The Enemy Within: The Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Moral Panic

When there is a period devoid of sensationalistic biker news, the public’s concern about outlaw bikers can be quite low. All it takes is one overt act of violence to heighten the public’s fear of Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs. Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs are the most current “dangerous class” which have been the subject of a moral panic in Canada. Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs as organized crime bodies are deemed to be the single most serious threat to the country—the enemy within. The gang war in British Columbia is fuelled by drugs supplied by the Hells Angels and there is a wide spread fear that these evildoers are trying to harm and tear apart the fabric of our society. This article provides a critical in-depth analysis of the construction of an Outlaw Motorcycle Gang moral panic with the focus on Canada. The roles played by the media, politicians, and the public in using isolated, violent incidents to support their interests will be examined along with the interactions between these groups and the resultant punitive actions directed toward members of Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs.     

Parole: How it is working

This paper presents some relevant information on parole and on several determinate sentencing proposals. Guidelines formulated by the United States Parole Commission demonstrate that release decisions can be structured to (1) enhance equity, (2) facilitate the explanation for decision variance, and (3) expose decision policy to public evaluation and debate. Empirically, parolees have a higher success rate or lower proportion of new convictions than those released in other ways. In contrast, the determinate sentencing proposals merely displace discretion to other areas of the criminal justice system where it is less visible and, hence, less subject to control.     

两种法理学之争:如何可能与发展

对"法律是什么"的不同回答,形成了两种不同性质的法理学。哈特"法理学"的特点是"描述性"与"中立性",是关于法律的"二阶"理论,其无涉道德评价;德沃金"法理学"的特点是"评价性"与"证立性",是关于法律的"一阶"理论,其关涉道德评价。哈特"法理学"的最大问题是,从法概念中剥离道德,导致不能为法律合法性提供辩护;德沃金"法理学"的关键问题是,用道德对法律合法性进行审查,易于消解法律的独立性,丧失法律的权威性。故此,为维护法律的合法性与独立性并存与统一,可借鉴富勒的"法律内在道德"观念,尝试性地区分法律的外在道德与内在道德,将法律的合法性审查标准限缩在法律的内在道德之中,并借鉴康德的"可普遍化检验"原理,将通过普遍化检验所形成的可普遍化原则作为法律的内在道德的判断标准。     

Just So: “The Law Which Governs Australia is Australian Law”

This essay provides a gloss on the relationship between the common law and the ‘law of the land’. It does so by turning attention to the technologies and identifications that continue to give Australian jurisdiction its place. These relations repeat the long pattern of the common law ordering of colonisation. They also provide the governmental conditions of legal responsibility for settlement. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

法律权威如何形成——卢梭法律观的启示

“法律是人民意志的记录”是卢梭提出的关于法律的一个重要命题,从此,法律权威建立在人民意志的基础上,使法律获得了不同以往的新的权威。正确理解卢梭该命题对我们今天树立法律权威有重要意义。     

Procedural goods in a democracy: How one is treated versus what one gets

There are four classes of procedural goods, each of which is an appropriate ground for answering the question: “Is this a fair procedure?” (i) It is unfair not to treat a person with dignity; the dignity goods are self-respect, personal control, and an understanding of the procedures that determine relevant outcomes. (ii) It is unfair to impose upon a person heavy (net) costs, such as overburdened cognitive capacities and high information costs, excessively painful interpersonal conflict, threats beyond those inherent in the situation, and humiliation. (iii) It is unfair to disregard (but not necessarily to violate) the person's own sense of justice, the codes of honor and practice of his own group and culture. And, of course, (iv) it is unfair to use a procedure that does not have the highest probability of achieving distributive or retributive justice. Few of the standard articles of democratic theory (e.g., liberty, equal treatment before the law, rights, and sharing of power) offer sufficient protections for the first three of these procedural goods.     

法律因何合法、怎样合理?——法律商谈论语境中的考察

马克斯·韦伯率先提出法律合法性和合理性论题,但由于其经验主义取向和价值无涉立场,只能得出实证论结论,即法律合法性就是法律的实际有效性或法律被人们所实际遵循,形式法律就是合理性法律。哈贝马斯在其交往合理性理论基础上提出了法律商谈论,认为法律是否合法的根据并不在于它是否实际有效,而在于它是否体现了一种以对话为前提要件的法律商谈精神。法律的合理化要旨在于将体现对话商谈精神的合法性法律要求进行具体社会实践式的兑现。     

When (Some) Prostitution is Legal: The Impact of Law Reform on Sex Work in Australia

In Australia, prostitution regulation has taken a very different path from many other countries. Law reform has led to the opening of some significant new spaces for legal sex work, including the (very different) regulatory regimes established in two Australian states – Queensland (brothels legal if their owners are licensed) and New South Wales (most commercial sex businesses and some street prostitution decriminalized; no licensing regime). The main research question is: how has regulation impacted on the positive rights of sex workers? I argue that law reform has engaged a mix of neo-liberal and other approaches – not to increase personal or corporate freedom but as part of a practical strategy designed to control a range of social problems, such as police corruption and organized crime. Neo-liberal regulation of prostitution in Australia has always been deployed in tandem with other modes of regulation – including new criminal law and policing strategies, planning law, health regulations, and (of course) moral regulation.     

