Institutional Collective Action on Drugs: Functional and Vertical Dilemmas of Unused Pharmaceuticals

The authors use the Institutional Collective Action Framework to analyze the barriers, opposition, and opportunities for residential pharmaceutical disposal programs in the United States via a case study on a series of take‐back programs pioneered in the state of Washington by local and state governments, as well as the corresponding backlash from federal agencies. While successful in some ways, these innovative solutions directly challenged the competing federal policy regimes controlled by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and, to a lesser extent, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Findings from case studies suggest that functional dilemmas created by existing institutions with entrenched regulatory regimes are a key challenge to finding efficient solutions to vertical ICA dilemmas. Conclusions, then, connect to the broader ICA research agenda, and implications for multi‐level governance issues.     

Get in line: Do part-time legislatures use sunset laws to keep executive agencies in check

Sunset provisions are clauses embedded in legislation that cause a piece of legislation or a regulatory board to expire on a certain date unless the legislature takes affirmative action to renew the legislation or board. Supporters and legislators offer several reasons why sunset laws are valuable and useful. An article by Baugus and Bose (2015), reported on the king-and-council model of Congleton (2001), suggests that sunset laws are a key tool legislatures use in asserting themselves against an executive branch that often dominates state government. We investigate this possibility using empirical analysis, which suggests that part-time legislatures, specifically, a form of part-time legislature referred to as hybrid legislatures, are more prone to use sunset legislation as a tool to keep the executive preferences in check.     

Tariff liberalization and product standards: Regulatory chill and race to the bottom?

Does tariff liberalization cause regulatory chill by putting downward pressure on health, safety, and environmental standards? Or does it cause a race to the top as governments seek to use standards as nontariff barriers to trade? There remains remarkably little empirical evidence to answer these long-debated questions. We seek to address this lack by analyzing annual country-by-industry data on notifications of changes in sanitary and phytosanitary standards by world trade organization members. Our results suggest that the impact of increased trade pressure depends on whether domestic producers are likely to gain or lose from a change in standards. Regulatory chill is the dominant response in most countries, but countries in which producers can adapt to standards relatively cheaply appear to race to the top. Consequently, tariff liberalization encourages divergence in standards across countries.     

Can private governance boost public policy? Insights from public–private governance interactions in the fisheries and electricity sectors

Based on the inductive analysis of two parallel cases of private environmental governance – private, market-driven fisheries governance and private, market-driven governance for electricity decarbonization – this paper uncovers a trigger for positive public policy spillovers from private environmental governance. It identifies circumstances that prompt groups of business actors working as private regulators to also take on a role as public policy advocates and supporters, revealing a potential for private governance initiatives that are targeted at a particular environmental problem to serve as a bolster for the public regulatory governance of that problem as well. Both private governance cases at the basis of this analysis feature groups of business actors seeking to meet voluntary sustainability goals through the tools of private governance (specifically, through flexing buyer power and private authority in an effort to reform environmentally problematic practices among particular groups of suppliers). In both cases, the business's inability to attain private sustainability goals though private governance means alone has given rise to business demand for facilitative public environmental policy and regulation. The analysis presented in this paper thus points to the occurrence of a particular and intriguing pattern of complementarity between private authority and public policy – one where public policy is called on to fill gaps left by private environmental governance and authority. And it identifies key conditions for such private-governance-driven recentering of public policy to occur, namely the presence of private supply chain greening goals and commitments that are economically, reputationally, and/or competitively critical for businesses to attain, combined with shortfalls in the capacity of businesses' private authority to bring about such attainment. The two case analysis further suggests the importance of ENGOs in identifying and activating some of the opportunities for leveraging shortfalls in private environmental governance to the advantage of public environmental policy and regulation.     

