Individualizing the Reasonable Person in Criminal Law

Criminal law commonly requires judges and juries to decide whether defendants acted “reasonably.” Nevertheless, issues of reasonableness fall into two distinct categories: (1) where reasonableness concerns events and states, including risks of which an actor is conscious, that can be justly assessed without regard to the actor’s individual traits, and (2) where reasonableness concerns culpable mental states and emotions that cannot justly be assessed without reference to the actor’s capacities. This distinction is significant because, while the “reasonable person” by which category-1 cases are assessed is a disembodied and impersonal ideal that consists of nothing but the uncompromising values of the jurisdiction, the reasonable person by which category-2 cases are measured must necessarily incorporate some of an actor’s individual traits or risk blaming the blameless. Courts and commentators have thus far approached the task of individualizing or subjectivizing reasonableness in category 2 by trying to determine in advance which individual traits are generally relevant and which are not. I propose an alternative approach that, in addition to applying to negligence and voluntary manslaughter cases alike, derives its content from the social practice of blaming. I propose that a reasonable person in category-2 cases consists of every physical, psychological, and emotional trait an actor possesses, with one exception—the exception being that he possesses proper respect for the values of the people of the state as reflected and incorporated in the statute at hand.

私法中理性人标准之构建

他人内心世界的无法直接获知性,决定了个案裁判中理性人标准的不可或缺.司法实践中,需要运用理性人标准来完成相应的评价工作.理性人标准的运用包括三个阶段:理性人建构、场景重构、透过认知图式得出结论.个案中,通过设想一个具有特定知识结构和能力水准之人,在具体的场景下会形成什么样的认识,来完成对行为人的评价任务.理性人的内部结构主要包括知识结构、认知能力和行动能力,理性人的具体化即表现为理性人的知识结构和能力水准的具体确定.理性人的具体化、场景的重构,均需在价值指引下进行.对此,认为理性人标准系为单一价值服务的观点不可取.理性人标准所要实现的价值,必须结合其所要解决的问题领域具体地加以确定,不同领域中理性人标准所要实现的价值也会不同.价值实现的基本途径是,将价值取向作为确定理性人能力水平和具体知识状况的标准,并指引场景的重构.理性人标准在私法中有着非常广泛的适用空间,并可扩展到公法领域.     

生态文明建设与环境法的正义追求

环境法产生和兴起于环境危机的时代,在法律领域承载着应对环境危机的历史使命。环境法的基本品格和历史使命决定了环境法成为保障和促进生态文明的首要法律部门。以生态文明为基本理念,根据生态文明建设的基本要求,环境法呈现出完全不同于传统法律部门的价值追求。作为环境法的核心价值,环境法的正义追求表现为多面的正义,包括代内正义、代际正义和人际正义。环境法的正义追求以实现人与自然的和谐共处为终极目的,这同时也是生态文明建设的题中之义。     

追寻理性的罪刑模式:把比例原则植入刑法理论

在以保障公民基本权利为主旨的法治国家的实现中,比例原则以其具体性、规范性和目的性在限制刑事权力上有着重要担当:能够弥补刑法的基本原则无法防止立法泛滥及刑法的谦抑性所不具有的硬约束力之缺陷.也因此,刑法学有必要引入比例原则分析范式,并以其三项子原则——妥当性原则、必要性原则和禁止过度原则的建构为突破口,追寻一种理性的罪刑规范,并形成如下学术路向:把比例原则作为罪刑关系配置的基本原则,刑事立法应该考虑刑法上的可罚的违法性,在刑法解释中强化合目的之法律解释方法.     

生态和谐人--生态文明的必然追求

随着社会的飞速发展。人类生存与生态平衡的矛盾日益突出。而生态和谐是人类解决这一矛盾的必然选择和必然趋势。从个体来看。人是社会发展的实践主体,因此。生态和谐的发展目标对人的素质提出了更高的要求,而造就生态和谐人则是实现这一目标的核心内容和有效方式。但我国目前存在的贫富差距现象和粗放式的经济发展方式等都严重地阻碍着生态和谐理念的推广。所以,需要个人从价值理念与生活方式入手,从自身做起,共同建设生态文明,促进社会和谐。     

On The Reasonable in Law

Abstract. In practical reasoning, reasonableness - as opposed to rationality - is an important concept. This paper explores the notion of reasonableness as applied exclusively to legal decisions. Conflicting values or legal requirements can make rationally deduced solutions unattainable, and may call for criteria of reasonableness, Conflicting values must be weighed, and weighed against each other, in search of a point of equilibrium between them. Legal cases are more or less difficult to solve, depending on the difficulty of finding a unique optimal equilibrium. The relevance of factual and ideal consensus for the determination of a reasonable legal decision is underlined. Finally, a definition of "reasonable legal decision" is proposed.     

