侦查机关内设鉴定机构鉴定问题的透视与分析——13起错案涉及鉴定问题的展开

鉴定结论被人们誉为"科学证据"。通过对13起错案涉及有关鉴定问题的透视,发现这一"殊荣"因侦查机关内设鉴定机构的"问题鉴定"使某些鉴定结论成了错案的"帮凶",这不仅导致了案件事实的错认,造成了司法不公正,同时降低了司法鉴定的公信力,最终影响了诉讼效率。我国司法鉴定制度改革在取消人民法院和司法行政部门内设鉴定机构的同时,准许侦查机关内设鉴定机构,这种制度是否合理值得进一步研究。     

日本司法鉴定制度的现状与改革

日本司法鉴定制度既不能满足诉讼对鉴定的需要 ,又影响了鉴定人的水准和鉴定结论的质量 ,成为导致诉讼非公正性和非效率性的重要原因。但其目前所进行的司法鉴定改革及诉讼专门委员会的设立都以法院为主导 ,虽易实现效率性 ,但难于保障公正性。中国应当吸取日本的教训 ,不仅注重规定鉴定结论与诉讼或法官的关系 ,而且更应注重建立中立的、统一的司法鉴定组织 ,注重使其他鉴定人员与司法鉴定挂钩 ,注重司法鉴定人员的司法和科学素质。     

论法院处理环境纠纷案件中的司法能动

司法能动是法院在案件审理中,不因循先例和遵从成文法的字面含义进行司法解释的一种司法理念以及基于此理念的行动。我国法院在发挥司法能动性,处理环境纠纷案件方面作出了大量努力,为经济社会发展提供了司法保障。但法院在发挥司法能动性处理环境纠纷案件中仍然存在较大的问题。解决这些问题,必须把握法院在环境纠纷案件处理中司法能动的向度,落实司法独立,引导法官正确行使自由裁量权,努力培养环境司法专业人才,发挥法官适用法律的能动性。     

电信管制的司法介入研究

目前我国电信管制领域的案件少有进入司法程序的,明显存在排斥司法介入的情形,主要原因在于电信管制机构非中立的管制者有意扩大管制范围,电信代理问题广泛存在,法院有意缩小司法管辖范围等。境外电信管制领域的司法介入早己存在,借助司法介入机制是各国电信管制机构维护、保证和提升管制能力的一种趋势。今后我国关键要建立真正独立的电信管制机构,并通过电信立法明确其法律地位和职权范围,破除电信代理问题,引入司法介入机制,提高法院在电信管制中的影响力,促使电信管制机构依法行政,维护电信市场公平竞争和电信消费者的合法权益。     

The Elastic Ceiling: Gender and Professional Career in Chinese Courts

Since the 1990s, the number of women in Chinese courts has been increasing steadily. Many women judges have risen to mid‐level leadership positions, such as division chiefs and vice‐chiefs, in the judicial bureaucracy. However, it remains difficult for women to be promoted to high‐level leadership positions, such as vice‐presidents and presidents. What explains the stratified patterns of career mobility for women in Chinese courts? In this article, we argue that two social processes are at work in shaping the structural patterns of gender inequality: dual‐track promotion and reverse attrition. Dual‐track promotion is dominated by a masculine and corrupt judicial culture on the political track that prevents women from obtaining high‐level promotions, but still allows them to rise to mid‐level leadership positions on the professional track based on their expertise and work performance. Reverse attrition enables women to take vacant mid‐level positions left by men who exit the judiciary to pursue other careers. Taken together, the vertical and horizontal mobility of judges in their career development presents a processual logic to gender inequality and shapes women's structural positions in Chinese courts, a phenomenon that we term the “elastic ceiling.”     

深化改革背景下对司法行政化的遏制

司法行政化,即以行政的目的、构造、方法、机理及效果取代司法自身的内容,形成以行政方式操作的司法。法院司法运作的全过程均带有行政化色彩,表现为司法目的和价值的行政化、案件审判活动的行政化、上下级法院关系的行政化、司法人事制度和法院结构的行政化以及审判管理的行政化等。在给定的约束条件下,司法行政化可以弥补一线司法能力之不足,可以抗制外部干预。但其过度发展会妨碍依法治国,损害办案质量与效率,危及司法权威和公信力,阻碍法院工作的可持续发展。司法行政化的根源在于基本权力结构及其运行机制;司法功能设定的非司法化和资源配置的有限性,统一的人事管理制度和财政供应制度以及国家机能分化不足,亦为重要原因。遏制司法行政化需强化法院的司法审查功能、审判功能以及终局性纠纷解决功能;需阻隔行政性要素介入审判,建立审判独立的"二元模式";需在法院审判管理、司法行政管理、上下级法院业务管理上"去行政化"。     

Campaigning for the Bench: The Corrosive Effects of Campaign Speech?

