Drastic increases in the use of imprisonment; the introduction of 'three strikes' laws and mandatory sentences; restrictions on parole - all of these developments appear to signify a new, harsher era or 'punitive turn'. Yet these features of criminal justice are not universally present in all Western countries. Drawing on empirical data, Hamilton examines the prevalence of harsher penal policies in Ireland, Scotland and New Zealand, thereby demonstrating the utility of viewing criminal justice from the perspective of smaller jurisdictions. This highly innovative book is thoroughly critical of the way in which punitiveness is currently measured by leading criminologists. It is essential reading for students and scholars of criminology, penology, criminal justice and socio-legal studies, as well as criminal lawyers and practitioners.

The globalization of housing finance led to the global financial crisis, which has created new barriers to adequate and affordable housing. It presents major challenges for current housing law and policy, as well as for the development of housing rights. This book examines and discusses key contemporary housing issues in the context of today's globalized housing systems. The book takes up the challenge of developing a new paradigm, working towards the possibility of an alternative future. Revolving around three constellations of writing by diverse contributors, each chapter sets out a clear and developed approach to contemporary housing issues. The first major theme considers the crisis in mortgage market regulation, the development of mortgage securitization and comparisons between Spain and Ireland, two countries at the epicentre of the global housing market crisis. The second thematic consideration focuses on housing rights within the European human rights architecture, within national constitutions, and those arising from new international instruments, with their particular relevance for persons with disabilities and developing economies. The third theme incorporates an examination of responses to the decline and regeneration of inner cities, legal issues around squatting in developed economies, and changes in tenure patterns away from home-ownership. This topical book will be valuable to those who are interested in law, housing rights and human rights, policy-making and globalization.

Whilst advances in biotechnology and information technology have undoubtedly resulted in better quality of life for mankind, they can also bring about global problems. The legal response to the challenges caused by the rapid progress of technological change has been slow and the question of how international human rights should be protected and promoted with respect to science and technology remains unexplored. The contributors to this book explore the political discourse and power relations of technological growth and human rights issues between the Global South and the Global North and uncover the different perspectives of both regions. They investigate the conflict between technology and human rights and the perpetuation of inequality and subjection of the South to the North. With emerging economies such as Brazil playing a major role in trade, investment and financial law, the book examines how human rights are affected in Southern countries and identifies significant challenges to reform in the areas of international law and policy.

With contributions from experts in the field of sociology of law, this book provides an overview of current perspectives on socio-legal studies. It focuses particularly on the relationship between law and society described in recent social systems theory as 'structural coupling'. The first part of the book presents a reconstruction of theoretical tendencies in the field of socio-legal studies, characterised by the emergence of a transnational model of legal systems no longer connected to territorial borders and culturally specific aspects of single legal orders. In the following parts of the book, the contributions analyse some concrete cases of interrelation between law and society from an empirical and theoretical perspective.

Negotiating religious diversity, as well as negotiating different forms and degrees of commitment to religious belief and identity, constitutes a major challenge for all societies. Recent developments such as the 'de-secularisation' of the world, the transformation and globalisation of religion and the attacks of September 11 have made religious claims and religious actors much more visible in the public sphere. This volume provides multiple perspectives on the processes through which religious communities create or defend their place in a given society, both in history and in our world today. Offering a critical, cross-disciplinary investigation into processes of negotiating religion and religious diversity, the contributors present new insights on the meaning and substance of negotiation itself. This volume draws on diverse historical, sociological, geographic, legal and political theoretical approaches to take a close look at the religious and political agents involved in such processes as well as the political, social and cultural context in which they take place. Its focus on the European experiences that have shaped not only the history of 'negotiating religion' in this region but also around the world, provides new perspectives for critical inquiries into the way in which contemporary societies engage with religion. This study will be of interest to academics, lawyers and scholars in law and religion, sociology, politics and religious history.

