评述罗伯斯比尔的法制思想与实践

罗伯斯比尔作为雅各宾派的重要领导人 ,把法国革命推向高潮。与此同时 ,他作为启蒙思想的信徒 ,在革命中彻底批判封建法制 ,建设资产阶级法制。曾领导雅各宾派通过了 1 793年宪法 ,并亲手为其起草了人权宣言 ,建构了人权体系对法院的改革、废除死刑、施行革命恐怖等提出了建议和设想。     

民事抗诉中检察机关的调查取证：透视与前瞻

检察机关办理民事抗诉案件具有一定的调查取证权是其履行法定职责的必然要求,其中书面审查应是检察机关办理民事抗诉案件的主要方式,调查取证则是检察机关办理民事抗诉案件的有效补充。检察机关审查民事抗诉案件的调查取证应在立法上予以明确。     

酌定量刑情节若干问题研究

酌定量刑情节具有刑法上之依据,但不具备内容的法定性,应将酌定量刑情节内容予以法定化。民愤与量刑依据存在偏差,不应作为酌定量刑情节,但是其对刑罚裁量能够产生特定影响;司法实践中“以强凌弱”的情况体现了更强的社会危害性和人身危险性,应当上升为法定量刑情节。     

Policing protest in the Australian Capital Territory: the introduction and use of the Public Order Act 1971

This article examines the reaction by the Australian Federal Government to the protest movements of the 1960s–1970s and their attempts to use public order legislation to thwart radical discontent in Australia. It argues that the Public Order (Protection of Persons and Property) Act 1971 was aimed at the threat of “violent” protests, particularly the tactic of the “sit-in”, and that to this end, the legislation was an overreaction to the actual threat posed by the protest movements at the time. It also shows that after a long gestation period, the Act was ill-equipped to deal with the changing nature of demonstrations in the 1970s, such as the problems caused by the erection of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. Thus, after an initial flurry of use in mid-1971, the law has been seldom used since.     

Discourses of popular politics,war and authenticity in Turkish pop music

Turkey and the United States (US) have had a close mutually beneficial political and military relationship since the end of World War Two. However, this relationship came under pressure when the US government and Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) tried to cooperate closely in the 2003 military invasion of Iraq. AKP's leadership failed to persuade Turkey's parliament to accept the deployment of US troops and equipment in Turkey partially due to public opinion. Despite Turkish media and its government being intertwined to the extent where subversive discourses are all but silenced, some popular music videos were able to articulate discourses which questioned AKP's military policies. This paper analyses lyrics, visuals and sounds of one of these songs to look at the way war and political issues become articulated through a form of simplified popular politics, despite being presented as serious and authentic by a number of key signifiers across the different modes. A number of scholars have addressed the issue of subversion in music both as actual political challenge and as popular counter culture. This case study is used to assess subversion in music in these terms in order to consider its likely place in political debate in Turkey.     

Russian Constitutional Crisis: Law and Politics Under Yel'tsin

This article is a foray into the understudied issue of environmental protest politics in Central Asia. Specifically, it uses Kyrgyzstan as a case study to test the argument that environmental concerns mobilized people to engage in protest and in ways different from other kinds of protest. This essay presents the first systematic study of public opinion about the environment in Kyrgyzstan. It includes results from a 2009 nationwide survey, over 100 expert and elite interviews, and newspaper content analysis. Furthermore, it spatially analyzes these results to identify geographical variation in public perception and political event occurrence patterns. Protest engagement is a complex process determined by the interaction of several factors, and is not explained solely by affluence, rationality, or grievances. Eco-mobilization – collective political action about the environment – represents a class of protest events that offers a different view into mass discontent in the former Soviet Union and neo-patrimonial societies. The study finds that these political actions about the environment are not necessarily elite driven; there is a basic foundation of national concern and salience of these issues, and demonstrated environmental beliefs do help to explain protest behavior.     

Elite coordination and popular protest: the joint effect on democratic change

Authoritarian elections offer a window of contestation where a democratic opposition may increase the pressure on authoritarian regimes to implement democratic change. Pressure may come either from popular protest (vertical threats), or from a coordinated counter-elite (lateral threats). Previous research on electoral authoritarianism has emphasized the importance of both lateral and vertical threats for democratization, but have not theorized how these two threats interact to promote higher levels of democracy. We argue that the effect of vertical threats is contingent on the existence of lateral threats. Popular mobilization is more likely to promote democratic change if a unified opposition translates popular grievances to democratic demands. Conversely, a mobilized population increases the probability that a unified opposition will enhance democratic change by increasing the reputational and organizational costs of repression and electoral manipulation. Our theoretical claims are corroborated by statistical analysis of 169 elections, held in 74 electoral autocracies around the globe 1991–2014.     

Bringing direct democracy back in: toward a three-dimensional measure of democracy

Most procedural definitions and measurements of democracy are missing one crucial component: direct popular decision-making. This is an important gap that does not allow users of data to ascertain some important variation among democracies. Thus, I propose a new measure that is strongly anchored in a procedural definition of democracy but includes this missing dimension. The proposed measure is well rooted in the literature and introduces a dimension whereby citizens may become the masters of their political fate at any time and without the consent of elected authorities, while avoiding the inclusion of extraneous attributes that are not highlighted in democratic theory. Tests of the validity of the new indicator, using Latin American cases, show that there is enough room for its inclusion without the typical collinearity problems this literature faces. This indicator is not only sound, but it is empirically appealing as it performs better than others when testing relevant hypotheses.     

Policing protest,security and freedom: the 2014 G20 experience

This article examines the policing of a major international political event (the G20 Meetings in Brisbane, Australia in 2014) from the perspective of the police and representatives of demonstrator groups who participated in the event. The article locates the policing of the 2014 G20 meetings within the history of the policing of major international political meetings in other countries. It analyses the legal framework within which the policing of the Brisbane G20 meeting was undertaken, comparing and contrasting these with legal frameworks developed for similar meetings and associated demonstrations in other jurisdictions. In the case of the Australian G20 Act, the legislation prioritized security over human rights, including the freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly. The strategies and planning processes applied by police in the lead up to the G20 are discussed, including the efforts made to ensure policing responses were respectful of the democratic rights of protesters. Drawing on interview and other data, the article reveals a diversity of perspectives on the ‘human rights’ policing and dialogue models, and provides an assessment of ‘Operation Southern Cross’ based on the post-event review of the G20 legislation undertaken by the Queensland Crime and Corruption Commission. The authors conclude that the policing of G20, based on extensive dialogue and minimization of coercive public order strategies, fostered a peaceful G20 event. The article concludes with observations about the perceived success of G20 policing in Australia, and indicates some lessons learned for best practice policing for future global events.