Combining feminist legal theory with international human rights concepts, this book examines the presence, participation and treatment of children in a variety of contexts. Specifically, through comparing legal developments in the US with legal developments in countries where the views that children are separate from their families and potentially in need of state protection are more widely accepted. The authors address the role of religion in shaping attitudes about parental rights in the US, with particular emphasis upon the fundamentalist belief in natural lines of familial authority. Such beliefs have provoked powerful resistance in the US to human rights approaches that view the child as an independent rights holder and the state as obligated to proved services and protections that are distinctly child-centred. Calling for a rebalancing of relationships within the US family, to become more consistent with emerging human rights norms, this collection contains both theoretical debates about and practical approaches to granting positive rights to children.

What is the purpose of comparative constitutional law? Comparing constitutions allows us to consider the similarities and differences in forms of government, and the normative philosophies behind constitutional choices. Constitutional comparisons offer 'hermeneutic' help: they enable us to see 'our' own constitution with different eyes and to locate its structural and normative choices by references to alternatives evident in other constitutional orders. This Cambridge Companion presents readers with a succinct yet wide-ranging companion to a modern comparative constitutional law course, offering a wide-ranging yet concise introduction to the subject. Its twenty-two chapters are arranged into five thematic parts: starting with an exploration of the 'theoretical foundations' (Part I) and some important 'historical experiences' (Part II), it moves on to a discussion of the core 'constitutional principles' (Part III) and 'state institutions' (Part IV); finally it analyses forms of 'transnational' constitutionalism (Part V) that have emerged in our 'global' times.

Internet censorship is a controversial topic - while the media periodically sounds alarms at the dangers of online life, the uncontrollable nature of the internet makes any kind of pervasive regulatory control impossible. This book compares the Australian solution, a set of laws which have been criticized as being both draconian and ineffectual, to major regulatory systems in the UK and US and understanding what drives them. The 'impossibility' of internet regulation opens deeper issues - what do we mean by regulation and how do we judge the certainty and effectiveness of law? These questions lead to an exploration of the theories of legal geography which provide tools to understand and evaluate regulatory practices. The book will be a valuable guide for academics, students and policy makers working in media and censorship law, those from a civil liberties interest and people interested in internet theory generally.

Plenty has been written about the political and economical aspects of regionalism, but the legal perspective has been neglected. East Asian Regionalism From a Legal Perspective is unique in synthesizing legal, economic and political analyses.

In the first part, the book investigates the current features of regionalism from a comparative perspective, looking at economic and currency cooperation and comparing Asian regionalism with Europe and Latin America. In the second part, the contributors go on to look at the present legal features of regionalism, covering institutional frameworks, trade diversity and regional integration.

The third part of the book is truly unique in proposing an essential groundwork for the institutionalisation of an East Asian Community. It conceives a draft East Asian Charter, an essential document that distils what East Asian nations have achieved, and also includes integral principles and fundamental rules for future cooperation among countries and peoples in the region.

This book will be of interest to graduates and academics interested in regionalism, international relations, international law and Asian studies.

Unlike much analysis about regulation in Asia which focuses on globalisation and the transplant effect, leaving domestic influence over commercial regulation under-researched and under-theorized, this book focuses on how local actors influence regulatory change. It explores the complex economic and regulatory factors that generate social demand for state regulation and shows how local networks, courts, democratic processes and civil society have a huge influence on regulatory systems. It examines the particular circumstances in a wide range of Asian countries, provides transnational comparisons and comparisons with Western countries, and assesses how far local regulatory regimes increase economic value and convey competitive advantages.

Unlike much analysis about regulation in Asia which focuses on globalisation and the transplant effect, leaving domestic influence over commercial regulation under-researched and under-theorized, this book focuses on how local actors influence regulatory change. It explores the complex economic and regulatory factors that generate social demand for state regulation and shows how local networks, courts, democratic processes and civil society have a huge influence on regulatory systems. It examines the particular circumstances in a wide range of Asian countries, provides transnational comparisons and comparisons with Western countries, and assesses how far local regulatory regimes increase economic value and convey competitive advantages.

