Dec 2016, Volume 11 Issue 4
    

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  • Orginal Article
    Lord Neuberger
  • Orginal Article
    SHI Yan’an
  • Orginal Article
    HU Tianlong
  • Orginal Article
    YAN Tian

    The major challenge that the theory of constitutional change in contemporary United States faced is social movement, and its core concern is to balance and maintain legal and political authorities of the Constitution through interpretation. At the descriptive level, the thoughts of liberal scholars of constitutional law who criticized the theory of originalism restored the true colors of social movement in acting on judicial interpretation of the Constitution in individual cases, thus summarized the rules of occurrence of such action, and put forward the theory of constitutional culture of the mechanism of action and that of the three-stages of action. At the prescriptive level, social movement is burdened with the “original sin” of political factions, and contrasted with the principle of republicanism in the constitutional era. During the Cold War period, pluralist theory linked social movement with the value of democracy, and began to accept its constitutional status. Moreover, given that the influence of social movement on judicial interpretation must be restricted in order to harmonize the conflict between political and legal authorities of the Constitution, both the pluralists and republicans put forward different schemes in response.

  • Orginal Article
    HU Tianlong

    China’s fiscal and taxation law reform is at a critical stage since Chinese economy development needs to consider compromising interests and conflicts from all sources, such as the social benefit network, real estate industry avidity, internationalizing currencies, fostering a philanthropic culture, and growing as a leader in the world market. These undertakings all demand a modern, handy fiscal and taxation law system. On the other hand, after two decades of implementation of the 1994 tax sharing system, the original initiative of strengthening centralized control might not keep pace with the needs of balancing decentralization and local financing demands, in addition to the troublesome taxpayers’ protection, tax judicature reform, and worsening environmental irregularities. Admittedly, China’s fiscal and taxation law reform faces new challenges and incentives. Rigorous international tax frameworks and multi-jurisdictional cooperation drive China to respond as an international trade giant and a responsible game player. Such international tax policy orientations create another layer of incentives and necessity for China to fine-tune its domestic fiscal and taxation legal framework, ranging from promotion of free trade zones, global sourcing practice and supply chain management, renegotiation of outdated tax treaty articles, more active participation in consequential overseas investments, to WTO Protocol compliance review, and international tax dispute resolution. Therefore, this article argues that, no matter the extent to which feasible, plausible or pragmatic proposals are presented, a top level architecting and a serious pursuit to upgrade citizens’ livelihood must be prioritized in earnest.

  • Orginal Article
    DENG Jinting

    Given the comprehensive reforms of and the temporary good scores achieved by the Commissions of Party Discipline Inspection (CDIs), it is important to understand these reforms to answer how long this anticorruption movement could last and whether it could finally succeed. Targeted at the CDIs’ historical problems and the adapting problems of the specialized-anticorruption-commission model (SAC), this article is composed of five parts, including: the historical non-specialized mission and the structural three-transform reform of the CDIs; the historical non-independence of the CDIs within the dual leadership framework, and its recent reforms; a new understanding of the sufficiency of the CDIs’ capacity compared with China’s Hong Kong’s ICAC, a successful example of the SAC, to overcome the distance problem in adapting the SAC; recent reforms on the accountability and disclosures of the CDIs to overcome the time consistency problem; and the conclusions for current achievements, with brief discussions of recent anticorruption strategies and the limitations or unresolved issues, and the lessons to adapt the SAC.

  • Orginal Article
    LU Yi

    We are living in a risk society where people devised the Precautionary Principle in order to minimize the harm caused by risk ex ante. Compared to the previous Food Hygiene Law (FHL) and the 2009 Food Safety Law, the 2015 revised Chinese Food Safety Law (FSL) made a real breakthrough in the sense that it legitimates an important principle in food safety governance. Apart from laying down the fundamental importance of this principle in food safety regulations, the FSL 2015 also invented arrangements from different aspects in order to implement this principle. In other words, the FSL 2015’s incorporation of the Precautionary Principle in a very real sense marked a transition from a demonstrative preventive food safety management regime to a more effective precautionary regime. However, the Precautionary Principle needs to be adopted in a “precautionary” way since this principle has its own limitations and defects. Incautious application of the principle may create new risks. This article compares the European approach in implementing the Precautionary Principle, and examines China’s legal arrangements against negative impacts brought by the Precautionary Principle. Three perspectives are discussed: independence of scientific institutes; proportionality in risk management measures, and the shift of burden of proof for market authorization.

  • Orginal Article
    SONG Lianbin,YANG Xiaoqiang

    The crime of deliberately rendering an arbitral award in violation of law was provided at the end of Article 20 of the Amendment VI to the Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China. Such a crime is likely to be misunderstood because views are sharply divided on its implication and scope of application. In addition, pertinent provisions are not manipulable. The wording of violation of law should not be included in articles of the law, as legalese. The charge is the product of redundant legislation, whose provisions are bound to be considered as pieces of blank paper. The creation of the crime disrespects arbitration, and removes the peculiarities of it. The charge of the crime undermines the profession of international arbitration. Therefore, the crime should be repealed. Where cases were arbitrated wrongly, and social harms were caused, criminal law and other laws would serve as remedies.

  • Orginal Article
    DING Xiaodong
  • Orginal Article
    PAN Xuenan