The Standardized Field Sobriety Tests: A Review of Scientific and Legal Issues

This article details the history and development of the National Highway and Safety Administration's Standardized Field Sobriety Tests. They are reviewed in terms of relevant scientific, psychometric, and legal issues. It is concluded that the research that supports their use is limited, important confounding variables have not been thoroughly studied, reliability is mediocre, and that their developers and prosecution-oriented publications have oversold the tests. Further, case law since their development has severed the tests from their validation data, so that they are not admissible on the criterion for which they were validated (blood alcohol concentration), and admissible for a criterion for which they were not (mental, physical, or driving impairment). Directions for further research are presented.     

中国传统法律思想研究的困境与出路

通过作为他者的西方法律文化的扩张和作为主体的中国法律史研究的偏离等方面的剖析,以期找到法律史研究中自我与他者的平衡。探求中国传统法律文化的真知,从精神上疏远自我以及以宽容之心接受他者均是必要的条件,只有在疏远与亲近之间达到同样的协调和均衡时,才能对自我以及作为异质文化的他者做出合理的判断。在对中国传统法律思想进行研究时,我们不仅要得古人之言,更为重要的是得古人之心。对不同的法律文化进行历史分析和文化诠释才是我们法史学研究得以正确进行的必要前提。     

“作为法律资源的天空”——天学视野下君权制约和秩序构建的法律意义

在天学的视野下,中国古人头顶的天空不仅成了“作为文化资源的天空”,而且更是成了“作为法律资源的天空”。古人通过对天象的细致观测,不仅从这个天空中获取了立法、司法等诸多具体的法律资源,更为重要的是,作为法律资源的天空在更深入的层次上表达了对于君主权力之制约和法律秩序之构建的重大法律意义。     

Lawyers and Politics in France, 1814–1950: The State, the Market, and the Public

Throughout the 19th century, lawyers in France were deeply involved in political action to pursue an overriding goal–to become recognized as spokesmen for the public. This strategy governed their history; it explains their brilliant social ascent and their subsequent slow decline. As long as the conflict between state and civil society raged, lawyers were able to we assets–political mobilization, the power of the word, the esteem enjoyed by law–which had allowed them faithfully to embody public opinion in its struggle to limit state powers. From this embodiment of public ideals they derived independence, prestige, and a dominant position in the state. But when the nature of the political regime ceased to be a bone of contention and when public life became organized around other cleavages, lawyers were gradually deprived of their representative function. This marked the beginning of a social decline that became visible between the two world wars and lasted until the 1950s.     

Prospective Person Memory: The Role of Self-Efficacy,Personal Interaction,and Multiple Images in Recognition of Wanted Persons

Prospective person memory refers to recognition of individuals one has been asked to be on the lookout for, such as wanted criminals or missing persons. Past field experiments have tended to find very low rates of identification. The present experiments examine whether multiple pictures, personal interaction, and increased self-efficacy would improve prospective person memory. Participants viewed a mock wanted person alert and were told that if they saw the person depicted in the alert they could win a cash prize. The alert either showed a single picture of the target person or multiple pictures. The target individual then showed up at the dining hall participants routinely had lunch. Some participants had peronal interaction with the target and some participants were led to believe that the likelihood of encounter was quite high. Despite these manipulations, only a small number of participants reported seeing the target individual.     

THE POLITICS OF COURT STRUCTURE: The Addition of New Federal Judges, 1949–1978

This article analyzes the effects of party control of the Presidency and Congress, and timing during the President's term on the success of proposals to add new federal judges. Proposals for new judges are more likely to pass if the same party controls the Presidency and Congress than if different parties are in power, and proposals are more likely to pass during the first two years of the President's term than during the second two years. Party control exerts a stronger influence than timing. We also find that the variables interact to produce their influence—the only real chance of adding new judges occurs if the same party controls the Presidency and Congress, and the proposal comes early in the President's term. Under all other conditions, the probability of success is small.     

