The Hurried Justification of Sanctions

In this paper I try to see how the Derridean aporias of the law of the urgency of legal decisions (the law interrupts the input of knowledge in the decision-making process) and the épokhè of the rule (justice can never be done in the present) are revealed in the context of the justification of sanctions. I argue that sanctions can only be justified in a purposive manner in the last instance. They can only be means to an end of punishment which has been opted for, and which can be justified on grounds of principles, or an authoritative calculation of incommensurable entities. I argue against theories, which advocate the internal connection of law and morality, because if such a connection could be established, the aporia of the hurried and unjustified action would obviously disappear. In particular my target is discourse theory as formulated mainly by Robert Alexy with his Sonderfallthese(Special Case Thesis). My objection is that, because of their instrumental nature, sanctions cannot be justified on moral grounds. I also consider some objections that could be raised from Klaus Günther's theory of appropriateness and Habermas' distinction between the moral, ethical and pragmatic employments of practical reason. I am argue that the former, which would become relevant at the stage of application, that is sentencing, does not resolve the justificatory problem of sanctions, and the latter confirms rather than falsifies my claim that punishment can never be said to be just.     

Sanction and Obligation in Hart's Theory of Law

Abstract. The paper begins by challenging Hart's argument aimed to show that sanctions are not part of the concept of law. It shows that in the “minimal” legal system as understood by Hart, sanctions may be required for keeping the legal system efficacious. I then draw a methodological conclusion from this argument, which challenges the view of Hart (and his followers) that legal philosophy should aim at discovering some general, politically neutral, conceptual truths about law. Instead, the aim should be to discover the values because of which certain things in the world are classified as law and others as non‐law. Focusing on those would give us a more insight to the roles law plays in society, as well as more illuminating answers to traditional jurisprudential questions like the status of law in evil regimes.     

民事诉讼行为论纲——兼谈民事诉讼法学研究方法的转型

传统上,我国采用＂诉讼法律关系论＂作为民事诉讼法学的基本分析工具。但是,法律关系论并不适合民事诉讼法领域,今后宜将＂民事诉讼行为论＂作为基本分析工具。两大法系对诉讼行为论有不同的理解,我国应当创新＂民事诉讼行为论＂的内涵,以诉讼行为的概念和类型论、控制论、评价论和制裁论作为其基本框架。运用诉讼行为论这个分析工具对整个诉讼法律制度进行重构,具有十分重要的理论意义和实践意义。     

Insider trading and the public enforcement of private prohibitions: some complications in enforcing simple rules for a complex world

Accepting the argument made by Manne, Epstein and others that firms wishing to allow their employees to insider trade should be permitted to do so, this article shows that there is still a crucial role for government in regulating insider trading. In particular, allowing employees to profit by insider trading is a form of employee compensation that, in contradistinction from conventional forms of equity compensation, results in unknowable and effectively unlimited costs to the company. Since providing employee compensation in this form causes the company to lose control of its compensation expense, even if insider trading were legal, virtually every company would rely on conventional forms of employee compensation and prohibit its employees from insider trading. But, pace Manne, Epstein and others, companies lack the means to detect insider trading by their employees, and even when they do catch employees insider trading, companies can impose only mild contractual sanctions, generally not exceeding disgorgement of profits and dismissal. As a result, although an efficient agreement between a company and its employee would prohibit the employee from insider trading, this prohibition cannot be effectively enforced by the company. Government, with its usual law enforcement powers, is better able to detect insider trading and can impose more severe sanctions on violators, including criminal penalties. Government should thus enforce a ban on insider trading in those instances, which will be virtually all instances, in which a company prohibits its employees from insider trading. The efficient solution is thus a hybrid system of private prohibition and public enforcement. Such a system is not unusual but the norm. Employers prohibit employees from embezzling their money and stealing their property, and employees are subject to contractual sanctions and dismissal for violating these prohibitions, but we still need statutes against theft to generate an optimal level of deterrence. This is all the more true when the employee misappropriates information, which is much harder to detect than a theft of money or property.

