Political Law Research Articles

Book Review: General Politics: Law in Politics, Politics in Law

Book Review: General Politics: Law in Politics, Politics in Law

Perspectives on the West in the Orthodox Church press of Kyiv diocese, 1900–1914

As Russian Orthodoxy in the late imperial period faced new pressures for freedom and democratization in society, the state, and the Church, Orthodox churchmen sometimes looked to the West – its culture and its religious confessions – as either cautionary tale or inspiration. This article examines how clergy and ecclesiastical academy scholars in the borderland diocese of Kyiv analyzed the West in the diocesan press. Their views of the West and of Russia helped to shape the Church’s varied responses to modern culture, political change, and calls for Church reform. Some contributors praised Western political freedom and law, but many experienced a fraught relationship with modernity. The Slavophile ideal of communal wholeness, which contrasted with Western impersonal legalism and atomization, and a reluctance to cede authority constrained the Orthodox response to modernity’s pressures. Retaining the Church’s role in society while addressing Western material vitality, modernist influences, and demands for freedom of conscience proved challenging. Some cautiously welcomed the Duma as a brake against bureaucracy but only as a consultative body, lest it curtail the tsar’s autocratic power. Rejecting the divisive individualism of Protestantism, they sought to soften Church hierarchy through conciliarism but stopped short of radically laicizing authority in the parish.

Drew Halfmann. 2011. Doctors and Demonstrators: How Political Institutions Shape Abortion Law in the United States, Britain, and Canada. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. $40.00. pp. 336. Paper. ISBN: 9780226313436.

Drew Halfmann. 2011. Doctors and Demonstrators: How Political Institutions Shape Abortion Law in the United States, Britain, and Canada. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. $40.00. pp. 336. Paper. ISBN: 9780226313436.

The changing face of political purposes and charity law in New Zealand

The changing face of political purposes and charity law in New Zealand

Resisting Multiple Narratives of Law in Transition Countries: Russia and Beyond

The literature on the role of law in countries with so‐called hybrid regimes that are stuck somewhere between democracy and authoritarianism tends to dwell on the politicization of law and the courts. This has the effect of discounting the importance of the vast majority of cases that are decided in accord with the law. Taking Russia as a case study, this essay reviews a cross‐section of the literature on its courts in order to document this tendency and explore why alternative narratives of law have failed to gain traction: Burbank's Russian Peasants Go to Court (2004); Feifer's Justice in Moscow (1964); Kaminskaya's Final Judgment (1982); Ledeneva's Can Russia Modernise? (2013); McDonald's Face to the Village (2011); Politkovskaya's Putin's Russia (2004); Popova's Politicized Justice in Emerging Democracies (2012); and Romanova's Butyrka (2010).

Sustainable management of the Mediterranean

The Mediterranean Sea is both a biodiversity and a political crossroad. Three continents are flanking each other along its shores, with an unparalleled mixture of cultures, economies, religions and political regimes. What human culture divides, however, is joined by ecology. The national boundaries mean nothing, for Nature. The use of the marine space must first of all respond to ecological laws, and these have logical supremacy over economic and political laws. Managing the Mediterranean Sea is one of the most challenging enterprises humans can attempt. The range of disciplines involved is so cross-cutting that the specialists at the extremes of the range often cannot understand each other, due to the complex jargons they use. This volume contains a selection of papers presented at the conference ‘‘Sustainable management of the Mediterranean’’, held in Rome at the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei on March 21st for the XIV World Water Day 2014. It aims at sketching a conceptual landscape covering many aspects that are crucial for the integrity of the Mediterranean Sea. There is marine ecology, of course, but it is linked to inland ecology, due to the influence of rivers in a semi-closed basin as the Mediterranean one. Microbial communities are reviewed too, because they are changing just as the rest of the biota, and their changes might have great, albeit not immediately perceived, impacts on the functioning of Mediterranean Ecosystems. The Suez Canal connects the Indian with the Atlantic Ocean, enhancing shipping activities in the basin. The regulations of the impacts of these ships are constantly evolving and are worth being considered and revised. Overfishing is a plague for Mediterranean biota, but fisheries are an important portion of Mediterranean culture and must be managed so as to allow fishermen to continue to fish without destroying the resource they rely upon. Fisheries provide proteins to a growing population that, especially in the Mediterranean area, does have ample margins of improvement in its own diet(s). The overexploited populations might be restocked with specific programs, and the first attempts in this direction are taking place. Water circulation connects the various parts of the Mediterranean, transporting propagules (i.e. the propagation phases in the life cycle of all species) throughout the basin. Moreover, the enhanced frequency of extreme events, such as intense storms, is adding further complexity to an already complex landscape. The title of this volume, the fil rouge that connects all its chapters, is the application of a widely employed jargon: F. Boero Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Biologiche e Ambientali, Universita del Salento, 73100 Lecce, Italy e-mail: boero@unisalento.it

