Life Imprisonment without Parole in China: Substituting Death for Economic Crimes

Life imprisonment without parole and commutation (LWOP) came under Ninth Amendment to the 1997 Criminal Law of Peoples Republic of China as a proviso to the suspended death penalty for corruption crimes. The legislative intent given for the arrival of new punishment depicts LWOP as a solution for the disparity in a suspended death sentence, controlling judicial discretion and proportional punishment for corruption which is debated as not an exhaustive and compelling justification. The manuscript addresses a substantive question; if LWOP is suitable for the criminal justice system in China? And is answered under three normative claims, namely necessity, effectiveness, and humanness.The examination of the topic contends LWOP is more of an effective tool in broader anti-corruption strategy than a need for domestic utilization.LWOP in China gives no hope of release and stands inconsistent with Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights

Beyond Sovereignty

Most texts examined so far were designed to explain where power lay within a local, seemingly autonomous political community. But local circumstances were shaped by the international situation, and the relationship between the local political community and the wider human society of which it was part became an increasingly important issue towards the end of the sixteenth century. In the face of continuing Habsburg dominance on the European continent, Protestants like Alberico Gentili began to articulate new ideas of a shared human society and of the law of peoples (ius gentium), using these to justify military intervention. The relationship between the law of peoples, the law of war, and Christian principles came to be debated more intensely, especially as political tensions deepened. With the outbreak of the Thirty Years War in 1618, calls for solidarity among co-religionists intensified, but this period also saw a major new account of the laws of nature which explicitly distinguished these from Christianity (although not from religion). In De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1625), Hugo Grotius argued that the authority of the civil magistrate needed to be connected to the natural law if his commands were to be seen as legitimate, while he defined this natural law in terms of ‘strict right’, distinct from considerations of virtue, distributive justice, or Christian charity. His achievement was to suggest how human beings with diverse opinions about salvation and merit could live peacefully together.

“Fantasy Upon Fantasy”: Some Reflections on Dworkin’s Philosophy of International Law

This article offers a critique of Ronald Dworkin’s article “A New Philosophy for International Law”, (Philos Public Aff 41: 1–30, 2013). It begins by showing that Dworkin’s moralised theory of law is built on two highly questionable background assumptions. On the one hand, a descriptively implausible characterisation of a positivist-voluntarist view of international law as the reigning “orthodoxy”. On the other hand, the methodologically questionable assumption that a theory of international law must discharge the dual function of explaining the validity of international law in a manner that underwrites its presumptive legitimacy. In its core part, the article then offers a sustained criticism of Dworkin’s moralised account of the validity and legitimacy of international law. Various problems are identified with the “principle of salience” that Dworkin offers in place of consent as a ground for international law. A key concern is the difficulties that stem from Dworkin’s willingness to proceed on the “fantasy” assumption that his theory needs to get off the ground, i.e. that there is an international court with compulsory jurisdiction and reliable mechanisms for enforcing its judgements. Finally, the article concludes with some thoughts on how Dworkin’s “fantasy-based” approach led him to over-estimate the degree to which international law can be a vehicle for the global spread of liberal democratic values. More minimalist ambitions for international legal order, along the lines suggested by John Rawls in The Law of Peoples, seem more realistic.

Francisco de Vitoria on the Right to Free Trade and Justice

In 1538–39 Francisco de Vitoria delivered two relections: De Indis and De iure belli. This article distills from these writings the topic of free trade as a “human right” in accordance with ius gentium or the “law of peoples.” The right to free trade is rooted in a more fundamental right to communication and association. The rights to travel, to dwell, and to migrate precede the right to trade, which is also closely connected to the rights to preach, to protect converts, and to constitute Christian princes. This has significant repercussions on the field of business ethics: the right to free trade is ultimately founded directly on natural law and indirectly on divine law; trade is not independent of ethics; and trade is presented as an opportunity to develop the virtues of justice and friendship, among other repercussions. Vitoria is portrayed as a defender of private initiative and free markets.

El ius gentium y la idea liberal de un orden mundial justo en John Rawls

Este artículo se centra en The Law of Peoples (1999), libro con el que John Rawls cierra el tríptico de su concepción socio-democrática de la justicia dentro de la tradición liberal, iniciada a principios de la década de los ‘70 con A Theory of Justice (1971), donde describe la justicia como equidad como un ideal moral universal al que deben aspirar todas las sociedades, y continuada dos décadas más tarde con Political Liberalism (1993), obra en la que el pensador estadounidense abunda en su idea de extender una concepción política de la justicia al Derecho de los pueblos y a su función reguladora de las relaciones justas entre los pueblos. De cualquier modo, pese a que Rawls admite expresamente la ascendencia que tienen sobre su idea de justicia el contractualismo y el iusnaturalismo kantianos, así como la influencia que ejerce sobre su estudio dedicado al Derecho de gentes la doctrina universalista e iusirenista del Derecho internacional público, veremos hasta qué punto satisfizo o defraudó Rawls con su visión pluralista del orden mundial las expectativas de quienes esperaban que hiciera una defensa firme de la justicia universal y de la democracia cosmopolita.

Islam, Rawls, and the Disciplinary Limits of Late Twentieth-Century Liberal Philosophy

This article tells the archival story of how Rawls invented a hypothetical Muslim state that he called “Kazanistan.” It examines drafts of The Law of Peoples from 1992 to 1998, Rawls's notes, his personal correspondence, and the sources preserved in his archives. I track Rawls's gradual interest in Islam, which resulted in his invention of Kazanistan during the final revisions, in March 1998. Contrary to the aesthetics of rigor and simplicity in ideal theory's methods, Rawls's actual method in his incursion into “comparative philosophy” and Islam was circuitous and contingent. And contrary to ideal theory's self-presentation as emerging from an ahistorical conceptual realm, the idealized abstraction of Islam emerges from Rawls's own history, or from an ideologically limited set of texts, conversations, and political debates about Islam. The genealogy of Kazanistan illustrates how liberal philosophy extracts data from other disciplines to construct other peoples, without regard for the surrounding disciplinary politics.

All Roads Lead to China

The economic decline of the West weakened economically by the euro zone crisis and politically by Brexit, is unlikely to be arrested. Yet the redistribution of global wealth has not advanced social justice, a Rawlsian ‘law of peoples’ or global emancipation, as the progressive mind anticipated. History far from ended in 1989 and geopolitics reasserted itself with the rise of revisionist powers on the other side of the Eurasian world island. Whether it was the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Russia’s growing assertiveness in Eastern Europe and Syria, the Shanghai Cooperation of authoritarian regimes, or the ASEAN-led but China-dominated, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, revisionist powers have taken new and illiberal global pathways. This chapter examines how, after joining the World Trade Organization in 2002, China emerged as the dominant, authoritarian, geopolitical presence, representing an unanticipated illiberal intervention into the borderless world. Whatever else the China model entails, it confutes liberal faith in the democratic end of ideology. Consequently, second order and weaker states are having to recognize diplomatic first principles, namely that a great power can only be balanced by a great power. The changing geopolitical and financial times requires, this chapter contends, prudent realism rather than abstract idealism.