Socio-Legal Studies in 2020

This article looks back to a paper written by the author and Phil Thomas in 2000 on socio-legal studies and reflects on what has changed in the world of socio-legal studies since then. It then turns to the continued modesty of the claims that socio-legal studies researchers make for their work. The suggestion made is that socio-legal studies forms a social ecology in what is termed the ‘hyphen-space’ and that through this space social ecology theory allows much larger claims to be made about how actors and issues at different levels and scales relate to each other. To this end, the article takes an issue, an artefact, and a broad classification of ‘people’ within the sphere of international commercial law to illustrate how social ecology can be used to broaden the claims that research makes.     

Using Rule 11 Sanctions to Punish Accusers Who Make False Allegations of Child Sexual Abuse in Custody and Divorce Cases

False claims of child sexual abuse negatively affect the accused parent and the child. Such false claims can be used to sway custody determinations and cause frivolous applications to the court. This Note proposes that courts impose sanctions, comparable to those set forth in Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, on litigants who make false claims of child sexual abuse.     

Evidentiary requirements for making findings about medical equivalence. Final rules

We are revising our regulations that pertain to the processing of claims for disability benefits under title II and title XVI of the Social Security Act (the Act). These revisions make the language in the rules we use under title II of the Act for making findings about medical equivalence consistent with the language in the rules that we use under title XVI of the Act. These revisions also clarify our rules about the evidence we use when we make findings about medical equivalence for adults and children. We are also updating and clarifying our rules that explain the Listing of Impairments (the listings) and how your impairment(s) can meet a listing.     

海淀区餐饮业举报投诉风险干预试验效果研究简

目的：本文通过分析海淀区餐饮业举报投诉案件资料,确定了当前餐饮业投诉举报的主要风险点,经过详细专家论证及实践讨论,将风险点量化评分,并采取相应干预措施,跟踪调查和效果评价,找出有效的干预措施,为改进监督执法方式、加强对餐饮业的检查指导针对性、提高其食品卫生安全水平提供了可行性建议。方法：设计问卷,进行餐饮企业举报投诉风险的干预试验,在干预试验前后对餐饮企业的2次调查结果分别进行风险评分,并对餐饮企业进行总体风险量化评分的对比,以观察干预的效果。结果：初步建立了餐饮业投诉举报风险评估的指标体系,确立风险等级。结论：此方法和指标体系的建立,为餐饮业卫生监督部门加强餐饮业投诉举报的处理提供了建议和参考;为实现餐饮业投诉举报风险的早期预警提供了科学数据和技术支持。     

In Search of Legitimacy: Toward An Empirical Analysis

Legitimacy is a much used concept in the social sciences. However, the absence of precise operational meaning has prompted questions about its utility as an explanation of compliance with social norms. Most recently, Alan Hyde has argued that legitimacy cannot be disentangled from other explanations of compliance such as coercion and self-interest and should, therefore, be abandoned. However, institutional, attitudinal, and behavioral dimensions of legitimacy can be operationalized. As part of our research on small claims courts we examined variations in institutional processes and legitimacy, gathered data on levels of voluntary compliance, and questioned defendants about their reasons for paying claims against them. We conclude that institutional legitimacy is related to voluntary compliance, and that the "language of obligation" is an important part of normal discourse. Operational meanings for legitimacy are available and empirical research about legitimacy should be a prominent part of the social science research agenda.     

Disability determinations by state agency disability examiners. Final rules

We are revising our rules on a temporary basis to permit State agency disability examiners to make fully favorable determinations in certain claims for disability benefits under titles II and XVI of the Social Security Act (Act) without the approval of a State agency medical or psychological consultant. These changes apply only to claims we consider under our rules for quick disability determinations (QDD) or under our compassionate allowance initiative.     

