Grenada: the Path to Revolution

At dawn on 13 March 1979, people living near the army barracks in the valley of True Blue near St. George's, capital of the young state of Grenada, were awakened by gunfire. A detachment of 47 rebels was attacking the barracks where approximately 300 soldiers were housed, and, taking advantage of the panic, seized the guns and ammunition stored there. The soldiers fled. It was 4 a.m., and an hour later the rebels took over the radio station. They appealed over the radio to the populace to take up arms and support the revolution that was beginning. The police were advised to surrender without resistance. In the hours that followed, the detachments of rebels, now joined by workers and student youth, seized the prime minister's residence, telegraph installations, and other strategic objectives. In the course of the day, all police stations hung out white flags. The sagging regime collapsed. Fidel Castro called the anti-imperialist democratic revolution that had been victorious in Grenada "a big revolution in a small country."¹     

军事法与军事伦理关系初探

军事伦理和军事法作为上层建筑的成分,都是对军事行为加以规范、控制,并通过规范、控制军事行为来调整军事社会关系。虽然二者之间存在诸多区别,但并非各自属于相互排斥的独立系统,而是客观地存在着一种相互依存、互相渗透的关系。军事法对军事伦理道德起着保护的作用,并促进其发展;军事伦理规范对军事法律制度则是一种重要的补充力量,对军事法的实施起着辅助的作用,对培养和影响军事主体对其现行军事法律制度采取什么态度有着重要的意义。     

论军事法的命令性特征与军事命令的法律性特征

军事命令和军事法作为指引军事活动的最主要的两类依据,二者具有内在的联系.军事法具有命令性的特征,军事命令亦具有法律性的特征.同时,军事法和军事命令又具有各自的独立性.在军事社会中,命令性因素关涉军事主权者的意志,法律性因素关涉现代规则治理精神.军事命令的法律性特征与军事法的命令性特征将“意志性”和“规则性”这两者沟通起来,形成军事法治的独特精神.在实践中应当处理好军事命令与军事法的关系,既要防范军事命令与军事法的混同与错位,也应防范二者的过度分离.     

The Status of Criminal Libel in Grenada After Worme v. Commissioner of Police

In January 2004, the Privy Council, the final court of appeal for all British Caribbean states, held that a criminal libel statute providing for the two-year imprisonment of publishers libeling government officials was constitutional and consistent with a democratic society. Over the years, the constitutionality of criminal libel laws in the United States has been attacked with only marginally greater success than the Grenadian law. This article provides a background to the development of criminal libel laws in the two regions; traces the 2004 decision, the threats and actions brought against the media by the Grenadian government in its aftermath; and discusses the likely effect that it could have on the law of libel in the British Caribbean.     

Fair and impartial railroad: The jury,the media,and political trials

The clash between social movements and political authority is often played out in the court rooms in criminal cases which are loosely described as “political trials.” While prosecutors, judges, and defendants rarely agree as to the “political” nature of a particular case, all parties usually regard the jury as the pivotal factor. The jury, of course, is enshrined in Anglo-American legal theory as the final check against suppression of liberty by the state. Plea bargaining is out of the question when the very legitimacy of the state is challenged and when dissident defendants are determined to use the trial process as a means of political expression. The crucial question is whether the jury has in fact lived up to its Constitutional role.The article attempts to answer this question at two levels. First, the history of political trials in the United States is reviewed with the general finding that radicals have faced juries which were both grossly unrepresentative of the general population and typically hostile to the ideas, life styles, and social origins of the defendants. Second, the article considers in some detail the impact of media coverage on potential jurors on one particular recent political case, the 1977–1978 trial of accused “guerrilla-bombers” Richard Picariello and Eduard Guilion in the Federal District Court of Southern Maine. The survey opinion data presented for this case strongly indicate that any chance of a fair trial for the defendants was compromised by effects of sustained hostile media coverage before the onset of the trial. Finally, the article considers available remedies in the form of either legislative reforms designed to ensure representative juries, or voir dire procedures aimed at eliminating biased jurors. A review of these remedies offers little hope that future political trials will be substantially fairer than in the past. Moreover, the direction of current criminal justice reforms, as in the proposed S-1722 Federal Criminal Code, promise to criminalize further important forms of political expression.The conclusion is not that jury trials should be avoided or minimized, since judges are apt to be even more predisposed against dissidents. Rather, the point is that the social and ideological biases which intrude especially in political trials are rooted in the political economy of capitalism which underlies the legal system itself. The jury system remains the best available defense against legal repression, but “justice” must ultimately await the outcome of continued social struggle, rather than further refinements of legal process.     

