公众意见在裁判结构中的地位

从裁判依据的类型分析,公众意见只能作为一种事实依据,参与个案裁判。在常规案件中,公众意见作为一种准用的辅助性依据,可以通过弱的裁量成为合理化判决结论的说明性事实。在遇有法律漏洞的疑难案件中,与社会性主张相一致的公众意见,如果耦合法律体系中的法律原则或基本权利规范,可以籍由强的裁量充当个案推理的运作性依据,成为非常情形中正当化个案规则创制的立法性事实。在日趋多元化和复杂化的转型中国,法律系统必须在稳定性和灵活性、普遍正义和个案正义之间寻求一种平衡;判断公众意见的个案裁判地位,同样需在辅助性依据或运作性依据、说明性事实或立法性事实之间寻求一种平衡。     

Modeling the Evolution of Legal Discretion.An Artificial Intelligence Approach

Abstract. Much legal research focuses on understanding how judicial decision‐makers exercise their discretion. In this paper we examine the notion of legal or judicial discretion, and weaker and stronger forms of discretion. At all times our goal is to build cognitive models of the exercise of discretion, with a view to building computer software to model and primarily support decision‐making. We observe that discretionary decision‐making can best be modeled using three independent axes: bounded and unbounded, defined and undefined, and binary and continuous. Examples of legal tasks are given from each of the eight ensuing octants and we conclude by saying what this model shows about current legal trends. We should stress that our taxonomy has been based on our observations of how discretionary legal decisions are made. No claim is made that our model is either complete (providing advice in every domain) or exact, but it does help knowledge engineers construct legal decision support systems in discretionary domains.     

Computer Power and Legal Reasoning: A Case Study of Judicial Decision Prediction in Zoning Amendment Cases

While social scientists have long advocated the use of statistical methodology in legal analysis, its practical application has not been tested. Statistical models based on social science theories have been used to predict judicial decisions and explain court behavior, but the legal profession has failed to develop statistical models based on traditional legal theories and using data familiar to the lawyer. This article seeks to demonstrate by practical application of statistical methodologies, coupled with traditional legal research methods, that such research can produce important insight into a court's decision making and provide a useful model for predicting the probability of a favorable decision. The zoning amendment decisions of the Connecticut Supreme Court are the data base of this study, which also provides a comprehensive explanation of zoning amendment law in Connecticut as a backdrop against which to evaluate the insights gained by statistical analysis.     

What's Law Got to Do with It? Judicial Behavioralists Test the “Legal Model” of Judicial Decision Making

[Behavioral research has] the potential to engender serious confusion over judicial decision making. Even worse, [it] may mislead the unsuspecting … into thinking that judges are lawless in their decision making, influenced more by personal ideology than legal principles…. I have no doubt that careful statistical analysis, cautiously interpreted, may conceivably shed some light on judicial decision making. But serious scholars seeking to analyze the work of the courts cannot simply ignore the internal experiences of judges as irrelevant or disingenuously expressed. (Edwards 1998, 1337-38)
[E]ven if Chief Judge Edwards is accurately reporting his perceptions, one must worry about whether those perceptions are in fact an accurate portrayal of the work of his court…. [W]hen leaders tell the public that their institutions function well and that the views of potential critics should be disregarded, skepticism and empirical testing are appropriate. (Revesz 1999, 845)     

Across the Sloping Meadow Floor: An Empirical Analysis of Preremoval Detention of Noncitizens

In many countries, the law permits state authorities to detain noncitizens before deportation. Typically judicial decisions about preremoval detention must be made within a short period of time during which deportable noncitizens are held in police premises, and depending on the country detention may last just one month (e.g., France) or up to 18 months (the Netherlands). While previous research has explored various dimensions of noncitizen detention including the legal procedure, health consequences, the condition of detention centers, and the lives of deportable noncitizens, the empirical assessment of the determinants of decisions on preremoval detention are largely unexplored. Using data from court proceedings of police petitions of detention in Spain and a quantitative strategy, in this article we undertake an empirical analysis of noncitizen detention combining personal background of deportable noncitizens, legal factors of the case, and the behavior of different actors involved in the procedure. To do it, we fit models that take into account variation occurred at judicial district levels. Results indicate, on the one hand, that relevant actors involved in the procedure use different informational cues to decide on cases. On the other hand, the role of prosecutors and attorneys during hearings proves also relevant to predict detention.     