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea? A Critique of the Ability of Community Mediation to Suppress and Facilitate Participation in Civil Life

This article revisits debate between academics and practitioners about the potential of community mediation. While mediation evangelicals make bold claims about the possibility of mediation helping to rebuild communities, academic critics have been suspicious of such contentions and claimed instead that mediation has provided just another route through which the state can interfere in the life of its citizens. It is argued here that debate on the topic has been clouded by unduly high expectations of disputes as agents of social change. Their importance has been understood by reference to their ability to rebuild communities or their potential to become test cases. It is argued here that mediated disputes make much more modest challenges to state authority but that they can be aided in this by the intervention of mediators prepared to take a pragmatic approach to the unachievable ideal of neutrality. The article does not conceive of community mediation as an alternative of the state or its agent. Rather, it suggests that mediators can be embedded within both worlds and act as message-bearers between them.     

Beyond CSI: Calibrating public beliefs about the reliability of forensic science through openness and transparency

What drives public beliefs about the credibility of a scientific field? This question is increasingly important, with recent discussion of a “reproducibility crisis” affecting many fields. Such discussions are vital in forensic science, a discipline that has experienced severe scrutiny from both the media and large oversight bodies. In this paper, we make three contributions to this discussion. First, we bring together and compare several studies in which laypeople were asked about the reliability of forensic science practices. This review suggests that forensic practices do not enjoy uniformly high reliability ratings from the public and these ratings are not calibrated with the scientific consensus. We then review three empirically-tested ways that other fields are dealing with their own crises, all centred around transparency and openness. Finally, we make recommendations for how forensic science can leverage transparency and openness to improve and maintain its long-term credibility. As part of these recommendations, we find that empirical research supports the Houston Forensic Science Center’s recent claims that it has improved its credibility through openness and transparency.     

Types and Causes of lawyers' Professional Liability Claims: The Search for Facts

Lawyers have become concerned about the rising numbers and the rising amounts of professional liability claims, which have in turn driven up liability insurance premiums and temporarily even caused an alarming contraction in the supply of insurance coverage. This article examines the state of factual information that could be used to measure and explain the development. It goes on to discuss the potential role that increased knowledge of the types and causes of professional liability claims could play in efforts to reverse the development, followed by a discussion of the difficulties of obtaining usable data from the two principal potential sources—lawyers and their insurers. The second half of the article describes and evaluates the work of the American Bar Association's Special Committee on Lawyers' Professional Liability in developing, in cooperation with the major insurers, a comprehensive data collection and reporting system for lawyers' professional liability claims.     

Historicising Criminalisation: Conceptual and Empirical Issues

This paper charts a renaissance in scholarly analysis of criminalisation, and suggests that we do not have the conceptual tools or empirical knowledge to make the claims about 'overcriminalisation' which motivate much of this scholarship. My argument gives further shape to projects under the umbrella of criminalisation, setting out some of the conceptual issues to be resolved before we can work towards an adequate interpretive, and normative, vision of how criminal law has been and might be used. The paper elaborates a number of projects in 'criminalisation scholarship', and suggests there is a failure adequately to distinguish the different senses of 'criminalisation' in the literature, or the varying methods which might be applied within historical, interpretive, analytic and normative studies of criminalisation. In conclusion, the paper argues for a certain genre of criminalisation scholarship, and for a multi-disciplinary criminalisation research agenda informed by history, sociology and political science as much as by law, criminology and philosophy.     

Toulmin's philosophy of argument and its relevance to offender profiling

This study sought to identify the extent to which claims about the probable characteristics of offenders in ‘offender profiles’ were based on substantive arguments. Because Toulmin's (1958) philosophy of argument has been demonstrated as a useful way of breaking down arguments into their constituent parts (Burleson, 1979) we examined the extent to which profiles contained grounds, warrants, backing and rebuttals to support or refute various claims about offenders. Twenty-one profiles, representing a range of ‘profiling styles’, were obtained from a variety of sources. All of these had been used in major criminal investigations either in the UK or internationally. Of the nearly 4,000 claims made, nearly 80% were unsubstantiated. That is, they contained no grounds, warrant, backing or rebuttal. Moreover, less than 31% of the claims were falsifiable. We argue that (a) this demonstrates the need for a careful, systematic evaluation of profiling advice (b) Toulmin's structure is one useful method for evaluating such material and for providing a possible framework for such advice.     

