从司法为民想到换位思考

司法为民是法院新时期工作的宗旨，是党和人民对法院的期望，是时代发展的必然要求，也是人民法院的立足之本。那么，如何让司法真正来为民服务呢？几年来的审判实践告诉我们，解决司法为民的问题并不难，法官只要深思一下，与当事人换个位置再想一下，司法才能更好的为民。当事人要求法官做的我们做到没有，做好没有，达到当事人满意没有。我想，法官如果与当事人换个位置来思考一下，就一定能够达到司法为民服务的法律效果和社会效果，法院和法官的形象就一定能在人们心中树立起来。     

缺席审判实务问题浅谈

目前,由于法律对缺席审判的规定过于简略,在审判实践中,不同的法院、不同的法官对缺席审判的适用条件、对缺席审判案件的当事人的陈述和举证的如何认证各有不同的认识和处理方式,造成司法程序标准的不统一,有的甚至严重影响了当事人的实体权利。从缺席审判的适用,事实证据的认定以及一些实践中的具体问题入手,讨论缺席审判在审判实务中的应用。     

江阴市人民法院

2008年至2011年9月,江阴法院认真践行"为大局服务、为人民司法"工作主题,共审执结案件66923件,标的额92.76亿元,审判人员年人均办案231件。为方便当事人诉讼,成立了职能完备、设施完善、管理创新的"诉讼服务中心",为群众提供导诉立案、法律咨询、诉前调解等"一站式"服务。先后开展"百名法官进百企"、"法官服务基层"等活动,为社区群众和企业提供法律服务。创新"知识产     

公权力对私权意思自治的保障——浅议执行和解的效率和违约后的救济

在民事活动中,意思自治原则贯穿于始终.而在发生争议提起诉讼时,当事人意思自治原则也是解决民事案件的一个重要司法原则,贯穿于诉讼程序的始终.在诉讼超始体现为诉讼的提起由当事人本人自行决定,当事人不主动申诉,法院没有必要去主动干预,即"不诉不理"原则;在审判过程中,则体现为审判人员在庭前的调解和判决前按程序要对当事人进行和解,当事人可以有机会通过平等协商、互相谅解达成调解协议,充分显示了对当事人意愿的尊重;而在诉讼终结对标的的执行过程中,虽然不能由法院进行调解,但当事人可以根据意思自治原则进行执行和解.     

论信用证欺诈例外原则与独立性原则的冲突及处理模式

独立性原则指只要受益人提交的单据与信用证要求相符,银行就必须付款.信用证例外属于信用证独立性原则的例外,是法院针对银行的行为对当事人提供有效的法律救济,两者之间既存在联系的一面.也存在相冲突的一面.     

论信用证欺诈例外原则与独立性原则的冲突及处理模式

独立性原则指只要受益人提交的单据与信用证要求相符，银行就必须付款。信用证例外属于信用证独立性原则的例外，是法院针对银行的行为对当事人提供有效的法律救济，两者之间既存在联系的一面，也存在相冲突的一面。     

法官职业言行规范中的情绪劳动管理

情绪劳动与管理现象在法官办案与信访接待中已大量出现,但法学界与法官们对其关注基本处于空白状态。从真实案例出发,可以看到几乎每天发生的法官面对当事人情绪失控、有对法官不尊重的言行甚至人身威胁时,基于身份和职业仍设法稳控当事人与自身情绪,进而法院领导代表组织对该情绪稳控行为作出积极评价的情绪劳动与管理现象;从法院与法官两个层面,论证司法为民、司法公信内在要求法官付出情绪劳动、法院对此加强管理;针对法院内部情绪劳动与管理不足影响司法公信的现状,从三个方面提出了提升情绪劳动管理与司法公信的设想。     

