State Nationality and Religious Family Law: Some Notes

Most States are ‘secular’ States. Freedom of religion allows religious communities to organize themselves within the framework of the law of the State. In some other States organized religion has a dominant position enabling it to have a major impact on the law of the State. Private International Law (PIL) of secular States is characterized by a large extent of openness to the law of other States. The extrovert character is missing on the side of non-secular States. The difference should not pass unnoticed. Nationality loses attractiveness as a connecting factor in family law, though it persists as a pointer to the cultural frame of reference for many persons. In Western countries this development is enhanced by libertarian ideas on family law. In PIL a parallel development can be registered. The scope of conflicts of laws rules tends to lose effect on the recognition of acts and facts that are situated abroad. This new ‘method of recognition’ appears to have some effect on the case law of superior courts. The European Union has had to deal with recognition issues in the field of family law.

     

Secession and Intervention in the Former Soviet Space: The Crimean Incident and Russian Interference in Its ‘Near Abroad’

Following Russian intervention and a referendum held on 16th March 2014, the Ukrainian republic of Crimea became incorporated within Russia. The Crimean episode marked just the latest in a series of situations arising in former Soviet states in which secessionist movements within disaffected territorial units were able to advance their causes aided by Russian external intervention. These situations raise significant international legal issues pertaining to secession by component parts of existing states, underpinned by external intervention. The unwillingness of the international community to recognise Russia’s incorporation of Crimea, similar to its earlier rejection of the purported secession of South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia, reinforces the widely held view that non-consensual secession must be grounded in exceptional circumstances which were found to be lacking in all of these situations. It also reaffirms the principle that territorial changes brought about by external intervention will not be recognised. However, while legal assessments of these incidents may appear prima facie straightforward, they cannot be entirely divorced from the wider political phenomenon of ethnic conflict in former Soviet states and tensions existing in those states between factions seeking to further European integration and those prioritising strengthening relations with Russia. The international legal reasoning employed by the key protagonists must be understood with reference to this wider context.     

事实行为的基础规范

在构成要件的规范意义上,事实行为是产生特定事实效果,并因此导致法律效果法定化的行为,既不同于行为范畴外的自然事实和纯粹人体事实,也与法律行为和准法律行为有本质差异。从意思要素的作用来看,事实行为分为无目的意思、目的意思不独立和目的意思独立三种类型,呈现出体系化的架构。事实行为在与法律行为对立和互斥的同时,在规范关系上还有协力并存和制约并存的形态。     

法律行为生效要件体系的重构

我国民法理论认为,法律行为生效需具备成立要件与有效要件;法律行为成立后,是否有效不明,只有再符合有效要件,才能发生法律效力。然而,无论是从成立要件关涉保障自治、有效要件关涉限制自治,还是从成立要件具有肯定性、有效要件具有否定性,甚或从诉讼法上成立要件事实由主张法律行为上权利者举证、有效要件事实由否认法律行为效力者举证的角度来看,此种"正面"、"并列"规定有效要件与成立要件的做法均有不妥。通过建立"成立推定有效"规则,并使积极性的"有效要件"转变为消极性"效力阻却事由",可改进这些弊病。这一方案厘清了各种影响法律行为生效的因素之间,以及其与私人自治的私法主导原则之间的意义脉络,并藉"成立要件+效力阻却事由"的制度构造建立了法律行为生效的"要件体系",从而凸显了私人自治对法律行为效力发生的决定性作用,并使私人自治获得体系性实现。     

纠缠于事实与法律之中

在我国的司法审判中,基层法院法官常纠缠于格式化的司法与非格式化的现实之间。他们依据司法的格式来处理非格式化的社会现实,处理那些无法用现代法律概念涵盖的事实。但是,在实践中,这种社会生活的非格式化问题却令格式化的司法难以回答。     