The book profiles some of the macro and micro factors that have impact on European religious literacy. It seeks to understand religious illiteracy and its effects on the social and political milieu through the framing of the historical, institutional, religious, social, juridical and educational conditions within which it arises. Divided into four parts, in the first one, One literacy, more literacies?, the book defines the basic concepts underpinning the question of religious illiteracy in Europe. Part II, Understanding illiteracies, debating disciplines?, highlights the theological, philosophical, historical and political roots of the phenomenon, looking at the main nodes that are both the reasons religious illiteracy is widespread and the starting points for literacy strategies. Part III, Building literacy, shaping alphabets, examines the mix of knowledge and competences acquired about religion and from religion at school as well as through the media, with a critical perspective on what could be done both in the schools and for the improvement of journalists' religious literacy. Part IV, Views and experiences, presents the reader with the opportunity to learn from three different case studies: religious literacy in the media, religious illiteracy and European Islam, and a Jewish approach to religious literacy. Building on existing literature, the volume takes a scientific approach which is enriched by interdisciplinary and transnational perspectives, and deep entrenchment in historical methodology.

Business networks are an important economic phenomenon of increasing practical importance throughout Europe. This volume examines business networks from an interdisciplinary perspective, with many contributions dealing with a certain form of business network, the so-called cooperative or non-hierarchical. With regard to this specific form of cooperation the volume presents new economic findings, proposes a definition and discusses the governance structure of those networks.Moreover, this book explores whether the research results can also be applied to hierarchical, centralized business networks. With medium-sized companies and all the more with large companies, business networks also pose the question of the compatibility with anti-trust law. This collection dedicates three contributions to this important question. They are complemented by chapters on liability of the network and its members towards third parties and contributions discussing duties of loyalty and the interpretation of agreements. Drawing on new research from Italy, Spain, Germany and Norway, this work illustrates the European legal perspective on business networks.

This new book offers a detailed, comparative, and critical analysis of the notion of `legitimate expectations' in administrative law. It sets out the moral justification for protection of expectations and examines how procedural and substantive principles of administrative law, as well as principles of tort liability, contribute to their protection in English, French, and EC law. It argues that English law does not protect expectations adequately and presents original and detailed suggestions for legal reform.

This book provides a clear and thorough account of the process leading up to the revision of the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) one of the four treaties administered by the ITU. The author's inside view of the events and his legal analysis of the new ITRs, are different from that what has been aired in most other accounts to date. His systematic approach shows how much of the criticism of the WCIT-12 process and of the ITRs themselves, is unjustified. This book provides the most accurate view to date of what theITRs really mean and of what really happened at WCIT-12, which was undoubtedly a key event in the history of telecommunication policy and which is likely to have significant long-term effects.

The book covers in some detail the events leading to the non-signature of the treaty by a significant number of states, outlines possible consequences of that split between states, and offers possible ways forward. The book includes a detailed article-by-article analysis of the new ITRs, explaining their implications and concludes with recommendations for national authorities. It concludes with an analysis of events from the point of view of dispute resolution theory, offering suggestions for how to avoid divisive outcomes in the future.

"This is an excellent book, and quite rich and comprehensive. The topic is important and the book will surely be of interest to regulators, diplomats, policy experts, and all those who participated in WCIT. The author is uniquely qualified to write an analysis of the new ITRs and an account of the Conference. This book will be a good reference for the next Plenipotentiary Conference to be held in 2014 which is going to discuss follow-up to WCIT-12." Naser al-Rashedi, United Arab Emirates.

"This is an authoritative expert account of a moment of high significance for vital issues with respect to international networks." Professor Dan Schiller, University of Illinois.

"This is an excellent and timely work." Professor Ian Walden, Queen Mary, University of London.

"Interested persons, businesses and governments can draw their policies from the assessments of a telecommunications insider as presented in this book.

The manifold arguments enlightening the interpretation of the provisions of the ITRs might become an invaluable guidance for those who apply the ITRs in the future."

Professor Dr. Rolf H. Weber, University of Zurich."

