In the past two decades, '"civil society" has become a central organizing concept in the social sciences. Occupying the middle ground between the state and private life, the civil sphere encompasses everything from associations to protests to church groups to nongovernmental organizations. Interest in the topic exploded with the decline of statism in the 1980s and 1990s, and many of our current debates about politics and social policy are informed by the renewed focus on civil society. Michael Edwards, author of the most authoritative single-authored book on civil society, serves as the editor for The Oxford Handbook of Civil Society. Broadly speaking, the book views the topic through three prisms: as a part of society (voluntary associations), as a kind of society (marked out by certain social norms), and as a space for citizen action and engagement (the public square or sphere). It does not focus solely on the West (a failing of much of the literature to date), but looks at civil society in both the developed and developing worlds. Throughout, it merges theory, practice, and empirical research. In sum, The Oxford Handbook on Civil Society will be the definitive work on the topic.

The issue of 'reverse discrimination' is a topical subject, particularly in the field of family reunification. Reverse discrimination occurs when a European Union (EU) citizen in a 'purely internal situation' is treated less favourably than an EU citizen of another nationality whose situation is largely governed by EU law. Reverse Discrimination in the European Union offers an up-to-date standard reference work on reverse discrimination. Part I of this book analyses the issue of reverse discrimination from an EU perspective. In particular, it questions whether reverse discrimination falls within the scope of application of Member State law or whether it falls within the ambit of EU law. Subsequently, it discusses the interpretation of the 'purely internal situation' doctrine on the basis of the case law of the European Court of Justice, giving special attention to recent developments since the controversial Ruiz Zambrano judgment.Although reverse discrimination is of interest from the perspective of the Member States, it is still mostly studied from the viewpoint of the EU.To address this, Part II looks at reverse discrimination in five Member States, namely Belgium, France, Italy, Germany and Austria. The focus lies on the ground(s) on which the national authorities decide whether or not to allow stricter treatment of purely internal situations. Finally, Part III analyses specific instances of reverse discrimination in federally structured Member States, from the perspective of both EU law and Belgian and German law.

This collection of essays brings together contributions from judges, legal scholars and practitioners in order to provide a comprehensive assessment of the law and practice of exceptions from the principle of free movement. It aims: - to conceptualise how justification arguments relating to exceptions to free movement operate in the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union and national courts; - to develop a comprehensive and original account of empirical problems on the application of proportionality; - to explore the legal and policy issues which shape the interactions between the EU and national authorities, including national courts, in the context of the efforts made by Member States to protect national differences. The book analyses economic, social, cultural, political, environmental and consumer protection justifications. These are examined in the light of the rebalancing of the EU constitutional order introduced by the Lisbon Treaty and the implications of the financial crisis in the Union.

There are two oppositional narratives in relation to telling the story of indigenous peoples and minorities in relation to globalization and intellectual property rights. The first, the narrative of Optimism, is a story of the triumphant opening of brave new worlds of commercial integration and cultural inclusion. The second, the narrative of Fear, is a story of the endangerment, mourning, and loss of a traditional culture. While the story of Optimism deploys a rhetoric of commercial mobilization and "innovation," the story of Fear emphasizes the rhetoric of preserving something "pure" and "traditional" that is "dying." Both narratives have compelling rhetorical force, and actually need each other, in order to move their opposing audiences into action. However, as Picart shows, the realities behind these rhetorically framed political parables are more complex than a simple binary. Hence, the book steers a careful path between hope rather than unbounded Optimism, and caution, rather than Fear, in exploring how law functions in and as culture as it contours the landscape of intellectual property rights, as experienced by indigenous peoples and minorities. Picart uses, among a variety of tools derived from law, critical and cultural studies, anthropology and communication, case studies to illustrate this approach. She tracks the fascinating stories of the controversies surrounding the ownership of a Taiwanese folk song; the struggle over control of the Mapuche's traditional land in Chile against the backdrop of Chile's drive towards modernization; the collaboration between the Kani tribe in India and a multinational corporation to patent an anti-fatigue chemical agent; the drive for respect and recognition by Australian Aboriginal artists for their visual expressions of folklore; and the challenges American women of color such as Josephine Baker and Katherine Dunham faced in relation to the evolving issues of choreography, improvisation and copyright. The book also analyzes the cultural conflicts that result from these encounters between indigenous populations or minorities and majority groups, reflects upon the ways in which these conflicts were negotiated or resolved, both nationally and internationally, and carefully explores proposals to mediate such conflicts.

