In Fiduciary Law, Tamar Frankel examines the structure, principles, themes, and objectives of fiduciary law. Fiduciaries, which include corporate managers, money managers, lawyers, and physicians among others, are entrusted with money or power. Frankel explains how fiduciary law is designed to offer protection from abuse of this method of safekeeping. She deals with fiduciaries in general, and identifies situations in which fiduciary law falls short of offering protection. Frankel analyzes fiduciary debates, and argues that greater preventive measures are required. She offers guidelines for determining the boundaries and substance of fiduciary law, and discusses how failure to enforce fiduciary law can contribute to failing financial and economic systems. Frankel offers ideas and explanations for the courts, regulators, and legislatures, as well as the fiduciaries and entrustors. She argues for strong legal protection against abuse of entrustment as a means of encouraging fiduciary services in society. Fiduciary Law can help lawyers and policy makers designing the future law and the systems that it protects.

The promotion of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) mechanisms is strongly linked to the idea of justice in the 21st century. National and international legislators increasingly offer new responses in this area with the aim of providing citizens with the opportunity to resolve their disputes outside state courts. Indeed, the global notion of ADR includes a multiplicity of institutions which have in common the purpose of facilitating the settlement of disputes outside courts. However, such generic references to ADR mechanisms, as well as the perceived centrality of the European approach, obscure important differences in the use, regulation and underlying philosophy of ADR in many countries of the world. This book focuses on a set of countries which accounts for more than half of international world trade. Its goal is to analyse in depth the various ADR devices present in relevant countries, such as Australia, China, England, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, and the USA. The book provides an in-depth analysis of the regulation of ADR in all these countries. Every chapter on national law analyses subjects covered by ADR devices, the existing legal regime, and its solutions and problems. The book provides a unique response to a topical matter of great legal and economic relevance. It is written by leading practitioners and scholars and provides a clear image of the existing framework from a legal, theoretical and practical standpoint. This book is essential for all those wanting to understand the reality of ADR in some of the most economically important countries of the world.

The Common Law is Oliver Wendell Holmes' most sustained work of jurisprudence. In it the careful reader will discern traces of his later thought as found in both his legal opinions and other writings. At the outset of The Common Law Holmes posits that he is concerned with establishing that the common law can meet the changing needs of society while preserving continuity with the past. A common law judge must be creative, both in determining the society's current needs, and in discerning how best to address these needs in a way that is continuous with past judicial decisions. In this way, the law evolves by moving out of its past, adapting to the needs of the present, and establishing a direction for the future. To Holmes' way of thinking, this approach is superior to imposing order in accordance with a philosophical position or theory because the law would thereby lose the flexibility it requires in responding to the needs and demands of disputing parties as well as society as a whole. According to Holmes, the social environment--the economic, moral, and political milieu--alters over time. Therefore in order to remain responsive to this social environment, the law must change as well. But the law is also part of this environment and impacts it. There is, then, a continual reciprocity between the law and the social arrangements in which it is contextualized. And, as with the evolution of species, there is no starting over. Rather, in most cases, a judge takes existing legal concepts and principles, as these have been memorialized in legal precedent, and adapts them, often unconsciously, to fit the requirements of a particular case and present social conditions.

The book deals with the genesis, formation and development of two fundamental aspects of English Law, common law and equity. The common law laid down the rules governing cohabitation in communities and human rights. Equity was the offspring of natural law designed to prevent and remedy injustice resulting from unconscionable conduct. English law including both common law and equity was introduced in former British Colonies and dominions. In most of them it was retained after independence. This is the principal legacy of English colonization of countries. The introduction, application and retention of English law is reflected in Cyprus, a former British colony.

William E. Nelson's first volume of the four-volume The Common Law of Colonial America (2008) established a new benchmark for study of colonial era legal history. Drawing from both a rich archival base and existing scholarship on the topic, the first volume demonstrated how the legal systems of Britain's thirteen North American colonies-each of which had unique economies, political structures, and religious institutions -slowly converged into a common law order that differed substantially from English common law. The first volume focused on how the legal systems of the Chesapeake colonies-Virginia and Maryland-contrasted with those of the New England colonies and traced these dissimilarities from the initial settlement of America until approximately 1660. In this new volume, Nelson brings the discussion forward, covering the years from 1660, which saw the Restoration of the British monarchy, to 1730. In particular, he analyzes the impact that an increasingly powerful British government had on the evolution of the common law in the New World. As the reach of the Crown extended, Britain imposed far more restrictions than before on the new colonies it had chartered in the Carolinas and the middle Atlantic region. The government's intent was to ensure that colonies' laws would align more tightly with British law. Nelson examines how the newfound coherence in British colonial policy led these new colonies to develop common law systems that corresponded more closely with one another, eliminating much of the variation that socio-economic differences had created in the earliest colonies. As this volume reveals, these trends in governance ultimately resulted in a tension between top-down pressures from Britain for a more uniform system of laws and bottom-up pressures from colonists to develop their own common law norms and preserve their own distinctive societies. Authoritative and deeply researched, the volumes in The Common Law of Colonial America will become the foundational resource for anyone interested the history of American law before the Revolution.