Justice Excused: The Deployment of Law in Everyday Political Encounters

This paper examines the use of legal claims by government officials and citizens in everyday political encounters involving civil rights. Data come from 580 letters sent to the federal government between 1939 and 1941, and from the replies sent by the newly formed Civil Rights Section of the Justice Department. In almost every case, the department refused to intervene and explained its refusal by making legal claims about federal jurisdiction. These legal claims masked the department's discretionary choices and thus helped depoliticize the encounters. Surprisingly, however, a substantial number of letter writers challenged the government's legal claims by deploying their own legal and moral arguments. The willingness of these citizens to challenge official legal pronouncements cautions against making broad generalizations about the capacity of ordinary people to respond effectively when government officials deploy legal rhetoric.     

论在我国援用海事赔偿责任限制的性质及其影响

目前 ,我国理论界对援用海事赔偿责任限制的行为是否为诉还存在颇多争议 ,基于此 ,本文通过对其他国家海事赔偿责任限制的适用程序的比较 ,在立足于我国《海事诉讼特别程序法》的基础上 ,分析在我国船舶所有人等援用海事赔偿责任限制的性质以及由此产生的影响 ,以期明确相关的理论和实践问题。     

Underclaiming and Overclaiming

Arguments that we have too much litigation (overclaiming) or too little (underclaiming) cannot be valid without estimating how many of the undecided claims that are brought (actual claims) or not brought (potential claims) have or lack legal merit. We identify the basic conceptual structure of such underclaiming and overclaiming arguments, which entails inferences about the distribution of actual or potential claims by their probability of success on the merits within a claims‐processing institution. We then survey the available methods for estimating claim merit.     

Transcending the Means Principle

A robust, if not absolute, prohibition on treating people merely as a means seems to sit at the core of common sense deontological morality. But the principle prohibiting such treatment, the ‘means principle’ (MP), has been notoriously hard to defend: both the subjective, intention-focused and the objective, causal-role-focused interpretations of what it means to use someone as a means face potent objections. In this paper, my goal is not to defend the MP, but to articulate and defend a new principle, which I call the Restricting Claims Principle (RCP), that explains why a person’s causal role is morally significant. The RCP broadens the basic frame of relevant considerations from the MP’s concern with the dyadic relationship between agent and patient to a global balance of patient-claims on an agent. It distinguishes two kinds of patient-claims that weigh in that balance: restricting and non-restricting. In most cases, these can be distinguished as follows: Restricting claims, if respected as rights, would restrict an agent from doing what she could otherwise permissibly do if the claimant (or his property) were absent; non-restricting claims, if respected as rights, would not in that way restrict an agent. Only restricting claims press to make others worse off than if the claimant were absent. The RCP holds that restricting claims must therefore be substantially weaker than non-restricting ones. The claims of those who would be used as a means are non-restricting, while the claims of those who would be harmed as a side effect are restricting. Thus the RCP can account for the same cases (mostly) as the MP, without having to rely on the MP to do so.     

The Boundaries of Property: Complexity,Relationality, and Spatiality

What does the property boundary mean to laypersons? How do everyday geographies of property work? Merrill and Smith offer an influential set of hypotheses concerning the boundary's role in communicating simple messages of exclusion in the everyday world. The first goal of this article is to assess these claims. Drawing from qualitative data on gardening from Vancouver, I suggest that the messages of the boundary may also be complex, intersubjective, and ambiguous. The supposedly robust moral intuitions that inform people's interactions with boundaries are not always exclusionary. Drawing from the sharp distinction between the heterogeneity of the empirical record and the studied simplicity of Merrill and Smith's account, my second goal is to make some broader claims regarding property and the boundary. Rather than seeking universality, simplicity, and singularity, I suggest the necessity and value of working with complexity. A relational view of property and space (or “spatiality”), I suggest, offers us a better perspective in which to begin to think about the complex work of the everyday property boundary.     

