Framework for Analysis of Legal Mobilization: A Decision-Making Model

The American legal system, structured in an entrepreneurial mode, relies upon the individual actor to personally evaluate the burdens and benefits of invoking the law on his or her own behalf Without discounting the contribution to our understanding of legal mobilization which has been made by the access-to-justice movement, the author argues that focusing on the poor and the distribution of legal services has limited our understanding of the legal system.
The article presents an alternative analytic framework for examination of citizen use of the law. The model of legal mobilization presented focuses on demands rather than needs, on citizens rather than lawyers or judges, on decision making rather than access, and on invoking the law rather than compliance with it. Drawing on the literature and available empirical evidence, the author attempts to analytically clarify the complex process of legal mobilization by organizing relevant variables into a decision-making model that focuses on the individual actor and the factors weighed in deciding whether and how to proceed in mobilizing the law.     

Regulatory Competition: A Private International Law Approach

This article analyzes the regulatory competition model (RCM) from a private international law perspective. This perspective helps us identify and resolve two gaps in the standard explanation of the RCM. According to the standard explanation, two conditions must be fulfilled for the market of legal products to function well: (1) free movement of resources (persons, capital, and goods); (2) the absences of cross-border externalities. In relation to this second condition, the standard model argues that a uniform material rule is necessary to overcome cross-border externalities. The main thesis of this article is that a private international law approach can complete this model by adding two ideas. First, a smooth functioning of the market-of-legal products requires, not only the free movement of resources, but also a uniform private international law system which guarantees the autonomy of the parties (free choice of law) and the procedural implementation of this autonomy (free choice of forum and free movement of judgments). And second, a uniform material law, which wipes out the regulatory market, is not essential to deal with the externality problem; rather a uniform conflict-of-laws rule, which leads to the internalization of cross-border externalities by states, can correct at least some of the externalities problem and also maintains the regulatory market.     

The Denial of Procedural Safeguards in Trials for Regulatory Offences: A Justification

Regulatory offences are a complex phenomenon, presenting problematic aspects both at the level of criminalisation and at the level of enforcement. The literature abounds in works that study the phenomenon. There is, however, an aspect that has remained largely unexplored. It concerns the relationship between the regulatory framework within which the crime occurs and the procedural safeguards that defendants normally enjoy at trial or at the pre-trial stage: defendants tried for regulatory offences are often denied safeguards that are generally considered as important constituents of trial fairness. Relying on a new conceptualisation of regulatory offences, this paper advances a theory that justifies these exceptional rulings.     

Procedural Justice and Affect Intensity: Understanding Reactions to Regulatory Authorities

Why is it that some people respond in a more negative way to procedural injustice than do others, and why is it that some people go on to defy authority while others in the same situation do not? Personality theorists suggest that the psychological effect of a situation depends on how a person interprets the situation and that such differences in interpretation can vary as a function of individual difference factors. For example, affect intensity—one’s predisposition to react more or less emotionally to an event—is one such individual difference factor that has been shown to influence people’s reactions to events. Cross-sectional survey data collected from (a) 652 tax offenders who have been through a serious law enforcement experience (Study 1), and (b) 672 citizens with recent personal contact with a police officer (Study 2), showed that individual differences in ‘affect intensity’ moderate the effect of procedural justice on both affective reactions and compliance behavior. Specifically, perceptions of procedural justice had a greater effect in reducing anger and reports of non-compliance among those lower in affect intensity than those higher in affect intensity. Both methodological and theoretical explanations are offered to explain the results, including the suggestion that emotions of shame may play a role in the observed interaction.     

