Anonymous Speakers and Confidential Sources: Using Shield Laws When They Overlap Online

The development of the Internet as a mass medium has created new tensions between the rights to speak anonymously and to be protected against defamation. Some courts have developed balancing tests to determine when anonymous speakers should be unmasked, the most popular of which generally require some initial showing of prima facie evidence. Other times, shield laws have been used to protect the anonymous when comments have been posted on news organization Web sites. However, news organizations should be cautious when using shield laws to protect anonymity, and judges should evaluate privilege claims as they always have. In other instances, anonymity appears to be adequately protected by summary judgment balancing tests. An approach in which news organizations focus on the type of comment and its potential journalistic contribution in deciding how to protect commenters’ identities could help ensure that anonymous speech is properly protected without harming shield laws.     

Online Public Response to Dutch News About Money Laundering

In this paper we analyze how Dutch Public Prosecution’s press releases about money laundering and underground banking are received by producers and consumers of online news reports. First we take a closer look at how journalists (re)framed six official press releases in 75 news reports. It turns out that journalists do not regularly adopt the success frame that the Public Prosecution uses in its press releases. Furthermore, the role of the Public Prosecution Service or the police is downplayed. The moral message that “crime should not pay” receives no coverage in news reports. Second, we analyze how the news reports generated 276 online comments. We distinguish three ways in which online commenters respond to news reports; they (1) appreciate, (2) downplay or (3) condemn the authorities’ success. Commenters are particularly likely to downplay or condemn the police’s success. When a news report focuses on ‘underground bankers’, commenters often express a negative opinion about the effort to curb money laundering. It also appears that readers did not always understand the use of a term like underground banking.     

德国民间组织监管体制的特点与启示

悠久的结社传统使得德国民间组织的发展极为成熟.众多的民间组织在德国的政治、经济、社会、文化等领域发挥着极为重要的管理和调节作用.在其发达的民间组织背后,是一套由健全的法律制度框架、政府管制方式以及民间组织自律机制所共同构成的、特殊的德国民间组织监管体制.     

News media reporting on civil litigation and its influence on civil justice decision making

The news media have the potential to act as a powerful influence on the civil litigation system, influencing decision making in particular cases and on the system more generally as media reports influence the decision making of various participants in the system. This paper reviews the research that has examined the relationship between news media reporting and civil litigation and proposes a framework that integrates this work and provides guidance for future research efforts. Specifically, we discuss the nature of media reporting on civil litigation, perceptions of the civil litigation system held by the public and legal actors, and the potential influence of news reporting about civil litigation on the decision making of jurors, judges, civil litigants, and policymakers. Overall, the research suggests that news reporting of civil litigation presents a systematically distorted picture of civil litigation and that this reporting can influence perceptions and outcomes of civil litigation in various ways. However, there are many gaps in the existing research that need to be filled. The proposed organizational scheme helps to identify ways that future research can provide links between the findings of existing research and to identify ways in which this research can be extended to new areas.     

Protecting Journalists’ Sources Without a Shield: Four Proposals

Journalists’ right to protect the identities of their confidential sources relies on an inconsistent set of court decisions based on constitutional and common law interpretations and state statutes. Efforts to bring some consistency to federal law through the passage of a shield law have stalled while journalists face new threats because of the vulnerability of their communications to discovery and monitoring by third parties. Also, the entry of non-professional communicators into the news ecosystem is causing courts to reevaluate and redefine long-standing protections. This article proposes four ways that sources could be better protected from unmasking without the passage of a shield law: improving whistleblower laws to better protect people who report illegal or unethical actions to the media; vastly reducing the number of government secrets to make “leaking” less attractive or necessary; changing legal strategy to focus on protecting the anonymity of sources instead of the rights of journalists to keep secrets; and more widespread and intelligent use of encrypted applications and software could all improve the security of journalistic sources. Because of the complexity of amending multiple whistleblower protection laws and changing the government’s document classification system, the article argues that the best solutions may be to persuade news organizations to change legal tactics and to use better encryption technology.     