In The Origins of Japan's Democratic Constitution, Theodore McNelly describes and analyzes the American draft of Japan's postwar constitution, Japanese influences on the document, and its adoption by the Imperial Diet. Providing a general overview of the process of the enactment of the democratic constitution in Japan, McNelly then analyzes conflicts among rival Japanese groups, the effects of the war-ban provision on Japan's security, and General MacArthur's shifting views on the achievement of world peace. The Origins of Japan's Democratic Constitution addresses the argument regarding U.S. "imposition" of the constitution on Japan with emphasis on the origins of the "no-war, no-arms" clause as well as the ideological, strategic, and historical background of the clause. Written by a former member of MacArthur's staff in Tokyo, this book will be of interest to the general reader as well as specialists seeking hitherto unpublished information and interpretations of this significant historical event.

Time itself creates advantages and disadvantages in the field of taxation. The timing of the recognition of income and expenses for tax purposes has two main implications: firstly, for the timing of the collection of tax, and secondly, for the question of quantification, i.e., how to ensure that the difference between the timing of the recognition of income or expenses, as opposed to the respective dates on which the amounts are actually received or paid, does not distort the determination of the amount of chargeable income.

The time component is a weapon in the confrontation between the opposing motivations of the taxpayers and the tax authorities. In any given fiscal year, taxpayers seek to present a minimal picture of their chargeable income, by "deferring" the recognition of income or "advancing" the recognition of expenses. As opposed to this, the tax authorities adopt the opposite strategy: maximizing taxable "profit" in any given year.

This book critically examines the various approaches that have been adopted in the tax systems in the UK, the US and Israel in relation to the timing of income recognition and expenses for tax purposes. It suggests an innovative tax model that identifies the advantages that arise to the taxpayer as a result of the differences between the timing of the recognition of income and expenses, and the timing of the receipt of the revenue or the payment of a liability, and taxes only that advantage.

Bringing together theoretical, empirical and comparative perspectives on the European Social Model (ESM) and transitional labour market policy, this volume contains theoretical accounts of the ESM and a discussion of policy implications for European social and employment policies that derive from research on transitional labour markets. It provides an economic as well as legal assessment of the European Employment Strategy and contains evaluations of new forms of governance both in European and member state policies, including discussions of the potential and limits of soft law instruments. Country studies of labour market reforms in Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and France assess their contribution to an emerging ESM, while comparative accounts of the ESM examine mobility and security patterns in Europe and beyond and evaluate recent 'flexicurity' policies from a global perspective.

Beyond the Courtroom provides a compilation of articles and chapters by a dispute resolution scholar who has made remarkable contributions over his thirty-year career. Professor Abramson has focused his research and practice on parties trying to resolve their own disputes. This book includes publications that have contributed to launching the then new field of mediation representation with special attention on how attorneys, as gate keepers to mediation, can effectively represent clients. The book also includes his original publications that have contributed to the emerging field of intercultural and international mediation and the already robust and mature field of negotiations.

Electronic Commerce and International Private Law examines the maximization of consumer protection via the consumer's jurisdiction and law. It discusses the proposition that a new connecting factor be used to improve the efficiency of juridical protection for consumers who contract with foreign sellers by electronic means and offers recommendations as to how to amend existing jurisdiction and choice of law rules to provide a basis for the consumer to sue in his own jurisdiction and for the law of the consumer's domicile to apply. The book will be a valuable resource for academics, students and practitioners working in the areas of international private law, electronic commerce law and consumer law.

Utilizing a comparative examination of case-law from England, Canada, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland, this volume provides a comprehensive and systematic study of the law of intervening causation (novus actus interveniens) to present an analysis of this particular judicial limitation of liability device. The work provides a structure from which to formulate core general legal principles and identify the various legal tests utilized by the courts.

To a disturbing degree, we are at the mercy of our time and place. While law may provide relief for some of life's troubles, that requires access to justice. Accessibility is the focus of this volume, which expands analysis of access to justice beyond the US and the UK to Asia and other comparative jurisdictions. Chapters characterise access to justice dynamics in these jurisdictions by addressing how access is understood, how it is achieved or not achieved, and how the jurisdiction should improve. The book addresses some issues seldom addressed in analyses of western jurisdictions, such as paid mandatory legal services and mandatory public interest activities, and provides English translations of relevant regulations. The book expands our understanding of access to justice with a comparative perspective, one that allows readers to identify relationships between access and its constitutive environment.

