公众意见在裁判结构中的地位

从裁判依据的类型分析,公众意见只能作为一种事实依据,参与个案裁判。在常规案件中,公众意见作为一种准用的辅助性依据,可以通过弱的裁量成为合理化判决结论的说明性事实。在遇有法律漏洞的疑难案件中,与社会性主张相一致的公众意见,如果耦合法律体系中的法律原则或基本权利规范,可以籍由强的裁量充当个案推理的运作性依据,成为非常情形中正当化个案规则创制的立法性事实。在日趋多元化和复杂化的转型中国,法律系统必须在稳定性和灵活性、普遍正义和个案正义之间寻求一种平衡;判断公众意见的个案裁判地位,同样需在辅助性依据或运作性依据、说明性事实或立法性事实之间寻求一种平衡。     

法律论证中的权威与正确性——兼论我国指导性案例的效力

法律论证既需要运用权威理由,也需要运用实质理由来证立法律命题。法律渊源是最重要的权威理由,它通过说明法律命题之来源的方式来证明后者的初步有效性。制定法与先例构成了法律论证之权威性框架的主要部分,制定法属于规范权威,而先例属于事实权威,它们在司法裁判中一般只需被指明。同时,法律论证的正确性宣称决定了法律论证也必须运用有效的实质理由,即对法律命题内容的正确性进行证立。这种论证既可以是法律体系内的论证,也可以是超越体系的论证。法律论证旨在于平衡权威与正确性,其中权威论证具有初步的优先性但并非不可推翻,权威性的强度与相关正确性论证的负担成正比。以此来分析,我国的指导性案例介于规范权威与事实权威之间,它的效力是一种"准制度拘束力"。     

De-moralized: Glucksberg in the malaise

Ten years down the road, what is the enduring significance of the "assisted suicide" cases, Washington v. Glucksberg and Vacco v. Quill? The cases reflect an unusually earnest, but nonetheless unsuccessful, attempt by the Supreme Court to grapple with a profound moral issue. So, why was the Court unable to provide a more satisfying justification for its conclusions? This Article, written for a symposium on the tenth anniversary of Glucksberg, discusses that question. Part I examines some of the flaws in reasoning in the Glucksberg and Quill opinions and suggests that these flaws stem from the opinion writers' inability to recognize and articulate their underlying normative assumptions. More specifically, both the Justices and the lower court judges, on both sides of the issue, evidently attributed normative significance to something like a "natural course of life" (even when they denied doing so), but none were willing or able to make this attribution explicit. Part II discusses the modern separation of moral reasoning from the metaphysical or theological perspectives that might once have endowed "nature" with normative significance, and it suggests that the deficiencies in Glucksberg-Quill are evidence of how that separation renders moral reasoning problematic. The Conclusion wonders whether in this situation, a renewed emphasis on formalism or tradition might make legal reasoning less unacceptable.     

A Critique of Alexy’s Claim to Correctness

This article offers an overview of the difficulties in Robert Alexy’s idea of law’s “claim to correctness.” The inquiry takes us deep into the nature of simple communication, back out to what it means to have a theory about the nature of law, and also in the direction of wondering about the interaction of legal theory and practical reasoning—reasoning about how we should best act. The article offers reasons to question whether law in fact makes claims, at least in any straightforward sense. Even if one brackets that matter, there are reasons to raise doubts about what is in fact implicit in the act of lawmaking. At one level, an act of lawmaking does implicitly assert the authority to act in that way. Whether it also implies that the content of the action is morally good, or at least not clearly morally bad, is, at a minimum, a harder question.     

On the Necessity of the Interconnection between Law and Morality*

Abstract. By taking issue with Robert Alexy's claim to correctness, I attempt to cast light on the nature of the necessity that pertains to the claim. With respect to it, I argue that it should be understood as deriving from the metaphysical requirements for normative knowledge in general. These requirements are shown to include a general norm of autonomy which is a priori and necessary, and comprises a minimal morality. The line of reasoning is compatible with discourse theory, but does not presuppose it; therefore more far‐reaching conclusions can be drawn.     