中国传统的司法和法学

近来祖国大陆的法学界流行着两种对于中国传统的批评:其一指责中国传统司法者不遵循法律和先例,仅仅就事论事,凭天理人情作成判决;其二声称中国传统文化里几乎没有法学可言。二者都与事实不符。第一,中国自秦汉时起,法律已极繁多,在有明文可以适用或有成案可以比照的情形下,司法者都乐于遵循,不会自找麻烦另寻判决的依据。如果没有法律或成案可用,任何法制里的司法者都该先仔细分析案情(“就事论事”),然后探索法的精义(“天理人情”)而作成一个合乎公平正义的判决;中国传统司法者的做法并非例外。第二,中国历代都有许多学者不仅以纯理性的观点和方法对于当代的法律加以注释、批详,并且从历史背景和社会经验中去深究其渊源、目的和效能,以及法与其它社会规范的关系、法的正当性,法律条文不足时应该如何补救等法学上的重要问题,留下许多著作,对于这些问题提出了精辟的见解。只因他们的观点、方法和所用的语言及陈述方式与近人习见的不同,所以被忽略了。中国传统法制自成一系,与世界另几个重要法系并立,各有短长。如要加以检讨,应该先对它作一番整体的、深入的研究;如果想用另一法系的某些规定作为他山之石以改善中国法制,则更须对那些规定甚至整个法系作一番同样的研究,看清了二者的优劣,慎为取舍,不可以轻易地将中国目前的问题一概归咎于传统,更不该盲目地仿效他人。     

Judicial precedents in civil law systems: A dynamic analysis

This paper uses a simple dynamic model to describe the evolution of judicial decision making in civil law systems. Unlike the common law systems, civil law jurisdictions do not adopt a stare decisis principle in adjudication. In deciding any given legal issue, precedents serve a persuasive role. Civil law courts are expected to take past decisions into account when there is a sufficient level of consistency in case law. Generally speaking, when uniform case law develops, courts treat precedents as a source of “soft” law, taking them into account when reaching a decision. The higher the level of uniformity in past precedents, the greater the persuasive force of case law. Although civil law jurisdictions do not allow dissenting judges to attach a dissent to a majority opinion, cases that do not conform to the dominant trend serve as a signal of dissent among the judiciary. These cases influence future decisions in varying ways in different legal traditions. Judges may also be influenced by recent jurisprudential trends and fads in case law. The evolution of case law under these doctrines of precedents is modeled, considering the possibility for consolidation or corrosion of legal remedies and the permanence of unsettled case law.     

Genocide, Complicity in Genocide and International v. Domestic Jurisdiction: Reflections on the van Anraat Case

When adjudicating international crimes, domestic courts arefaced with a choice between the application of internationallaw or national law. In the recent van Anraat judgment, a DutchDistrict Court explicitly opted for the former alternative.This approach led to the accused's acquittal of complicity ingenocide. In the Court's opinion, there was no proof beyonda reasonable doubt that van Anraat had actual knowledge of SaddamHussein's special intent to destroy part of the Kurdish population.According to the Court, such proof is required under internationallaw. This article argues that the Court's preference for internationallaw was not prescribed, either by international law or by domesticlaw, although in principle such preference may prove advisable,whenever international rules are clear and exhaustive. Aftertracing the intricate legal discussions on mens rea requirementsfor genocide and complicity in genocide, the author concludesthat the issue has not yet been completely elucidated in internationalcase law and legal literature. In situations of ambiguity whereinternational case law offers insufficient guidance, domesticcourts would better resort to their own criminal law. As Dutchcriminal law extends the mens rea of the accomplice beyond ‘knowledge’so as to cover dolus eventualis as well, application of domesticlaw might have affected the outcome of the case.     

