Word: legalism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...just an undergrowth but a lush jungle of archaic restrictions, limitations and protections based on the 19th century notion of a female as the dependent property of a father or husband. In Georgia, the legislature has stubbornly refused to repeal an 1863 law that defines a woman's legal existence as "merged in the husband." In Arizona, insurance companies may still cancel a divorced woman's insurance (but not a man's) on the grounds of "instability...
Last week Islamic Revolutionary Courts, controlled by the Komiteh, tightened their grip on Iran's legal system, for the first time executing persons charged with nonpolitical offenses. In public trials that are expected to replace the widely protested late-night secret tribunals, the courts punished rapists, thieves and adulterers, as well as more of the SAVAK agents, police and army officers who have been their chief targets. In Tehran, four men convicted of raping an 18-year-old male university student were executed; unaccountably, the victim was given 13 lashes. In Jamshid Abad, near the Caspian coast, a married...
China's new rulers might put it more practically: no law, no Four Modernizations program to improve agriculture, industry, defense, and science and technology. "It is essential to strengthen the socialist legal system if we are to bring great order across the land," says Chairman Hua Kuo-feng. That means assuring bureaucrats, intellectuals and skilled workers essential to China's development that they will not be summarily sent off to the rice paddies or driven to suicide, as they often were under Mao. Fear of government highhandedness, party leaders now admit, has been running rampant. To boost morale...
...creating a rule of law will be difficult for a country that has had virtually no formal legal system for almost two decades. After they came to power in 1949, the Communists issued some Soviet-style statutes, but the system withered away during the Cultural Revolution. Public trials were few and mainly for show; lawyers were almost nonexistent, and judges were largely untrained hi the law. In the late '60s the Peking People's Daily ran an editorial titled "In Praise of Lawlessness," condemning law as a bourgeois restraint on the revolutionary masses...
...very sharp and complicated class struggle, a life and death struggle," says Chang Chunglin, a deputy director of research at Peking's Law Institute, "and people who have experience in such struggles know quite well that they are difficult to deal with and still go through all necessary legal procedures." Until recently the "enemies" made up as much as 5% of the population, but the list has been shortened this winter as various "capitalists" and "landlords" have been restored their rights and in some cases their property...