Researching and Theorizing the Processes of Professional Identity Formation

This paper is concerned with professional identity formation, at both the individual and organizational levels, and the dialectic between individual processes and the social trajectory of organizational reproduction. The research project on which the paper is based was stimulated by the growing concern of United Kingdom legal education institutions and professional bodies with how new entrants to an increasingly diverse profession negotiate the changing demands of a complex stratified and segmented labour market. The paper will give a brief outline of the first stage of a longitudinal study of two cohorts of part-time and full-time students on the Legal Practice Course at a new university in England, (some of whom are now in training with firms) and representatives of the local legal employment market. A report of the research results to date will be set in the context of an exploration of some key theoretical perspectives which inform the field of the profession and of identity development, such as theories of symbolic, linguistic, and cultural capital.     

Understanding the Costs of Litigation: The Case of the Hourly-Fee Lawyer

What does it mean to talk about the “cost of civil justice”? What can be done to bring down that cost? This article addresses these two important questions. Drawing on data collected by the Civil Litigation Research Project, the authors first examine the components of cost and then present an extensive analysis of what is by far the dominant element of the cost equation-legal services. The analysis of the cost of legal services examines the amount of time lawyers devote to cases and the rates they charge for their time. The major factors influencing time include adversariness, stakes, litigant goals, and court (federal versus state); hourly rates appear to be determined primarily by the legal services market. The article closes with a discussion of the implications of the results of the analysis for reforms of the civil justice system that might seek to lower the cost of justice.     

Moonlighting in Law School: A Multischool Study of Part-Time Employment of Full-Time Students

The part-time employment of full-time law students is a significant aspect of contemporary legal education. Successful socialization and training in law are presumed to require the undivided time, effort, and commitment of students. Part-time employment, therefore, is commonly believed to siphon those scarce personal resources away from the central task of legal education. This multi-school study of a sample of 1,370 law students attempted to determine the significant ways in which employed students were differentiated from nonemployed classmates in finances, attitudes, and uses of time, and whether type of law school and student's year in school had effects on patterns of student employment.
The incidence of part-time employment, while strongly related to personal financial resources, was found to be equally influenced by the type of school attended and year in school. While those settings varied substantially in the degree of permissiveness toward student part-time employment, students employed part time could not be distinguished statistically from their nonemployed classmates in terms of levels of involvement in law school or their levels of morale. Both temporal and attitudinal disengagement from law school were found to be commonplace among upper-class students in all school settings, but part-time employment did not appear to contribute to it uniquely.     

国民性、资本市场与法律的深层结构——民众的“好赌性”与市场调控法则

如同制度变迁始终存在路径依赖一样，市场的发展也存在路径依赖。“好赌”的“国民性”表明，中国资本市场有其内在逻辑。这是我们按照英美规则，构建资本市场法律结构时易被忽略的知识。中国有关资本市场的法律结构未能充分考量资本市场的功能区隔问题，过分关注公开型资本市场的规则建设，忽略闭锁型资本市场的开发。依托文化解释的逻辑和资本市场的功能逻辑，从总体上反思中国资本市场的功能和市场规则的正当性，可在一定程度上帮助我们发现资本市场的发展方向，发现资本市场法律的意义和未来。     

我国法律方法教育的反思

在法学教育中,法律方法即把法律规范运用到裁判案件中所采用的方法具有双重属性,即知识的属性和能力的属性。就法律方法的知识属性而言,它应成为法学教学中的知识传授对象,就法律方法的能力属性而言,它又是法律人才必备的素养。目前,我国法学教育既没有重视法律方法知识在法律人才培养中的作用,也没建立起较完善的训练法律技能的有效机制。法律方法教育是我国目前法学教育的薄弱环节,因而应当成为当下法学教育必须重视并着力解决的根本性问题之一。     

《最高人民法院公报》选编民事案例的变化

1985-2008这24年间,《最高人民法院公报》选编民事案例存在以下变化:年度选编民事案例的数量逐渐增多、案件类型趋向复杂化。在裁判方法上,从突出国家规则强制到注重判决说理;从突出案件裁判类型的代表性、示范性到注重展示法官的裁判方法;从示范最高人民法院对法律的权威理解、严格解释法律规则的基本文义到注重对裁判规则的建构;司法裁判中的知识观由一元发展为多元。形成这些变化的原因有:市场经济的发展、有中国特色的社会主义法律体系的逐步建立、法律职业化、对案例作用的重视、司法裁判由单纯追求政治正确向注重知识正确的转向。合理预期、职业知识而非简单的伦理说教或单纯的意识形态灌输,应当成为中国司法未来发展的主导逻辑。     

