European remedial coherence in the regulation of non-consensual disclosures of sexual images

The non-consensual dissemination of sexually explicit images or videos for no legitimate purpose represents a serious sexual violation by means of breaching an individual's ability to control their own sexual identity. This article argues that the only adequate legal response to this behaviour is targeted criminal regulation, and that action on a regional level is within the European Union's competence by virtue of Article 83(1) TFEU. The approaches of EU Member States to the phenomenon through targeted criminal law are examined in order to extract positive and negative elements of the respective regulatory systems. Drawing on the experiences of these States, as well as on existing EU criminal directives, a draft directive is included to illustrate what form a European regional system of criminal regulation may take.     

Levels of Generality in the Legal Reasoning of the European Court of Justice

The level of generality or of abstraction used to describe a precedent, a right, or the legislative intent behind a statutory provision or constituent purpose behind a constitutional provision can have a decisive impact on the outcome of a case. Characterising it in narrow terms has the effect of reducing the scope of decision of a judgment; conversely, a broader characterisation provides more leeway for a judge in a case to encompass its facts within the precedent, right or purpose in issue. The issue raised by the level of generality problem is the extent to which courts have a discretion or freedom of manoeuvre as to the level of generality they decide upon, and thus whether generality and abstraction are manipulable in the hands of judges and are not really predetermined by the legal sources in question or an established judicial method of interpretation. Uncontrolled judicial discretion of this kind is problematic from the point of view of the rule of law and democracy, especially when adjudication concerns constitutional provisions, the equivalent in the EU being interpretation by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) of the EU Treaties; reversal of ECJ interpretation through Treaty amendment is particularly difficult to achieve because it requires unanimous coordination by the Member States. This article examines two alternative ways of determining the correct or appropriate level of generality issue in ECJ interpetation, coherence or the legal traditions of the Member States, and argues in favour of the latter as a less subjective method. Application of the two alternative approaches is tested in two areas of EU law, state liability and criminal law.     

The Triangular Relationship Between Nationality,EU Citizenship and Migration in EU Law: A Tale of Competing Competences

Within the legal framework of the EU, the Member States have remained competent to regulate who qualifies as a national. As nationals of a Member State are simultaneously EU citizens and enjoy the right to intra-EU mobility, it is the Member States who, through their Nationality Laws, determine who is to be classed as an EU citizen and who enjoys the right to intra-EU mobility. This article explores whether Member State competence to regulate nationality matters has been affected by the introduction of EU citizenship and/or developments in intra-EU mobility rights, the contents of which are determined primarily by the EU.

     

Foreign Investors in the EU—Which ‘Best Treatment’? Interactions Between Bilateral Investment Treaties and EU Law

Abstract: This article discusses the main interactions between bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and EU law. The European Commission identified a number of incompatibilities in BITs signed by eight recent Member States with the USA, proposing solutions for their adjustment in conformity with EU law, but was this step sufficient? The risk of disputes remains, as long as the proposed adjustments do not achieve legal force and as long as other BITs still need to be harmonised with EU law. Moreover, provisions in BITs that are not in conflict with EU law could still be challenged if the application of certain EU requirements by Member States interferes with foreign investors' rights. To avoid such risks, coherence between different commitments and practices of the Member States is needed and coordination at the EU level is highly desirable.     

The Temporal Paradox of Regions in the EU Seeking Independence: Contraction and Fragmentation versus Widening and Deepening?

This article investigates the possibility of regional entities within EU Member States to become EU Member States in their own right following their secession from their mother state. International law does not automatically allow such regions to remain EU Member States since it refers this issue back to the constituent instruments of international organisations and a reading of both the EU Treaties and the ECJ's jurisprudence seems to preclude such a ‘continued membership’. The article then further explores the legal issues which could arise during the accession process of the newly independent state. After suggesting solutions to bridge the gap between its secession and its own EU membership, it is argued that the key challenge for such a region would be to ensure a smooth transition, without the loss of prerogatives under EU law, from being an EU region to an EU Member State proper.     

