Legislative Transparency and Credit Risk

Open governance requirements are designed to improve accountability, which implies that transparent governments are more trustworthy stewards of their publicly invested power. However, transparency may also reduce institutional effectiveness and inhibit political compromise, diminishing the capacity to manage resources responsibly. We assess empirical support for these competing perspectives in the context of American state legislatures, many of which have become exempt from state sunshine laws in recent decades. We leverage variation in the timing of these legislative exemptions to identify the effect of removing transparency in a crucial governing institution on investors’ risk perceptions of states’ general obligation bonds. Our analysis of these data during the period 1995–2010 suggests that removing legislative transparency reduces state credit risk. We conclude that while openness in government may be normatively desirable, shielding legislative proceedings from public view may actually be better for states’ debt repayment capacity, improving their overall fiscal health.     

论民事抗诉对实现司法公正的价值

司法公正是社会主义法治内涵的核心价值,它直接关系到公民的人身、财产安全和社会的稳定与安宁.民事抗诉制度对于实现司法公正具有重要的价值,具体表现在:它能有效地监控法官的自由裁量权,有效地节省司法资源,克服司法地方化.正因如此,在我国目前条件下,民事抗诉制度只能不断完善与加强,决不能削弱,更不能废除.     

公平正义与和谐社会建构

公平正义是社会主义法治的价值追求,是和谐社会的重要特征之一。实现社会的公平正义,是构建和谐社会的价值前提;实现社会的公平正义,是建构和谐社会的基本条件;实现社会的公平正义,必须进一步加强制度建设。     

Gender,Culture and the Law: Approaches to ‘Honour Crimes’ in the UK

This article examines the debate on whether to analyse ‘honour crimes’ as gender-based violence, or as cultural tradition, and the effects of either stance on protection from and prevention of these crimes. In particular, the article argues that the categorisation of honour-related violence as primarily cultural ignores its position within the wider spectrum of gender violence, and may result in a number of unfortunate side-effects, including lesser protection of the rights of women within minority communities, and the stigmatisation of those communities. At the same time it is problematic to completely dismiss any cultural aspects of violence against women, and a nuanced approach is required which carefully balances the benefits and detriments of taking cultural factors into account. The article examines the issues within the context of the legal response to cases involving honour-related violence, arguing that although the judiciary has in a number of cases inclined towards viewing ‘honour’ as primarily cultural rather than patriarchal, in some cases they have begun to take a more gender-based or ‘mature multiculturalism’ approach.

论法治之法

法治的实现以法制为前提,而良法又是法治的题中之义,也是法治的有力保障.本文试图从立法原理、立法宗旨、立法程序以及法律的价值取向等方面来分析何为良法,以求探讨在法治建设中如何使立法真正走上良性的发展轨道.     

Is there a global environmental justice movement?

One of the causes of the increasing number of ecological distribution conflicts around the world is the changing metabolism of the economy in terms of growing flows of energy and materials. There are conflicts on resource extraction, transport and waste disposal. Therefore, there are many local complaints, as shown in the Atlas of Environmental Justice (EJatlas) and other inventories. And not only complaints; there are also many successful examples of stopping projects and developing alternatives, testifying to the existence of a rural and urban global movement for environmental justice. Moreover, since the 1980s and 1990s, this movement has developed a set of concepts and campaign slogans to describe and intervene in such conflicts. They include environmental racism, popular epidemiology, the environmentalism of the poor and the indigenous, biopiracy, tree plantations are not forests, the ecological debt, climate justice, food sovereignty, land grabbing and water justice, among other concepts. These terms were born from socio-environmental activism, but sometimes they have also been taken up by academic political ecologists and ecological economists who, for their part, have contributed other concepts to the global environmental justice movement, such as ‘ecologically unequal exchange’ or the ‘ecological footprint’.     

The everyday peace project: an innovative approach to peace pedagogy

A critical task for peace pedagogy is to challenge views of peace as primarily responses to declared war. Crisis-based politics tend to focus on exceptional situations and fail to capture the entire spectrum of violence. Premised on the idea that peace cannot be understood in isolation of larger structural problems, this paper proposes the concept of ‘everyday peace’ as a framework for peace education. Drawing from a pedagogical initiative, we examine how students engage with the concept of everyday peace and present our findings in three related domains: (1) definition of everyday peace, (2) application of everyday peace principles and (3) role of collaboration in everyday peace approaches. Our analysis underscored two important themes in participants’ definitions of everyday peace: (1) peace as a value-based praxis and (2) individual-level and systemic components of everyday peace. Applying these principles to a violent event in the local community, participant responses emphasized compassion, cultures of peace and the need to draw reflexive, meaningful connections between local and global contexts. The participants also outlined the synergistic role of collaboration in everyday peacebuilding. We discuss our findings in relation to extant research and consider implications of an everyday peace framework for holistic peace education.     

Fair Trade and justice: a comment on Walton and Deneulin

In this article we first point out that the different conceptualisations of Fair Trade, which are sometimes analytically contradictory, actually form a coordinated set. Understanding the Fair Trade project is impossible without taking these interlinked conceptualisations into consideration. Second, this set basically forms a mechanism of structural, institutional and moral reforms that guide actions. In this way Fair Trade sets out to produce less injustice than is usually the case with the structures and institutions that govern conventional trade. Nevertheless, it does not try to define what a just society is or even to perfectly define ‘fair trade’. This implies the adoption of a comparative justice angle. It is precisely by linking comparative individual situations with the structures that produce these situations that relative justice can find its strength and purpose.     

论"非羁押式强制措施"的刑期折抵——以权利保障为视角

我国的刑事法律仅规定"羁押"的日期应当在被告人被判处的自由刑中予以折抵,而将取保候审、监视居住这样的"非羁押式强制措施"限制人身自由的日期排除于折抵刑期之外.从刑事司法公正、被追诉人的权利保障及权利与义务的对等性三方面论述"非羁押式强制措施"应予折抵刑期的合理性和正当性,并提出具体的立法建议.     

理想图景与正义问题——《中国法学向何处去》读后

通过对中国法学自1978年以来26年间的这一个时代的批判,邓正来提出了一种以社会秩序的建构及其正当性为核心问题的中国法律哲学观,其任务是建构一种"中国法律理想图景".以"中国法学向何处去"为主题的系列论文,不仅强调了世界结构是这种法律哲学观的历史性条件,还隐含着建构"中国法律理想图景"必须考虑的三类正义问题.