Neutralization and Tax Evasion: How Effective Would a Moral Appeal Be in Improving Compliance to Tax Laws?

The failure of individuals to pay their taxes in full is a serious budgetary problem for the federal government. Existing research (Schwartz and Orleans, 1967; Grasmick and Scott, 1982) suggests that efforts to increase the guilt feelings experienced for tax evasion might improve compliance. However, neutralization theory (Sykes and Matza, 1957) predicts that guilt feelings can be reduced by neutralization strategies which justify guilt-producing behavior, compromising the inhibiting effect of guilt feelings. Our research shows that through the use of neutralization strategies which justify tax evasion the inhibiting effect of guilt feelings is sharply reduced. The implications of this finding for tax compliance programs based on appeals to the moral obligation of paying taxes are discussed.     

三位民国法学家关于中国法理自觉的探讨

本文从民国时期三位法学家的理论入手,通过分析他们的理论,发掘他们主要因应的社会、法律问题,从而指出他们的法律理论几乎都沿着晚清的礼法之争,试图在理论上为西方法律在中国社会的有效性及其正当性,提供理论支持,代替西方法律只有政治支持的局面,以期最终莫定西方法律在中国社会的基础.同时,通过检讨他们的理论的有效性,指出他们的法律理论在中西之间的理论困境.     

How Their Laws Affect our Laws: Mechanisms of Immigration Policy Diffusion in the Americas, 1790–2010

Why do laws become similar across countries? Is the adoption of similar laws and policies due to factors operating independently within each country? Do countries develop similar rules in response to similar challenges? Or is the similarity of laws and policies due to the interdependent responses that scholars have referred to as processes of policy convergence, transfer, and diffusion? We draw on an analysis of immigration and nationality laws of 22 countries throughout the Western Hemisphere from 1790 to 2010, and of seven case studies of national and international policymaking, to show that policies are often interdependent, even in the domain of immigration law, which scholars have presumed to be relatively immune to external influence. We argue that specific mechanisms of diffusion explain the rise of racist immigration policies in the Americas, their subsequent decline, and the rise of an anti‐discriminatory norm for policies. Most striking among our findings is that at key junctures after 1940, weaker countries effectively advanced an anti‐discriminatory policy agenda against the desires of world powers. We identify the conditions under which weaker countries were able to reach their goals despite opposition from world powers.     

公序良俗视角下同性结合法律问题研究 ——从我国台湾地区修法争议谈起

不同国家或地区对同性结合态度悬殊不一,从完全施加打击到全面予以保护的谱系中,我国内地、香港地区、澳门地区三法域落入中间区域,而台湾地区正朝加强保护的方向过渡。同性结合是否构成违法、应否进行立法保护及是否赋予婚姻权利,实质蕴含不同国家或地区的公序良俗标准有所迥异。尊重同性恋现象、尊重同性结合者权益以及尊重多元成家趋势,我国台湾地区选择修法。然而修法同时,传统伦常应被尊重,市民社会多数人生活方式应被尊重,民法概念及体系价值应被尊重。在尊重与被尊重之间,同性婚姻不宜一次性进入台湾地区“民法”,立“同性伴侣法”乃是我国台湾地区保护同性结合权益的一个理想选项。对台湾地区修法争议的考察,是我国其他三法域思考同性结合利益保护问题的窗口。     

The Origins of the ‘Nonmarket Economy’: Ideas,Pluralism & Power in EC Anti‐dumping Law about China