罚金刑在近代刑法中的确立——以1907年大清刑律草案的相关规定为视点

清末10年修律,首当其冲的就是刑事法律的改革。1907年10月,沈家本主持的修订法律馆上奏中国近代第一个刑法草案——大清刑律草案,在中国刑法史上第一次将罚金确定为五大主刑之一。从1908年到1910年,中央各部院堂官、地方各省督抚、将军都统陆续上奏对大清刑律草案的签注意见,其中涉及罚金的主要问题有:罚金定为主刑问题、罚金单位和等级问题、罚金易刑问题、罚金适用的过轻与过重问题、罚金与赔偿金的关系问题。回顾和分析罚金刑在中国近代刑法中的确立过程,将使我们在微观层次上对“会通中西”的法律变革原则有新的体悟,并有利于对近代“礼法之争”的再认识。     

Unwitting subjects of surveillance and the presumption of innocence

Mass surveillance programmes introduced by several EU Member States influence the protection that citizens enjoy on the basis of fundamental rights and freedoms. This paper focuses on the impact that these programmes have on the legal principle of presumption of innocence. The authors argue that even in those circumstances where the principle does not immediately apply because mass surveillance is undertaken before any criminal charge is issued, the collection of information and potential evidence limits the guarantees offered by the principle during the stages of a legal process. It is argued that mass surveillance programmes undermine the role of the principle of presumption of innocence at the stages of a criminal process and compromise, therefore, the very effectiveness of the legal process.     

EU Citizenship without Duties

Many believe that duties should be at the essence of citizenship. This paper dismisses this view, using EU law as the main context of analysis, by making five interrelated claims. (1) There are no empirically observable duties of EU citizenship; (2) such duties would lack any legal‐theoretical foundation, if the contrary were true; (3) legal‐theoretical foundations of the duties of citizenship are lacking also at the Member State level; (4) EU law plays an important role in undermining the ability of the Member States where residual duties remain to enforce them; (5) this development is part of a greater EU input into the strengthening of democracy, the rule of law and human rights in the Member States and reflects a general trend of de‐dutification of citizenship around the democratic world. If these conclusions are correct, it is time to stop categorising EU citizenship duties among the desiderata of EU law.     

论行政处罚的适用条件及其与刑罚的适用关系

行政处罚适用的核心条件是法律、法规或者规章规定的违反行政管理秩序的行为,但以尚未构成犯罪为临界点。行政处罚和刑罚同为公法上的制裁手段,都是以受惩戒者向以国家所代表的社会承担责任为落脚点,因而在功能和价值取向方面存在一致性。针对行为既违反行政管理秩序又构成犯罪的竞合现象,就行政处罚与刑罚在适用关系上结合现行法律法规进行应用理论分析,行政处罚与刑事处罚原则上不能同时适用,行政违法构成犯罪案件应当归属司法权主管范围,而行政机关只能就那些诸如吊扣证照等专属行政职权与职责内容的法律责任追究行使独立的案件主管权。     

Holding to Account a Possible European Public Prosecutor Supranational Governance and Accountability Across Diverse Legal Traditions

The Lisbon Treaty provides a legal basis for the Member States of the European Union (EU) to establish a European Public Prosecutor (EPP) with competence to prosecute, in the courts of the Member States, crimes against the financial interests of the Union. Article 86 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, provides that the Member States may unanimously, or through flexible cooperation where nine Member States agree, establish such a European-level prosecution body, with the possibility for its powers to be extended by unanimity to include serious crime having a cross border dimension or affecting more than one Member State. Within the legal traditions of the Member States, means of holding prosecution authorities to account vary considerably. Probably the strongest form of accountability exists in the civil law tradition of Member States that permit appeals to judicial bodies for decisions not to prosecute, which contrasts with the traditional common law reluctance to even give reasons for not prosecuting. Similarly, the ways in which prosecution authorities interact or overlap with police functions, and thus with general mechanisms of police and/or bureaucratic accountability, differ. Some of the particular features of EU cooperation suggest additional accountability issues, notably, questions concerning competence spill-over and problems of remoteness. This paper seeks to address how to conceptualise governance and accountability of a possible EPP outside of the context of a trial (the latter entailing a type of open legal accountability that can be studied in its own right) and including the question of the definition of competences.     