Should judges in United States courts be permitted to cite foreign laws in their rulings? In this book Jeremy Waldron explores some ideas in jurisprudence and legal theory that could underlie the Supreme Court's occasional recourse to foreign law, especially in constitutional cases. He argues that every society is governed not only by its own laws but partly also by laws common to all mankind (ius gentium). But he takes the unique step of arguing that this common law is not natural law but a grounded consensus among all nations. The idea of such a consensus will become increasingly important in jurisprudence and public affairs as the world becomes more globalized.

Many advocates of euthanasia consider the criminal law to be an inappropriate medium to adjudicate the profound ethical and humanitarian dilemmas associated with end of life decisions. Euthanasia, Death with Dignity and the Law examines the legal response to euthanasia and end of life decisions and considers whether legal reform is an appropriate response to calls for euthanasia to be more readily available as a mechanism for providing death with dignity. Through an analysis of consent to treatment, living wills and autonomous medical decision making, euthanasia is carefully located within its legal, medical, and social contexts. This book focuses on the impact of euthanasia on the dignity of both the recipient and the practitioner while emphasizing the legal, professional, and ethical implications of euthanasia and its significance for the exercise of clinical discretion. It will provide a valuable addition to the euthanasia debate.

The leading case of The Mayor, Alderman and Burgesses of the Borough of Bradford v Pickles was the first to establish that it is not unlawful for a property owner to exercise his or her property rights maliciously and to the detriment of others, or the public interest. Though controversial at the time, today it is often invisible and taken for granted. This book explores why the common law, in contrast to civil law systems, developed in this way.

In this book, Michael Lobban argues that a proper understanding of English law and jurisprudence in the period is needed to clarify the nature of common-law practice and the way in which it was envisaged by its practitioners. He questions some commonly-accepted views of the nature of the common law itself and argues that attempts - notably those by Blackstone and Bentham - to expound or to criticize common law in essentially theoretical terms were mistaken. His approach is not a philosophically-based one, but he is concerned with the evolution and spread of judicial ideas which were grounded upon the work of moral and political philosophers, and makes a valuable corrective contribution to our historical understanding of a critically important period in legal history.

Foundations of Private Law is a treatise on the Western law of property, contract, tort and unjust enrichment in both common law systems and civil law systems. The thesis of the book is that underlying these fields of law are common principles, and that these principles can be used to explain the history and development of these areas. These underlying common principles are matters of common sense, which were given their archetypal expression by older jurists who wrote in the Aristotelian tradition. These principles shaped the development of Western law but can resolve legal problems which these older writers did not confront.

As a special administrative region of China, Hong Kong has its own legal system rooted in the common law. Reforms to this system take into account Hong Kong's unique conditions as an international city and draw widely on practices around the world. Since 1980 recommendations from a Law Reform Commission, chaired by the Secretary for Justice, have resulted in comprehensive revisions in key areas of law, ranging from commercial arbitration and interception of communications to divorce and copyright.

Recently, however, the government has been slow to act on the Commission's recommendations. Questions have also arisen about whether the Commission -- under-resourced, part-time, and government-led -- can really meet the needs of an increasingly sophisticated society. Is law reform itself also in need of reform? This collection of essays by distinguished experts from around the world seeks answers to the question. The book explores the varied experience of law reform in Hong Kong and other common law jurisdictions and makes recommendations for strengthening the process of law reform both in Hong Kong and elsewhere.

What makes a great book? If the determining factors are the content,authorship and timing of publication then this collection of essays from some of Europe's most eminent judges and jurists satisfies all three criteria. Readers will here find the expanded versions of the speeches given at a one-day conference in London to mark, from a legal point of view, the beginning of the new millennium. In a thoughtful and predominantly comparative manner the distinguished speakers explore the cross fertilisation of ideas that is taking place between the Common and Civil law systems in such important topics as human rights, commercial law, and comparative methodology. The contributors include Lords Irvine, Bingham, Woolf, Steyn, and Goff, the President of the Court of the European Communities, Dr Iglesias, the President of the Court of Human Rights, Dr Wildhaber, the President of the German Constitutional Court, Professor Limbach, Justices Lenoir and Mirabelli, respectively of the French and Italian Constitutional Courts, the Professor Walter van Gerven, former Advocate General of the Court of the European Communities, Professor Klaus Hopt, co-Director of the Max-Planck Institute of Hamburg, Professor Christian von Bar, Director of the Institute of Comparative Law at the University of Osnabruck and the organiser of the conference, Professor Basil Markesinis, Director of the Oxford Institute of European and Comparative Law. The book commences with a Foreword by Keith Clark, Senior Partner of the multinational law firm, Clifford Chance, who have sponsored the conference. This is a unique book about legal practice in the increasingly integrated world of tomorrow.