Law,the State,and Public Order: Regulating Religion in Contemporary Egypt

A substantial scholarship has studied the extent to which states across the political and geographic spectrums rely on legal, bureaucratic, and judicial institutions to govern religion. However, a deeper inquiry into the mechanisms through which regulation occurs has yet been achieved. This article foregrounds conversion, understood as mobility between social groups in which belief and sincerity may figure but is not reducible to either, to observe these dynamics. Through an analysis of Egyptian jurisprudence on the right to change religion as well as interviews with complainants and litigators, the article challenges widespread assumptions about who and what constitute the regulatory field. It also shows how religious difference is produced in the legal‐bureaucratic encounter. By accounting for institutions that are not typically considered part of the regulatory field nor thought to be bound by the strictures of legal positivism, this article further occasions a rethinking of the public–private distinction within critiques of secularism.     

区际冲突法中的公共秩序保留

公共秩序保留作为国际私法的一项重要制度,其直接功能是维护法院地的社会公共利益、法律的基本原则以及基本道德观念,而从法伦理的性质来看,其最终目的是为了实现法律的实质正义,匡正形式正义的不妥当性。区际法律冲突是由于法域间存在不同法律制度、社会利益和道德观念而产生的,在运用冲突法解决区际法律冲突时,仍然遇到适用外域法的结果与法院地法的社会公共利益相违背,违反公平和正义的情形,因此,有必要运用公共秩序保留制度来避免这种结果的出现,尤其是在我国,区际法律冲突与国际法律冲突十分接近,公共秩序保留制度的运用显得更为重要。另外,在同一时空,在公共秩序的价值评判标准的运用上,区际冲突法应当与与国际私法完全一致。也就是说,应当采用“完全适用论”。     

社会法的社会语境:人民社会的政治观念——兼与公法、私法社会语境的比较

社会语境是介于社会需求事实与上层建筑之间的媒介场景,作为第三法域或是部门法的社会法也应该有自己特殊的社会语境系统。当代西方国家因社会内部压力对市民社会自由性和自利性的有限改造,促成了"律他、利他"的人民社会初级语境形成,体现出"协调市场竞争与进行社会保护"的政治观念,西方国家的社会法是对该政治观念的法制反映。"以人为本、谋求社会成员共同幸福"是中国特色社会主义人民社会语境的政治观念,中国的社会法建设除应具有"协调市场竞争与进行社会保护"之相同经济、社会功效外,还具有制度自觉的政治功效。人民社会不同层次的政治观念决定了两种不同的社会法立法目标与任务和其在法律体系中不同的实体地位。     

Chinese Practice in Public International Law: 2006 (III)

Continued from Part II published last year, this part of theSurvey covers materials reflecting Chinese practice in 2006relating to: XI. Outer Space Law (Definition and Delimitationof Outer Space; Draft Protocol on Matters Specific to SpaceAssets to the Convention on International Interests in MobileEquipment; The Status and Application of Five UN Treaties onOuter Space; Practice of States and International Organizationsin Registering Space Objects; The Establishment of the DisasterManagement International Space Coordination Organization; ThePolicy of Peaceful Use of Outer Space; The Cooperative Approachto the Peaceful Use of Outer Space; The Convention of Asia-PacificSpace Cooperation Organization); XII. International Law on Diplomaticand Consular Relation (Preconditions for the Establishment ofDiplomatic Relation; Vienna Convention on the Consular Relations;Diplomatic Protection and Consular Assistance); XIII. InternationalCriminal Law (Universal Jurisdiction in Absentia; Treaty andJudicial Practice on Extradition and Criminal Judicial Assistance;The "East Turkistan" Terrorists in Guantanamo Bay; The LAI CheongSing (LAI Changxing) Case in Canada; The Position Towards TokyoTrial; Illegal Migrants; Trafficking of Persons; Anti-Corruption);XIV. International Law on Environment (Environment and Development;Climate Change; Dam-building on International Rivers; SonghuajiangRiver Pollution Accident; Tropical Rain Forest in SoutheastAsia; Animal Fur Trade; Auction of Dinosaur Egg); XV. InternationalOrganization (United Nations; World Health Organization; ShanghaiCooperation Organization); XVI. International Economic Law (InternationalTrade Law; International Protection of Intellectual PropertyRights; International Financial Law); XVII. International Lawon Energy (Energy and Development; Energy Policy); XVIII. InternationalLaw on Natural Disaster (Tsunami Warning System; InternationalHumanitarian Donation and Assistance); XIX. International Lawon Health (The Issue of SARS; the Issue of Avian and Human PandemicInfluenza).     