实用主义的法官法理学*--透视霍姆斯大法官的司法哲学

奥利弗·W.霍姆斯是美国法理学与司法史上的一个里程碑,历经百年,他的司法哲学仍然意义深远地影响着美国的法律思想与司法实践。在霍姆斯的司法哲学理论中,法官的首要职责是遵守代表多数方的立法,即使立法存在缺陷;然而,对立法机构的尊重,并不是因为法院缺乏发现事实的能力,而是法官在裁判时不得依赖个人对事实的认知。在其撰写的司法意见中,霍姆斯为言论自由与结社所做的辩护与其对优势社会力量或立法的尊重之间存在着矛盾。正是古典的司法自制理论与狭义的司法能动主义,共同构成了霍姆斯的实用主义法理学,这是一种美国法律本土背景下的法官法理学。     

Psychological Injuries and Legal Decision Making in Civil Cases: What We Know and What We Do not Know

Civil plaintiffs frequently seek monetary compensation for their psychological injuries. Despite the increased study of psychological injury within the legal system, there has been little empirical examination of how psychological injury evidence impacts legal decisions. To illuminate what is known (and not known) on this topic, this paper reviews legal and empirical research regarding how legal decision makers (judges and jurors) perceive and use psychological injury evidence to render civil judgments. A few themes emerged from this review: (1) Courts generally devalue psychological injury, often making it difficult for plaintiffs to pursue and succeed on these claims; (2) these difficulties are a likely byproduct of legal decision-makers’ misperceptions of mental illness; and (3) despite a recent surge in empirical research on how jurors perceive and use psychological injury evidence to render civil decisions, many unexplored areas remain. Specific recommendations for legal policy and suggestions for future research are highlighted throughout this review.     

Do a Law’s Policy Implications Affect Beliefs About Its Constitutionality? An Experimental Test

Although a substantial empirical literature has found associations between judges' political orientation and their judicial decisions, the nature of the relationship between policy preferences and constitutional reasoning remains unclear. In this experimental study, law students were asked to determine the constitutionality of a hypothetical law, where the policy implications of the law were manipulated while holding all legal evidence constant. The data indicate that, even with an incentive to select the ruling best supported by the legal evidence, liberal participants were more likely to overturn laws that decreased taxes than laws that increased taxes. The opposite pattern held for conservatives. The experimental manipulation significantly affected even those participants who believed their policy preferences had no influence on their constitutional decisions.     

GOVERNING STANDARDS OF MEDICAL CARE: State Courts Interpret the Locality Rule

This article analyzes a significant, but little researched, form of legal involvement in the medical profession—state appellate court opinions. Analyzing 100 years of state appellate court decisions on a legal rule called the "locality rule," the author presents four distinct judicial interpretations of the rule. Each has distinctive policy implications for law and medicine pertaining to the setting of standards for professional competency in medicine. Three of the judicial interpretations provide for increasing amounts of judicial deference to the professional autonomy of the medical community. A fourth interpretation within the last decade, however, upholds a judicial prerogative for establishing standards of professional competency. The author concludes that the fourth interpretation is not an aberration and signals a change in the relationship between law and medicine for the future.     

“行政行为违法性继承”的表现及其范围——从个案判决与成文法规范关系角度的探讨

尽管我国行政法学理论尚未触及"行政行为违法性继承"问题,成文法中也无相应的文字表述,但司法判决已经对此作出了表述。相关判决在解决先行行为与后续行为之间的关系问题上,通过对相关法律条款用语的解释,建构了判断是否承认"行政行为违法性继承"的基本标准。本文通过对相应判决事例中的逻辑思路的分析,整理出判决对行政法学理论提出的涉及"受案范围"和"起诉期间"方面的问题,并通过对相关国外学说的考察,梳理出探讨该问题时实定法上的如何例外性地不适用"受案范围"和"起诉期间"制约的基本要点和理论上"行为效果关系"和"救济目的"等基本进路,在此基础上就判决事例中"共同要件"的逻辑思路与相关成文法律的条款用语之间的关系,以及由此形成的规范的内在构成和效力涵盖范围进行了剖析。本文同时也对我国判例的运作方式及其在成文法上的立足基础作了个案性的考察。     

权利冲突的司法化解

法定权利之间的冲突并非一个伪命题,其在司法实践中颇为常见。受到立法者的有限理性、社会的变动性以及法律语言的模糊性等多重因素的影响,某些情形下权利的边界未被立法者清晰界定,并由此引发法定权利之间的冲突。权利冲突的实质是利益冲突和价值冲突。权利冲突的存在导致了法律适用的难题,法官需要借助个案中的法益衡量来确定权利边界并进而化解权利冲突。法官在进行法益衡量时,可以参考权利位阶来作出判断,然而权利位阶秩序缺乏整体确定性,仅有有限的参考价值,因此法益衡量还需诉诸比例原则。比例原则包括适当性原则、必要性原则和狭义的比例原则三项子原则。比例原则能够指引法官对权利作客观和理性的衡量,最大限度地缩小法官的裁量余地。鉴于个案中的法益衡量具有决策性质,法官必须在司法能动主义与司法克制主义之间维持恰当的平衡,在解决权利冲突时不能逾越司法的限度。     

