Condominium and the City: The Rise of Property in Vancouver

Condominium is a form of land ownership that combines private ownership of an individual unit in a multi‐unit building with an undivided share of the common property in the building and a right to participate in the collective governance of the private and common property. Introduced by statute across North America in the 1960s, condominium facilitated the vertical subdivision of land and enabled a massive increase in the density of private interests. This article describes condominium and considers the justifications that were offered for this rearrangement of property. It then chronicles the introduction of condominium to the city of Vancouver and maps its spread across the city from 1970 to 2010. In doing so, the article reveals that condominium, a legal innovation without peer in its capacity to increase the density of private ownership in land, has provided the legal architecture of ownership for the remaking of Vancouver.     

论建筑物区分所有权人组织的法律性质

建筑物区分所有权人组织是我国新兴的不动产所有权人自治管理组织.对于建筑物区分所有权人组织的法律性质,我国目前有关法律法规并未作出规定.确定建筑物区分所有权人组织的法律性质对于确定组织及其成员、任职人员有关权利、义务和责任的归属,明确建筑物区分所有权人组织的对内对外关系均有重要意义.建筑物区分所有权人组织的民事主体地位、诉讼主体地位以及责任能力的探讨揭示了其法律性质的特殊性.赋予其法律人格是明确其内外部关系较为可行的方法.     

The relationship between corporate governance characteristics and credit risk exposure in banks: implications for financial regulation

This article analyses board structures in listed Danish banks in the years prior to the financial crisis by exploring the relationship between corporate governance characteristics and credit risk exposure. The article presents a novel approach as it relies on a newly developed risk metric entitled the “Supervision Diamond” introduced by the Danish FSA, which “external” board directors must address. It contains five thresholds for measuring a bank’s exposure to credit risks i.e. the proportion of large customers, lending growth, the ratio of lending/deposits, liquidity buffer and the proportion of real estate loans. By employing quantitative governance variables the article finds that increased executive director remuneration is associated with increased credit risk posed by the bank’s borrowers. On the other hand, increasing the number of executive/“inside” directors is associated with a lower credit risk exposure. It is argued that more “inside” directors on the executive board constitutes a stronger “checks and balance” system. The article also documents that the probability of obtaining state capital from the Danish credit bailout package is negatively related to larger boards as well as higher executive director remuneration. The policy implication is that financial authorities should be increasingly aware of insufficient corporate governance characteristics in order to prevent excessive credit risk exposure. Moreover, the article provides important insights on which corporate governance variables have a significant impact on a bank’s credit risk exposure. This knowledge is valuable for financial authorities/policy makers considering future regulatory initiatives and how they should administer bank monitoring.     

《民法典》夫妻债务条款的不足与应对

《民法典》第1064条关于夫妻债务的条款源于《最高人民法院关于审理涉及夫妻债务纠纷案件适用法律有关问题的解释》,该条款原来只针对夫妻对外关系,上升为法律条文后同时适用于夫妻对内和对外关系,即“内外同一”模式。由于债权人不易了解夫妻内部情况,这种做法较易损害债权人利益,对此可以通过适当放宽债权人举证责任和强化法院职权探知予以应对。该条文从司法解释上升为法律条文时与第1089条的衔接不够顺畅,遗漏了夫妻中举债一方的举证责任,应予补充。在内容上,该条第1款和第2款都出现“共同意思表示”,鉴于该条款的法理基础是《最高人民法院关于适用〈中华人民共和国婚姻法〉若干问题的解释(一)》第17条,建议将第1款的“共同意思表示”解释为签订合同的民事法律行为,将第2款的“共同意思表示”解释为表见代理。此外,条文中的夫妻“共同生产经营”的含义具有不确定性,建议对其进行目的性扩张解释。     

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.     

支持理论下民事诉讼当事人法律意识的实证研究

传统研究重视“法的供给”视角,致力于创设“良法良制”。通过转向“对法的需求”视角,本研究基于支持理论和法律意识理论,访谈了142名四类常见民事诉讼案件的当事人。本研究发现,当事人对司法的信赖分为“特定支持”和“普遍支持”两个维度。负面的诉讼经历仅会降低当事人对主审法官(法院)的评价(特定支持),尚未削弱他们对法院系统及司法制度的评价(普遍支持)。此外,当事人可以被进一步分为“门外汉”和“入门者”。前者不信赖法院的根本原因在于其法律意识与司法制度间存在巨大的冲突和矛盾;“入门者”的意识则限定于法律体系内,只在意法官的审判质量。随着司法系统的日渐完善,“入门者”对司法的信赖有望逐步提升。但“门外汉”则需要通过“知情(法)受益”这一过程先转化为“入门者”。     

Sharia Courts and Muslim Personal Law in India: Intersecting Legal Regimes

In July 2005, a Delhi lawyer filed suit with the Supreme Court of India seeking to ban “sharia courts” (dar ul qazas) and Islamic legal opinions, arguing that they constitute a “parallel judicial system” that undermines the state's legal institutions. The Supreme Court decided in 2014 that dar ul qazas are not parallel but appropriate alternative forums. In this article, I analyze several divorce cases in Delhi and Patna dar ul qazas to show that, rather than being alternative or parallel, dar ul qazas intersect with state courts. Attending to this intersection, I argue, has implications for how we understand legal pluralism, secularism, and the relation between them. Specifically, I argue that because of how cases travel between dar ul qazas and state courts, dar ul qazas help to consolidate the oppositions between religious and secular law, kin relations, and rights upon which secularism relies.     

