制度的借鉴与创制——"法庭之友"与专家法律意见

"法庭之友"制度有助于法庭作出符合社会公正价值愿望的裁判,提升司法民主化,已成为英美对抗制诉讼文化不可或缺的重要组成部分.中国不存在与其完全相同的对应物,但是中国司法民主化的其他形式历来有之,近年来流行的法律专家论证意见书与美国"法庭之友"书状在制度价值、论证内容、法律地位等方面具有共同性,我们应当借鉴"法庭之友"制度的成功经验.将我国专家法律意见制度规范化.     

“法庭之友”制度的基础与运行机制——以吴英案为中心的分析

"法庭之友"制度的构建、运行及其功能发挥需要司法的独立与权威、有赖于良好的舆论环境和成熟的社会组织的支撑。在民众广泛参与、理性发表法律意见的前提下,出现了社会精英主导舆论走向、主流意见趋于统一、舆论表现出更强的社会责任感的发展趋势,这就为"法庭之友"制度的建构提供了舆论结构基础。"法庭之友"制度有助于疏通政治渠道、凝聚民意、弥补法官知识的缺陷、分担法院责任、推动法律发展,因而具有促进司法的法律效果和社会效果有机统一的制度功能。"法庭之友"制度功能的发挥,在很大程度上有赖于法院通过尊重、评价、吸纳机制所给予的司法支持。"法庭之友"制度在凝练主流民意、优化舆论环境、构建信任基础和消解政治压力方面对我国司法制度的改革与完善具有重要的借鉴意义。我们应该在借鉴国外有益经验的基础上,结合我国的司法国情,合理定位"法庭之友"的功能、框定适用范围、界定合适主体、构筑严密正当的程序,建构中国特色的"法庭之友"制度。     

“法庭之友”制度及其借鉴

"法庭之友"制度在美国采用之后得到了很大的发展,并对司法审判产生了重大的影响.该制度虽然不无质疑,但不应忽视其对司法实践所产生的积极作用.我国的"专家法律意见书"有违程序正义理念,应在借鉴"法庭之友"制度合理内核的基础上,建立专家咨询制度.     

论国际司法程序中的法庭之友制度

<正>引言法庭之友制度随着国际司法机构近十余年来的大量增加或深度改革,在国际司法领域获得了相当的发展。有关能否接受法庭之友摘要,WTO争端解决机构最近的实践引起了成员方激烈的争议,已经成为有关WTO谈判的热点之一。法庭之友(拉丁语amicus curiae,英语friends of the court,法语ami de la cour)通常指案件当事人以外的人对法院存有疑问的事实或法律问题通过提交书面报告或参加庭审的方式善意地提请法院注意的人。法庭之友摘要(amicus curiae briefs)是与争端通常没有直接利害关系或法律联系的私人和团体向法庭提交的阐述法律观点或事实信息的报     

美国“法庭之友”制度初探

＂法庭之友＂来源于古罗马法,经历了漫长的历史发展,早期运用于英国普通法律中,然后运用到了美国法律并且由此逐渐发展开来。这种制度的主要设立原因是为了给非案件当事人向法庭陈述意见的平台,在上诉审中得到了较大的运用。运用这种制度的能够促进非案件当事人对法庭提供与案件有关的实用信息,讲述出与案件事实相关的内容。而＂法庭之友＂能够对法院的判决起到影响作用,其主要以书状的形式实现,又能称作为＂法庭之友陈述＂。     

法庭之友:发现真实的扩展与限制

发现真实是诉讼的真谛。对抗制是英美法系发现案件真实的最佳选择,却也可能歪曲案件的真相。法庭之友有利于矫正对抗制的弊端,帮助法官发现案件真实,实现司法正义,已成为对抗制并蒂难分的重要组成部分。法庭之友极大地扩充了法官发现案件真实的制度空间,同时,法庭之友与特定的证据制度的结合又可能阻碍案件真实的发现。法庭之友就是在与真实发现的扩充与限制中发展与兴盛起来的。     

“法庭之友”制度的探究与启示

以规范人的社会活动为目的的法律与以追求人的真善美为目标的文学,两者紧密相连、相互影响。文学视域中的“法庭之友”制度,深刻揭示法律不是“本本中的法律”而是“行动中的法律”。“法庭之友”制度进入到司法环节并适用于个案诉讼程序,对促进公正司法、提高司法民主具有重要价值。“法庭之友”制度在价值取向、制度模式、诉讼地位上与中国专家法律意见制度具有共同性,但两者在参与主体、论证内容、提请程序上存在差异性。可通过借鉴“法庭之友”制度的精神和价值理念,建构规范中国专家法律意见制度。     

