Constitutional overperformance: an empirical study of de facto protection of rights with no de jure equivalents

European Journal of Law and Economics - In this paper we aim to contribute to the debate on successful enforcement of constitutional rules and its determinants by extending the focus to the...     

Reconstructing Insurance Law: The Law Commissions' Consultation Paper

In July 2007 the English and Scottish Law Commissions published the consultation paper Insurance Law – Non-disclosure and Breach of Warranty (hereafter LCCP) which sets out in detail the Commissions' provisional proposals for the reform of insurance contract law with particular reference to the key areas of utmost good faith, warranties and agency. This article analyses, from a critical standpoint, the LCCP's principal conclusions and recommendations. It begins by noting, as a means of demonstrating that the current reform process should be informed by modern industry practices, that the ways in which modern insurance contracts are concluded differ significantly from those when insurance law was last reviewed by the Law Commission in 1980. The article then discusses the dichotomy between consumer and business insurance given that this distinction underpins the LCCP and its approach towards reforming the pre-contractual duty of good faith. By way of backdrop to the analysis, we consider the approach taken towards reforming the law governing intermediaries acting for prospective assureds during the disclosure process. Finally, the proposed rules for warranties and similar terms are examined. It is argued that the proposal to retain continuing warranties in business insurance contracts will, if implemented, represent a missed opportunity to rid insurance contracts of terms long criticised as draconian and disproportionate in their effect.     

Anne Wagner,La Langue de la Common Law

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique -     

Profit Neutrality in Licensing: The Boundary Between Antitrust Law and Patent Law

We address the patent/antitrust conflict in licensing and developthree guiding principles for deciding acceptable terms of license.Profit neutrality holds that patent rewards should not dependon the rightholder’s ability to work the patent himself.Derived reward holds that the patentholder’s profits shouldbe earned, if at all, from the social value created by the invention.Minimalism holds that licenses should not be more restrictivethan necessary to achieve neutrality. We argue that these principlesare economically sound and rationalize some key decisions ofthe twentieth century such as General Electric and Line Material.     

民法典编纂与法官“造法”:罗马法的经验与启示

文本研究了罗马法上裁判官法的发展以及市民法—裁判官法二元体制的形成,以及罗马法通过《永久告示》的编纂和法学家研究的努力,将其整合为一个体系的历史过程.借鉴这一历史经验,在中国民法典编纂中必须对既有的民事领域的司法解释进行全面的整理和汇编,然后整合到未来中国民法典之中去.在民法典编纂之后,我国最高法院的“造法”功能应当发生根本性的转型,目前的这种通过司法解释来造法的体制需要加以重大地改革.     

释法抑或造法:由刑法历次修正引发的思考

刑法历次修正表明,我国刑法正从厉而不严走向严而不厉。然而,刑法修正所追求的目标应是法网严密,即疏而不漏。作为严密刑事法网的不同进路,释法并不绝对排斥造法,但在位阶上应当优先于造法使用。频繁犯罪化的刑事造法本质上是刑法工具思维和刑法功能泛化的体现,对之应保持警惕并予以限制。在社会主义法律体系基本建成的背景下,立法中心主义应向释法中心主义转变。     

Spectacularizing Crime: Ghostwriting The Law

Beginning with an examination of the process whereby punishment turns its point of application from body to subject, and its scene of application from public to private -- as Foucault outlines in Discipline and Punish -- this paper attempts to complicate Foucaults thesis of a shift from corporeal visibility to invisibility as it appears in his account of the withdrawal of punishment from a public, spectacular domain into the no less public yet private sphere of the prison by attending to the transformations of spectacle itself which accompanied this process of disembodiment. The embodied spectacle of punishment -- the states theatre of cruelty -- gave way to a disembodied discursive explosion of images of crime and punishment, and this process can be traced through the texts of Bentham (Panopticon Letters, Fragment on Ontology) and Dickens (Great Expectations). Foucaults dichotomy between the spectacle of public punishment and the disciplinary, non-spectacular prison overlooks the importance of images of crime and punishment which come to pervade public discourse and imagination as part of the installation of the disciplinary régime. Spectacularizing entails a move from the specific, embodied singularity of spectacle to the condition of a generalized, disembodied, and continual insistence: it is this that constitutes and characterizes the shift from spectacular sovereignty to disciplinary surveillance. This spectacularizing is akin to the spectre: some thing that remains difficult to name: neither soul nor body, and both one and the other (Derrida). The spectre haunting the nineteenth century was the criminal, and that centurys rationalizing of crime and punishment was based upon a fear of the spectral itself.     

Seeing Law: The Comic,Icon and the Image in Law and Justice

This special issue examines how the comic and the icon prefigure forms of legality that are different to modern law. There is a primal seeing of law unmediated by reading, writing or possibly thinking. This introduction identifies the primacy of the eye, the emergence of visual jurisprudence and the transformations of law as a paper-based material practice to a digitally enabled activity.     

国际法上的时际法概念

引言最近几十年来 ,“时际法 (ｉｎｔｅｒｔｅｍｐｏｒａｌｌａｗ)”这一概念越来越引起了国际法学者的注意。它首先是在 192 8年的帕尔马斯岛案件仲裁裁决中被引入国际法领域的 ,①此后就不断有国际法学者发表论文探讨时际法的问题。 1970年 ,有两本关于这一问题的专著出版 :法国国际法学者保罗·塔韦尼埃的《国际公法中行为与规则在时间上的适用的研究 (时际法或过渡法的问题 )》②以及德国国际法学者沃尔夫—迪特里希·克劳哲—阿布拉思的《时际国际法———国际法规范的时间上的适用范围》。③再有 ,世界著名的学术性团体———国际法研…     

法治社会的“法”与“治”

“依法治国”,“法治”为其要义。近些年来,学界政界,对法治议论者甚多,其中不乏有胆有识之高论。但何谓法治之“法”,何谓法治之“治”,何“法”可用之于“治”,“法”与“治”关系如何,法治本质与特性如何,似鲜有平心静气、细致深入之论者。就此而言,此处严存生教授之文可谓棋高一筹,令人一新耳目。文中释论人之本性,法之明善及法之属性;治之自治与善治,治之于官而非民,治出于民及其属性等等,均有学理说服与发微启迪之长。推呈学界,或能复引精粹之玉。不仅如此,意味更为深长者,“依法治国”之“法治”,究竟寓意何在?其与“法制”究竟有何不同?前者一定是观念上的进步,抑或传统“治”国之策的另一种表达?