Policy, Research, and Funding: Socio Legal Studies in a changed Political Climate

In the current conservative political climate in Britain, the USA and elsewhere, spcio-legal scholars are under increasing pressure to display explicitly the practical relevance and usefulness of their research. 'Relevance' is usually taken to be indicated by the capacity of research findings to change social policy or to foreclose certain courses of action. But it is also important to turn the question around and as well as asking about the extent to which socio-legal research has changed governmental policies, we should always bear in mind that governmental policies, particularly about modes of funding, may change the character and fundamental utility of socio-legal research. The discussion is illustrated by reference to recent experience at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at Oxford University.     

西方自由主义影响下的新闻自由——从17世纪以来西方政治传播学历史文献的角度

17世纪以来,投身于英国资产阶级革命的西方政治哲学家们对个人自由和新闻自由进行了深入的思考和论证,自由主义延伸到新闻传播中自然便提出了思想自由、言论自由以及出版自由等问题。17世纪以来的西方政治哲学家们基本上都将上述自由归因于天赋人权。英国思想家弥尔顿强调人是理性动物,保护言论和出版自由是因为只有允许人们公开辩论才能够发现真理,20世纪以来依靠公开辩论发现真理这一观念最终导致了思想和意见的自由市场理论的产生,它们成为支撑新闻自由理论的基石。在西方,新闻自由被人们视为一项绝对的精神权利,理论的倡导最终也导致了实践中的立法保障。回顾新闻自由的发展过程,有助于我们理解20世纪以来自由主义复兴的西方当代社会语境中,新闻自由所面对的进退维谷的现实。     

Political Liberalism and Political Embeddedness: Understanding Politics in the Work of Chinese Criminal Defense Lawyers

This article examines the meanings of politics in everyday legal practice using the case of Chinese criminal defense lawyers. Based on 194 in‐depth interviews with criminal defense lawyers and other informants in 22 cities across China, we argue that lawyers’ everyday politics have two faces: on the one hand, lawyers potentially can challenge state power, protect citizen rights, and pursue proceduralism in their daily work; on the other hand, they often have to rely on political connections with state agencies to protect themselves and to solve problems in their legal practice. The double meanings of politics—namely, political liberalism and political embeddedness—explain the complex motivations and coping tactics that are frequently found in Chinese lawyers’ everyday work. Our data show that the Chinese criminal defense bar is differentiated along these two meanings of politics into five clusters of lawyers: progressive elites, pragmatic brokers, notable activists, grassroots activists, and routine practitioners. They also suggest that a principal manifestation of political lawyering is not merely short‐term mobilization or revolutionary struggle against arbitrary state power, but also an incremental everyday process that often involves sophisticated tactics to manage interests that often conflict.     

European Studies and the European Crisis: Legal and Political Science between Critique and Complacency

European Studies used to be dominated by legal and political science approaches which hailed the progress of European integration and its reliance on law. The recent set of crises that struck the EU have highlighted fundamental problems in the ways and means by which European integration unfolds. The quasi‐authoritarian emergency politics deployed in the euro crisis is a radical expression of the fading prevalence of democratic processes to accommodate economic and social diversity in the Union. As we argue in this paper, however, the mainstreams in both disciplines retain a largely affirmative and apologetic stance on the EU's post‐democratic and extra‐constitutional development. While political science contributions mostly content themselves with a revival of conventional integration theories and thus turn a blind eye to normatively critical aspects of European crisis governance, legal scholarship is in short supply of normatively convincing theoretical paradigms and thus aligns itself with the functionalist reasoning of the EU's Court of Justice. Yet, we also identify critical peripheries in both disciplines which intersect in their critical appraisal of the authoritarian tendencies that inhere in the crisis‐ridden state of European integration. Their results curb the prevailing optimism and underline that the need for fundamental reorientations in both the theory and practice of European integration has become irrefutable.     

中美律师继续教育比较研究

现代市场经济的竞争，实质是科技和人才的竞争，律师业也不例外。律师要争得应有的地位，求得长远的发展，最根本的是依靠自己能够存国家的民主法制建设中、在经济与社会的发展中发挥举足轻重的作用，能够为社会、为当事人提供高效优质的法律服务。要做到这一点，所有律师必须不断更新知识，学习掌握国内、国际新法律、新业务。律师行业是精英行业，这种精英需要终生学习修炼。     

Richard Mullender,Matteo Nicolini,Thomas D.C. Bennett and Emilia Mickiewicz (eds): Law and Imagination in Troubled Times. A Legal and Literary Discourse

Liverpool Law Review -