On universal relevance in legal reasoning

The purpose of this essay is to defend a claim that a certain consideration, which I call unworkability, is universally and necessarily relevant to legal reasoning. By that I mean that it is a consideration that must carry legal weight in the justification of some judicial decisions in every legal system in which (1) all disputed matters of law can be adjudicated, and (2) all judicial decisions are to be legally justified. Unworkability's necessary relevance has important implications for a theory of relevance presented by Rolf Sartorius. On this theory, nearly all considerations that are relevant to a judicial decision are supplied by legal principles embedded in the legal rules and decisions, or by extralegal principles dependent, in some way, on the legal principles. (The exceptions to the embedding thesis that Sartorius would, no doubt, recognize are elaborated in the text but can be set aside here.) But there are possible legal systems which do not contain an embedded legal principle concerning unworkability; and nonetheless, unworkability is relevant to judicial reasoning in those systems. Hence, a theory of relevance that relies on principles embedded in the content of rules is too simplistic. Some substantive considerations are relevant for other reasons.     

The Influence of Administrative Law Judge and Political Appointee Decisions on Appellate Courts in National Labor Relations Board Cases

Scholars have long been simultaneously concerned with the factors that influence appellate court decision making and the level of deference that the courts allow for agencies. However, scholars have treated administrative agencies as unitary actors with a single level of decision making, but in reality agency decisions involve input from multiple actors within the agency. I argue that appellate courts rely more heavily on decisions made by actors in the bureaucracy with greater levels of expertise and who are less politically motivated as cues in their decision making. This theory is bolstered by legal precedent in the area of administrative law that suggests courts should more heavily rely on the expert judgment of administrative judges. Thus, as a result of their increased expertise, appearance of political neutrality, and institutional support, courts will be more reliant on decisions issued by administrative law judges (ALJs) than those issued by the political appointees as cues in their decision making. Using over 300 unfair labor practice decisions issued by the federal appeals courts on review of cases from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board), I develop a model of appeals court decision making in unfair labor practice cases as a function of the initial decision of the ALJ, the final order of the political appointees of the NLRB, case characteristics, the ideology of the deciding appeals court panel, Supreme Court influence, and economic factors. Though the ideology of the court plays a role in its decision making, cues from ALJ decision making and that of the Board weigh more heavily in appellate court outcomes. However, cues from ALJ decisions play the most consistent role in appellate court decision making, even in more difficult cases. This has important implications for agency strategy in courts and suggests that future research should consider the influence of lower‐level decision making over appellate court decision making in the area of administrative law.     

人心似铁与官法如炉:“无文”视域下的清代司法审判

清代司法审判的性质和裁判依据一直以来是一个重要的问题,从中可以挖掘传统法律文化的精髓来指导今天的司法实践。把清代的司法审判还原到清代的社会现实来进行实证研究,应该从以下两个维度思考:其一,以普通人对法律的认知及司法诉求来探讨其对清代司法审判的影响;其二,以断案官员自身的理念和对普通人的思维模式及行为方式的了解为前提,并且在背景依赖的制约下来探讨官员对清代司法审判结果的影响。清代司法审判的性质和官员的断案基准是在二者的紧张关系中展现的。     

Street‐Level Tort Law: The Bureaucratic Justice of Liability Decision‐Making

Most legal scholarship on tort focuses primarily on judicial decisions, but this represents only a limited aspect of tortious liability. The vast majority of decisions concerning tortious liability are made by bureaucrats. Unavoidably then, there are two tiers of justice in tort law. This article focuses on the lower tier – bureaucratic decision‐making – arguing that the justice of bureaucratic decisions on tort should be considered on its own terms and not by judicial standards. We develop the notion of bureaucratic justice, applying a normative framework originally set out in relation to public administration. This enables an evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of different ways of bureaucratically determining liability claims in tort. The regimes discussed concern the liability of public authorities, but decision makers comprise both state and non‐state actors and the bureaucratic justice framework is, in principle, applicable to understand and evaluate the liability of both public and private actors.     

