Institutional Restrictions: Why can’t the Property Owners’ Committee be Established?: An Analysis of the Practice Process of Legal Texts

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 6063-6081
Author(s):  
Cheng Yu ◽  
Zhang Junlong
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Field Observation ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Legal Practice ◽  
Administrative Control ◽  
The Past ◽  
Property Owners ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Establishment Process

Why cannot property owners’ committees be established? This study answers this question from the perspective of legal practice process, which is different from previous discussions about the owner’s actions. Previous studies regard the law as a weapon and tool for owners to safeguard their rights, while this study focuses on the legal texts and regards the legal system as the key variable of the establishment of the property owners’ committees. We adopt field observation and in-depth interviews to analyze the establishment process of Guangzhou property owners’ committees in Guangzhou in the past 20 years. It is found that the legal system is often transformed into a governance tool, which is specifically characterized as the “anti-mobilization ability” of the system. In this case, local governments intervene in the development of legal texts by means of self-empowerment, raising the bar, and intentional delay, to embed administrative objectives and facilitate the convenience of administrative control and regulation, which partly results in the difficulty to establish owner’s committees.

scholarly journals A City Too Busy to Remember? Aging, Structural Violence, and the Politics of Forgetting in Atlanta’s Gentrification

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 393-393
Author(s):  
John Pothen ◽  
Keland Yip ◽  
Ellen Idler
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Structural Violence ◽  
Aging In Place ◽  
Healthcare Services ◽  
The Past ◽  
Critical Theories ◽  
Property Owners ◽  
Ongoing Development ◽  
The City ◽  
Depth Interviews

Abstract Can forgotten stories from the past inform a city’s future? As older adults continue to live longer and comprise more of the population than ever before, the suitability of gentrifying spaces for older adults aging in place is increasingly important. Critical theories of gentrification argue that remembering the experiences of older adults in this context - experiences of suffering, resilience, and structural violence - is essential to promote changes in support aging in place. In this study, we tell a story of individual experiences, structural violence, and aging in the ongoing gentrification of one neighborhood in southwest Atlanta. We construct this narrative through a qualitative analysis of 1,500 local newspaper articles from 1950 to the present day and 10 in-depth interviews with ex-residents of the neighborhood aged 65-87. Drawing on the theory of planetary rent gaps, we frame gentrification as a class struggle between property-owners and working class residents. We highlight the city government’s role as a facilitator for property-owners through projects including the Model City initiative, preparation for the 1996 Olympics, and ongoing development surrounding the Atlanta BeltLine. We show how these projects have affected the prospects for aging in place in general and, specifically, by affecting access to healthcare services. We share this story in an effort to combat the politics of forgetting and to inform a richer, more inclusive, and more equitable future for gentrifying spaces.

Having one's cake and eating it: the paradox of contextualisation in socio-legal research

2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 487-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reza Banakar
Keyword(s):  
Legal System ◽  
Legal Practice ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Legal Decisions ◽  
Legal Rules ◽  
Legal Context ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
The Law ◽  
Self Reference ◽  
Closed Image

Traditional doctrinal scholarship provides an important service to practising lawyers by analysing legal rules and decisions, clarifying ambiguities within rules, structuring them in a logical and coherent manner and describing their interrelationship (Chynoweth, 2008). The systematisation and formulation of the law in terms of doctrine creates a conceptual basis for constructing a legal context that helps to determine which rules should be applied in a particular situation. In this sense, doctrinal studies emerge out of the study of legal texts (or black-letter law), which are generated by legislature, courts and other legal authorities, and feed back in to legal practice once they are used in deciding cases. The method of doctrinal research, being functional to legal practice, dominates academic law and legal education. Notwithstanding its role in supporting legal practice, the doctrinal approach is criticised for conveying a normatively closed image of law (Cotterrell, 1995, pp. 50–53), for constructing the legal context narrowly, for presenting the legal system as a body of rules which can be studied in isolation from the broader societal context of the legal system by the exegesis of authoritative texts (Bradney, 1998, p. 76; Vick, 2004), for ‘not being self-conscious about its assumptions’ (Twining, 1999, p. 44) and for cultivating what Geoffrey Samuel (2009) calls the ‘authority paradigm’. Internally, i.e. from the standpoint of the legal system and its functionaries, this paradigm (or legal context) is produced by way of self-reference and normative closure, continually reaffirming the authority of legal sources such as legal texts, previous legal decisions and/or legislation, and prioritising definitions and methods based on what William Twining called the ‘practical insider attitudes’ (Twining, 2000, p. 129; for a discussion, see Banakar, 2003, p. 8). Externally, i.e. from the standpoint of policy-makers and citizenry, it is upheld through the threat of violence against non-compliance, backed by the authority of the modern state. The authority paradigm's normative closure and its dependency on coercion encourage ‘rigidity and introspection rather than an open-minded attitude to academic methods and pursuits’ (Samuel, 2009, p. 432). It fosters an understanding of the law as a system, which exists independently of societal forces. In order to escape the intellectual constraints of the authority paradigm, many academic lawyers turn to social theory and social sciences, which in contrast to law are based on the ‘perspective of enquiry’ (Samuel, 2009; see also Banakar, 2009b). These scholars place the law in the broader sociocultural context of the legal system and study legal phenomena in relation to societal forces, which are the prerequisite for the existence of the legal system and the production of the narrow legal context of the law. However, such an evasive strategy often comes at a price.

