In this brief, accessible text, Malcolm Klein presents insights gained from his forty years of experience investigating street gangs. In Part I he reveals some of the dominant trends that have emerged over the course of his research, defining and describing gangs, their locations, who joins them, and the types of illegal behavior in which they engage. In Part II he delves into the conceptual contexts that help us to understand those trends, examining gangs in relation to other small groups, comparing gangs in the U.S. to those in Europe, and discussing approaches to gang control. About the Series Keynotes in Criminology and Criminal Justice provides essential knowledge on important contemporary matters of crime, law, and justice to a broad audience of readers. Each volume is written by a leading scholar in that area. Concise, accessible, and affordable, these texts are designed to serve either as primers around which courses can be built or as supplemental books for a variety of courses.

The forms of action are a part of the structure upon which rests the whole common law of England and, though we may have buried them, they still, as Maitland says, rule us from their graves. The following extract is taken from the editors' preface: 'The evasion of the burden of archaic procedure and of such barbaric tests of truth as battle, ordeal and wager of law, by the development of new forms and new law out of criminal or quasi criminal procedure and the inquest of neighbour-witnesses has never been described with this truth and clearness. He makes plain a great chapter of legal history which the learners and even the lawyers of today have almost abandoned in despair. The text of the chief writs is given after the lectures ...'

One of family law's greatest challenges within the 21st Century is facing the decreased rate of marriages and the increased number of unmarried co-habiting couples. All over the world, lawmakers and courts have met this challenge with different legal solutions. Currently, eleven American jurisdictions recognize the doctrine of common law marriage, but for other jurisdictions have abolished the doctrine within the last fifteen years. Common Law Marriage presents a thorough legal history of common law marriage, from its origins to current law and possible future developments in law. Dr. Goeran Lind researches current law by analyzing American cases, discussing the legal requirements for the establishment of a common law marriage, as to capacity, contract, implied agreement, cohabitation, holding out, and burdens of proof. As Lind points out, due to the choice of law principles, courts all over the United States must decide on common law marriages on a case-by-case basis. As long as couples move from one state to another, individual state courts in the United States must apply the doctrine of common law marriage and decide if such a marriage has been established when a couple has lived in, or visited, a common law marriage state. Common Law Marriage provides an avid look at the level of expertise regarding the doctrine of common law marriage and expresses the evident need for guidance concerning it.

Law is a lasting social institution, but it must also be open to change. How is law made, and what prompts change? How can society influence the law, and how does the law respond to societal change? The first volume of Shaping Tomorrow's Law examined human rights and European law. In this second volume Mary Arden turns her attention to domestic law, providing a judge's viewpoint on the roles of society, government, and the judiciary in the transformation and reform of the law. The first section of Common Law and Modern Society explains what we mean by judge-made law and shows how the law responds to the needs of a changing society. Adaptation may be in response to shifting values, or in response to constitutional change. This is demonstrated in chapters on assisted reproduction and assisted dying, both modern concerns, and a far older example, that of the law on water, which has been evolving over the centuries in response to society's changing demands. The law also needs to reflect constitutional change, as in the case of Welsh devolution. The second section of the book looks at the necessary simplification of the law and systematic legal reform. These tasks lie at the heart of the work of the Law Commission, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2015. Drawing on her own experience as former Chairman of the Law Commission, Mary Arden argues that statute law can be made simpler by codification, and that the success of codification may vary depending on the field of law. The final section looks ahead to tomorrow's judiciary. The accountability of judges is a continuing area of discussion, and this includes ensuring that the reasoning behind their decisions is understood by the relevant people. Mary Arden goes on to argue that the vision for the judiciary today and tomorrow should be one of greater diversity in the widest sense. This will help to ensure not only greater fairness and wider opportunity but also better decision-making. The book concludes with advice and encouragement for future legal professionals.