Field Theory,Cultural Capital,and the First Amendment: Two Paradoxes in the Legitimation of News

Does law influence the legitimation of news? I examine legitimations offered during ethics debates about news stories in which private people are thrust into the media spotlight. When navigating the space between what can be published lawfully and what should be published, journalism organizations offer legitimations that vary in ways that reflect the hierarchy of legal frameworks for decision. According to field theory, the cultural capital of the juridical field is constitutive of status hierarchies in the journalism field, even though the First Amendment leaves journalism to structure itself. This structuring leads to two paradoxes. First, in the performance of negative legitimation, news organizations justify ethics violations by converting the minimum standard of lawful speech into claimsmaking about laudable speech. Second, in acts of displacing legitimation, reporters suggest that more publicity is the remedy for invading privacy, translating the valorization of speech rights over privacy rights into a puzzling norm.     

北京民间妇女组织公信力建设的路径探索

公信力是民间妇女组织获取支持并得以持续发展的重要条件。近年来,北京民间妇女组织有了一定程度的发展,但相对于其他民间组织,民间妇女组织发展则较为缓慢,其突出表现为公众对民间妇女组织的认知度偏低。因此,提高北京民间妇女组织的公信力,需从自律机制、他律机制两方面寻求具有可操作性的实施路径。     

谈民间组织发展与政府职能转变的互动关系

民间组织发展和政府职能转变的互动关系构成了市民社会与国家二元互动的一个缩影,也是行政管理体制改革事业有效开展的重要组成部分。政府职能转变为民间组织发展提供了重要契机和必要空间,并将带来政府对民间组织监督和管理方式的相应变化;民间组织的发展也将会从多个方面推动政府职能转变和行政管理体制改革,并成为政府职能转变效果的重要表征和继续改革的信心来源与动力支撑。     

The Price of Civil Rights: Black Lives,White Funding,and Movement Capture

What influence do funders have on the development of civil rights legal mobilization? Fundraising is critical to the creation, operation, and survival of rights organizations. Yet, despite the importance of funding, there is little systematic attention in the law and social movements and cause lawyering literatures on the relationship between funders and grantees. This article recovers a forgotten history of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's (NAACP) campaign to protect black lives from lynchings and mob violence in the early twentieth century. I argue that funders engaged in a process of movement capture whereby they used their financial leverage to redirect the NAACP's agenda away from the issue of racial violence to a focus on education at a critical juncture in the civil rights movement. The findings in this article suggest that activists tread carefully as the interaction between funders and social movement organizations often creates gaps between what activists want and what funders think movements should do.     

Copyright Ownership of Online News: Cultivating a Transformation Ethos in America's Emerging Statutory Attribution Right

Several federal district courts in 2009 and 2010 interpreted a relatively obscure provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to grant a potentially broad right of attribution to owners of copyright in creative works. The statutory provision prohibits removal or alteration of copyright management information. The law gives reason for both hope and fear for news organizations. On one hand, an attribution requirement is seen by some in the news industry as relief from negative effects of technology, including online news aggregators. On the other hand, news organizations already have been sued under the copyright management provision for their conduct in newsgathering. This article examines the copyright management information provision and concludes that transformation will be a key consideration in balancing the interest in attribution with preservation of newsgathering's reliance on access to and fair use of copyright-protected works.     

State‐Sponsored Homophobia and the Denial of the Right of Assembly in Central and Eastern Europe: The “Boomerang” and the “Ricochet” between European Organizations and Civil Society to Uphold Human Rights

