Analysis of the Identification of Decriminalization of Loan Defrauding from the Perspective of Self－Responsibility Benchmark

The current criminal law on loan defrauding is flawed. It requires reflection and improvement. On the basis of an empirical research into the precedent loan defrauding cases, under the guidance of the self－responsibility theory, this article advocates the timely decriminalization of the borrower as the victim and calls to account the lender’s legal responsibility. Legal enforcement on negative responsibility and the practical criminal law interpretation provides support for this measure. The rationale of the decriminalization of the borrower and the legal responsibility of the lender should be ensured according to the principle of a legally prescribed punishment for a specified purpose, instead of any arbitrary expansion of its application. Its purport is to seek an effective path for the balance and coordination between the borrower and the lender in their interest relationship, so as to solve actual problems such as financing difficulties in practice, which is a comprehensive and effective protection for both sides’ legal interests, and is an innovation and harmonious development of the socialist market economy in our country.     

The Significant Development of the Exclusionary Rule of Illegal Evidence in China: from the Perspective of the Promulgation of “The Rule of Strict Exclusion of Illegal Evidence”

The function and value of exclusionary rule of illegal evidence lie not only in the prevention of mistrial, but also in the manifestation of procedural justice, the regulation of judicial conduct and the emphasis on the protection of human rights. The promulgation of “the rule of strict exclusion of illegal evidence” has made a positive response to the practical problems during the implementation of exclusionary rule of illegal evidence. Many provisions in this rule are much more strict than before, such as further defining the scope of illegal oral evidence, clarifying the method of excluding the repeated confessions, emphasizing the timeliness of exclusion of illegal evidence and the synchronization of supervision of investigation, attaching the importance of collection and application of process evidence, and exerting the review of the legitimacy of evidence in pre-trial conference. After the promulgation of “the rule of strict exclusion of illegal evidence”, we should continue to focus on the implementation of exclusionary rule of illegal evidence, ensuring its function of post-punishment and illegal prevention.     

Videogame analysis: a social-semiotic approach

The relevance of videogames in the contemporary cultural ecosystem and their social impact make it necessary to develop theories and analytical models to understand the expressive potential of videogame design, and how videogames work as texts, giving shape to certain values, behavioural patterns and ideological visions. To do so, it is crucial to build a bridge between game studies and contemporary semiotics. Thus, with this aim, we present in this paper an analysis model for studying videogames as texts that combines theoretical and methodological elements from social semiotics and procedural rhetorics, a specific branch of game studies. Our model is based on four levels: the narrative, ludo-narrative, system-gameplay and designer-player dimensions. As a case study, the model is applied to the videogame The Last of Us.     

The Seattle Teamsters and the procedural state, 1935–1942

The Teamsters Union often clashed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Seattle between 1935 and 1942. At times the Seattle Teamsters resisted the NLRB, yet in other cases the union worked within the agency's procedures to expand. In the years after the Wagner Act, the Teamsters exploited the NLRB to block employees from choosing their own union. This article uses archival records to explore cases where the Seattle Teamsters successfully adapted to federal regulation of collective bargaining between 1935 and 1942. Seattle workers opposed to the Teamsters bravely fought to protect their right to organize, yet these employees faced a union skilled at working with the procedural state. These cases show the increasing ability of the Seattle Teamsters to enroll workers wary of the union by complying with NLRB rules.     

Two Models of Monetary Redress: A Structural Analysis

Monetary redress is a developing area of human rights policy. The article examines how a redress program’s design affects the interests of program applicants. It distinguishes two program models, individual assessment and common experience, and explores their differing effects on applicants’ interests. Analyzing two Irish cases, redress for survivors of the industrial schools and the Magdalene laundries, the discussion is applicable to a wide range of redress programs including those in postconflict, transitional justice, and postcolonial contexts.     

Clarity of responsibility and foreign policy performance voting

Do voters’ assessments of the government's foreign policy performance influence their vote intentions? Does the ‘clarity of responsibility’ in government moderate this relationship? Existing research on the United States demonstrates that the electorate's foreign policy evaluations influence voting behaviour. Whether a similar relationship exists across the advanced democracies in Europe remains understudied, as does the role of domestic political institutions that might generate responsibility diffusion and dampen the effect of foreign policy evaluations on vote choice. Using the attitudinal measures of performance from the 2011 Transatlantic Trends survey collected across 13 European countries, these questions are answered in this study through testing on incumbent vote the diffusion‐inducing effects of five key domestic factors frequently used in the foreign policy analysis literature. Multilevel regression analyses conclude that the electorate's ability to assign punishment decreases at higher levels of responsibility diffusion, allowing policy makers to circumvent the electoral costs of unpopular foreign policy. Specifically, coalition governments, semi‐presidential systems, ideological dispersion among the governing parties and the diverse allocation of the prime ministerial and foreign policy portfolios generate diffusion, dampening the negative effects of foreign policy disapproval on vote choice. This article contributes not only to the debate on the role of foreign policy in electoral politics, but also illustrates the consequential effects of domestic institutions on this relationship.     

