‘Payback’, Customary Law and Criminal Law in Colonised Australia

‘Payback’ is an Australian Aboriginal English term (also known in Melanesia) commonly understood to refer to a vendetta. Satisfaction of a grievance, such as a death or wife-stealing, may be sought through ritual ceremony, gift-giving, corporal punishment and ordeal, or even killing. Such phenomena, often characterised as vendetta or feud, have been noted by non-Aboriginal observers during most of the period of European colonisation (from 1788). In spite of the presumption of sovereignty that recognises only one law, it is shown that the criminal law in Australia has conceded limits to its reach in dealing with payback. More recently we observe that judicial attitudes have tended to recognise the positive functions of certain forms of payback in resolving conflict and upset in communities. Far from being eradicated by colonisation, payback retains a rationality in Aboriginal communities in a country that is subject to white man's law.     

土地法、动产法到信息法的社会历史变迁

人类社会的发展已经由农业社会、工业社会进入到信息社会。早期的人类在狩猎经济的方式下生存,没有私有财产,也没有所有权。农业社会的基础经济资源是土地,与之相适应,土地法成为最早的经济资源配置法则。工业社会的基础经济资源是机器,于是动产法取代了土地法的核心地位。信息是信息社会最重要的经济资源,信息法必将成为一个独立而完善的法律部门。     

Reforming the United Kingdom Constitution: Law,Convention, Soft Law

The Governance of Britain Green Paper continues the programme of constitutional reform begun in 1997, and appears to reinforce the juridification of the UK's constitution. Nevertheless, several key reforms will be implemented not by legislation, but by creating new conventions. This article argues that such ‘declared’ conventions are best understood as a form of constitutional ‘soft law’, which attempt to influence constitutional behaviour rather than generating binding norms. Applying a regulatory analysis, it then argues that the case for a soft, rather than hard law approach to constitutional reform is weaker than its widespread use in the UK suggests. Finally, the article challenges the thesis that the political constitution is being replaced by a legal constitution, arguing that the government's attitude to constitutional reform still exhibits basic characteristics of political constitutionalism. Moreover, there is more to contemporary constitutional developments than a bipolar contest between political and legal constitutionalism.     

Law, Space, and Place: Reframing Comparative Law and Legal Anthropology

In her book Mapping Marriage Law in Spanish Gitano Communities (2006) , Susan Drummond challenges the disciplinary perspectives of comparative law and legal anthropology in her study of Gitano marriage practices. By reframing the way in which the "local" or "locale" is viewed—through an ethnographic study of Gitanos—she displaces the traditional boundaries ascribed to comparative law, with its focus on taxonomy and structure, and with legal anthropology's approach to culture. Her study not only elucidates how national and transnational law intersect, but highlights the complex interconnections between local law and the larger systems of law that attempt to regulate it. This detailed interdisciplinary depiction of the spatial and temporal dimensions of law demonstrates the importance of taking account of scale, projection, and representation that requires both comparative law and legal anthropology to rethink the nature of space and place and their relationship with law from both their macro- and microperspectives.     

Politics,Prisons, and Law Enforcement: An Examination of the Emergence of “Law and Order” Politics in Texas

This article examines the rise of “law and order” politics in Texas, providing an in‐depth archival case study of changes in prison policy in a Southern state during the pivotal period when many U.S. states turned to mass incarceration. It brings attention to the important role an insurgent Republican governor and law enforcement officials played in shaping crime policy. Law enforcement's role is considered within a broader examination of political strategy during a period of intense socioeconomic volatility. The findings suggest that within particular political contexts, especially those with low levels of political participation, law enforcement agents might play a key role in shaping punishment.     

“Going to Law”: Reflections on Law,Religion, and Mitra Sharafi's Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia

This essay explores religion's need for law, comparing the story told in Mitra Sharafi's Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia (2014)—about the virtual hijacking of British colonial law to serve the communal religious needs of Parsis in colonial India—to other contexts in which secular and religious legal systems have built symbiotic relationships, including in the United States and Thailand. It concludes by urging a reweaving of religious and legal histories after the critique of secularism and its shadows, separationism, and antinomianism.