Moving Children through Private International Law: Institutions and the Enactment of Ethics

This article examines how the Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Co‐operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (Hague Adoption Convention) plays a central role in justifying the institution of legal adoption. The Hague Adoption Convention has often been regarded as a response to the challenges that the “global situation” brings to adoption practice. Based on private international law, the agreement contains protocols and norms to ensure the protection of the child in intercountry adoption. In the article, I propose that the Hague Convention can be understood as a “transparency device”; a complex assemblage working in pursuit of global “good governance.” The device, however, also operates as justification within the institutional domain, allowing adoption agencies to make distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate adoptions. Idemonstrate how the logic of transparency disguises as much as it promises to reveal. While the doctrine's aim is to validate adoptability and combat trafficking, it also helps to mainstream Euro‐American adoption knowledge to other parts of the world.     

转型中国的城市化治理与发展法体系

在转型中国的时代背景下,城市化法律治理研究应当跨越价值分析与规范分析的鸿沟,在理论与实证的基础上更新理念框架。城市化治理的历史进程为我们反思“法律与发展”研究的成败得失,提供了丰富的启迪和资源。聚焦城市化法律治理的现实症结,“发展法”的新分析框架得以成型,并导向一种新的整体性法治发展战略。“为了发展的法”是城市化和法治化有机一体的理念构造,“发展中的法”为“作为发展的法”奠定历史传统基底,“通过发展的法”确保城市化中法律权能的宏观均衡配置,“有关发展的法”将启动新的“法律与发展”的互动。     

Indigenous Peoples and Sustainable Development Subprojects in Brazilian Amazonia: The Challenges of Interculturality*

The implementation of sustainable development projects for Indigenous peoples in Brazilian Amazonia by the Pilot Program for the Protection of Brazilian Tropical Forests has generated new types of intercultural relations between the dominant society and local Indigenous communities. This article analyzes sixteen of these projects focussing upon (1) sociocultural relations, in which two different administrative and political systems come into contact and require the adoption by Indigenous peoples of a Western “project” format to meet their social and environmental needs, and (2) interscientific relations, whereby unresolved legal issues concerning the use of and access to Indigenous knowledge by members and institutions of the wider society are exacerbated.     

“不合规”规划许可合法性审查的检视与司法空间政策的形成

“不合规”是不符合国家强制性标准的简约表达,我国各地法院对于“不合规”规划许可是否合法的裁决并不一致。国家强制性标准具有法律约束力,把公法意义上对“不合规”规划许可的合法性审查转化为私法意义上对居民是否获得侵权补偿的审查是不妥的,认定“有补偿则合法”实际进行了“超越法律的法的续造”,会产生负外部性效果,因而在公法层面上“不合规”则不合法的判断模式是成立的。为适度发挥司法空间政策形成功能,可确认经补偿之“不合规”许可违法而不予撤销,并制度性激活反向征收作为补救措施,为城市持续发展服务。     

On the Rights Protection of Vulnerable Groups Under the Prevention and Control of a Public health Crisis: A Literature Review and Perspective for Future Directions

The legal system for prevention and control of a public health crisis rests on two pillars: human rights protection and good governance. This duality is well illustrated by substantively equal treatment of vulnerable groups in a pandemic from the perspectives of public service, social inclusion, accessible environment, gender equality, and right to health. A review of literature on this topic shows that current research needs to address the gap between “life supremacy” and “equal protection” in the area of human rights protection, and the gap between “putting people first” and “strict control at the grassroots level” in the area of good governance. The research should employ intersectional methodology to highlight the rights logic of the socialist legal system and the key role of the Communist Party of China’s leadership in balancing individual versus community rights, enhancing the governance capability for participation by multiple social agents, ensuring equal protection for disadvantaged groups, promoting inclusive and sustainable development, and realizing the common prosperity of all the people.     

What Is Transnational Law?

Is it important to conceptualize transnational law and “map” it as a new legal field? This article suggests that to do so might help both juristic practice and sociolegal scholarship in organizing, linking, and comparing disparate but increasingly significant types of regulation. To explore the idea of transnational law is to raise basic questions about the nature of both “law” and “society” (taken as the realm law regulates). This involves radically rethinking relationships between the public and the private, between law and state, and between different sources of law and legal authority. Taking as its focus Von Daniels's The Concept of Law from a Transnational Perspective and Calliess and Zumbansen's Rough Consensus and Running Code (both 2010), the article considers what approaches may be most productive, and what key issues need to be addressed, to make sense of broad trends in law's extension beyond the boundaries of nation‐states.     