The Legal Protection for China's Flexible Workers during the Covid-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a chain of socioeconomic effects worldwide. China’s social and economic operations and labor market have also been suffered because of this global crisis. During hard times, flexible employment becomes an important means for stabilizing employment. However, the pandemic also exposed the problems ensuing from insufficient legal protection for flexible workers. First, there are some gaps and defects in the labor and social security laws in terms of their scope and applicability to flexible workers. Second, there were limitations in the support and protection policies for flexible workers at the early stages of the pandemic. Although the government implemented measures soon after the outbreak of COVID-19, their role is still constrained by the legal lacunae in protecting flexible workers. As flexible employment will continue to play a significant role in China’s labor market, the State Council issued a far-reaching official document in July 28, 2020 to support it. This document indicates the directions for providing better legal protection for flexible workers, which contains expanding the legal scope and enriching the legal protection. Based on the realities and latest policies, the legal protection for flexible workers should be systemically improved in the future.     

The “age of empire”: again?

Law and ways of thinking about law have historically been integral to processes of colonialisation and extension of empire. Contemporary forms of colonialism in a globalising legal environment may be less obvious, more nuances or even subconscious. However, the emergence of higher education as a trade commodity, the shift to fee-paying students as consumers and the market competition for international students among universities raise questions about the export and import of various forms of legal education, especially in the context of plural and mixed legal systems, debates about legal transplants, and concerns about legal imperialism. This article examines these issues and considers the place of comparative legal education in the contemporary environment facing university law schools.     

Health care and the labor market: learning from the German experience

Many observers have begun to question the U.S. reliance on an employment-based private health insurance system. In thinking about the future of this system, it is instructive to examine the German experience. The German health insurance system is almost entirely organized and financed around the labor market. In recent years, the German labor market has changed in several ways. Among other changes, more German women now work, the proportion of retirees in the population has increased, the share of manufacturing in employment has declined, and the economy has become more open. These labor market changes have made it more difficult to organize health insurance around employment in Germany. Recent changes in the German health insurance system have, to some extent, decoupled health insurance from employment. This decoupling is likely to continue as the labor market changes further. We explore the implications of this experience for the United States.     

The Protection of Traditional Foods in the EU: Traditional Specialities Guaranteed

Since the dawn of the common market, the European Union has enacted abundant legislation regulating the employment of specific food names. This process has led to the introduction of a regulatory framework for wines and spirits, and four quality schemes for food products: protected denominations of origin (PDO), protected geographical indications (PGI), traditional specialities guaranteed (TSG), and optional quality terms (OQT). This paper focuses on the TSG. It will first determine the collocation of this quality scheme in the EU legal framework; second, it will conduct a legal exegesis of the norms regulating the TSG under the previous Regulation 509/06 and analyse the ways in which they have been interpreted and applied; third, it will suggest reasons for the limited success of this scheme in the past; and fourth, it will explore the recently enacted Regulation 1151/12, seeking to establish whether it addresses the pre‐existing flaws that fettered the TSG.     

围绕“人格”问题的法理论辩

"人格"问题在法学与法律上都是个众说纷纭的概念,由此也引起学界对其意义、范围以及与其它概念相区别的争论。诸如"人格的概念在法律上是否必需?","人格概念是否仅存在于私法制度之中?","人格"的概念是否与"法律主体"、"权利能力"的内涵相同?……等等,都常常引起人们的关注。作为法学、法律上的一个基础概念,人格有其存在的特殊意义,它既在私法上成为法律主体建构的基石,也在公法上为人的平等提供了依据。同时,人格既不等同于法律主体,也不类似于权利能力,而是法学、法律上具有独特内涵的专门范畴。     

The Ideal Socio-Legal Order. Its "Rule of Law" Dimension

Abstract. The author aims at defining the borderlines of the concept "rule of law." This has been often inflated to encompass several dimensions of an ideal legal order. The author on the contrary believes that the "rule of law" ought to be a "thin" ideal. As a matter of fact, when the "rule of law" signifies almost any dimension of an ideal legal order, it comes to stand for nothing essential in particular. Deflation is then advocated for the rehabilitation of the normative content of the "rule of law." This means that the "rule of law" should be defined as a concept covering only some well delimited dimensions of an ideal legal order.     