改革是提高人民法院审判效能的动力

一、改革的探索长期以来,法院的审判工作沿袭着一种封闭式、行政化的模式,这种办案模式虽然在一定时期有其合理、积极的一面,但随着我国改革开放的不断深化,社会主义市场经济的逐步建立,传统的习惯做法已很不适应发展的需要.突出表现在:一是“先定后审”,使庭审走过场;二是过分强调法院审判人员的职权作用,当事人始终处于被动、从属地位.法官为当事人收集证据,在庭审中宣读证言、出示证据.不注重当事人的举证责任;三是“只判不审.只审不判”,司法裁判行政化,合议庭、审判员主要对案件事实负责,而实体判决、裁定权则在院、庭领导.“审案的无权判案,判案的不审案”,这种做法、不利于严肃执法,案件逐级请示汇报,也延缓了办案速度.     

法院调解兴衰的经济学分析

调解作为一种有效解决民事纠纷的方式,在我国司法实践中曾几度兴衰,究其原因,学界有着不同的看法。本文从经济学角度,运用法经济学的研究方法,通过对社会、当事人及法院各自的价值判断标准进行经济学分析,试图找出法院调解兴衰的原因并对法院调解的未来做出理论上的预测。     

《民事诉讼法学》学习辅导

通过学习，要了解和掌握民事诉讼法的一些基本原则如当事人诉讼权利平等原则、辩论原则、处分原则、法院调解原则等和一些基本制度如合议制度、陪审制度、回避制度、公开审判制度等，特别是要重点掌握民事诉讼的管辖问题、当事人问题以及从一审到再审的基本诉讼程序问题等。     

The Independence of the Italian Constitutional Court

It is often asserted that the Italian Constitutional Court is not independent of the Executive and Legislative branches of the government in Rome. We offer a view of independence that is congruent with bodies such as constitutional courts. We argue that the evidence, both qualitative and quantitative, however poor it may be, indicates that the Italian Constitutional Court is as independent as any other corresponding constitutional or supreme court of democratic countries. The evidence is not directly conclusive because the question, in the end, is not whether the judges, one by one, are independent, but whether the Court is independent. The evidence we offer pertains mostly to judges. If judges are independent, as that evidence seems to indicate, the Court is a fortiori even more independent.     

“调判结合”的困境—以民事审判结构理论为分析框架

最高人民法院最近将“调判结合”作为民事审判工作的指导方针。根据民事审判结构理论,该政策恰当地回应了社会转型过程中和谐社会与法治社会的基本要求,而调解与判决之间的矛盾性,使得调判结合同时陷于外部合理性与内部矛盾性的困境,而这根源于更深层次上和谐社会与法治社会的同样困境,这导致了法院有意无意地倾向于强化调解。如果不对此种动向保持警惕,我们很可能重蹈覆辙。     

Aging and Productivity Among Judges: Some Empirical Evidence from the High Court of Australia

A number of studies have shown that productivity declines with age in a wide range of activities. Based on United States experience, it has been argued that one profession that might be an exception to this phenomenon is the judiciary. This study explores the relationship between aging and productivity for a sample of retired judges of the High Court of Australia. The High Court provides a useful test for the hypothesis that older judges are more productive because, in contrast to the United States, most, if not all, judges write their own judgments. Thus, ghostwriting does not cloud the issue of judicial productivity. The findings support the life-cycle hypothesis, which suggests the age-citation profile should increase, reach a peak and then decline as judges get closer to retirement. Thus, the results are consistent with the view that the productivity of judges over their working lives follows a similar pattern to other professions such as academia.     

Financial development in adversarial and inquisitorial legal systems

This paper aims to understand why common law countries have more developed financial markets than civil law countries. One difference between these two legal origins is the procedure of evidence collection for a trial: It is adversarial in common law and inquisitorial in civil law. The adversarial system delegates the collection of evidence to a larger extent to lawyers than the inquisitorial system does. The paper presents a model of law and finance in which investors use courts to enforce their financial contracts with entrepreneurs. Investors are willing to lend more if courts collect evidence more efficiently. Financial markets are more developed in the adversarial than in the inquisitorial system if investors are richer than entrepreneurs or if lawyers are more productive than judges. Manipulation of evidence by lawyers has an ambiguous impact on finance.     