A Court Quietly Rewrote the Federal Pesticide Statute: How Prevalent is Judicial Statutory Revision?

Author's Note: My thanks to Lloyd Musolf, Paul Sabatier, Martin Shapiro, John M. Thomas and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier draft. I also acknowledge the generous support of the Energy and Environmental Policy Research Program at the Institute of Ecology, University of California at Davis.
The resurgence in policymaking by American courts has revitalized the longstanding debate over judicial activism. Yet much of that debate addresses judicial interpretations of the Constitution, as distinct from statutory law. When interpreting vague statutes, judges can make inconspicuous but fundamental policy reforms. This paper discusses the political circumstances encouraging this form of judicial intervention. The enormous subtlety in judicial capabilities is illustrated. The paper concludes that by focusing primarily on obvious features of court activism, the contemporary debate may be seriously under representing the extent of judicial contributions to our fragmented form of governance.     

What There is Left and How It Works: Ancient Rhetoric and the Semiotics of Law

The present paper examines three parts of ancient school rhetoric: the issues, the topics, and the questions of style from the perspective of legal semiotics. It aims (1) to demonstrate the roles these have played and can play in the interpretation of legal discourses; and (2) to summarise what insights have been and can be gained from this classical tradition by contemporary legal research. It is argued that the promise of legal semiotics for rhetorical investigations is that it may help to make sense of the functioning of the system of ancient rhetoric, and contribute to our understanding of how rhetorical tradition works, while the research of ancient rhetoric can explore a range of semiotic devices essential for lawyerly thinking, resulting in the knowledge of a richer framework of interpretation.     

The Mobile Internet: What is it? How will it be built? And What Services will it Deliver?

It is only natural for people to communicate. That is why the telephone has been such a success. It extends the power of the human voice to reach wherever the telephone network goes. The mobile phone added a new dimension, by cutting the cord that previously tied phone users to specific locations - like their homes or offices. It gave users for the first time the freedom to make and receive calls wherever they happen to be. The next significant step in wireless communications will be to build on this basic wireless access, and add a considerable range of new and more advanced internet-based services involving high-speed data, video and multimedia communications.     

Passenger name record (PNR) data: How the EU is promoting (virtual) security by actually limiting Passengers' fundamental rights

The use for security purposes of airline passenger data (PNR) has gradually come to the fore especially in EU-US relations because of the tension between those who considered the use of PNR an effective tool in the fight against terrorism and those who considered the interference in citizens' privacy disproportionate. The Court of Justice intervened decisively on the issue in June 2022 with the “Ligue des Droits Humains” Judgment C-817/19. This ruling should have been followed by a review of the national legislations that transposed the Directive. On the contrary, the Member States are still going in the opposite direction to that indicated by the Court.     

The devil is in the details: How arbitration system design and training facilitate and inhibit repeat-player advantages in private and state-run arbitration hearings

This article demonstrates that arbitration system design and the training that arbitrators receive shape the extent to which repeat players gain advantages in arbitration hearings. While prior arbitration research does suggest that arbitrator training matters, this is the first article to show how it matters, as we observe actual arbitration hearings in private and state-run arbitration systems in two states. Our comparative analysis links three literatures interested in how seemingly interest-neutral institutions, like disputing forums, serve in practice to reinforce dominant norms, values, and hierarchies: (1) sociolegal studies of repeat-player advantages in disputing, (2) studies of occupational socialization in educational settings, and (3) neoinstitutional organizational sociology studies of how managerial values influence the way in which organizations construct law. We bridge these literatures by showing how arbitrator system design and the occupational socialization that arbitrators receive in private arbitration are primary mechanisms through which managerial values influence the arbitration process, ultimately providing a pathway for repeat-player advantages in hearings. Because our analysis compares two distinct arbitration systems, we identify variation in these processes and offer preliminary but tangible policy recommendations for the design and implementation of arbitration systems that best protect civil and consumer rights within arbitral forums that the Supreme Court continually upholds.