COVID,crisis, and unordinary order: A critical analysis of Australia’s JobKeeper wage subsidy scheme as an exceptional measure

Carl Schmitt’s famous articulation of the relation between sovereignty and the exception emphasises not simply the basis for a suspension of the law in a state of emergency, but the role of the sovereign in deciding upon the existence of the ‘normal situation’, the ‘everyday frame of life’ which the law requires to function. Our pandemic times have included extreme biopolitical measures deployed to manage the health crisis, but also unprecedented political responses to regularise or stabilise the economic order. One example is Australia’s historic JobKeeper wage subsidy scheme. As law, it was given life by an executive power predicated on nationhood and enlivened by crisis. As policy, it was intended to help businesses retain workers through targeted, proportionate support. In reality, it also provided significant protections and even windfalls to corporations and their investors, leading to critiques of the scheme as corporate welfare. However, rather than highlighting deficiencies of the JobKeeper programme, these outcomes underscore its ultimate function. This article analyses the relationship between norm, exception, and order in the context of Australia’s flagship economic-policy response to the pandemic. First, by analysing the mutually constitutive relationship between norm and exception, employing the theories of Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben. Second, by critically examining the legislative basis for JobKeeper, its political narrative and practical outcomes. Third, by demonstrating that the scheme, though an extraordinary departure from policy, can be understood as fundamentally a different and exceptional method to secure and reproduce our neoliberal corporate order in a state of exception.

     

Multiple Wrongdoing and Offence Structure: A Plea for Consistency and Fair Labelling

Crimes come in all shapes and sizes, but relatively little work has been done on offence structure – Robinson's recent functional analysis is perhaps the one obvious exception. This article concentrates on incidents of multiple wrongdoing and suggests that the current substantive law is both inconsistent and confusing. Burglary, for example, is unnecessarily narrowly defined and should be expanded to include broadly similar scenarios. The law is confusing because it conflates qualitatively very different incidents under the same umbrella – serial killers, for example, commit the same crimes as those who kill multiple victims by one act. Not only does the law fly in the face of common sense but it conflicts with the principle of fair labelling – that crimes be defined to reflect their wrongfulness and severity – which seeks to fulfil some important functions in the criminal justice system.     

Agamben and Marx: Sovereignty, Governmentality, Economy

This essay reconsiders Marx’ prehistory of capital through the lens of the work of Giorgio Agamben, who in the wake of Foucault has proposed a bio-political theory of sovereignty that breaks down the analytical separation between sovereignty and governmentality that Foucault in his work tries to maintain. Although Agamben mentions Marx only once in his study of sovereign power, I argue that his study nevertheless contributes to our understanding of the capitalist relation as not only a governmental but also a sovereign power relation. In the first part of this essay, I show through a philological commentary on Marx’ use of the adjective ‘vogelfrei’—translated as free, rightless, without protection, outlawed—to characterise the proletariat, that the Marxian proletariat is a figure of what Agamben in his study of sovereign power calls bare life. In the second part of the essay, I show that this sovereign dimension of the capitalist relation is also substantiated by Marx’ analysis of the logic of the capitalist relation as that of the exception. After Carl Schmitt, who wrote that ‘sovereign is who decides on the state of exception’, Agamben has argued that the logic of the exception is the logic of sovereign power. Reconsidered through the lens of Agamben’s argument, Marx’ account of the prehistory of capital reveals that there is a sovereign logic of the exception at work in the capitalist relation. In the final part of the essay, I start from Agamben’s single reference to Marx in his study of sovereign power to discuss the importance of my conclusions for Agamben’s political message.     

Market Practice and the Evolution of Foreign Sovereign Immunity

The twentieth century witnessed a “tectonic” shift in international law, from absolute to restrictive theories of sovereign immunity. As conventionally understood, however, this transformation represented only a change in default rule. Under absolute immunity, courts could not hear lawsuits and enforce judgments against a foreign sovereign without its consent. Under restrictive immunity, foreign sovereigns were not immune to their commercial acts, regardless of consent. Using a two‐century dataset of loan contracts, we show that market practice undermines this conventional understanding. For centuries, loan contracts were structured as if the rules of sovereign immunity could not be changed by contract. In the 1970s, however, market practice changed, seemingly in response to the codification of sovereign immunity law in the United States and United Kingdom. We explore why market practice conflicts with the conventional understanding of sovereign immunity, and we examine the association between codification and the structure of sovereign loan contracts.     