Chinese Practice in Public International Law: 2006 (II)

Continued from Part I published earlier this year, this partof the survey covers materials reflecting Chinese practice in2006 relating to: Fundamental principles of international law(Section IV; territorial integrity, including Taiwan issue andTibet issue, non-interference of internal affairs and friendlyco-operation); International law of recognition (Section V;recognition of States and governments); International peaceand security (Section VI; North Korea nuclear issue, Iraniannuclear issue, Darfur issue, Kosovo issue, Great Lake regionissue, Lebanon–Israel conflict issue and Middle East issue);Anti-terrorism (Section VII); Non-proliferation and disarmament(Section VIII; general policy, nuclear disarmament, Treaty onNuclear Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), ComprehensiveTest Ban Treaty (CTBT), Treaty on the Central Asia Nuclear WeaponFree Area, Security Assurances for non-nuclear-weapon States,Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT), Bacteriological (Biological)and Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction (BWC), Certain ConventionalWeapons (CCW), Ottawa Convention, Non-Proliferation of Weaponsof Mass Destruction (WMDs) and Missiles, Illicit Trade in SALW,UN Disarmament Commission, Conference of Disarmament (CD) andPrevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS)); InternationalLaw on Territory and Frontier (Section IX; Diaoyu Islands, NanshaIslands, China–India Territorial and Frontier Dispute,China–Russia Frontier); International Law of the Sea (SectionX; UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, Conservationof Marine Bio-diversity Beyond Areas of National Jurisdiction,Fishery, Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic MarineLiving Resource, Marine Navigation, Delimitation and DevelopmentDisputes with Japan in East China Sea, Principle of MaritimeDelimitation with Other Countries, Base Points of the ChineseTerritorial Sea and The Issue of Suyan Islet).     

Chinese Practice in Public International Law: 2006 (I)

This part of the Survey covers materials reflecting Chinesepractice in 2006 relating to: I. Subjects under discussion atthe ILC (Shared natural resources; responsibility of internationalorganizations; reservation to treaties; unilateral acts of states;effects of armed conflicts on treaties; obligation to extraditionor prosecution; fragmentation of international law); II. Internationalhuman rights law (general commitment on human rights; collectivehuman rights, including right of self-determination, right todevelopment; civil and political rights, including freedom ofreligion, freedom of expression, issue of organ transplants;economic, social and cultural rights, including right to food,right to health; human rights of aliens, including freedom ofpress of foreign correspondents, rights of refugees; human rightsof special groups, including rights of ethnic minorities, rightsof indigenous peoples, rights of women, rights of children,rights of immigrants, rights of persons with disabilities, rightsof older persons; implementation of international human rightslaw, including the establishment of UN Human Rights Council,review of mandates and mechanisms of UN Human Rights Council,the implementation of human rights instruments, human rightsdialogue and corporation; human rights situation in foreigncountries, including Myanmar, Middle East; human rights andinternational trade); III. International humanitarian law.     

论我国刑法修正的秩序价值优先性——以《刑法修正案(九)》为视角

《刑法修正案(九)》对我国1997年《刑法》进行了较大规模的修改,在起草和审议过程中,很多内容备受争议.从具体内容看,《刑法修正案(九)》尽管兼顾公民权利和社会秩序两种价值,但更多地倾向于优先选择秩序价值.这是由刑法本身的性质所决定的,但也受到我国社会实际状况的深刻影响.然而,这并不是说,刑法优先选择秩序价值就是绝对的.相反,自由价值也是刑法的目的之一,因而对秩序价值有一定的约束.自由价值对秩序价值的约束,在先天上是弱性的,只有在立法和司法上将刑法谦抑性原则程序化、制度化,才能发挥这种约束作用.     

The Fault of (European) Law in (Political and Social) Economic Crisis

It is a commonplace that the discipline of economics has contributed to the current crisis, above all, because economic methodologies are charged with fatally inflating debt risk, such that collapse was the inevitable result. But what might be said of the role of law within this constellation? Much ink has been consumed detailing legal shortcomings within regulatory regimes for the financial services. However, a full accounting has yet to be made of the broader fault which may also be attributed to the premises of modern and increasingly post-national law, especially as they coalesce with a broader abdication of political responsibility for crisis. This contribution begins this accounting, investigating the processes by which law has transformed itself into an economic technology within post-national regimes in its contemporary quest for material legitimacy. Above all, in its idolatry of the factual, law has itself become a power locus—especially within the European Union—that similarly pre-empts the politics within which social and economic stability might be defined and achieved.     

