Sociological Jurisprudence and Legal Realism as a Basis for the Development of Judicial Law-Making

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 1528
Author(s):  
Gyulnaz Eldarovna ADYGEZALOVA

The aim of the present work is to study the role of sociological jurisprudence and legal realism for the development of judicial law making in the modern legal system. During the study, the author used general scientific methods, including historical, comparative, and logical ones. An analysis of legal documents was also performed, which allowed making conclusions about trends in the Russian legal system. The study showed that sociological jurisprudence and the realistic school of law of the United States were milestones of the development of the same socio-legal school. It was determined that the supporters of sociological trends could be attributed to the moderate direction of the American sociological legal school, and the legal realists – to the radical one. The basis of the socio-legal school is formed by the ideas of pragmatism, which are expressed in the functional and instrumental approach to the law. One of the basic tenets of the proponents of socio-legal school is the following: the law shall harmonize the interests, actually act and be implemented in the activities of the court. Views of sociologists of law contributed to the approval of the idea of judicial law making not only within the Anglo-American legal family but also in the legal systems of the Romano-Germanic legal family. They drew attention to the process of decision-making by the court, the process of setting up the rule of law by the court. The novelty of this research is that we have identified not only the influence of supporters of sociological school of law on the beginning of the new phase in the development of law, but also that the process was legitimate, and representatives of the scientific direction were able not only to recognize the pattern of ongoing legal development but also tried to steer the process in the right direction, so that the law would not lose its regulatory function and would not become a soulless mechanism in the hands of law enforcers.

Author(s):  
Ольга Терновая ◽  
Olga Tyernovaya ◽  
Светлана Соловьева ◽  
Svyetlana Solovyeva

This article deals with theoretical and legal approaches and peculiarities of the regulation of corporate contract under the laws of France and USA. One of the factors that promoted the promulgation of the shareholders agreement was the participation of Anglo-American investors in French societies, which were more accustomed to contractual relations then to the use of rigidly fixed forms of joint-stock companies. Despite the fact that one of the aims of such agreements was an attempt to get rid of excessive publicright control, such contracts could never contradict the mandatory requirements of the law and the provisions of the company’s charter. In the United States legislative embodiment of the right of shareholders to enter into various types of agreements is carried out by laws regulating activities, the procedure of the establishment and management of Business Corporations. The content of a shareholders agreement and the right to participate in such agreement is regulated by the legal regime of corporation. The agreement between the members of close corporation de facto may change the provisions of corporation’s charter relating to corporate governance and profit sharing. All types of shareholders agreements, which could be concluded by the members of Business Corporation, are considered in the present article. State law that regulates contractual relations does not apply to shareholders agreements despite the legal doctrine view that corporations are of a contractual nature. The comparative analysis of the jurisprudence, legal doctrine and provisions of US and French legislation allows us to conclude that in the USA, unlike France, shareholders agreements are regulated by Corporate Law, not by the provisions of the Contract Law as it takes place in France.


Author(s):  
ARTAN QERKINI

The market economy and changes within Republic of Kosovo’s legal system, which imposed the need of legal changes within the field of contested procedure also, have caused this procedure to become more efficient vis-à-vis legal provisions which were in force until October 6th 2008. Through the Law on Contested Procedure (hereinafter “LCP”), the legislator has aimed, inter alia, to make the contested procedure more concentrated, and thus, more efficient. In this regard, the Kosovar legislator has determined that it is mandatory for the parties to present any and all relevant evidence for resolving the dispute until the preparatory session, and in the event that one was not held, until the first main hearing session. As an exception, the parties may present relevant evidence even after this stage of proceedings, provided that their failure to present said evidence no later than at the preparatory session, respectively first main hearing session, was through no fault of their own. I consider that these legislative amendments are vital to ensuring practical implementation of the principle of efficience in the contested procedure.


Author(s):  
Mark McClish

In Indic thought, the daṇḍa (“staff”) represented the king’s use of violence for the purpose of governance. His right and obligation as daṇḍadhara (“wielder of the staff”) to punish those deemed deserving of punishment under the law defined the king’s role in the legal system. In this sense, daṇḍa represented the legalization of domination, in which state violence was reckoned as just punishment. But the king was not the only one with a recognized right to punish. This chapter explores how daṇḍa was used to articulate and legitimize relations of domination within the legal imagination of Dharmaśāstra. It asks, in particular, who is conferred the right to punish and how much?


