Introduction to Neumann: law and socialist political theory

Abstract

Regulators attempt to understand financial markets and their risks in terms of categories of knowledge and datasets that are defined and produced by the markets. However, regulators cannot adequately interpret or utilize such knowledge, for reasons including their social distance from the sites of knowledge production, the diversity of financial firms’ proprietary risk models, firms’ abilities to game the rules thus rendering the ‘metrics’ meaningless and several backfiring aspects of global regulatory networking and reform. Calls for yet more information about trading, posed in terms of the merits of transparency, result in information swamping of regulators. Meanwhile, while policy-makers tinker with regulatory structures (‘architecture’), political reaction to the crisis de-legitimizes public regulation as a project. Yet there is one positive aspect of the reforms – enhancing powers for ‘resolution’ of financial firms in ways that impact upon investors while minimizing wider destabilization – upon which the regulatory information requirement can and should be refocused. To protect the public interest, legal transparency is required, trading transparency is not. This paper introduces these issues by drawing on critical work on transparency and markets.     

Challenges to the East Asian environment

Abstract

Can economic interdependence reduce conflicts among states in East Asia? The so-called ‘cold politics and hot economics’ has become a defining feature of Sino-Japanese political-economic relations. This puzzling pattern of interaction is clearly illustrated in the sovereignty dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands. The island dispute has unfolded in five rounds of distinct clashes thus far. From one perspective, the competitive elements in the island dispute make it difficult for both Japan and China to give way to the other side on the territorial and maritime issues. At the same time, the two countries have successfully managed to contain their respective territorial and maritime claims thus far. Drawing on the liberal peace theory, this article systematically demonstrates that economic interdependence has repeatedly fostered the de-escalation of Sino-Japanese conflict over territorial and maritime rights.     

Economic cooperation in Northeast Asia: The proposed Tumen River scheme

Abstract

This paper examines a relatively unexplored aspect of the Russo-Japanese territorial dispute: the involvement of subnational actors. It focuses in particular on the sustained campaign of domestic lobbying and paradiplomacy by elites from the Far East region of Sakhalin aimed at preventing the Russian central government from transferring the South Kuril Islands/Northern Territories to Japan during the 1990s. It explores the various responses to the ‘Sakhalin factor’ from federal authorities in Russia, as well as private and public bodies in Japan, highlighting the subsequent localization and pluralization of diplomatic channels. The paper also considers why the ‘Sakhalin factor’ became so prominent, pointing to a synergy of factors that include the high-profile anti-concessionary campaigns of the Sakhalin political elite, the fallout from Russia's troubled attempts at state building and a possible convergence of interests between Boris Yeltsin and regional authorities. The paper concludes with an analysis of how Vladimir Putin's federal reforms, launched in 2000, have diminished Sakhalin's authority over the South Kuril Islands.     

Globalisation before the crash: the City of London and UK economic strategy

The global financial crisis provides an opportune moment to analyse the rise of the City of London financial markets, their role in the globalisation process and an attempt by the Labour Party Left in the 1970s to challenge emerging transnational forces. The USA became the world's ‘hegemon’ after the Second World War, but London retained its power in finance; well placed to challenge the post-war Keynesian regulatory consensus in favour of globalising interests, theoretically and politically served by the rise of neo-liberal ideology. In response the Labour Party Left devised its radical ‘Programme 1973’ and subsequently the Alternative Economic Strategy, which in seeking to defend social democracy, understood the necessity to prevent the erosion of national financial controls. The 1976 International Monetary Fund crisis was a defining moment in this battle. This article includes interviews with key contemporary actors and is based in the discipline of International Political Economy.     

Arbitration in financial dispute resolution: the final step to reconstructing the default(s) and exception(s)?

In this article, I argue for caution in embracing family arbitration as a new form of private ordering for resolving parties' financial disputes. I explain that family arbitration may be more successful than other forms of private ordering and final court hearings in enabling certain types of parties to resolve certain types of disputes. I consider why family arbitration may not become numerically significant despite its potential benefits, but may be much more important in normative terms. Lawyer-led negotiations remain the most common form of out-of-court resolution and constitute the de facto default form of bargaining in the shadow of the normative regime framed by ss 23–25 Matrimonial Causes Act 1973. Together with the transformation in approach to nuptial agreements, family arbitration may mark a normative shift towards autonomy and private ordering. I question whether this is a desirable step for family law, at least before we have resolved the underlying policy debate.     