The Ethics of Legalism

Abstract. "Legalism" is defined as requiring that all matters of legal regulation and controversy ought so far as possible to be conducted in accordance with predetermined rules of considerable generality and clarity. Thus there may be moral limits on governments which ban them from acting on the substantive moral merits of situations with which they have to deal. This is most important in public law, but also applies in private law, e.g., in cases involving property. Hume, Kant, and Hayek are examined in respect of their case for legalism; Alexy and Finnis also reviewed. Autonomy is the foundation for legalism, and justifies "ethical positivism," in T. Campbell's phrase. Critical legal studies (Unger, Kelman, Kennedy et al.) however challenge legalism's premises. But the "critical" arguments against reification merely raise, they do not settle, the issue about the politics of legalism and the desirability of legal dogmatics. With all faults, legalism is a prerequisite of free government.     

The Problem with Entrapment

In R v Looseley; Attorney General’s Reference (No. 3 of2000) the House of Lords articulated a legal framework to govern‘entrapment’ in criminal cases. Their Lordshipsregarded the need for judicial intervention to assist entrappeddefendants as uncontroversial. This article argues that thedoctrine they set out, in fact, necessitates substantial, andlargely unarticulated, departures from principles the courtsordinarily stress as fundamental to the criminal law. In particular,entrapment doctrine determines liability for criminal acts byreference to the kind of environment inhabited by their perpetrators,a perspective the law ordinarily attempts to exclude. This articlesuggests that the anomalous treatment of entrapment can be understoodas a device to prevent the police from relocating the temptationto commit crime to environments in which they are not ordinarilyconfronted and to ensure that those from backgrounds in whichserious criminality is not usually a plausible option will escapepunishment if tempted to commit crime by the police.     

论国际贸易领域中的“私法行为公法化”

2017年夏天以来美国在中美贸易之间频频制造摩擦并对中国的相关立法和企业行为发起挑战,其表象是美国政府作出的决定,但实际上背后私人企业是始作俑者;它们所涉及的问题实质是私法行为公法化现象及其理论。历史地看,"私法行为公法化"自近代国际贸易出现之日起,就已经存在,只不过美国政府将其表达的更为直接而已。私法行为公法化意指私人将蕴含营利性的动机、目的等意志的行为通过特定形式变成国家意志的行为或过程,它影响或干预国际贸易,以实现其追求自己利益最大化之目标;通过它,私人部门对国际贸易法律制度的形成和发展产生重要影响,并体现为国际贸易的国内与国际法律规范,进而对后进的国家之国际贸易产生制约。应对中美之间的贸易摩擦不能仅限于政府之间,企业等私人部门的参与也至为重要。     

The Bush Doctrine Revisited: The 2006 National Security Strategy of the USA

In its 2006 National Security Strategy, the USA reaffirms thecontroversial doctrine of pre-emptive self-defence as crucialin the "war on terror" proclaimed after the attacks of 9/11.But it does not provide a detailed examination of pre-emption.The questions left open in the 2002 US National Security Strategyas to what will trigger pre-emptive action, when action againstnon-State actors will be permissible and what degree of forcewill be proportionate in pre-emptive action are still unresolved.The promise that "The reasons for our actions will be clear,the force measured and the cause just" does not offer much inthe way of specific guidance. It is very striking that in thiscontext, the US strategy makes no reference to internationallaw or to the role of the UN Security Council. The other mainfocus of the strategy is on the "promotion of democracy", butit does not go so far as to assert any legal right to use forcefor this purpose, and it makes only passing reference to humanitarianintervention. The EU 2003 Security Strategy provides a markedcontrast in that it does not adopt the doctrine of pre-emptiveself-defence, does not expressly identify "rogue States" anddoes profess respect for international law and for the roleof the UN. Other States have not generally shown themselveswilling to accept a Bush doctrine of pre-emptive self-defence.They agree that there are new threats facing the world frominternational terrorists and the danger of proliferation ofweapons of mass destruction, but the 2005 World Summit showedclearly that there is no general acceptance of pre-emptive action.Moreover, the International Court of Justice still follows acautious approach to self-defence. The 2006 National SecurityStrategy largely reaffirms the doctrines of the earlier 2002Strategy, but whereas the focus in the 2002 Strategy was onthe threat posed by Iraq and North Korea; attention has nowshifted to Iran and Syria, accused of being State sponsors ofterror by Hizbollah and Al-Qaida. The article ends with a discussionof the recent conflict in Lebanon: this raised the crucial questionwhether the war on terror gave Israel a wide right to use force,even a pre-emptive right. The conflict highlights dramaticallythe practical significance of the divisions on the scope ofthe law of self-defence with regard to action against non-Stateactors, pre-emption and proportionality.     

