The Integration of Law into Global Business Solutions: The Rise,Transformation, and Potential Future of the Big Four Accountancy Networks in the Global Legal Services Market

Using a unique data set comprised of original research of both the corporate Web sites of the Big Four—PwC, Deloitte, KPMG, and EY—and their affiliated law firms, as well as archival material from the legal and accountancy press, this article documents the rise and transformation of the Big Four legal service lines since the enactment of the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002. Moreover, it demonstrates that there are good reasons to believe that these sophisticated players will be even more successful in penetrating the corporate legal services market in the decades to come, as that market increasingly matures in a direction that favors the integration of law into a wider category of business solutions that these globally integrated multidisciplinary practices now champion. We conclude with some preliminary observations about the implications of the reemergence of the Big Four legal networks for the legal profession.     

Employment Discrimination Law and Industrial Psychology: Social Science as Social Authority and the Co‐Production of Law and Science

This article combines Monahan and Walker's classification of social facts, social authority, and social frameworks with political‐institutionalism's view of law and science as competing institutional logics to explain how, and with what consequences, employment discrimination law and industrial‐organizational (I‐O) psychology became co‐produced. When social science is incorporated into enforcement of legislative law as social authority—rationale for judicial rule making—law's institutional logic of relying on precedent and reasoning by analogy ensures that social science will have ongoing influence on law's development. By helping set research agendas and providing new professional opportunities, institutionalized legal doctrine shapes social science knowledge. But because of differences in institutional logic, wherein legal cumulation is backward looking whereas scientific cumulation is forward looking, co‐production of law and science may produce institutional mismatch between legal doctrine and scientific knowledge.     

Towards a Hierarchy of Legal Acts in the European Union? Simplification of Legal Instruments and Procedures

Abstract A remarkable feature of the Union's legal order is the absence of a genuine hierarchy of legal acts—a pre‐established ranking of different types of legal acts in accordance with the democratic legitimacy of their respective authors and adoption procedures, which is used as a means to resolve conflicts among these different types of legal acts. There is however a clear suggestion of such hierarchy in the sequence in which the newly created legal instruments are listed in Article I‐33(1) and in the organisation of the subsequent Articles I‐34 to I‐37 of the European Constitution. In this contribution, the (lost) logic behind the Union's current set of legal instruments is analysed, followed by an examination of the reform of the system of legal instruments carried out in the European Constitution. Lastly, an attempt is made to answer the question as to whether this reform amounts to the establishment of a genuine hierarchy of legal acts in the Union.     

法律逻辑研究对象新论

在新的情境下，法律逻辑学的研究对象可做新的定位：法律逻辑学是研究法律思维的逻辑学科，是法学与逻辑学的交叉，是面向法律制度、法律实践和法律适用的应用逻辑，是法学方法论的理论基础和重要的组成部分。     

Legal aspects of managing Big Data

Big Data is shorthand for the currently rapidly evolving techniques of gathering and analysing for competitive advantage vast unstructured and structured sets of digital data. Big Data is currently at an early stage of development, but many organisations will be embarking on Big Data projects in the next couple of years in order to be in a position to know more about their customers than their competitors. Central to the success of these projects will be four critical factors: (i) understanding the legal framework for Big Data and how it applies to the organisation concerned; (ii) effectively bringing together the organisation's IT and legal functions in the Big Data project; (iii) a clear understanding of the organisation's objectives for its Big Data operations; and (iv) a structured approach to the strategy, policy and process aspects of Big Data governance.     

Bribing the Machine: Protecting the Integrity of Algorithms as the Revolution Begins

In the Industrial Revolution, machines took on the burden of physical labor; in the Big Data Revolution, machines are taking on the tasks of making decisions. Algorithms are the rules and processes that enable machines to make those decisions. Machines will make many decisions that affect general well‐being. This article addresses a threat to the efficacy of those decisions: the intentional distortion or manipulation of the underlying algorithm so that machines make decisions that benefit self‐interested third parties, rather than decisions that enhance public well‐being. That threat has not been recognized or addressed by legal thinkers or policy makers. This article first examines the lifecycle of an algorithm, and then demonstrates the likelihood that self‐interested third parties will attempt to corrupt the development and operation of algorithms. The article then argues that existing mechanisms cannot protect the integrity of algorithms. The article concludes with a discussion of policies that could protect the integrity of algorithms: transparency in both the development of and the content of algorithms that affect general well‐being and holding persons who corrupt the integrity of such algorithms accountable. Just as the Industrial Revolution eventually improved the quality of life for many, so too does the Big Data Revolution offer enhancement of general well‐being. That promise, however, will only be realized if policy makers take action to protect the integrity of underlying algorithms now, at the beginning of the revolution.     

