scholarly journals Creating a Virtuous Leviathan: The Party, Law, and Socialist Core Values

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (01) ◽  
pp. 41-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Delia LIN ◽  
Susan TREVASKES

AbstractIn recent years, the Chinese Communist Party has declared that its governance must dominate over all aspects of law-making and enforcement, declaring that its leadership must be implemented across the entire process of governing the country in accordance with the law. Contemporaneous to this new way of thinking about the law-Party nexus is a propaganda push to integrate moral values into the law. This paper is about moralizing governance in the Xi Jinping era. It explores the ideology behind the promotion of this morals–law integration, focusing on the Socialist Core Values in the legal realm under the current Xi Jinping administration. We do so from two interrelated perspectives. The first examines the relationship between law and morality. Here, we argue that the Party’s calls for a law–morality amalgam can be understood as a form of “pan-moralism.” The second looks at the supremacy of Party rule, extending the theory of the “Leviathan” proposed by Thomas Hobbes to take into account the Party’s morality push. This two-pronged argument enables us to assert that the Xi Jinping administration is creating a “virtuous Leviathan.”

Author(s):  
András Sajó ◽  
Renáta Uitz

This chapter examines the relationship between parliamentarism and the legislative branch. It explores the evolution of the legislative branch, leading to disillusionment with the rationalized law-making factory, a venture run by political parties beyond the reach of constitutional rules. The rise of democratically bred party rule is positioned between the forces favouring free debate versus effective decision-making in the legislature. The chapter analyses the institutional make-up and internal operations of the legislature, the role of the opposition in the legislative assembly, and explores the benefits of bicameralism for boosting the powers of the legislative branch. Finally, it looks at the law-making process and its outsourcing via delegating legislative powers to the executive.


Author(s):  
Stacy Moreland

This article asks the question: how do judges know what rape is and what it is not? The statutory definition contained in the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Act1 (SORMA) guides courts in adjudicating rape cases, and as such the definition is theirs to interpret and implement. This article analyses a small selection of recent judgements of the Western Cape High Court2 (WCHC) for answers. The article begins by establishing why judgements are an important source for understanding what rape means in society at large; it then discusses the relationship between power, language, and the law. This is followed by specific analyses of cases that show how patriarchy still defines how judges express themselves about rape. It concludes by looking at the institutional factors that discourage judges from adopting new ways of talking about rape, and their constitutional mandate to do so.


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 211-240
Author(s):  
Adam Chilton ◽  
Jonathan Masur ◽  
Kyle Rozema

Abstract We investigate the role that political ideology plays in the selection process for articles in law reviews. To do so, we match data on the political ideology of student editors from 15 top law reviews from 1990 to 2005 to data on the political ideology of the authors of accepted articles. We find that law reviews with a higher share of conservative editors accept a higher share of articles written by conservative authors. We then investigate potential explanations for this pattern. One possibility is that editors have a preference for publishing articles written by authors that share their ideology. Another possibility is that editors are objectively better at assessing the contribution of articles written by authors that share their ideology. We find evidence that the latter explanation drives the relationship between editor and author ideology.


Modern China ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 347-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Trevaskes

This article explores the political significance of “governing the nation in accordance with the law” 依法治国 ( yifa zhiguo) in the Xi Jinping era. It examines party statements and propaganda about the necessity of exercising party leadership over all key aspects of law-based governance, particularly the politico-legal system. The aim is to understand the strategic need for yifa zhiguo as part of the ideological repertoire of the Xi leadership. The argument is that yifa zhiguo is essentially an ideological and strategic message about power relations under Xi and the capacity of the party to withstand various threats to its credibility and thus ultimately to bring about the nation’s and party’s rejuvenation.


Laws ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 6
Author(s):  
Jack Clayton Thompson

This paper intends to set out an argument to Legal Idealism and a thesis that holds law and morality as necessarily connected. My focus is on deconstructing the Positivist argument to the Autonomy Thesis and beginning to reconstruct it through the application of morality to law’s autonomous authority. My aim, ultimately, is to demonstrate how, through the concept of law, practical reason might explain the related (and overlapping) notions of legitimacy, authority, and the obligation to obey through the necessary connection of law and morality. That is, I intend to demonstrate that morality both survives and remains identifiable (transparently) following the process of metamorphosis into institutionalised practical reasoning. If this is so, the authority of and obligation to law is simultaneously a form of morally rational obligation. In the response to the Positivist argument that moral values are incommensurate, I will show that this commensurability can be determined ‘artificially’ by a system of institutionalised reasoning (i.e., the law); this is to say, if I can show that the Legal Positivist argument is left incomplete without some explanation of moral values underpinning it, I need not to show that a specific, defensible moral truth or principle is required, but that an artificial weighting of abstract moral principles is sufficient