International Community and Abuses of Sovereign Powers

International law was traditionally a horizontal and state-centric system of rules. Although state-centrism is in decline, it is still reflected in some of the core concepts and procedures governing contemporary international law. This article identifies the community-oriented values in the international community that stretch beyond the interest of sovereign states. It further explores how these values can be protected by the international community when states abuse their sovereign powers. Attention is paid to the concepts of Chapter VII powers and limitations on the authority of the Security Council, as well as the concepts of obligations erga omnes and norms jus cogens. While the latter two concepts reflect fundamental values of the international community, they cannot be used as an enforcement mechanism to address the abuses of sovereign powers. The enforcement can come from Security Council resolutions adopted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Notably, the concept of the international peace and security nowadays covers even seemingly purely domestic gross and systematic violations of human rights. Despite this stretch of the Security Council’s powers, the community-oriented rules also demand that its measures need to be interpreted with the framework of international human rights law in mind. The article concludes that the post-Second World War era has seen a turn away from state-centrism and toward a community-oriented international legal system. The international community has acknowledged the existence of a rights-based minimum threshold of a shared value system. However, the enforcement of this value system remains subject to state-centric procedures. There is no automatic and readily available remedy against abuses of sovereign powers.     

Cyprus under British Rule: An International Law Analysis of Certain Land Surveys and Land Assignments Between 1878 and 1955

From 1878 onwards, Great Britain exercised sovereign rightscoming close to full sovereignty over Cyprus. The present articledemonstrates that, by undertaking certain land surveys and landassignments with regard to religious property in North Cyprus,Great Britain ultimately failed to abide by the restrictionon the exercise of its sovereign rights flowing from internationallaw, which in turn referred to the Ottoman Law on Foundationsand Endowments. Apart from shedding light on a commonly neglectedaspect of colonial law, which is closely linked to key conceptsof public international law continuing to shape our present-daydiscourse, a loose frame of reference for reparation of pastinjuries is sketched out.     

Athens Revolting: Three Meditations on Sovereignty and One on Its (Possible) Dismantlement

In British and continental constitutional theory, the sovereign provides a mouthpiece for the law, helping present a unified body politic. For Hegel too the sovereign is a function for the unity of the people. But it is the subject’s desire, which brings the sovereign into existence as guarantor of the law’s coherence and closure. The spontaneous insurrection of December 2008 in Greece weakened the hold of the sovereign on the subject. The post-political condition was challenged by the unplanned actions of resistance and performance by people who have been excluded from political visibility.     

法律的生成———边沁的法律概念的构成

边沁的法律是主权者的命令这一定义是其价值追求与逻辑推演的结果,经解释性研究而展放出边沁创立这一定义的整体思想框架,即边沁以安全、生存、富裕、平等为价值序列体系;依据经验主义本体论,反驳了自然法与自然权利的虚有性,确定了快乐为立法追求的根本目标,进而,以其价值序列体系与功利计算方法来推导出他的主权者,以道义逻辑推导出命令,最后推导出法律是人民意志的表达。     

The Politics of Jurisdiction

Jurisdiction is a central concept in the framing of the legal world but it has received short shrift in mainstream legal theory. This article examines the prevailing conceptual forms of jurisdiction in order to retrieve space for the political. The study of jurisdiction is also the study of the political community that it invokes and authorises. The first part of the article examines the three forms that jurisdiction takes in contemporary scholarship (territory, community, governance) to show that each form overlooks some implication of the political community that is tethered to jurisdiction. The second part of the article flips the inquiry to demonstrate the oversight of jurisdiction in theories of sovereign exception. The emergent understanding of jurisdiction as political provides an anchor for the study of jurisdiction going forward and highlights the potential role for jurisdictional arrangements in contemporary public law and constitutional law settings.     

