This volume presents an analysis of controversial events and issues shaping a rapidly changing international legal, political, and social landscape. Leading scholars and experts in law, religious studies and international relations, thoughtfully consider issues and tensions arising in contemporary debates over religion and equality in many parts of the world. The book is in two parts. The first section focuses on the anti-discrimination dimension of religious freedom norms, examining the developing law on equality and human rights and how it operates at international and national levels. The second section provides a series of case studies exploring the contemporary issue of same-sex marriage and how it affects religious groups and believers. This collection will be of interest to academics and scholars of law, religious studies, political science, and sociology, as well as policymakers and legal practitioners.

While the visibility of disability studies has increased in recent years, few have thoroughly examined the marginalization of people with disabilities through the lens of political economy. This was the great contribution of Marta Russell (1951-2013), an activist and prominent scholar in the United States and best known for her analyses of the issues faced by people with disabilities. This book examines the legacy of Marta Russell, bringing together distinguished scholars and activists such as Anne Finger, Nirmala Erevelles and Mark Weber, to explicate current issues relevant to the empowerment of people with disabilities. Drawing from various fields including Law, Political Economy, Education and History, the book takes a truly interdisciplinary approach, offering a body of work that develops a dextrous understanding of the marginalization of people with disabilities. The book will be of great use and interest to specialists and students in the fields of Political Economy, Law and Society, Labour Studies, Disability Studies, Women's Studies, and Political Science.

This collection of readings places side by side the principal doctrines of contracts, torts, unjust enrichment, and property in the cases of the United States, England, France, Germany and China. It presents code provisions, cases, and other legal materials that describe the law in force, and places each doctrine in its historical context to enable an understanding of the development of law as an ongoing process, in which the resolution of current issues depends upon how past issues were resolved. It both provides a road map of the private law of these jurisdictions, and illustrates how private law has been shaped by history, by the effort to solve common problems, and by differences in culture. This new edition reflects changes in the law, and includes the addition of Chinese Law as a comparative study.

Within the global phenomenon of the (re)emergence of religion into issues of public debate, one of the most salient issues confronting contemporary Muslim societies is how to relate the legal and political heritage that developed in pre-modern Islamic polities to the political order of the modern states in which Muslims now live. This work seeks to develop a framework for addressing this issue. The central argument is that liberal theory, and in particular justice as discourse, can be normatively useful in Muslim contexts for relating religion, law and state. Just as Muslim contexts have developed historically, and continue to develop today, the same is the case with the requisites of liberal theory, and this may allow for liberal choices to be made in a manner that is not a renunciation of Muslim heritage.

Law and Policy in Modern Family Finance - Property Division in the 21st Century adopts a conceptual approach to address key questions about the legal division of property when a marriage, civil union, de facto relationship, or other close personal relationship ends. These questions include: which relationships should be subject to a statutory regime; which property should be shared; whether property held on trust should be included; how property should be shared; how economic disparity caused by the division of functions within the relationship should be addressed, if at all; whether, and if so to what extent, the interests of children of the relationship should be considered; whether parties should be allowed to contract out of a statutory regime and, if so, whether such contracts should be binding; and whether death should be treated in the same way as relationship break-down.The authors use New Zealand's current legislative framework as a basis for critical analysis and reflection. Despite New Zealand's Property (Relationships) Act 1976 being hailed as socially progressive legislation when it was enacted, there is concern in New Zealand that its property sharing regime no longer meets society's needs and expectations. However, issues of fairness, equality, and modern complexities in the division of relationship property are not unique to New Zealand. Other jurisdictions are facing similar problems, including Australia, England and some continental European countries.The inclusion of internationally recognised relationship property experts from England, Australia and Germany ensures the utility of the book for international audiences, making it of interest to law reformers, academics, the judiciary, the legal profession, and law students everywhere in the world.

The United States is extremely diverse religiously and, not infrequently, individuals sincerely contend that they are unable to act in accord with law as a matter of conscience. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the free exercise of religion and the United States Supreme Court has issued many decisions exploring the depth and breadth of those protections. This book addresses the Court's free exercise jurisprudence, discussing what counts as religion and the protections that have been afforded to a variety of religious practices. Regrettably, the Court has not offered a principled and consistent account of which religious practices are protected or even how to decide whether a particular practice is protected, which has resulted in similar cases being treated dissimilarly. Further, the Court's free exercise jurisprudence has been used to provide guidance in interpreting federal statutory protections, which is making matters even more chaotic. This book attempts to clarify what the Court has said in the hopes that it will contribute to the development of a more consistent and principled jurisprudence that respects the rights of the religious and the non-religious.

Major land reform programs have reallocated property in more than one-third of the world's countries in the last century and impacted over one billion people. But only rarely have these programs granted beneficiaries complete property rights. Why is this the case, and what are the consequences? This book draws on wide-ranging original data and charts new conceptual terrain to reveal the political origins of the property rights gap. It shows that land reform programs are most often implemented by authoritarian governments who deliberately withhold property rights from beneficiaries. In so doing, governments generate coercive leverage over rural populations and exert social control. This is politically advantageous to ruling governments but it has negative development consequences: it slows economic growth, productivity, and urbanization and it exacerbates inequality. The book also examines the conditions under which subsequent governments close property rights gaps, usually as a result of democratization or foreign pressure.