多元的物权法源及其适用规律

从我国物权的立法、司法、交易等实践情况来看,我国的物权法源是多元的。在属于规范性法律文件的法源中,国家立法机构制定的物权法等狭义法律是核心,它们的位阶平等,相互间存在替代、细化、补充等关系。狭义法律之外的其他规范性法律文件,包括行政法规、地方性法规、没有变通规定的自治条例、单行条例或经济特区法规、司法解释、部门规章、地方政府规章,解释和细化了狭义法律,在不违背狭义法律目的的前提下,给物权内容提供了重要支撑。规范性法律文件所认可的法源包括国家有关规定或国务院的有关规定以及当事人订立的合同。在上述法源之外,习惯与物权法的根本宗旨、基本定位、整体风格、相关规定等高度契合,在无其他法源可供适用时起到补充作用。中国共产党的政策在农村土地物权领域发挥着重要作用,在它与狭义法律不一致时,承载基本政策和具体政策的党中央文件可作为法院裁判说理的依据.但不能成为裁判依据。     

Union After the Union: Problems of Ordering National and State Relations in the Former USSR

The reasons for the demise of powerful states are never fully clear, either to contemporaries or to historians—the varied interpretations of the fall of Rome are only one case in point. But this applies especially to empires, i.e., state structures that, over an entire geopolitical region, come to dominate nations whose statehood has thereby been destroyed or partially preserved, albeit with some portion of sovereignty, large or small, having been lost. In this sense (but only in this sense), the USSR was an empire like the Russian tsardom. But in this sense as well, the United States of America is an empire—true, a modern one, ruling as if by remote control, indirectly. Understood in this way, empires are a function of the entire world system and will disappear not only, and not so much, by dint of internal turmoil, as simply because "the world has become different."¹     

捍卫权利模式——个人信息保护中的公共性与权利

个人信息权和个人信息受保护权是两种相对立的模式,学界通常认为个人信息权赋予个人排他性的支配权,这与个人信息的公共性相矛盾。个人信息的公共性并不必然反对权利模式。一种广义的公共性包含着个人信息所负载的公共利益,个人信息的公开化也是网络时代个人和商业交往的必要前提,但这并不意味着要否定个人信息保护的权利模式。公共利益具有多样性,正是某些公共利益支持了权利。权利所蕴涵的主张权确保了人的尊严和自由,这也是个人信息保护法的立法宗旨;个人信息受保护权做不到这一点,它不具有义务指向性。但在立法模式上,个人信息保护法要以义务性规范或禁止性规范为主,这是由网络空间个人信息的性质决定的。     

The Normative Foundations of Defamatory Meaning

This paper assesses normative arguments regarding four views about defamatory meaning. The moralised view holds that a statement about a person is defamatory if and only if we ought to think less of that person if the statement is true. The nonmoralised view holds that a statement is defamatory if and only if people in fact think less of the subject on hearing the statement. A third - the dual view - can be split into two versions. The first version holds that a statement is defamatory if and only if it satisfies either the moralised or non-moralised views. The second version holds that statements satisfying either view can be defamatory, but they ought to be considered fundamentally different forms of personal defamation, with different remedies, defences and conditions of liability attached. Both the moralised and non-moralised views are rejected because they fail to acknowledge instrumental and intrinsic reputational value respectively. The first version of the dual view is rejected because it compromises the expressive value of defamation, implausibly suggests that truth should be a general defence and fails to recognise that different objections apply to the moralised and nonmoralised views. The upshot is that we ought to accept the second version of the dual view.     

The Meanings of the Logical Constants in Deontic Logic

If deontic logic is to cast light on any of the normative sciences, such as legal reasoning, then certain problems regarding its logical constants must be faced. Recent studies in the area of deontic logic have tended to assume that it is our responses to the "paradoxes" of deontic implication which are fundamental to resolving problems with the use of deontic logic to investigate various branches of normative reasoning. In this paper I wish to show that the paradoxes are of secondary importance; that they are merely by-products of the central issue, namely the ability of certain syntactic forms to embody natural language structures used in reasoning about norms. An investigation of modal syntax is proffered as the best starting-point from which to tackle the questions that still dog the legitimacy of deontic logic. Part I provides some philosophical background to the discussion of deontic logical constants. Part II addresses in greater detail issues concerning the representation of normative concepts; and Part III offers a few remarks on the general issue of deontic logic's fruitfulness as an analytical tool.     

