The Kremlin and the Government Do Not Agree with the Duma

At the last session of the Duma, the deputies adopted amendments to the law on local self-government, allowing the reform, against which the governors have as a body been actively speaking out recently, to be "forgotten" for a time by the regions.     

Back to the Future

They thought this out very well, having in mind the television broadcast of the Constitutional Court session on TV Channel One. Ukraine has not seen anything like this before. The general public, as a rule, has been able to see only the final portion: a judge in his robes pronouncing a verdict—a decision that is not subject to appeal. Today everyone who wants to can become familiar with the work in the constitutional kitchen. Total access, as they say. Well, almost total, since the confidentiality of the meeting room is still preserved.     

政府主导下的集体建设用地流转:从理想回归现实

尽管现行法律严格限制了集体建设用地入市流转的可能,但不少地方政府都积极引导集体建设用地流转,并出台了大量规范性文件。地方政府从自身利益即财政收入、经济增长的最大化来决定是否允许集体建设用地流转。在一定程度上,这和农民、中央政府的目标函数相冲突;为此,应对地方政府自行出台的办法进行改进、修正,以最大程度平衡各主体的利益诉求,协调好经济增长、耕地保护、宏观调控、农民增收的相互关联。     

Bringing Justice Back to the Community

As states and local governments struggle to meet the demands of increasing workloads with decreasing revenues, a strategy is emerging that brings new energy and resources to the juvenile justice system. This strategy, Community Justice, empowers the community to prevent and resolve problems once thought to be the exclusive responsibility of the justice system. Juvenile courts operating within this new approach are discovering that community residents are willing to become actively involved when allowed to participate in defining the goals, objectives, and their roles in furthering community safety. This article describes this new approach, provides examples of promising practices, and articulates the crucial role of the court in promoting community justice strategies.     

重返犯罪构成原点——以犯罪构成塑成刑事法学研究新范式

犯罪构成是兼具实体法和程序法双重属性的刑事范畴,在刑事一体化理念被提出以实现刑事学科整合研究的背景下,应将传统的犯罪构成模型加以改进,确立犯罪构成的实践模式,作为刑事一体化理念的基础性实施机制,以突破当下刑事法在研究进路上的困境。     

From Cairo to Jerusalem: Law,Labour, Time and Catastrophe

Following the eclectic itineraries of ‘Near East’ expert, R. M. Graves, this article tells a story of an ongoing Nakba (catastrophe) of small and large legal decisions. Without reducing the human catastrophe of the event of the Nakba (the 1948 Palestinian forced exodus), it engages with it as a legal event that crosses (in this story at least) from Cairo to Jerusalem, from the League of Nations’ era (1920–1946) to the United Nations’ era (1945–), from the governance of labour and gender, to labour partition, and finally to the governance of municipalities through law and expertise. Graves’ relationship to both Cairo and Jerusalem was materialized through different forms of affective legal governance. Graves, who in his own dichotomous words was ‘neither a Zionist nor an anti-Semite’, managed Jerusalem across national lines in the wake of the UN Partition Plan (1947), and as the old empire was withdrawing right before Jerusalem itself became a site of the catastrophe—right before the Nakba.

     

From Angels to Humans: Law,Coercion, and the Society of Angels Thought Experiment

Law and Philosophy - Whether legal systems are necessarily coercive raises normative concerns. Coercion carries a presumption of illegitimacy and a special justificatory burden. If legal systems...     

Experts, Juries, and Witch-hunts: From Fitzjames Stephen to Angela Cannings

Angela Cannings's successful appeal against her convictions for murder has revived an old controversy about the competence of juries to evaluate expert evidence. In response to criticisms of the jury system in the wake of a series of controversial poisoning trials, the Victorian jurist J.F. Stephen argued that juries were well equipped to decide on behalf of the community which experts should be treated as authorities, whose opinions the lay public could accept for practical purposes as 'beyond reasonable doubt'. Such practical decisions did not, Stephen argued, require that juries fully understand the experts' reasons for their conclusions. This article draws on recent work in social epistemology to argue that Stephen's view of the jury remains tenable, and that his authoritarian arguments can be recast in more democratic terms. It also concurs in Stephen's blunt recognition that the courts' need to make decisions despite the uncertainties of science renders some convictions of the innocent inevitable.