The European legal framework on cybercrime: striving for an effective implementation

This article analyzes the European legal framework on cybercrime. Initially, it argues the challenges of cybercrime to traditional criminal justice systems. Subsequently, it focuses on the criminal law framework on cybercrime with a mainly European perspective. The European legal framework provides a three-path solution: the reduction of frictions among national legislations, the introduction of new investigative powers and the facilitation of international cooperation. The article presents and discusses each solution. Further, it argues that the effective implementation of the main legal instruments does not seem to depend on the legal enforceability of these international measures. Contrarily, other, non legal, factors such as national security, politics, the economy and the public opinion appear to stimulate the spontaneous implementation of the European legal framework. In this context, the added value of the EU action is rather low, although the Treaty of Lisbon and the Stockholm Programme may improve this situation in the long term.     

'I've lost the plot': an everyday story of legal aid lawyers

This paper examines the impact on a specific group of solicitors in the United Kingdom of recent changes in the delivery of legal services. These changes are seen as a form of the New Public Management (NPM), and the paper explores the proposition that NPM is producing a public sector characterized by high output but low morale, through an analysis of qualitative data from a group of 'political' legal aid practitioners. The data is seen to support the high-output/low-morale thesis, and the paper argues that one effect therefore of legal aid reform may be to damage the 'political' lawyer's project of empowering the client and countering social injustice.     

Law making for baby making: an interpretive approach to the determination of legal parentage

This article proposes a new model for analyzing legal issues arising from technological conception and uses it to develop rules to govern the legal parentage of technologically conceived children. Professor Garrison shows that most commentators on technological conception have employed a "top-down" methodology, deriving rules for specific cases from an abstract global principle such as reproductive autonomy, freedom of contract, or anticommodification. Professor Garrison critiques these and several other approaches, showing that they offer little concrete guidance in many cases, risk the introduction of discordant values into the law of parentage, and fail to capture all of the values that have traditionally guided parentage determination. In their place, she proposes an "interpretive methodology" which, by relying heavily on current rules governing parentage determination in other contexts, would assimilate technological conception within the broader law of parental obligation. Professor Garrison argues that cases of sexual and technological conception should be governed by similar rules because, despite mechanical differences between these two reproductive methods, there are no significant differences in the parent-child relationships that they produce. She demonstrates that the interpretive approach can cabin rule-making disagreements, and that it can generate comprehensive parentage rules that are based on uniform policy goals and that ensure consistent treatment of parent-child relationships.     

The other side of the Anne Frank story: The Dutch role in the persecution of the Jews in World War Two

Contrary to their historical reputation there were only a few Dutch citizens who rescued Jews during World War II by providing their homes as a shelter. Of all the West European countries occupied by the Germans, the number of Jewish casualties was the highest in The Netherlands. Before the occupation there were approximately 140,000 Jews living in The Netherlands, and of that total at least 109,000 were murdered. When the war was over many war criminals and Nazi collaborators were punished. This did not include, however, Dutch civil servants and many of the police and train conductors who were all part of the Holocaust machine. They were recruited from the large middle-ground of a population of mainly bystanders. In addition, Dutch criminology has been conspicuously silent about the Holocaust. Therefore, I shall discuss the following issues as contributory to the Holocaust: (1) the denunciation process; (2) the attitude of The Netherlands' bureaucracy in general; and, (3) the negative impact of the actions of officials in positions of the highest power such as the Queen (who fled to Britain), members of the Supreme Court and Chiefs of Police.     

The making of the Canadian legal profession: a hybrid heritage

The Canadian legal profession emerged from the confluence of two distinct traditions: the American and the English. The colonies of British North America followed the pre-revolutionary American model of a unified legal profession, according to which all lawyers could practise as barristers and solicitors. American and Canadian lawyers pursued a client- and market-driven, eclectic type of practice that was receptive to innovations – such as the large law firm, the contingency fee, and university legal education – that were strongly resisted in England. On the governance side, however, Canadian lawyers created an indigenous but English-inflected model whereby professional self-governance was delegated to a statutorily-created body that had the power to compel all lawyers to join if they wished to practise law. With their commitment to client-centred service and strong governance, Canadian lawyers long enjoyed a cooperative and productive relationship with provincial governments, unlike the adversarial one characteristic of the United States or the long benign neglect of the legal professions by the English state. It is argued that this historical pattern may help to explain the continuing strength of the self-governance model in Canada at a time when it is being questioned and radically reformed elsewhere in the common law world.     