State‐sponsored homophobia emerged in certain Central and Eastern European states in the past decade, with the denial of the right of assembly for gay pride marches. However, more recently there has been progress in the recognition of the fundamental democratic right of assembly. What accounts for this progress in fulfilling commitments enshrined in the European human rights treaties? This article proposes that the response of European organizations, in particular the Council of Europe and the European Union, as well as human rights nongovernmental organizations working in collaboration with local civil society organizations, have been critical to this progress. Previous literature has described a “boomerang” effect, in which aggrieved citizens use transnational activist networks to publicize human rights violations and put pressure on governments to fulfill their international legal commitments. To understand the functioning and effectiveness of the “boomerang” we introduce the concept of the “ricochet”—a process in which various institutions and civil society rapidly exchange information as well as political and legal argumentation. We posit that the ricochet is an integral process in the development of a European consensus on the human rights recognized by the European Court of Human Rights. Four cases have been selected for empirical analysis: Poland, Latvia, Serbia, and Russia. In analyzing the ricochet of information and argumentation between institutions and civil society, we find the consensus has been framed around the right of assembly, instead of the more contested area of human rights and sexual orientation.     

论民法上土地与建筑物的关系——以一元推定主义为中心的理论探索

对于民法上土地与建筑物的关系问题,学术界长期以来众说纷纭。但通过一种形而下的还原性考察可以发现,罗马法及近现代范式民法其实既未采取绝对的一元主义,也不是纯粹的二元主义,而是以一元推定主义为共性,英美法亦不例外。我国立法尚有必要进一步契合一元推定主义的法理,妥善安排土地权利与建筑物权利的得丧变更,以保障秩序、自由、平等和效益等多元价值目标的协调。     

中国民间组织的合法性困境

中国民间组织存在严重的合法律性问题,一方面,占总数80％以上的民间组织属于“非法存在”,另一方面,经过合法登记的民间组织也存在内部管理不善、财务混乱甚至违法犯罪等问题。从法律角度考察,民间组织的合法律性困境,直接地由执法部门的执法不能导致,归根结底由立法不当产生。现行的民间组织法规体系严重缺乏实效,处于正当性与合法律性均不足的困境中。解决民间组织的现实问题,需要尽快制定《民间组织法》,推进管理制度变革,从控制型管理转向培育型管理。     

How do I vote the scoundrels out? Why voters might not punish corrupt politicians at the polls

While we frequently hope electoral democracy can serve as an important constraint on corruption, there are good reasons to think that such might not be the case. This paper analyzes two closely-related questions: should we expect voters to punish corrupt politicians or parties at the polls, and should we expect such influences to check corruption generally? While there have been clear-cut cases in which such punishments have been massive and decisive, they are much the exception. Indeed, a variety of factors having to do with corruption as a concept and as a political issue, the nature of competitive electoral politics, and more recent economic and political trends reshaping important aspects of liberal democracy, all point toward a pessimistic assessment. Ideas for changing that state of affairs are few, because the difficulties reside less at the level of fixable “problems” and more with the inherent workings of liberal political and economic systems. Efforts to improve the quality of news coverage and civic education, however, and any prospects for strengthening and deepening civil society, may hold out some hope for the longer term.     

法治理想主义与法治现实主义——读《法治进程中的“民间治理”》有感

在法治理想主义路线中,中国民间组织的法治意义被描绘成如下一幅法治秩序的生长图景:在国家与社会的合作互动中,多元化的民间组织通过协商、谈判参与立法实践,形成被共同认可的、且对国家法律有支撑和补充作用的"民间法"。法律运行方式亦从全能独断式向参与、协商式转变。然而,如此一幅民间法律治理的理想图景却遭遇到现阶段中国民间组织生长艰难的挑战。与法治理想主义以理想性立场为核心的分析进路不同,法治现实主义更关注法治现实进程及其制约因素,在民间组织等相关问题上,更强调分步推进战略,谨慎寻求得近期行动的可行性及其与远期行动之间的协调与衔接。由此,在几个重要方面形成了与法治理想主义不同的理论特点。     

Maintaining legitimacy using external communication strategies: An analysis of police-media relations

Police organizations must strategically control their external environment in order to maintain organizational legitimacy. Exploiting their relationship with the news media is one way to accomplish this goal effectively. Despite the documented importance of crime, justice, and social control as a news topic, there is a limited understanding of the variables driving how police and media evaluate this relationship. This study used data collected from a national sample of police media personnel to fill this gap, and concluded that the police and media valued their interdependent relationship, but for different reasons. Police public information officers recognize the power of the media and attempt to use this power to promote the organization. News personnel are satisfied because the police provide data so they can easily produce crime stories. The implications for understanding how police organizations control their external organization are discussed.     