Traditional and Customary Law: Adat

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Butt ◽  
Tim Lindsey
Keyword(s):  
Judicial Review ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Small Proportion ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
The State ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
The Past ◽  
Statutory Protection ◽  
Traditional Communities

Many Indonesians—primarily those living in rural areas—still follow customary law (adat). The precise rules and processes of that adat differ significantly from place to place, even within short distances. This chapter shows that for many decades, adat has been subservient to national law. State-made law overrode it, leaving it applicable only in a very small proportion of cases where no national law applied, where judges could apply it as ‘living law’. Even in these cases, many judges ignored adat or distorted it when deciding cases. The 1945 Constitution was amended in 2000 to require the state to formally recognize and respect customary law, as practised in traditional communities. The Constitutional Court has given effect to this in various judicial review cases, as have some statutes enacted in the past decade or so. However, this constitutional and statutory ‘protection’ has been impeded in practice by requirements for traditional communities to be formally ‘recognized’ by their local governments, many of whom have been unresponsive to calls for recognition.

Zur Mehrsprachigkeit in der Schweiz und im schweizerischen Rechtssystem

2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paweł Bielawski
Keyword(s):  
French Text ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Legal Texts ◽  
Swiss Confederation ◽  
Official Languages ◽  
Made In

AbstractThe article analyses how the Swiss Confederation regulates its multilingualism and the role the official languages play in the legislative and judicial processes of this country. It is proved here that the legislation in Switzerland is not made in all four official languages, hence it depends on translation. Considering that only German and French text versions of Swiss laws are aligned to each other, the article further examines whether the differences existing between the language versions of these legal texts lead to pragmatic divergences. Against this backdrop, the article considers whether the legal system of the multilingual Switzerland can be called multilingual.

scholarly journals The challenges of donor engagement with faith-based organizations in Cameroon’s health sector: a qualitative study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sibylle Herzig van Wees ◽  
Michael Jennings
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Health Outcomes ◽  
International Development ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
The Past ◽  
Faith Based Organizations ◽  
The Government ◽  
Depth Interviews

Abstract Substantial global advocacy efforts have been made over the past decade to encourage partnerships and funding of faith-based organizations in international development programmes in efforts to improve social and health outcomes. Whilst there is a wealth of knowledge on religion and development, including its controversies, less attention has been payed to the role that donors might play. The aim of this study was to describe and analyse the engagement between donors and faith-based organizations in Cameroon’s health sector, following the implementation of the Cameroon Health Sector Partnership Strategy (2012). Forty-six in-depth interviews were conducted in selected regions in Cameroon. The findings show that global advocacy efforts to increase partnerships with faith-based organizations have created a space for increasing donor engagement of faith-based organizations following the implementation of the strategy. However, the policy was perceived as top down as it did not take into account some of the existing challenges. The policy arguably accentuated some of the existing tensions between the government and faith-based organizations, fed faith-controversies and complicated the health system landscape. Moreover, it provided donors with a framework for haphazard engagement with faith-based organizations. As such, putting the implications of donor engagement with FBOs on the research map acknowledges the limitations of efforts to collaborate with faith-based organizations and brings to the surface still-remaining blinkers and limited assumptions in donor definitions of faith-based organizations and in ways of collaborating with them.

Haunted by the past: transformations and daily challenges of China's prosthetics

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-124
Author(s):  
Chunchun Wang
Keyword(s):  
Design Methodology ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Institutional Pressures ◽  
Rehabilitation Center ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Past ◽  
Daily Experiences ◽  
History Of ◽  
Depth Interviews

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the transformations of prosthetic practices in China, as well as the daily experiences and dilemmas arising from the everchanging practices since 1949. On the basis of materials, this paper explores an everyday perspective to review the history of technology.Design/methodology/approachEthnography was collected with the application of participant observations, informal interviews and in-depth interviews during a 13-months study at a rehabilitation center in Chengdu, China. The literature on prosthetic manufacturing was also reviewed for this paper.FindingsChina's prosthetic technology seems to evolve from traditional to modern. However, this progressive narrative – innovation-based timeline (Edgerton, 2006, xi) – has been challenged by daily practices. Due to institutional pressures, prosthetists are in a dilemma of selectively using their knowledge to create one kind of device for all prosthesis users with a certain kind of disability, thereby regulating the physical and social experiences of prosthesis users. Besides, prosthesis users are accustomed to prostheses made with old techniques, and must correct themselves from old experiences to the daily practices recognized by the selected techniques.Originality/valueThis paper provides a cross-cultural case to reexamine Edgerton's criticism of the progressive and orderly innovation-centric technological narrative. More importantly, it reviews the history and practices of China's prosthetics from daily experiences rather than Edgerton's concentration on technology; therefore, it provides an everyday perspective for future research on technological transformations.

