行政瑕疵对环境犯罪的影响

作为环境犯罪前置性规范的行政可能存在瑕疵。行政瑕疵包括行政规范违法、行政处分违法以及行政规范欠缺三种情况。行政规范瑕疵分为行政法规违宪与行政命令违法。行政处分瑕疵可能导致行政处分无效以及行政处分可撤销两大类。行政存在瑕疵时,刑事法院是否有审查权、环境犯罪如何处理,外国的一些做法值得我们借鉴。我国在处理类似问题时应当区别具体行政行为与抽象行政行为。法院对规章及其以下的抽象行政行为以及具有重大明显违法情形的具体行政行为的适法性应当具有审查权。行政规范欠缺时环境犯罪的处理可以在立法技术上通过反面规定的形式加以解决。     

Who reads Navajo poetry and what are they reading? Exploring the semiotic functions of contemporary written Navajo

This paper analyzes contemporary written Navajo in public signs, newspapers, and poetry. While the number of public space displays of written Navajo has increased in recent years, this has not met with an increase in either Navajo literacy or in the number of Navajo speakers. This paper argues that much written Navajo is read not for semantico-referential content, but either as icons and indexes of Navajo spaces and identity or as icons and indexes of fidelity to an orthographic norm. Contemporary written Navajo poetry is not normally read as poetry but as a success or failure to align with the orthographic norm. This mirrors nothing so much as how many Navajos were taught English literacy in the boarding schools.     

Tackling invisible frontiers of global justice: an extension of Sen’s ‘Comparison View of Justice’ into IR

A central challenge of Amartya Sen’s comparative view of justice is to bring cultural diversity to bear on conceptualizing global justice, which includes building bridges across cultures that enable effective action, and rendering compatible the most beneficent of Rawlsian (or transcendental) intentions with irreducible cultural diversity. For social scientists meeting this challenge requires, first, taking account of variation of social practices in the social construction of meaning, and second, uncovering invisible frontiers of global justice that remain hidden due to conceptual or empirical oversight. The latter is especially true for contemporary International Relations (IR) theory, which assumes state actors to be the main interlocutors in the global realm, and thus precludes consideration of micro-level forms of inter-national relations (understood as interaction among all types of actors that takes place across country borders and that bears traits of national identity). Alternatively, Sen’s micro-perspectival approach offers a welcome support for pluralist approaches that both appreciate non-state access to contestation in the international arena, and account for the meaning-in-use of fundamental norms (democracy, rule of law, human rights) in different cultural and inter-national contexts.     

News Norms and the Strategic Timing and Content of Candidate Messages

Abstract

In this paper, we ask what sets of factors influence the timing and the content of presidential candidate press releases. Utilizing a unique data set, we examine the influence of internal campaign factors as well as external media factors on campaign information dissemination during the invisible primary season. We find that both types of factors may influence the timing of press releases; as to content, however, media norms are less likely to alter a candidate's general strategic message, which is dictated by his competitive status and national stature.     

Estonia caught between East and West: EU conditionality,Russia's activism and minority integration

This article takes a subjective approach to studying norm compliance in order to determine how EU conditionality and Russia's activism have affected elite attitudes toward minority policies, majority–minority relations, and language use in Estonian society in the post-accession period. The results of a Q method study and semi-structured interviews with integration elites in spring 2008 reveal four distinct viewpoints. The study casts doubt upon the success of EU conditionality in Estonia by demonstrating that European minority rights norms remain contested and have not been internalized by a substantial portion of elites. In addition, the study points to an important role for Russia's activism in the development of a more inclusive society. Russia's activism actually works against minority integration by reinforcing pre-existing domestic norms that are not compatible with European minority rights standards and by aggravating tensions over history and language, which frustrate integration efforts. This article ultimately contributes to studies on the effects of international pressure on minority integration by pointing to the need for greater attention to the ways in which multiple actors at both the international and domestic levels structure the influence of EU conditionality.     

