Globalization and the Decline of Legal Consciousness: Torts, Ghosts, and Karma in Thailand

This study analyzes the transformation of legal consciousness associated with the process of globalization. It examines changing conceptions of injury and compensation in northern Thailand, where global economic and cultural flows have had a dramatic impact over the past twenty years. In their "injury narratives," ordinary Thai people describe the harm they have suffered, the causes they identify, the issues of responsibility with which they struggle, the obligations and remedy systems they consider relevant, and the role of law as they perceive it. These accounts, as well as litigation records from the Chiangmai Provincial Court, suggest that a transformation of Thai legal consciousness has indeed occurred, but not in the direction one might have expected. Rather than embracing liberal legalism or conceptualizing their grievances in terms of rights, injury victims in post-globalization Thailand are now less inclined to perceive their experiences in legal terms and more inclined to rely on a new form of religious discourse in which Buddhist precepts justify the injured person's decision to refrain from the pursuit of compensation. This article offers an explanation of why globalization appears to have pushed legal consciousness in the direction of religiosity rather than rights.     

Jihad in a World of Sovereigns: Law,Violence, and Islam in the Bosnia Crisis

This article argues that jihads waged in recent decades by “foreign fighter” volunteers invoking a sense of global Islamic solidarity can be usefully understood as attempts to enact an alternative to the interventions of the “International Community.” Drawing from ethnographic and archival research on Arab volunteers who joined the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia‐Herzegovina, this article highlights the challenges and dilemmas facing such jihad fighters as they maneuvered at the edges of diverse legal orders, including international and Islamic law. Jihad fighters appealed to a divine authority above the global nation‐state order while at the same time rooting themselves in that order through affiliation with the sovereign and avowedly secular nation‐state of Bosnia‐Herzegovina. This article demonstrates an innovative approach to law, violence, and Islam that critically situates states and nonstate actors in relation to one another in transnational perspective.     

Confronting Law Affectively: Encounters of a Patpong Sex Tourist

When considering spaces of sex-work such as Patpong in Bangkok, Thailand, the inclination is to be drawn into habitual debates concerning the legitimacy of sex-work and the clear objectification of sex-workers. While these concerns are valid and real, there are significant absences in terms of the theoretical mapping of the space, such as the affect of the presence of law, bodies, space and the sexual encounter itself. Law emerges as the most significant presence, since it both forms the transactional surface of Patpong and produces the confusion and revilement that results from the confluence of cold legal exchange with the tactile intimacy of the sexual encounter. This text explores the ethnographic space of Patpong in order to understand ways in which law’s transactional, effective surface is both embodied through subjectivication and spatially emplaced, yet also disrupted through the affective agency of the bodies and spaces it enfolds in order to produce this surface. This exploration will point to the limitations of law’s effective surface and suggest ways in which law might be located within a regime of affect, which returns the law to the body it subjectivises.     

Pluralism and local law in extraterritorial spaces

Based on ethnographic research, this article shows how legal orders are being established in spaces where the state law is absent. The case of refugee camps—often discussed as sites of legal limbo and state of exception—seems to be a space of legal pluralism. However, when observing local legal practices, this pluralism is dissolved into a powerful local camp law. This characteristic type of legal order is produced by social camp-specific mechanisms, camp materiality as well as the remaking of pre-camp structures. Therefore, refugee camps should be viewed as extraterritorial spaces with a high degree of legal autonomy that enables and forces residents to create a local camp law. The findings of this study add to the literature of law and order in camps and to the debates on plural configurations in extraterritorial spaces.     

The German Courtroom Film During the Nazi Period: Ideology, Aesthetics, Historical Context

This essay examines the films of the Nazi period concerned with questions of justice and the administration of the law. It traces the ways in which law films developed prior to the Nazi era. It notes the apparent paradox of the Nazi obsession with questions of justice, law, and legality which are found in their strictly controlled film output. The use of film as a mass propaganda weapon affected legal subjects and this can be seen as a means of creating consensus. This centred on the role of the state in creating a system which allowed the individual to be integrated into the mythical folk community. Those who threatened this social cohesion were depicted as threats to the common sense of ordinary people and this stretched from propaganda films into comedies.     

