The Case for a Rational Reconstruction of Consent in Criminal Law

This article argues for consistency in criminal law and the need for 'rational reconstruction' of the law where necessary to achieve this. It focuses Parliament's failure to respect the need for consistency by passing a statutory definition of consent in the Sexual Offences Act 2003 which appears to apply only to sexual offences. As a result, the law on consent risks being a patchwork of statute and ad hoc case law, without any overarching principle to deal with new situations and different offences. The consequent lack of certainty, accessibility, predictability and fairness is compared to the standards of the European Convention on Human Rights. The statutory definition of consent in the context of the sexual offences is assessed critically as a model which could be used in offences against the person and property offences. The article concludes that until Parliament responds to the need for certainty and consistency by legislating on consent, there can be no rational reconstruction of consent under the Sexual Offences Act 2003.     

美国女性主义法学及其启示

女性主义法学以其独特的方法论剖析法律问题,提出女性问题方法、女性主义实际推论方法、提高觉悟方法以及用社会性别视角观察历史、文化、社会现象,从而展现出与以往法学理论研究的不同进路。女性主义法学是一种对女性及性别进行全方位认识的法学流派。其"硬核"已经并非单纯要求女性在婚姻、家庭、劳动就业和社会福利保障等方面享有与男性同样的权利,它更要求在分配和界定上述权利的过程中,乃至在以法律为核心的整个现代法治结构中加入女性的视角和女性的生存体验与思维方式,要求立法中的社会性别意识,从而使两性关系、婚姻、家庭乃至社会健康协调地发展。     

A Review and Critique of the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire (SEQ)

This paper reviews and critiques the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire (SEQ), "... a self-report inventory representing the first attempt to assess the prevalence of sexual harassment in a manner that met traditional psychometric standards" (Fitzgerald, Gelfand, & Drasgow, 1995, p. 427). Widely used by its developers and others as a measure of sexual harassment, the SEQ is not a finished product, has a number of problems, and has weak psychometric properties. Because of inconsistencies (e.g., in time frame, number of items, wording of items), the SEQ lacks the advantages of standardized measures, such as the ability to assess changes over time. It defines sexual harassment very broadly, having the effect of distorting findings about sexual harassment. Most importantly, it is not clear what or whose definition of sexual harassment the SEQ assesses.     

Online Sexual Grooming in Sweden—Online and Offline Sex Offences against Children as Described in Swedish Police Data

The expansion in Internet use since the mid‐1990s has created a completely new and largely unmonitored forum for contacts between adults and children. The anonymity provided by Internet communications has been viewed as creating favourable conditions for adults wishing to develop manipulative relationships with children, and there has been a growing concern about the way the Internet may be used by adults intent on sexually exploiting and abusing young people. Much of the focus of this concern has been directed at adults using the Internet to create opportunities for the commission of offline sex offences. Based on police data from Sweden, this article describes the range of Internet‐related sexual offences against children currently being brought to the attention of the Swedish justice system. It focuses not only on the range of strategies employed by adults to persuade children to meet them offline for the purposes of sexual exploitation and abuse but also on the different types of online sexual offences that children in Sweden are currently being subjected to.     

Reviews

Books reviewed:
Hodges, Multi-Party Actions
Katz et al., Cross Currents: Family Law and Policy in the US and England
Paulus, Die internationale Gemeinschaft in Völkerrecht
Norrie, Punishment, Responsibility, and Justice: A Relational Critique
Bell, Peace Agreements and Human Rights
Powell, Sir James Whitelock's Liber Famerlicus 1570–1632: Law and Politics in Early Stuart England
Clam, Droit et société chez Niklas Luhmann. La contingence des normes     

美国对犯罪与违法的法理界定

本文阐述的是美国关于犯罪本质的哲学解释。刑罚既包括过错犯罪。也包括严格责任违法,这两者代表了两种不同的刑事责任类型。美国学界主张过错犯罪的要点在于其是侵害公众利益的不法行为,并非由于其危害公众利益,而是因为公众负责处罚此类行为,即它们应该得到国家的处罚。不法行为得到惩罚是因其性质严重,它们不敬重社会公认的价值;只有当行为人违反重要价值时才应得到处罚,不仅是出于对刑法实用主义的考虑,亦取决于罪刑法定原则的内涵。美国学者分析过错犯罪和不太严重的违法行为,认为后者同样存在着损害公众利益的危险。     