Seeing Law: The Comic,Icon and the Image in Law and Justice

This special issue examines how the comic and the icon prefigure forms of legality that are different to modern law. There is a primal seeing of law unmediated by reading, writing or possibly thinking. This introduction identifies the primacy of the eye, the emergence of visual jurisprudence and the transformations of law as a paper-based material practice to a digitally enabled activity.     

Negligence and Human Rights Law: The Case for Separate Development

A number of judges and academics have argued in favour of the convergence of negligence law with human rights law. By contrast, the thesis of this article is that the two legal orders should develop independently, so that for the most part the law of negligence ought not to be affected by human rights considerations. It is argued that the case for convergence is based on two false assumptions, namely that human rights law and negligence law perform similar functions within our legal order and that the norms of human rights law are more fundamental than the norms encapsulated in negligence law. It is also argued that convergence would undermine the coherence of negligence law. Ultimately, the case for separate development rests on the desirability of recognising public law and private law as autonomous normative systems with their own distinctive rationales, concepts and core principles.     

形式正义的合理诉求——对死刑复核程序意义的两种角度分析

实现形式正义是死刑复核程序的基本价值诉求。虽然从形成司法决策和司法裁量权的程序控制两个角度考虑,对死刑复核程序的设计会有所不同,但形式正义的诉求是两个角度的共同归结。考虑到司法成本的因素,形式正义的诉求还要有一定的现实合理性。     

论英美刑法中的犯罪疏忽

一、犯罪疏忽的概念和特征(一 )犯罪疏忽 (CriminalNegligence)的含义英国法律委员会在其工作文件中对犯罪疏忽是做如下定义的 ,“如果某人没能象作为一个正常人在他的情况下那样 ,对其行为给予注意 ,发挥技能或者进行预见 ,那么 ,他就是疏忽的。”① 也就是说 ,疏忽是行为人有责任履行某种注意标准 ,但没能达到这种标准 ;以及 ,行为人没能像正常人或者谨慎的人那样 ,在法律要求实施合理行为的情况下合理地实施其行为。因此 ,“疏忽是关于行为标准的要求 ,含有疏于思考、而非心理状态的内容 ,很少成为严重刑事犯罪的要素。”②美国法学会在…     

Luhmann: Law,Justice, and Time

Time is central to Luhmann’s writings on social systems. Social systems, as systems of meaning, operate within three dimensions: factual, social and temporal. Each of these dimensions entails selections of actualities from potentialities (or contingencies) within horizons. Whilst the factual dimension involves selections based on distinguishing ‘this’ from ‘something else’, and the social distinguishes between alter and ego (asking with respect to any meaning whether another experiences it as I do), the temporal dimension operates with the primary distinction of before and after. In the temporal dimension, everything is ‘ordered only according to the when and not to the who/what/where/how of experience and action’ (Luhmann in Social systems. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1995, p. 78). In this paper, we explore the connection between the temporal dimension of meaning within the legal system and its connection to justice. We begin by setting out succinctly the role played by justice within the legal system, as presented by Luhmann, particularly in his book Law as a social system (2004). From this beginning, we move on to consider the relationship between law, justice and time, taking two examples. The first is the temporality of judicial decisions. The second concerns the relationship between the temporal meaning of law’s own operations, and the presumption of innocence.     

Multiculturalism,Institutional Law,and Imaginary Justice

Following Le Pen's relative successin the French presidential vote and the BritishNational Party's historic return in our own2002 local elections, the article considers theprospects for the production of morecommunicative race relations in contemporaryBritain. To this end we reassess the media'streatment of the Stephen Lawrence case andexplore the political logic of the Macphersonreport, the policy document which followed theapparent miscarriage of justice that allowedLawrence's alleged killers to walk free. Interms of our analysis of the media we areconcerned to show how the real of Britain'sordinary racism was hidden behind an ideologyof multiculturalism that scapegoated singularindividuals to cover for the structuralinequalities of wider society. The article aimsto show how the media upheld the notion ofobjective justice that institutional law wasapparently unable to secure.But while the media supported the ideology ofthe law, its exposure of the failings ofinstitutional law also led to calls for legalreform to guarantee the realisation ofinstitutional justice. Although we accept thatthe attempt to achieve legal totality isimpossible, our argument is that the critiqueof legal objectivity, which takes in subjectiverights claims, may present the possibility forthe realisation of a novel, inclusive, model ofrace relations. That is to say that althoughthe media supports the ideology of the law, thefact that this support requires a critique ofpractical law forces the law to modernisearound the idealistic demands of its ownideological structure. Akin toDouzinas,¹ who has argued for theendless expansion of rights as post-modernutopianism, we believe that this process ofmodernisation, which is arranged to maintainthe status quo through minimal reform, is thecondition of possibility of a more inclusivesystem of race relations.     