Article 6 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) provides that the EU will accede to the system of human rights protection of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Protocol No 9 in the Treaty of Lisbon opens the way for accession. This represents a major change in the relationship between two organisations that have co-operated closely in the past, though the ECHR has hitherto exercised only an indirect constitutional control over the EU legal order through scrutiny of EU Member States. The accession of the EU to the ECHR is expected to put an end to the informal dialogue, and allegedly also competition between the two regimes in Europe and to establish formal (both normative and institutional) hierarchies. In this new era, some old problems will be solved and new ones will appear. Questions of autonomy and independence, of attribution and allocation of responsibility, of co-operation, and legal pluralism will all arise, with consequences for the protection of human rights in Europe. This book seeks to understand how relations between the two organisations are likely to evolve after accession, and whether this new model will bring more coherence in European human rights protection. The book analyses from several different, yet interconnected, points of view and relevant practice the draft Accession Agreement, shedding light on future developments in the ECHR and beyond. Contributions in the book span classic public international law, EU law and the law of the ECHR, and are written by a mix of legal and non-legal experts from academia and practice.

Today within neoliberal democracies, gender and sexuality provisions give people the opportunity of being granted social and legal protection. But how does the asylum system intervene within claimants' understandings of themselves and in what ways does this affect their livelihoods in the country of arrival? The Sexual Politics of Asylum emerges from a 2 year long ethnography, which explores the experiences of 60 gender and sexual minority refugees in the UK. Bringing previously unheard stories to the forefront, this enlightening volume challenges dominant notions about the construction of sexuality and gender as an instrument for claiming rights in a world shaped by postcolonial relations. Giametta first examines why the migratory experience of the studied migrants is located within a set of humanitarian-inflected discourses that privilege suffering and trauma. This is then followed by an assessment of the respondents' biographical accounts, which consequently uncovers how being situated in liminal socio-political and legal interstices produces precarious forms of life. Whilst the topic of asylum for gender and sexual minorities has attracted wide media coverage over the past decade, there persists a lack of academic attention to the complex experiences of these refugees. As such, this timely book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in human rights, sociology, anthropology, migration, sexuality, gender and cultural studies, as well as people working within the refugee granting process.

In legal decisions and commentary, freedom of assembly is widely cherished as a precious human right and as indispensable for the preservation of democratic governance. But despite this rhetoric assemblies are subject to extensive regulation, such as prior restraints, and restrictions on the time, place and manner of assemblies. This comparative study examines five influential jurisdictions and reveals similarities and inconsistencies between them. It finds that freedom of assembly is often subjugated to freedom of expression in a way that disregards the expressive potential of assemblies. The shortcomings include the misconstrued content neutrality and public forum doctrines in the US, blanket bans and other restrictions based on intangible and distant harm in the UK, preventative restrictions and viewpoint discrimination in Germany, and the uncertain status of freedom of assembly and opaque judicial reasoning in France. Such inconsistencies also present challenges for the European Court of Human Rights in developing a coherent assembly doctrine. The book argues that it is time for jurisprudence to move away from a narrowly focused concept of expression, and recognise the creative and expressive value of freedom of assembly.

Million of people around the Asia Pacific region are suffering from the twin effects of globalization and exclusionary nationality laws. Some are migrant workers without rights in host countries; some are indigenous peoples who are not accorded their full rights in their own countries. Yet others are refugees escaping from regimes that have no respect for human rights. This collection of essays discusses the ways in which citizenship laws in the region might be made consistent with human dignity. It considers the connectedness of national belonging and citizenship in East and Southeast Asian and Pacific states including Australia the impact of mass migration, cultural homogenization and other effects of globalization on notions of citizenship and possibilities of commitment to a transnational democratic citizenship that respects cultural difference.;This work is intended for use by departments of politics, international relations, economics (courses in international trade, globalization, labour economics), Asian studies, sociology (courses in legal and citizenship studies), and law.