香港贿赂犯罪之立法特色及其启示

香港政府反贪污贿赂的成效举世瞩目，这首先应当归功于其刑事立法的合理性。与内地刑法相比，贿赂范围的广泛性，代理人贿赂、选举贿赂等特色罪名的设置，各类主体贿赂犯罪法定刑的一致性．行贿与受贿同等处罚，从严处罚涉及公共机构的商业贿赂犯罪，注重财产刑和资格刑的并科适用等，都是香港贿赂犯罪立法的独特之处，这些做法对内地贿赂犯罪立法的修改和完善具有重要的借鉴意义。     

Everyday Stranger Harassment and Women’s Objectification

The present research suggests that stranger harassment (i.e., experiencing unwanted sexual attention from strangers in public) is a frequent experience for young adult women, and that it has negative implications for their well-being. First, stranger harassment was positively related to self-objectification (Fredrickson & Roberts, Psychol Women Quart 21:173–206 1997). This was true for women who coped with stranger harassment using common strategies (passive, self-blame, or benign), but not for women who used an uncommon, active coping strategy (e.g., confronting the harasser). Second, stranger harassment experiences and self-objectification were positively related to women’s fear of and perceived risk of rape. Further, women who feared rape were more likely to restrict their freedom of movement. In concert, the findings suggest that stranger harassment may have both direct and indirect negative effects on women’s lives, and that it is a phenomenon worthy of future research.

The impact of increasing vs. decreasing harassing behaviours on perceptions of hypothetical instances of repeated sexual harassment

ABSTRACT

Sexual harassment is a traditionally underreported crime. One factor that might affect perceptions and willingness to report harassment is its occurrence over time: harassing behaviours that gradually increase or decrease in severity over time might impact its perception. In the present research, 177 female participants read a series of daily scenarios about increasing, decreasing, or steady harassment, and completed measures regarding their perceptions of and willingness to report it. Participants displayed increases and decreases in negative reactions as harassment increased and decreased, respectively, suggesting that each instance of sexual harassment is interpreted independently of earlier harassing behaviours, and that early, strongly harassing behaviours have little impact on how subsequent instances of harassment are perceived. This explanation is supported by the similar ratings in the midpoint (day 4) of the scenario series, regardless of whether harassment was increasing or decreasing.     

Changing institutional culture in the wake of clerical abuse – the essentials of restorative and legal regulation

The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse completed its final report in December 2017 after five years of hearings. The Royal Commission was the culmination of pressure from a series of public inquiries about institutional sexual abuse and sustained advocacy from victims and survivor support groups. The Commission made recommendations designed to change institutional leadership, governance and culture. The challenge is to have that change embedded in institutional culture. This paper considers how this might be done in a specific institution, the Catholic Church given that more than two-thirds of reported abuse in faith-based institutions occurred within its ranks. Regulatory theory suggests effective regulation must be responsive to past institutional behaviour. In the case of the Church, the task is profound given its strong self-protective culture which has long shielded abusers. The form of regulation must provide a balance where criminal sanctions loom large in the background while redress processes proceed in the foreground to repair both the harm suffered by survivors and renew Church culture.     

Women in Law Enforcement: Subverting Sexual Harassment with Social Bonds

Female law enforcement officers who have strong social bonds with their colleagues can reduce the effect that sexual harassment has on job satisfaction. Social bond theory was tested to examine the relationship between sexual harassment and job satisfaction in a sample of 109 active-duty male and female police and correctional officers. Law enforcement personnel are thought to be particularly vulnerable to stressors on the job, like sexual harassment, but they can significantly benefit from strong departmental and colleague support. With some progress toward gender equity, this study shows that female officers still face barriers that are linked to this predominantly male-dominated career.     

论刑事政策对刑法解释的意义

从实证研究的角度看,我国存在着两种具有法律意义的刑法解释体系:刑法有权解释体系和刑法适用解释体系。刑法适用解释对定罪量刑有着更加现实和重要的意义。刑事政策是刑法定罪量刑的基础。无论是刑法有权解释还是刑法适用解释,其内容都必须符合刑事政策的要求。     

The Concept of Appropriation and The Offence of Theft

The English law of theft is confusing and problematic in principle. Since the introduction of the Theft Act 1968 there has been inconsistency in the interpretation of appropriation as court and commentators have grappled with the intuition that appropriation must entail some subjective element and cannot be purely objective. Although subjectivity is traditionally associated with culpability rather than with conduct, it is argued that some acts can be subjective and yet factual and stand as causes to effects. Appropriation is such an act, its necessary and sufficient condition being a mindset, here termed proprietary subjectivity, on the part of the actor. It is argued that clarification of the concept of appropriation can help to resolve misperceived problems. Such clarification will also reveal other problems in the law of theft. Some tentative comments de lege ferenda are made suggesting how these problems can be addressed.     

