Law in Film: Globalizing the Hollywood Courtroom Drama

The courtroom drama is a prominent film genre. Most of the movies in this category are Hollywood productions, dealing with the legal system in the United States of America. What they have in common is that essential parts of their stories take place in court. These movies have a tremendous influence on the public's concept of justice even though very few of them accurately reflect legal reality. Anyone with legal training who watches films of this sort will notice in them all sorts of absurdities which are not thoroughly investigated in this paper. Our concern here is to inquire why even movies that take place in continental Europe follow patterns of the American system and also why certain elements from American movies are repeated over and over again.     

TARGETED ENFORCEMENT AND ADVERSE SYSTEM SIDE EFFECTS: THE GENERATION OF FUGITIVES IN PHILADELPHIA*

Research on targeted enforcement in high‐crime places has focused on direct crime‐reduction impacts, possible displacement of crime, and more recently, diffusion of benefits to adjacent areas. Studies have ignored other unanticipated negative effects that a place‐oriented enforcement intervention may have on the justice system overall. Using the generation of fugitive defendants as one possible example of an important system side effect, this study proposes hypotheses relating to adverse, generalized, system side effects of a place‐ and crime‐focused intervention, and it tests for target area and targeted crime‐type effects, nontarget area and nontargeted crime‐type effects, and overall system effects. The analysis employs a multiple interrupted time‐series design [auto‐regressive integrated moving average (ARIMA)] to test the impact of one widely publicized, geographically targeted drug‐enforcement strategy in Philadelphia (Operation Sunrise, formally launched in June 1998) on the incidence of bench warrants as a measure of fugitives (weekly aggregate bench warrants series for the period January 1994–May 2005; N= 590 observations). The findings appear to support all hypotheses as they relate to the example of the generation of fugitives, and suggest a generalized system adverse side effect from the circumscribed place‐ and crime‐focused intervention. The implications of the findings for both research and policy relating to targeted enforcement interventions are discussed.     

The Italian Senate

This article analyses the composition and the functions of the Italian Senate. There are 315 senators, three-quarters of them elected in single-member constituencies through a first-past-the-post system, the remaining ones are elected according to the additional member system among the best losers. The voting age for the Senate is 25 and only Italian citizens who are 40 years or older can be elected. All former Presidents of the Italian Republic are life senators - at present two. Moreover, the President may appoint additional life senators among outstanding Italian citizens - at present five. The Italian Senate has the same powers and performs the same functions as the House of Deputies. According to some scholars and politicians, this system accounts for a better legislation; according to the critics, the Italian model of bicameralism is simply old, cumbersome and useless. The Senate provides a number of ministers commensurate to its size, but only one Prime Minister has ever held a seat in the Senate. The most important debates take place in the House of Deputies, but the government may be defeated in the Senate because all Italian governments must enjoy the confidence of both chambers. Though several proposals for the reform of the Senate have been entertained, none has been approved so far. It is unlikely that even the transformation of the Senate into a Chamber representing the regions, along the model of the German Bundesrat, will take place.     

Towards a Theory of Institutionalized Judicial Exceptionalism

What happens when the exception becomes the norm, what happens when the law becomes a form for that which cannot have a legal form, that is, the political? The focus of this article is a form of power politics that is institutionalised and set up to work side by side with the existing legal system as a sort of normalized, co‐ordinated court procedure, initiated with the aim of subjecting specific groups (terrorists, criminals) to extended regulatory control and enforcement. These strategic bureaucratic mechanisms of exclusion appear as security enforced measures, which side by side with the existing ‘normal’ legal system govern a specific judicial‐political area. The normalised (or rooted, if one wishes) incorporation of extra‐judicial authority within the legal system will in the article be refered to as institutionalised judicial exceptionalism. The purpose of the article is to theorise and conceptualise the in many ways murky or indistinct phenomenon of institutionalised judicial exceptionalism.This task includes suggesting a model capable of assimilating within its theory the displacement in the relationship between the state, the law and the citizen that stems from the fact that the ever more securitized discourses on terrorism and crime increasingly take priority over the ordinarily non‐derogable principle of equality before the law.     

Enforcing the Climate Regime: Game Theory and the Marrakesh Accords

This article reviews basic insights about compliance and "hard" enforcement that can be derived from various non-cooperative equilibrium concepts, and evaluates the Marrakesh Accords in light of these insights. Five different notions of equilibrium are considered – the Nash equilibrium, the subgame perfect equilibrium, the renegotiation proof equilibrium, the coalition proof equilibrium, and the perfect Bayesian equilibrium. These various types of equilibrium have a number of implications for effective enforcement: (1) Consequences of non-compliance should be more than proportionate. (2) Punishment needs to take place on the Pareto frontier, rather than by reversion to some suboptimal state. (3) An effective enforcement system must be able to curb collective as well as individual incentives to cheat. (4) A fully transparent enforcement regime is not unconditionally a good thing. It is concluded that constructing an effective system for "hard" enforcement of the Kyoto Protocol is a formidable task that has only partially been accomplished by the Marrakesh Accords. In practice, however, the design of the compliance system for the climate regime had to balance a desire to minimize non-compliance against other important goals, including the need for due process.     