司法中的主题词

法律主题词指称的是法律要求的、典型的社会事实 ,它与社会事实之间是词与物的关系。在司法中 ,法律关注的是指称行为性质的主题词 ,而不是具体行为的细枝末节。法律主题词把现实生活中有鲜明个性的行为归结为同一种抽象行为 ,它虽然是人为创造的 ,但有重构社会生活的力量。     

GMOs in the Internal Market: New Legislation on National Flexibility

In an area where until now national autonomy has been tenaciously resisted, new EU legislation provides Member States with ‘flexibility to decide whether or not they wish to cultivate GMOs on their territory’. This forces attention on to the subtle, and not so subtle, ways in which internal market law constrains political actors in the EU. But it is similarly suggestive of how political actors might contribute to the evolution of the internal market. As well as exploring this relationship between the new legislation and internal market law, this article reflects on the ways in which lessons from the past have been addressed by legislators. Whilst it takes somewhat seriously the politics of GMOs, the new legislation simultaneously reinforces some of the limitations of our dominant models for generating knowledge, including the EU's problematic dichotomy between facts and values, risk assessment and risk management.     

Damaska and the Faces of International Criminal Justice

Mirjan Damaka 's scholarly publications provide important insightsfor the analysis of systems of criminal justice at the internationallevel. This is particularly true for his major book: The Facesof Justice and State Authority – A Comparative Approachto the Legal Process. The book develops ideal types, or models,of the structure and the function of government. As far as thestructure of government, the ideal types of hierarchical andcoordinate officialdom are contrasted with one another. Withregard to the function of government in society, two other mutuallyexclusive ideal types are developed: the ideal type of the purelyreactive state and that of the purely activist state. In thepurely reactive state all state activities are essentially aform of dispute resolution between individual citizens. Consequently,all proceedings take the shape of a contest between two parties.In the reactive state, on the other hand, all law is an expressionof state policies. This entails that all proceedings are essentiallyan official inquiry enabling the state to implement its policies.The four ideal types call for several observations, one of thembeing that, at the international level, there is no authoritythat can be compared to a state. Setting up international criminal courts requires choices withregard to the structure and function of authority. Internationalhuman rights instruments provide no guidance as to the natureof the choices to be made. In particular, they do not indicatewhether the legal process should be structured as a contestbetween two parties or as an official inquiry. The same is truefor empirical evidence. An analysis of the structures of authority in internationalcriminal courts reveal that they represent hybrids of the hierarchicaland the coordinate ideal types of officialdom. The fact thatthese courts are unitary courts has a profound effect on evidentiaryarrangements. The most important issue raised by the exposition of ideal typesof The Faces of Justice concerns the relationship between thegoals of international criminal justice and the appropriatelegal process to serve their realization. Goals of a conflict-solvingnature are best served by a legal process structured as a contestbetween two parties and goals related to the implementationof policies by a legal process structured as an official inquiry.It is therefore essential to determine what goals are beingpursed by international criminal courts. One may distinguishhere between goals that international systems of justice mayor may not have in common with national systems of criminaljustice. The pursuit of the traditional goals of criminal justicecommon to international and national systems of justice doesnot provide compelling reasons to prefer either a contest modelor an inquest model of the legal process. This is different,however, for the idiosyncratic goals of international criminaljustice that set apart international systems of criminal justicefrom national systems. The pursuit of these goals makes it desirablethat historical facts are established as accurately as is possiblein the given circumstances. They are, therefore, best servedby a legal process that takes the shape of an official inquiry.In the hybrid type of procedure adopted by the ICTY there isinsufficient clarity about the procedural status of the peculiargoals of international criminal justice as well as about theuse of procedural means to pursue them. This entails that itis not really possible to determine whether this hybrid representsa success. Hybrid types of procedure cannot truly exist withoutadopting a view with regard to the impartiality of judges thatis inspired by standards enshrined in international human rightsinstrument rather than those that are characteristic for thelegal process shaped as a contest between two parties.     