     

The scope of punishment: an economic theory

The harm caused by many acts is not certain but probabilistic. Current public enforcement of the law combines harm-based sanctions (usually in criminal law) with act-based sanctions (very common in administrative law and regulation). We propose an economic theory of the choice between harm-based and act-based sanctions in public enforcement. The efficiency of act-based versus harm-based sanctions is analyzed and a typology of the determinants is drawn up. Our model suggests that harm-based sanctions are more efficient when (1) acquiring information about the act is important, (2) engaging in harm avoidance activities is advisable, (3) judgment-proofness is not a very significant problem, (4) punishment is especially costly, (5) changes in law are expensive or difficult to negotiate and (6) on average, potential criminals are better informed than the government about losses for society. Legal policy implications are discussed.     

Ex Ante and Ex Post Allocation of Risk of Illegality: Regulatory Sources of Contractual Failure and Issues of Corrective and Distributive Justice

The pursuit of welfare objectives through contract law rules could be exemplified in the case of illegality and subsequent nullity sanctions attached to a contract that violates certain regulatory rules. The effectiveness of contractual allocation of risk of illegality (regulatory prohibitions), therefore, varies, depending on which contract theory prevails. Maintaining the validity of a prohibited and failed contract, and allocation of the relevant risks, is crucially dependent on whether we adhere to a welfare or rights-based theory of contract. In this paper we argue that impossibility of ex ante and ex post allocation of risk of illegality is the logical outcome of the adherence to a welfare theory of contract law, as maintaining even a minimum validity of the failed contract would result in some welfare losses. According to this approach unjust enrichment could not be rectified because it would diminish the optimal enforcement of welfare objectives. On the other hand, and despite such prohibition and illegality, a rights-based theory would resist opportunistic and rent-seeking behaviour and would ensure the validity of the contract and just allocation of losses and gains, which arise from the failure of the prohibited contract.     

Real Property, Spontaneous Order, and Norms in the Gold Mines

This article contributes to the current debate about why people follow the law even when they are not subject to legal sanctions, as when there are no police and little danger of a lawsuit. Most recent scholarship in this area takes the form of norms theories, suggesting that social norms rather than laws shape behavior and that deviations from the norm are punished by either social or internal sanctions. Robert Sugden, however, proposes that order may develop "spontaneously" in the many areas of life where abiding by the rules minimizes the risk of costly confrontations with others and is thus in the interest of all parties. When this is true, the threat of little or no sanctions plays no role in regulating behavior. This article tests Sugden's theory against a simple property system, that of the California gold mines, in which individual miners held small claims subject to strict work requirements. The evidence of eyewitnesses shows that the stability of the regime did not depend on norms, but on the reasonable prediction that other claim holders would themselves stand up for their rights under the local mining code. Disputes about the rules and their application were submitted to arbitrators, whose decisions were accepted by the parties and did not need to be enforced. The California experience thus provides an example of a stable property regime for which game theory has a more satisfying explanation than do any of the norms theories.     

Escalating penalties for repeat offenders

Agents may commit a crime twice. The act is inefficient so that the agents are to be deterred. Even if an agent is law abiding, she may still commit the act accidentally. The agents are wealth constrained. The government seeks to minimize the probability of apprehension. If the benefit from the crime is small, the optimal sanction scheme is decreasing in the number of offenses. By contrast, if the benefit is large, sanctions are increasing in the number of offenses. Increasing sanctions do not make the criminal track less attractive; they make being honest more attractive.     

Plea bargaining with budgetary constraints

In this paper, we construct a simple model that illustrates a perverse effect associated with plea bargaining in which an increase in sanctions can lead to reduced deterrence. This finding is derived from the interaction of binding budgetary constraints and plea bargaining. In an environment with these institutional features, higher sanctions are not always optimal when resources are limited, even if such sanctions are costless. Such potential phenomena may be useful in explaining the fact that many states have introduced limitations on plea bargaining. Prosecutors being concerned with their conviction rates is necessary for such a result to be present.     