2012 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agung Setiyawan

Islam is a religion that has a universal characteristic, the worldview  (Weltanschauung) of equality, justice, takaful, freedom and dignity as well as having a humanistic concept of theocentrism as core values of all the teachings of Islam. In terms of culture in society, Islam is letting local knowledge and local cultural products are productive and do not contaminate aqidah to exist, even putting traditional Islam as one of the basis for determining the law. As mentioned in one of the rules of jurisprudence thatsays "al-'adah al-muhakkamah" (customary law can be used as a benchmark). Thus Islam is a religion of tolerance and full of moral values.


2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 253-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Virgil Hoehne

AbstractThis paper deals with social anthropologists serving as expert witnesses in asylum proceedings in the UK. It argues that it is not a fundamental epistemological divide, but rather massive power differentials that characterise the relationship between social anthropologists and legal practitioners in this context. Within a narrow framework provided by the law, which focuses on ‘true facts’ and ‘objective evidence’, social anthropologists have to position themselves, and they often must do so somewhere along a spectrum from positivist to post-positivist positions (regarding, for example, such concepts as ‘culture’ and ‘identity’). This, as well as their subordinate position in the context of the proceedings, sits uneasily with the professional, moral and ethical standards of their discipline. Engagement as an expert, therefore, comes with certain costs for social anthropologists that range from having to bend one's own epistemological perspective to the risk of being ‘demolished’ as an expert (and beyond) in sometimes implicitly politicised asylum decisions.


2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 231-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Allan ◽  
M. Tignino ◽  
F. Loures

AbstractIn 2008, the UN International Law Commission adopted a set of 19 articles as a contribution to the codification and development of international groundwater law, and submitted them to the UN General Assembly. In view of the ILC's report, UNGA Resolution 63/124 takes note of the Draft Articles; commends them to the attention of governments; encourages States to apply and adjust the Draft Articles as a basis to negotiate specific aquifer agreements; and decides provisionally to examine the question of the final form that might be given to those articles at that body's 66 th Session. The Draft Articles offer an important basis for the progressive development of the law governing transboundary aquifers, in particular by acknowledging the complementary relationship between universal and regional or aquifer-specific legal instruments. In this context, the paper will assess the potential role and relevance of the Draft Articles' text, as it now stands, to guide European States in the sound management of the aquifers shared in the region. It will do so by comparing and evaluating the relationship between the Draft Articles and relevant European legal instruments, with particular focus on the issues of sustainability, planned measures, monitoring, emergencies, and the geographic scope of freshwater agreements. The analysis will show that, while these global and regional instruments can be mutually supportive, some important differences exist in the extent and content of the obligations under each of them.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-61
Author(s):  
Dian Latifiani ◽  
Raden Muhammad Arvy Ilyasa

Moral values in legal science are important. However, the flow of law sees a variety of moral values. This paper aims to see the position of moral values in the science of law. Legal positivism separates strictly between law and morals. According to him, there is no law other than the command of the authorities. Even extreme identifying the law (Recht) as the law (wet). Legal positivism activities are aimed at concrete problems, which are different when compared to natural law thinking which engages itself with the validation of man-made law. For adherents of natural law theory, an unjust law is not law. there is an absolute relationship between law and morality. the two cannot be separated, so the law must refer to moral principles.


2021 ◽  
pp. 7-17
Author(s):  
Robert Alexy

Philosophy is general and systematic reflection about what there is, what ought to be done or is good, and how knowledge about both is possible. Legal philosophy raises these questions with respect to the law. In so doing, legal philosophy is engaged in reasoning about the nature of law. The arguments addressed to the question of the nature of law revolve around three problems. The first problem addresses the question: in what kinds of entities does the law consist, and how are these entities connected such that they form the overarching entity we call ‘law’? The answer is that law consists of norms as meaning contents which form a normative system. The second problem addresses the question of how norms as meaning contents are connected with the real world. The third problem addresses the correctness or legitimacy of law, and, by this, the relationship between law and morality.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document