Hobbes on Political Authority,Practical Reason and Truth

The role of sovereign authority in Hobbes' political philosophy is to establish peace and stability by serving as a definitive and unambiguous source of law. Although these broad outlines of Hobbes' account of political authority are uncontentious, matters quickly become more complicated once one seeks its normative basis. This much is evident from recent debates on the normative status of the laws of nature and the related issue as to whether Hobbes is better categorised as an incipient legal positivist or as a heterodox natural law thinker. In this paper I argue that although the positivist and natural law commitments in Hobbes' theory of political authority can be partially reconciled, such a reconciliation points to the need for more substantive theories of practical reason and truth than are to be found in Hobbes' official statements on these topics. Section II examines the positivist and natural law dimensions in Hobbes' thought and suggests that the role of sovereign authority in providing the definitive interpretation of the laws of nature allows a partial reconciliation to be effected. In section III, I consider the tension between this reconciliation and Hobbes' instrumentalism about practical reason and equivocal separation of authority and truth.     

从“非正式帝国主义”到“法律帝国主义”:以近代中国的境遇为例

近代国际法理论框架下的"非正式帝国主义",由最初的"自由贸易"模式扩展至政治、司法等诸般间接控制样式。在"非正式帝国"的塑造中,合乎国际法规范的条约具备去疆界化与再疆界化的意义,即破除正式领土帝国的堡垒,重建非正式帝国的藩篱。法律无疑是实现"非正式帝国主义"不可或缺的重要支撑,而它本身也成就为"非正式帝国主义"的一种典型形式——"法律帝国主义"。以近代中国的境遇为例,法律帝国主义所表达的,正是在政策指引之下,借助条约规定方式,以治外法权为基本实践手段,通过司法机构的跨域构建以及法律职业人士的身体力行,以最终达成西方法播散的整体过程。对此,我们应有清醒的认识。     

Common Wealth

After reviewing developments in human rights law and international law – in particular the domestication of international human rights law and the rise of the democratic norm in international law – the importance of these developments for the Commonwealth and for its member states is highlighted and linked to many of the programmes and policies that the Commonwealth Secretariat has recently launched. This paper discusses these developments and others in order to stress the wealth of potential advantages for Commonwealth member states and their citizens that flow from a common commitment under the rule of law to human rights and democracy. The authors endeavour to show that such wealth is more than mere economic benefit – as important as that undoubtedly is – and that citizens stand to reap a moral system of government, one which expands the opportunities for popular participation in political processes and puts an end to social practices that marginalise some citizens and empower others.     

Federal Relationships

The Great October Socialist Revolution, having abolished the rule of the exploiting classes, brought freedom from the age-long oppression of all the peoples of the former tsarist empire, granting them the right to self-determination up to and including secession. As a result of the triumph of the October Revolution, sovereign Soviet socialist republics came into being on the territory of what had been tsarist Russia. These republics established their own supreme organs of power and administration and became, like the RSFSR, states of a new, socialist type.     

Bentham on the Interpretation of Laws

A widely accepted view is that, for Bentham, legal interpretation was a mechanical or technical matter. This paper reconstructs Bentham’s complex theory of legal interpretation and challenges the above view. It demonstrates that Bentham’s theory of legal interpretation consists of three major theses. First, when there are different interpretations of a law, the authoritative interpreter ought to be the sovereign legislature. Second, strict interpretation attributes to the legislature the will it actually has when making the law. The strict interpretation of a law ought to take the text of the law itself as the standard, and then be guided by its purpose. Third, liberal interpretation attributes to the legislature a will that it would have had if it had been aware of the case before the court, but which it in fact failed to have through inadvertency. Liberal interpretation is a necessary evil, and must be checked: liberal interpretation ought to be made according to the pattern and materials of the old laws, and be subject to the authority of the sovereign legislature.     