A formal representation of declaration-related legal relations

A formal language is introduced that contains expressions for the dependency of a legal relation on the claims that the concerned individuals make and on the permissions that they grant. It is used for a classification of legal relations into six major categories: categorical obligation, categorical permission, claimable obligation, grantable permission, claim-dependent obligation and grant-dependent permission. Legal rights may belong to any of these six categories, but the characteristics of a right-holder are shown to be different in each of the six types.     

瑞克麦斯热那亚航运公司、瑞克麦斯轮船公司诉CS海运株式会社船舶碰撞损害赔偿纠纷案——论海事赔偿责任限制“先抵销、后限制”的具体适用

海事赔偿责任限制制度有着悠久的历史,在实践中也发挥了重要作用。《中华人民共和国海商法》对海事赔偿责任限制也有明确的规定,但在具体适用上,还存在着一些不足之处。《中华人民共和国海商法》规定救助款项不属于可限制性债权的范围,但这仅针对被救助方而言。当被救助方将自己所支付的救助款项作为己方损失要求对方赔偿时,因该救助款项是碰撞所致损害的一部分,对方可以主张适用海事赔偿责任限制。如果一次海难事故一方存在非人身伤亡的赔偿请求,另一方存在人身伤亡的赔偿请求,两类不同性质的赔偿请求不能依据民法债的一般原理先行抵消,应依法适用各自的责任限额,最后再实现债的抵消。保险人取得代位求偿权后,向责任方主张其应承担的赔偿责任时,应视为＂就同一事故向请求人提出反请求＂,因此在被保险人享受责任限制的情况下,保险人的请求金额应当适用＂先抵销、后限制＂的规定。     

Choosing disability: preimplantation genetic diagnosis and negative enhancement

This article examines the unusual circumstance of what the author has tentatively termed "negative enhancement". This term is used to describe those instances where individuals seek to use preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to achieve outcomes that, commonly, are socially not preferred. In a recent survey by the Genetics and Public Policy Centre, it was found that 3% of IVF-PGD clinics in the United States reported having provided PGD to couples who seek to select an embryo for the presence of a particular disease or disability, such as deafness, in order that the child share the characteristic with the parents. The idea of "negative enhancement" is, therefore, both a paradox and a useful means to describe the hidden assumptions behind claims that enhancement technologies can only lead us in one direction -- towards a race of blond, blue-eyed, able-bodied, intellectually magnificent and athletically superior beings. In Australia there does appear to be a consensus that PGD should only be used to select against serious disability. This inevitably raises the question of how we define disability and who is best placed to make decisions about the kind of kin we want to create.     

民法典的实施与民事审判方式的再调整

民法典为民事纠纷的解决提供了更加充实和完善的实体法根据。基于民事审判方式在民事审判程序运行中的特殊地位,民事审判方式也应为民法典的实施作出相应调整。我国传统的民事审判方式是在较长时期实体法缺失或很不完善的法制环境下的产物,由此也就形成了虽追求纠纷解决结果,但却不在意深究请求权基础和法律推理逻辑的"散点式审判方式"。民法典作为体系化的、自洽的实体权利义务根据,为法律审判的"三段论"推理提供了最基本的前提条件。民法典实施的强大社会"气场"也必将有利地驱动民事审判方式再次进行调整,转向以明确原告实体请求权有无为中心的"聚焦式审判方式"。这种转向使得整个民事审判过程将始终围绕着实体请求权基础、请求权要件事实展开审判活动,从而实现了程序法与实体法的有效贯通和对接。使得以实体请求权及要件事实为中心的聚焦式审判能够更精确、细致地进行事实认定和法律适用,并催生更具技术操作规范的"要件审判法",从而能够更有效率地解决纠纷,让人们真切地感知到个案解决的实体正义和程序正义。