美国法庭之友制度的价值纬度与实证研究

法庭之友制度是美国司法制度的重要组成部分,在立法上有明确的规定,法庭之友为法院提供了不同于当事人的观点、意见、补充性的事实和论据,从不同角度影响了法官,帮助法院作出公正的判决,有利于立法机关立法的民主多元化。另外,在诸多的法庭之友的主体中,美国的副检察总长发挥的作用最大,在最高法院,其几乎排他性地代表了执行部门和联邦政府。我国可以从主体资格、程序规则和内容范围等方面借鉴法庭之友制度,规范专家法律意见书的运作,完善我国的司法民主体制。     

自行辩护问题研究

长期以来,我国对刑事辩护制度的研究比较关注律师辩护,对被追诉人自行辩护问题重视不够.然而,实践中律师参与辩护的比例较低,随着认罪认罚从宽制度的实施,轻罪案件中被告人委托律师进行辩护的动力更是大大减弱,加之值班律师并不提供出庭辩护服务,因此法庭审判主要以自行辩护为主.刑事辩护研究,应当从以"律师"为中心向以"被追诉人"为...     

程序输入的新渠道——“法庭之友”制度及其借鉴意义

目次一、概述二、“法庭之友”制度简介三、“法庭之友”与相关制度的区别四、美国“法庭之友”制度与我国司法环境的可兼容性五、我国建立“法庭之友”制度的构想一、概述起源于古罗马法的“法庭之友”制度被引进到普通法系尤其是美国国内法后,得到了前所未有的发展。该制度对     

Bhartṛhari and Maṇḍana on Avidyā

The concept of avidyā is one of the central categories in the Advaita of Śaṇkara and Maṇḍana. Shifting the focus from māyā, interpreted either as illusion or as the divine power, this concept brings ignorance to the forefront in describing duality and bondage. Although all Advaitins accept avidyā as a category, its scope and nature is interpreted in multiple ways. Key elements in Maṇḍana’s philosophy include the plurality of avidyā, individual selves as its substrate and the Brahman as its field (viṣaya), and the distinction in avidyā between non-apprehension and misapprehension. A closer investigation shows that Maṇḍana is directly influenced by Bhartṛhari’s linguistic non-dualism in developing the concept of avidyā. This study also compares other key constituents such as vivartta and pariṇāma that are relevant to the analysis of avidyā. As the concept of counter-image (pratibimba) emerges as a distinct stream of Advaita subsequent to Maṇḍana, this study also compares the application of pratibimba in the writings of Bhartṛhari and Maṇḍana.     

Unraveling the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Kāvyaprakāśa</Emphasis>: Jayadeva Pīyūṣavarṣa’s idiosyncratic sequence of topics in the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Candrāloka</Emphasis>

In his twelfth century alaṃkāraśāstra, the Candrāloka, Jayadeva Pīyūṣavarṣa reverses the sequence of topics found in Mammaṭa’s Kāvyapr-akāśa, an earlier and immensely popular work. With such a structural revisionism, Jayadeva asserts the autonomy of his own work and puts forth an ambitious critique of earlier approaches to literary analysis. Jayadeva investigates the technical and aesthetic components of poetry in the first part of the Candrāloka, prior to his formal semantic investigations in the latter half of the text, thus suggesting that aesthetic evaluations of poetry beneficially inform scientific investigations of language. Jayadeva’s organization of his chapters on the semantic operations, moreover, intimates that the study of suggestive and metaphoric functions of language clarifies our understanding of denotation, which is conventionally understood to be the primary and direct path of verbal designation.     

The Supreme Array Scripture: A New Interpretation of the Title “Gaṇḍavyūha-sūtra”

This article argues for a new interpretation of the Sanskrit compound gaṇḍa-vyūha as it is used in the common title of the Mahāyāna text the Gaṇḍavyūha-Sūtra.The author begins by providing a brief history of the sūtra’s appellations in Chinese and Tibetan sources. Next, the meanings of gaṇḍa (the problematic member of the compound) are explored. The author proposes that contemporary scholars have overlooked a meaning of gaṇḍa occurring in some compounds, wherein gaṇḍa can mean simply “great,” “big” or “massive.” This general sense is particularly common in the compound gaṇda-śaila (a “massive rock” or “boulder”) and is found in such texts as the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, the Harivaṃśa and the Harṣacarita. Following the discussion of Gaṇḍa, the author examines the term vyūha (“array”) as it is used in the Gaṇḍavyūha-sūtra. The article concludes with the suggestion that a more appropriate translation of the Gaṇḍavyūha-sūtra would be “The Supreme array Scripture.”     

