Culpability and the Politics of Love

In L’amour du censeur, a seminal work published in French in 1974 but as yet untranslated into English, Pierre Legendre uses the Freudian Oedipus complex as a reading grid with which to decipher the libidinal dynamics underpinning Christian civilisations. This paper exposes Legendre’s work, and complements it by elucidating the play of the different modalities of identification conceptualised by Freud in Group Psychology. Horizontal and vertical identifications channel the investments that lend consistency to a political figure, an ideology, a discourse. Legendre’s work reminds us that the primary function of a given civilisation is to institute a workable libidinal economy for its subjects, and that politics names the knot of the social bond.     

罪责的社会化与规范责任论的重构——期待可能性理论命运之反思

当前期待可能性理论研究中的认识误区在于,将期待可能性等同于规范责任论本身.罪责概念并没有固定的连续意义,随着刑法任务观的调整,它经历了重要的意义裂变.罪责的客观化与社会化意味着责任基础的改变,最终引起规范责任论的重构.期待可能性的命运不仅折射出罪责领域所经历的变革,也折射出刑法的整个基本运作框架发生重大转型的事实.     

Mistake of Law and Culpability

When does a defendant not deserve punishment because he is unaware that his conduct breaches a penal statute? Retributivists must radically rethink their answer to this question to do justice to our moral intuitions. I suggest that modest progress on this topic can be made by modeling our approach to ignorance of law on our familiar approach to ignorance of fact. We need to distinguish different levels of culpability in given mistakes and to differentiate what such mistakes may be about. I discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this approach with special attention to how to contrast offenses from defenses. The alternative I tend to favor probably should not be implemented in existing penal codes. As a result, we are likely to remain dissatisfied with the decisions made by our criminal justice system about the exculpatory effect of ignorance of law.     

罪责的客观化与期待可能性理论的命运

当代刑法对风险控制与危害预防的强调,使得罪责概念的内容经历了重大的变化。随着对行为人的控制能力的强调,以选择自由为基础的传统规范责任论被废弃。期待可能性被从责任论中剥离出来,其重要性也日益呈下降的趋势。期待可能性理论在当代所遭遇的命运,折射出刑法任务观的重新定位对刑法体系中具体制度与理论的重大影响。     

Gaps in the Law Fulfilled with Meaning: A Semiotic Approach for Decoding Gaps in Law

Semiotics provides the tools for studying the process of decoding law, one of the most important tasks in the daily work of courts. The semiotic review of juridical interpretation and gap filling concludes that in juridical and semiotic methodology the same question—how a norm is interpreted—is answered from different perspectives. According to the semiotic model proposed in the current paper, juridical interpretation can be structured into three levels: intra-, inter- and supranormative sign-process. For legal theory semiotics can highlight the similarities in the interpretation of norms and gaps. In gap filling the iconic, indexical and symbolic relations compensate for the missing of intranormative semiosis. The applicability of the proposed model is tested on an example of case law. Semiotic investigation of the judgements of Supreme Court of Estonia and European Court of Human Rights shows that semiotics gives a well structured picture of the juridical interpretation process.     

Review of “Crime and Culpability: A Theory of Criminal Law”

This is a review of the challenging book in which Larry Alexander and Kimberly Ferzan propose sweeping revisions to the structure of substantive criminal law.     

我国刑事赔偿制度归责原则反思

对刑事赔偿的归责原则,我国有学者主张适用过错责任原则,有学者主张适用违法责任原则,还有学者主张适用结果责任原则,等等。这些原则在解决应否赔偿的问题上都存在难以克服的缺陷。之所以如此,主要是因为刑事赔偿制度与一般侵权赔偿制度有重大区别,刑事赔偿程序由国家向受害者支付赔偿费用的程序以及追偿程序两大程序构成,这两大程序应适用不同的归责原则:前一程序应适用结果责任原则,后一程序应适用过错责任原则。我国国家赔偿法对刑事赔偿归责原则的规定存在严重缺陷,应当进行彻底重构。     

大陆法系犯罪论体系的嬗变

通过探讨大陆法系的犯罪论体系的嬗变,指出它仍然存在诸多需要进一步研究的问题,进而,认为对我国传统的犯罪构成理论的批判是值得商榷的.我国传统的犯罪构成理论仍然具有生命力,应该暂缓引进大陆法系的犯罪论体系.     

Punishing the Awkward, the Stupid, the Weak, and the Selfish: The Culpability of Negligence

Negligence is a problematic basis for being morally blamed and punished for having caused some harm, because in such cases there is no choice to cause or allow—or risk causing or allowing—such harm to occur. The standard theories as to why inadvertent risk creation can be blameworthy despite the lack of culpable choice are that in such cases there is blame for: (1) an unexercised capacity to have adverted to the risk; (2) a defect in character explaining why one did not advert to the risk; (3) culpably acquiring or failing to rid oneself of these defects of character at some earlier time; (4) flawed use of those practical reasoning capacities that make one the person one is; or (5) chosen violation of per se rules about known precautions. Although each of these five theories can justify blame in some cases of negligence, none can justify blame in all cases intuitively thought to be cases of negligence, nor can any of these five theories show why inadvertent creation of an unreasonable risk, pure and simple, can be blameworthy.     

我国国家赔偿归责原则之反思与重构

按国家赔偿法的规定,国家赔偿的归责原则是违法原则。这个原则存在着自相矛盾、与刑事诉讼法规定不一致、过于严格限制受害人获得国家赔偿以及与国际上国家赔偿归责原则多样化趋势不协调等缺陷。国家赔偿的归责原则应当是一个归贵原则体系,在这个体系中,有一般性的、具有普适性的一般原则,又有特殊性的、仅针对特殊事项适用的特殊原则。一般原则仍然是违法原则,而特殊原则包括过错原则、无过错原则和结果原则等,各项原则所适用的具体范围又有着一定的差异和不同。     

事实与价值:罪过评价的二元视角——论传统罪过理论的缺陷与期待可能性理论

传统罪过理论的缺陷在于只注重心理事实的判断而忽视规范价值的判断(对过错是否具备刑法非难价值的判断),本文试图将大陆法系刑法理论中的期待可能性理论引入我国的罪过理论中,从而在罪过的概念中增加规范价值评价的因素,以使我国的罪过理论更加完善。     

Closing the Gaps: Plaintiffs in Pivotal Sexual Harassment Cases

When he wrote Debtors in Court almost 30 years ago, Herbert Jacob laid the foundation for the legal mobilization research that has flourished in recent years. In arguing that litigants were political actors, Jacob showed that their social identities and Communications networks influenced their decisions to use the power of the law to vindicate their interests. This paper builds on Jacob's original insights to analyze the origins of the claim for sexual harassment as a Title VII violation. By focusing on the women who filed those claims, the paper examines the interaction of class, gender, and race that created social distance between the women and their harassers and employers. This distance made informal resolution of their disputes impossible, requiring the intervention of third parties. In addition, their Communications networks led them to attorneys able to generate and expand the new claim for sexual harassment. This analysis of a particular moment in legal history reveals the potential political significance of private litigation.