Localizing Global Rules: Public Participation in Lawmaking in Vietnam

As the pace of legal harmonization in developing East Asian states increases to comply with international trading treaties, a disjunction is forming between legislative expectations and everyday business practices. Evidence considered in this article suggests that Vietnam is no exception. State control over public discourse favors the interests of business elites, while small-scale entrepreneurs struggle to make their views known. Lawmakers exposed to this asymmetric discourse rarely adjust global legal rules to suit the transactional requirements of small-scale entrepreneurs. As a consequence, the largely imported commercial legislative framework is increasingly reflecting the interests of business elites. The article concludes that for the state to develop a more inclusive regulatory regime, it needs to relax its control over public deliberation and give small-scale entrepreneurs more opportunities to convey local precepts and practices to lawmakers.     

立法民主:概念与根据

立法民主的核心含义是指在立法决策、立法活动中,依据民主原则,贯彻民主原则,法文件的内容则不能作为立法民主的内涵要素.现代立法的要求之一是贯彻立法民主原则,其根据在于,现代法乃是人们享受良好人世生活的一种制度安排,从理性上说,公民有保留立法权力的要求;现代国家社会成员地位的平等,要求立法活动遵行民主原则.     

Professional Innovation: Corporate Lawyers and Private Lawmaking

Through an intensive examination of the development and diffusion of a new legal device—the shareholder rights' plan or poison pill—this article demonstrates the entrepreneurial, lawmaking role of corporate lawyers. This study case suggests that corporate lawyers may act as legal entrepreneurs, developing and promoting new legal devices and strategies on behalf of actual and potential clients. If affirmed by the courts, these devices or techniques are rapidly diffused thereby contributing to the creation of new legal knowledge. The creation and successful defense of the shareholder rights' plan led to both new caselaw and statute law. In this way, corporate practitioners contribute to the creation of new legal knowledge, suggesting a bottom-up approach to knowledge creation rather than the conventional top-down view. It is suggested that legal innovations like the shareholder rights' plan are more likely to be developed in newer firms than in established firms and in specialized firms than general service law firms.     

论法国知识产权法典的立法特色及借鉴

法国 1992年颁布的知识产权法典 ,以“法典化”的立法体例独树一帜 ,在内容、结构和立法技术上独具特色 ,对我国知识产权法的建设有一定的借鉴和启示。     

Dimensions of Legislative Conflict: Coalitions,Obstructionism, and Lawmaking in Multiparty Presidential Regimes

This article addresses central issues in multiparty presidential systems: the functioning of legislative coalitions and the dynamics of legislative conflict. Since electoral competition has elements of both positive‐sum (increase in common support) and zero‐sum (exact division of the support) qualities, lawmaking in coalitional systems presents unique challenges. Using legislative data from Brazil, we examine how coalition management and unity affect legislative delay and obstructionism. We find, among others, that: (1) coalition management is pivotal for both faster legislative approval and less obstructionism, but its effect depends on coalition size; and (2) cohesive opposition impedes the legislative process.     

Agency,Coercion, and Global Justice: A Reply to My Critics

Mathias Risse, Andrea Sangiovanni, and Kok-Chor Tan have offered some subtle and powerful criticisms of the ideas given in my Justice and Foreign Policy. Three themes in particular recur in their critiques. The first is that the arguments I make in that book rest upon unjustified, arbitrary, or contradictory premises. The second is that the use of coercion in the analysis of distributive justice is a mistake. The third is that the global institutional set represents, contrary to my arguments, an independent first-order site of justice. I address these criticisms, and try to vindicate the methodology of Justice and Foreign Policy in the face of these objections.     

Exporting and importing criminality: Incarceration of the Foreign Born

Since previous studies have found that crime rates vary by immigrant group there is a need to dis‐aggregate immigrants by country of birth in order to obtain a more accurate representation of the relationship between migrants and crime. This study examines data from six countries (Australia, Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and the U.S.A.) on the country of birth of their inmate populations. The following observations are reasonable conclusions from the data available. First, the percentages of each home country's inmate population that is foreign‐born varies remarkably. Second, in general foreign‐born inmates tend to come from regions outside the region within which the host country was located, though in most cases from regions that were proximate. Third, given the small number of countries reporting, it is intriguing that just a small number of countries and regions can account for such a high proportion of a home country's inmate population if one includes the numbers of a country's citizens who are housed in foreign prisons as part of that original country's inmate population. The paper concludes with a discussion of a number of policy implications that flow from these findings.     

