LEGAL CONSUMERS AS COPRODUCERS

Although the extent of unbundling among private legal practitioners in the changing Australian marketplace remains uncertain, there is a shift in thinking about the appropriate role of consumers in accessing everyday legal services. This is evident in the delivery of legal services other than those provided by private practitioners, where the consumer's role in legal service delivery arrangements is gradually being transformed. Among those institutions that are responding positively, if not inevitably, to the rising tide of legal self-helpers is the Family Court of Australia. The court's activities in attempting to meet the needs of its pro se consumers is simultaneously creating opportunities for unbundled legal service delivery, at least for those lawyers willing to seize these opportunities. It would appear that family law disputes, together with the large numbers of voluntary and involuntary legal self-helpers that these disputes generate, is fertile terrain for the development of alternative forms of legal service delivery.     

STATE AND LEGAL AUTHORITY

The idea of authority lies at the conceptual heart of much legal policy analysis. This essay discusses three perspectives on state and legal authority—the liberal-constitutional, the corporatist, and the technocratic—as a broad political framework for understanding major issues of judicial policy-making in the United States today. The essay examines recent literature on judicial legitimacy and capacity within the context of the three perspectives and raises research questions which derive from this approach to judicial policy. This framework provides a theoretical basis for seeing not only a decline, but changes in patterns of judicial authority and their relationship to any existing crisis of authority in the state in general.     

法律哲学与政治哲学

一、法律和政治或许法律哲学可以被理解为政治哲学的一个分支?这两者之间显然存在着关联。法律体系是政治体系的一个组成部分,而奇怪的是政治学的研究者们竟始终对它的实施不感兴趣。法律、法律适用、法律构成、立法机关、法院、司法判决、法律推理、法治,如此等等,都是政治学研究的重要课题。立法机关和法院是政治机构,法治是政治理念,司法判决和法律推理是一定社会的政治文化的组成部分,是人们展示的政治实践和政治技能。的确,它们都不是政治学的研究者们感兴趣的主题。政治学研究者的兴趣点,在于像政党这样的非法律的组织,像自由与繁荣这…     

集思广益道海西佳作灵动谱新章——《海峡法学》发刊词

新年伊始,万物吐芳,<海峡法学>应景而生,勃勃生机,自不待言.福建省在海峡西岸经济区中居主体地位,与台湾地区地缘相近、血缘相亲、文缘相承、商缘相连、法缘相循.福建省在与台湾地区法学有效对接,进行积极探索的过程中,<海峡法学>具有开拓性的意义,其将广纳两岸法学界的创新成果,展示探讨法学的最新学术观点,必将引发两岸法学界的极大热情,以及他们所关注的法学精神的祈向,是至关重要的一种价值向度.     

INFORMATION COSTS AND LEGAL SERVICES

Most of the current debate on the effective provision of legal services ignores the centrality of information costs. It is argued that conventional controls do not address this issue, especially where clients are infrequent users of legal services and the services required are nonroutine. In this segment of the market for legal services there is an "adverse selection" problem that will drive down the quality of legal services. Existing methods of ensuring quality legal services to this segment of the market are unlikely to be effective. It is suggested that only legal agents with incentives and opportunities to acquire information can mitigate the adverse selection problem. The English bifurcation of lawyers into barristers and solicitors partly performs such a function and provides a model for possible innovations in the North American context.     

FRUSTRATED CONTRACTS AND LEGAL FICTIONS

“Someone says to me: ‘Show the children a game.’ I teach them gaming with dice, and the other says, ‘I didn't mean that sort of game.’ Must the exclusion of the game with dice have come before his mind when he gave the order?” (Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 33, trans., (1953)).