This book brings together essays on themes of human rights and legal history, reflecting the long and distinguished career as academic writer and human rights activist of Brian Simpson. Written by colleagues and friends in the United States and Britain, the essays are intended to reflect Simpson's own legal interests. The collection opens with biography of Simpson's academic life which notes his major contribution to legal thought, and closes with an account of his career in the United States and a bibliography of his writings. As a tribute to Simpson's varied interests in the law, the collection is grouped around themes in human rights, legal philosophy, and legal history. The human rights papers are concerned with the history of the right of individual petition to the European Court of Human Rights, and recent successes in which Brian Simpson played a part; the evolution of a transnational common law of human rights; the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the interpretation of the provisions on identity in France and England; the suspension of human rights which would have occurred, had the emergency War Zone Courts scheme been brought into effect during wartime; historical resistance to colonial laws in Papua New Guinea; and the ratio decidendi of the story of the Prodigal Son. Historical themes are found in essays concerned with three nineteenth-century Lord Chancellors; in two essays relating to the fate of the civil jury on either side of the Atlantic which provide a fascinating comparison; in the 'battle of the books' which led to changes in eighteenth-century copyright law; and judicial rivalry between King's Bench and Common Pleas in the early modern period.

This book provides a history of some of the main institutions of South African private law and in so doing explores the process through which integration of the English common law and the continental civil law came about in that jurisdiction. Here is a book aimed at both European and South African audiences. For European lawyers it provides a stimulating insight into the way the process of harmonization of private law has occurred in South Africa and may occur within the European Union. By analysing the historical evolution of the most important institutions of the law of obligations and the law of property the book demonstrates how the two legal traditions have been accommodated within one system. The starting point for each essay is the "pure" Roman-Dutch law as it was transplanted to the Cape of Good Hope in the years following 1652 (and as it has been examined in considerable detail in another volume edited by Robert Feenstra and Reinhard Zimmerman, published in 1992). The analysis focuses on how the Roman-Dutch law has been preserved, changed, modified or replaced in the course of the nineteenth century when the Cape became a British colony; and on what happened after the creation of the union of South Africa in 1910. Each essay therefore attempts, in the field of law with which it is dealing, to answer questions such as: what was the level of interaction between the civil law and the common law? What were the mechanisms that brought about the particular form of competition, coexistence or fusion that exists in that area of law? Is the process complete or is it still continuing? Is it possible to observe the emergence, from these two routes, of a genuinely South African private law? How is the result to be evaluated? In establishing reception patterns at the level of specific areas of law, they go beyond generalization about the compatibility of the two traditions and present evidence of a possible symbiosis of English and Continental law.
For South African readers the principal value of the book is that it offers essays by the most prominent South African private lawyers refelecting on the history of their subjects. It therefore constitutes the first stage in the writing of a history of substantive private law in South Africa. So far the focus has mainly been on the so called "external history" of South African law, and such texts as there are on the development of the institutions of private law are often in Afrikaans and mainly to be found in unpublished theses. Thus this book fulfils a real need for those teaching South African private law and legal history.
Although the volume investigates a specific aspect of the making of modern South African law it is imperative not to lose sight of the fact that private law in that country, as every way else did not develop in a vacuum, but as part of a wider political and social prcess. For this reason the book opens with an essay which contextualizes the contributions that follow, giving a view of the "setting" in which the development of South Africa took place: colonial domination, cultural imperialism, and racial and nationalistic ideologies. Two further introductory essays pay specific attention to the impact of the procedural framework on the substantive private law and to the "architects" of the mixed system.

Oxford's variorum edition of William Blackstone's seminal treatise on the common law of England and Wales offers the definitive account of the Commentaries' development in a modern format. For the first time it is possible to trace the evolution of English law and Blackstone's thought through the eight editions of Blackstone's lifetime, and the authorial corrections of the posthumous ninth edition. Introductions by the general editor and the volume editors set the Commentaries in their historical context, examining Blackstone's distinctive view of the common law, and editorial notes throughout the four volumes assist the modern reader in understanding this key text in the Anglo-American common law tradition. Entitled Of Private Wrongs, Book III can be divided into three principal parts. The first describes the multiple courts in England and their jurisdictions, including the wrongs cognizable in each of them. The second describes some aspects of the substantive common law: wrongs to persons and to personal and real property. The third describes the processes of litigation in the courts of common law and equity.