“十一五”法治建设与法律服务业：规划·规范·规则——第六届中国律师论坛观点集粹

第六届中国律师论坛于9月24日在山西太原举行。这次论坛以“‘十一五’法治建设与法律服务业:规划·规范·规则”为主题,吸引了来自亚太法律协会、国际司法桥梁、香港律政司、香港律师会、澳门法务局、两岸商务法学会及全国律师界、英国、台湾等律师事务所的近一千两百名代表。在本次论坛上律师代表们畅所欲言,围绕主题从律师管理、律师实务、发展战略、律师文化和律师宣传等五个方面展开了热烈的研讨。现将论坛上的精彩观点摘登如下,以飨读者。     

You Say Regulation, I Say Punishment: The Semantics and Attributes of Punitive Activity

Recent trends in crime control have given new energy to an age-old question, namely what kinds of activity qualify as punishment. In addressing this question, jurists and scholars have often employed a logic that either restricts interpretations of punishment to traditional forms (e.g., prison, probation, death penalty) and functions (e.g., deterrence and retribution), or expands them to include the broader forms and functions of social control. This paper examines these opposing logics and considers an alternative logic based in common stipulations in power theory. Within this particular framework, punishment is conceived as action that is necessarily relational, intentional, personal and coercive.     

The Principle of the ‘Common’, Legal Pluralism and Decolonization in Latin America

Law and Critique - This paper aims to introduce, in the context of Latin America, the theoretical epistemic discussion regarding the theme of the ‘common’ as a political principle which...     

Legal Needs of The Poor: Problems,Priorities and Attitudes*

The Legal Services Corporation is faced with the problem of allocating limited resources in order to meet the legal needs of the poor. It is forced into the dilemma of setting priorities, creating workable regulations to meet an ambiguously defined and elusive concept of legal need. Recently enacted regulations require annual reports by legal services programs that are based, in part, on the assessment of eligible clients' needs as expressed by their attitudes. These regulations are premised on unarticulated implicit assumptions relating attitudes, problems experienced, and legal need. This study examines these assumptions in an analysis of perceived problems, help seeking behavior, attitudes toward the allocation of legal services resources, and how these have changed over time for the eligible client population of one legal service program in California.     

Law,the Digital and Time: The Legal Emblems of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Doctor Who</Emphasis>

This article is about time. It is about time, or more precisely, about the absence of time in law’s digital future. It is also about time travelling and the seemingly ever-popular BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who. Further, it is about law’s timefullness; about law’s pictorial past and the ‘visual baroque’ of its chronological fused future. Ultimately, it is about a time paradox of seeing time run to a time when time runs ‘No More!’ This ‘timey-wimey’ article is in three parts. The first part looks to a hazy remembered past of the legal emblem tradition as presented in Peter Goodrich’s Legal Emblems and the Art of Law to learn visual literacy and also to glimpse the essential elements of modern legality with authority, decision and violence. The second part maps how these images and icons of modern legality are manifest in the Doctor Who fiftieth year anniversary special ‘The Day of the Doctor.’ The third stage looks beyond these first order meanings to understand the chronological chaos of ‘The Day of the Doctor.’ The technicity of the image as a portal through time and space that the narrative revolves around charts the implications for the digital end of time for law.     

The Judicial Transformation of the State: The Case of U.S. Trade Policy, 1974–2004

The recent shift in state policies from Keynesianism to neoliberalism was accompanied by a transformation in state structures. The case of trade liberalization in the United States reveals that this structural transformation is of a judicial nature. In 1974, supporters of free trade successfully shifted authority over the management of protectionist claims from Congress to quasi-judicial bodies in the U.S. executive; in 1994 , they successfully strengthened the dispute settlement mechanisms of the World Trade Organization. This judicial transformation indicates a shift from sites where decisions are made by way of political negotiations to sites where judges preside over legal disputes. In the article, I identify the political origins of these judicial transformations and discuss the factors that make judicial sites more favorable to neoliberal policies than political sites.