The Public Life of Private Law.

私法的公共生活。

• 批准号: ES/J021903/1
• 负责人: Mairead Enright
• 金额: $ 1.85万
• 依托单位: University of Kent
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2013 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FJ021903%2F1
• 关键词: Public; Life; Private; Law.

Policy-makers of all stripes aim to defuse political conflict by appeals to law. When it was reported that shari'a councils grant religious divorces to Muslim couples in Britain, many commentators purportedly concerned to protect women's rights and preserve social cohesion called for new criminal legislation outlawing the councils. The summer's social disturbances in Britain's cities generated highly public demands for punishment of the 'rioters' in the criminal courts. Opponents of the anti-austerity occupations which have taken place in cities worldwide call for more forceful policing of expression and assembly in the interests of public order. Survivors of past human rights abuse demand public acknowledgment of the wrongs done to them and punishment of the wrongdoers. The resort in each instance is to public law; sometimes criminal law, sometimes human rights law. This indicates a failure of public legal imagination. We often forget that private law plays a powerful role in regulating social conflict. This is especially true of the law of obligations, which comprises contract and tort (the law of civil wrongs). Divorcing Muslim couples may use contract law to depart from the provisions of family law. Many of the summer's 'rioters' and their families found themselves in breach of 'contracts' increasingly used by local authorities and landlords to regulate tenants' behaviour. The tort of trespass sets the permissible boundaries to occupation as a form of political protest, and by extension to freedom of expression and assembly. Victims of past institutional human rights abuse have attempted to use the tortious concept of 'duty of care', and the tort of trespass to the person to hold their abusers accountable. Thus, although private law often slips under the radar of public consciousness, its role in channelling important political conflicts should not be under-estimated. Private law, as much as public law, puts us in our place as citizens.Our series of four seminars will explore the role of private law in shaping political struggle. This is what we mean by 'the public life of private law'. We are interested in mapping the ways in which engagement with private law might by turns enhance and restrict political engagement between opposing groups and between the citizen and the state. Many critical legal and political scholars worry that our politics are hollowed out by over-reliance on litigation and regulation to fulfil political aims. A number of questions flow from this position. Is the difficulty amplified when the law at issue is private law; more readily associated with economic imperatives than with rights claims? Is a resort to private law inevitably a depoliticizing move, or does private law open up novel means of political struggle? Does the formal, technical nature of private law generate peculiar strategic advantages for political actors? Does private law inevitably bolster existing disparities in political power, or does it contain means by which imbalances can be addressed? Are contract and tort cases ever as significant for politics as civil rights litigation, or does private illegality inevitably lack political cachet?

各行各业的政策制定者都致力于通过诉诸法律来化解政治冲突。当有报道称，伊斯兰教法委员会允许英国穆斯林夫妇进行宗教离婚时，许多据称关心保护妇女权利和维护社会凝聚力的评论家呼吁制定新的刑事立法，宣布该委员会为非法。今年夏天，英国城市的社会骚乱引发了公众强烈要求在刑事法庭上惩罚“暴徒”的呼声。在世界各地的城市中发生的反紧缩占领的反对者呼吁为了公共秩序的利益对言论和集会进行更有力的监管。过去侵犯人权行为的幸存者要求公开承认对他们犯下的错误，并惩罚违法者。在每一种情况下都诉诸公法;有时诉诸刑法，有时诉诸人权法。这表明公众法律的想象力的失败。我们经常忘记私法在调节社会冲突方面发挥着强大的作用。对于债的法律来说尤其如此，债的法律包括合同和侵权行为（民事不法行为法）。离婚的穆斯林夫妇可以利用合同法来背离家庭法的规定。许多夏季的“骚乱者”及其家人发现自己违反了地方当局和房东越来越多地用来规范租户行为的“合同”。非法侵入侵权行为规定了作为政治抗议形式的占领的允许界限，并延伸到表达自由和集会自由。过去制度性侵犯人权行为的受害者试图利用“照顾义务”的侵权概念和侵犯人身的侵权行为来追究虐待者的责任。因此，尽管私法经常在公众意识的雷达下滑动，但它在引导重要政治冲突方面的作用不应低估。私法和公法一样，使我们成为公民。我们的四个系列研讨会将探讨私法在塑造政治斗争中的作用。这就是我们所说的“私法的公共生活”。我们感兴趣的是绘制的方式，其中与私法的参与可能会反过来加强和限制对立团体之间的政治参与和公民与国家之间。许多持批评态度的法律的和政治学者担心，我们的政治因过度依赖诉讼和监管来实现政治目标而被掏空。这一立场产生了一些问题。当所涉法律是私法时，困难是否会扩大;私法更容易与经济需要而不是权利主张联系在一起？诉诸私法是否必然是一种非政治化的举措，还是私法开辟了政治斗争的新手段？私法的形式和技术性质是否为政治行为者带来了特殊的战略优势？私法是否不可避免地支持了现存的政治权力差异，或者它是否包含了可以解决不平衡的手段？合同和侵权案件对政治的重要性是否与民权诉讼一样，或者私人非法行为是否不可避免地缺乏政治声望？