Norway and Emissions Trading: From Global Front-Runner to EU Follower

A striking convergence has taken place in the design of the Norwegian and EU greenhouse gas emissions trading systems from 1998 to 2004. This article argues that the Norwegian adaptation to the EU did not take place as a consequence of perceived legal obligations under the European Economic Area agreement. Nor did it take place due to Norwegian actors being persuaded about the merits of the EU design. The main explanation has to do with interests. The EU market and politics are of course generally very important for Norway. However, before the US pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, the Norwegian outlook in climate politics was global. The US pull-out accelerated the development and hence the attractiveness of the EU trading system and resulted in EU emissions trading as the most probable and possibly only international market for Norway to link up to. Hence, this analysis provides further support to the importance of being sensitive to the global context and institutional interaction when analyzing the relationship between the EU and its neighboring countries.     

Justice in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Practicing Corruption, Practicing Resistance?

Based on empirical material collected in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), this article analyses certain practices labelled as corruption as being part of broader relations of subjugation and resistance. In the first part it describes how a system of governance was instituted and maintained during colonialism and dictatorship through knowledge-power that allowed for relations of domination and exploitation to take place. Then, it analyses how in a context of democratic transformation, certain practices of corruption help unveil the complexity of multi-layered power relations mobilising discourses of knowledge as well as practices of subjugation, resistance, oppression and exploitation. The article concludes by underlining that institutional actors have a vested interest in maintaining the current system in place as they represent the nodal point of power-relations.     

论优先权在我国民法典中的设计

优先权制度源于古罗马法,是私法上一项古老而陌生的“特权”制度。优先权制度体现了国家维护公共利益,推行社会政策,保护弱势群体生存利益的立法思想,反映了法律对实质平等、公平、正义等理念的不懈追求,同时也蕴涵着和谐的基本理念,体现了现代民法对人的终极关怀的价值取向,符合现代民法发展的趋势。在我国构建民法体系的过程中优先权制度应当占有一席之地。建议借鉴法国法模式,在民法典物权编中设专章统一进行规定,同时保留特别法对优先权的规定。     

Drowning without aspiration: is this an appropriate diagnosis?

It has been reported that 10-15% of drowning victims do not aspirate water. We have revisited the original studies quoted to reach this conclusion and find it is without foundation. Sudden cardiac standstill is known to occur on land and, therefore, may also occur when the victim is in water. In the absence of the common finding of significant pulmonary edema in the victim's respiratory system, to conclude his or her death was caused by "drowning without aspiration" is unwise. All causes of sudden death that might occur in which respiration may not take place should receive serious consideration when examining bodies with such findings that are found in water.     

试析我国制度创新中的经济结构演进

经济结构的调整是经济发展的永恒主题。作为社会基本经济制度的所有制结构的宏观结构调整和制度创新 ,对经济结构向高度化方向演进起着至关重要的作用。非国有制经济在经济结构演进中具有高效率 ,它能够带来制度变迁和经济绩效的提高 ,只要我们不断消除所有制非均衡状态 ,解除对非国有经济的进入壁垒 ,就会带来新一轮的产业结构优化和经济增长的效应。     

谈建立我国公益性诉讼制度的可行性

公益性诉讼是伴随着经济社会的进一步发展而出现的一种新类型诉讼。我国侵害社会公益的事件频发,但对于公益性诉讼制度法律却未确立。在司法实践当中,已有公益性诉讼出现,因缺乏相应的法律依据,法院难以对此种案件做出处理。而理论界对我国是否应当建立公益性诉讼制度意见不一。从公益性诉讼确立的法理基础、宪法依据和现实依据等三个方面,详细论证了我国建立公益性诉讼的可行性,明确提出了应当在我国建立公益性诉讼制度。     

SAMSON AND DELILAH IN DIVORCE MEDIATION

Does divorce mediation pose special problems for women that it does not pose for men? This article argues that the metaphor of power imbalances that has been invoked to express this concern has not only caused those in the field to see husbands and wives in political terms, but also prevented them from seeing how women, as well as men, influence the outcome of the discussions that take place between them.     

