The Ethics of Corporate Lawyers: A Sociological Approach

The American Bar Association is considering a revision of its Code of Professional Responsibility. One revision deals specifically with lawyers whose clients are organizations; it attempts to delineate the ethical responsibilities of such lawyers when they discover an employee or a member of one of their clients is engaged in wrongdoing on the organization's behalf. Because the proposal suggests that corporate counsel may be justified in public disclosure of the wrongdoing when the organization itself fails to rectify the problem, it has sparked much controversy in the profession and much speculation as to whether and when corporate counsel will "blow the whistle." The article offers a sociological perspective on the act of a corporate counsel's public disclosure of organizational wrongdoing. The act of disclosure is treated as a social behavior, the likelihood of which is increased or decreased by a number of factors including the attorney's awareness of the wrongdoing, the attorney's orientations to the larger profession, the structure of the professional practice setting within which the counsel is located, and the supports for disclosure offered by the legal profession through its formal organizations. These factors are described and then combined into a general predictive model of disclosure by corporate counsel. A concluding discussion of the general ramifications of the proposed revisions focuses on the social implications of the attorney-client privilege, in which the client is as unique an actor as is the large organization.     

The Priority of Participation: A Friendly Response to Professor Gargarella

A response to Roberto Gargarella’s review of Punishment, Participatory Democracy, and the Jury, by Albert W. Dzur.     

The Role of Non-State Actors: A Response to Professor Ryngaert

Netherlands International Law Review - A short article by Professor Ryngaert in an earlier issue of the NILR is here examined and criticised, in particular the suggestion there made that certain...     

行政规划的法律性质研究——与王青斌先生商榷

行政规划法律性质的不同观点有单一性质说和非单一性质说等,各有其优点和不足。行政规划并不现实地产生、变更或消灭权利义务关系,人们的传统观念认为只有通过后续行为才能现实化,规划本身不以法律效果为目的。但这种观念值得反思,影响和限制也是行政机关追求的效果,某些细部的、具体的强制性规划的影响和限制具有"直接性"和"必然性",应视为直接的法律效果。行政规划分别构成不同的行政行为和事实行为,并有自身的特点。目前对于"规划确定程序"有诸多的认识误区,规划和确定规划裁决是两个独立的行为,规划的性质由规划的自身内容和因素决定,那种认为只能由"确定规划裁决"的性质决定规划的性质的观点是不妥当的。具体的强制性规划的争议解决应针对规划本身,而不是针对后续行为,以尽早化解矛盾。     

企业慈善捐赠的法律规制

目前,我国企业慈善捐赠法律规制还不完善,企业慈善捐赠定性没有法律依据、立法上缺乏对捐赠企业及受捐者相关权利保障、企业摊捐劝捐现象随处可见。欲解决这些困境。必须在立法上将企业慈善捐赠纳入社会保障体系,明确捐赠企业与受捐人的合法权利,并对企业摊捐劝捐行为予以规制,引导企业主动捐赠。     

公司法结构变革之逆向思维——以公司法对司法解释回应之视角

通过对公司法与公司法司法解释发展历史的梳理,不难发现,公司法司法解释对公司法的创立及修订而言,处于“边缘而不予完全考量”之地位.引发此种现象主要在于最高人民法院功能定位、社会、经济、政治等因素合力之结果.这种对司法长期积累的鲜活立法素材的不重视,必然引发公司法实践中的宏观影响及微观障碍,不利于公司法私法秩序的发现及总结.为此,公司法在再次修订时应加大对司法解释因素的考量,使司法审判中所发现的“源头活水”能够有效地在公司法立法中得以体现.     