This book focuses on the most serious social and economic challenges faced by China from a public international law perspective. The vast and diversified nature of public international law inspires the author to organize the book on a topic oriented basis, i.e. selecting five most crucial and interrelated issues in contemporary China to investigate and address. It reviews and evaluates China's response to these challenges and its continuing efforts in searching for solutions to these problems. These issues are inter-related and mutually affective, and moreover, impact collectively on the nation's standings in the international community. The country's national stability and economic sustainability may be retained only when these issues are dealt with efficiently and appropriately. This is a timely and comprehensive book addressing the most crucial problems confronted by contemporary China in the field of public international law, mainly concerning border issues, natural resources, environment and corruption. The work not only addresses these issues separately, but also delineates their interrelationships. In doing so, the complexity of these issues is revealed to a full extent.

This book is the first study of late Hanafism in the early modern Ottoman Empire. It examines Ottoman imperial authority in authoritative Hanafi legal works from the Ottoman world of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries CE, casting new light on the understudied late Hanafi jurists (al-muta'akhkhirun). By taking the madhhab and its juristic discourse as the central focus and introducing "late Hanafism" as a framework of analysis, this study demonstrates that late Hanafi jurists assigned probative value and authority to the orders and edicts of the Ottoman sultan. This authority is reflected in the sultan's ability to settle juristic disputes, to order specific opinions to be adopted in legal opinions (fatawa), and to establish his orders as authoritative and final reference points. The incorporation of sultanic orders into authoritative Hanafi legal commentaries, treatises, and fatwa collections was made possible by a shift in Hanafi legal commitments that embraced sultanic authority as an indispensable element of the lawmaking process.

Principles of French Law offers a comprehensive introduction to French law and the French legal system in terms which a common lawyer can understand. The authors give an explanation of the institutions, rules and techniques that characterize the major branches of French law. The chapters provide the reader with a clear sense of the questions that French lawyers see as important and how they would answer them.
In the ten years since the publication of the first edition, French law has changed in significant ways. European Union law and the European Convention on Human Rights have had a significant impact especially on procedural law and family law. There has been a new Commercial Code, major legislation on divorce, succession and criminal law, as well as significant developments in the Constitution. In addition, there have been very considerable developments in the case-law and a much discussed proposal for reform of major areas of the law of obligations.
The chapters present not only the rules of law, but, where appropriate, the principles and values underlying the system. Considerable use is made of juristic literature and of examples from French case law.
The book is designed for students studying French law at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, and as preliminary reading for students about to study in France. It will also serve as an initial point of reference for scholars embarking on a study of French law.

The rise of China signals a new chapter in international relations. How China interacts with the international legal order-namely, how China utilizes international law to facilitate and justify its rise and how international law is relied upon to engage a rising China-has invited growing debate among academics and those in policy circles. Two recent events, the South China Sea Arbitration and the US-China trade war, have deepened tensions. This book, for the first time, provides a systematic and critical elaboration of the interplay between a rising China and international law. Several crucial questions are broached. These include: How has China adjusted its international legal policies as China's state identity changes over time, especially as it becomes a formidable power? Which methodologies has China adopted to comply with international law and, in particular, to achieve its new legal strategy of norm entrepreneurship? How does China organize its domestic institutions to engage international law in order to further its ascendance? How does China use international law at a national level (in the Chinese courts) and at an international level (for example, lawfare in international dispute settlement)? And finally, how should "Chinese exceptionalism" be understood? This book contributes significantly to the burgeoning and highly relevant scholarship on China and international law.

The principle of legal certainty is of fundamental importance for law and society: it has been vital in stabilising normative expectations and in providing a framework for social interaction, as well as defining the scope of individual freedom and political power. Even though it has not always been fully realised, legal certainty has also functioned as a normative ideal that has structured legal debates, both at the national and transnational level. This book presents research from a range of substantive areas regarding the meaning, possibility and desirability of legal certainty in the context of a rapidly changing global society. It aims to address these issues by bringing together scholars from various jurisdictions in order to examine changes in the shifting meaning of legal certainty in a comparative and transnational context. In particular, the book explores some of the tensions that now exist between the conventional expectation of legal certainty and the various challenges associated with regulating highly complex, late modern economies and societies. The book will be of interest to lawyers concerned with understanding the transformation of core rule of law values in the context of contemporary social change, as well as to political scientists and social theorists.