Elmer's case: A legal positivist replies to Dworkin

Conclusion I have argued that Legal Positivism can accommodate the existence oftheoretical disagreements in law and that Ronald Dworkin is wrongto claim otherwise. As far as Legal Positivists are concerned, evenjudges who differ over both the truth of propositions of law and thegrounds or sources of law can have a legal duty to resolve their dis-agreements on the basis of legal arguments. The duty exists whenconventional legal practice creates it. Moreover, all Anglo-Americanlegal systems impose the duty on judges because all such systemscontain legal practices of the right sort: practices creating expectationsthat cases will be decided on the law even when they raise doubtsabout the content or proper formulation of a rule of recognition.Thus, Elmer's Case poses no threat to Legal Positivism. To the con-trary, it reveals the richness of that theory as few other cases can.Only if Elmer's Case is detached from the context of Anglo-American adjudication can it be said to undermine Legal Positivism.But then no theory of positive law could withstand its challenge.A draft of this essay was presented at a political theory workshop at the University of Chicago. I am grateful for comments received from Russell Hardin, Leo Katz, Steven Fletcher and Thomas Christiano on that occasion. I also thank Steven Walt and Jules Coleman, two of the better dressed philosophers I know.     

Rights,goals, and hard cases

Rights have two properties which prima facie appear to be inconsistent. The first is that they are conditional in the sense that one some occasions it is always justifiable for someone to act in a way which appears to be inconsistent with someone else's rights, such as when the defence of necessity applies. The second is that rights are indefeasible in the sense that they are not subject to being defeated our outweighed by utilitarian or policy considerations. If we view rules and the rights which they establish as being subject to a ceteris paribus clause, the form of which generates out the exceptions, the conditionality of rights becomes reconcilable with their nondefeasibility. Such a view of rules and rights would entail that the goals of the law and their orderings be considered as a part of the law. When so viewed, propositions about goals and their orderings become legitimate premises for legal reasoning, furnishing solutions to hard cases in the law of torts, without resort to balancing of interests or judicial discretion.     

The Inevitability of Moral Evaluation*

According to contemporary legal positivism, law claims to create obligations. In order for law to be able to create obligations, it must be capable of having authority. Legal positivism claims that for law to be capable of having authority, it only has to meet non‐moral or non‐normative conditions of authority. In this paper it is argued that law can only be capable of having authority if it also meets certain normative conditions. But if something must meet certain normative conditions in order to be capable of having authority and if it must be capable of having authority in order to be law, then it is only law if it is conceivable that it meets these normative conditions and this can only be ascertained by means of an evaluation. Therefore, legal positivism's claim that determining what the law is does not necessarily, or conceptually, depend on moral or other evaluative considerations (the separation thesis) is incompatible with its claim that law must be able to create obligations. Further, an analysis of Hart's concept of law shows that it is not only possible that the identification of the law depends on moral evaluation, as Hart claims, but that it is conceptually necessary that it does.     

论命题与经验证据和科学证据符合

在逻辑学上,证实与证明不同,证实只能显现一个命题之然,而证明则可以显现一个命题之所以然。法官要想获得一个完整的内心确信,不仅要知其然,而且必须知其所以然,因此,诉讼证明活动中,一个命题的核证性标准由真的证实标准和证明标准有机构成———命题与经验证据符合就是真的证实标准,命题与科学证据符合就是真的证明标准。与保证性标准意义下的真不同,这里的真总是自以为真,是感觉为真,具有相对性,是可错的。     

‘In this Day and Age’: Social Facts,Common Sense and Cognition in Tort Law Judging in the United Kingdom

Tort law judging in the United Kingdom includes judicial ‘truth claims’ or ‘social facts’ about the world, society, and institutional and human behaviour. Although corrective justice and rights scholars assert tort law is autonomous and internally referential, social facts can be influential in tort decisions. While there is some evidence of judicial use of empirical research, many social facts are based on judicial notice, judicial common sense, and intuition. Social facts, often based on judicial common sense, play a role in tort judging. However, they can also be fertile ground for the introduction of cognitive bias and judicial error. The role of social facts in tort judging is not confined to ‘policy’ reasoning but includes social framework, context, and background. Emerging research on judicial cognition can help explain the nature and impact of common‐sense social facts. There is a need to consider potential responses to judicial use of social facts and judicial cognition.     

Law, Morality, Coherence and Truth

Abstract . The author analyzes the relations between truth and law starting from the distinction between practical and theoretical spheres. He shows, first, how moral and legal statements and reasoning are connected with an operation of weighing and balancing different values and principles and how this operation is ultimately based on personal and intuitive preferences and feeling. The criteria developed by the theoretical sciences to define truth (coherence, consensus and pragmatic success) can only be translated into practical statements as criteria of correctness because we cannot affirm that a norm or value statement is true or false. The three criteria become interrelated indices of correctness: They are criteria for rational discourse.