Internal Report Submitted to the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies

Dissident Irish Republicans have increased their violent activities in recent years. These “spoilers” reject the 1998 Good Friday Agreement power-sharing deal between Unionist and Nationalist traditions in Northern Ireland. Instead dissident IRAs vow to maintain an armed campaign against Britain's sovereign claim to Northern Ireland and have killed British soldiers, police officers, and civilians in recent years. These groups have small political organisations with which they are associated. The assumption across the political spectrum is that, whereas Sinn Fein enjoyed significant electoral backing when linked to the now vanished Provisional IRA, contemporary violent Republican ultras and their political associates are utterly bereft of sympathy. Drawing upon new data from the Economic and Social Research Council 2010 Northern Ireland election survey, the first academic study to ask the electorate its views of dissident Republicans, this article examines whether there are any clusters of sympathy for these irreconcilables and their modus operandi. The piece assesses whether there are any demographic, structural, ideological, religious, or party trends indicating Republican dissident sympathies. It also assesses the extent to which dissidents are seen as a threat and examines whether this perception is shared evenly across Northern Ireland's two main communities.     

State writing,subversion and citizenship in Southern Rhodesia’s state of emergency, 1959–1960

This article takes a moment of political upheaval – Southern Rhodesia’s 1959 State of Emergency – to explore the uses of writing in the remaking of state authority and citizenship. The 1950s had produced a powerful bureaucratic state, a shaky attempt at multi-racial “partnership,” and African aspirations to a citizenship able to encompass equality, rights and self-determination. The Emergency brought the tensions in these modes of government and citizenship to the fore. The article explores the working out of these tensions in two instances: the bureaucratic attempt to manage political detainees, and the police evidence used to substantiate charges of subversion on the part of nationalists in court. The article traces the limits of the state’s “lawfare” and the means by which detainees and nationalists developed new understandings of citizenship as aspirational imaginary, legal condition and practical tool, through the written word.     

Overkill? An Examination of Comparatively Excessive Death Sentences in North Carolina, 1990–2010

This study examines death/life capital sentences in one southern state, North Carolina, during the period 1990 to 2010 to determine the extent to which they are comparatively excessive/lenient. The study employs data derived from a variety of official sources on the population of capital trials in the state during this timeframe and follows the analytic techniques developed by David Baldus and his colleagues and by Paternoster and Kazyaka in their studies of comparative excessiveness in capital sentencing in California, Georgia, and South Carolina, respectively. The results show a substantial number of death sentences that meet the standard for excessiveness, but the data also show a nearly equal number of life sentences that may be deemed too lenient. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

“案例指导制度”的历史探寻

判例法和成文法相结合,就是混合法。历史上,中国经历了三次判例法和成文法的结合。以下简单回顾一下中国混合法的三次“轮回”。     

中国的保险法律制度

一、中国保险业的概况（一）中国保险业的发展历程中国在建国初期曾经成立中国人民保险公司,但随後不久,由于社会体制的变化,各种风险控制转由国家统筹,商业保险失去了存在的基础。     

深圳行政三分模式解析

7月31日,深圳市公布了《深圳市人民政府机构改革方案》,启动政府机构改革。根据该方案,深圳在探索实行职能有机统一的大部门体制的基础上,本着决策科学、执行有力、监督到位与既相互制约又相互协调的要求,完善行政运行机制,将市政府机构各工作部门由原46个政府部门减少为31个,并根据部门职能定位划分为“委”、“局”、“办”。     

中国内地与香港媒体诽谤问题比较研究

诽谤就是损毁名誉,保护名誉不受侵害的法律在国际上通称为诽谤法,中国称为名誉权法。诽谤法最早诞生在英国。鸦片战争后,英国占领香港,并将英国法律移植到香港。1997年7月1日中国对香港恢复行使主权,实行“一国两制”,香港原有法律基本保持不变,在香港延续了一百多年的英国普通法传统得以继续保留。     

法律体系的新成员——案例指导制度

案例指导制度是我们国家司法制度新近确立的一个组成部分。作为新生事物,它与我们现存的法律体系、法律制度是否兼容,这是值得探讨的。在大陆法系国家,案例制度一开始也受到了排斥,但後来还是逐步引进并确立了案例制度。我认为,对于中国而言,正在讨论建立的案例指导制度,与立法、司法、执法,包括法律职业、法律教育也应该是兼容的,而不是排斥的。