The volume offers both a general overview and selected details of Italian private law and its transition from early 20th century legal tradition to a modern legal system based on constitutional values and geared towards European integration. Among the areas presented are family law, succession, legal persons, businesses and companies, property, contract, and tort. The volume takes into account not only the legislative system, starting from the 1942 Civil Code and highlighting the many and significant changes that have been made in the past six decades, but also the profound influence of case-law and legal scholarship. The authors emphasise the eclectic but systematically solid foundations of Italian private law, which has been able to blend successfully the best of the diverse continental legal traditions and adapt itself to the ever growing pressure of EU legislation. The volume is addressed to legal scholars, practitioners and students who wish to gain first hand knowledge of Italian private law in their research, professional or academic activity.

A novel and incisive investigation of the role of judicial precedents and customs in Russian law, this book examines the trends in the development of judge-made law in Russian civil law since the demise of the Soviet Union.

Exploring the interrelated propositions that a certain creative element is intrinsic to the judicial function in modern legal systems, which are normally shaped by both legislators and judges and that the Russian legal system is not an exception to this rule, the author argues that the rejection or acceptance of judge-made law can no longer be sufficient grounds for distinguishing between common law and civil law systems for the purposes of comparative analysis.

Divided into six chapters, it covers:

• the principles applied by judges when interpreting legal acts; analyzing a number of academic writings on this subject
• the boundaries of the realm of judge-made law and the problem of 'hard cases' and the factors, which make them 'hard'
• a taxonomy of forms in which Russian courts effectuate their law-creation functions
• current policies of courts in legal and socio-political matters
• joint-stock societies and arbitrazh courts.

Estimating the degree of creativity within different branches of the Russian judiciary and explaining the difference in the approaches of various courts as well as setting out proposals as to how the discrepancies in judicial practice can be avoided, Judicial Law-Making in Post-Soviet Russia is invaluable reading for all students of international law, comparative law, legal skills, method and systems and jurisprudence and philosophy of law.

At a time when financial crime routinely crosses international boundaries, this book provides a novel understanding of its spread and criminalisation. It traces the international convergence of financial crime regulation with a uniquely comparative approach that examines key institutional and state actors including the European Union, the International Organization of Securities Commissions, as well as the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, France, Italy and Germany, all countries that harbour some of the most influential stock exchanges in the Western world. The book describes and documents the phenomenon of internationalisation of securities frauds - such as insider trading and market manipulation - and the laws criminalising those acts, most notably those responding to recent dramatic transformations in securities markets, high frequency trading, and benchmark manipulation. At the European level, it shows the progressive uniformisation of laws culminating in the 2014 European Union Market Abuse Regulation. The book argues that criminal prohibitions against internationalised market abuse must be understood as an economic and legal imperative to protect financial markets against activities that imperil its integrity, compromising the confidence of investors and thus affecting the economy as a whole. The book is supported by an extensive review of the most significant scholarship in each country.

Italian Private Law provides an excellent overview and analysis of Italian private law and its transition from the early twentieth century legal tradition to a system based on constitutional values, geared towards European integration. Exploring the eclectic yet systematically solid foundations of Italian private law, which has adapted itself to the ever growing pressure of EU legislation, Alpa and Zenovich look at the legislative system as well as the profound influence of case-law and legal scholarship. It examines: family law succession legal persons businesses and companies property law contract law tort law. This volume is a key resource for legal scholars, practitioners and students who want to gain a deeper knowledge of Italian private law in their research, professional or academic activity.

This book presents, analyses and evaluates the Principles of Latin American Contract Law (PLACL), a recent set of provisions aiming at the harmonisation of contract law at a regional level. As such, the PLACL are the most recent exponent of the many proposals for transnational sets of 'principles of contract law' that were drafted or published over the past 20 years, either at the global or the regional level. These include the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts, the Principles of European Contract Law, the (European) Draft Common Frame of Reference and the Principles of Asian Contract Law. The PLACL are the product of a working group comprising legal academics from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela. The 111 articles of the instrument deal with problems of general contract law, such as formation, interpretation and performance of contracts, as well as remedies for breach. The book aims to introduce the PLACL to an international audience by putting them in their historical and comparative context, including other transnational harmonisation measures and initiatives. The contributions are authored by drafters of the PLACL and contract law experts from Europe and Latin America.