城市房屋拆迁中司法强制执行问题的法律思考

拆迁引入司法裁决机制,可以通过司法的力量,强化对行政权力的监督和制约,给行政权力在拆迁中戴上法律的枷锁。本文从《国有土地上房屋征收与补偿条例》中有关司法强制执行的法律规定入手,分析司法强制执行在城市房屋拆迁中的价值、启动的条件、现实运行中存在的问题,并由此提出完善这一制度的建议,旨在能有效解决城市房屋拆迁过程中司法强制执行出现的问题。     

从检察权配置论审判监督的难点及对策

我国检察机关的审判监督工作流于形式，效果不佳。其表面原因在于主观上的监督意识缺失和客观上的监督方法的缺位，根源在于检察权配置问题。本文从检察权配置的角度对当前审判监督工作的难点提出自己看法，并对改革发表一定见解。     

Constructing Common Regulations of General Part of China's Environmental Code from the Perspective of Legal Order

Order comes first in legal values, while laws should maintain the consistency and stability of order. The proposed China's environmental code (Code) shall restate the prevailing environmental legal norms and optimize the prevailing environmental legal order. From the perspective of stabilizing the legal order, common regulations of General Part of the Code should connect with the constitution and the prevailing environmental laws, determine the legal values of the Code-governing environment, and provide the foundation and basic framework for each subsequent part of the Code. Therefore, common regulations of the Code should recognize and support the constitution order and bolster the emerging eco-environment legal order relating to the eco-civilization construction. They should be coherent, value-orientated, and independent, inheriting the general framework of the prevailing Environmental Protection Law of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and other specific environmental laws, and developing the applicable norms. Specifically, consistently with the legislative purposes, the Code common regulations should recognize the objectives of construction of eco-civilization and pursuit of social, economic and ecological sustainable development, and this pursuit should be carried out based on the basic principles; the application scope of ecological environment should be redefined in order to maintain the ecological value and overall ecological order; the clause on basic environmental obligations and the clause on citizens' environmental rights should be defined with the national environmental protection obligations as the main thread and the multi-player legal relationship as the framework; and the national environmental protection obligations should be preliminarily delivered with three clauses: national environmental protection financial support, environmental publicity and education, and global environmental governance.     

区域环保督察的功能定位及制度完善

跨区域环境治理需要地方政府间的密切协作,同时也离不开具有更高权威的主体的介入。作为我国的跨区域环境保护管理机构,环保督察局应当在跨区域环境治理中发挥积极的作用。然而,由于功能缺位,长期以来区域环保督察机构在跨区域环境治理方面所能发挥的作用非常有限。解决这一问题的关键在于明确我国区域环保督察机构在跨区域环境治理中的功能定位。基于我国的生态环境治理实践,通过对“污染影响跨区域”和“污染源跨区域”两大类我国目前主要的跨区域环境问题进行分析可知,区域环保督察机构应当担任“监督者”而非“管理者”的角色。充分借鉴中央环保督察的制度框架,区域环保督察机构应当通过构建跨区域环境问题的信息和线索收集机制、督促整改机制和问责启动机制实现对地方政府涉跨区域环境问题执法的有效监督,从而发挥区域环保督察机构的跨区域环境治理功能。     

商人主义、商行为主义究竟是什么?——理论综述与质疑

商人主义、商行为主义是商法理论中用来标识不同立法例的常用词。但通过检索我国现有的商法学与商法总论教科书、相关的商法学论文与专著,商人主义、商行为主义的定位与功能存在各种观点与表述,并没有相对统一的结论。求证于作为商行为主义之代表的《法国商法典》、《西班牙商法典》,作为立法例的商行为主义难以得到验证。商人主义、商行为主义有三种定位,以往的理论并未作出区分。我国未来的商事基本法在立法技术上应采商人主义。     

环境侵权归责原则之反思与重构——基于学说和实践的视角

归责原则是环境侵权制度的核心和关键,考察现行归责原则理论和实践不难发现,学说上存在过错责任与无过错责任之争,立法上面临《物权法》和《侵权责任法》的抵牾,实践中不同类型案件适用不同的归责原则。这三重悖论的根源,在于环境侵权未能依据环境学规律区分为拟制型污染侵权和实质型污染侵权,进而适用相应的归责原则:实质型污染侵权适用无过错责任;拟制型污染侵权适用过错推定责任,超标视为过错,在双方均无过错时,则以公平责任作为损失分担的原则。