Private Military Contractors,Crime, and the Terrain of Unaccountability

Criminological research has traditionally attempted to explain the etiological factors of crime and then suggest appropriate controls. More often than not, the foci of this kind of work have remained on “street crime.” Since the 1990s, however, some scholars have turned their attention to the causal factors of corporate crime, state crime, crimes of globalization, supranational crimes, and their various permutations and interconnections. Clearly missing from this literature is the growing phenomenon of private military contractors (PMCs) and the crimogenic culture of and atmosphere within which they operate. Specifically, while the use of PMCs is rapidly growing, the increasing propensity for PMC's crimogenic culture and the unregulated nature of what has become a global industry is rarely studied by social scientists. Further, few criminologists have examined this area of research by applying criminological theory to explain the growth and emergence of PMCs. Our goal is to help fill this gap. Through the process of theory building and refinement we identify factors that facilitate the criminogenic environment within which PMCs operate. Additionally, without attempting to expand explanatory and causal mechanisms, policies aimed at reducing PMC criminality and social justice for their victims cannot be developed. As such, we draw from theoretical developments in state and state‐corporate crime, social disorganization, and anomie literature to shed light on key factors associated with PMCs, namely, the crimogenic atmosphere within which they operate.     

Military Veterans, Culpability, and Blame

Recently in Porter v. McCollum, the United States Supreme Court, citing “a long tradition of according leniency to veterans in recognition of their service,” held that a defense lawyer’s failure to present his client’s military service record as mitigating evidence during his sentencing for two murders amounted to ineffective assistance of counsel. The purpose of this Article is to assess, from the just deserts perspective, the grounds to believe that veterans who commit crimes are to be blamed less by the State than offenders without such backgrounds. Two rationales for a differential treatment of military veterans who commit crimes are typically set forth. The Porter Court raised each, stating that we should treat veterans differently “in recognition of” both “their service” and “the intense stress and mental and emotional toll” of combat. The former factor suggests there being a “social contributions” or gratitude-based discount, whereas the latter factor points towards a “mental disturbance” discount. This Article analyzes the two accounts and raises some doubts about both. This Article then argues that a military veteran who commits a crime should not be blamed to the full extent of his blameworthiness, not necessarily because of his mental capacity nor because of his social contribution, but because the State’s hand in producing his criminality undermines its standing to blame him.     

军事法体系的反思与重构

军事法学研究是一个长期积累而又需要不断自省的过程,对以往研究成果的借鉴与批判,对过去研究进路的重审与反思,是中国军事法学取得突破性发展的关键。在这个意义上,由法律出版社出版的《军事法学》(2006年)为我们打开了一扇窗户,该书首次对中国军事法体系进行了反思和重构,确立起了与以往完全不同的研究进路,并就军事权、军事组织法等提出了一系列新的观点,体现出军事法学研究的思路创新和自省、批判精神。     

The reformers’ dilemma: media,policy ownership,and reform

Current proposals for strengthening policy ownership in reforming economies are fundamentally flawed. Modeling the reform process as a prisoners’ dilemma demonstrates that political agents must overcome this conflict of interests before present proposals for bolstering ownership will work. A politically autonomous mass media is one important mechanism enabling political agents to do this. Reforming countries without free media face an uphill battle overcoming the problems associated with transition. We test our theory by investigating the relationship between media freedom, foreign aid, and economic development in 26 post-socialist transition countries. The results of this analysis support our theory.      

Military government, political control and crime: The case of Israeli Arabs

This paper deals with the different methods used to control the Israeli Arab population during the military government (1948–1966). I have sought to expand the standard conceptual framework that serves most criminologists in Israel, and discuss the broader context in which the political control of the Arab population took place. It is vital to consider this context because a significant amount of criminality among the Arab population was an outcome of the political control imposed upon it. The principal goal of the analysis is to clarify the ways in which the political control influenced the criminal process, and to point out to the theoretical and empirical importance of the links between politics and crime, when discussing crime amongst the Arab minority in Israel.     