论民事检察监督的范围

在检察机关的各项职权中,行使最"杂"的莫过于民事检察权了。民事检察的范围,从现行法律的规定看仅是"生效的判决和部分裁定";从检察机关的宪法地位考察包括任何公权力机关对民事法律的适用范围;从法理上评析:检察监督职能的发挥必须规范在与其他国家机关的关系上,行使代表公共利益的国家公权力机关不正确实施国家民事法律,构成了民事检察监督的事实原因。民事检察权力运用是否正确依存于民事审判权力。民事检察监督的范围:在对象上,是代表公共利益的机关(包括事业单位和企业);在内容上,应当围绕民事法律在公权力机关的实施;在阶段上,包括诉前、诉中和诉后的任何阶段。     

Exorbitant CEO compensation: just reward or grand theft?

The failure of society to criminalize policies and practices of powerful organizations and individuals that are demonstrably harmful has been a central theme of the white collar crime literature since Sutherland. In recent years much commentary and criticism has been directed at vastly exorbitant compensation packages awarded to CEOs of major corporations and other major institutions. Although some criminal prosecutions have been pursued on the basis of allegations of fraud in relation to CEO compensation (e.g., the Dennis Kozlowski/Tyco case and the Conrad Black/Hollinger case), and some civil lawsuits demanding repayment of unjustifiably large CEO compensation have been initiated (e.g., the Richard Grasso/New York Stock Exchange case), most typically exorbitant CEO compensation packages result in neither criminal indictments nor civil lawsuits. This article explores the status of exorbitant CEO compensation as a criminological phenomenon, beginning with a typology of different views on such compensation. The contemporary scope of disproportionate compensation is reviewed, with the exponential increase in the gaps between the compensation of CEOs and those below them documented. Some of the different mechanisms along a continuum of legal to illegal for providing exorbitant CEO compensation are identified. Why is the awarding of exorbitant CEO compensation typically legal? What specific forms of harm arise from awarding exorbitant CEO compensation? Why do Corporate Board Compensation Committees award exorbitant CEO compensation? Indeed, what are the specifically criminogenic dimensions of Corporate Board decision-making that contribute to this process? What arguments can be advanced in favor of criminalizing exorbitant CEO compensation and against doing so? What specific practical constraints would have to be overcome to criminalize the awarding of exorbitant CEO compensation? If exorbitant CEO compensation has not been addressed traditionally as a form of white collar crime, what arguments can be advanced in favor and against doing so now? This article promotes attention to the exorbitant CEO compensation issue by white collar crime scholars, with a provisional addressing of the questions raised above.     

行政权的边界意识及其法律培植研究

行政权边界意识以哲学上的意识和边界意识为认识前提,以行政权本身为成立和运行载体,由行政权的执行者在头脑中形成与刻意.行政权边界意识的主要范畴主要包括：行政权与公民权的边界意识、行政权与共同公权力的边界意识、行政权的时空边界意识、行政责任与社会责任的边界意识.行政权边界意识的观念提升,宪法、法律以及判例对行政权与公民权边界的明确,公民权利意识对行政权边界意识的反致作用,是行政权与公民权边界意识的法律培植.而行政权与立法权、司法权边界意识以各自的权限为基本意识架构,在责任上,禁止行政责任之社会责任化承担.     

我国民间组织的合法性困境及立法思路探讨

民间组织的大规模兴起反映出我国公民社会建设过程中社会领域改革的功能性需求,但现行立法指导思想的偏差和法规体系的严重滞后,不仅制约了民间组织快速、健康发展,难以满足社会对公民结社自由权行使的迫切要求,也导致了民间组织出现严重的合法性困境。解决这一困境,既要明确立法指导思想,解决好立法原则的适时性、稳定性和连续性问题,更要兼顾民间组织培育与社会发展的良性互动关系,尊重民间组织成长的自身规律。