The Legal Response of the League of Nations to Terrorism

Terrorism was first confronted as a discrete subject matterof international law by the international community in the mid-1930s,following the assassination of a Yugoslavian king and a Frenchforeign minister by ethnic separatists. The League's attemptto generically define terrorism in an international treaty prefiguredmany of the legal, political, ideological and rhetorical disputeswhich plagued the international community's attempts to defineterrorism in the 50 years after the Second World War. Althoughthe treaty never entered into force following the dissolutionof the League itself, the League's core definition has beenhighly resilient and has influenced subsequent legal effortsto define terrorism. While the League's 1937 Convention forthe Prevention and Punishment of Terrorism is often referredto obliquely in international legal discussions of terrorism,the drafting of the Convention has seldom been intensively analysed.By closely examining its drafting, this article elucidates howthe drafters of the Convention agreed on a definition of terrorism,and why they rejected alternative definitions. In doing so,it hopes to refresh and enliven current international debatesabout definition in the wake of the United Nation's 60th anniversaryyear, which saw renewed emphasis placed on the quest for definition.     

Entrepreneurial Regulatory Legal Strategy: The Case of Cannabis

This article develops the concepts of regulatory legal strategy, a resource-based view of government agencies, and regulatory entrepreneurship. These ideas are explored through a case study of the limited (if any) access that legal cannabis-related businesses have to the banking system due to the clash between federal law and laws in those states that have legalized some uses of cannabis. This article argues that regulators’ entrepreneurial regulatory legal strategies can have a material impact on regulated entities and give them a competitive advantage. To demonstrate, this article claims that regulators’ adoption of permissive regulatory legal strategies has facilitated access of some cannabis-related businesses to the banking system. Conversely, if regulators adopted obstructive regulatory strategies, this would act as a constraint on such access in the future, even if Congress resolves the federalism issue largely responsible for the current limitations these businesses face.     

Doing Justice to Foucault: Legal Theory and the Later Ethics

This article provides a critical evaluation of Ben Golder’s and Peter Fitzpatrick’s recent Foucault’s Law, which it characterizes as a decisive intervention into both legal theory and Foucault scholarship. It argues in favour of Golder’s and Fitzpatrick’s effort to affirm the multiplicity of Foucault’s work, rather than treat that work as either unified by a consistent position or broken into a series of relatively stable periods. But it also argues against Golder’s and Fitzpatrick’s analysis of Foucault’s understanding of the law through a conceptual framework borrowed from Derrida, and especially Derrida’s distinction between law and justice. It shows how this approach to reading Foucault effectively transforms some of his more powerful criticisms of the law into defences of justice. In place of this interpretation, the second half of this paper initiates a reading of Foucault’s later work on ethics and the self in the ancient world. It develops the theme of an ethics, or a way of life, that takes shape at a distance from politics on the one side and law on the other.     

高管薪酬的法律迷思

高管薪酬机制既是资本市场辉煌的动力，也是全球性经济危机的诱因。金融危机背景下“正面我赢，反面你输”的单向保护高管利益的扭曲薪酬机制面临反思。在薪酬机制从现金薪酬向股权薪酬过渡，股权薪酬与业绩脱钩，高管薪酬公平议价面临遭遇质疑之际，行政强制的限薪措施只是一种临时的激进措施，程序合理化与信息公开化为基石的公司治理是解决高管薪酬的方向。     

我国公司法人代表制论纲

公司法人代表与人格化了的公司相伴而生,其对外代表公司法人的相关理论包括代理说和机构说,并因法人拟制说与实在说的对峙而纷争不止。公司法人代表制作为公司法人治理结构的一项重要制度安排而为各国所重视,并由法律设定为一元制、多元制和折衷制等不同形式。我国采用一元制的法定代表人制,尽管合乎历史规律但却不符当今现实。在法人本质理论上采取拟制说,将私法自治引入《公司法》,采多元制的法人代表制,明确代表权只是对外代表法人进行活动的身份资格而非公司事务的执行权,不失我国目前公司法人治理结构的一种良性尝试。     

公司法律形态演进的动力机制

公司形态源于经济生活实践,经法律理性选择后成为公司法律形态,并在接受商业实践检验的过程中不断修正与完善。因受到信息不对称因素的制约,公司法律形态的变迁蕴含着不以参与者意志为转移的客观必然性;同时,因受到成本因素的影响,公司法律形态的演进表现为一个能动更新的过程。除了以商品经济的不断发展为主导性推动力量外,公司法律形态的演变还要受到政治、宗教、传统文化等多元因素的影响。