scholarly journals Ordering Power under the Party: A Relational Approach to Law and Politics in China

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (01) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan WANG ◽  
Sida LIU
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Legal Profession ◽  
Legal Institutions ◽  
Relational Approach ◽  
Chinese Leadership ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
Iron Triangle

AbstractExisting scholarship of China’s legal institutions has primarily focused on individual institutions, such as the court, the police, or the legal profession. This article proposes a relational approach to the study of political-legal institutions in China. To understand the order and exercise of power by various political-legal institutions, the relational approach emphasizes the spatial positions of actors or institutions (the police, courts, lawyers, etc.) within the broader political-legal system and their mutual interactions. We suggest that the changing ideas of the Chinese leadership about the role of law as an instrument of governance have shaped the relations between various legal and political institutions. The interactions of these political-legal institutions (e.g. the “iron triangle” of the police, the court and the procuracy) further reveal the dynamics of power relations at work.

Common Law Constitutionalism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William E. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Legal Profession ◽  
Legal Institutions ◽  
Law System ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Law System

This chapter shows how common law pleading, the use of common law vocabulary, and substantive common law rules lay at the foundation of every colony’s law by the middle of the eighteenth century. There is some explanation of how this common law system functioned in practice. The chapter then discusses why colonials looked upon the common law as a repository of liberty. It also discusses in detail the development of the legal profession individually in each of the thirteen colonies. Finally, the chapter ends with a discussion of the role of legislation. It shows that, although legislation had played an important role in the development of law and legal institutions in the seventeenth century, eighteenth-century Americans were suspicious of legislation, with the result that the output of pre-Revolutionary legislatures was minimal.

scholarly journals Burning the Rechtsstaat: legal institutions and protection of the rule of law

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-131
Author(s):  
Christopher A. Hartwell ◽  
Mateusz Urban
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Institutional Context ◽  
Economic Outcomes ◽  
Legal Institutions ◽  
Economic Literature ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
The Past

AbstractThe economic literature is clear that transparent and impartial rule of law is crucial for successful economic outcomes. However, how does one guarantee rule of law? This paper uses the idea of ‘self-reinforcing’ institutions to show how political institutions may derail rule of law if associated judicial institutions are not self-reinforcing. We illustrate this using the contrasting examples of Estonia and Poland to frame the importance of institutional context in determining both rule of law and the path of legal institutions. Although starting tabula rasa for a legal system is difficult, it worked well for rule of law in Estonia in the post-communist transition. Alternately, Poland pursued a much more gradualist strategy of reform of formal legal institutions; this approach meant that justice institutions, slow to shed their legacy and connection with the past, were relatively weak and susceptible to attack from more powerful (political) ones. We conclude that legal institutions can protect the rule of law but only if they are in line with political institutions, using their self-reinforcing nature as a shield from political whims of the day.

Getting Schooled: Legal Mobilization as an Educative Process

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (01) ◽  
pp. 163-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Gallagher ◽  
Yujeong Yang
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
Legal Mobilization ◽  
Legal Knowledge ◽  
Legal Institutions ◽  
Legal Representation ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
Educative Process

This article explores the role of formal education and specific legal knowledge in the process of legal mobilization. Using survey data and in-depth case narratives of workplace disputes in China, we highlight three major findings. First, and uncontroversially, higher levels of formal education are associated with greater propensity to use legal institutions and to find them more effective. Second, informally acquired labor law knowledge can substitute for formal education in bringing people to the legal system and improving their legal experiences. The Chinese state's propagation of legal knowledge has had positive effects on citizens' legal mobilization. Finally, while education and legal knowledge are factors that push people toward the legal system, actual dispute experience leads people away from it, especially among disputants without effective legal representation. The article concludes that the Chinese state's encouragement of individualized legal mobilization produces contradictory outcomes—encouraging citizens to use formal legal institutions, imbuing them with new knowledge and rights awareness, but also breeding disdain for the law in practice.

scholarly journals Response to Vanessa Deverson On 'Child Abuse And Neglect: Mandatory Reporting And The Legal Profession'

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Caruso
Keyword(s):  
Child Abuse ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Child Abuse And Neglect ◽  
Legal Profession ◽  
Northern Territory ◽  
Mandatory Reporting ◽  
Final Part ◽  
Abuse And Neglect ◽  
Reporting Laws

This comment responds to Vanessa Deverson’s article titled ‘Child Abuse and Neglect: Mandatory Reporting and the Legal Profession’ and examines whether it is desirable for lawyers to be required to report child abuse and neglect that may be revealed by their clients. The comment begins by articulating the role of the legal profession, and explains how it differs from other professions. Part I explains that an obligation to report child abuse would fundamentally change the role of the legal profession in defending or asserting the rights, liberties and liabilities of their clients. Part II argues that even if mandatory reporting were to be brought in, it would be unlikely achieve its intended purpose because it would create suspicion towards the legal profession and undermine its role. The final Part discusses current South Australian draft legislation aimed at protecting children and argues that this may be a more appropriate route. The comment concludes that current Northern Territory reporting laws do not belong in a legal system that depends on clients having confidence in their lawyers.

