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NEWS |
China — The Ministry of Justice has issued a series of regulations to curb illegal operation by lawyers and law firms that would take effect as of 1 May 2004.
The regulations would involve professional associations taking on a role of supervising lawyers and curbing illegal activity. Mr Zhao Dacheng, director of the Ministry’s department of lawyers and notarisation was quoted as saying ‘Lawyers not only represent the interests of their clients but also are a critical power in realising justice ... For all law-abiding lawyers, the new rules will be positive for the business ... If the lawyers do a good job, the interests of all parties will be protected.’
The regulations would cover aspects of bribing judges and prosecuting attorneys, where the lawyer would lose his business licence for doing so. Also lawyers would be forbidden from collecting private fees from clients; and law firms would be supervised by the judiciary and pricing administrations. (Source: www.china.org.cn )
China — China is facing a shortage of lawyers. There are currently a total of 102,000 certified lawyers for a population of 1.3bn. This means that for every 12,745 people there is only one lawyer. China’s number of lawyers does not meet the demands for legal service in China, especially in the less developed west China. Minister for Justice, Mr Zhang Fusen, was quoted as saying that there are still 206 counties without lawyers in China. He also said that there was a shortage of lawyers skilled and experienced in international businesses.
The demand for legal service increased largely on China becoming part of the WTO in late 2001 and upon the central government signing the Close Economic Partnership Arrangement (‘CEPA’) with Hong Kong and Macau on 2003. (Source: www.china.org.cn)
USA — In a bid to curb drunk driving, the leaders of the city of Los Angeles have proposed seizing and selling the vehicles belonging to those arrested for drunk driving. Police Chief William Bratton said ‘We can arrest and jail a driver under the influence. But unless we can take away their keys and their cars, they can and will be a deadly menace on city streets.’
Legal scholars, however, say that the proposed law that would allow the LA Police Department to keep the money and use it for drunk driving programmes, raises issues of due process and property rights guaranteed by the US Constitution. Professor Erwin Chemenrinsky of the University of Southern California was quoted as saying ‘What’s so troubling to me is that they are doing this as a civil proceeding so that you lose all of the protections that are present in a criminal prosecution, such as due process and reasonable doubt ... I have no problem if they want to take away cars as a criminal penalty but they are taking them away before (the drivers) are convicted ... I’ve lost my car when I haven’t been deemed guilty of anything.’
A spokesman for the LA City Council said if the proposal should become law, the vehicle’s owner would have his or her car confiscated even if someone else was arrested for driving it while drunk — a provision that would prompt parents to ‘think twice’ before letting their teenagers borrow the family car.
The spokesman also went on to say that the legislation could be drafted such that the car would be impounded at the time of arrest but not sold unless the accused drunk driver is convicted. (Source: www.cnn.com)
USA — The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that government agents can search and even dismantle a car’s gas tank as part of drug and other smuggling interdiction at the nation’s borders.
Border officers can randomly search gas tanks, despite the absence of specific indication that a particular car is suspect, the high court said. A federal appeals court in California had said that officers could visually inspect gas tanks, but not dismantle them unless they have reason to suspect wrongdoing. In the case of Manuel Flores-Montano, whose station wagon was searched at the Otay Mesa Port in California, officers found 37 kilograms of marijuana bricks once the car’s gas tank was removed. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said that the government could not use the marijuana as evidence because the search was unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court has overruled this finding. (Source: www.findlaw.com)