This book is directed at the central difficulty in legal history: one is not reconstructing earlier answers to modern questions, but earlier questions; and they were different in kind. Today we see law as a system of substantive rules which can be explained in textbooks, altered by legislation, and embodied in a restatement or a code. It is somehow separate from society and needs separate adjustment; and there is a simple relationship between legal and other change. If this had always been so, legal and social and economic history would all be easy. They are not. Such a vision comes late in legal developments, and the common law reached that stage only in quite recent times. But ever since an early stage fortune has preserved copious original materials; and we can hope to trace not just the changing arrangements of one society, but the stages through which at least one legal system has passed, the changing ways in which the law itself has been seen. The underlying questions have always been beyond discussion in any practical context. How far are right and wrong man's business rather than God's? How and upon what terms are the resources of creation to be appropriated to individuals? But answers are at any one time assumed, and determine what smaller questions arise as daily business for those concerned with the legal process. It is to the changing nature of those practical questions that this book seeks to reduce the development of each of the main branches of the law.

Two central themes run through The Due Process of Law. The first is the workings of the various "measures authorised by the law so as to keep the streams of justice pure"--that is to say, contempt of court, judicial inquiries, and powers of arrest and search. The second is the recent development of family law, focusing particularly on Lord Denning's contribution to the law of husband and wife. These broad themes are elaborated through a discussion of Lord Denning's own judgments and opinions on a wide range of topics.

In this unique book Lord Woolf recounts his remarkable career and provides a personal and honest perspective on the most important developments in the common law over the last half century. The book opens with a comprehensive description of his family background, which was very influential on his later life, starting with the arrival of his grandparents as Jewish immigrants to England in 1870. His recollections of his early years and family, education and life as a student lead into his early career as a barrister and as a Treasury Devil, moving on to his judicial career and the many roles taken therein. The numerous standout moments examined include his work on access to the judiciary, prison reform, and suggested reforms to the European Court of Human Rights. Fascinating insights into the defining cases of his career, T AG v Jonathan Cape, Gouriet v Union of Post Office Workers, Tameside, Hazel v Hammersmith, M v Home Office, remind the reader of how impactful his influence has been. He considers the setting of the mandatory component of the life sentences of Thompson and Venables and the Diane Blood case. Alongside the case law, and the Woolf Reforms, the Constitutional Law Reform Act 2005 is also explored. Considering the ebb and flow of changes over his remarkable judicial life, Lord Woolf identifies those he welcomes, but also expresses regret on what has been lost. A book to remind lawyers, be they students, practitioners or scholars, of the power and importance of law. All author profits from the book will be donated to the Woolf Institute.

Always the serious student's choice for a Trusts Law textbook, the new seventh edition of Moffat's Trusts Law once again provides a clear examination of the rules of Trusts, retaining its hallmark combination of a contextualised approach and a commercial focus. The impact of statutory developments and a wealth of new cases - including the Supreme Court and Privy Council decisions in Patel v. Mirza [2016] UKSC 42, PJS v. News Group Newspapers Ltd [2016] UKSC, Burnden Holdings v. Fielding [2018] UKSC 14, and Federal Republic of Brazil v. Durant [2015] UKPC 35 - are explored. A streamlining of the chapters on charitable Trusts, better to align the book with the typical Trusts Law course, helps students understand the new directions being taken in the areas of Trust Law and equitable remedies.

The Formation of English Common Law provides a comprehensive overview of the development of early English law, one of the classic subjects of medieval history. This much expanded second edition spans the centuries from King Alfred to Magna Carta, abandoning the traditional but restrictive break at the Norman Conquest. Within a strong interpretative framework, it also integrates legal developments with wider changes in the thought, society, and politics of the time. Rather than simply tracing elements of the common law back to their Anglo-Saxon, Norman or other origins, John Hudson examines and analyses the emergence of the common law from the interaction of various elements that developed over time, such as the powerful royal government inherited from Anglo-Saxon England and land holding customs arising from the Norman Conquest. Containing a new chapter charting the Anglo-Saxon period, as well as a fully revised Further Reading section, this new edition is an authoritative yet highly accessible introduction to the formation of the English common law and is ideal for students of history and law.

This book brings together past and present law commissioners, judges, practitioners, academics and law reformers to analyse the past, present and future of the Law Commissions in the United Kingdom and beyond. Its internationally recognised authors bring a wealth of experience and insight into how and why law reform does and should take place, covering statutory and non-statutory reform from national and international perspectives. The chapters of the book developed from papers given at a conference to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Law Commissions Act 1965.