Justifying law: An explanation of the deep structure of American law

Conclusion Charles Darwin argued that human beings are what happen whenphysical laws act upon a planet with the characteristics that earthhad five billion years ago. Similarly, I have argued that theprimacy of individual will is what eventually happens when asociety allocates and limits coercion based upon rights. From timeto time particular visions of the good or the right dominate publicbehavior, but they are eventually enframed by rights — the authoritative claim of each person to respect.I have argued that the propositional structure of American law—the laws themselves — can be seen to be a logically consistentsystem of propositions stemming from the axiom that the will ofeach person is worthy of respect. This is an explanatory, not anormative, proposition. The axiom was not put there by anyoneand the law derived from it, any more than the human brian wasput there and the theory of relativity derived from it. The axiomcame to be embodied in k because of a fact — the single universalcharacteristic of human beings that is relevant to the question ofarranging coercion is individual will — and a process — the right ofeach person to demand a justification for coercion used upon him.Since will is universal to human beings, this would suggest thatany rights-based legal system would evince a general structuresimilar to our own. Particularities of national culture, naturalresources, population density, and so on would produce a verydifferent liberty frontier from the one facing this country andhence, different laws. But the general structure of law — the relationship between principle and policy decision, the role of thebasic rights, and so on — should be similar. This similarity shouldprovide a common basis for cooperation between states, transcending particularities of economic structure, political structure and ideology. We have seen that a very broad range ofeconomic and political institutions may be justified. The essential difference between states lies not in the different ways that theyarrange institutions but in the different ways that they justifythem. Those that justify them to people as persons are similar.Those that justify them by conformity to a design are different.The theory set out here is not a design. It is an explanation. Onevirtue of explanations is that they draw forth other explanations.More importantly, they offer perspective — they tell us what weare up to. As the social relations which law must rationalizebecome ever more complex, perspective becomes ever more necessary. The simple laws have already been written. The connectionbetween the doctrine of consideration and the first principle isobvious. The connection between the hard look doctrine ofreviewing administrative agencies and the second principle isnowhere near so obvious (though it is a lovely example of thejudicial process enframing the realm of uncertainty). The morecomplex and artificial the institution, the poorer the guidance ofintuition and the more necessary are conscious guides to decision.Justification comes easy to printers. Most of them don't knowwhy a page of print that has straight margines left and right isjustified. They don't need to know, for the idea has immediateintuitive appeal; it is easy to accept and to remember, and, onceremembered, it is an effective guide to behavior. It is easy to seethat this line of print is not justified and to do somethingabout it. It is not so easy to tell whether the hard look doctrine orthe enforcement of a surrogate motherhood contract sits fairly on itspage. Justification of law requires an understanding of thecriterion against which it is being done. There is an intuitive core— a sense — to any act of judgment, but that core can be illuminated and developed by an understanding of the framework withinwhich it operates.     

Some Evidence of a Pluralistic Discipline: A Narrative Analysis of Public Administration Symposia

This article investigates the discipline of public administration as it is manifested in symposium articles published during the period 1985–99. What was the field trying to accomplish? The method of investigation is narrative analysis. Using specific discourse markers (method, substantive contents, and authorial intentions), the authors found a wide variety of purposes and projects in the symposia investigated. The condition of public administration, they conclude, is distinguished by a radical pluralism—a striking absence of any singular conception of public administration scholarship.     

Targeting Benefits for Electoral Gain: Constituency Marginality and the Distribution of Grants to English Local Authorities

We model the spatial allocation of resources over constituencies as an optimization problem in which governing parties face uncertainty about voter preferences, but seek to increase their chances of getting re-elected. We show that a rational government should allocate extra resources to marginal constituencies and especially favour opposition-held marginals. We test this hypothesis on data about central government grants to larger English local authorities. We consider whether Conservative controlled and 'flagship' local authorities also benefit. Our empirical results suggest that the government allocated around £500 million more to local authorities containing marginal constituencies and around £155 million more to 'flagship' local authorities than they could have been expected to get on the criteria of social need and population.     

美国与东亚经济失衡及东亚区域合作构想

美国与东亚经济失衡与摩擦对东亚区域经济一体化的影响巨大而复杂。一方面,为应对与美国的经济摩擦,东亚先进经济体往往通过对外直接投资将国内失去比较优势的产业转移到区内后进经济体,将其作为自己的出口平台,从而促进东亚地区产业分工与国际生产网络等经济一体化的形成;另一方面,作为东亚区域经济一体化进程中最重要的外部因素,美国对东亚经济一体化的立场、东亚对美国市场和美国货币的非对称依赖都在一定程度上限制了东亚地区一体化的发展。     

INTRODUCTION

Abstract

In the last issue of 1994 the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (BCAS) presented a special “Notes from the Field” section on the Bretton Woods institutions. The ten contributions to that section provided case studies of specific projects in Asia and overviews of International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank policies. In sum, they mounted a comprehensive critique of the historical and contemporary policies of these global financial institutions.