A three-year comparative longitudinal study of a school-based social work family service to reduce truancy,delinquency and school exclusions

New Labour is keen to use legislation to encourage what are seen as desirable family practices, and to discourage other, less-favoured, forms. What this means in policy terms has now been codified in its 1998 Green Paper, Supporting Families . In this paper, we examine the validity of this enterprise in terms of its underlying assumptions about social behaviour and economic decision making. We argue that the government implicitly assumes a universal model of 'rational economic man' and his close relative the 'rational legal subject', whereby people take individualistic, cost-benefit type decisions about how to maximize their own personal gain. Change the financial structure of costs and benefits, and the legal structure of rights and duties, in the appropriate way and people will modify their social behaviour in the desired direction. However, recent research suggests that people do not act like rational economic man in making decisions about their moral economy. Legislation based on this assumption might then be ineffectual and the proposals in Supporting Families seem to be one example. This is what we have labelled the 'rationality mistake'. In Part I of this work, we focus on the financial proposals in the Green Paper and on the New Deal for Lone Parents in particular. We then go on to counterpose this with the results of recent empirical work on how and why people actually do make family decisions. In Part II, to be published in the next issue, we focus on chapter four of Supporting Families , on strengthening marriage, and again compare New Labour's proposals with recent empirical work.     

Judges as satisficers: a law and economics perspective on judicial liability

If judges are guardians of the law, who is to protect the individual member of society from the occasional corrupt, malicious, or reckless judge? The aim of this paper is to provide an answer to the last part of this question, focusing more heavily on cases of negligently inflicted harm. Departing from Simon’s bounded rationality and influenced by other constructs in behavioral law and economics, we view judges as satisficers who make decisions within real-world constraints, such as imperfect information and uncertainty, cognitive limitations and erroneous information. Judges are limited by the commonly observed barriers to the decision making process. Because their goal is not to optimize but to render opinions that are merely satisfactory, they often act as poor agents of their principals’ interests. In this light, it becomes clearer why judges tend to engage in behavior that is “improper”, especially under the circumstances of the currently overloaded judicial caseloads. We first address the differences in judges’ roles in Anglo-American and Continental legal systems. We then present our simple model for judicial misbehavior based on an understanding of judges as “satisficers”. Next we discuss the particularities of judicial errors and introduce a realistic and viable construct of “inexcusable judicial error”. On this basis we evaluate the impact of various incentive schemes on judicial behavior, focusing on the civil liability of judges. We conclude that civil liability for grave judicial errors is the most adequate remedy.     

Black Hole of Responsibility: The Adjudication Committee's Role in a Chinese Court

How courts and judges in authoritarian regimes decide cases behind closed doors has rarely been studied, but it is critically important in comparative judicial studies. Primarily drawing on the minutes of the adjudication committee in a lower court in China, this article explores its operational patterns and decision‐making process. The data suggest that among the criminal cases reviewed by the committee, very few were difficult or significant, but a relatively high percentage of the suggested opinions of the adjudicating judges was modified. In contrast, many civil cases reviewed were difficult to resolve but the committee offered little assistance. Overall the operation and decision‐making of the committee were subsumed by the administrative ranking system inside the court and the authority of the court president was enormous. The analysis also demonstrates the limited role of the committee in both promoting legal consistency and resisting external influences. Instead of achieving its declared goals, the committee has degenerated into a device for both individual judges and committee members to shelter responsibility. The findings compel researchers to reevaluate the role of the adjudication committee in Chinese courts, and the relationship between judges and authoritarian regimes.     

Long‐Term Change and Stability in House Voting Decisions: The Case of the Minimum Wage

Although members of Congress exhibit considerable stability in their voting decisions on similar, recurring issues, members' long‐term voting histories reveal evidence of systematic instability as well. I argue that members reverse positions in predictable ways when the vote history loses value as a decision cue, and I present empirical evidence for this behavior in the context of the highly salient and regularly repeated House decisions on increasing the federal minimum wage. The empirical findings suggest that reversals of member positions are related to institutional, electoral, and constituency factors. I conclude by discussing the importance of these findings to understanding congressional decision making and representation.     

American State Supreme Court Justices, 1900-1970

What are the paths that lead to the state supreme court bench? If we can identify these paths, can we then determine that they produce distinctive patterns in a court3 decision making? Based on a study of 694 judges who sat on 16selected American state supreme courts between 1900 and 1970, this article finds that the appellate judiciary was drawn from a variety of legal and political backgrounds rather than from any single career line. The judges came from both non-elite and elite law schools. About half had no substantial lower court judicial experience. Over one-third had been public prosecutors, another third had held other elective political office, and only a small minority had practiced in multilawyer big-city law firms. The article reports changes over time in these and other judicial characteristics (such CIS age, turnover, political party affiliations) and describes interstate differences. Few significant statistical relationships are found, however, between the background characteristics of judges and selected characteristics of state supreme court opinions.