论WTO决策机制

WTO的决策机制是指WTO对有关事项诸如条文的解释、修改、义务的豁免以及接受新成员、贸易争端的解决等作出决定的机制。WTO的决策机制十分重要,因为它直接涉及到与这些事项相关的各成员的权利与义务。从WTO决策机制与国家主权、协商一致机制和投票表决机制三个方面进行了分析,并指出了WTO决策机制的缺陷与不足,旨在为WTO决策机制的改进与完善作出努力。     

Decision-Making for Life Apart

… he (the layman) can understand the basic character of the English way of legal thinking, he can identify himself with it and, above all, can make his peace with it by retaining once and for all a solicitor as his legal father confessor for all contingencies of life (Max Weber, Economy and Society, 1922¹). The tendency in England and Wales is to use a solicitor's office as the automatic first port of call without first becoming aware of the range of services and the range of options which are available to separating and divorcing couples (Looking to the Future, 1995, para 7.3).     

论科学决策、民主决策的法治化——基于北京市交通治堵方案征求民意的考量

北京市交通治堵方案向全社会征求民意,是科学决策、民主决策的体现。决策科学化、民主化需要法治化的保障。通过制定重大决策程序法律规范,为科学决策、民主决策提供基本的法律依据,实现依法决策、科学决策和民主决策的统一。     

双层互动决策模型:近十年来中国政策过程的一个解释框架

近十年来,在决策环境影响下,互动关系成为影响中国公共政策过程的关键变量。通过对中国新医改方案制定过程的案例研究发现,当下中国公共政策过程是官僚体系层面(政策前台)的制度环境、社会网络层面(政策后台)的博弈格局和两者界面的互动结构共同作用的过程。这种双层互动决策模式在新常态下仍然具有强大的生命力,应得到积极的推广和发展。发展双层互动决策模式,尤其关注充分发挥执政党意识形态的政策价值导向功能、创造各利益群体平等参与公共决策的博弈平台以及以程序公正保障政策公正等三个问题。     

Force,Stress, and Decision-Making Within the Belgian Police: the Impact of Stressful Situations on Police Decision-Making

Stress and fear are inevitable aspects of the police job and may have a large impact on police officers’ decision-making process. Many studies have explored how stress and fear may influence assessments of police officers, especially with regard to the use of force. This article aims to contribute to this research domain by reporting the findings from two empirical studies among Belgian police officers: a quantitative study of police officers’ attitudes towards and experiences with the use of force and a qualitative study on the influence of stress and emotions on officers’ decision-making and assessment abilities and accuracy of shooting. Both studies confirmed that stress and fear are often present in Belgian police practice. One of the main findings is that Belgian police officers are anxious about the consequences of their actions because they know they will be held accountable for them. The pressure that results from this accountability can make it even more difficult for police officers to react to stressful situations. Therefore, we need to look for the right balance in this difficult position, by providing tools that support police officers in making daily decisions, and help them do their job as effectively as possible.     

Neuropsychological Evaluation of Decision-Making Capacity in Older Adults

The purpose of this article is to examine the neuropsychology of decision making in the elderly. Topics covered include diagnostic considerations, basic issues (e.g., terminology), ethical and legal issues, and guidelines for competency/capacity evaluations. The intended audience is those with some familiarity with clinical psychology and neuropsychological assessment. As our society is aging, psychologists are likely to increasingly evaluate elderly clients, and capacity issues are likely to be salient in many of these cases.     

JUVENILE COURT INTAKE An Analysis of Discretionary Decision-Making

An increasing amount of pressure has been directed toward juvenile court operations, much of which has focused on the hypothesized abuse of the broad discretionary decision-making power that has traditionally been vested in the court. In this paper, we attempt to examine the extent to which factors not directly associated with the nature of the alleged offense may alter the probability that a juvenile w.11 be referred for a formal hearing in the juvenile court, a step which many analysts feel may have the unintended function of promoting rather than inhibiting subsequent involvement in delinquent behavior. Based on an analysis of 346 cases, our findings show that a number of variables that are not of direct legal relevance do exert a significant influence on the dispositional process, but the magnitude of this influence is not as great as many have been led to expect given the orientation of some explanatory models, particularly those based on the propositions of the labeling school.     