‘Market’ and ‘market economy’ exercise a powerful, even magnetic grip on our collective imagination. But what do we mean by ‘market economy’? Does it make sense to speak of a ‘nonmarket economy’, and if so, what does it mean? How are the ideas of ‘market economy’ and ‘nonmarket economy’ related? Focusing on EC anti‐dumping law, this article seeks to answer these questions. It argues that the legal concept of ‘nonmarket economy’ in EC anti‐dumping law has been socially constructed, by means of relations among a plurality of institutional and normative sites, as part of a changing configuration of legal ideas in specific historical circumstances, and in contexts of political, economic, social, and symbolic power. This argument is articulated in three parts. First, the concept of ‘nonmarket economy’ in EC anti‐dumping law, though drawing on earlier elements, had its main roots in the early Cold War. Second, starting in the 1960s, the GATT multilateral negotiating rounds began to define more specific international rules of the game, but a variety of more localised processes played essential roles as forces of change. Of special importance were, first, the tension between legislative rules and administrative discretion in the United States, and, second, the Europeanisation of foreign trade law in the course of European integration. Third, the EC law concept of ‘nonmarket economy’ was born in the late 1970s. The main reasons were changes in the international anti‐dumping law repertoire, specific ideas in Europe about comparative economic systems, and the perceived emergence of new economic threats, including exports from China.     

The House of Lords in Al-Jedda and Public International Law: Attribution of Conduct to Un-Authorized Forces and the Power of the Security Council to Displace Human Rights

Netherlands International Law Review -     

生态环境损害的赔偿、移转与预防:从私法到公法

如何赔偿、移转和预防损害是当代损害赔偿法律的核心内容,也应是构建生态损害赔偿法体系的三个任务.对生态环境损害立法,应树立“损害赔偿体系”的大观念.生态环境损害制度的研究和设计,应置于“生态损害赔偿体系”的概念框架下,进行全盘观照、整体布局、全面推进.传统损害赔偿法主要体现为私法,但如今公法也越来越多地介入到损害赔偿领域,损害赔偿从私法向公法移转是当代损害赔偿法的普遍趋势.基于生态环境损害的特殊性,生态环境损害赔偿的移转应当是我国立法设计和理论研究的一个重点领域,是一项迫切任务.     

Public Interest Law Organizations and the Two‐Tier System of Access to Justice in the United States

Public interest law organizations (PILOs) are important institutions for providing access to justice in the United States. How have political, economic, and institutional factors shaped PILOs? How do PILOs vary in the services they offer and in their geographical location relative to poverty and population in the United States? This article investigates these questions by combining original survey data from a representative sample of public interest law organizations with GIS data on population and poverty. We find that the presence of a PILO is positively related to political progressiveness and population at the county level, but negatively related to the concentration of poverty. Our analysis reveals a two‐tier system of public interest representation in which national organizations engage in a variety of social change strategies, whereas local and regional organizations utilize more limited strategies and depend more on governmental funding. These patterns have implications for access to justice in the United States today.     

The “Production” of Corruption in China's Courts: Judicial Politics and Decision Making in a One‐Party State

Despite its rampant presence, judicial corruption in China has often been regarded as the idiosyncratically deviant behavior of a few black sheep eluding prescribed judicial conduct. This entrenched assumption has both discouraged in‐depth investigation of the phenomenon of judicial corruption and inhibited proper understanding of the functioning of China's courts. This article, based on an empirically grounded examination of the processing of court rulings tainted by corruption, showed that judicial corruption in China is an institutionalized activity systemically inherent in the particular decision‐making mechanism guided by the Chinese Communist Party's instrumental rule‐by‐law ideal. In investigating what has contributed to the institutionalization of judicial corruption, the interplay between law and party politics in China's courts was also examined. The findings, therefore, also shed light on behind‐the‐courtroom judicial activities and on the enduring perplexity of the gap between the law in the book and the law in action.     