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Achmad Irwan Hamzani ◽  
Kanti Rahayu ◽  
Tani Haryadi ◽  
Nur Khasanah ◽  
Havis Aravik

The political direction of the law in Indonesia in the development of national law simplifies legislation. The scope of national legal development is not only through legislation. There is the functionalization of the law that lives in society. The purpose of the research describes the political urgency of law in the development of national law and reviews the political direction of national law development law. This research uses a philosophical approach, namely to examine the law from the ideal side in the form of an idea of the direction of national law politics in the future. The results of this study show that the politics of law is necessary to provide direction in the development of national law. Each country has a legal political direction whose role as the basic policy of state organizers to determine the direction, shape, and content of the law to be established. Legal politics as a strategy of the formation process, as well as the implementation of laws based on the national legal system to achieve the goals and ideals of the state. The political direction of the law in Indonesia in the development of national law simplifies legislation. The scope of the development of the national legal system can be through legislation and functionalization of the living law. The political direction of the law in Indonesia in the development of national law simplifies the process of legislation. The impact will only be a successful legal state in law-making, but weak in law in action. The implication of this study is to expand the political direction of national law which includes the functionalization of the living law. By functionalizing "the living law", the resulting law is rooted in the legal consciousness of society.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Emma Jane Smith

<p>It is widely accepted that the right to a fair trial is one of the most important guarantees contained within our legal system. That right is undermined when a jury member conducts his or her own research into a case. This type of juror misconduct constitutes contempt of court. In the light of the fact that the law of contempt is currently the subject of review in a number of jurisdictions, this paper considers how the law of contempt could be adapted to better manage the risk of jurors undertaking independent research. After a discussion of the current law and some problems with it, particularly those created by modern communications technology, this paper considers a number of possible reform options. It makes two broad recommendations. First, that the law should focus relatively more on preventing jurors undertaking their own research than on limiting publication. Second, that independent research by jurors should be the subject of statutory criminalisation, and a range of measures should be adopted to increase jurors’ understanding of the importance of not going outside the evidence before them and to minimize any incentives for jurors to conduct their own research.</p>


2003 ◽  
Vol 12 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 81-104
Author(s):  
Meghan Nealis

AbstractBritish perceptions of the United States in Indochina between 1957 and 1963 were cautious and constructive. This article examines the perceptions of policymakers in Prime Minister Harold MacMillan's government and public opinion as expressed in the Times of London. British policymakers had basic doubts regarding American policy in Indochina, but Britain remained involved in the region after 1954 and agreed with the United States on defining the problem and on the broad methodological approach to the crisis. London wanted to ensure that Washington pursued the “right” policy in Indochina, that Britain utilized its expertise in post-colonial and counter-insurgency, and that the Anglo- American alliance maintained its importance for both countries. The study of these perceptions reveals some concerns which we would anticipate, but also shows that Britain respected the United States as a leader in the region and that it agreed with the United States on core issues.


Author(s):  
Andreas Motzfeldt Kravik

Abstract The article explores the current stagnation in multilateral law-making based on an analysis of recent treaty attempts across various subfields of international law. It further examines why the law of the sea has continued to evolve despite this trend. The article demonstrates that states still regularly seek multilateral treaties to address new challenges. While there is some evidence of general treaty saturation, it is the current inability of traditional great powers to negotiate new binding norms which is the most constraining factor on multilateral law-making. This in turn is related to deeper geopolitical shifts by which traditional great powers, notably the United States and its allies, have seen their relative influence decline. Until the current great power competition ends or settles into a new mode of international co-operation, new multilateral treaties with actual regulatory effect will rarely emerge. The law of the sea has avoided the current trend of stagnation for primarily three reasons (i) a global commitment to the basic tenets of the law of the sea; (ii) a legal framework that affords rights and obligations somewhat evenly disbursed, allowing less powerful states to use their collective leverage to advance multilateral negotiations, despite intermittent great power opposition; and (iii) the avoidance of entrenched multilateral forums where decisions are reached by consensus only.


AJIL Unbound ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 108 ◽  
pp. 153-154
Author(s):  
Mary Ellen O’Connell

I very much appreciate the seriousness with which Tom Ruys read my comments on his article. Rather than convince me that his thesis about Article 2(4) is correct, however, his reply provides further support for the opposing view. Minor force is excluded from Article 2(4) but regulated under other legal principles. Here are some examples: •He accepts that there are many cases where states and courts have treated low level uses of force as regulated under rules other than Article 2(4). He also argues, and I agree, that some cases are unclear as to whether they support an Article 2(4) threshold or not. Yet, he fails to deal with the really important point in my comment that the great weight of authority clearly supports the threshold. In his reply he even cites with favor the recent report of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia, but the report supports the view that low level uses of force fall below the Article 2(4) threshold.•Ruys concedes that some low-level uses of force are outside Article 2(4). In his reply he provides a new hypothetical of such a minor use of force, a bar fight in Afghanistan between soldiers of different nationalities. He says it is a matter of common sense that such a use of force is excluded from Article 2(4). Yes, common sense is one of the reasons to conclude low-level force is excluded. Given that he agrees on this, his article should be about where the threshold is, not an argument that there is no threshold at all. I argue that various other rules of international law from the principle of non-intervention to human rights law to the law of countermeasures indicate where the threshold is. In his reply he takes up an example I provide on “targeted killing,” asking where is the legal distinction between knifing an individual and launching a Hellfire missile at an individual, as opposed to launching a Hellfire at a group of people—the example I used. I categorize all Hellfire attacks as covered by Article 2(4) because of the amount of firepower involved. The Hellfire was developed as a tank-killing weapon. The number of persons targeted is not as significant as the fact the Hellfire involves more too much firepower to conform to the rules governing lawful law enforcement (police) deployment of lethal force. Lawful deployment of a Hellfire must comply with one of the exceptions to Article 2(4).•Saying minor force is excluded from Article 2(4) is not the same as saying such force is lawful. The example just mentioned of knifing an individual, say by the intelligence services of one state acting on the territory of another state, implicates non-intervention, human rights, and countermeasures, among other rules relevant to regulating minor uses of force. In his reply, Ruys criticizes the adequacy of some of this law. No doubt some of the law is inadequate, but that is a different issue from the one he is examining, which is what law applies to minor uses of force.•If Article 2(4) included minor uses of force states could not lawfully employ countermeasures involving minor uses of force in, for example, rescue and arrest efforts. Using force under today’s law, which does not include Ruys’s proposal to expand the right to use force in self-defense, requires Security Council authorization. This is clearly a problem for his analysis. States simply do not do this. The United States did not go to the Security Council to get permission to try to rescue the American journalist, James Foley, beheaded by ISIL militants in Syria in August or to detain Abu Khattala in Libya in June. Both operations followed the rules regulating lethal force by police and were lawful in my view, but not in Ruys’s view of the current law.