论中国特色社会主义法律体系的科学建构

本文针对我国法律体系即是部门法体系的观点进行了评析 ,认为无论是在划分的标准、目的、原则上 ,还是在内容上都存在着根本性缺陷 ;提出了建构社会主义法律体系的原则 ,即权利的神圣性与权力制衡的对抗性辩证统一原则、公平与效益辩证统一原则和自由与秩序辩证统一原则 ,进而提出了以利益为标准将我国社会主义法律体系划分为在宪法统领之下的国家法、社会法、家庭法和自治法四大部类的新观点。     

(Un)Authorized: A Study on the Regulation of Street Vending in Latin America

This article offers an examination of the official rules that participate in the organization of street vending activities in Latin American cities. It does so by explaining the legal assemblages that serve to define how, where, and by whom certain Latin American public spaces may be occupied, and by empirically illustrating the way in which the legal status of street vendors—that is, whether or not they are willing or able to get official recognition to work in these public spaces—affects the way they use and occupy the urban landscape. The information gathered here suggests that securing access to official permission to work on the streets does significantly affect vendors' locations as well as their working modalities. The subsequent analysis also illustrates a significant relationship between vendors' legal status and specific interactions with urban authorities and other actors. These findings suggest that, although law cannot prevent the unauthorized occupation of public spaces for commercial purposes, it could certainty avert the reproduction of other illegal practices and, perhaps most importantly, protect the urban poor from the vulnerability they face before state and nonstate violence.     

The Rule of Law and Equality

This paper describes and defends a novel and distinctively egalitarian conception of the rule of law. Official behavior is to be governed by preexisting, public rules that do not draw irrelevant distinctions between the subjects of law. If these demands are satisfied, a state achieves vertical equality between officials and ordinary people and horizontal legal equality among ordinary people.     

追问“常识”——宪法是什么

宪法是国家的根本大法,这更多的是从效力方面来明确宪法的。全面认识宪法,还应包括更多的内容:宪法是法的组成部分,因而宪法具有可诉性;宪法是人民授权政府的一份授权委托书,因而宪法是控制公共权力的控权法,同时又是保护人民权利的保权法;宪法是国家活动总章程,因而宪法明确了国家的组织原则和管理方式;宪法调整的是国家的重大社会关系,因而宪法在内容上有别于其他普通法律;宪法具有最高的法律效力,因而制宪和修宪的程序比普通法律严格。     

Living legal fictions: constituting the state or submerging the signifier?

This is an inquiry into the ways the state is constituted as an effective legal fiction. It is based on the premise that the state was not constituted, once and for all, some three centuries ago (as Bourdieu suggests) but that the existence of the state relies on continuing legal and social processes. The focus is on the translation from the legal to the social, specifically the semiotic interaction between law, space and daily life in the dynamics of this on-going mise en scène. This requires re-thinking a number of semiotic issues: first, Lefebvre’s challenge to a semiotics which neglects the place of the material (body, space) and, second, a challenge to Lefebvre’s assertions that the state operates in a realm of freedom in switching ‘at will’ between codes. Third, it is possible to question the conditions by which the state operates as a ‘floating signifier’, which maintains its domination by overwhelming us with its excess meanings. The inquiry proceeds by analysing the legal semiotics of space in different settings: the axis as an expression of legal and state power, from the courtroom to the capital city (Rome, Washington, Canberra), and street names with legal referents (Montréal and Mexico City, in addition to the above). After considering these self conscious attempts at meaning-making, the article concludes that the legal constitution of the state in urban space is not determined by a single wilful semiotic regime, but (taking insights from de Certeau) is contingent upon the interpretations and enactments of people who use the spaces. Except in the controlled environments of the courtroom and the planned capital city, everyday life is continually reconstituting the meanings of law and the state.     