Rights as a Divide‐and‐Rule Mechanism: Lessons from the Case of Palestinians in Israeli Custody

Critics have highlighted the complicity of human rights law in mass disempowerment and domination—a criticism equally applicable to child law. This article investigates this issue, as evidenced by three recent developments that Israel has justified by invoking these legal frameworks: an increased separation of Palestinian adults and children in Israeli custody; the Israeli legal system's growing preoccupation with “rehabilitating” the now‐segregated Palestinian children; and the Israeli authorities' ever‐diminishing interest in such rehabilitation for adult Palestinian prisoners. By canvassing the legal architecture, judicial rationalizations, adverse effects, and sociopolitical context of these developments, this article foregrounds their divide‐and‐rule logic and structure of driving a generational wedge between Palestinians and potentially weakening their political ties, solidarity, and resistance.     

Reflections on the reconfiguration of access to justice

This paper draws on a series of research studies of the last two decades of legal aid reforms to consider their wider social and political meaning. They are evaluated against a ‘master ideal’ of access to justice rather than a fictive golden age. It will be argued that despite New Labour's rhetoric of social inclusion and the positive initiatives this sometimes produced, the neo-liberal character of the reforms has eroded both social rights and access to justice. Their internal logic requires the imposition of a market and the use of least cost labour, thereby reducing the guarantee of due process to the lowest common denominator: consumption of a legal service becomes a sufficient alternative to just outcomes.     

从逻辑学的视角看中西法律文化的差异

本文主要从逻辑的角度探讨了中西法律文化的差异。首先 ,分析了逻辑在法律文化中的地位和作用 ;其次 ,探讨了西方法律文化中逻辑分析的传统 ;再次 ,指出了中国传统法律文化的非逻辑特征 ;最后 ,探讨了中国传统法律文化中的非逻辑特征对我国立法、司法以及法制现代化的影响 ,呼吁在法律文化的比较研究中应重视逻辑的作用     

夫妻共同债务规则的法理逻辑

《民法典》夫妻共同债务规则的债务范围标准可以体现法律行为理论的核心与逻辑,充分尊重当事人的意思表示,期望避免“被负债”现象。《民法典》将原夫妻共同债务规则的法理逻辑由物权中共有改为法律行为理论,这是夫妻共同债务在法理逻辑上的理性回归,规避了共有逻辑下出现的随意借贷、“被负债”、危害婚姻家庭稳定等现象;法律行为理论高度重视当事人的意思表示,充分保护当事人合法权益,能以一以贯之的逻辑解释夫妻共同债务规则,并与其他相关制度衔接。但是夫妻共同债务规则目前也并非完美无缺,在清偿规则、日常家事代理权等方面仍需完善。     

Between the Law: The Unmaking of Empire and Law's Imperial Amnesia

Asian victims of Japanese imperialism have filed lawsuits against the Japanese government and corporations since the 1990s, which became prime sites for redress decades after Japan's defeat in World War II. As this ethnography demonstrates, this process paradoxically exposes a legal lacuna within this emergent transnational legal space, with plaintiffs effectively caught between the law, instead of standing before the law. Exploring this absence of law, I map out a post‐imperial legal space, created through the erasure of imperial and colonial subjects in the legal framework after empire. Between the law is an optic that makes visible uneven legal terrains that embody temporal and spatial disjuncture, rupture, and asymmetry. The role of law in post‐imperial transitions remains underexplored in literatures on transnational law, legal imperialism, postcolonialism, and transitional justice. I demonstrate how, at the intersection of law and economy, post‐imperial reckoning is emerging as a new legal frontier, putting at stake law's imperial amnesia.     

Legislating Morality: Scoring the Hart‐Devlin Debate after Fifty Years

It has now been more than 50 years since H. L. A Hart and Lord Patrick Devlin first squared off in perhaps the most celebrated jurisprudential debate of the twentieth‐century (1959–1967). The central issue in that dispute—whether the state may criminalize immoral behavior as such—continues to be debated today, but in a vastly changed legal landscape. In this article I take a fresh look at the Hart‐Devlin debate in the light of five decades of social and legal changes.     

论法律逻辑学与法律思维能力的培养

法律思维能力是法律职业能力结构中的决定性因素.法律逻辑是训练法律思维的必要的、有效的工具.法律逻辑有助于准确掌握和运用法律概念,合乎逻辑地建立和把握命题并进行法律推理,对即将作出的法律裁决或法律意见进行逻辑论证.为达到将逻辑理论知识转化为法律思维能力之目的,法律逻辑学应在教学内容和教学方法等方面进行改革.     