Political Financing in Africa: A Comparative Study of Kenya and Nigeria: Proposal for Reform

The linkage between money and polities is a powerful one with implications for democracy, especially in new democracies. Political finance has been identified as a source of political corruption in several countries. Political finance laws and regulations, through which political parties and candidates for office declare their funding sources, are among the main instruments. The relationships between party financing and corruption are so significant that to ignore party funding is simply to open wide the donor for corruption. Looking into Nigerian and Kenyan political history one realizes that there is much that need to be done in this regard. This is why the financing of political life is both a necessity and a problem. The frequency with which new laws concerning campaign and party finance are enacted is testimony to the failure of many existing legal frameworks and legislations. For instance, the Electoral Acts of 2002, 2006 and 2010, the Election Campaign Financing Bill 2012, the Public Collections Act 1960 review the current status of campaign and political finance regulations in Nigeria and Kenya. The cover among other issues: the regulation, management, expenditure and accountability of election campaign funds during election and referendum campaigns. This is because hardly a month goes by without a new scandal involving political money breaking out in some in this part of the globe. Political parties constitute one of the core groups of institutions in Kenya and Nigeria’s democratic systems. The parties that emerged in Nigeria for instance, since Nigeria’s Fourth Republic, however, are characterized by undemocratic practices and exhibited gross misconducts against transparency and accountability. At their best, political parties should nurture and articulate the expression of socio-political interest and opinion. Under current Nigerian conditions, however, most political parties lack ideologies, not issue oriented, but are merely zero-issue alliances of notables who are able to control and, often enough, manipulate party structures, candidacies and even the general electoral process itself. Most parties are vehicles in the hands of few “political entrepreneurs” who invest huge amount of money and expect concurrent rewards on such investment (in the form of public works and procurement contracts, prebendal appointments of cronies to public offices and other forms of prebendal activity). The fallout has led to mass electoral/political violence and political destabilization and disempowerment of the generality of the Nigerian electors, the exclusion of alternative parties seeking to participate in electoral politics and the absence of an effective system to regulate political finance. This paper seeks to explore the concept of political finance. It will equally attempt to concisely analyze the extant legal framework regulating political finance in Kenya and Nigeria, highlight their inadequacies with a view of reforming these inadequacies for a better political finance management and best practices and proffer suggestions on the ways forward drawing freely from the instructive practices of other emerging and advanced democracies.

Five Laws of Politics

Political scientists tend to shy away from claiming that there are laws of politics. This diffidence is unwarranted. Here, I present five empirical laws of politics. By a of politics I mean an empirical regularity that is invariant, or almost invariant, that is descriptive of intrinsic properties of politics, democracy, and the state. The laws, four spanning democracies and autocracies, and one setting a boundary between the two regime types, are drawn from data on 452 in 27 democracies, 15 from the Ibero-America (Latin America plus Spain and Portugal), and most of the rest from North America, Europe, and the Pacific Rim (the OECD countries), plus ritualistic elections and referendums in 14 dictatorships. Law #1. The law of minority rule. All governments are minority governments. This is a given in dictatorships, but even in democracies parties capture or retain the presidency or the parliament with the votes of a minority of the selectorate (registered or eligible voters). In democracies, average turnout is about 75% and the mean incumbent share of the vote is around 40%. Therefore, the average winning coalition averages 30%.Law #2. The law of incumbent advantage. In democracies, on average incumbents are reelected more than half the time. Law #3. The law of shrinking support. On average, incumbents lose between 3 and 8 percent points per term, the former representing the cost of governing in the OECD region, the latter in Ibero-America. Their illusions of unanimity and perpetual power notwithstanding, dictatorships are not exempt from this law, as evidence drawn from transition in autocracies from several continents, cultures, and region of the world attest. Formerly ruling parties crashed, their share of the vote plummeting from the 90-99% they used to claim in single party elections to as low as the single digits or low teens.Law #4. The law of 60 percent. In democracies, it is rare for incumbents to win more than 60 percent of the vote, and it never happens twice within the same spell in office. The average maximum incumbent share of the vote across all democracies is 53.5%, the one variable on which there is no difference between regions. This law serves as a boundary separating all democracies from most dictatorships.Law #5. The law of alternation or shared power. In democracies, control of the government alternates between political parties or coalitions of parties. This is because no party is capable to encompassing the totality of the values and interests of any society. As well as presenting the data that demonstrate these patterns, I place these laws in the context of related scholarly literature, and offer possible explanations for the laws in light of it.