Legal and Extralegal Barriers to Delinquency

Recent research on deterrence has begun to couch discussions of legal sanctions in the context of broader perspectives that take account of other factors that may inhibit law violation. Such an approach can answer significant questions about the importance of legal sanctions relative to other variables. In this research, a three-variable inhibitory model suggested by Grasmick and Green (1980) was tested using panel data from a large sample of adolescents. Internalized normative constraint was found to be the strongest predictor of subsequent delinquency. However, perceptions of the risk of both formal and informal sanctions add significantly to the model's explanatory power. Interaction effects were noted that suggest sanction threats may have a compensatory effect where internal constraints are weak.     

《民法典》第157条(法律行为无效之法律后果)评注

本条中“民事法律行为”既包括财产行为也包括身份行为,既包括负担行为也包括处分行为;“确定不发生效力”既包括效力待定法律行为终未获追认、已成立终未获审批的情形,也包括法律行为未成立的情形。本条中“财产”包括一切可转让的利益,就权利移转型合同而言,财产返还请求权系物权性的回复原状请求权,它主要指有形财产的占有回复和权利簿册记载的回复。折价补偿请求权为特殊的不当得利请求权,在合同无效清算场合,应一般性禁用《民法典》第986条得利丧失抗辩规则。损害赔偿请求权是一种特殊的缔约过失赔偿请求权,可适用于双方明知或应知合同违法、背俗而无效的场合。本条并非宣示性条款,它规定了三项独立的请求权基础。在法律对建设工程合同等特殊合同以及其他法律行为无效另有特别规定时,应各依该特别规定处理。     

刑法概念的法哲学问题

刑法的概念既重要又危险,而如何使其科学化却是被忽视了的法哲学问题。从刑法与道德和政治的关系出发,能够为重新理解刑法的概念开辟新路径。任何时代的刑法都是自己时代的公共道德与政治权力相互结合的产物,只不过由于政治权力的性质不同,这种结合方式亦会不同。现代刑法应具有对公共道德与公共政治进行双向控制的功能,而刑法生活是刑法道德基因所存在、表现的基本场域,回到刑法生活才是尊重和确证刑法之道德基因的基本途径。     

我国刑法中轻罪与重罪若干问题研究

我国刑法中轻罪与重罪的划分,仅指轻罪行与重罪行的划分。在学术界关于区分轻罪和重罪的四种观点中,以一定法定刑为标准认定罪行的轻重具有充分的依据。认定轻罪和重罪法定刑的分界线当以有期徒刑3年为限,即凡法定最低刑为3年或3年以上有期徒刑的罪行都是重罪,反之便是轻罪。我国刑法存在若干轻罪与重罪界限不明的条文,需调整其罪刑关系。犯罪的未完成形态只存在于重罪之中。     

Towards Efficiency in Attributing Criminal Liability to Corporations: Canadian and Brazilian Regimes Compared

This article compares Canadian treatment of corporate criminal liability with that in Brazil, examining whether there are ways in which one system can learn from the other. It is argued that the Canadian model could provide a starting point for revision of Brazilian legal principles in this area that, would encourage the public to recognize that crimes committed by corporations should be taken seriously. However, because criminal liability requires a high burden of proof and is therefore difficult to secure, the Brazilian regime of strict liability may ultimately be useful in encouraging compliance by corporations, assuming sanctions are severe enough and detection of violations by law enforcers is enhanced. The solution may therefore consist in the use of both these regimes, as is currently the case with anticorruption law in the UK.     

Coordinating in the Shadow of the Law: Two Contextualized Tests of the Focal Point Theory of Legal Compliance

In situations where people have an incentive to coordinate their behavior, law can provide a framework for understanding and predicting what others are likely to do. According to the focal point theory of legal compliance, the law's articulation of a behavior can sometimes create self‐fulfilling expectations that it will occur. Existing theories of legal compliance emphasize the effect of sanctions or legitimacy; we argue that, in addition to sanctions and legitimacy, law can also influence compliance simply by making one outcome salient. We tested this claim in two experiments where sanctions and legitimacy were held constant. Experiment 1 demonstrated that a mandatory legal rule operating in a property dispute influenced compliance only when there was an element of coordination. Experiment 2 demonstrated that a default rule in a contract negotiation acted as a focal point for coordinating negotiation decisions. Both experiments confirm that legal rules can create a focal point around which people tend to coordinate.     