Double Nationality in the EU: An Argument for Tolerance

Currently the Member States' nationalities, short of being abolished in the legal sense, mostly serve as access points to the status of EU citizenship. Besides, they provide their owners with a limited number of specific rights in deviation from the general principle of non‐discrimination on the basis of nationality, and—what is probably more important for the majority of their owners—trigger legalised discrimination in the wholly internal situations. Viewed in this light, the requirement to have only one Member State's nationality enforced in national law by 10 Member States seems totally outdated and misplaced. This paper focuses on the legal analysis of this controversial requirement.     

The Crime of Aggression before the House of Lords: Chronicle of a Death Foretold

In the days preceding the invasion of Iraq by the Coalitionforces, groups of individuals committed acts of civil disobediencein British military bases to hinder what they thought were unlawfulpreparations for an aggressive war. In R v. Jones et al., theHouse of Lords examined the question of whether individualscan rely upon the alleged prevention of crimes against peaceto justify otherwise unlawful actions under English law. TheLords ruled that the crime of aggression is a crime under customaryinternational law, yet not under English law. This followedfrom the principle that customary crimes cannot be incorporatedinto the English legal system without statutory enactment. Asa result, the appellants could not invoke the ‘Nurembergdefence’ to elude responsibility incurred under domesticlegislation.     

Legal Hypocrisy

Accusations of hypocrisy in law and politics typically invoke hypocrisy as a personal failing. This locution misses the much more dangerous way laws and legal institutions themselves can be hypocritical. Hypocrisy can be equally revealed when an institution not only deceives another but acts against its avowed values or does not act in ways required by the values professed. Thus, legal actors, institutions, and norms can, in their institutional role, act against the values they avow, displaying legal hypocrisy. By avowing attractive values while acting in ways that undermine those values, laws and legal institutions victimize citizens to achieve goals that could not be openly justified. In doing so, hypocritical laws not only harm their victims but, by obscuring the injury, undermine the victim’s ability to call the law into account. Hypocrisy is important to highlight precisely because it suffocates the voice of its victims. Because hypocrisy takes advantage of a person while only pretending to justify one’s actions, hypocrisy not only harms citizens but treats them with a form of contempt. The vicious irony is that hypocrisy in the law not only harms its “direct victims” but ultimately undermines the very rule of law.     

A primer on US antitrust claims against patentees under Walker Process

Legal context: In the wake of two recent cases from the Federal Circuit onthe subject, this article provides an introduction to the WalkerProcess doctrine under US law. Under the doctrine, a patenteewho knowingly enforces a patent procured by intentional fraudon the patent office may lose its immunity to antitrust claims,should it act to enforce its patent. Key points: Walker Process fraud refers to a knowing and deliberate fraudperpetrated on the patent office as opposed to mere acts ofinequitable conduct. Proving that a patent applicant engagedin Walker Process fraud does not by itself prove liability foran antitrust violation. The accused infringer must still provethe individual elements of an antitrust claim. Antitrust claimsbased on Walker Process fraud require significant time and resourcesto litigate. Practical significance: With the allure of mandatory treble damages and attorney's fees,antitrust claims based on Walker Process fraud can serve asa potent counterclaim for an accused infringer's arsenal. Butthe legal requirements and resources needed to successfullylitigate these claims to a conclusion may temper their effectivenessfor the typical patent-infringement suit.