A new era has emerged in the ways in which candidates for state judicial office campaign. In the past, judicial elections were largely devoid of policy content, with candidates typically touting their judicial experience and other preparation for serving as a judge. Today, in many if not most states, such campaigns are relics of the past. Modern judicial campaigns have adopted many of the practices of candidates for other types of political office, including soliciting campaign contributions, using attack ads, and even making promises about how they will decide issues if elected to the bench. Not surprisingly, this new style of judicial campaigning has caused considerable consternation among observers of the courts, with many fearing that such activity will undermine the very legitimacy of legal institutions. Such fears, however, are grounded in practically no rigorous empirical evidence on the effects of campaign activity on public evaluations of judicial institutions. The purpose of this article is to investigate the effects of campaign activity on the perceived legitimacy of courts. Using survey data drawn from Kentucky, I use both post hoc and experimental methods to assess whether public perceptions of courts are influenced by various sorts of campaign activity. In general, my findings are that different types of campaign activity have quite different consequences. For instance, policy pronouncements by candidates do not undermine judicial legitimacy, whereas policy promises do. Throughout the analysis, I compare perceptions of courts and legislatures, and often find that courts are far less unique than many ordinarily assume. I conclude this article with a discussion of the implications of the findings for the contemporary debate over the use of elections to select judges to the high courts of many of the American states.     

论司法对行业自治的介入

着行业协会在我国的迅速发展,其所引发的法律问题也逐渐凸显,特别是如何建立合理的对行业自治的司法介入机制成为我们必须关注的重大课题。在处理好司法权与自治权关系的前提下,应当建立起有效的司法监督机制,以保障成员免受协会自治权力的侵害；在综合考虑协会事务的性质、组织的地位以及权力的属性等多方因素的基础上,应当在民事诉讼和行政诉讼之间选择合理的司法介入方式；在允许司法介入行业自治的同时,应要求法院保持相对谨慎的态度并遵循必要原则,以防止对社会自治的不当干预。     

刑事诉讼专家辅助人出庭的观点争议及其解决思路

我国2012年修改的《刑事诉讼法》和《民事诉讼法》对“有专门知识的人”的规定相当简略,尤其是其出庭“适用鉴定人的有关规定”表述．不仅存在“有专门知识的人”是作为专家证人还是专家辅助人之争论．而且还引发是否有必要界定为中立的鉴定人诉讼地位之分歧。基于此．“有专门知识的人”参与法庭是否需要准入限制、法庭如何行使审查权限以及是否适用回避制度、其权利义务如何确定、如何在法庭上进行质证、其质证的效力如何以及在法庭上应安排何种位置等问题需要理论予以澄清．而理论需要结合我国司法制度与诉讼制度的要求及其功能作出具有规范意义的诠释．     

我国环境审判专门化的探索与发展——基于环保法庭的法律分析

环境审判专门化在生态文明建设的大背景下具有正当性和必要性。我国设立的各种环保法庭是对环境审判专门化的有益探索。但是我国的环保法庭还存在审判模式不统一、管辖权缺少法律依据、组成人员不专业等问题。环境审判专门化的制度建构应该从合理确定环保法庭的管辖权和受案范围、放宽原告诉讼资格推进环境公益诉讼、实现环保法庭组成人员的多元化、促进环保法庭诉讼与非诉讼程序的衔接等方面进行。     

组织视角下的民事诉讼发回重审制度

民诉法学界和实务界有关二审程序中的发回重审存在较大争议,该制度成为本次民诉法修改的重要议题之一。为了形成共识,对这一问题从法解释论的角度进行阐释解说尤为必要。为了限制发回重审裁量权的滥用,我国司法实践中采用程序细化与加强对审判的组织管理并行的策略。不过这种"程序"与"组织"的交织并不能真正抑制裁量权滥用,反而因剥夺当事人的程序参与权而损害审判的公信力。为调整二者的相互关系,应在审判管理的组织背景下保障审判程序的自主性,恢复当事人在程序运作中的结构性位置。     

Judicial Specialization and Ideological Decision Making in the US Courts of Appeals

We investigate the influence of subject matter expertise, opinion specialization, and judicial experience on the role of ideology in decision making in the courts of appeals in a generalized, as opposed to specialized, setting. We find that subject matter experts and opinion specialists are significantly more likely to engage in ideological decision making than their nonspecialist counterparts and that opinion specialization is a particularly potent factor in ideological decision making. Further, increased judicial experience has no effect on the conditional use of ideology. We discuss the potentially wide‐ranging implications of our findings for both theory and policy.     

Transnational Jihadism and the Role of Criminal Judges: An Ethnography of French Courts

Lower national courts are increasingly asked to perform a transnational role, being directly involved in major geopolitical issues such as conflicts, migration, and transnational terrorism. Based on an ethnography of French criminal courts, this article aims to examine this emerging role of national lower courts as transnationalized players. Through an examination of terrorism prosecutions in France and the positions of the different judicial actors, it is argued that lower criminal courts, acting within a transnational context, can offer more robust resistance to states’ policies than supreme courts. This is because of the routine and the banality of their function and the direct interaction with the accused persons coupled with the judges’ own professional ethos and notion of judicial independence. Unlike supreme courts, whose role is more visible, and thus under the constant scrutiny of the political branches of the state, lower courts can operate in a more distant, independent space.     

