译者|李昀筱,浙江大学法本
审稿|张庆;岳文豪,上海交通大学
编辑|陈宣颖, 西南政法大学本科
责编|陈远航,美国西北大学LL.M.
The Incoherence of Prison Law
监狱法的不连贯性
By Emma Kaufman & Justin Driver
In recent years, legal scholars have advanced powerful critiques of mass incarceration. Academics have indicted America’s prison system for entrenching racism and exacerbating economic inequality. Scholars have said much less about the law that governs penal institutions. Yet prisons are filled with law, and prison doctrine is in a state of disarray.
近年来,法律学者们对大规模监禁提出了强有力的批评。学者们指责美国的监狱系统使得种族主义更加根深蒂固并加剧了经济不平等。学者们对规制刑罚机构的法律言之甚少。然而,监狱里虽“充满”了法律,“监狱理论”却处于混乱的状态。
This Article centers prison law in debates about the failures of American criminal justice. Bringing together disparate lines of doctrine, prison memoirs, and historical sources, we trace prison law’s emergence as a discrete field — a subspeciality of constitutional law and a neglected part of the discipline called criminal procedure. We then offer a panoramic critique of the field, arguing that prison law is predicated on myths about the nature of prison life, the content of prisoners’ rights, and the purpose of penal institutions. To explore this problem, we focus on four concepts that shape constitutional prison cases: violence, literacy, privacy, and rehabilitation. We show how these concepts shift across lines of cases in ways that prevent prison law from holding together as a defensible body of thought.
在关于美国刑事司法的失败之处的辩论中,本文将视野聚焦在监狱法上。我们汇集了不同的学说、监狱回忆录和历史资料,追溯监狱法作为一个独立的领域之显现——一个宪法的子专业和一个被称为“刑事诉讼”的学科中被忽视的部分。然后,我们对这一领域进行了全面的批判,认为监狱法是建立在对监狱生活的性质、囚犯权利的内容以及刑事机构的目的的谬见之上的。为了探讨这个问题,我们把重点放在塑造监狱的宪法性案件的四个概念上:暴力、文化水平、隐私和改造(罪犯)。我们展示了这些概念如何在不同的案件中发生变化,从而使监狱法无法作为一个(能够前后)保持一致的站得住脚的思想体系。
Exposing the myths that animate prison law yields broader insights about judicial regulation of prisons. This Article explains how outdated tropes have narrowed prisoners’ rights and promoted the country’s dependence on penal institutions. It links prison myths to the field’s central doctrine, which encourages selective generalizations and oversimplifies the difficult constitutional questions raised by imprisonment. And it argues that courts must abandon that doctrine — and attend to the realities of prison — to develop a more coherent theory of prisoners’ constitutional rights.
揭露监狱法的谬见,可以对监狱的司法监管产生更为广泛、深刻的理解。本文解释了过时的陈规陋习是如何限缩了囚犯的权利,并加强了国家对刑事机构的依赖。它将对监狱的谬见与该领域的核心理论联系起来,该理论鼓励选择性概括,并过度简化了监禁所带来的困难的宪法问题。本文认为,法院必须放弃这种理论——并关注监狱的现实——以发展出一套更加连贯的囚犯的宪法权利理论。
It is a pity indeed that the judge who puts a man in the penitentiary does not know what a penitentiary is. ——— Eugene V. Debs
能将人关进监狱的法官却不知道什么是监狱,这确实很遗憾。——尤金·维克托·德布斯(译者注:美国杰出的工人运动领袖,社会主义的宣传家,美国社会党的创始人。)
Structural Deregulation
结构性放松管制
By Fody Freeman & Sbaron Facobs
Modern critics of the administrative state portray agencies as omnipotent behemoths, invested with vast delegated powers and largely unaccountable to the political branches of government.  This picture, we argue, understates agency vulnerability to an increasingly powerful presidency. One source of presidential control over agencies in particular has been overlooked: the systematic undermining of an agency’s ability to execute its statutory mandate. This strategy, which we call “structural deregulation,” is a dangerous and underappreciated aspect of what then-Professor, now-Justice Elena Kagan termed “presidential administration.”
现代行政国家的批评者将政府机构描绘成无所不能的庞然大物,拥有极大的授权,而且很大程度上不对政府的行政部门负责。我们认为,这种描述低估了政府机构面对日益强大的总统有多脆弱。特别地,我们忽视了总统对各机构控制权的一个来源:(总统有)系统地破坏机构执行其法定任务的能力。这种策略,我们称之为“结构性放松管制”。这是当时的教授、现在的大法官埃琳娜-卡根(Elena Kagan)所称的“总统行政”的一个危险和未被重视的方面。
Structural deregulation attacks the core capacities of the bureaucracy. The phenomenon encompasses such practices as leaving agencies understaffed and without permanent leadership; marginalizing agency expertise; reallocating agency resources; occupying an agency with busywork; and damaging an agency’s reputation. Structural deregulation differs from traditional “substantive” deregulation, which targets the repeal of particular agency rules or policies. While substantive deregulation may have serious consequences, it is relatively transparent, limited in scope, and subject to legal challenge. By contrast, structural deregulation is stealthier. It is death by a thousand cuts.
结构性放松管制攻击了官僚机构的核心能力。这种现象包括以下做法:使机构人员不足和没有长期领导;边缘化机构的专业知识;重新分配机构的资源;使机构被繁忙的工作占据;以及损害机构的声誉。结构性放松管制与传统的“实质性”放松管制不同,后者旨在废止特定的机构规则或政策。虽然实质性放松管制可能有严重的后果,但它相对而言更加透明,范围有限,并会受到法律的挑战。相比之下,结构性放松管制更加隐蔽。(对政府机构而言)它是一种温水煮青蛙的死法。
We argue that structural deregulation is in tension with constitutional, administrative, and democratic norms. Nevertheless, public law is remarkably ill-equipped to address it. Constitutional and administrative law both have blind spots when it comes to presidential management of the bureaucracy, especially when the President’s mission is incapacitation. Specific statutes meant to protect the civil service or inoculate agency budgets from presidential control do not help much either — they are vulnerable to workarounds. These blind spots and workarounds have allowed structural deregulation to flourish as a method of presidential control, with serious consequences for the future of the administrative state. We therefore propose legislative and regulatory reforms that could help to control the risks of structural deregulation.
我们认为,结构性放松管制与宪法、行政和民主规范之间存在着紧张的关系。然而,公法在解决这个问题时明显能力不足。当涉及到总统对官僚机构的管理时,宪法和行政法都有盲点,特别是当总统的任务是使(这些机构)丧失能力时。旨在保护公务员或使机构预算免受总统控制的具体法规也无济于事——因为它们很容易受到变通办法的影响。这些盲点和变通方法使结构性放松管制作为总统控制的一种方法得以蓬勃发展,对行政国家的未来产生了严重的影响。因此,我们建议进行立法和监管改革,以帮助控制结构性放松管制带来的风险。
参考链接:
https://harvardlawreview.org/2021/12/the-incoherence-of-prison-law/
https://harvardlawreview.org/2021/12/structural-deregulation/
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