Law,culture and massively multiplayer online games

Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) are now a major international phenomena. Millions of people can play together online, readily navigating boundaries between nations, languages and legal jurisdictions. The communities around some of these games are huge, of a size equivalent to a large city or small nation. This article explores three themes, labelled for conceptual purposes ‘games as legal spaces’, ‘games need lawyers’, and ‘lawyers need games’. It argues that games are inherently legal spaces, infused with legal-ness in a variety of ways; that more direct engagement from the legal community would be of tremendous value in making these systems, and the entertainment spaces which they regulate, ‘better’; and that we have a great deal to learn about law and about the regulation of the online space from games. The article concludes with the proposition that there is an opportunity for impactful knowledge exchange between legal scholars, MMOG developers and publishers, and the gaming community.     

The Legal Profession as a Social Process: A Theory on Lawyers and Globalization

This article proposes a processual theory of the legal profession. In contrast to the structural, interactional, and collective action approaches, this processual theory conceptualizes the legal profession as a social process that changes over space and time. The social process of the legal profession includes four components: (1) diagnostic struggles over professional expertise; (2) boundary work over professional jurisdictions; (3) migration across geographical areas and status hierarchies; and (4) exchange between professions and the state. Building on the processual theory and using China as a primary example, the author proposes a research agenda for studying lawyers and globalization that seeks to shift the focus of research from the legal elite to ordinary law practitioners, from global law firms to local law firms, and from advanced economies to emerging economies.     

"Jurisdictional Politics" in the Occupied West Bank: Territory, Community, and Economic Dependency in the Formation of Legal Subjects

This article examines the distribution of legal rights in the Israeli occupied West Bank. It argues that legal rights are distributed through a "jurisdictional politics" that tries to stabilize the contingent relationship between political community, territory, and legal subjects. In particular, this jurisdictional politics seeks to delimit the contradictory boundaries of the Israeli state by creating distinct categories of person out of the populations that live and work in the region. These issues are addressed by examining a dispute concerning the jurisdiction of Israeli law over Palestinian workers in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The article ends by arguing that in the context of multiple movements of people, capital, and military force, attention must be paid to the often contradictory ways in which jurisdictional regimes seek to produce particular types of citizens and subjects.     

A Conversation with Tibetans? Reconsidering the Relationship between Religious Beliefs and Secular Legal Discourse

Over cups of chai, a conversation between U.S. law professors and Tibetan exiles about the formation of a new democratic Tibetan government under the Dalai Lama goes awry. This article investigates why the misunderstandings occurred by presenting the context of the Tibetan and U. S. concepts of sacredness and secularity. The former Tibetan government and legal system are explained in some derail as well as the Tibetan wiew of the sacred and secular spheres in society. The deistic origins of the U.S. Constitution and the pervasive religious cosmology of the Framers are then described. These two similar positions are contrasted with the current modern and postmodern positions of an all-encompassing secular sphere that defines and contains religion. The author argues that "sacred" and "secular" have changed positions, with secularity now having an unmarked positive value and being viewed by U.S. law professors as a necessity for a democratic political and legal system. As the conversation with the Tibetans demonstrates, the richness and power of an integrated sacred perspective is difficult to comprehend from a hegemonic secular public space. Reformulating this "inarticulate debate" will be necessary for a coherent conversation to take place.     

European Law Beyond ‘Ever Closer Union’ Repositioning the Concept,its Thrust and the ECJ's Comparative Methodology

The article investigates competing understandings of European law. It supports, against the prevailing EU‐centred understanding, an ecumenical concept that embraces EU law, supplementing international instruments, the European Convention on Human Rights and, importantly, various domestic laws enacting or responding to such transnational law, as well as European comparative law. To keep the concept in sync with European politics, it posits a new idea that binds the parts together: to provide for a European legal space rather than further European integration (the ever closer union). This idea can also serve as European law's functional equivalent to forming one legal order. European law thus conceived grasps the puzzling complex of interdependent legal orders, sets a common frame for corresponding reconstructions (European composite constructions, legal pluralism, network theories, federalism or intergovernmentalism) and allows forces with diverging outlooks to meet in one legal field, on one more neutral disciplinary platform. Within this framework, European comparative law finds a new mission as well as a sound legal basis.     