域外医疗纠纷ADR制度对我国医疗纠纷人民调解制度的启示

本文采用比较研究的方法,通过介绍域外医疗纠纷非诉讼法律制度的创新之处,从中借鉴其合理设置,为进一步完善我国医疗纠纷处理机制,优化我国医疗纠纷人民调解制度,构建和谐医患关系提供一个较为开阔的视角和思路。     

医疗纠纷案例鉴定及解决方式转变的研究

目的以某综合性三甲医院2009—2011年全部已结案医疗纠纷病例为研究对象,探讨医疗纠纷解决机制及相关医疗纠纷鉴定的转变。结果2009—2011年3年中,共结案医疗纠纷106例,其中医院自行和解结案26件,占24．5％;第三方调解结案21件,占19．8％;法院判决和调解结案59件,占55．7％。建议医疗机构应充分发挥第三方解决医疗纠纷的能力,重视医疗纠纷鉴定。     

Deepening democracy through community dispute resolution: problems and prospects in South Africa and Chile

Post-apartheid South Africa and post-Pinochet Chile have taken significant steps to democratize justice. This article acknowledges conventional reforms of both countries’ criminal justice systems but focuses primarily on case studies of participatory and restorative initiatives that have attempted to expand the theory and practice of public safety practices in non-state settings. The experience of resolving interpersonal disputes in new democracies and what it means for the people who do it is examined. The research hypothesized that public participation in matters of justice and security can foster more active citizenship, a contribution to deepening democracy in countries in transition, as South Africa and Chile have been since the early 1990s. The experiences of the Community Peace Program and the Barrio Sin Violencia shed light on both the potential and the limitations of efforts to deepen democracy through community dispute resolution. They suggest that whether or not public participation in matters of justice and security fosters more active citizenship in democratizing countries depends on complex cultural and historical influences, including perspectives on sources of authority, institutional patterns of justice, and mutual trust.     

专家辅助人制度的问题与改革——基于我国侦查实践的研究

新《刑事诉讼法》设立的专家辅助人制度,将其适用范围限定在了庭审阶段。但根据我国目前的司法实践来看,刑事诉讼中的鉴定争议大都集中于初查或侦查阶段,因此部分侦查机关已将该制度应用于侦查阶段的鉴定程序中,并取得了较好的效果。由此看来,仅仅在庭审阶段建立专家辅助人,必然存在较多局限,而侦查阶段的鉴定程序建立专家辅助人制度势必具有必要性与可行性。因此,立法应根据诉讼实践,对目前的专家辅助人制度进行完善,以建立合理可行的侦查阶段专家辅助人制度。     

The Sino–Japanese territorial dispute and threat perception in power transition

A territorial dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands has gained a high profile in Sino–Japanese relations. Since the 2012 escalation of the territorial dispute, there is no sign of any de-escalation despite economic interdependence, which previously helped ease the tension. Drawing on the constructivist understanding of threat perception and power transition theory, this article analyzes the way in which the deepening of threat perceptions associated with a perceived regional power transition prevents Japan and China from working beyond their subjective conceptions of justice associated with boarders and history. Since 2012, the Sino–Japanese territorial dispute has increasingly fitted into a larger picture of power-political conflict taking place in a power transition in which both Japan and China aim to return to ‘normality’ by propagating their territorial claims, strengthening their military capabilities, and strategic realignment. To that end, this article first introduces a theoretical framework on the centrality of threat perceptions in power transition. Second, it traces the ways in which Japan and China have developed a threat perception of each other since 1972. The third section deals with the escalation of the Sino–Japanese territorial dispute since 2010 and highlights the deepening of mutual suspicion and threat perception exemplified at the bilateral and multilateral levels. I conclude that the Sino–Japanese territorial debate entered a new stage of normative and power-political competition in earning international support for territorial claims in the East China Sea.