International Law in Practice: An Irish Perspective

Netherlands International Law Review -     

法律与政治:共生中的超越和博弈

法律与政治具有共生性,共同服务于社会目标与价值。虽然在形式上法律表现为政治的产物,依凭政治权力和政治组织而存在,但法律与政治是基于社会结构内在需要的不同而存在,具有基于社会结构的差异性和独立性。由于形式上的结合,人们往往把法律混同于政治,导引出法律的非结构性作用,变异为外在的政治工具;也正因为存在基于社会结构的实质性差异,法律才可以与政治适度分离并超越政治。但其过程充满以社会事件形式表现出来的冲突和博弈,通过这些冲突性社会事件,法律日渐进化为国家和社会之间的平衡互动性制度机制,在实现国家治理的同时能够成为公民维护自身利益的制度依靠。     

宪法学断想三则

民主制度是宪法的基本内容也是宪政的基本内容。将民主排除于宪政之外,既在逻辑上不成立也不合乎历史事实。从国外经验看,违宪审查制度是以多数人民主制度为前提,又用以对抗多数人民主对少数人权利的可能侵犯。解决我国公民宪法权利虚置问题,关键之点还在于发展社会主义民主。宪法规定的公民自由权是一种具体性权利,公民应享有完全意义的法的请求权。     

The Rule of Law and Authoritarian Rule: Legal Politics in Sudan

Mark Fathi, Massoud . 2013 . Law's Fragile State: Colonial, Authoritarian, and Humanitarian Legacies in Sudan . Cambridge University Press. Pp. xxii + 265. $109.99 cloth, $34.99 paper. Does the rule of law guarantee peace and democracy, as so many people in the development and governance field believe? What are the historical and sociocultural conditions that shape the way rule of law mechanisms work in practice? Mark Massoud's monograph tracing the changing dimensions of the rule of law in Sudan from its colonial period to the present offers an important perspective on these questions, casting doubt on the simple argument that the rule of law produces democracy and peace. Instead, he shows how colonial and authoritarian rulers used the rule of law to consolidate power and legitimate their rule. In Law's Fragile State: Colonial, Authoritarian, and Humanitarian Legacies in Sudan, Massoud develops the concept of legal politics, arguing that the way the rule of law works varies with the political system in which it is embedded. He concludes that the forms of legal politics that reinforce the power and authority of legal institutions are more likely to sustain an authoritarian state than to bring democratic rule. His analysis is a valuable caution to those who promote the rule of law as the salvation for all. Taking a sociolegal perspective, he shows how it works in practice.     

Politics of Law and the Lacanian Real

The paper explores the role of Jacques Lacan’s Ethics of Psychoanalysis in debates in law and legal philosophy. It proceeds by considering a debate between Slavoj Žižek and Judith Butler over Lacan’s concept of the real, which forms part of a larger discussion over the future of democracy and the rule of law (Butler et al. 2000). Through reference to discussions of the relationship between law and ethics based on the Antigone tragedy, I argue that the difference between Žižek and Butler’s positions should not be understood in terms of the correctness of their reading of Lacan, but in terms of the political commitments that inform their respective interpretations. I explain the implications of this debate over one of Lacan’s most enigmatic concepts, thereby showing how Lacan’s theory can be used to rethink the politics of law in light of the increased emphasis on ethics in contemporary legal debates.     

The Boycott of the Law and the Law of the Boycott: Law, Labour, and Politics in British Columbia

This article uses a critical theoryllegal mobilization perspective to study the 1987–92 trade union boycott of the British Columbia labour law. The problems encountered establishing a total boycott–one that would eschew all contact with the state–and the subsequent modification of the parameters of the boycott through a selective reliance on the law offer an important case from which to learn more about the role of law and legal rights in highly regulated organizations and how collectives mobilize the law. The author argues that legal rights are important to unions because of their ability to mediate the complexity of labour relations through a decentralization of authority. At the same time, mobilization of the law for this purpose accentuates localized identities and unequal resources that operate in tension with a boycott ethos, necessitating a deliberative politics to legitimize the law. By exploring the tension between these two forms of mobilization around law–one to reduce complexity, another to legitimize broad collective norms–the author analyzes and draws some conclusions about the reproduction of social unionism in British Columbia.     

人工流产:权利抑或义务——女性主义视角下中美堕胎法比较研究

美国法上妇女堕胎权是宪法上保护的权利,但各州政府有权对此进行规范、限制甚至在一定条件下禁止。中国法上妇女享有充分的堕胎权,仅禁止选择性别的人工流产,但在计划生育国策下,有时人工流产成为义务,妇女的生殖健康也被漠视甚至受到侵害。以妇女为中心,保障妇女的堕胎自主决定权与生殖健康是女性主义对人工流产的法律进路。     

国际法治:良法善治还是强权政治

国际法治意味着法治的原则适用于国际关系之中。法治的理想激发着国际法学家在国际社会实现法治,但是由于存在着重重障碍,强权政治在国际关系中仍然占据主导地位。但是,有可能建立人类利益作为国家决策的基础,代替以往抽象的国家利益和安全考虑。基于此,国际法治可以在良法善治的前提下实现。     

The Politics of Revolt: On Benjamin and Critique of Law

In his essay ‘Critique of Violence’, Walter Benjamin subjects violence (Gewalt) to a critique in order to establish the criterion for violence itself as a principle. His starting point is the distinction between law-positing and law-preserving violence. However, these are for him inseparable and subjected to the law of historical change: the history of the law is nothing but the dialectical rising and falling of legal orders. Benjamin’s analysis of legal violence and his criticism of parliamentary democracies, this article advances, should be related to the critical analysis of the possibilities for alternative politics in contemporary democratic rule of law states, as those advanced by Bernard Noël, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Luc Nancy and Jacques Rancière. For Benjamin, it is only law-destroying divine violence, whose principle is justice (Gerechtigkeit), not power (Macht), that is able to break this circle and open up a new era. Divine violence is, however, not only a provocative but also an extremely problematic, even dangerous, concept, as Jacques Derrida, among others, has claimed. This article considers, therefore, whether the concept of divine violence has any real political relevance in the contemporary era.