离退休人员就业权法律保护问题研究

随着社会经济的迅速发展,我国劳动力人口年龄结构发生了较大变化,身体健康、精力充沛的离退休人员成为劳动力市场一支主要力量。但是,我国劳动力市场现行法律制度只是针对初次就业的劳动者,缺乏保护离退休人员就业权的相关法律规定,使离退休人员就业权受到侵害。因此,我国应构建保护离退休人员就业权的法律制度,使其在公正平等的前提下参与就业竞争,促进社会和谐、稳定、可持续发展。     

Access to Justice and Social Inclusion: The Policy Challenges in Wales

Enhancing access to legal and advice services is a central pillar of the Access to Justice Act 1999. Within the new welfare framework, employment rights come increasingly into focus as the UK government seeks to forge a link between welfare and work. Access to the labour market, and being sustained within it, are seen as major mechanisms for combating social exclusion. Discrimination at work can only thwart these ambitions. The Access to Justice reforms imply an assessment of need and a review of the ways in which individuals are negotiating the available system of redress. This article reports on a study of advice provision in employment discrimination cases in Wales, funded by the Legal Services Commission and the Equality Commissions in Wales. Drawing on the accounts of key providers, individual experiences of advice seeking and available statistical evidence, it explores the opportunities and constraints of the Welsh context and profiles many of the policy challenges posed for the devolved administration. It demonstrates that, despite advances in equalities legislation and policy directives aimed at strengthening people's employment rights, a number of critical obstacles remain for the most disadvantaged groups.     

Through a screen,darkly: Electronic legal education in Europe

Abstract

Electronic legal education involves the use of information, communication and instructional technologies to enhance students’ learning of the law and to provide law teachers with environments and tools for teaching the law. With the fast growth of the Internet many Law schools and Law faculties are moving their education and training into web environments. This may open new ways of teaching and learning the law by providing students with an environment in which they can manage legal information and legal knowledge for their personal professional use. However, it is clear that throughout Europe there are divergent as well as convergent uses of the web and IT This article explores some of the issues inherent in this, and suggests a number of projects that would enable ICT in legal education to facilitate the aims of the Sorbonne‐Bologna process.     

破解大学生就业困境的“二位一体”路径

市场配置和政府调控是人力资源配置的两种基本形式.面对市场配置的缺陷以及政府在大学生就业中所应承担的职责,只有将市场配置与政府调控相结合,使二者形成合力,才能有效解决大学生就业难的问题.     

爱国主义与以人为本———“国家 个人本位”法律价值观的现代诠释

单向“集体本位”是中国传统文化也是中国传统法的价值观。它经历了家族本位、国家本位、国家与家族本位、国家与社会本位、阶级本位等发展阶段。改革开放以来,伴随着社会主义市场经济、社会主义民主政治建设特别是法律文化建设的深入进行,在社会意识形态领域逐渐形成了以爱国主义和以人为本为标志的社会主义核心价值观。这种社会主义核心价值观为社会主义法律价值观———“国家·个人本位”的酝酿和形成创造了前提。双向的“国家·个人本位”法律价值观标志着现代中国法律文化建设的价值方向。     

“诉累”的法经济学分析

“诉累”是司法界经常使用的一个术语。从法经济学的角度看“诉累”的产生原因在于普法力度不够、司法权力寻租、低下的司法效率、委托代理、较高的诉讼成本、行政机关对司法活动的干涉、较低的司法素质。诉累导致“租的耗散”、激化社会矛盾,导致司法公信的丧失和“理性”的违约行为。应加强普法活动、切实保证司法独立、全面提高司法人员的素质,健全法律援助制度、确立权力与责任相统一的原则。     

BRIEF VIEW ON THE STANDARDIZED TRAINING OF LEGAL PRACTICE SKILLS

Because of the massive expansion in enrollment, the number of graduates from law schools across the country is unprecedented, but the rate of unemployment is also unprecedented in comparison with the graduation. In stark contrast, many employees are finding it difficult to find graduates of talent fitting directly to working requirements. The traditional mode of education is to cultivate students with legal research abilities, but the main social need calls for graduates who are prepared to practice, which has caused the low employment. As a result, the graduates’ failure to meet the social demand caused serious imbalance between supply and demand. The characteristic of legal practice skills is to solve practical problems through the practice of adapting legal knowledge, but practical skill training in law school education now is basically nonexistent. The training of legal practice skills must be conducted through aspects of course design, and therefore teaching methods necessitate comprehensive reformation. The practice skills of the legal profession, such as basic literacy, basic skills, and work skills, are indispensable to the education of students. Educating them to attain these skills will aid them directly in practical work after graduation, improve their work quality and employment rate, and consequently improve the whole overall quality of the legal profession.