Mental Health Courts and Their Selection Processes: Modeling Variation for Consistency

Admission into mental health courts is based on a complicated and often variable decision-making process that involves multiple parties representing different expertise and interests. To the extent that eligibility criteria of mental health courts are more suggestive than deterministic, selection bias can be expected. Very little research has focused on the selection processes underpinning problem-solving courts even though such processes may dominate the performance of these interventions. This article describes a qualitative study designed to deconstruct the selection and admission processes of mental health courts. In this article, we describe a multi-stage, complex process for screening and admitting clients into mental health courts. The selection filtering model that is described has three eligibility screening stages: initial, assessment, and evaluation. The results of this study suggest that clients selected by mental health courts are shaped by the formal and informal selection criteria, as well as by the local treatment system.     

Courts between Democracy and Hybrid Authoritarianism: Evidence from the Venezuelan Supreme Court

This article offers a theoretical discussion about courts in “hybrid regimes” that evolve from formerly democratic countries. The evolution toward authoritarianism typically allows governments more latitude to reduce judicial independence and judicial power. Yet, several reasons, including legitimacy costs, a tradition of using courts for judicial adjudication and social control, and even the use of courts for quenching dissent may discourage rulers from shutting down the judicial contestation arena and encourage them instead to appeal to less overbearing measures. This usually leads to a decline of the judiciary's proclivity to challenge the government, especially in salient cases. To illustrate these dynamics, I discuss the rise and fall of judicial power in Venezuela under Chávez's rule, focusing on the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court. Formerly the most powerful institution in the country's history, the Chamber briefly emerged as an influential actor at the beginning of the regime, but a comprehensive intervention of the judiciary in 2004 further politicized the court and effectively reduced its policy‐making role.     

A Court Quietly Rewrote the Federal Pesticide Statute: How Prevalent is Judicial Statutory Revision?

Author's Note: My thanks to Lloyd Musolf, Paul Sabatier, Martin Shapiro, John M. Thomas and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier draft. I also acknowledge the generous support of the Energy and Environmental Policy Research Program at the Institute of Ecology, University of California at Davis.
The resurgence in policymaking by American courts has revitalized the longstanding debate over judicial activism. Yet much of that debate addresses judicial interpretations of the Constitution, as distinct from statutory law. When interpreting vague statutes, judges can make inconspicuous but fundamental policy reforms. This paper discusses the political circumstances encouraging this form of judicial intervention. The enormous subtlety in judicial capabilities is illustrated. The paper concludes that by focusing primarily on obvious features of court activism, the contemporary debate may be seriously under representing the extent of judicial contributions to our fragmented form of governance.     

Judicial Activism in Perilous Times: The Turkish Case

Under what circumstances do courts act in ways that challenge the political hegemony of the military in countries with weak democratic institutions? This article addresses this question by focusing on a critical case of judicial activism in Turkey. It argues that lower courts unexpectedly can be centers of judicial activism that contributes to expansion of civil liberties and restrictions on arbitrary state power when the high judiciary supports the political status quo. This is because lower courts provide greater access to legal mobilization pursued by civil society actors. At the same time, judicial activism in lower courts is sustainable only when political power is distributed among elites with conflicting interests, and the civilian government offers support and protection to activist members of the judiciary.     

地位与策略:“大调解”中的人民法院

本文是对当前部分地方推行的,力图追求法院在大调解中占据主导地位的本土实践的反思,并试图通过论述证明:法院在现有的制度环境下很难真正地扮演起大调解中的主导角色。这与执政党对法院的定位、社会公众对解纷机构的选择倾向和司法的固有限度息息相关。法院的这种角色决定了其在追求大调解格局主导地位过程中所采用的各种策略。这些策略的采用虽然极大提升了法院解决疑难纠纷的能力,但却同时进一步限制了法院对主导地位的追求。二律悖反的事实说明准确定位才是法院在大调解中发挥更大作用的基础和关键。     

行政立法司法审查之成因

在我国,法院在行政诉讼中对于作为行政行为依据的行政立法不具有审查权,而其他国家则毫无例外地将这种审查权赋予了法院。法院在诉讼中之所以必须审查行政立法,不仅是由于议会审查和行政审查存在着缺陷,而且也是由于司法权的特点决定的。法院的这种审查权是行政诉讼制度发挥功能的必要条件,没有这种审查权,法院对具体行政行为的合法性审查就无法落实。     

从一起撤销仲裁裁决案看我国司法监督的范围

在仲裁司法监督范围这一问题上,理论界一向有争议。通过对东莞市中级人民法院一起裁定驳回申请撤销仲裁裁决案例的分析,可以看出,司法实践中,已经将程序问题作为司法对仲裁的主要监督范围,将司法审查范围限于程序性审查有助于保障仲裁的独立性和自治性。因此,删除现行法律关于仲裁实体审查的规定,既符合国际惯例,也有助于促进我国仲裁事业的发展。