Law's Wars,Law's Trials

The rule of law is a foundation of the liberal state. The US ‘War on Terror’ under Presidents Bush and Obama threatened and violated the rule of law in multiple ways. This article surveys those challenges and analyses how US institutions responded in order to assess the capacity of the legal system to resist political pressure in moments of crisis.     

论经济法的时空性

经济法作为以社会公共利益为价值追求的国家干预经济的基本法律形式 ,在现实中表现为兼具独特的民族性和共同的时代性的存在形态。为了深入地确证和认知这样一个有着历史的地理的特性的法律事象 ,我们可以借助于时空性的哲学之维来揭示其本己性品格。在本文中 ,作者以对时空性这一物质运动的基本形式的阐释为逻辑起点 ,界定了经济法时空性的基本内涵 ,论述了经济法时空性的现实表现即经济法发展的国际差别和趋同走势 ,并阐发了时空观在经济法发展中的运用。通过这样的考察 ,本文展现了一种解读经济法的存在、经济法的认知和经济法的发展的研究路径。     

泰国的涉外民商事管辖权制度

在泰国,对不涉及不动产或与此相关的权利和利益的诉讼,由被告住所地或诉因发生地能行使地域管辖权的法院管辖;有关不动产或其他与不动产有关的权利的诉讼,由有地域管辖权的被告住所地法院或不动产所在地法院管辖.外国国家不能成为泰国法院的当事人;当事人不能自主地选择管辖法院;在外国法院待审的案件还可向有管辖权的泰国法院提交;泰国法律制度中没有不方便法院这一概念.     

Corpus Linguistics as a Method of Legal Interpretation: Some Progress,Some Questions

Corpus linguistics is becoming a respected method of statutory and constitutional interpretation in the United States over the past decade, yet it has also generated a backlash from a group of scholars that engage in empirical work. This essay attempts to demonstrate both the contributions and the risks of using linguistic corpora as a primary tool in legal interpretation. Its legitimacy stems from the fact that courts routinely state that statutory terms, when not defined as a matter of law, are to be given their ordinary meaning. Judges have responded to this challenge, with the assistance of the linguistics community, by using corpora to determine which meanings are ordinary. However, legal analysts have not determined exactly what makes one meaning ordinary and another not ordinary. This gap has led to a level of disagreement in the field. Moreover, while linguists who engage in corpus linguistic analysis typically emphasize the importance of context, the legal application is peculiarly context-free, in keeping with legal philosophies that eschew reliance on reference to a law’s purpose and the intent of the legislature that enacted it. This move adds a political dimension to corpus analysis as a means of legal interpretation. Yet, the article concludes that by relying on a blend of general and specialized corpora, the legal system can substantially reduce the problem of contextualization, as some linguists and practitioners have already recognized.

     

The Heterogeneous State and Legal Pluralism in Mozambique

This article analyzes some of the most salient features of the state and the legal system in Mozambique. I propose the concept of the heterogeneous state to highlight the breakdown of the modern equation between the unity of the state, on the one hand, and the unity of its legal and administrative operation, on the other. The centrality of legal pluralism is analyzed in light of an empirical research focused on community courts and traditional authorities. I use the concept of legal hybridization with the purpose of showing the porosity of the boundaries of the different legal orders and cultures in Mozambique and the deep cross-fertilizations or cross-contaminations among them. Special attention is given to the multicultural plurality resulting from the interaction between modern law and traditional law, the latter conceived here as an alternative modernity.