Geographical profiling in a novel context: prioritising the search for New Zealand sex offfenders

The present work explores the utility and value of geographical offender profiling methodologies within a novel context, considering both theoretical and practical issues relating to their application. The effectiveness of a well-known geographical profiling system, Dragnet, was tested across 101 New Zealand sex offence series, and findings compared with those derived for an equivalent sample from the UK. Average search costs (the amount of the total offence area that needed to be searched, starting from predicted offender home location, before the offender's actual home was reached) were far greater for the New Zealand sample than their UK offending counterparts. It is argued that this is because the spatial behaviour of New Zealand offenders violates many of the assumptions that Dragnet and other similar geographical profiling systems make in predicting offenders' home locations. Calibration of the system to the specific home-crime distance patterns of the New Zealand offenders did not enhance the efficacy of predictions made to a significant extent. It is consequently argued that, in their current form, geographical profiling systems are limited in their ability to account for samples displaying very different spatial characteristics to those that they were developed from and for. The implications of these findings for the general utility of geographical profiling are discussed, and ways in which systems might be developed in order to broaden their scope and applicability are suggested.     

刑法信仰的根基

刑法作为一种规范,不论是立法、司法都深深植根于某种特定的文化和社会制度中。它自身会受到该文化和制度的制约。但是,刑法必须体现人的一定欲求。因为,只有刑法的价值真正体现出对公民作为人的本身的价值关怀,才能得到公民的信仰,刑法自身才具有生命力。于是,我们看到刑法的信仰获得就是这样一个互动过程:刑法是保障和发展公民人权的大宪章,寻找到了公民信仰刑法的根基;同时,公民通过遵守刑法和维护刑法的价值坚定对刑法的信仰。刑法信仰的根基就在于刑法必须植根于人的欲求中,体现出人的欲求,不得违背"常情、常识、常理"。因此,我国现行刑法要想获得信仰至少必须做到:刑法价值真正的转变;刑事解释的公正;刑事普法的观念转变。     

刑法关怀与刑法解释

刑法应体现法律之公平善良的特质 ,刑法关怀是指刑法对自然人、社会组织及社会所给予的刑法关注、刑法抵御和刑法保护 ,刑法解释即有权解释 ,是指有权机关依据一定原则使用法定方法对法律文本所作的阐释 ,是连结刑事立法与刑法适用的纽带和中介 ,是折射和反映刑法关怀的最佳视角。欠缺刑法关怀的刑法解释在一定程度上说可能是合法的但未必是合理的。从刑法关怀的维度审视我国现有的刑法解释 ,一方面在于把刑法关怀坚持到底 ,另一方面在于反思刑法解释的真正科学的定位 ,由此建立合法合理的刑法解释体系。     

刑法规避探析

公平、公正、规范是刑事执法的内在要求。论述刑法规避的概念、构成要件,研究刑事执法实践中出现的刑法规避现象并分析其原因,提出遏制与预防刑法规避的对策,对追求刑事执法公正、公平、规范的刑事执法目标,具有重大意义。     

论行政刑法的性质和概念

行政刑法在我国是一个崭新的研究领域。行政刑法在法律上兼具行政法与刑法的双重性质,行政刑法是国家为了实现行政管理的目的,维护正常的行政管理秩序,规定行政犯罪并追究其行政刑法责任的特殊法律规范的总称。     

论传统刑法文化对刑事司法所带来的负面影响及其改进

当今中国比较先进的刑事司法制度为什么不能很好地付诸实施?其原因可能是多方面的。试图从刑法文化视角进行诠释。主要观点是:(1)刑法文化包括观念性刑法文化和制度性刑法文化,它们之间的冲突是导致刑事司法不能很好地遵守刑事法规定现象产生的原因。(2)之所以发生观念性刑法文化和制度性刑法文化的冲突,主要是由于影响当今法官观念性刑法文化的中国传统刑法文化存在不足。(3)要想使刑事司法制度得以实现,就必须改进中国传统刑法文化之不足。