No.185-1刘小枫：大学校门的正确打开方式 (No.185-1 Liu Xiaofeng: The way to open the gates of the university)

This is another in the series of essays that were presented at the “来华外国人与近代中国法” 国际学术研讨会 "Foreigners and Modern Chinese Law" International Symposium Conference and then continued thereafter in the same spirit.

No.185-1刘小枫：大学校门的正确打开方式 (No.185-1 Liu Xiaofeng: The way to open the gates of the university).

In this very interesting short essay Liu Xiaofeng considers ways that modern approaches to education rob the student of the time to appropriately approach the the study of text, and produce a student that appears to be more the object of the input of various modern factors of learning.  This is a problem with its own mirror in the West.  Comparing notes about these potentially troublesome approaches to knowledge, and its dissemination in industrial societies that are ordered increasingly in machine or factory like form, is worthy of consideration. My own thoughts in the U.S. Context here: Made to Market Education and Professionalization in University Education;  Consequences of the Growing Divide Between the Ideal of the University and its Reality;  Central Planning and the University: What is So Bad About Administrative Management of Knowledge Production and Dissemination?;  Engaged Scholarship--De-Centering Faculty From Research and Teaching in a Relentless March Toward a Training Model for Middle Tier Universities?

The essay was posted to 叁會學坊, the San Hui Fang Workshops microblog and it follows below 中国语文 only.

Chapter 14 (Chapter Summaries) "The People Making Law" in Elements of Law and the United States Legal System

(Washington Monument Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2016)

I recently announced the forthcoming publication by Carolina Academic Press of my Elements of Law and the United States Legal System (ISBN: 978-1-61163-927-8 • e-ISBN: 978-1-61163-984-1).

The work made sense as a century of legalization (here and here) and judicialization (here and here) forces more and more people worldwide to bump up against aspects of aspects of the U.S: legal system.  The system is a complex amalgamation of distinct approaches to legalization, and the mechanics of its implementation, that  tends to be mystifying to everyone, even individuals trained in law elsewhere. Most people tend to be hard pressed to explain the U.S. legal system either to non-lawyers or to foreigners, even sophisticated foreign lawyers or jurists, or for that matter to each other. Most would find it difficult unravel the distinct strands of law in the United States, each of which deeply embedded within their own internally coherent systems of generation, interpretation and application. The object of the book is to make the elements of law within the U.S. legal system more accessible and easier to invoke.

This set of posts provide interested readers with a more detailed description-summary of each chapter along with teaching objectives. After these descriptions I will circulate a chapter by chapter based draft Teacher's Manual. Comments welcome for all. 

All contents posted on line may be accessed here:

Contents and Links; Chapter Summaries and Draft Teaching Notes: "Elements of Law and the United States Legal System"

Summary book organization and Chapter 14 Summary follows.

Ruminations 72: La Calunnia è un Venticello; On the Address of Donald Trump to the Nation in Congress Assembled 28 February 2017

(Pix Wall Street Journal 28 Feb 2017)

After a tumultuous first month in office--a month that appeared to solidify the great rifts among emerging political factions in  the U.S.--the President gave his first address to Congress assembled  following the forms of a State of the Union Address.   Donald Trump,  Remarks by President Trump in Joint Address to Congress, Washington, D.C. 28 February 2017 (and transcript here). Governor Steve Beshear (former Governor of Kentucky) delivered the Democratic Party response (Democratic Response To Trump's Address To Congress, Annotated, NPR 28 Feb. 2017). Political analysis followed in short order (here, here, here, here, here, and here) to some extent predictably and across the political spectrum as it is evolving in the U.S. 

Here, I am less interested in the sort of political analysis  to which most attention has been paid.  While relevant, in a pragmatic, short term American sort of way, it does little to help understand the underlying ideological structures that will shape much of what will pass for politics over the course of this administration.  It is to that--an elegant and quite sophisticated ideological framework, that the reflections that follow will emphasize. The object of these reflections are simple and straightforward--top take the President at his word, both here and as first unveiled in his inaugural address (my analysis here English,  中国语文), and to see what ideological structures emerge that may of use in understanding the way in which he sees the world and how that world view will color the work of his subordinates both in terms of valuing policy and in the forms of implementation and measures that will be favored going forward. The text of the Speech to the Joint Session of Congress then follows.

Chapter 13 (Chapter Summaries) "The Administrative Branches: The Non-Delegation Doctrine, An Introduction" in Elements of Law and the United States Legal System

(Washington Monument Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2016)

I recently announced the forthcoming publication by Carolina Academic Press of my Elements of Law and the United States Legal System (ISBN: 978-1-61163-927-8 • e-ISBN: 978-1-61163-984-1).

