This article compares constitutional amendments in China and Taiwan to explore the long shadow cast by the Chinese encounter with ‘modernity’ on their divergent constitutional roads. It observes that in China, preambular changes have been the characteristic of the amendments to the 1982 Constitution of the People's Republic of China, while the rule-conformity feature of Taiwan's multiple rounds of constitutional revision indicates that the preservation of the formal identity of the 1946 Constitution of the Republic of China is central to Taiwan's constitutional transformation. The article argues that the prominence of the preamble in China's constitutional amendments reflects the programmatic character of its socialist constitution, which is seen as an instrument for progress and emancipation through revolutionary forces. In contrast, Taiwan's rigorous observance of amendment rules underscores the pivotal role of legality in its constitutional development. Progress and continuity underlie the respective necessary legitimating conditions for constitutional amendment in China and Taiwan. Tracing the revolution-progress and the legality-continuity nexuses to the Chinese quest for liberation from Western imperialism, this article suggests that modernity guides both China and Taiwan in maintaining the legitimacy of their respective constitutions. China's path towards modernity tells a story of constitutional struggle in the prehistory of the Global South.

In this article, I examine the attempt to apply proportionality balancing (PB) to the co-ordination of the relations between governance regimes, which I call ‘inter-scalar PB’, from the perspective of competing institutional arrangements of global governance. Observing inter-scalar PB becoming a legal technique of management, I argue that it be reconceived as a narrative framework within which the fundamental values and principles of individual governance regimes can be politically contested without antagonism. I first discuss the role PB has played in the interaction between the law of state immunity and international investment law and then take a closer look at the features of inter-scalar PB as intimated in those instances: simplism, normativism, institutionalism and legalism. I suggest that the complex fundamental issues concerning the relationship between governance regimes are left out in the proportionality analysis-mediated resolution of regime-induced conflicts, disclosing the depoliticization tendency in inter-scalar PB. Juxtaposing it with the indicator project in international human rights advocacy, I conclude that both are jurispathic and reflect the rationalist propensity in the legal administration of global governance. PB, reconceived as a language in which values, conflicts, and interests of each governance regime can be argued and narrated as part of the politics of reconstructing global governance, will help to recast global governance in more jurisgenerative terms.

This article aims to provide an alternative account of political constitutionalism by situating it in a broader process of constitutional politics than the traditional court vs parliament debate has suggested. Drawing upon Robert Cover’s distinction between the jurispathic and the jurisgenerative constitution, I argue that parliamentary decision-making is not necessarily more congenial to a jurisgenerative constitutional order than judicial review as political constitutionalists contend. I trace the jurispathic character of current scholarship on political constitutionalism to the presupposition of institutional sovereignty in a narrow understanding of constitutional politics, which its defenders share in common with the supporters of judicial supremacy. To move towards a robust version of non-court-centred jurisgenerative constitutionalism, which I call constitutional jurisgenesis, we need to rethink the place of politics in a constitutional order. From Cover’s idea of constitutional nomos I take two further lessons for this new understanding of constitutional politics. First, constitutional theory should reconsider the role of institutional sovereignty in the relationship between law and politics in constitutional orders. Second, to engage the people in constitutional politics, we need to shift attention from the popular sovereignty-centred debate to constitutional narratives, which are oriented towards nomos-building.

The synthesis of aluminum nitride (AlN) powders from aluminum (Al) particles via a thermal nitridation process was carried out at high temperature (>900 °C) with a long reaction time (∼several hours). This study proposes a two-stage plasma-chemical synthesis process to efficiently minimize the agglomeration of Al particles, reduce the reaction time and temperature, and promote the formation of AlN powders. In the first stage, partially nitrided Al powders were produced at temperatures lower than 600 °C in atmospheric-pressure microwave N2 plasma. The particle size of the as-prepared powders was similar to that of the original Al powders. In the second stage, the reaction temperature was increased to 700–800 °C and the reaction time was less than 5 min in N2 plasma. Well-dispersed AlN powders with almost no agglomeration were produced. Moreover, the particle size was lower than that of the original Al.

