.     

商谈民主视野下的结社自由与社团立法

商谈民主理论认为社会公众通过协商和对话参与决策能达致在公共问题上的共识并实现民主,同时强调社团等＂商谈性配置＂的关键作用。结社自由是＂商谈性配置＂发挥作用的法律基础和保障,其内涵反映了个人与社团实现该自由的具体方式和途径。我国目前在社团立法上存在着合法性与正当性方面的不足,因此,应当从转变立法指导思想、明确结社自由的权利属性、完善社团管理体制等方面加以解决。