The Paradox of the Moral Irrelevance of the Government and the Law: A Critique of Carlos Nino's Approach

Some authors have speculated about the fact that if the law were connected to morality, then it would not be relevant, because morality would be enough to regulate social life. A study of this objection to the connection thesis will be outlined in this paper. In other words, the possible answers to the question about the practical difference that law gives to morality will be analyzed. The work of the Argentine philosopher Carlos Nino will be taken as the starting point for this task.     

The Moral Foundation of Law and the Ethos of Liberal Democracies

This paper deals with the connection between law and morality. Such a connection is relevant for political theory, since demonstrating that law necessarily implies a claim to justice would require fundamental rights to be considered the horizon of any legal system, instead of being considered as dependent on the axiological context of liberal democracies. The paper approaches the controversy starting from an overview of the work of the German philosopher Robert Alexy, in particular his attempt to establish an analytical link between law and morality, and to this end considers law as a speech act with a claim to correctness. It then examines the critique put forward by Joseph Raz, that points out the lack of objectivity of this claim to correctness. In order to establish a moral foundation for law, the paper argues that it is necessary to take account of Karl‐Otto Apel's attempt to establish the transcendental foundation of language, as well as of Habermas' critique of that attempt. In conclusion, it is argued that the debate about a possible link between law and morality sheds new light on contemporary debates on liberal justification in political theory.     

Psychopathy and instrumental aggression: Evolutionary, neurobiological, and legal perspectives

In the study of aggression, psychopathy represents a disorder that is of particular interest because it often involves aggression which is premeditated, emotionless, and instrumental in nature; this is especially true for more serious types of offenses. Such instrumental aggression is aimed at achieving a goal (e.g., to obtain resources such as money, or to gain status). Unlike the primarily reactive aggression observed in other disorders, psychopaths appear to engage in aggressive acts for the purpose of benefiting themselves. This is especially interesting in light of arguments that psychopathy may represent an alternative life-history strategy that is evolutionarily adaptive; behaviors such as aggression, risk-taking, manipulation, and promiscuous sexual behavior observed in psychopathy may be means by which psychopaths gain advantage over others. Recent neurobiological research supports the idea that abnormalities in brain regions key to emotion and morality may allow psychopaths to pursue such a strategy—psychopaths may not experience the social emotions such as empathy, guilt, and remorse that typically discourage instrumentally aggressive acts, and may even experience pleasure when committing these acts. Findings from brain imaging studies of psychopaths may have important implications for the law.     

How to Make Bad Law: Lessons from Cyberspace

There is a clear trend for law and regulation, particularly in cyberspace, to become increasingly precisely specified. The perceived benefit of this approach, increased certainty as to compliance, may be illusory. Over‐complex laws have serious disadvantages, particularly a greatly weakened normative effect, and problems of contradiction and too‐frequent amendment. The combined effect of these disadvantages can be to produce a ‘bad’ law system, assessed in terms of Fuller's internal morality of law. It may also result in a law‐system which substantially fails to achieve its intended aims. This article proposes that these defects can be cured by abandoning the search for precision and substituting a method of lawmaking which requires the law's subjects to make their own qualitative assessments of whether they are meeting the obligations imposed on them. This will make the law more easily understandable by those to whom it applies, and will also increase the normative effect of cyberspace law.     

民事法律行为范畴的守成与完善

在目前我国不少权威性民法学理论著作中,民事法律行为颇受非议,或干脆被废止不用。罗马法体系中由于民法地位显赫,以致民法与罗马法同义、与法学同称,在《德国民法典》中创造发明并直接使用法律行为概念,有其历史缘由与合理性。而在我国,民事法律行为业已成为法律行为在民商法领域中的重要类型化成果,不应当将其恢复到德日民法中的法律行为并与我国法理学中的法律行为概念相混淆,似应在坚守民事法律行为成果及其科学特色的基础上,对其来源于前苏联民法理论学术争议中的"法律行为必须合法"的这一不合理因素进行剔除,并使之改进发展为更加科学合理且具中国民商法理论特色的民事法律行为制度。