The evolution of European legal integration

This article contributes to the development of theories on European integration by testing and exploring statistical models on the long-term development of legislative activity of the European Commission. Drawing on legal information gained from the European Union’s PreLex database and analyzing it with the help of statistical analyses, we map out growth patterns of EU law between 1976 and 2003. We construct time-series models and models based on non-linear regression. While the performance of models based on the traditional theoretical approaches, intergovernmentalism and neo-functionalism, is rather poor, the analysis suggests that nonlinear dynamic models might be an interesting avenue for future conceptualizations of the EU integration process. This article is based on a paper presented at the ECPR Standing Group on the European Union Second Pan-European Conference on EU Politics, “Implications of a Wider Europe: Politics, Institutions and Diversity”, 24–26 June 2004, Bologna, Italy. We would like to thank the seminar participants for useful comments.     

Preventing innovative cooperations: the legal exemptions unintended side effect

In 2004, European competition law had been considerable changed by the introduction of the new Council Regulation No. 1/2003. One of the major renewals was the replacement of the centralized notification system for inter-company cooperations in favor of a so-called legal exemption system. We analyze the implications of this reform and its arising uncertainty on the agreements firms implement, especially on innovative agreements like vertical R&D agreements. By means of a decision theoretic approach, we show that the law’s intention to reduce the incentive to establish illegal cartels will be reached but innovating cooperations might be prevented. To avoid this unintended side effect, fines but not the monitoring activities should be increased.     

Mental disorder and legal responsibility: The relevance of stages of decision making

The paper discusses the relevance of decision-making models for evaluating the impact of mental disorder on legal responsibility. A three-stage model is presented that analyzes decision making in terms of behavioral control. We argue that understanding dysfunctions in each of the three stages of decision making could provide important insights in the relation between mental disorder and legal responsibility. In particular, it is argued that generating options for action constitutes an important but largely ignored stage of the decision-making process, and that dysfunctions in this early stage might undermine the whole process of making decisions (and thus behavioral control) more strongly than dysfunctions in later stages. Lastly, we show how the presented framework could be relevant to the actual psychiatric assessment of a defendant's decision making within the context of an insanity defense.     

The European Research Area: On the Way Towards a European Scientific Community?

Abstract:  The concept of a European Research Area was launched by the Commission in 2000 with the intention of becoming a watershed in European research policy. The aim was to create an 'internal market of research', in contrast with previous efforts in research policy that amounted to continued fragmentation. Lack of support from both Member States and the Council, together with the almost exclusive use of the Open Method of Coordination for the design of the Area, meant that the initially high ambitions were not met. The social repercussions of the project were also watered down as a consequence.     

刍议税收优先权的法律位序

我国《税收征收管理法》第45条规定了税收优先权,但该条对税收债权之间的优先权,以及税收之债与其他民事债权优先权之间的位序,没有明确规定。法律需要在这方面加以解释与细化,以指导税收工作中的实践行为。     

论欧洲共同体之反倾销法

本文以欧洲共同体 (EEC)之反倾销政策为主要内容 ,通过对其所形成背景、立法变更、新旧反倾销规则比较和其对欧洲共同体倾销差额计算方式之影响的研究 ,针对当前欧洲共同体反倾销政策实践的检讨 ,并以欧洲共同体反倾销法与美国反倾销法两者进行比较 ,希望藉此有助于对欧洲共同体之反倾销制度有更深入的分析与了解。     

The legal constitution: United Kingdom parliament and European court of justice

Membership of the EC has transformed the legal status of the UK parliament. Prior to British accession, Acts of Parliament were the supreme law of the land, unchallengeable in any court. This paper argues that EC membership raised the courts ‐ national as well as European ‐ above parliament and that at the time of accession parliamentarians were almost wholly unaware of this fundamental change. The author links MPs’ ignorance to the highly political, rather than legal, nature of the British constitution and traces the evolution of their constitutional understandings. Identifying a new dynamic interplay between British judiciary and parliament, the study argues that the creeping hegemony of law within constitutional politics merits continuing analysis by legislative scholars.