Regulating Autonomy: An Assessment of Policy Language for Highly Automated Vehicles

Self‐driving cars (also known as driverless cars, autonomous vehicles, and highly automated vehicles [HAVs]) will change the regulatory, political, and ethical frameworks surrounding motor vehicles. At the highest levels of automation, HAVs are operated by independent machine agents, making decisions without the direct intervention of humans. The current transportation system assumes human intervention though, including legal and moral responsibilities of human operators. Has the development of these artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous system (AS) technologies outpaced the ethical and political conversations? This paper examines discussions of HAVs, driver responsibility, and technology failure to highlight the differences between how the policy‐making institutions in the United States (Congress and the Public Administration) and technology and transportation experts are or are not speaking about responsibility in the context of autonomous systems technologies. We report findings from a big data analysis of corpus‐level documents to find that enthusiasm for HAVs has outpaced other discussions of the technology.     

What Role for Human Rights in Business?

The Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) were endorsed by the United Nations Human Rights Council in June 2011, following the six‐year mandate of the Special Representative to the Secretary General (SRSG) on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises. The SRSG developed a framework comprised of three pillars: (1) States have a duty to protect against human rights abuses committed by third parties, including business enterprises; (2) business enterprises have a responsibility to respect human rights; and (3) victims of business‐related human rights abuses need access to effective remedies. In particular, guiding principle (GP) 11 provides that business enterprises should respect human rights, that is, they should avoid infringing on the human rights of others and address adverse human rights impacts with which they are involved. This article considers the implications of the Guiding Principles' framework for business; the continuing role of conventional accountability mechanisms in providing access to remedy for victims under the third pillar of the framework; and developments in ‘hard law', with a particular focus on the approach by the UK, since the introduction of the UNGPs, before turning, briefly, to the future for business and human rights.     

Fair treatment,fair play? The relationship between fair treatment perceptions,political trust and compliant and cooperative attitudes cross-nationally

Obtaining citizens’ voluntary compliance with political decisions is a fundamental democratic challenge. Fair treatment by public officials plays a key role in theoretical and empirical studies on citizens’ compliance and cooperation. Yet it is unclear whether citizens within different societies react to (un)fair treatment in the same way. Using multilevel structural equation modelling and multilevel regression analysis on the European Social Survey 2010–2 (N = 52,458), this article shows that perceptions of fair treatment by police officers are associated with higher levels of trust in political institutions and in turn stronger compliant and cooperative attitudes of citizens in 27 countries. Yet the link between perceptions of unfair treatment and institutional trust is stronger in countries in which fair behaviour is more prevalent. While fair treatment is often considered to be a universal norm affecting citizens in a uniform way, this article sheds light on important cross-national variations.     

以审判为中心的刑事诉讼制度改革

十八届四中全会决定提出“推进以审判为中心的诉讼制度改革”,这触及了中国刑事诉讼结构中一个由来已久的症结.“以审判为中心”观念的缺失,造成了同一审级诉讼流程中审判的“离心化”和实际上的“侦查中心主义”,进而导致垂直审级结构中第一审的“失重”,在实践中引发了较为严重的后果和特殊的政治风险.推进以审判为中心的刑事诉讼制度改革,应当在两个方向上着手:在水平方向上,首先应当在宏观的侦查、审査起诉和审判的关系上实现“以审判为中心”,其中的关键在于抑制案卷移送制度的不良影响,同时为“审判中心主义”发掘更大的制度空间;其次在审判阶段应当做到“以庭审为中心”,其核心要求是保护被告方的对质权;法院判决的权威性来自公正的庭审,法院自身也不能脱离庭审来进行事实认定.在纵向的审级结构上,在打造坚实的第一审的基础上,确立第一审在事实认定方面的权威地位,同时合理界定和调整第二审和死刑复核程序的功能,确保第一审在整个刑事程序体系中居于“重心”地位.