Protecting Supremacy from External Influences: A Precondition for a European Constitutional Legal Order?

The number of international law obligations that have binding force on the Union and/or its Member States is sharply increasing. This paper argues that in this light the well‐functioning of the European Union ultimately depends on the protection of the principle of supremacy from law originating outside of the EU legal order. The supremacy of EU law is essential to ensuring that Member States cannot use national rules to justify derogation from EU law. As a matter of principle, international treaties concluded by the Member States rank at the level of ordinary national law within the European legal order and below all forms of European law (both primary and secondary). Article 351 TFEU exceptionally allows Member States to derogate from primary EU law in order to comply with obligations under anterior international agreements. It does not however allow a departure from the principle of supremacy that underlies the European legal order. In Kadi I, the Court of Justice of the European Union stated that Article 351 TFEU, while it permits derogation from primary law, may under no circumstances permit circumvention of the “very foundations” of the EU legal order. This introduces an additional condition that all acts within the sphere of EU law need to comply with a form of “super‐supreme law”. It also strengthened the principle of supremacy and gave the Court of Justice the role of the guardian of the Union's “foundations”. The Court of Justice acted on the necessity of defending the Union as a distinct legal order, retaining the autonomous interpretation of its own law, and ultimately ensuring that the Union can act as an independent actor on the international plane.     

Smuggling of Migrants, Trafficking in Human Beings and Irregular Migration on a Comparative Perspective

Abstract:  The European Union aims to develop a European criminal justice to combat cross-border crimes of smuggling of migrants and trafficking in human beings. This article focuses its attention on European Community/European Union (EC/EU) law and on two Member States, Italy and the United Kingdom (UK). The findings show that there are diversities and ambiguities in the definition of irregular migration. On the contrary, the EU and Member States should concentrate their efforts on the two crimes of smuggling of migrants and trafficking in human beings rather than criminalising irregular migration.     

The Constitution of a European Democracy and the Role of the Nation State

Starting from the presupposition that European democracy is necessary to the survival and development of the European Union, the author deals with the process which may entail a European constitution, and discusses the elements of the present legal structure of the EU which are conducive to a European Democracy. In particular, the author focuses on the incomplete, polycentric, and dynamic character of a possible EC/EU constitution, and on the duality of its legitimating principle. This claim is that these characteristics necessitate some institutional modifications of democratic principles if compared with national democracy, and that Euro-democracy is possible if we do not simply apply the standards of democracy valid for Member States, but succeed in developing criteria which are adequate to the institutional qualities of the EC/EU. Finally, the author maintains the legal character of the regulatory power of the Community, and invokes the mutual legal bonds linking the Member States and their peoples as the source of the Community.     

Rules for Rights: European Law,Health Care and Social Citizenship

Social citizenship is about equality. The obvious problem for European social citizenship in a very diverse Union is that Member States will not be able or willing to bear the cost of establishing equal rights to health care and similar aspects of social citizenship. Health care is a particularly good case of this tension between EU citizenship and Member State diversity. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) strengthened the right to health care in other Member States, but this cannot create an equal right to health care when Member States are so different. In its efforts to balance a European right, the Court has formulated ‘rules for rights’—not so much European social citizenship rights, as a set of legal principles by which it judges the decisions of the Member States.     

Protection Orders in the European Member States: Where Do We Stand and Where Do We Go from Here?

This article tries to provide an overview of current criminal, civil and administrative protection order legislation in the 27 European Member States by comparing five studies that have (laterally) touched upon this topic. Although the data are sometimes questionable and, on occasion, even contradictory, the general picture emerges that there is a huge variation in levels of victim protection across the EU. In some Member States there are considerable gaps in victim protection legislation, for example, because there is no (pre-trial or post-trial) protection in criminal proceedings or because civil protection orders and/or barring orders are not available. If we agree that in the light of today??s emphasis on victim protection the current gaps in protection order legislation can no longer be accepted, a strategy needs to be devised on how to solve this problem. It was argued that the European Union could play an important part in addressing the protective vacuum, first by supporting thorough research into the current status of protection order legislation and implementation in the 27 Member States, and second by further exploring certain ??soft law?? possibilities such as co-regulation or the open method of coordination.     