On the “Exporting” of Morality: Its Relation to Political Conservatism and Epistemic Motivation

A new phenomenon, moral exporting (ME), is introduced to capture active attempts to promote certain views of morality to others. It was hypothesized that political conservatives would be more likely to exhibit ME, due in part to strong epistemic concerns for certainty that may become attached to the moral domain. Related items from the 1988 and 2006 General Social Surveys were analyzed, and new scales were developed to better assess ME and specific moral-related epistemic concerns (moral absolutism). In a second study, these scales were administered to a large college student sample along with measures of political ideology and need for closure (NFC). Results generally showed that political conservatism was strongly related to the new ME factor. Further analysis determined that both moral absolutism (MA) and NFC accounted for significant portions of this relationship, but that the specific epistemic construct (MA) was a more proximal mediator. Discussion centers on further distinguishing ME and MA from related constructs, as well as on future research and applications.     

'A Stranger to its Laws': Sovereign Bodies, Global Sexualities, and Transnational Citizens

This article examines the importance of mobility in the historical and ongoing constitution of lesbian and gay subjectivities. While the state in the past frequently sought to restrict the movement of sexual dissidents across national borders, current developments in an array of jurisdictions suggest a more permissive attitude, particularly in the case of the 'unification' of same-sex couples. These legal and political developments are interrogated with respect to the construction of 'acceptable' homosexualities and, more broadly, in terms of cosmopolitan and communitarian visions of sexual citizenship.     

Global access to treatment: achievements and challenges

As mentioned in the previous issue, this section of the Review addresses issues related to improving access to adequate and affordable care, treatment, and support everywhere. It replaces the section previously called "Patents and Prices." In this issue, we feature a review of achievements and challenges in recent years in opening global access to HIV/AIDS treatments. The article - one of a series commissioned to mark the tenth anniversary of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, discussing past developments and future directions in areas of policy and law related to HIV/AIDS - describes the developments that recast the debate about access to treatment from one focused on patent entitlements to one focused on the right to health and treatment. It analyzes the role of national and international activism, strategically constructed alliances, and principled leadership in achieving this change. And it discusses continuing obstacles to equitable access to HIV/AIDS treatments for the world's population.     

Crossing the boundary: Peasants,shepherds, and servants in a western Alpine community

In the historical and anthropological literature, western Alps servants were widely assumed to be few in number, and the importance of the institution of service therefore negligible. This study combines historical-demographic and ethnographic methods to investigate whether this was true of a community in the Italian western Alps with a mixed population of peasants and transhumant shepherds. Surprisingly, a valuable 1951 census reveals that seemingly small numbers hide what was actually a normal phase in the life course of peasant sons whom shepherds recruited to work as servants. Distinct patterns of life-cycle and lifetime service seem to have coexisted in the same community. The evidence also confirms that in southern Europe, as some recent studies have pointed out, the institution of service often was not just the circulation of young men and women between households but an asymmetrical exchange between different socioeconomic groups. Otherwise rigid social and cultural boundaries were thereby crossed.     

Crossing the boundary: Peasants, shepherds, and servants in a western Alpine community

In the historical and anthropological literature, western Alps servants were widely assumed to be few in number, and the importance of the institution of service therefore negligible. This study combines historical-demographic and ethnographic methods to investigate whether this was true of a community in the Italian western Alps with a mixed population of peasants and transhumant shepherds. Surprisingly, a valuable 1951 census reveals that seemingly small numbers hide what was actually a normal phase in the life course of peasant sons whom shepherds recruited to work as servants. Distinct patterns of life-cycle and lifetime service seem to have coexisted in the same community. The evidence also confirms that in southern Europe, as some recent studies have pointed out, the institution of service often was not just the circulation of young men and women between households but an asymmetrical exchange between different socioeconomic groups. Otherwise rigid social and cultural boundaries were thereby crossed.     

The Contradictions of Immigration Lawmaking: The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986

This paper argues that the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 is a composite of contradictory measures. On one hand, employer sanctions are meant to curtail the employment of undocumented workers and preserve the U.S. labor market for legal residents and citizens; on the other hand, special foreign worker programs are designed to enhance the supply of immigrant workers. In an effort to make sense of these contradictions, the author places the legislation in historical context and proposes a dialectical model of immigration policymaking.