Political Liberalism and Political Embeddedness: Understanding Politics in the Work of Chinese Criminal Defense Lawyers

This article examines the meanings of politics in everyday legal practice using the case of Chinese criminal defense lawyers. Based on 194 in‐depth interviews with criminal defense lawyers and other informants in 22 cities across China, we argue that lawyers’ everyday politics have two faces: on the one hand, lawyers potentially can challenge state power, protect citizen rights, and pursue proceduralism in their daily work; on the other hand, they often have to rely on political connections with state agencies to protect themselves and to solve problems in their legal practice. The double meanings of politics—namely, political liberalism and political embeddedness—explain the complex motivations and coping tactics that are frequently found in Chinese lawyers’ everyday work. Our data show that the Chinese criminal defense bar is differentiated along these two meanings of politics into five clusters of lawyers: progressive elites, pragmatic brokers, notable activists, grassroots activists, and routine practitioners. They also suggest that a principal manifestation of political lawyering is not merely short‐term mobilization or revolutionary struggle against arbitrary state power, but also an incremental everyday process that often involves sophisticated tactics to manage interests that often conflict.     

Political Liberalism. Neutrality and the Political

Abstract. The paper examines the current discussion in liberalism around the issue of the "neutrality" of the state. It scrutinizes the "political liberalism" defended by John Rawls and Charles Larmore and shows that the consequence of their approach is to evacuate the dimension of "the political" from the idea of a well-ordered society. By presenting the exclusions existing in their model of liberal society as the product of free agreement resulting from rational procedures, "political liberals" offer us a picture in which antagonism, violence and power have only disappeared because they have been made invisible. The consequence is to leave liberalism unable to conceptualize power and antagonism. The paper concludes that there cannot be such a thing as a "neutral justification of the neutrality of the state" (Larmore 1987) and that a pluralist perfectionist perspective like the one proposed by Joseph Raz offers a more adequate way to envisage the specificity of modern pluralist democracy.     

Rawls's Political Liberalism. A Reassessment

Since Rawls's Political Liberalism is by now the subject of a wide and deep philosophical literature, much of it excellent in quality, it would be foolhardy to attempt to say something about each of the major issues of the work, or to sort through debates that can easily be located elsewhere. I have therefore decided to focus on a small number of issues where there is at least some chance that a fresh approach may yield some new understanding of the text: Rawls's distinction between “reasonable” and “unreasonable” comprehensive doctrines; the psychological underpinnings of political liberalism; and the possibility that political liberalism might be extended beyond the small group of modern Western societies that Rawls's historical remarks suggest as its primary focus. I also include a discussion of the much‐debated issue of civility and public reason, which could hardly be avoided given its prominence in the book's reception. This paper should therefore be read not as a comprehensive account of the work but as one person's attempt to grapple, very incompletely and imperfectly, with a book that is as great as any philosophy has seen on this topic of great human urgency.     

Political Liberalism, Marriage and the Family

Can and should political liberals recognize and otherwise support legal marriage as a matter of basic justice? In this article, we offer a general account of how political liberals should evaluate the issue of whether the legal recognition of marriage is a matter of basic justice. And, we develop and examine some public reason arguments that, given the fundamental interests of citizens, could justify various forms of legal marriage in some contexts. In particular, in certain conditions, the recognition of some form of legal marriage may be the best way to protect the fundamental interests of women as citizens in freely chosen associations. Or, it may be that, in certain conditions, to secure the social conditions necessary for gays, lesbians and bisexuals to be free and equal citizens, some form of legal marriage can or should be recognized.     

Stability,Autonomy, and the Foundations of Political Liberalism

Law and Philosophy - An attractive form of social stability is realized when the members of a well-ordered society give that society’s organizing principles their free and reflective...     