作为法院创造物的法律——格雷法律渊源理论探究

格雷区分法律与法律渊源,这种区分本身代表他的法概念:法律是法院创造的一般规则。相较于奥斯丁法律命令论,格雷认为不是主权者,而是法官创造了法律。然而,在讨论法律渊源的法律约束力,格雷的立场徘徊于强弱两种不同的法律渊源理论,造成了其理论的不自洽。借助凯尔森和哈特对此的相关批评可以看出,如果扩大格雷法概念的外延,上述冲突将得到化解。因此,格雷所谓的法律渊源其实是法律的一部分。     

Dominions: Law, Literature, and the Right to Death

The 'curious right' attending modernity and revealed in Blanchot's 'Literature And the Right to Death' could be readily reduced to that sovereign right to take life which ultimately subordinates law. Yet, so the argument runs, with that same curious right law surpasses sovereignty. And it does so by way of its similarity to literature. What will uncover that surpassing by law, and by literature, will be a pervasive concern with death as the horizon of the law.     

The Sovereign Event in a Nation's Law

This article interrogates the relationship between the sovereign event and a legal decision that purports to place sovereignty beyond law. It argues that sovereignty cannot be regarded as unitary, and elaborates the process of iterability by which the sovereign event is split from the outset. This dynamic is examined through an interrogation of the non-justiciability of sovereignty in Mabo v. Queensland (No. 2)(1992). Along with the unitary conception of sovereignty, Mabo (No. 2) deployed an absolute measure for community in the form of the ‘skeletal principle’ of the doctrine of tenure. The paper argues that a conception of the political that affirms the One sovereign source of community and law instead of the original dis-position of law, nation and community repeats the original violence, and will, at best, run aground on the righteous (mis)recognition of the ‘appropriate savage’. It concludes with an indicative rethinking of community through the thought of Jean-Luc Nancy. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Cape Legal Idioms and the Colonial Sovereign

A crucial element of sovereignty politics concerns the role that juridical techniques play in recursively creating images of the sovereign. This paper aims to render that dimension explicit by focusing on examples of crime-focused law and colonial rule at the Cape of Good Hope circa 1795. It attempts to show how this law helped to define a colonial sovereign via such idioms as proclamations, inquisitorial criminal procedures, and case narratives framing the atrocity and appropriate punishment for crimes. Referring to primary texts of the time, the paper explores how procedures and narratives of Cape law were also deeply involved in fashioning specific images of the sovereign in whose name it claimed to operate.     

The Sovereign German States and the Code Napoléon. What Spoke for its Adoption in the Rhine Confederation?

In the principality of Hesse-Nassau and the other states of the Rhine Confederation (1806–1814) the sovereign princes were eventually to comply with Napoleon's wishes and adopt the Code Napoléon (CN). The subject treated here is how this adoption came about.French law was more modern than contemporary German law. Napoleon wanted the CN to be adopted in all the states where French troops were stationed. The sovereigns of the states of the Rhine Confederation (1806–1814) asked their lawyers to assemble at the Congress of Giessen for the purpose of creating a common version of the CN for their respective states. This involved solving various problems.It was the liberals in South Germany, not the conservatives and the nationalists in Prussia, who accepted the CN as a modern, liberal and sophisticated body of law. But for the liberals, too, there was a critical point: the definition of who was subject to the law in the CN. This was no longer the individual owner of property, but the citizen of a sovereign state who was a member of his nation. This definition was unacceptable to Germans because, under the German conditions of the period, their membership of a nation and their citizenship of a sovereign state differed.People did not have their estates in just one of the little post-Empire states, but in several. (But only in one state were they given the status of being subject to the common law.) Herr von Almendingen, an important lawyer of the period, suggested a European nationality!     

国内公法对国际法的影响

国际法包括私法意义上的国际法和公法意义上的国际法。近现代国际法本质上是一种私法意义上的国际法,但国际交往的日益频繁与复杂必然要求建立某种形式的等级制与集中化架构,公法意义上的国际法应运而生。作为一种后发的法律秩序,国际法受到较为成熟的国内法的影响是很自然的。在借鉴国内公法发展国际法时面临某些重要的障碍,也会产生不可忽视的风险,应该予以充分的注意。国内公法日益影响国际法的趋势对于中国的国际法理论与实践将产生重要的影响。