Convenient and Inconvenient Truths in Family Law: Preventing Scholar‐Advocacy Bias in the Use of Social Science Research for Public Policy

This is the second of two articles on the risks of advocacy bias in the reporting of research findings when boundaries are blurred between social science research and advocacy in the pursuit of public policy. In the first article we identify common ways in which social science researchers and reviewers of research—wittingly or unwittingly—can become advocates for ideological positions and social policies at the expense of being balanced reporters of research evidence. The first article discusses the difference between truth in social science and truth in law and identifies a range of scholar‐advocacy strategies that bias research evidence, illustrated by recent debates about overnight parenting of infants and toddlers. In this second article we show how biased research evidence by scholar advocates results in increased confusion and controversy that diminishes the credibility of all parties and stalemates progress in the field, using a case illustration of intimate partner violence in family court. We also show how adherence to scientific methods prevents the misuse of research and suggest a number of collaborative, integrative measures that can help transcend the adversarial stalemate. In a look to the future we consider some unbiased, standardized ways of assessing the strength and generalizability of research evidence.     

The Developing Habitus of the Anti‐Social Behaviour Practitioner: From Expansion in Years of Plenty to Surviving the Age of Austerity

Specialist anti‐social behaviour units are common within social housing providers, with many established in response to the policies of the New Labour governments of 1997–2010. These units now find themselves operating in a different political and financial environment. Following the English riots of 2011, the Coalition government, whilst imposing budgetary cuts across the public sector, called on social housing providers to intensify their role in tackling disorder. This article explores the habitus or working cultures within anti‐social behaviour units post‐New Labour. It does so through empirical research conducted in the aftermath of the English riots. The research finds that practitioners view their work as a core function of social housing provision. They have developed an understanding of human behaviour, which crosses the criminal and social policy fields with a wide skillset to match. A number of factors including national policy, community expectations, and multi‐partnership engagement influence their dynamic working culture.     

“Who Is a Homosexual?”: The Consolidation of Sexual Identities in Mid‐Twentieth‐Century American Immigration Law

This essay uses court records to trace the federal government's attempts to regulate homosexuality among immigrants in the mid-twentieth century, asserting that such attempts illustrate the state's struggle to make homosexuality visible, to produce a homosexuality that could be both detected and managed. I focus on the process by which two competing paradigms for understanding homosexuality (status and conduct) were consolidated into a single model in which homosexual identity could be deduced from homosexual acts. Federal officials and the courts initially treated homosexuality as a form of conduct, most commonly deporting homosexual aliens for having committed crimes of moral turpitude. Later, these same government entities relied on status provisions, deporting immigrants charged with homosexuality as aliens "afflicted with psychopathic personality." While the "psychopathic personality" terminology supported the notion that the homosexual was a kind of person rather than a set of behaviors, it also depended upon psychiatrists to support the claim that homosexuals were by definition psychopathic. When many psychiatrists distanced themselves from that idea, the government refused psychiatric opinion that differentiated psychopaths from homosexuals by arguing that these terms connoted legal-political rather than medicalized identity categories. While this conception arose out of a conservative impulse by immigration officials and the courts to fix homosexuality as identity so that it could be regulated (by bureaucrats rather than psychiatrists), I argue that the emphasis on legal-political identity categories licensed a conception of the homosexual as a kind of citizen that had some emancipatory as well as repressive effects.     

Applying the Strategies of International Peacebuilding to Family Conflicts: What Those Involved in Family Disputes Can Learn from the Efforts of Peacebuilders Working to Transform War‐Torn Societies

Intractable international conflicts and difficult or intractable family conflicts have much in common. Relationships are damaged or destroyed, escalation causes parties to become polarized and make bad decisions, communication is strained or nonexistent, and competition and coercion take the place of collaboration. Similarities also exist in the realm of solutions, and those caught in (or intervening in) difficult family conflicts can learn much from the strategies and tactics of international peacebuilders. This article describes eight steps that peacebuilders at both the family level and the international level can take to make very damaging conflicts more constructive.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:
• Limiting escalation is important in both contexts.
• Preventing or correcting misunderstandings is key to resolution in both contexts as well.
• Be sure you are focusing on the real problem(s).
• Get the facts straight (and agreed upon) before making agreements.
• Healing past wrongs is important for long term stability.
• Working both within and beyond the zone of possible agreement (ZOPA) is essential in both contexts.
• Working to improve relationships helps all parties and improves the outcome.