The work made sense as a century of legalization (here and here) and judicialization (here and here) forces more and more people worldwide to bump up against aspects of aspects of the U.S: legal system.  The system is a complex amalgamation of distinct approaches to legalization, and the mechanics of its implementation, that  tends to be mystifying to everyone, even individuals trained in law elsewhere. Most people tend to be hard pressed to explain the U.S. legal system either to non-lawyers or to foreigners, even sophisticated foreign lawyers or jurists, or for that matter to each other. Most would find it difficult unravel the distinct strands of law in the United States, each of which deeply embedded within their own internally coherent systems of generation, interpretation and application. The object of the book is to make the elements of law within the U.S. legal system more accessible and easier to invoke.

This set of posts provide interested readers with a more detailed description-summary of each chapter along with teaching objectives. After these descriptions I will circulate a chapter by chapter based draft Teacher's Manual. Comments welcome for all. 

All contents posted on line may be accessed here:

Contents and Links; Chapter Summaries and Draft Teaching Notes: "Elements of Law and the United States Legal System"

Summary book organization and Chapter 13 Summary follows.

Chapter 12 (Chapter Summaries) "The General Government: Separation of Powers and Checks and Balances" in Elements of Law and the United States Legal System

(Washington Monument Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2016)

I recently announced the forthcoming publication by Carolina Academic Press of my Elements of Law and the United States Legal System (ISBN: 978-1-61163-927-8 • e-ISBN: 978-1-61163-984-1).

The work made sense as a century of legalization (here and here) and judicialization (here and here) forces more and more people worldwide to bump up against aspects of aspects of the U.S: legal system.  The system is a complex amalgamation of distinct approaches to legalization, and the mechanics of its implementation, that  tends to be mystifying to everyone, even individuals trained in law elsewhere. Most people tend to be hard pressed to explain the U.S. legal system either to non-lawyers or to foreigners, even sophisticated foreign lawyers or jurists, or for that matter to each other. Most would find it difficult unravel the distinct strands of law in the United States, each of which deeply embedded within their own internally coherent systems of generation, interpretation and application. The object of the book is to make the elements of law within the U.S. legal system more accessible and easier to invoke.

This set of posts provide interested readers with a more detailed description-summary of each chapter along with teaching objectives. After these descriptions I will circulate a chapter by chapter based draft Teacher's Manual. Comments welcome for all. 

All contents posted on line may be accessed here:

Contents and Links; Chapter Summaries and Draft Teaching Notes: "Elements of Law and the United States Legal System"

Summary book organization and Chapter 12 Summary follows.

Chapter 11 (Chapter Summaries) "Hierarchies of Law Within the Domestic Legal Order and Between National and International Law Reflecting Governmental Order" in Elements of Law and the United States Legal System

(Washington Monument Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2016)

I recently announced the forthcoming publication by Carolina Academic Press of my Elements of Law and the United States Legal System (ISBN: 978-1-61163-927-8 • e-ISBN: 978-1-61163-984-1).

The work made sense as a century of legalization (here and here) and judicialization (here and here) forces more and more people worldwide to bump up against aspects of aspects of the U.S: legal system.  The system is a complex amalgamation of distinct approaches to legalization, and the mechanics of its implementation, that  tends to be mystifying to everyone, even individuals trained in law elsewhere. Most people tend to be hard pressed to explain the U.S. legal system either to non-lawyers or to foreigners, even sophisticated foreign lawyers or jurists, or for that matter to each other. Most would find it difficult unravel the distinct strands of law in the United States, each of which deeply embedded within their own internally coherent systems of generation, interpretation and application. The object of the book is to make the elements of law within the U.S. legal system more accessible and easier to invoke.

This set of posts provide interested readers with a more detailed description-summary of each chapter along with teaching objectives. After these descriptions I will circulate a chapter by chapter based draft Teacher's Manual. Comments welcome for all. 

All contents posted on line may be accessed here:

Contents and Links; Chapter Summaries and Draft Teaching Notes: "Elements of Law and the United States Legal System"

Summary book organization and Chapter 11 Summary follows.

No.184王银宏：世界上第一个宪法法院之争 ——二战之前的奥地利与捷克斯洛伐克宪法法院 (No.184 Wang Yinhong: The World's First Constitutional Court Controversy: The Austrian and Czechoslovak Constitutional Courts before World War I)

This is another in the series of essays that were presented at the “来华外国人与近代中国法” 国际学术研讨会 "Foreigners and Modern Chinese Law" International Symposium Conference and then continued thereafter in the same spirit.


No.184王银宏：世界上第一个宪法法院之争 ——二战之前的奥地利与捷克斯洛伐克宪法法院 (No.184 Wang Yinhong: The World's First Constitutional Court Controversy: The Austrian and Czechoslovak Constitutional Courts before World War I).