New Approaches to International Financial Regulation

What has happened to scholarship on international financial regulation since the global financial crisis? This paper maps out core debates suggestive of the new intellectual terrain that emerged out of the global financial meltdown. I argue that the old-consensus in neoclassical economic theory has given way to a new mainstream institutionalist legal literature, which I term the Reformist approach. I show that this post-crisis shift of focus parallels developments in the fields of international political economy, and law and development. I argue that this Reformist literature could benefit from further engagement with what I term the “New Approaches” literature in international legal theory and in the anthropology and social studies of finance.

Friedrich Kratochwil. The Status of Law in World Society: Meditations on the Role and Rule of Law

When Fritz Kratochwil published his classic Rules, Norms and Decisions in 1989, it was reviewed by an obviously bewildered David Bederman in the American Journal of International Law. Clearly, it seemed, here was something international lawyers should take note of, but equally clearly, Bederman, no intellectual slouch by any standard, had a hard time figuring out what made the book relevant, or even just interesting, for international lawyers. It seems Bederman was expecting something along the lines of a description of the role of law in global politics, but no such story unfolded. Instead, Rules, Norms and Decisions posited not a description, but a way of looking at the role of norms in international politics, and did so unlike much of what had gone on before: this was neither a variation on realism, nor riding the wave of institutional liberalism, nor anything like the New Haven approach or sociological jurisprudence or Henkin-style behaviouralism. As it turned out, Rules, Norms and Decisions became the closest thing to a manifesto of constructivism in the study of world politics, and therewith became pigeonholed as one of the three grand theories of international relations. This entailed considerable irony and, indeed, ironies abound when Kratochwil is concerned, and do so much to his delight, one suspects. One of these ironies is that Fritz Kratochwil, despite being one of the founding fathers of the grand theory of constructivism in the discipline of international relations, broadly denies the possibility of grand theory in the social sciences. Secondly, there is the irony that while Kratochwil may generally be considered as a theorist, he strongly advocates a practical orientation, distinguishing between scientific reasoning and practical reasoning. And thirdly, amidst all the talk about interdisciplinary scholarship, Kratochwil is both critical of much of this work and

Design and Implementation of Network Leave Examination and Approval System Based on CRP Digital Campus Information Management Platform

Aim at leave examination and approval requirements of digitization and networking, we use J.Office cooperative office platform as developing platform of design and implementation of network leave examination and approval system of CRP digital campus network information platform (CRP), we use leave examination and approval process of Hainan Vocational College of Political Science and Law as an example to give specific implementation steps and demo about network leave examination and approval system.

Market Structure and Political Law: A Taxonomy of Power

The goal of this Article is to create a way of seeing how market structure is innately political. It provides a taxonomy of ways in which large companies frequently exercise powers that possess the character of governance. Broadly, these exercises of power map onto three bodies of activity we generally assign to government: to set policy, to regulate markets, and to tax. We add a fourth category — which we call dominance, after Brandeis — as a kind of catchall describing the other political impacts. The activities we outline will not always fit neatly into these categories, nor do all companies engage in all of these levels of power — that is not the point. The point is that Bank of America and Exxon govern our lives in a way that, say, the local ice cream store in your hometown does not. Explicitly understanding the power these companies wield as a form of political power expands the range of legal tools we should consider when setting policy around them.

Deliberative Democracy and Political Law: The Coercion Problem

Deliberative democratic theories contend that, prior to the making of collective decisions, there ought to be deliberation among those affected by the decision, where deliberation is understood in some sense as interpersonal discussion. A deliberative theory imposes moral demands upon citizens: each citizen ought to remain open to her co-citizens’ views (that is, to listen attentively and try to understand them); and she should be willing to change her view or preferences in light of what she learns from the discussions. Deliberative perspectives dominate modern democratic theory. Yet most deliberative democrats undervalue law and neglect to address its substantial and varied influences on political practice. Since the 1960s, the legalisation of politics has deepened. “Political law” now extensively regulates democratic procedures. In this paper (part of an ongoing “Law of Deliberative Democracy” collaborative project) I consider whether institutional designers can help to realise deliberative democratic ideals through carefully tailored law, or alternatively whether law has a generally anti-deliberative role to play in democratic politics. Much turns on this question. If the latter is more likely, then given political law’s modern spread throughout democratic practice, the general feasibility of achieving deliberative democratic ideals appears doubtful.The paper focuses on what I call “the coercion problem.” A hallmark of deliberative theory is that nothing should compel decision-makers to reach a particular decision except rational persuasion. But the aim of law is often precisely to coerce: to use the force of the state to pressure a law’s subjects to conform to mandates and restrictions. According to Habermas, law might coerce only up to a point. But political law uniquely influences deliberation not just by creating broad institutional foundations, but additionally by establishing a fine matrix of political rules. The problem of legal coercion is potentially fatal to deliberative democracy. Yet I conclude on a note of cautious optimism: that certain modes of regulation may mitigate coercion, such as Raz’s “guidance,” and Sunstein, Anderson and Pildes’ “expressivism.”