scholarly journals Immunizing the Flock: How the Pandemic Court Rewrote Religious Freedom

Laws ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Paul Baumgardner
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
The Past ◽  
The U.S

When coronavirus began to descend upon the United States, religious freedom advocates across the country sounded the alarm that citizens’ religious practices and institutions were under threat. Although some of the most extreme arguments championed by these advocates were not validated by our legal system, many were. This article explores the underappreciated gains made by religious freedom advocates before the U.S. Supreme Court over the past year. As a result of the “Pandemic Court”, religious freedom in the United States has been rewritten. This promises to radically change the educational, employment, and health prospects of millions of Americans for the rest of the pandemic and long afterwards.

PROBLEMATIC ASPECTS OF IMPLEMENTATION OF ADMINISTRATIVE RESPONSIBILITY FOR NON-PAYMENT OF CHILD SUPPORT

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Viktoriia Chokhrii ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Child Support ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
The State ◽  
The Past ◽  
Control Functions ◽  
Labor Legislation ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Administrative Penalty ◽  
Executive Body ◽  
Administrative Responsibility

The article is devoted to the consideration of problematic aspects of the implementation of administrative responsibility for non-payment of child support, is used in the form of socially useful work. In particular, the essence of this type of administrative penalty is revealed. The study focuses on the problematic issues that arise in the implementation of the imposed administrative responsibility in the form of socially useful work. A number of problems concerning the legal application of Article 183-1 of the Code of Ukraine on Administrative Offenses (hereinafter – the Code of Administrative Offenses) and ways of their solution have been outlined. Amendments to the current legislation of Ukraine are proposed in order to improve the implementation of resolutions in cases of administrative offenses. In particular, it is proposed to monitor the workload of the staff of the territorial bodies of the State Executive Service in Ukraine and analyze their staffing standards and functional responsibilities for the preparation of materials under Article 183-1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses. In addition, it was proposed to improve the organization of the performance of socially useful work by local governments by conducting appropriate explanatory work and methodological assistance to local governments in organizing the solution of this issue. The article proposes to transfer control functions to the executive body, and to improve the duty imposed on local governments to provide socially useful work is to improve, including amendments to the labor legislation of Ukraine. It is noted that when drawing up an administrative offense or making a decision in the case, it is necessary to find out the presence or absence of circumstances that for good reasons made it impossible for the debtor to pay child support, or the existing alimony arrears for the past period. The expediency of development of methodical recommendations for local self-government bodies concerning the order of definition and performance of socially useful works is substantiated.

Audientia sacerdotalis?—Remarks on the Legal Nature of Dispute Resolution by Ecclesiastics in Late Antiquity

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-149
Author(s):  
Marzena Wojtczak
Keyword(s):  
Dispute Resolution ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Simultaneous Increase ◽  
Legal Practice ◽  
Legal Doctrine ◽  
The Past ◽  
Lower Rank ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Legal Nature ◽  
The Subject

Abstract The problem of audientia episcopalis in late antiquity has been the subject of extensive research in the past. Previous studies have usually focussed on the legal doctrine, as well as the picture of bishop courts in the light of the literary sources. In contrast, the question of how audientia episcopalis functioned in the legal practice as shown by papyri has caused scholars much difficulty, due to the limited material available as well as the obscure nature of the institution. One could therefore ask: how is it possible that such allegedly common practice of dispute resolution by the bishops—as literary sources make us believe—is so elusive in the papyri? How to explain the simultaneous increase for that period of the papyrological attestations regarding arbitration/mediation carried out by the clergy of lower rank? Could we be dealing with some sort of audientia sacerdotalis functioning in the legal practice? How widespread was in fact the audientia episcopalis, and was this institution homogeneous or rather heterogeneous in nature? The paper presents the attempt to answer these questions by confronting the imperial law with the evidence of legal practice.

China’s Science and Technology Progress through the Lens of Patenting

2021 ◽  
pp. 89-112
Author(s):  
Gary H. Jefferson ◽  
Renai Jiang
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Advantage ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Patent Quality ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Government ◽  
International Sector ◽  
Role Of The Government

This chapter assesses China’s science and technology (S&T) progress through the lens of the patenting literature in the context of China. In particular, after presenting an overview of China’s patent production over the past twenty-five years, it investigates the following questions: What accounts for China’s patent surge? What are the implications of the surge for patent quality? Does the nature of the patenting reveal China’s S&T direction and comparative advantage? How has the international sector affected China’s patent production? What has been the role of the government—the central, provincial, and local governments—in shaping patent production? And finally, how heterogeneous is China’s regional patent production; are patenting capabilities diffusing across China?

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document