The emergence of the rule of law in Russia

This paper challenges an empirical claim about the commercial courts (arbitrazhnye sudy) made by Kathryn Hendley and her co-authors in their paper “Law, Relationships and Private Enforcement: Transactional Strategies of Russian Enterprise” in Vol. 52, No. 4, Europe-Asia Studies in 2000. Basing their case on a quantitative survey of Russian firms, they conclude that economic actors in the 1990s relied on ‘the law and legal institutions’ because the commercial courts were relatively effective. In order to test this claim about the link between individual behaviour and the judiciary, I ask: What type of belief about corruption was held by Russian economic actors who trusted the commercial courts for conflict resolution at the end of the 1990s? The data set is drawn from a survey of 227 Russian firms made in 1997. I use self-reported data on economic actors’ preference for using or not using the commercial court (in case of a hypothetical conflict about a considerable amount of money) as a proxy for trust. A binary logistic regression model shows that economic actors who accepted corruption as a fact of life at the time of market entry were three times more likely to trust the commercial courts for conflict resolution than economic actors who rejected corruption. This finding contradicts any reasonable definition of the rule of law and suggests that the neo-liberal reformers should have paid more attention to the content – rather than merely to the speed – of reform.     

Nome law: Deleuze & Guattari on the emergence of law

This article orientates Deleuze & Guattari’s pragmatic semiotics towards a semiotics of law. This pragmatic semiotics is explored, and directly related to the theory of emergence and complexity that is also a key feature of Deleuze & Guattari’s work. It is suggested that the development of these aspects of Deleuze & Guattari’s thought in relation to law allows the contours of a noological legal theory to be sketched out. Noology is the study of images of thought, their emergence, their genealogy, and their creation. A first exploration of this noological legal theory is then carried out by the conceptualisation of nome law as the first emergence of law as theorised by Deleuze & Guattari in the plateau “1837: Of the Refrain” from “A Thousand Plateaus”. This is a conceptualisation of law’s emergence in a far-from-equilibrium palaeolithic hunter-gatherer pack, and contrasts to accounts of law’s origin in a founding violence or mythical contract. It is the ‘big bang’ of legality, and the opening up of a first image of legality, problematic of social organisation, and anthropomorphic knowledge space.     

Corrections for age in estimating older adults' stature from long bones

Stature estimates based on long bone measurements require a correction factor to compensate for stature decrease in older people. Such a correction should exclude the effect of any secular trend in stature and reflect the age at which stature begins to decrease, sex differences, and the increasing rate of change with age. Stature correction which meet these requirements for ages 46 through 85, based upon two recent large-scale longitudinal anthropometric studies, are provided in tabular form.     

人格权法的内部体系

为适应市场经济发展和满足人民生活需要 ,中国民法典立法工作正在紧锣密鼓地进行 ,特别是自去年 12月法工委颁布民法草案之后 ,民法典立法成为全社会关注的热点 ,学界纷纷以不同的方式为这部法典的诞生贡献出自己的心血。为此 ,本刊特策划一组稿件 ,以期对这场讨论有所裨益     

关于完善我国个人所得税法的设想

我国个人所得税法虽经历次修改但仅是局部微调,没有弥补现行个税法的根本缺陷,我国个人所得税法的改革和完善仍任重而道远。本文借鉴国外个人所得税法改革的合理成分,在分析我国个人所得税法缺陷的基础上,提出应在分类征收模式向分类与综合相结合的征收模式转变;减少累进税率级次,降低最高边际税率;实行税收特别措施;采用基本扣除与专项扣除相结合的方式,建立弹性税制,推广税收指数化和加强征管五个方面予以完善。     

The retention of personal information online: A call for international regulation of privacy law

New technologies permit online businesses to reduce expenses and increase efficiency by, for example, storing information in “the cloud”, engaging in online tracking and targeted advertising, location and tracking technologies, and biometrics. However, the potential for technology to facilitate long term retention of customers' personal information raises concerns about the competing right of individuals to the privacy of their personal information. Although the European Commission has recently released a proposal for regulation to “provide a data subject with the right to be forgotten and to erasure”, neither the OECD Privacy Guidelines nor the APEC Privacy Framework includes any requirement to delete personal information. While New Zealand includes a “limited retention principle” in the Privacy Act 1993, apart from one limited exception the privacy principles cannot be enforced in court. Taking New Zealand privacy law as an example, this paper examines the issue of retention of customer data, explains why this is a serious problem and argues that although it could be addressed by appropriate amendments to domestic laws, domestic privacy legislation may not be sufficient in an online environment. In the same way as other areas of law, such as the intellectual property regime, have turned to global regulatory standards which reflect the international nature of their subject matter, international privacy regulation should be the next stage for the information privacy regime.     

Sexual abuse in Canadian university and college dating relationships: The contribution of male peer support

Using data from a Canadian national representative sample survey of male university and college students, this study tested three hypotheses from a theoretical model which attempts to explain the relationship between male peer group dynamics and sexual assault in dating relationships. Consistent with previous research conducted in the United States, the findings reported here show that male peer support is a significant predictor of sexual abuse in post-secondary school courtship. This article concludes with several suggestions for further research.     

Privacy protection as a case study in personal rights protection in Israeli law

Personality rights, by nature, reflect the culture and values of society. Thus, it is interesting to look back on the road that Israeli law has traveled since the early 1980s, when the right to privacy as such had no trace of protection in Israeli private law, through to the present, when it is protected by both the Protection of Privacy Law and the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty. Current Israeli case law, which shows that the balance between privacy and free speech in cases of publication of private information leans toward privacy, can be partially explained by historical, religious and cultural reasons. The increased privacy litigation in Israel forms part of an ever-growing protection of other personality rights in Israeli law, thus serving as a good example of this expanding trend.