Evaluation of six presumptive tests for blood, their specificity, sensitivity, and effect on high molecular-weight DNA

Luminol, leuchomalachite green, phenolphthalein, Hemastix, Hemident, and Bluestar are all used as presumptive tests for blood. In this study, the tests were subjected to dilute blood (from 1:10,000 to 1:10,000,000), many common household substance, and chemicals. Samples were tested for DNA to determine whether the presumptive tests damaged or destroyed DNA. The DNA loci tested were D2S1338 and D19S433. Leuchomalachite green had a sensitivity of 1:10,000, while the remaining tests were able to detect blood to a dilution of 1:100,000. Substances tested include saliva, semen, potato, tomato, tomato sauce, tomato sauce with meat, red onion, red kidney bean, horseradish, 0.1 M ascorbic acid, 5% bleach, 10% cupric sulfate, 10% ferric sulfate, and 10% nickel chloride. Of all the substances tested, not one of the household items reacted with every test; however, the chemicals did. DNA was recovered and amplified from luminol, phenolphthalein, Hemastix, and Bluestar, but not from leuchomalachite green or Hemident.     

Monks Who Have Sex: Pārājika Penance in Indian Buddhist Monasticisms

In the study of Buddhism it is commonly accepted that a monk or nun who commits a pārājika offence is permanently and irrevocably expelled from the Buddhist monastic order. This view is based primarily on readings of the Pāli Vinaya. With the exception of the Pāli Vinaya, however, all other extant Buddhist monastic law codes (Dharmaguptaka, Mahāsāṅghika, Mahīśāsaka, Sarvāstivāda and Mūlasarvāstivāda) contain detailed provisions for monks and nuns who commit pārājikas but nevertheless wish to remain within the saṅgha. These monastics are not expelled. Rather, they are granted a special status known as the śikṣādattaka. In this paper I explore the rules. concerning pārājika penance and the śikṣādattaka with specific regard to monastic celibacy. Given that five out of six extant law codes recognise this remarkable accommodation to the rule of celibacy, I argue that we must look to Vinayas other than the Pāli Vinaya if we are to arrive at a nuanced and representative view of Indian Buddhist monasticism.

Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet. Augustine of Hippo (354–430 C.E.)

     

Family breakdown and the ‘Welfare Child’ in 19th and 20th century Britain

This article traces new cycles of interest in past children as distinct from past childhood. Recent work highlighting that a conceptualisation of childhood existed even in periods with few written records closes the chapter begun by Philippe Ariès in 1960. Instead, there has been a new surge of interest in children on the edges of family life, as well as children in similarly liminal positions between the worlds of adults and children: runaways, delinquents and orphans. Several themes in the literature are identified, based on the conflicting ideas of ‘body/mind’, ‘victim/threat’, ‘needs/rights’. It is noted that researchers are using more imaginative ways of reaching the lived experience of children than the family or institutional framework, and that an increasing link is drawn between historical and modern concerns such as child abuse and the care of ‘at risk’ children.     