The prohibition of abuse of rights in Article 17 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR or Convention) embodies one of the Convention's main principles: its commitment to democracy and democratic values. The provision aims to prevent groups and individuals from successfully invoking fundamental rights and freedoms to justify anti-democratic activities. At the same time it is also one of the Convention's most controversial provisions. There exists a certain tension between human rights protection and the concept of abuse of rights. While human rights essentially aim to promote freedom by affirming the basic rights and freedoms citizens enjoy vis--vis state authorities, the abuse clause primarily aims to protect the democratic organisation of the state against groups and individuals invoking these rights with the aim of undermining it. Furthermore, an analysis of the growing body of case law on this topic shows that the interpretation and application of Article 17 ECHR are far from unequivocal. While according to Article 17 ECHR anti-democratic activities may be excluded from the protection of the Convention, clear criteria for determining which activities fit this description are lacking. In addition, the case law covers different methods of application of the abuse clause that seem to be used rather arbitrarily. This has resulted in a rather obscure and inconsistent case-by-case approach. This study seeks to shed light on the prohibition of abuse of rights in Article 17 ECHR in order to contribute to a more coherent interpretation of this provision. To that aim it studies the abuse clause from different perspectives. First, it looks at the historical background of the provision to examine what motivated the drafters to include this prohibition. Then it moves on to the case law of the European Commission of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights and to legal doctrine, revealing the difficulties and inconsistencies in the current interpretation of the abuse clause. Next, it analyses the interpretation of prohibitions of abuse in other human rights documents to see whether parallels can be drawn with the interpretation of Article 17 ECHR. Subsequently, it addresses the concepts of 'abuse of rights' and 'militant democracy' and examines the extent to which they offer a framework for understanding the abuse clause. Based on the insights obtained from these different perspectives, this study puts forward a proposal as to how Article 17 ECHR can best be applied in the future.

The coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty has provided the EU with new powers in the fields of criminal law and security law while reinforcing existing powers in immigration and asylum law. The Stockholm Programme is the latest framework for EU action in the field of justice and home affairs. It includes a range of new legislation in the fields of immigration and asylum, substantive criminal law, criminal procedure and co-operation between national criminal justice systems. The combination of the new treaty and programme have made security and justice key areas of legislative growth in the EU. This volume brings together a range of leading scholars, as well as some of the most interesting new voices in the debate, to examine the state of EU security and justice law after the Lisbon Treaty and the Stockholm Programme. It provides a critical examination of EU law in the fields of immigration, asylum, counter-terrorism, citizenship, fundamental rights and external relations. The book also examines the evolving roles of the EU institutions and criminal justice agencies. It provides a critical account of EU law in this field under the developing constitutional and institutional settlement.

How do societies at the national and international level try to overcome historical injustices? What remedies did they develop to do justice to victims of large scale atrocities? And even more important: what have we learned from the implementation of these so-called instruments of transitional justice in practice?Lawyers, socials scientists and historians have published shelves full of books and articles on how to confront the past through international criminal tribunals, truth commissions, financial compensation schemes and other instruments of retributive/punitive and restorative justice. A serious problem continues to be that broad interdisciplinary accounts that include both categories of measures are still hardly available. With this volume a group of international experts in the field endeavors to fill this gap, and even more. By alternating historical overviews with critical assessments this volume does not only offer an extensive introduction to the world of transitional justice, but also food for thought concerning the effectiveness of the remedies it offers to face the past successfully.

An attorney and certified information privacy professional offers a resource book for citizens seeking to understand, use, and defend their right to know under freedom of information laws in the United States. The Right to Know: Your Guide to Using and Defending Freedom of Information Law in the United States sets out in plain language freedom-of-information best practices for ordinary citizens, activist organizations, journalists, bloggers, and lawyers. Jacqueline Klosek, an expert in U.S. information law, educes practical lessons from dozens of case studies to show how readers can use freedom of information laws to protect themselves, but also to protect the environment, and public health and safety, as well as to expose governmental and corporate crime, waste, and corruption. Finally, the book shows American readers how, in contrast to what is going on in most democracies, their right to know is being progressively curtailed, why this is so dangerous to democracy, and what they can do to help reverse the alarming trend. 15 illustrations

For some time now, the European Court of Human Rights is under substantial pressure. From a case overload crisis it stumbled into a legitimacy crisis with regard to certain countries. This should be taken seriously, since scholars warn that institutions with eroding legitimacy risk demise or reform. The goal of this volume is to explore how widespread this critical attitude of the European Court of Human Rights really is. It also assesses to what extent such criticism is being translated in strategies at the political level or at the judicial level and brings about concrete changes in the dynamics between national and European fundamental rights protection. The book is topical and innovative, as these questions have so far remained largely unexplored, especially cross-nationally.Far from focusing exclusively on those voices that are currently raised so loud, conclusions are based on comparative in-depth reports, covering fifteen Contracting Parties and the EU.

Due process protections are among the most important Constitutional protections in the United States, yet they do not apply to non-citizens facing detention and deportation. Due Process Denied describes the consequences of this lack of due process through the stories of deportees and detainees. People who have lived nearly all of their lives in the United States have been detained and deported for minor crimes, without regard for constitutional limits on disproportionate punishment. The court's insistence that deportation is not punishment does not align with the experiences of deportees. For many, deportation is one of the worst imaginable punishments.