In this very interesting essay Wang Yinghong considers the origins of two homologous but quite distinct first efforts at constructing what would become the standard model of European constitutional court. The historical and multidisciplinary study of the Constitutional Court of Austria and the Constitutional Court of the Czechoslovakia reveals the initial unity and division of thought respecting what would become a standard governmental institution..

The essay was posted to 叁會學坊, the San Hui Fang Workshops microblog and it follows below 中国语文 only.

Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) hearing: "The Broken Promises of China’s WTO Accession: Reprioritizing Human Rights"

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) tends to be a good barometer of legislative thinking about China in the United States. Not that this thinking is either coherent or well directed. But it does represent the way in which U.S. "China expert" elites and their legislative masters develop "knowledge" about China. This knowledge is then used to shape U.S. policy and legislative approaches U.S. China relations. It also suggests the way that U.S. ideological thinking shapes the way in which China is viewed as understood by the United States.

This characterization is not meant to suggest a personal position on either the outlook or work of the CECC, or of its advisers. That characterization, however, does suggest that ideological blinders tend to tell us more about the U.S. (in this case) than it does about the Chinese. But if course the same is true of Chinese organs with a similar purpose aimed the the United States. It is with the object of helping to understanding American construction of China, rather than of helping to understand Chinese constructions of themselves (however "flawed" either exercise may be in and of itself and to itself), that this is offered.

One notes only that trade has always been weaponized  as an element of politics--the legalization of that weaponization after 1945 offered at least the appearance of predictability and stabilization, that is of the marketization of politics (that is of conflict) among states so that the rest of us might better maximize our own welfare within and between these battles. It is becoming clearer, now, that legalization in furtherance of a regulatory governance structure within which these political contests could be managed is itself weakening. Perhaps this conference provides a window on to the mechanics and trajectory of that change.

The CECC, under the Chairship of former Presidential candidate Marco Rubio (R-FLA) has just announced hearings on the Chinese engagement with world trade in general, and the World Trade Organization regime in particular. The "concept note" for the hearings and the tentative list of witnesses follows.

Chapter 10 (Chapter Summaries) "Ordering Government Through Law: Constitutions, Statutes, Treaties, Regulations, Judicial Decisions, and Other Sources" in Elements of Law and the United States Legal System

(Washington Monument Pix © Larry Catá Backer 2016)

I recently announced the forthcoming publication by Carolina Academic Press of my Elements of Law and the United States Legal System (ISBN: 978-1-61163-927-8 • e-ISBN: 978-1-61163-984-1).

The work made sense as a century of legalization (here and here) and judicialization (here and here) forces more and more people worldwide to bump up against aspects of aspects of the U.S: legal system.  The system is a complex amalgamation of distinct approaches to legalization, and the mechanics of its implementation, that  tends to be mystifying to everyone, even individuals trained in law elsewhere. Most people tend to be hard pressed to explain the U.S. legal system either to non-lawyers or to foreigners, even sophisticated foreign lawyers or jurists, or for that matter to each other. Most would find it difficult unravel the distinct strands of law in the United States, each of which deeply embedded within their own internally coherent systems of generation, interpretation and application. The object of the book is to make the elements of law within the U.S. legal system more accessible and easier to invoke.

This set of posts provide interested readers with a more detailed description-summary of each chapter along with teaching objectives. After these descriptions I will circulate a chapter by chapter based draft Teacher's Manual. Comments welcome for all. 

All contents posted on line may be accessed here:

Contents and Links; Chapter Summaries and Draft Teaching Notes: "Elements of Law and the United States Legal System"

Summary book organization and Chapter 10 Summary follows.

No.176 雷思温 : 笛卡尔普遍怀疑中的上帝、数学与恶魔 ; No.176 Lei Siwen: Cartesian universal doubt in God, the devil and mathematics

This is another in the series of essays that were presented at the “来华外国人与近代中国法” 国际学术研讨会 "Foreigners and Modern Chinese Law" International Symposium Conference and then continued thereafter in the same spirit.

No.176 雷思温 : 笛卡尔普遍怀疑中的上帝、数学与恶魔 ; No.176 Lei Siwen: Cartesian universal doubt in God, the devil and mathematics.

In this very interesting essay Lei Siwen, of Renmin University Department of Philosophy, considers the early thought of Decartes around the the inter-relationships between the senses and the Devil and the Divine and mathematics.  These Lei uses to try to better understand the skepticism in Descartes' thought.

The essay was posted to 叁會學坊, the San Hui Fang Workshops microblog and it follows below 中国语文 only.