双层互动决策模型:近十年来中国政策过程的一个解释框架

近十年来,在决策环境影响下,互动关系成为影响中国公共政策过程的关键变量。通过对中国新医改方案制定过程的案例研究发现,当下中国公共政策过程是官僚体系层面(政策前台)的制度环境、社会网络层面(政策后台)的博弈格局和两者界面的互动结构共同作用的过程。这种双层互动决策模式在新常态下仍然具有强大的生命力,应得到积极的推广和发展。发展双层互动决策模式,尤其关注充分发挥执政党意识形态的政策价值导向功能、创造各利益群体平等参与公共决策的博弈平台以及以程序公正保障政策公正等三个问题。     

A Gramscian Approach to Studying the Judicial Decision-Making Process

This paper applies a Gramscian analytical framework to scrutinise the judicial decision-making process. Based on two distinct research projects, the article explores how, on one hand judges in criminal courts can be identified as part of the bureaucratic machinery of the state, as ‘technicians of repression’; whereas, on the other hand, human rights judges can be distinguished as providing ‘moral and intellectual leadership’ in their production and reproduction of certain values. Some of the key questions this article seeks to answer are: What is the role of hegemony in the judicial decision-making process? To what extent are legal actors both ‘technicians of repression’ and ‘moral and intellectual leaders’? This paper uses examples from empirical research conducted at courts in Argentina and at the European and Inter-American Courts of Human Rights to identify and explore this dual role of judges as both repressive technicians and moral and intellectual leaders in neo-liberal capitalist societies.     

民事诉讼当事人行为选择下的诉讼构造及其活化

在民事诉讼中植入当事人行为选择,不仅能有效地构建促进当事人自由选择的诉讼构造,还能在很大程度上化解因自由裁量权而引发的法官道德困境,并能借助"条件优势范式"妥善处理司法能动性所要求的司法技术与权利立法之间的协同问题。同时,行为选择所依托的当事人"第二次机会"的架构,亦能很好地敦促诉讼制度自觉提供备位性程序保障,以减缓行为选择的责任机制对程序整体活化的影响。     

Fairness and Health Care Decision Making: Testing the Group Value Model of Procedural Justice

Considerable research has supported the notion that procedural justice is important to individuals independent of outcome considerations. Tyler and his associates (Lind and Tyler, 1988; Lind and Earley, 1992; Tyler, 1989) proposed that this is so because procedural justice serves a group value function. In the present research, we explored aspects of this group value formulation in a real life health care context. Specifically, we assessed the relationship between individuals' appraisals of procedural justice following health care treatment decisions as well as (i) expectations for different consequences to self; (ii) estimates of how they were viewed by the health care authorities; (iii) attributions about the reasons for their treatment; and (iv) ratings of emotional reactions. Results confirmed many components of the relational, group value model of procedural justice (Lind and Tyler, 1988; Lind and Earley, 1992; Tyler, 1989). Specifically, respondents who felt that they had been treated fairly expected that their status and their relationship with the health care decision maker and others in their health care group would improve; perceived that the health care decision maker would rate them positively on a variety of personality dimensions; felt that the health care decision maker's interactions with them revealed quite a lot about the decision-maker's personality characteristics; and indicated increased levels of pride and pleasure as well as lower levels of anger as a result of their treatment. Results were discussed from several frameworks including Markus and Kitayama's (1991) concept of the independent and the interdependent self.     

Spaces and Places: A Systems Theory Approach to Regulatory Competition in European Company Law

Abstract:  This article takes issue with the longstanding oppositional themes of harmonisation versus regulatory competition in European company law. Instead of embracing one approach over the other in exclusivity, the article draws attention to the persisting mixture of approaches to an emerging European-wide law regulating the business corporation. Against the background of an ongoing struggle over identifying the goals and taboos of the European legislator's mandate in regulating the company, the argument put forward here is that this very struggle is reflective of the nature of the evolution of company law in an 'integrating Europe and a globalising world'. European attempts of developing European company law as part of a larger initiative of improving the Union's potential for innovation and competition are thus likely to meet with the challenges that contemporary Nation States are facing when adapting their modes of regulation and representation to the demands of an increasingly complex and decentralised fields of market activities. Situating the law of the business corporation within the larger theme of European integration on the one hand, and of issues of market regulation, domestic, transnational, and international, on the other, suggests the adoption of a systems theory-based approach to understanding the boundaries of law in this multilevel and multipolar process.     