What does the Belt and Road Initiative mean for the existing multilateral organisations? What can it represent for the future of the European Union in the long run? What is the role of hard and soft law in the functioning of the Initiative? What does it represent from a legal theory perspective? This book aspires to contribute to the international debate by gathering scholars with different backgrounds (legal theorists, public international lawyers, comparative lawyers) in a way that they can offer their inputs and observations concerning the Belt and Road Initiative.

Scholars have produced a wide variety of theoretical work on contract law. This is the first book to compile it, to present it coherently, to evaluate it, and to supply numerous references to additional sources. The author also offers his own practical perspective that emphasizes contract law's richness and complexity and questions the utility of abstract unitary theories. The author argues that, notwithstanding contract law's complexity, it successfully facilitates the formation and enforcement of private arrangements and ensures a degree of fairness in the process of exchange. Each chapter presents a pair of largely contrasting theories to clarify the central issue of contract law and theory, to set forth the range of views, and to help identify a practical middle ground. Among the contract theories discussed and analyzed are promise, contextual, feminist, formal, mainstream, critical, economic, empirical, and relational. The book should interest legal theorists, practising lawyers, law students, and general readers who want to learn more about contract law and theory.

Due to rapid developments in the communication sector, the right to privacy faces new challenges. The increasing digitization and internationalization of communication processes have raised a number of issues, and lead to conflicts wherever national legal systems and moral concepts collide. Particularly in the areas of data protection and liability of online service providers, universal approaches are required. This title presents positions of specialists in Europe, Australia, the US and Canada which contribute to the international dialogue and thereby offer a starting point for a sustainable policy for the protection of privacy rights

The state is legally required to be neutral towards religion, but in many countries it is increasingly anything but. This book conducts a comparative legal analysis of the church-state relationship within and between western countries - including the USA, France and Israel - that are key players in international and domestic dynamics in which religion and religious conflict take centre stage. It analyses how government accommodates diversity, how policies of multiculturalism and pluralism translate into legislation, the extent to which they address matters of religion and belief and what pattern of related issues then come before the courts. Finally, it considers how civil society and democracy in general can maintain a balance between the interests of those of different religions and beliefs and those of none. In this illuminating study, Kerry O'Halloran shows how the relationship between religion and government affects civil society and the functioning of democracy in North America and Europe.

This book brings together leading counterterrorism experts, from academia and practice, to form an interdisciplinary assessment of the terrorist threat facing the United Kingdom and the European Union, focusing on how terrorists and terrorist organisations communicate in the digital age. Perspectives drawn from criminological, legalistic, and political sciences, allow the book to highlight the problems faced by the state and law enforcement agencies in monitoring, accessing, and gathering intelligence from the terrorist use of electronic communications, and how such powers are used proportionately and balanced with human rights law. The book will be a valuable resource for scholars and students of terrorism and security, policing and human rights. With contributions from the fields of both academia and practice, it will also be of interest to professionals and practitioners working in the areas of criminal law, human rights and terrorism.

The value of mediation has been widely acknowledged worldwide, as shown by the number of jurisdictions in which the courts enforce obligations on parties to negotiate and adopt mediation to settle construction disputes. This book examines the expansion and development of court-connected construction mediation provisions across a number of jurisdictions, including the England and Wales, the USA, South Africa and Hong Kong. It includes contributions from academics and professionals in six different countries to produce a truly international comparative study, which is of high importance to construction managers as well as legal professionals.

Comparative Concepts of Criminal Law is unique in the sense that it introduces the reader to the fundamental concepts and rules of substantive criminal law in a comparative way and not just to the criminal law system of one specific jurisdiction. Compared with other fields of law, like contract and property law, comparative research into the so-called general part of criminal law is quite a recent phenomenon within academia. The increasing 'Europeanisation' of criminal law and policy makes such a comparative approach even more necessary.This handbook therefore fills a legal educational gap by exploring basic concepts of substantive criminal law in three major European legal systems: the common law system of England and Wales and the civil law systems of Germany and the Netherlands. Each chapter focuses on a specific concept or doctrine that is necessary to determine criminal liability (e.g. actus reus, mens rea, defences, inchoate offences). Throughout the book the authors also highlight and discuss some recent legislative and judicial developments that broaden the scope of criminal liability in our modern culture of control.This book is not only invaluable for students, but also for legal practitioners who want to broaden their knowledge of criminal law.