1912 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-85
Author(s):  
James Brown Scott ◽  
George F. Seward

It is common knowledge that the United States was originally settled either by God-fearing men and women fleeing from persecution, or by political refugees who were unable to bring about reforms which they believed essential to good government and were unwilling to comply with the state of affaire existing in the Old World, or, finally, by those who, unfortunate at home, were desirous of bettering their condition in the New World. The Pilgrim and the Puritan, the Episcopalian and the Catholic, the Quaker, the Presbyterian and the Lutheran settled the Atlantic Coast. The roundhead and the cavalier, the rich and the poor and the inmate of the debtor’s prison found themselves side by side upon a plane of equality without the traditions and the conservatism of an older world. Whether the colony was composed of Puritans and manifested intolerance to the protestant brother of a different faith; whether the settlement remained loyal to the Church of England, as Virginia, or favored the Catholic, as Maryland, or freely accepted the law-abiding without questioning his religion, as the Quakers of Pennsylvania, the principle of religious toleration steadily gained ground, and by the time of the Revolution it may be said generally that religious differences ceased to influence men or their conduct toward each other, by virtue of a conception of liberty which embraced not merely the right to and protection of property but the freedom of thought, of speech and of public worship. The example of Virginia, which in 1786 established religious freedom by statute, profoundly influenced the Federal Government and the various States of the Union; for, by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, it is provided that “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” and the States of the American Union have, in their various Constitutions, placed the same restriction upon their legislatures. The amendment of the Constitution and the like provisions in State Constitutions were not dictated by indifference or hostility to the principles of the Christian religion, but aimed to prevent not merely the establishment of any one form of religion, however widely spread, but to establish upon a firm footing the right before the law of every religious sect.


Author(s):  
Carlos Góómez-Jara Dííez

At the beginning of the twenty-first century two legal concepts linking citizen/enemy status with criminal law have provoked heated discussion both in Europe and in the United States. The American concept, i.e., Enemy Combatants, has been basically developed by the U.S. Supreme Court and more recently by the Bush administration. The European term, Feindstrafrecht/Enemy Criminal Law, has been fundamentally coined and explained by leading German academic Professor Güünther Jakobs. Though born and raised by different parents, the two concepts have numerous aspects in common, or at least this will be argued throughout the paper. The most important common ground is that both concepts, with similar terminology, try to address the problem of what to do with individuals who are viewed as sources of extreme dangerousness. Put differently, they both tackle the question of whether citizenship-in a broad sense-concedes certain rights but imposes a fundamental duty: to have a minimum of law-abiding behavior. If the duty is not fulfilled, then the rights are not acknowledged and the individual is treated as an enemy, not as a citizen. The underlying reasoning oozes social contract theory. This is not by chance, as great philosophers (Rousseau, Fichte, Hobbes, Kant) have employed similar arguments that are briefly sketched in the essay. There are also references to the legal theory behind the scenes predicating that in order for legal constructions to exist (rights, the State), they need to be followed by most people. Hence such a duty to comply, in general terms, with the law is imposed upon all persons. If not, law would be just daydreaming. Strong and consistent as all these arguments sound, the basic problem with this type of reasoning is that it is hard for the legal system to follow without entering into self-contradiction. In this light, criticism will be brought by one of the most prominent social theories of the time, i.e., systems theory, arguing that law-abiding behavior is a precondition for legal institutions to exist, yes, but it cannot be secured by law itself. It is a precondition that has to be presupposed by the legal system. Moreover, using this kind of necessity rule, i.e., the State and the Law need to secure the preconditions of their own existence (self-preservation), entails a diabolic logic as it may lead to the destruction of the system itself. To this extent, self-preservation against external threats (terrorist attacks) and internal threats (curtailment of civil liberties) seems equally important. The essay finishes with some proposals for resolving this delicate matter, trying to reflect a keen sense of balance and forward-looking thinking.


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