Principles, Values, and Rules in Legal Decision-Making and the Dimensions of Legal Rationality

Abstract. The author singles out various conceptions of rationality used in practical legal discourse: formal and substantive rationality, instrumental goal- and means-rationality, communicative rationality. Practical rationality is expressed in decisions justified by epistemic and axiological premises according to the rules of justificatory reasoning. Five levels of analysis of this justification are identified. Rules, principles and evaluations are used as justifying arguments and their characteristics determine the dimensions of rationality of decision depending on the features of rules, various conceptions of principles, and kinds of relativisation of evaluations. The dimensions of legal rationality depend mainly on three singled out conceptions of rationality, i.e., formal rationality dealing with the deep structure of justification, instrumentally oriented rationality as content of justifiability, and communicative rationality linked with the pragmatics of human interaction. Legitimacy, according to the presented analysis, appears as a subclass of external justification dealing with axiological premisses in terms of instrumental rationality and/or communicative rationality.     

Lessons from the Sustainability Movement: Toward An Integrative Decision-Making Framework for Nanotechnology

The author argues that bioethicists must develop alternative approaches to facilitate the study of the conditions for the responsible development of nanotechnologies. Proponents of "sustainability" have developed a useful model to integrate multiple perspectives into the evaluation of the impact of technologies on global ecological integrity under conditions of uncertainty.     

犯罪嫌疑人、被告人诉讼人权与诉讼权利比较研究

基于人的身份 ,犯罪嫌疑人、被告人享有广泛的实体人权 ,基于被嫌疑的身份 ,犯罪嫌疑人、被告人的实体人权将会受到一定的限制或剥夺。为了保障其实体人权免受不正当侵害 ,国际人权法为犯罪嫌疑人、被告人设定了许多诉讼人权 ,与此相应的是 ,我国法律赋予了犯罪嫌疑人、被告人广泛的诉讼权利。但与国际人权法规定相比 ,我国法律规定仍有较大差距 ,有进一步完善之必要。     

Dispute Resolution Outside of Courts: Procedural Justice and Decision Acceptance Among Users of Ombuds Services in the UK

Attitudes toward legal authorities based on theories of procedural justice have been explored extensively in the criminal and civil justice systems. This has provided considerable empirical evidence concerning the importance of trust and legitimacy in generating cooperation, compliance, and decision acceptance. However, not enough attention has been paid to attitudes towards institutions of informal dispute resolution. This paper asks whether the theory of procedural justice applies to the alternative dispute resolution context, focusing on ombuds services. What are the predictors of perceptions of procedural justice during the process of dealing with an ombuds, and what factors shape outcome acceptance? These questions are analyzed using a sample of recent ombuds users. The results indicate that outcome favorability is highly correlated with perceived procedural justice, and both predict decision acceptance.     

政府多部门决策协调的研究述评

目标和价值的多元化加剧了政府部门间的协调困境,从而导致一系列决策问题。政府科层结构衍生的协调机制和制度安排调节了部门间自主性与相互依赖性之间的张力,为它们达成决策共识创造出新的结构条件。然而,理解多部门决策协调的关键在于政府部门内生的政治动力和微观过程。在文献回顾的基础上发现,决策协调过程存在“兄弟”不平等现象,即部分政府部门可以利用信息、知识、职能配置和关系网络等资源来实现权威的“再生产”,进而获得更高决策影响力。非对称的权力和权威关系体现了政府部门间动态的行为结果。它涵盖了政府部门在不同决策情境如何通过“零”协调、说服、讨价还价和联盟建设等行为方式促成决策目标或手段的共识。有别于纯粹的竞争和合作定势,权威的“再生产”指向政府部门决策协调行为的一般性特征。