Political Liberalism, Ethos Justice, and Gender Equality

Susan Okin criticizes John Rawls’s ‘political liberalism’ because it does not apply principles of justice directly to gender relations within households. We explain how one can be a ‘political liberal feminist’ by distinguishing between two kinds of justice: the first we call ‘legitimacy justice’, conceptions of which apply to the ‘legally coercive structure’ of society; the second we call ‘ethos justice’, conceptions of which apply to citizens’ ‘non-coercive’ relations. We agree with Okin that a society in which most persons act in accordance with ‘gender equal’ ethos justice is morally superior to one in which most persons do not. A shared commitment to a particular conception of ethos justice, however, cannot be required by a conception of legitimacy justice. A political liberal feminist is committed to promoting gender equality with respect to both legitimacy justice and ethos justice, but recognizes that different means are necessary to do so.     

In Defense of Class Struggle

Critical Criminology - In his article, “In Defense of Resistance,” Ferrell (2019) argues for the importance and centrality of the study of everyday and emergent acts of resistance to...     

In Defense of Criminal Possession

Criminal law casebooks and treatises frequently mention the possibility that criminal liability for possession is inconsistent with the Voluntary Act Requirement, which limits criminal liability to that which includes an act or an omission. This paper explains why criminal liability for possession is compatible with the Voluntary Act Requirement despite the fact that possession is a status. To make good on this claim, the paper (1) defends the Voluntary Act Requirement, (2) offers an account of the nature of omissions of the kind that need be included in that for which criminal liability is imposed in the absence of a voluntary act, and (3) argues that possession is a status that is constituted in part by an omission of this sort. The result is that to hold people criminally liable for possession is to hold them criminally liable both for a status and for an omission, an omission that is part of what it is to have that status. The paper also distinguishes possession from vagrancy, which is not a proper object of criminal liability, precisely because of constraints placed by the Voluntary Act Requirement. And the paper argues that possession incident to dispossession is not a proper object of criminal liability because it does not involve an omission of the kind that other forms of possession involve.     

自由主义:基于理性的政治论说

无论我们对自由主义持何态度 ,都不可否认它是当今汉语学界的一种显学。由于各种原因 ,在学界占据主流地位的始终是 2 0世纪后半期在西方兴起的以反思启蒙理性为着力点的、以哈耶克、波普和伯林等为主要代表的自由主义思潮。然而 ,由于对自由主义在西方发展脉络 ,尤其是自由主义之最初证成缺乏足够的了解 ,国内学人难以理解哈耶克等人何以要极力辩解自由主义不是建构理性主义 ,误认为其对“理性的滥用”之批判就是要批判理性本身 ,有些人甚至追随某些西方后现代主义思潮 ,断定自由主义抛弃理性仍能得到有力辩护。通过剖析格雷和罗蒂两个学案表明 :自由主义之哲学论证离不开理性 ,否则或失去其本质或沦其为偶然 ,因为自由主义本为探求政治理性之学。不过 ,自由主义并非建构理性政治的惟一通途 ,肯定还存在着建立理性政治的其他通路需要我们去摸索     

In Defense of the Practice Theory

Hart proposed that law is made possible by the practice among legal officials of observing conventional social rules, the most important being rules of recognition. This view has been dubbed the practice theory, and it has been attacked by many legal theorists. This paper argues that many criticisms of the practice theory fail because they misunderstand the nature of the organizational challenge to which rules of recognition are the solution. The challenge of constituting a legal system is essentially the challenge of constituting a group agent, and when viewed through Pettit’s account of group agency, the practice theory can easily be defended.     

Patriotic Liberalism

Law and Philosophy -     

隐私权的政治哲学辩护

作为现代社会的基础哲学,自由主义通常被作为隐私权的政治哲学基础。在对自由主义的基本前提“权利优先于善”的质疑中,社群主义和共和主义以不同于自由主义的理路也对隐私权作出了辩护。厘清和阐释这三种政治哲学对隐私权的辩护方式有助于我们加深对隐私权的概念理解。     

提高我国刑事辩护质量的另一条路径——再论刑事辩护准入制度的建立

建立刑事辩护准入制度是提高我国刑事辩护质量的另一条现实路径。在现实国情允许的情况下,我国应从死刑案件开始,分步骤、分阶段地设立刑事辩护的准入门槛,同时设置相应的监督、惩戒以及退出机制,为刑事辩护准入制度的实施营造良好的制度环境。