This book seeks to question the widely held assumption in Europe that to have knowledge of law is simply to have knowledge of rules. There is a knowledge dimension beyond the symbolic which reaches right into the way facts are perceived, constructed and deconstructed. In support of this thesis the book examines, generally, the question of what it is to have knowledge of law; and this examination embraces not just the conceptual foundations, methods, taxonomy and theories used by jurists. It also examines the epistemological schemes used by social scientists in general in order to show that such schemes are closely related to the schemes of intelligibility used by lawyers and judges.

Comparative Law offers a thorough grounding in the subject for students and scholars alike, covering essential academic discussions and comparative law methodology. It critically debates both traditional and modern approaches to the discipline and uses examples from a range of jurisdictions to give the reader a truly global perspective. Its contextualised and interdisciplinary approach draws on examples from politics, economics and other social sciences to provide an original contribution to topics of comparative law. This new third edition is fully revised to reflect developments in the scholarship and includes two new chapters, balancing the book's structure between comparative law of the past, present and future. Suitable for students taking courses in comparative law and related fields, this book offers a fresh and cosmopolitan perspective on the subject.

The papers published in this proceedings volume are written by a selection of authors, resulting from a call for papers for the 1st International Conference on Law and Governance in a Global Context (ICLAVE) originating from Indonesia and other countries. This proceedings volume shall be a very valuable contribution to understand contemporary law issues in Indonesia which are not always taught in law schools. These proceedings will not only serve as a useful reference for law students and academicians, but also help law practitioners to understand law issues that may be encountered in Indonesia. It covers selected items such as Administrative Law, Constitutional Law, Business Law, Intellectual Property Law, Criminal Law, Human Rights Law, Adat Law, Shariah Law, Judiciary Law and International Law, which are all important for undergraduate and post-graduate law students, as well as academicians and law practitioners in the law community.

This book examines law and religion from the perspective of its case law. Each chapter focuses on a specific case from a Commonwealth jurisdiction, examining the history and impact of the case, both within the originating jurisdiction and its wider global context. The book contains chapters from leading and emerging scholars from across the Commonwealth, including from the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Pakistan, Malaysia, India and Nigeria. The cases are divided into four sections covering: - Foundational Questions in Law and Religion - Freedom of Religion around the Commonwealth - Religion and state relations around the Commonwealth - Rights, Relationships and Religion around the Commonwealth. Like religion itself, the case law covers a wide spectrum of life. This diversity is reflected in the cases covered in this book, which include: - Titular Roman Catholic Archbishop of Kuala Lumpur v Home Minister on the use of the Muslim name for God by non-Muslims in Malaysia - The Church of the New Faith v Commissioner of Pay-roll Tax (Vic) which determined the meaning of religion in Australia - Eweida v UK which clarified the application of Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights - R v Big M Drug Mart on the individual protections of religious freedom under the Canadian Charter of Rights. The book examines how legal disputes involving religion are among the most contested in the courts and shows that in these cases, passions run high and the outcomes can have significant consequences for all involved.

First published in 1999, this book focuses on the new role of private law in late modernity. It analyses the pressures for changes in this area of law due to the present processes of privatisation and marketisation. The perspective is welfarist: in what ways and to what extent can the welfare state expectations of the citizens be defended through private law mechanisms when state-offered security is diminishing? Which alternatives are available when developing private law? The questions are discussed against the background of theories concerning important features of late modern society, for example consumerism, risk, information, globalisation and fragmentation. Several fields of private law are analysed, such as private law theory, tort and liability law, contract law and credit law as well as access to justice issues. The approach is comparative, including analyses of both common law and continental law.