Advocating Democracy: The Role of Lawyers in Taiwan's Political Transformation

1995 ◽  
Vol 20 (02) ◽  
pp. 561-599 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Kaufman Winn ◽  
Tang-chi Yeh
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Legal Profession ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
Martial Law ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Democratic Rule ◽  
The Republic

Litigation has not been a significant strategy in Taiwan for challenging injustice due to the use of the Civil Law tradition as a model for the Republic of China legal system and the diminished autonomy of the ROC legal profession and legal system under martial law and authoritarian rule. Individual lawyers, however, were among the leading proponents of reform during Taiwan's recent transition to democratic rule. Furthermore, one of the significant liberalizing reforms ushered in by the democratic transition has been the reform of the ROC legal profession. We examine the contribution of some lawyers to democratization and consider what role the reconstituted ROC legal profession may play in the political economy of Taiwan in the future.

Lawlessness in Russia? Rethinking the Narratives of Law

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Hendley
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Legal Institutions ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
The Law ◽  
Fundamental Value ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
Willingness To Use ◽  
At Will

This book examines how ordinary Russians experience the law and the legal system. Russia consistently ranks near the bottom of indexes that measure the rule of law, an indication of the country's willingness to use the law as an instrument to punish its enemies. The book considers whether the fact that the Kremlin is able to dictate the outcome of cases seemingly at will—a phenomenon known as “telephone justice”—deprives law of its fundamental value as a touchstone for society. Drawing on the literature on “everyday law,” it argues that the routine behavior of individuals, firms, and institutions can tell us something more about the role of law in Russian life than do sensationalized cases. Rather than focusing on the “supply” of laws, the book concentrates on the “demand” for law. This introduction discusses the perceived lawlessness in Soviet Russia and the dualism that lies at the heart of Russians' attitudes toward law and legal institutions. It also provides an overview of the book's chapters.

Gans, Eduard (1797–1839)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence S. Stepelevich
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Firm Structures ◽  
Legal Theorist

Gans was an influential legal theorist and an admirer of Hegel’s doctrines regarding the nature and purposes of political institutions. He attempted to extend the role of those doctrines to the practical reform of German legal theory. Gans criticized this theory as being neither universal nor in accord with natural human rights. One of the most evident expressions of this partiality of the law was to be found in the legal disregard of the natural civil rights of Jewish citizens. Gans looked to the past, to Roman law, with its universal applications and its firm structures based upon natural rights, as a model upon which a future German legal system could be constructed.

Law and Social Change in the New Nations

1978 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence Rosen
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Legal Institutions ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Direct Control ◽  
Judicial Opinions

It is one of the central paradoxes of any legal system that it should appear at once so central to the imposition of decisive pronouncements aimed at the very structure of social relationships yet remain dependent on forces beyond its direct control for the acceptance and implementation of these strictures. This peculiar status of laws and legal institutions gives rise both to exaggerated claims for its impact on social change and equally unrealistic assertions that all legal systems merely follow and support processes whose fundamental operations are carried out in the broader spheres of social and political life. Like other institutions, a legal system performs distinctive tasks in accord with its own internal history and logic. But in its very design and operation it is deeply influenced by the struggles for control and influence that occur among its own personnel, and between them and other sectors of society. Being neither self-executing nor independently defined, statutory propositions and judicial opinions have impacts which are as difficult to trace in detail as they are wide-ranging and interconnected at large. Even in societies with elaborated and sharply delineated legal institutions, the role of the legal system in shaping or reflecting social and political patterns partakes of this confusion of distinctiveness and derivativeness.

Prelude to the Legal Profession in Lagos 1861–1880

1970 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 98-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Adewoye
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Legal Profession ◽  
Legal Institutions ◽  
European Law ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
African Soil ◽  
Insight Into

A theme which has not gained much of the attention of scholars of African law is the historical development of European law and legal institutions in Africa. There is a tendency to take their “reception” for granted, as if to say that it is redundant to know how they came to be established on the African soil. By historical development is not meant simply the chronological order of events, treating law almost as a self-contained system in no way related to the environment in which it operates. A more useful approach, it is submitted, would be to evaluate the role of European law and legal institutions in the total context of African social, economic and political development. From our appreciation of the role law has played in the past in the moulding of African societies, we are likely to be more conscious than ever of the importance of law in African development. Furthermore, historical analysis of European law and legal institutions in Africa may yield some insight into the nature of African legal institutions as they are today. This paper, a plea for the historical dimension in African legal studies, discusses the role of a class of men in the English-type courts in Lagos before the legal profession, as we know it, established itself.

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