Arts districts,universities, and the rise of digital media

In the last decade, arts and culture have been placed at the center of attention when discussing economic growth. In particular, studies on the “creative class” have been using arts and culture as an important factor impacting local economies. In addition, studies on local economic development have frequently viewed universities as a major factor in economic growth. In the middle of this discussion is new economic growth via creativity, via new recipes and new combinations of local capital, and via innovation centers. Combining these disparate literatures brings to center stage both clusters of arts and culture and concentrations of research and human capital development. Hence, the focus of this paper is to analyze the dual impacts of universities and arts districts on innovation and economic growth through employment in digital media. The results indicate that cultural districts have a consistently positive effect on local digital media economic activity—employment and innovation. The same cannot be said for research universities.     

The Military Dimension of the War on Drugsin Mexico and Colombia

The Armed Forces of Colombia andMexico have characteristics thatdifferentiate them from the rest of theirLatin American counterparts. They areatypical armed forces that are shaped bythe realities of their contemporarypolitical history. The failure of lawenforcement institutions has forced bothmilitaries to take on the mission ofcombating drug trafficking andinternational criminal cartels. In orderfor these militaries to successfullyaccomplish this mission, they must besubordinated to civilian rule, cooperatewith other countries and internationalorganizations, and be accountable to therule of law.     

Newsmaking criminology: Reflections of the media,intellectuals, and crime

Although academicians in criminology and criminal justice have come to appreciate the importance of the media in constructing ideological images of crime and punishment, apparently they have not considered how to use mass communications for the purposes of informing, interpreting, and altering those images to reflect more realistically the social, political, and economic conditions of crime and social control. Beginning with an analysis of the relationships among the developing political economy of the mass media, intellectuals, and conceptions of crime and justice, this essay introduces a criminological practice that can take advantage of the available opportunities in the production of crime news. I call this practice “newsmaking criminology.” It refers to the conscious efforts of criminologists and others to participate in the presentation of “newsworthy” items about crime and justice.     

美国军事司法体制

美国军事司法体制直接起源于英国的《战争条款》,这种体制强调军事指挥官对军事司法程序的控制,军事司法的独立性、公正性很难得到保障。《统一军事司法法典》的颁行,加强了军事司法的法律之治和对正当程序因素的吸收,增强了军事法官的独立性,保障了被告人的程序权利,从多个方面限制和制约了军事指挥官对军事司法程序的过多干涉和非法影响。军事指挥权和军事司法权的相互制约型塑了美国军事司法体制的基本结构,同时决定了纪律、秩序功能和公平、正义功能指导军事立法和司法的双重属性。研究美国军事司法体制的历史、结构与功能,对于促进全球新军事变革视野中的我军军事司法体制改革,具有重要的借鉴意义和参考价值。     

The Orwellian Military Commissions Act of 2006

In three decisions in 2004 and 2006, the Supreme Court of theUnited States rejected the sweeping claims by President Bushthat his role as Commander in Chief entitled him to detain personsindefinitely and, if he chose, to subject them to war crimestrials before military commissions that did not have all ofthe procedural protections of courts martial. The Court's rulings,however, left open the possibility that, notwithstanding thetreaty obligations of the United States under the Geneva Conventions,Congress could authorize the President to take the steps thathe could not take unilaterally. In the Military CommissionsAct (MCA) of 2006, Congress did just that. However, despiteits title, the MCA does far more than authorize military commissions.Most significantly, it eliminates the statutory right of aliensdeclared by the government to be ‘unlawful enemy combatants’and detained indefinitely on that basis, to seek a writ of habeascorpus from a federal court. To be sure, the MCA provides someright of access to federal court for persons convicted of warcrimes by military commissions or found to be unlawful enemycombatants by a military ‘combatant status review tribunal’or equivalent body, but even then, it severely curtails opportunitiesfor judicial relief. In this and other respects, the MCA purportsto confer rights that, upon close inspection, prove illusory.For example, it uses the language of the Geneva Conventions,even while forbidding courts to look to international and foreignsources to construe that language. The MCA is, more broadly,an exercise in misdirection. It is, in a word, ‘Orwellian’.     

军事行政行为探析

军事行政行为是军事行政行为理论的基石,准确地界定军事行政行为的内涵与外延,对其进行科学分类,既是军事行政法学发展的迫切需要,也是我军贯彻依法治军方略的迫切要求。本文探讨了军事行政行为的概念、分类、效力等理论问题,并把它放到军队法制建设甚至整个法治社会的发展中去研究,对于加强我军科学管理与行政执法具有重要意义。