轻微涉罪行为处理问题研究——以刑法与治安管理处罚法的竞合为切入点

对轻微行为是否成立犯罪的问题,我国刑法规定情节显著轻微危害不大的行为不构成犯罪。但这是一个相对模糊的规定。由于其他法律通常也对这些轻微违法行为规定了处罚,因此便带来部门法之间竞合的问题,容易导致处罚时适用法律的不一致。对这一问题,立法上的完善固然是一条重要的应对途径,但司法过程中相关配套制度的建立也有助于问题的解决。     

A Reasonable Balance of Law and Sentiment: Social Order in Democratic Taiwan from the Policeman's Point of View

Taiwan's political democratization has engendered a contradiction in its legal regime: consolidation of rule of law at the macro-institutional level is matched by the persistent marginalization of legal authority in ground-level social practices. This article uses an ethnographic study of neighborhood police to explore certain practical and structural elements involved in maintaining this contradictory sociopolitical order. I examine some of the processes through which state authority is invoked and applied to the policing of public space, focusing on the ideals of legitimacy that animate these processes. The argument of the article is that historical and cultural factors embodied in contemporary Taiwan's "idea of police"—exemplified in the trope of a balance between reason, law, and sentiment—are crucial to understanding how solidification of the rule of law within state institutions is kept within the boundaries of a social sensibility that does not take law as the last word.     

Ann Wagner and Le Cheng (eds): Law,Cinema, and the Ill City: Imagining Justice and Order in Real and Fictional Cities

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique -     

Just-in-Time Justice: Globalization and the Changing Character of Law,Order, and Power

This article examines how economic globalization has dialectically interacted with the nation-state and legal order to facilitate the production of “just-in-time justice”—the increasingly flexible character of law, order, and power. Utilizing Chambliss’s analytic strategy, particularly his dialectical approach to lawmaking, I first examine the relationship between the global social order, economic globalization, and the changing architecture of nation-states. I then explore ways that the legal order has been flexibilized, including the creation of “states of exception,” the privatization of social control functions of the state, the development of transnational spaces for governance, and the widespread use of surveillance. My analysis of these transformations suggests that the greatest danger in the contemporary moment may be what we do not know, what is hidden from public accountability, beyond the public gaze. Importantly, this analysis also highlights that law continues to matter—or else there would not be such a press to ensure its disappearance.     

论公序良俗原则对习惯及习惯法的权衡

习惯、习惯法及公序良俗均为不确定的概念,因内涵上相互交融而难以完全区分。习惯与习惯法具有自发性、区域性、非正式性等特征,其适用可弥补成文法的不足,有利于现代民法对实质正义的追求。就功能论而言,公序良俗原则是习惯与习惯法的过滤器,起着净化习惯与习惯法的作用。也就是说,无论是习惯法还是事实上的习惯,只要违反公序良俗,均无适用的余地。     

Public Procurement Law, Public Bodies, and the General Interest: Perspectives from Higher Education

Abstract This article examines the interaction of EC public procurement law with the legislative framework governing higher education in England and Wales. It focuses on the impact of this interaction on changing status of higher education institutions, organisations that are at the margins of the much‐discussed public–private divide in law. The Higher Education Act 2004 is viewed as a driver of potential change in status, and a distinction is drawn between mechanisms which appear to support the introduction of change and those that instead introduce fluctuation and lead to concerns for legal certainty at the margins of public law. The study thus also has wider relevance where public‐sector reform is premised upon organisational forms with hybrid or ambiguous status.     

Between Law and Transnational Social Movement Organizations: Stabilizing Expectations of Global Public Goods

This article draws on Niklas Luhmann's theory and method to present transnational social movement organizations as a solution to the problem of increased expectations of global public goods which fail to find adequate accommodation in law. As a concrete example of the limits of law in this respect, it examines the non liquet of the World Court on the question of the illegality of nuclear weapons. The trajectory of anti‐nuclear norms is traced beyond the limits of law to the alternative structure of transnational social movement organizations, and the article presents such organizations as stabilizing increased expectations of global public goods through their recursive decision making and their capacity to continuously project those expectations at the legal and political systems. This generates observations on the concept of ‘global governance ‘, the structural relations between global civil society and international law, and the role of this form of organization in the evolution of the global political system.