Since 1999, the EU has adopted legislation harmonizing many areas of immigration law, in particular rules on borders, visas, legal migration, and irregular migration. The much-enlarged and fully updated second edition of this book contains the text of and detailed commentary upon every significant measure in this field proposed or adopted up until 1 September 2011. It includes commentary on the EU visa code, the Schengen Borders Code, the Frontex Regulation, the Returns Directive, the Directives on family reunion, long-term residents and single permits for migrant workers, and many more besides. This is the essential guide for any lawyers, academics, civil servants, NGOs and students interested in this area of law. The authors of each commentary are academic and practitioner experts in the field of EU immigration law based in the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands.

The need to allow a change of legal sex/gender in certain cases is no longer disputed in most jurisdictions, and for European countries there is no question as to whether such a change should be allowed after the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in Goodwin v. United Kingdom (Application no. 28957/95). The question has therefore shifted to what the requirements for such a change of the legal sex/gender should be. Many jurisdictions have legislated or developed an administrative approach to changing sex/gender, but the requirements differ significantly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, particularly with regard to age, nationality and marital status, as well as the medical and psychological requirements. The latter in some jurisdictions still include surgery and sterility as a precondition, thus potentially forcing the persons concerned to choose between the recognition of their sex/gender identity and their physical integrity.The book also examines questions that are thus far under-researched, namely what the full legal consequences of a change of legal sex/gender should be, for example with regard to existing legal relationships such as marriages and registered partnerships, but also concerning children and parentage.The Legal Status of Transsexual and Transgender Persons is the result of an international research project, including not only national reports from 14 European and non-European jurisdictions but also two chapters that look at legal sex/gender changes from a Christian perspective and one chapter from a medical-psychological perspective. The final comparative chapter compares and contrasts the different approaches and requirements and makes recommendations for best practice and law reform.

Armed conflicts are a major cause of forced displacement, but people displaced by conflict are often not recognised as refugees under the 1951 Refugee Convention. They are frequently considered as having fled from generalised violence rather than from persecution.This book determines the international meaning of the refugee definition in Article 1A(2) of the 1951 Refugee Convention as regards refugee protection claims related to situations of armed conflict in the country of origin. Although the human rights-based interpretation of the refugee definition is widely accepted, the interpretation and application of the 1951 Refugee Convention as regards claims to refugee status that relate to armed conflict is often marred with difficulties. Moreover, contexts of armed conflict pose the question of whether and to what extent the refugee definition should be interpreted in light of international humanitarian law. This book identifies the potential and limits of this interpretative approach. Starting from the history of international refugee law, the book situates the 1951 Refugee Convention within the international legal framework for the protection of the individual in armed conflict. It examines the refugee definition in light of human rights, international humanitarian law and international criminal law, focusing on the elements of the refugee definition that most benefit from this interpretative approach: persecution and the requirement that the refugee claimant's predicament must be causally linked to race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.Refugees from Armed Conflict is of interest to academics and practitioners in international refugee and human rights law.'Anyone who is interested in the present refugee debate, should at some point take up Holzer's book [...].' (ZAR, 2016, 5-6, p. 186)

Since 1999, the EU has adopted legislation harmonizing many areas of immigration law, in particular rules on borders, visas, legal migration, and irregular migration. The much-enlarged and fully updated second edition of this book contains the text of and detailed commentary upon every significant measure in this field proposed or adopted up until 1 September 2011. It includes commentary on the EU visa code, the Schengen Borders Code, the Frontex Regulation, the Returns Directive, the Directives on family reunion, long-term residents and single permits for migrant workers, and many more besides. This is the essential guide for any lawyers, academics, civil servants, NGOs and students interested in this area of law. The authors of each commentary are academic and practitioner experts in the field of EU immigration law based in the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands.

This book provides a new conceptual model for considering constitutional rights from a comparative perspective. A prestigious club bars women from standing for executive positions. A homeowner refuses to rent their house to a person on grounds of their race. Each of these real-life cases involves the exercise of private power, which deprives individuals of their rights. Can these individuals invoke the Constitution in response? Horizontal Rights: An Institutional Approach brings a fresh perspective to these age-old, yet fraught issues. This book argues that constitutional scholarship and doctrine, across jurisdictions, has proceeded from an inarticulate premise called ‘default verticality.’ This is based on a set of underlying philosophical assumptions, which presumes that constitutional rights are presumptively applicable against the State, and need special justification to be applied against private parties. Departing from default verticality and its assumptions, this book argues that constitutional rights should apply horizontally between private parties where the existence of an economic, social, or cultural institution creates a difference in power between the parties, and allows one to violate the rights of the other. The institutional approach aims to be both theoretically convincing, as well as a providing a workable model for constitutional adjudication. It applies both to classic issues such as restrictive covenants, as well as cutting-edge contemporary legal problems around the regulation of platform work and the distribution of property upon divorce. This promises to be an exciting new contribution to the global conversation around constitutional rights and private power.