Restoring Trust: Plachimada,the Human Trust and Anticipatory Negligence as Restorative Justice

This paper argues for proleptic restorative justice in the area of the environment in the form of a ‘human trust’. Drawing inspiration from the Roman public trust, the human trust insists that some ‘goods’ are so important that they can neither be owned nor spoiled; rather, they must be protected. In order to explain this model, water rights will be used as an example, specifically, the case of Plachimada’s battle with Coca-Cola over the use of local ground water in Kerala, India. This case allows consideration of the protection of water for people, the ongoing privatization of natural resources, and the strength of property rights. The human trust questions the merit of seeing the environment as property or in economic terms. Moreover, the human trust urges proleptic restorative justice, as in the case of the environment, restoration after the fact is often impossible. The potential harm is so extreme that one can argue for an action in tort of ‘anticipatory negligence’, a development of the quia timet injunction.     

论失踪损害赔偿之诉的法律适用——以马航客机失踪事件切入

自然人的失踪通常都会给其近亲属造成严重的精神损害和一定的财产损害,依据我国法律现有规定及其解释,在失踪是因可归责于他人的事由所致时,失踪者近亲属应独立享有对相关责任人的损害赔偿请求权。肯定此类损害赔偿请求权,不仅符合分配正义原则,而且能更好地实现权益保护与行为自由的平衡。在单纯的失踪损害赔偿之诉中,失踪者近亲属可以请求赔偿精神损害、寻亲费用和扶养费损失等,在失踪者已被宣告死亡时,还可请求死亡赔偿金。     

Introduction: Procedural Justice, Law and Policy

Over the last few years, procedural justice has become one of the most debated fields in social science and law. Modern thinking about law, democracy and public policy inevitably leads to a consideration of appropriate procedures. Images of such procedures are culturally bound and also formed by individual cognition. The word "fair" seems to encompass the most desired features of procedures.     

诚信·公平·权利——“民法人”教学新理念的构建

立足于现代高等教育应当培养什么人的问题并结合民法学精品课程建设的实践,需要对“民法人”这一教学理念进行探索和阐释。民法人的素质或品质可以定义为:民法人是讲诚实、守信用的人,民法人是具有平等价值观和公平观念的人,民法人是懂得尊重他人权利的人,民法人是具有社会公德意识的人,民法人是具有义务观和责任感的人,民法人是系统掌握和精通民法知识的人。     

The New Insolvency Law and Governance of Corporate Legal Person

Start of the insolvency proceedings influences the two basic problems of corporate governance: restriction about the “soft budget” of corporation and “information asymmetry” between the interior and exterior person. In fact, the insolvency law is a mechanism of the potential exterior supervision. In the insolvency proceedings, most of the information is open to the creditor and to the superintendent, who is liable for protecting the interest of the creditor. The key problems of corporate governance are transparency and information disclosure. The insolvency law provides the power of supervision to the creditor when corporation insolvency. Of importance is that power is conducted by collectivity and supported by judicatory and professional organization. In June 2004, the finance committee submitted the new draft of the insolvency law to the standing committee of the national people’s congress. There are many articles about corporate governance. These articles are generally divided into two kinds, one is restriction on conduct of the supervisors in the period of the insolvency proceedings, and the other is examination of the conduct before the start of the insolvency proceedings. Translated from Jurist Review, Vol. 2, 2005 (in Chinese)     

民法上的人及其人性透析

“人”的问题是各个部门法的首要问题。各个民法典的基本概念及其基本价值观,都是以关于人的某种特定的观念为出发点的。对从古罗马法到现代民法中的“人”及其人性问题进行历史的探讨,以及对现时代的诸国市民法中的人性问题进行分析,可以得出“平等而理性的人”的民法共识并不是从古至今就融入民法,也并不是放诸四海皆准的“真理”,它仅仅是一种假设的结论。在此基础上对民法中的“人像”从理论上进行了较全面的描述,并指出了现代民法对这一问题应该采取的态度。