The Education and Study of Electronic Data

In this era, computer Science and Internet has been the basis of our live. But it carried out information crime and it is worsening.Thus, instead of traditional evidence, electronic data has been an effective means to deal with information crime. So it is very improtant for the university to develop a related course and train students to deal with it. East China University of Political Science and Law has set up a college course named information crime and computer forensics for undergraduate students for eight years and done some study work. Both of them has got great achievements.

Revulsions of Capital: The Political Law of Slavery in the Epoch of the Turner Rebellion, Virginia 1829-1832

This paper continues the pattern of work I have been pursuing on the Turner Rebellion, a slave rebellion that took place in Virginia in August 1831. During the past two years I have been engaged in preliminary explorations of different aspects of the rebellion that have resulted in a series of working papers, written to teach myself what I don’t know, and what I should. This paper was written for the same purpose; it differs from prior papers in stepping back from the rebellion itself in order to situate it in Virginia’s constitutional history, and in regard to the debate over gradual emancipation that broke out in its aftermath. Essentially, Virginia in the epoch of the Turner Rebellion is a state divided largely on east-west lines. Slavery dominates east of the Blue Ridge in the long-settled Tidewater and Piedmont; the west (particularly the Trans-Allegheny region that would eventually become the state of West Virginia) is much more recently settled and largely slave-free. This division, together with less marked local slaveholder/non-slaveholder and freeholder/non-freeholder distinctions in the east of the state, largely determines the substance and structure of Virginia’s politics. I consider two “phases” of Virginia’s politics: (1) the Constitutional Convention of 1829-1830, in which Eastern and Western delegates fought over the replacement of county-based apportionment and suffrage that privileged freehold in land by white basis apportionment and white manhood suffrage, and (2) the emancipation debate that took place in 1831-32 during the first session of the state legislature to meet following the Turner Rebellion. I also consider the analysis of the emancipation debate written in 1832 by the William & Mary professor of “political law” Thomas Roderick Dew, Review of the Debate in the Virginia Legislature of 1831 and 1832. I argue that out of the deep divisions exposed by the constitutional and legislative debates there emerged a new political and economic equilibrium, confirmed in Dew’s analysis, and centered not, as before, upon propertied hierarchy but upon property’s commodification, notably commodified labor. In the case of self-possessed white labor, commodification meant increased circulation. The same was true of enslaved labor, with the important qualification that slaves had no control over how far they were circulated. Slavery became transactional – the price of subsistence. Their commodification meant slaves were no longer harnessed to custom (in the shape of common law property claims), or to positive municipal law, or to paternal stewardship, but instead represented a capital investment on which the master-creditor might realize returns either through work, or, just as rationally, sale into the interstate slave trade. The paper concludes with a short analysis of Virginia’s contribution to that trade before and after the Turner Rebellion.

The Politics of Interest in International Law

The article examines the substance and form of 20th century positivist international law; in particular the way in which each determines the other. The text describes the turn to interests in international law, which evolved slowly in scope and depth. By examining Lassa Oppenheim’s focus on ‘common interests’ that united states and Hans Kelsen’s focus on the ‘struggle of interests’ that constituted politics, the article studies two phenomena produced by the foundational role taken by interests during the 20th century. First, this role contributed to putting an end to the moral discussion about the treatment of native populations. Secondly, it curbed debate about a common political project for a global order, thus creating conformity characterized by abuse of power – all in the name of the neutrality of positivist law. This article suggests that the work of these two leading theoreticians in the field has contributed to the shaping of the legal theory of mainstream positivist international law, and seeks to foreground discussions about the different theories on the role of law in politics. In this manner it aims to help reconceptualize law in such a way as to bring about a situation in which discussions of a common political project for the international arena are more central.