The Question Concerning the Common Frame of Reference

The many directives on private consumer law enacted in the last three decades have met with considerable neglect and resistance amongst domestic judges, legislatures and scholars, bringing about less legal unity and more ‘legal fragmentation'—to say it in the words of the Commission. The Draft Common Frame of Reference is one more attempt, on the part of certain strands of European private law scholarship, at imposing a formal break on, and at overcoming, such fragmentation. Presented as a ‘comprehensive and self‐standing’ document, its ambition is to definitively implement the Commission‐generated, market‐orientated agenda of private law reform, so much resisted at the national level. The article argues that the EU legislative institutions should not go ahead with the plan of incorporating the Draft's content in EU law, by adopting a CFR. A CFR would confer an unprecedented degree of authority on a range of contested directive‐generated rules, from the test of fairness to the risk development defence in product liability. In creating a climate in which CFR‐based legalistic arguments promote unity over fragmentation, a CFR would emasculate public debate by implementing, under the spell of legal necessity, exactly those partisan, Commission‐initiated policies that have been, and still are, openly opposed in domestic legal circles. The Draft embodies a grammar of imposition that should be questioned.     

Creative Death Penalty Reform in China: The Case of Drug Transportation

China's criminal justice system has, for decades, been consistently notorious as one of the world's most punitive. Recent reform of the nation's decades‐long harsh criminal justice policy to instead balance severity with greater leniency has given reformist‐minded judges and legal experts some cause for optimism. However, it has also created a judicial dilemma in determining how to apply this more lenient ethos in sentencing some capital crimes. This is particularly the case for the capital crime of transporting drugs, which is the focus of this article. This article reveals how reform can be achieved through skillful legal maneuvering for a crime category that is caught between two contesting views of the social benefits of punishment.     

Infusing Public Law into Privatized Welfare: Lawyers,Economists, and the Competing Logics of Administrative Reform

Along with the trend toward “New Public Management” (NPM) and replacing the legal culture of public bureaucracies with market logic through privatization, we are also witnessing instances of “publicization,” the application of public law norms and mechanisms to privatized services. The article explores the role of government lawyers and economists in the dynamics of these administrative reforms. Using a detailed case study of welfare‐to‐work reform in Israel, it shows that the reconstruction of decision making and accountability patterns under NPM was the result of competing efforts by these professional groups to appropriate the “privatized state” to accord with their own institutional logics and interests. While economists advanced a “market” logic, lawyers tried to reproduce the logic of “law” in the post‐bureaucratic setting. The study demonstrates how eventually public law norms were re‐infused into privatized welfare as a result of the increasing institutional power of the lawyers in the regulatory space, along with wider political and social support for the entrenched legalistic mechanisms of the administrative state. However, in addition to the “battle of norms” between lawyers and economists, there were also concessions that led to the redrawing of the boundaries of public law along more functional, rather than formal, lines.     

人工智能算法的伦理危机与法律规制

进入网络时代以后,人们逐步形成了一种以技术性和流动性为核心的在线生存样态.人们日益被数据化和被算法化.技术平台往往会利用自身在数据处理和深度学习算法上的技术优势,生成一种隐性的支配权和控制权,从而形成人工智能算法独特的运行逻辑.人工智能算法独特的运行逻辑正在深刻地改变着以往的生产方式和生活方式,并诱发了一系列的伦理危机...     

法律逻辑：回顾与展望

法律逻辑的历史大致分为三个阶段：第一阶段主要是建立以传统逻辑或一阶逻辑内容为框架的法律逻辑体系,并将这些理论广泛地运用于法律思维领域之中;第二阶段主要是从法律适用问题的研究扩展到了法律发现或获取问题的研究;第三阶段主要是对事实发现、法律获取、诉讼主张与裁决证成的规律、规则与方法进行系统的研究,逐渐地建立以事实推理、法律推理、判决推理与法律论证理论为主要内容的不同于传统逻辑与一阶逻辑框架的法律逻辑体系,并将这些理论应用于事实的发现、法律的获取、诉讼主张与裁决的证立之中。     

法的不确定性与可推导性

实在法是一个不完全的、非协调的、开放的体系。实在法是不确定的、可推导的和可修正的。立法者不可能为每个具体案件都准备好现成的法律答案，法官们不得不在法律不确定条件下探寻解决当前案件的裁决理由。解决法律不确定性的过程是一个法律推理的过程，可以将这些法律推理概括为：解释推导、还原推导、演绎与类比推导、辩证推导、衡平推导。法律的不确定性问题以及如何解决它的问题，是法律逻辑的中心问题与重大课题，应当而且能够从逻辑学角度出发进行研究。以往“经典逻辑加法律例证”的法律逻辑体系，不涉及也不可能解答法律的不确定性及其推导问题．没有充分涵盖法律领域中的推理与论证．不能作为法律逻辑的基本框架和主要内容。     

法律逻辑的基本问题

法律领域里有三种推理:事实推理、法律推理、判决推理。法律推理是法律逻辑的主要研究对象,法律推理的正当性问题的探讨是法律逻辑的基本问题,解决法律推理的正当性判定问题和推导问题是法律逻辑的重要任务。