法官判决的知识基础

通过两个有关法官判决的司法文本的对比阅读,力求揭示“常识”这一知识形态自身内部结构因素的流变以及逻辑基础和知识谱系的转化,进而动态地展现其与司法知识之间的微观内在勾连;并在此基础上,努力在社会转型、权力分工以及司法知识形态的流变三者之间建立起一定意义的内在关联,进而揭示出当下中国司法知识专业化建设所可能面临的问题,从而指出解决问题的可能的司法模式或司法改革道路。     

试析美国对华政策的利益集团因素

在美国的外交决策中,利益集团有着不可忽视的影响力.冷战后,利益集团更是公开走到了前台,通过游说等手段间接地影响着美国对外政策的制定.为此,中国在处理中美关系时,必须把美国各利益集团因素考虑进去,大力开展第二渠道外交.     

转型社会的政治决策：期权博弈与公平均衡解释

在转型社会中,政治决策是拥有主要政治权力的行政主体,与反映主要群体利益的社会主体之间的博弈均衡。现实的各种政治后果可以从考虑期权价值的延迟均衡和抢先均衡来说明,也可以表现为考虑心理动机的“公平均衡”。在如同海峡两岸博弈这样复杂的均衡组合中,作者推论存在可以称为“虚妄公平”的均衡概念。转型社会的各个主体因此必须寻求“真实公平”策略选择,才能实现真正公平的政治决策目标。     

委托理财协议中的保底条款效力之追问

保底条款是委托理财协议中最重要的条款,它不仅决定了这种投资方式的存在与否,同时亦是委托理财失败诉争时当事双方相持不下的根本原因。对于该条款的效力认定,目前的法律与司法实践并没有提供能真正能起到指导与评价作用的答案。因此,从合同的私法性、社会法性及保底条款与其它条款的勾连角度来追问保底条款的效力问题是合理与适法判决的关键所在。     

Who do you believe? Assessing student and community member perceptions of bystander and victim witnesses

ABSTRACT

Eyewitness identifications provide critical evidence as they are often persuasive to jurors, but documented misidentifications have led to wrongful convictions . Researchers have examined how jurors evaluate multiple eyewitnesses, but not different types of eyewitnesses, such as bystanders and victims. Additionally, none of this research has examined jurors’ ability to evaluate bystander and victim identifications that vary in quality. Two studies examined student and community members’ perceptions of bystander and victim witnesses. Study 1 participants read about a good or poor-quality identification made by a bystander or victim. Study 2 participants read about both bystander and victim identifications that varied in quality. Both studies found jurors were sensitive to identification quality as demonstrated by a variety of legal decisions, including verdict, though the quality of a second identification in Study 2 did not change any legal decisions. Multiple differences between student and community member samples emerged across both studies suggesting that community members are more likely to trust witnesses and convict. Reliance on student samples may overestimate jurors’ ability to evaluate multiple eyewitnesses and underestimate the likelihood of conviction based on flawed eyewitness evidence.     

Firearm examination: Examiner judgments and computer‐based comparisons

Forensic firearm examination provides the court of law with information about the source of fired cartridge cases. We assessed the validity of source decisions of a computer‐based method and of 73 firearm examiners who compared breechface and firing pin impressions of 48 comparison sets. We also compared the computer‐based method's comparison scores with the examiners' degree‐of‐support judgments and assessed the validity of the latter. The true‐positive rate (sensitivity) and true‐negative rate (specificity) of the computer‐based method (for the comparison of both the breechface and firing pin impressions) were 94.4% and at least 91.7%, respectively. For the examiners, the true‐positive rate was at least 95.3% and the true‐negative rate was at least 86.2%. The validity of the source decisions improved when the evaluations of breechface and firing pin impressions were combined and for the examiners also when the perceived difficulty of the comparison decreased. The examiners were reluctant to provide source decisions for "difficult" comparisons even though their source decisions were mostly correct. The correlation between the computer‐based method's comparison scores and the examiners' degree‐of‐support judgments was low for the same‐source comparisons to negligible for the different‐source comparisons. Combining the outcomes of computer‐based methods with the judgments of examiners could increase the validity of firearm examinations. The examiners' numerical degree‐of‐support judgments for their source decisions were not well‐calibrated and showed clear signs of overconfidence. We suggest studying the merits of performance feedback to calibrate these judgments.     

行政决策听证及其存在问题、对策初探

现行听证会给公众造成了听证走过场的不良印象;对策是制定行政程序法典,扩大听证范围,公开征求民意渠道,延长听证时间,建立代表意见回应机制,分离听证组织机构与决策机关。     

Sentencing disparity: An analysis of judicial consistency

This paper reports the results of an analysis of judicial disparity in the sentencing of persons represented by legal-aid lawyers. Because the socioeconomic characteristics of legal-aid clients are fairly uniform, the analysis of such cases made it possible to explore the influence of case facts, system factors, and the judicial disparity of the sentences given in relatively similar situations. The analysis finds that case facts and offender characteristics, particularly prior record, are good predictors of sentence type and excellent predictors of sentence length. While there was some indication of judicial inconsistency in sentence-type decisions, that is, unexplained variation from case to case, there was little indication of strong individual judicial bias across the cases used in the analysis.     

我国公共决策主体多元体系的建构与完善

本文基于系统理论的研究视角,认为我国的公共决策主体体系包括核心层决策主体、中间层决策主体、外部层决策主体,并从各个子系统的角度提出了优化公共决蓑主体体系并提升其能力的途径与方法,以期实现科学的公共决策多元参与,提升公共决策体系整体能力,实现公共决策主体体系总体功能的最大化。