Getting Schooled: Legal Mobilization as an Educative Process

This article explores the role of formal education and specific legal knowledge in the process of legal mobilization. Using survey data and in‐depth case narratives of workplace disputes in China, we highlight three major findings. First, and uncontroversially, higher levels of formal education are associated with greater propensity to use legal institutions and to find them more effective. Second, informally acquired labor law knowledge can substitute for formal education in bringing people to the legal system and improving their legal experiences. The Chinese state's propagation of legal knowledge has had positive effects on citizens' legal mobilization. Finally, while education and legal knowledge are factors that push people toward the legal system, actual dispute experience leads people away from it, especially among disputants without effective legal representation. The article concludes that the Chinese state's encouragement of individualized legal mobilization produces contradictory outcomes—encouraging citizens to use formal legal institutions, imbuing them with new knowledge and rights awareness, but also breeding disdain for the law in practice.     

Disaster management,risk reduction and international disaster response laws in the Commonwealth

This paper considers the existence and use of disaster risk management laws across the Commonwealth. It commences by considering approaches to risk management and disaster response. It reviews international and regional disaster law, policy and tools. The paper examines national disaster risk management laws through the lens of a typology of laws, based on the complexity and scope of the disaster risk reduction and response system. It makes recommendations for Commonwealth countries relating to review of disaster laws, implementation of international frameworks, and the inclusion of disaster risk reduction, recovery, climate change, quality standards and the prevention of sexual and gender-based violence in disaster laws.     

问责制药巨头

在丈夫自杀之后，年轻的寡妇吉姆开始追究跨国制药巨头——辉瑞（Pfizer）公司的责任。因为她认为正是它的疏忽，导致丈夫之死。她的努力促成一项具有里程碑式的裁定，有可能因此改变法制进程。