Legal scholars have been inspired by the dialogic approach and rallied around it as the solution to constitutional conflict in domestic constitutional orders and the transnational legal landscape. This paper aims to show that the gravitation towards judicial dialogue in contemporary constitutional theory misses the point, given the ambiguities surrounding it. My investigation reveals that the dialogic approach does not succeed in guiding the inter-departmental or inter-regime interactions in a way that no single power would exert unilateral domination. The emergence of judicial supremacy in both national and transnational constitutional orders further suggests that underlying those ostensible examples of judicial dialogue is a transfigured conception of sovereignty. As it is the rise of judicial sovereignty that drives the move towards judicial dialogue in contemporary constitutional developments, I suggest that legal scholars shift focus of attention from the idea of dialogue to the enhanced judicial role in the new constitutional era.

This study investigates how family control influences entry mode choice between joint ventures and wholly owned subsidiaries. Based on past studies revealing family-controlled firms’ unique concerns regarding the preservation of socioemotional wealth, the researchers posit that, firms with higher family control respond more drastically to perceived environmental uncertainty when choosing their entry mode. The researchers hypothesize that, when perceiving high environmental uncertainty, firms with higher versus lower family control are more likely to choose joint ventures. However, when perceiving low environmental uncertainty, firms with higher versus lower family control tend to choose wholly owned subsidiaries. The empirical results obtained from a sample of 1,644 investments undertaken by publicly listed companies in Taiwan support the hypotheses.

The question of constitutionalization cuts through the heart of theoretical debate on the fragmentation of global governance. This paper aims to contribute to this debate through a comparison of global administrative law (GAL) and the conflicts-law approach. While the conflicts-law approach espouses the move towards global constitutionalism, GAL disavows constitutional ambition. I make a twofold argument. First, the differing diagnoses these two approaches make of global governance lead to their distinct proposed solutions. GAL identifies the lack of accountability as the underlying concern of global governance and responds to fragmented global governance through balancing-centred legal management. The conflicts-law approach instead attributes the challenges facing global governance to the ill-designed democratic institutions in nation states and turns to ‘democratic juridification’ as the solution. Second, GAL and the conflicts-law approach reflect two distinct images of constitutionalism. GAL’s ‘constitutional deficit’ suggests its implicit embrace of a version of constitutionalism rooted in the tradition of populist democracy. The conflicts-law approach situates transnational democracy in the conflicts-law process in which inter-regime conflicts are resolved, suggesting a prototype of constitutionalized global governance underpinned by an epistemic understanding of democracy.

Globalization redefines the relationship between law and space, resulting in the emergence of transnational administrative law in a globalizing legal space. I aim to shed light on transnational administrative law by examining how administrative law relates to the process of European integration. I argue that the idea of administrative legitimation is at the core of this relationship. In the European Union, transnational administration grounds its legitimacy on the fulfilment of administrative law requirements. However, given that in the European Union, administrative legitimation is rooted in Europe's constitutional transformation, I caution against the projection of Europe's experience onto global governance.

500 nm-thick aluminum-doped zinc oxide (ZnO:Al) thin film is usually used as a front transparent conductive oxide (TCO) contact on photovoltaic devices, and for this application is often deposited by a reactive radio-frequency (r.f.) magnetron sputtering system from a ceramic target. This work reports on the preparation and characterization of AZO thin films on Corning 1737 glass substrates grown by reactive r.f.-magnetron sputtering from a ZnO ceramic target with 2 wt% Al content. It was found that the growth parameters, such as chamber pressure, working power, and deposition temperature, have significant influences on the properties of AZO films. According to the experimental results: (1) Films were polycrystalline showing a strong preferred c-axis orientation. (2) With increasing working power, the resistivity decreased, and mobility and the carrier concentration increased. (3) Lower deposition temperature leads to a decrease in resistivity, with 2.5×10-4 Ω-cm representing the lowest resistivity reached.

This work reports on the fabrication and characterization of Mo thin films on soda-lime glass substrate grown by reactive RF magnetron sputtering. Film thickness was measured by x-ray step surface profiler. The structural properties and surface morphology were analyzed by x-ray diffraction (XRD), atomic force microscope (AFM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Electrical properties were measured by four-point probe. It was found that the growth parameters, such as argon flow rate, RF power, film thickness, have significant influences on properties of Mo films. The strain on films revealed the complicated relationship with the working pressure, which might be associated with micro structures and impurities. In order to improve the adhesion and electricity, we adopted a two-pressure deposition scheme. The optimal thickness and sheet resistance are νm and 0.12 ω The mechanisms therein will be discussed in detail. Furthermore, we also investigated the diffusion property of Na ion of double Mo films sputtered on soda-lime glass. Our experimental results could lead to better understanding for improving further CIGS-based photovoltaic devices.