Reinforced self-affirmation as a method for reducing the eyewitness misinformation effect

The misinformation effect occurs when an eyewitness includes information in their account that is incongruent with the event they witnessed, and stems from being exposed to incorrect external sources. Yet little research has been undertaken on techniques that could protect eyewitnesses from the influence of misinformation, despite the dangerous consequences of distorted testimony. In this article, a method of enhancing self-confidence, called reinforced self-affirmation (RSA), was proven to reduce the misinformation effect in five experiments. First, participants watched or heard an original event take place. They were then exposed to post-event material containing false information about that event, and finally they were given a memory test about the original material. The RSA, which took place either before the post-event material or before the final test, consisted of self-affirmation (recalling the greatest achievements in life) and external positive feedback (simulated ‘good’ results in a memory test or fake favourable results on personality tests). A meta-analysis of all five experiments revealed that the overall effect of RSA on reducing the misinformation was significant (effect size of 0.94), suggesting that this technique has the potential to be developed for practical use to make eyewitnesses less vulnerable to misinformation.     

FACE-TO-FACE INTERACTION IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM

Abstract Management of face-to-face social interaction is not limited to a micro-perspective, as some critics have argued, but is equally valid as an explanatory model in macro-organizational settings. A "differential leverage interaction model" is presented, which demonstrates that organizations determine, to a great extent. the nature of face-to-face interactions that take place. The application of the model to the courts and criminal justice system casts a new light on conventional explanations of the processes. powers, alignments, and activities of individuals who come to be enmeshed in the legal institution.     

广东省群体性事件多发的态势与防范对策

广东省群体性事件的高发是广东省处于社会转型时期的必然产物。社会发展的断裂、利益表达机制的缺乏、群体利益冲突的增加是群体性事件多发的根本原因。建立健全社会保障机制、利益表达机制、社会危机应对机制、全面的社会治安防控机制是解决群体性事件的有效措施。     

The empty place of European power: Contested democracy and the technocratic threat

In this article, I analyse the European Union (EU) in the light of the Lefortian question: What place does power have in a democracy? Claude Lefort has argued that modern democracy is a regime where the place of power is empty. In this article, I investigate what this entails for the EU. I take the current situation of democracy in the EU as being marked by two developments: the contestation of democracy by citizens on the one hand and the hollowing out of democracy at the EU level on the other. Exemplary for the first development are the popular protest movements known as the indignados. The second feature is exemplified by governance and technocracy. My argument suggests that the critical response of the former to the latter can in fact be read as the claim that what should have been the empty place of power in European democracy has come to be occupied by the establishment of an authoritarian regime of expert rule.     

Convertibility as a step for the RMB internationalization

The paper concentrates on the issue of currency convertibility in the context of Chinese strategy of the RMB internationalization. It argues that the motive for that strategy was ignited by China’s dissatisfaction with the long lasting unstable international monetary system. Recent global financial crisis intensified China’s urge to get rid of “dollar trap” and look for a diversified international reserve currency system where the Chinese yuan could take a place. The paper investigates the step-by-step approach from the trade settlement to more comprehensive policy measures. It also emphasizes the importance of domestic financial reforms for the RMB full convertibility, including flexible exchange rate, market determined interest rate and deepened domestic financial market.     

台湾地区大学自治和法律保留之关系

大学自治和法律保留的关系在台湾地区一直充满争议,这种争议源于制度保障说和授权说之间的冲突,前者将自治权视为宪法上的分权而不从属于法律,后者则要求严格适用法律保留,要解决冲突不能仅仅以制度保障说来代替授权说,还需要控制法律对大学事务的规范密度。台湾地区的经验和教训对推动大陆大学法治建设具有重要借鉴意义。     

民事争点整理程序的合理性基础及其建构

通过民事争点整理程序充实审前程序已成为各国民事诉讼制度上的一个不约而同的选择。这不仅是民事诉讼历史演进的结果,而且有其深刻的法理基础和哲学基础。我国民事争点整理程序尚付阙如的现状,严重影响和制约了民事诉讼纠纷解决功能的实现。应在建构我国民事争点整理程序时应从争点整理的主体、客体、范围、时间、地点以及方法和结果几个方面,借鉴国外先进经验并兼顾我国法律体系,进行具体的程序设计。     

我国知识产权刑法保护现存问题及完善建议

我国知识产权犯罪的定罪标准呈逐渐下降的趋势,相应的刑罚制度严厉程度也处于世界前列,然而侵犯知识产权的犯罪活动仍比较猖獗,犯罪化程度较高。这种现象表明,仅依靠严刑重罚的方式难以实现防治侵犯知识产权犯罪行为的目的。完善我国知识产权刑法保护,应从协调统一民刑法不同法律之间关于知识产权的规定,完善知识产权犯罪刑罚结构以及保持知识产权犯罪行政打击的常态化、高压态势,完善行政执法与刑事司法衔接机制等方面入手。