Mediation, arbitration and negotiation

We compare three common dispute resolution processes - negotiation, mediation, and arbitration - in the framework of Crawford and Sobel [V. Crawford, J. Sobel, Strategic information transmission, Econometrica 50 (6) (1982) 1431-1451]. Under negotiation, the two parties engage in (possibly arbitrarily long) face-to-face cheap talk. Under mediation, the parties communicate with a neutral third party who makes a non-binding recommendation. Under arbitration, the two parties commit to conform to the third party recommendation. We characterize and compare the optimal mediation and arbitration procedures. Both mediators and arbitrators should optimally filter information, but mediators should also add noise to it. We find that unmediated negotiation performs as well as mediation if and only if the degree of conflict between the parties is low.     

The constitutional future of the European Union

The formal distinction between a treaty and a constitution is much less important than the question of who is authorized to interpret and amend it. The judges of the European Court of Justice interpret the Treaty by simple majority, while unanimity of the member-states would be required to reverse these decisions. The European Union needs a Court whose judges are empanelled from, and selected by, the highest courts of the member-states. The Treaty on European Union violates three fundamental constitutional principles: (i) the principle of the separation of powers, (ii) the democratic principle, and (iii) the principle of subsidiarity.     

Conflict prevention by Bayesian persuasion

Drawing upon the Bayesian persuasion literature, I show that a mediator can provide conflicting parties strategically with information to decrease the ex-ante war probability. In a conflict between two parties with private information about military strength, the mediator generates information about each conflicting party's strength and commits to sharing the obtained information with the respective opponent. The conflicting parties can be convinced not to fight each other. The conflicting parties benefit from mediation, as the ex-ante war probability is reduced. The benefit is taken up by weak conflicting parties. This benefit is larger when war is costlier and when the war probability absent mediation is higher.     

Institutional Dynamics on the U.S. Court of Appeals: Minority Representation Under Panel Decision Making

This article assesses how the institutional context of decisionmaking on three-judge panels of the federal Court of Appealsaffects the impact that gender and race have on judicial decisions.Our central question is whether and how racial minority andwomen judges influence legal policy on issues thought to beof particular concern to women and minorities when serving onappellate panels which decide cases by majority rule. Properanalysis of this question requires investigating whether womenand minority judges influence the decisions of other panel members.We find that the norm of unanimity on panels grants women influenceover outcomes even when they are outnumbered on a panel.     

Judicial impartiality in politically charged cases

This paper examines under which institutional and political circumstances tenured public officials make partisan decisions. It analyzes the decisions of the judges from the French supreme administrative court regarding the validity of controverted mayoral elections between 1958 and 2007 and uses the vote differential between winners and losers in each election as a quasi-natural experiment to assess the judges’ impartiality. It appears that the judges became partisan after 1981, when the far-right Front National party started to gain more votes. Before 1981, judges cancelled elections only when the vote differential between the election winner and the closest challenger was small. Afterwards, the affiliation of the parties’ candidates also mattered as judges seldom cancelled elections won by communist, mainstream left-wing and mainstream right-wing politicians.     

Do judges react to the probability of appellate review? Empirical evidence from trial court procedures

The appellate review system is intended to serve as an efficient remedy for imperfect judicial decision making. However, it can fulfil this task only when appeals are ex ante unpredictable to the judge, and thus can be expected to occur primarily in case of a bad verdict. Using data from case records of a German trial court, we show that the probability of appeal can be predicted based on easily observable exogenous factors. Controlling for the complexity of a legal case, we find that judges also tend to decrease their effort when the ex ante probability of appeal is low. Thus, our empirical evidence indicates an inefficiency in the appellate review system because trial judges allocate their effort to cases not exclusively according to case complexity, but particularly according to the ex ante probability of being reviewed.