Vedic Language and Vaiṣṇava Theology:Madhva’s Use of Nirukta in his Ṛgbhāṣya

This article explores the way in which Madhva (1238–1317), the founder of the Dvaita Vedānta system of Hindu thought, reformulates the traditional exegetic practice of nirukta or “word derivation” to validate his pluralistic, hierarchical, and Vaiṣṇava reading of the Ṛgvedic hymns. Madhva’s Ṛgbhāṣya (RB) is conspicuous for its heavy reliance on and unique deployment of this exegetical tactic to validate several key features of his distinctive theology. These features include his belief in Viṣṇu’s unique possession of all perfect attributes (guṇaparipūrṇatva) and His related conveyability by all Vedic words (sarvaśabdavācyatva). Such an understanding of Vedic language invokes the basic nirukta presupposition that words are eternally affiliated with the meanings they convey. But it is also based onMadhva’s access to a lexicon entitled Vyāsa’s Nirukti with which his critics and perhaps even his commentators seem to be unfamiliar.While the precise status of this text is the subject of ongoing debate, Madhva’s possession of special insight into the sacred canon is established in part by his unique claim to be an avatāra of the wind god Vāyu and a direct disciple of Viṣṇu Himself in the form of Vyāsa₁. Thus, Madhva’s use of nirukta invokes his personal charisma to challenge not only conventional understandings of the hymns but traditional exegetic norms. Madhva’s provision of an alternative tradition of nirukta provoked sectarian debate throughout the Vijayanagara period over the extent to which one could innovate in established practices of reading the Veda. Articulating the Veda’s precise authority was a key feature of Brahmin debates during this period and reflects both the empire’s concern with promoting a shared religious ideology and the competition among rival Brahman sects for imperial patronage that this concern elicited. By looking at how two of Madhva’s most important commentators (the 14^th-century Jayatīrtha and the 17^th-century Rāghavendra) sought to defend his niruktis, this article will explore how notions of normative nirukta were articulated in response to Madhva’s deviations. At the same time, however, examining Madhva’s commentators’ defense of his niruktis also demonstrates the extent to which Madhva actually adhered to selected exegetic norms. This reveals that discomfort with Madhva’s particular methods for deriving words stemmed, in part, from a more general ambivalence towards this exegetical tactic whose inherent open-endedness threatened to undermine the fixity of the canon’s very substance: its language. Vyāsa’s Nirukti is one of several ”unknown sources” cited in Madhva’s commentaries whose exact status continues to be debated. Some scholars (e.g. Rao, Sharma, Siauve) maintain that these texts are part of a now lost Pāṅcarātra tradition that Madhva is attempting to preserve. This may be true for many of these citations. However, in addition to claiming to be both an avatāra of Vāyu and Viṣṇu-as-Vyāsa’s student, Madhva states in several places (e.g., VTN 42, RB 162) that the canon has suffered loss during transmission and that only Viṣṇu can reveal it in its entirety. Thus, it is possible that Madhva intends texts like Vyāsa’s Nirukti to be viewed as part of an ongoing and corrective revelation, a notion that is compatible with many Vaiṣṇava traditions (Halbfass, 1991: 4).     

Policing Outlawed Desire: ‘Homocriminality’ in Beat Spaces in Australia

Drawing on interview data of gay men who have had their behavior in public spaces scrutinised by agents of the law for signs deviance, this article explores the historical characteristics of police animosity towards such conduct in Australia. This entails examining encounters between police and gay men who pursue desire in ‘beat’ (or ‘cottage’ to the use the UK term) spaces. Exploring why these outlaw gay male subjects are so abject and troubling to the law, the discussion documents how law’s desire to regulate gay men plays out in the masquerade of ‘plain-clothes’ agent provocateur operations where police entrap gay men by mimicking gay bodily appearances, gestures and mannerisms. This article also examines how police regulation of gay desire functions as a form of violence that delimits expressions of same sex desire in public spaces. A key theme that underpins the analyses in this paper is that the policing of desire in ‘beat’ spaces helps produce qualities of illicitness and dangerousness and that this, in turn, fuels the circuit of desire at play between gay men and agents of the law.

Interrupting the Myth of the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Partage</Emphasis>: Reflections on Sovereignty and Sacrifice in the work of Nancy,Agamben and Derrida

Agamben traces the bio-political essence of modern politics to the non-sacrificial killing of Homo Sacer in Roman law. Nancy, on the other hand, links the history of Western politics to the fundamental logic of sacrifice in Western metaphysics. He nevertheless contemplates the possibility that Western societies may finally have arrived at the threshold of a non-sacrificial existence. Derrida seeks to resist the sacrificial logic of Western metaphysics and politics, but nevertheless appears to accept it as an irreducible fact of human co-existence. Unlike Nancy, he envisages no actual or actualised beyond beyond the realm of sacrificial metaphysics and politics. He thus can be said to interrupt Nancy’s ‘myth’ of a non-sacrificial partage. This article compares these three philosophical stances in the hope of throwing more light on the role of sacrifice in the law and politics of our time. Professor of Law, Rand Afrikaans University. Conversations with Ann van Sevenant, Carol Clarkson, Louise du Toit, Peter Fitzpatrick, Costas Douzinas and Adam Thurschwell gave impetus to many of the themes developed in this article. Concomitant shortcomings and inaccuracies, as always, are mine.