Should a politician be free to fiercely attack the religion of a sector of the population? Should he be allowed to strongly reject the culture of a particular minority group? Should religious adherents be allowed to advocate the transition from a democratic to a theocratic state? Should a satirical magazine be free to mock religious figures and practices? These sort of questions concern the place of faith in public debate and continue to dominate public discussion that has been fuelled by a series of events, including the terrorist attacks in New York, Madrid and London; the assassination of Dutch film director Theo van Gogh; the affair of the Danish Cartoons; the prosecution of Dutch politician Geert Wilders for his statements on Islam and Muslims; and the terrorist attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris.The overarching question triggered by these events concerns the relationship between freedom of expression and the regulation of 'hate speech'; which forms of hate speech should the state prohibit, on what grounds and by which means? Notably, the restriction of hate speech uttered in the context of the public debate about multiculturalism, immigration, integration and Islam, and of religious fundamentalism has become a topic of lively discussion.This research constitutes the first international comparative study that provides a profound analysis of the law on hate speech in France and the Netherlands and under European and international law. It thoroughly examines the national legislation, its drafting history, policy and other legal documents and case law including famous legal cases against Dutch politician Geert Wilders, French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen and le Front National, French comedian Dieudonne and satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. It also makes reference to the most recent international hate speech literature and discusses its key issues. This book can, thereby, form a source of inspiration for anyone interested or involved in the regulation of hate speech: academics; legislators; judges; prosecutors; politicians; interested citizens; and involved NGOs and can contribute to the 'faith in public debate', by elucidating its possible boundaries.

This book presents a wholly new perspective on the Child Support Agency. The authors were granted privileged access to the CSA's own staff and were thus able to monitor case conduct from both the Agency and the client perspective. In a gripping analysis they compare the accounts of former husbands and wives with those of their respective legal advisers,and, critically, they incorporate the experience and views of the beleaguered CSA staff who attempted to calculate and enforce child maintenance obligations in those same cases. The media picture of the misery visited upon 'absent fathers' is borne out in part, but even more striking is the authors' account of a catastrophic administrative failure which led to the abandonment of many of the basic tenets of administrative justice. The reasons do not lie in the perceived unfairness of the formula but rather in the failure of those drafting the Child Support legislation to appreciate the impact of such change upon the rest of our hugely complex benefit structure. Their failure to grasp that the problems of inadequate disclosure and ineffective enforcement - with which courts had grappled for decades - could not be tackled effectively by a distant bureaucracy.

Within the European Union there is considerable diversity in morally sensitive issues like legal recognition of same-sex relationships or reproductive matters, such as abortion, assisted human reproduction (AHR) and surrogacy. States generally expressly claim recognition of such diversity and it is explicitly respected at European level, even though the (implicit) influence of European law is increasingly visible in these areas.Cross-border movement within the EU adds a new dimension to this complex picture. It implies that States are increasingly confronted by (the consequences of) one another's regimes. For example, same-sex couples residing in one EU Member State claim recognition of their marriage concluded in another Member State, or women from Member States with restrictive abortion regimes resort to States with more liberal regimes. This research explores this cross-border dimension, identifies a number of pressing questions and provides insight into the interests that are at stake in such situations.This volume firstly investigates what if any standard-setting is in place in three national jurisdictions (Ireland, Germany and the Netherlands) as well as in the relevant European jurisdictions (EU law and the ECHR) in respect of reproductive matters and legal recognition of same-sex relationships, and how this has developed over time. This analysis inter alia provides insight into what considerations and interests play or have played a role in legislative debates and case-law, in what respects the regimes studied differ, and how European law has influenced national standard-setting. It furthermore provides the necessary basis for the subsequent analysis of how the relevant jurisdictions respond to cross-border movement in these areas and how they interact. While, for example, States sometimes appear to ward off cross-border movement in these areas to protect their national moral standards, in other situations they choose to or are obliged under European law to accommodate such mobility in order to protect the interests of vulnerable parties involved. This research thereby observes and clarifies the dynamics in decision-making regarding these issues, analysing and explaining how various areas and levels of law interact.