解读新《刑事诉讼法》 推进司法鉴定制度建设

新《刑事诉讼法》对司法鉴定制度做了如下修改：纠正了＂鉴定结论＂不准确的提法,还原了司法鉴定之本质;删除了＂人身伤害的重新鉴定或者精神病医学鉴定由省级人民政府指定医院进行＂的规定,理顺了司法鉴定体制;明确了鉴定人应当出庭作证的范围,确立了鉴定意见的传闻排除规则;增强了鉴定人参与诉讼的权利保护;增设了专家辅助人制度,使鉴定意见的质证程序有望实质化。这些修改是司法鉴定程序立法的重大进步,然而鉴定人权利保障体系尚有待健全。     

What Really Happened in New Orleans? Estimating the Threat of Violence During the Hurricane Katrina Disaster∗

Although research indicates that initial media reports greatly exaggerated the severity of violent crime in post‐Katrina New Orleans, it is not yet clear whether violence in general was a problem for storm victims. In this study, data from a unique survey of storm victims are used to estimate the overall threat of violence faced by those who were hardest hit by the storm and who lived through the disaster in New Orleans. The findings suggest that, while the threat of violent victimization was very real for some respondents, it did not dominate the experience of these storm victims. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the social construction of law and order, the persistence of disaster myths, negative stereotyping of the urban poor, and crime control issues in the context of disaster management and planning.     

解释宪政:辛亥革命的制度论与文化论之辩

辛亥革命是中国宪政史上的转捩点,它瓦解了传统的帝国,却没能顺利完成新的民族国家建构;它组建了共和政体,却没有带来共和与民主。与其说是传统文化阻碍了宪政的生长,不如说是迷信西方模式所造成的苦果。革命派和立宪派的争论,背后实际上隐喻着制度论与文化论的分野;在是否应当学习西方的问题上,它们既相通又冲突。只有将制度论的理性建构与文化论的经验累积有机统一起来,才能达致宪政的坦途。     

共建21世纪海上丝绸之路——走出东亚格局中的二元困境

传统东亚格局具有明显的一元化特点,无论是经济贸易还是政治安全都高度依赖美国。伴随中国经济的快速崛起,东亚经济体对美国的经济贸易依赖逐步被中国所取代,从而形成当前东亚地区格局中的二元困境,即政治安全依赖美国,而经济贸易依赖中国。同时20世纪90年代末金融危机后逐步形成的东亚传统的合作模式也遭遇多层面挑战。中国新一届政府提出的建设21世纪海上丝绸之路的战略构想,基础扎实、背景厚重、举措有力、开放度高、统领力强,在区域合作架构上实现了一系列重大突破,也为走出东亚格局中的二元困境开启了可行路径。中国是构建21世纪海上丝绸之路的发起者,东盟是21世纪海上丝绸之路的重点地区,通过共建21世纪海上丝绸之路,中国与东盟关系将发展到全新阶段,提升至更高水平。     

Remembering Mao Zedong

正The nation commemorates the contributions of New China’s founding father Mao Zedong,a man whose name is inseparable with the birth of the People’s Republic of China(PRC),has long been regarded as a symbol of the Chinese Communist Revolution.Now,his lasting influence has been reaffirmed through his 120th anniversary.     

新媒体视角下社会管理创新探讨

新媒体时代的到来,改变了信息传播的方式,改变了人们的生活、生产方式,给社会管理创新带来了机遇和挑战.新媒体视角下,如何推进社会管理创新,是当前各级政府面临的重大课题.社会管理者应树立现代媒体意识,运用新媒体技术,预防和减少社会矛盾,改进社会管理方式,以实现社会治理的科学化.     

Area Differences and Time Trends in Crime Reporting: Comparing New York with Other Metropolitan Areas

Police measures of crime are shaped by victims’ decisions to notify the police. To obtain a better understanding of US crime trends, this study uses the National Crime Victimization Survey to examine geographic differences and temporal trends in crime reporting in New York and other metropolitan areas for the period 1979-2004. We find that net of crime characteristics and survey methodology, the New York metropolitan area showed fewer increases in crime reporting than did other metropolitan areas. These divergent trends suggest that the real differences in the drop of nonlethal violence between New York and other areas may have been smaller than those indicated by police-based crime statistics. We also find that from the early 1990s to 2004, New York showed a sharp decrease in the likelihood of victims perceiving that “police wouldn’t help.” This trend suggests that police reforms in New York City have not resulted in more victims using police-related reasons to explain their nonreporting behavior. Instead, researchers need to develop a broader theoretical framework (not an exclusive focus on police actions) to understand how police- and nonpolice-related factors may explain the geographic variation in the trends of reporting observed in this study.     

Innovation in Communication and Media Studies: Reflections from South African Academics

Abstract

This article discusses the possibility of a discipline of communication and media studies that is innovative, pluralistic and open in ways that conduce to development. Based on a set of in-depth interviews with a select group of South African communication and media studies scholars, the article discusses critically how, and if, communication and media studies as a field is innovative. Innovation here talks to a discipline that is imaginatively open to a myriad of different, diverse and divergent contributions relevant to the human endeavour of understanding the world in ways that better humanity. In doing this, the authors critically explore how the discipline is perceived variously by the scholars interviewed as enabling, encompassing and embodying innovation in research, teaching, curricula, theory, methodology, resourcing, and community outreach. As such the article addresses a span of issues that either support or inhibit innovation.     

The Russian Revolution at 100: the Soviet experience in the mirror of permanent counterrevolution

Abstract

The Russian Revolution is analysed in this paper in the context of a conjuncture dominated by counterrevolution. Beginning with the repression of the 1850s, a process of permanent counterrevolution has become the over-determining trend of social-political history. The Russian Revolution was subject to several distinct aspects of this process. First was external counterrevolution, the attack on it from the outside. Whilst Anglo-America was the main bulwark organising it, the Nazi/fascist counterrevolution and invasion of the USSR was an example of counterrevolution that ran out of control and ended in a defeat in Europe that was only overcome through a long and risky Cold War. Internal counterrevolution affected the Russian Revolution as part of a longer process of adjusting socialist theory to successive defeats. In the Soviet case, Socialism in One Country was the decisive mutation in this respect and must be viewed as the decisive component of the triumph of counterrevolution. After the war, Anglo-America adjusted the counterrevolutionary strategy to surgical excisions of socialist tendencies until the USSR, isolated and ideologically exhausted, collapsed. Even so, several of its legacies continue to be relevant, notably the nationality policy and internationalism. Also, today’s information revolution casts a new light on the Soviet planning experience that must be studied now that capitalism is slipping into a systemic crisis.     

Introduction: Meritocracy in Perspective. The Rise of the Meritocracy 60 Years On

Sixty years after its publication, Michael Young’s The Rise of the Meritocracy remains one of the most important texts for understanding the changing intellectual politics of postwar Britain. Young’s fictional vision of a meritocratic society explores the consequences of a society where each citizen is judged according to the formula ‘I.Q. + Effort = Merit’. The successful meritocrats hoard ever-greater rewards for themselves, crystallising into a rigid and repressive elite who rule over an increasingly powerless and depressed underclass. While the concept has evolved and adapted, the language of meritocracy is one of the great survivors of postwar British politics. In an age characterised by the rise of populist leaders and movements, as well as a backlash against educated ‘liberal elites’, revisiting, reinterpreting and re-evaluating Young’s influential satire and the central place the concept of meritocracy occupies in the history of postwar Britain has never been more important.