Balancing Between Human Rights Assumptions and Actual Fundamental Human Rights Safeguards in Building an Area of Freedom,Security and Justice: a Cosmopolitan Perspective

Rhetoric often claims that the European Union (EU), in issues related to Justice and Home Affairs, has to be united in its diversity. As such, the asylum and judicial systems of the Member States are initially perceived as equally good. By applying the cosmopolitan theory on two fields of interstate cooperation, asylum and judicial cooperation in criminal matters, the article explores how cosmopolitan the EU is in these fields, with a specific focus on material detention conditions. For cosmopolitanism to work, it has to be grounded in commonly shared norms, which enable the EU to regulate its dealings with the otherness of the Member States. The crucial role of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union in placing boundaries on the equal goodness of the Member States’ asylum and judicial systems is analysed. This judicial reality in which cosmopolitan norms are established and protected is discussed, together with the political realities dominating policy debates in order to build an Area of Freedom, Security and Justice.     

Data retention and the future of large-scale surveillance: The evolution and contestation of judicial benchmarks

Recent and upcoming judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) have resurfaced a much-debated topic on the legal limitations of law enforcement authorities and intelligence services under EU law in implementing surveillance operations. In its decisions, the CJEU has reinstated and at times remoulded its case-law on data retention, unearthing a variety of legal issues. This article aims to critically analyse the legal limitations of (indiscriminate) surveillance measures, the role of the private sector in the scheme, and the line between the competence of the Member States and that of the EU on national security matters. It also aims to remark on the latest developments on the reception of the decisions by the Member States and the EU legislator, as well as on the ongoing dialogue between the CJEU and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).     

简论沈家本的废除死刑观

近代著名法学家沈家本在他主持的清末法制改革中,针对中国古代刑罚的残酷、繁多,主张刑罚趋轻、废除酷刑,并形成了自己颇具特色的废除死刑观。沈家本认为,要在中国废除死刑,必须结合中国的国情,走二步废除论之路,即首先减省死刑、死刑惟一;然后在此基础上谋教养、讲道德、废死刑。     

El principio de reconocimiento mutuo en el derecho de la unión europea según la cláusula de “plena fe y crédito” de la constitución de estados unidos

The paper shows a comparative analysis of the law of the united states of america (US) and the european union (EU) focusing on the principle of mutual recognition, which has served as a basis in order to achieve the enforcement of judicial decisions by the authorities of the different Member States. It illustrates the origins and evolution of this principle within the US legal system, as well as its recent implementation within the European integration system with the aim of creating a common space of freedom, security and justice. The paper lists and analizes a substancial number of legal acts adopted so far in the area of civil and criminal law. Furthermore, it highlights the influence the case-law of the US Supreme Court and the Court of Justice of the EU has had on the development of this principle. Moreover, it elaborates on the function of this principle as a nation-building element, raising the question whether this concept could be possibly transposed to a regional integration system with clear federal traits such as the EU.     

Variations in Member States’ Preliminary References to the Court of Justice—Are Structural Factors (Part of) the Explanation?

The preliminary reference procedure in Article 267 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), which enables national courts to request the Court of Justice to provide a ruling on the interpretation or validity of an EU legal act, is widely considered to be the jewel in the crown of EU law. When considering the number of references from different Member States, it will become immediately apparent that there are considerable variations. This article examines to what extent these variations may be explained by three structural factors, namely (1) population size, (2) willingness to litigate and (3) Member State compliance with EU law. It is concluded that some—but not all—of the variations in number of references from Member State judiciaries may be attributed to structural factors rather than being merely a reflection of different Member State courts’ willingness to make use of Article 267 TFEU on such references (the so‐called behavioural factors).