"Walking on two legs in Chinese law schools": A Chinese/U.S. Program in Experimental Legal Education

Dong Jingbo, a young faculty member at the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, used to teach using only the traditional lecture technique which she had experienced in her own legal education in China and Korea. Until, that is, Professor Dong attended summer workshops given by Pacific McGeorge, in partnership with American University’s Washington College of Law, and also earned an LL.M. at Pacific McGeorge, in the Teaching of Advocacy. Her classes no longer are limited to lecture. She has developed a simulation to use in Chinese criminal law classes, has demonstrated it to other Chinese law professors and has written a law review article about it.2 The simulation is based on a news story about a man who used his wife’s ATM card to make two successive withdrawals of 10,000 RMB, while the receipts reflected a total withdrawal of only 2 RMB, and even though his wife had only 10,000 RMB in her account. The man was charged with theft. Professor Dong assigns students to play the role of the prosecutor, defense counsel and judge. They are given the definition of theft, and must argue and decide the case. She then provides a series of additional facts, requiring deeper analysis. Introduction of this role play into the class builds on learning theory to provide deeper understanding of the elements of the crime of theft than a student could obtain by listening to a lecture. Moreover, this learning by doing encourages analysis, fact development, understanding of the important role of the theory of the case, and independent thinking. For these reasons, and as our experience in China affirms, role play is a useful learning method in traditional, simulation, and clinical law courses.

Effects of Immediate Stimulation on Single Nucleotide and Catecholamine Level in Chinese Tree Shrews

The present study examined the effects of the immediate stimuli on the levels of catecholamine and single nucleotide of Chinese tree shrew by using RIA approach. When tree shrews were under immediate stimulation, compared to the control animals, the levels of the epinephrine (E), norepinephrine (NE), adenosine monophosphate (cAMP), and cyclic guanosine phosphate (cGMP) in blood were significantly increased. Also, the acute stimulation could significantly enhance the cAMP and cGMP levels of the midbrain ventral tegmental area (VTA), prefrontal cortex (PFC), hippocampus (Hipp), and testis (Testicle), and the dopamine (DA) levels in PFC, Hipp, striatum, and nucleus accumbens (NAc). However, when tree shrews were treated with reserpine, both the E and NE levels were significantly reduced (P< 0.01), indicating that the reserpine interventions could reduce or prevent those stress-related damages. Also, the mitochondrial index (the volume density, surface density and density) in hippocampus cells were significantly increased by 55.21%, 55.21% and 55.21% respectively (P<0.01), compared to those of the control animals housed. Our results demonstrated that the immediate stimulus can significantly affect the synthesis and release of epinephrine, norepinephrine, DA, cMAP, and cGMP in Chinese tree shrews. This study was supported by the following Chinese funding agencies: the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31060283), the National Social Science Fund (07BSH054), the Lanzhou Social Science Fund (07-1-64), and the Academic Innovation Team Building Program Management of Gansu Institute of Political Science and Law (GZF2013CXTD003).

Law in Politics, Politics in Law

Law in Politics, Politics in Law

Un influyente maestro del derecho político español: Vicente Santamaría de Paredes (1853-1924) = An influential master of the Spanish Political Law: Vicente Santamaría de Paredes (1853-1924)

Vicente Santamaría de Paredes fue el más influyente cultivador del Derecho Político durante la Restauración (1874-1923). Sucesor de Colmeiro y predecesor de Adolfo Posada en la Cátedra de esa disciplina en la Universidad Central, sus principales obras fueron el Curso de Derecho Político y el Curso de Derecho Administrativo. Ambas vieron la luz por vez primera en los años ochenta del siglo XIX y fueron objeto de numerosas reediciones. Tuvo además Santamaría una notable actividad como abogado, como parlamentario en las filas del Partido Liberal, como ministro de Instrucción Pública y Bellas Artes en un Gobierno presidido por Segismundo Moret y como preceptor del Rey Alfonso XIII. A Santamaría se debe el impulso de la ley que en 1888 reformó la jurisdicción contencioso-administrativa y que trazó la nueva planta del Consejo de Estado. De su trayectoria, sobre todo académica en el ámbito del Derecho Político, se ocupa esta semblanza.Vicente Santamaría de Paredes was the most influential professor of the Spanish Political Law during the Restoration (1874-1923). Successor of Manuel Colmeiro and predecessor of Adolfo Posada in the chair of this academic discipline at the Central University of Madrid, their main works were the Curso de Derecho Político and the Curso de Derecho Administrativo. Both were published for first time in the eighties of the nineteenth century and re-edited many times after. Santamaría had also an important activity as a lawyer, as a member of Parliament inside the Liberal Party, as a minister of Education in a Cabinet headed by Segismundo Moret and as preceptor of King Alfonso XIII. Santamaría promoted the Act which in 1888 carried out a deeply reform of the administrative jurisdiction and drew up the new functions of the Consejo de Estado. This essay deals with his career path, especially in the field of the Political Law.