Globalisation has opened new avenues to corruption. Corrupt practices are proliferating not only within national borders but across different countries. Despite many national and international anti-corruption bodies and strategies, corruption far from being eradicated. There is an urgent global demand for a better understanding of corruption as a phenomenon and a thorough assessment of the existing regulatory remedies, towards the establishment of more effective (and possibly uniform) anti-corruption measures. Our previous collection, Corruption in the Global Era (Routledge, 2019), analysed the causes, the sources, and the forms of manifestation of global corruption. An ideal continuation of that volume, this book moves from the analysis of the phenomenon of corruption to that of the regulatory remedies against corruption and for the promotion of integrity. Corruption, Integrity and the Law provides a unique interdisciplinary assessment of the global anti-corruption legal framework. The collection gathers top experts in different fields of both the academic and the professional world - including criminal law, EU law, international law, competition law, corporate law and ethics. It analyses legal instruments adopted not only at a supranational level but also by different countries, in the attempt of establishing an interdisciplinary and comparative dialogue between theory and practice and between different legal systems towards a better global promotion of integrity. This book will be of value to researchers, academics and students in the fields of law, criminology, sociology, economics, ethics as well as professionals - especially solicitors, barristers, businessmen and public servants.

This book explores key innovations in Rwandan law, exploring how the country has tried to combine the homegrown legal system with the civil law and common law legal systems to create a new hybrid legal system. The author explores the history of Rwandan law through the pre-colonial, to colonial and post-independence periods, and examines the homegrown legal and justice approaches, such as Gacaca, Abunzi, and Imihigo, introduced to deal with legal problems that could not be dealt with using the western legal system in post genocide Rwanda. The book highlights the innovative Rwandan approach to incorporating international law in the domestic legal system; it also covers the evolution of Rwandan constitutional law and constitutionalism since independence, and the development of family law from a legal system that oppressed women to one that promotes the rights of girls and women. Finally, the book explores the combination of common law and civil law systems in the development of the new Rwandan criminal law and in the transformation of the organization, jurisdiction, and functioning of Rwandan courts. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of African law, international law, and the legal system in Rwanda.

Economic regulation in the telecommunications sector can be performed through economy-wide instruments, such as antitrust law and antitrust authorities, or through sector-specific instruments, such as telecommunications regulation and regulatory authorities. Relying on a comparative analysis of five countries, the present book seeks to shed some light on the respective roles of both types of instruments in liberalized telecommunications markets.

Little has been written on Japanese contract law and anti-trust law in Western languages. This book describes the role of this law in protecting the distributor against unilateral terminations of distribution agreements. There have been significant pressures both to lower prices and restructure distribution channels in Japan which have strained many distribution agreements. This volume, based primarily on Japanese language legal material, not only involves a study of applicable black-letter law, but also a sociological study of its application in practice. Detailed analysis has been made in particular of famous legal termination cases during the 1990s in the Japanese luxury cosmetics distribution system which generated influential decisions by the higher courts and the Fair Trade Commission, providing new insights into whether or not there are distinct Japanese attitudes towards contracts.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203398386

Legal Pluralism in Central Asia reports on historical, anthropological and legal research which examines customary legal practices in Kyrgyzstan and relates them to wider societal developments in Central Asia and further afield. Using the term legal pluralism, the book demonstrates that there is a spectrum of approaches, available avenues, forms of local law and indigenous popular justice in Kyrgyzstan's predominantly rural communities, which can be labelled living law. Based on her extensive original research, Mahabat Sadyrbek shows how contemporary peoples systematically address challenging problems, such as disputes, violence, accidents, crime and other difficulties, and thereby seek justice, redress, punishment, compensation, readjustment of relations or closure. She demonstrates that local law, expressed through ritually structured communicative exchange, through dictums and proverbs with binding characters and different legal practices or processes undertaken in specific ways, deem the solutions appropriate and acceptable. The reader is thereby enabled to see the law in people's deepest assumptions and beliefs, in codes of shame and honour, in local mores and ethics as well as in religious terms. In this way, the book reveals the dynamic, changing and living character of law in a specific context and in a region hitherto insufficiently researched within legal anthropology.

For many years, legislators around the world have responded to the particular needs of consumers by introducing dedicated rules for consumer sales contracts. In the European Union, a significant push came through the adoption of the Consumer Sales Directive (99/44/EC). Elsewhere in the world, legislation focusing on consumer sales contracts has been introduced, for example in New Zealand and Australia. This book offers a snapshot of the current state of consumer sales law in a range of jurisdictions around the globe. It provides both an overview of the law in selected jurisdictions and compares the application of these rules in the context of two case scenarios.