“规则制华”政策下中国自由贸易协定的功能转向

中国已签订的自由贸易协定在商界利用率不高,经贸规则止步于对世界贸易组织的简单模仿,总体上偏向于扩大市场准入的传统功能且效果有限。当代国际经济法面临体系性重构,由西方主导的“规则制华”政策的影响与日俱增,但该政策背离了全球治理的正确方向。鉴于此,当下中国自由贸易协定应积极转向规则建构功能:一是以自身利益为内在基准进行议题盘点,突出自身的规则诉求;二是以制度扩散为外在目标,追求国内制度外溢与对外制度供给,并以“效率提升型”制度为供给特色,从而将本国自身利益与国际公共利益结合起来。“合理利用区域机制,通过自由贸易协定进行规则再造,对‘一带一路’中小伙伴进行制度供给”的改革思路符合中国的实力现状,这一思路既能促进全球化背景下的经贸合作利益,又能保障新兴大国对内的公共政策自主权与对外的制度话语权。     

Imperial paradigms: First Amendment theory,legal interdisciplinarity and reductionism

Increasingly, legal scholars are bringing the theories and vocabularies of other disciplines to bear upon legal issues, including First Amendment theory. While legal interdisciplinarity has many advantages, it also raises questions when scholars attempt to “reduce” legal theory to the conceptual frameworks of other disciplines. This article examines two such attempts, one by a feminist legal scholar, the other by an advocate of the economic analysis of law. The article critiques these approaches and explores some possible limits of interdisciplinary First Amendment scholarship.     

The Embedded Acquis Communautaire: Transmission Belt and Prism of New Governance

The European Union offers crucial insights into the gradual shift from a Weberian form of modern 'government' towards the institutionalisation of post-Weberian 'governance'. The article argues that the emerging 'polity of polities' context, not only threatens the constitutional basis of democratic rule but also raises the questions of what exactly the new institutions of governance beyond the nation-state are, and what they imply for the functioning (rules of the game) and legitimacy (democratic processes) of the political order. In an effort to elaborate on these questions, the article develops two themes. First, it raises critical questions about the conceptual boundedness of 'governance' in the discussion of constitutional and policy studies within the field of European integration. Secondly, it advances a methodological access point for the study of the institutionalisation of governance in the Euro-polity. It suggests situating the legal concept of acquis communautaire at the boundary of legal studies and politics. The concept is then applied to a case study of citizenship policy in the EU to demonstrate how the acquis communautaire–more precisely, the 'embedded acquis communautaire'–facilitates methodological access to the study of the institutionalisation of governance beyond the state and despite states.     

Competition and Cooperation in International Commercial Arbitration: The Birth of a Transnational Legal Profession

This paper revisits the sociology of international commercial arbitration on the basis of unexploited archives and data. This material casts new light on the competition between “grand old men” and “young technocrats” in the 1980s and 1990s, a theme that has structured the analysis of international commercial arbitration since the pioneering work of Yves Dezalay and Bryant G. Garth (Dealing in Virtue). In contrast, the data show that the crucial transformative period actually took place between the 1950s and 1970s, when a relatively well‐defined group of individuals emerged as the leading arbitrators at the International Chamber of Commerce. These individuals— the “secant marginals”—succeeded in constructing a cooperative interface (rather than competition) between otherwise separate legal systems and professions. In doing so, they created the conditions necessary for the emergence of a new transnational legal profession. At a more general level, the article proposes an alternative narrative of globalization, wherein actors operating at the intersection of various systems, create new arenas of governance on the basis of inter‐system cooperation.     

Constructing Legal Order in an Intelligent Society

Legal order originated in a land-centered agricultural society, having now gone through a market-centered industrial society and a network-centered information society. With the rise of the intelligent society, it is transforming into an algorithmcentered legal order of an intelligent society. The “digital” “networking” “intelligent” revolution brought by the intelligent technologies including big data, cloud computing, the Internet, blockchain, and artificial intelligence (AI), has been causing critical challenges to the current legal order, and has generated powerful momentum for construction of fresh legal order featuring scientificness, people centeredness, justice, inclusiveness and co-governance. Construction of such a new jurisprudential legal order to solve this intelligent society’s “governance deficit” is an urgent task. There is a need to set up a new foundation on which an intelligent society can build steady and lasting progress.     

Institutions,Arrangements and Practical Information*

Abstract. A restatement of an institutionalist theory of law is attempted with particular reference to legal reasoning and legal rights. Use is made of Ota Weinberger's concept of “practical information”, focusing on both its momentary and diachronic aspects. Momentary practical information corresponds to the need to know which conduct is required of us at a given moment. The diachronic practical information becomes relevant whenever we wish to stabilize the practical information and to reduce the likelihood of change regarding our ways of acting. Furthermore, the momentary information is given sense only against the background of the diachronic one. Among the different types of diachronic practical information particular importance is ascribed to legal “institutions” such as contracts and rights. Legal “institutions” are conceived as founded on various sets of rules. Rules may then increase the number of facts in the world: those special kinds of facts which are represented by social phenomena.