International Norms and the End of Apartheid in South Africa

This article examines the interface in the post-World War II era between expanding global movements supporting human rights and traditional great power concerns regarding global security, and asks why an international alliance of actors mobilized to pressure the Western powers, particularly the USA, to politically isolate and economically sanction South Africa in the midst of the cold war. We argue that in the international struggle against apartheid, humanist (human rights) ideology emanating from social movements in global civil society clashed with traditional realist ideology regarding what constituted state security in the global polity. The norms of self-determination of nations and anti-racism together fueled global activism and challenged powerful Western states. Facing mass protests and lobbying efforts from citizens, democratic states across the Western world found greater security in upholding their own professed human rights principles than in maintaining close economic ties to the apartheid regime.     

Parallel authoritarian powers: an explanation of Mexico’s authoritarian regime breakdown

Regional multilateral regimes have become important instruments for promoting and defending democracy around the world. The novel nature of these regional instruments has generated a cottage industry in social science scholarship. Yet, none of these works compare the democracy promotion and defence regimes of the Organization of American States (OAS) and the African Union (AU). This article is designed to fill this gap. We argue that the unique constellation of actors that are members of each respective organization have reinforced two distinct democracy promotion and defence paths. The state-driven regime evolution characteristic of the Americas contrasts with Africa's expert-driven process of regime construction. The state-centric process of the OAS regime has bolstered a narrow interstate multilateralism that upholds traditional sovereign state prerogatives and minimizes the role for non-state actors in the promotion and defence of democracy in the Americas. The expert-driven process of AU's regime construction has fostered a legalistic approach to democratic promotion and defence in Africa and opened up space for non-state actors to play a central role in the development of regional democracy promotion and defence norms.     

Constitutional Conventions and the Prince of Wales

The Upper Tribunal (Administrative Appeals Chamber) held in Evans v Information Commissioner that certain correspondence between Prince Charles and government officials must be disclosed under freedom of information legislation. Much of the judgment was devoted to a discussion of the constitutional conventions applicable to Prince Charles, and the case provides a useful example of how conventions and laws can interact. In this note, I argue that the Upper Tribunal misunderstood how conventions are distinguished from one another, and misapplied the test for the identification of conventions.     

自然资源国家所有权双阶构造说

祛除国家所有权的法律神话,遵循解释论立场的研究范式,中国语境中的自然资源国家所有权是一个法规范系统。该系统包含基础性规范、确权性规范、授权性规范及管制性规范四个单元,分别由宪法文本、物权法文本和特别法文本予以载明。具备转介功能的引致条款把各单元串联成一个整体。在现代法秩序中,所有权绝不是由某一个部门法“独家经营”的法律概念。就所有权类型的理论反思而言,自然资源国家所有权蕴含着宪法所有权与民法所有权的双阶构造,纯粹私权说与纯粹公权说均难谓恰当。就自然资源使用的法律调整机制而言,应回归公物与私物二元区分的大陆法传统,并对“非对物采掘类”与“对物采掘类”自然资源作类型化处理,由此形成不同的规范配置。     

自下而上的规范制定与网络安全国际规范的生成

信息通信技术的使用给国际和平与国家安全带来威胁,而网络安全国际规范还处在生成的过程中。各国政府致力于达成一定的规范共识,但常常受到国家间政治博弈的影响。在此情况下,互联网企业及非政府组织开始以“自下而上”的方式积极参与到规范制定中,并提出了不少有别于现有规范成果的规范倡议。互联网企业及非政府组织期望严格约束国家的网络空间行为,并在网络安全治理中扮演更重要的角色。它们提出的规范倡议从多个方面弥补了现有规范的不足。在现实中,主导规范制定的国家行为体与非国家行为体既相互利用,又持续博弈,互联网企业及非政府组织在规范制定进程中的权力与影响力受限。联合国信息安全开放式工作组及少部分国家有限度地向非国家行为体开放,使经过挑选的部分规范倡议进入政府间规范讨论议程,但国家间的分歧与博弈又阻止了这些规范倡议成为受到认可的国际规范。尽管如此,国家间博弈方式的转变,即越来越多的国家利用互联网企业及非政府组织的力量为政治博弈服务,以及公私关系更为平衡的新型网络安全治理模式的构建,为互联网企业及非政府组织争取更大的规范制定权力提供了机会。