政府多部门决策协调的研究述评

目标和价值的多元化加剧了政府部门间的协调困境,从而导致一系列决策问题。政府科层结构衍生的协调机制和制度安排调节了部门间自主性与相互依赖性之间的张力,为它们达成决策共识创造出新的结构条件。然而,理解多部门决策协调的关键在于政府部门内生的政治动力和微观过程。在文献回顾的基础上发现,决策协调过程存在“兄弟”不平等现象,即部分政府部门可以利用信息、知识、职能配置和关系网络等资源来实现权威的“再生产”,进而获得更高决策影响力。非对称的权力和权威关系体现了政府部门间动态的行为结果。它涵盖了政府部门在不同决策情境如何通过“零”协调、说服、讨价还价和联盟建设等行为方式促成决策目标或手段的共识。有别于纯粹的竞争和合作定势,权威的“再生产”指向政府部门决策协调行为的一般性特征。     

Speed of Decision-Making as a Procedural Justice Principle

The uncertainty management theory (Lind and Van den Bos, Research in organizational behavior 24, 181–223, 2002; Van den Bos and Lind, Advances in experimental social psychology, pp. 1–60, 2002) proposes that perceived fairness decreases experienced uncertainty, and, thus, the importance of fairness is enhanced under higher uncertainty. For example, the six procedural justice principles (Leventhal, Social exchange: advances in theory and research pp. 27–55, 1980) can be seen to reduce uncertainty in the long run by producing higher quality decisions. However, the decision-making process itself also may cause uncertainty, especially when the process is prolonged. Thus, we bring the speed of the decision-making process into discussion as one justice principle. We suggest that people use speed-related information as heuristic information and substitute lacking procedures-related information by drawing inferences from the speed of the decision-making. We propose that the speed of decision-making has a twofold effect on perception of procedural fairness: very fast and very slow decision-making processes are perceived to produce more uncertainty than moderate time processes, and consequently, a moderate process is expected to be related with more positive fairness perceptions than very slow or very fast processes. The statement was further tested by examining the mediating role of procedural fairness perceptions in the relationship between speed and its one consequence, perceived legitimacy, with a survey sample (N = 846) in the context of Finnish forest policy. The analysis confirmed the hypotheses. The role of speed as a justice rule and its contribution to the uncertainty management theory is discussed.     

Decision-Making About Volitional Impairment in Sexually Violent Predators

The Kansas v. Hendricks (1997) decision, in which the Supreme Court authorized post-sentence civil commitment for certain sex offenders, appeared to be constitutionally legitimized by limiting the class of offenders eligible for this special form of civil commitment to those who are "unable to control" their dangerousness. Nowhere in the available record, however, did the Court elucidate what they meant by this notion of volitional impairment. This study sought to examine factors that legal professionals (n=43), psychologists (n=40), and mock jurors (n=76) deem most relevant to a determination of sex offender volitional impairment. Participants, who were randomly assigned to a sexual predator commitment or an insanity hearing context, read a series of 16 vignettes that described a pedophilic offender and included combinations of variables hypothesized to be related to judgments of volitional impairment. Results suggested that participants, who as a group made remarkably high estimates of likelihood of future sexual violence, considered verbalization of control, history of sexual violence, and the context of the hearing as highly relevant to determinations of volitional impairment. Implications for policy and practice are explored.     

自动化行政的法律控制

自动化行政存在于信息、数据的收集与处理,行政活动电子化以及直接作出行政决定三种情形中,在当下备受关注。它与传统行政活动在主体、程序、裁量等方面都存在差异,由此潜藏了诸多未来可能出现的法律风险,例如信息、数据收集以及处理的错误风险、对个人隐私和数据保护的侵扰风险、算法不透明所引发的风险等。厘清自动化行政的法律控制要素,即从自动化行政的主体、权利、程序几个方面加以考量,将有助于我们对现有的法律体系进行思考、修正、补充并在需要建构新的法律规则的情形下给予及时补足。这也应当是我们当下对待人工智能时代的态度:谨慎且冷静。     

Automated comparison of firearm bullets

Fired bullets bear striation marks that can be thought of as a "fingerprint" left by the firearm. This new comparison approach is based on an automated extraction of a "signature" encompassing the relevant marks from an image. To this end, multiple pictures of the bullet are recorded first by using different illumination patterns, and a high quality image is generated by means of fusion techniques. After a preprocessing, the image intensities are filtered along the striations direction, yielding a compact representation of the marks. A non-linear filter selects the striae of interest. The actual comparison takes place by cross-correlating the signatures obtained this way. Finally, an assessment strategy is proposed to objectively evaluate the performance of the system. As demonstrated with an image database of real bullets, the proposed approach outperforms a state-of-the-art commercial system.