Every government engages in budgeting and public financial management to run the affairs of state. Effective budgeting empowers states to prioritize policies, allocate resources, and discipline bureaucracies, and it contributes to efficacious fiscal and macroeconomic policies. Budgeting can be transparent, participatory, and promote democratic decision-making, or it can be opaque, hierarchical, and encourage authoritarian rule. This book compares budgetary systems around the world by examining the economic, political, cultural, and institutional contexts in which they are formulated, adopted, and executed. The second edition has been updated with new data to offer a more expansive set of national case studies, with examples of budgeting in China, India, Indonesia, Iraq, and Nigeria. Chapters also discuss Brexit and the European Union's struggle to require balances budgets during the Euro Debt Crisis. Additionally, the authors provide a deeper analysis of developments in US budgetary policies from the Revolutionary War through the Trump presidency.

As the Single Market of 1992 comes into being, the need to develop an effective "social dimension" for that market has been acknowledged as a matter of pressing concern. Of the numerous initiatives already embarked upon by the European Commission in the context of that "social dimension", one of the most fundamental is the programme of measures designed to safeguard the health and safety of workers at their places of work. This volume presents the background to the programme of European Community initiatives, tracing the origins of a European policy on occupational health and safety and looking at the progressively expanding ambitions of Commission Action Programmes in this field. This brings the picture up to date to the measures adopted within the framework of the Community Charter of Fundamental Social Rights of Workers and includes consideration of the "Framework Directives" 80/1107/EEC and 89/391/EEC. Full texts of the relevant instruments making up the European Communities' Health and Safety Legislation are included in this work.

This book deals with the interconnection between the Brussels I Recast and Rome I Regulations and addresses the question of uniform interpretation. A consistent understanding of scope and provisions is suggested by the preamble of the Rome I Regulation. Without doubt, it is fair to presume that the same terms bear the same meaning throughout the Regulations. The author takes a closer look at the Regulations' systems, guiding principles, and their balance of flexibility and legal certainty. He starts from the premise that such analysis should prove particularly rewarding as both legal acts have their specific DNA: The Brussels I Recast Regulation has a procedural focus when it governs the allocation of jurisdiction and the free circulation of judgments. The multilateral rules under the Rome I Regulation, by contrast, are animated by conflict of laws methods and focus on the delimitation of legal systems. This fourth volume in the Short Studies in Private International Law Series is primarily aimed at legal academics in private international law and advanced students. But it should also prove an intriguing read for legal practitioners in international litigation. Christoph Schmon is a legal expert in the fields of Private International Law, Consumer Law, and Digital Rights. After serving in research positions at academic institutes in Vienna and London, he focused on EU policy and law making. He is appointed expert of advisory groups to the EU Commission.

The first ever sourcebook on U.S.-Kurdish relations, The Kurdish Question in U.S. Foreign Policy is a unique and timely work. It not only reproduces the full text of over 325 of the most important U.S. government documents dealing with the Kurdish question, but also provides both a guide to U.S. government sources for locating subsequently published materials and an annotated list of over 200 primary and secondary sources. Thorough and instructive, the book serves as an invaluable research tool and published national archive of U.S. government documents on U.S-Kurdish issues. U.S. government information is crucial for any research or reading on American involvement in Kurdish affairs. This sourcebook alleviates some of the problems associated with using U.S. government documents, such as lack of access and difficulty in identifying relevant sources. It educates users on where and how to find relevant U.S. government information on the Kurds as well as other stateless nations. Detailed subject, author, and title indices are also included to allow easy access and identification of key materials. The first ever documentary sourcebook and annotated bibliography on U.S. foreign policy towards the Kurds, The Kurdish Question in U.S. Foreign Policy should appeal to all academic, special, and public libraries, as well as among government and news agencies.

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.

This book discusses the opportunities and challenges facing legal education in the era of globalization. It identifies the knowledge and skills that law students will require in order to prepare for the practice of tomorrow, and explores pedagogical shifts legal education needs to make inside and outside of the classroom. With contributions from leading experts on legal education from various jurisdictions across the globe, the work combines theoretical depth with practical insights. Seeking to understand the changing landscape of legal education in the era of globalization, the contributions find that law schools can, and must, adopt educational strategies that at least present students with different understandings of what studying and practicing law is meant to be about. They find that law schools need to offer their students choices, a vision of practice that is not driven entirely by the demands of the marketplace or the needs of major international law firms. Bridging the gap between theory and practice, this book makes a significant contribution to the impact of globalization on legal education, and how students and law schools need to adapt for the future. It will be of great interest to academics and students of comparative legal studies and legal education, as well as policy-makers and practitioners.

This timely book examines crucial developments in the field of privacy law, efforts by legal systems to impose their data protection standards beyond their borders and claims by states to assert sovereignty over data. By bringing together renowned international privacy experts from the EU and the US, the book provides an accurate analysis of key trends and prospects in the transatlantic context, including spaces of tensions and cooperation between the EU and the US in the field of data protection law. The chapters explore recent legal and policy developments both in the private and law enforcement sectors, including recent rulings by the Court of Justice of the EU dealing with Google and Facebook, recent legislative initiatives in the EU and the US such as the CLOUD Act and the e-evidence proposal, as well as ongoing efforts to strike a transatlantic deal in the field of data sharing. All of the topics are thoroughly examined and presented in an accessible way that will appeal to scholars in the fields of law, political science and international relations, as well as to a wider and non-specialist audience. The book is an essential guide to understanding contemporary challenges to data protection across the Atlantic.

This title was first published in 2001. The global legal landscape is littered with attempts to provide context and meaning for sexual harassment law. Most have failed because they have limited themselves to the mere words of law. This cross-national study is the first to expand our notion of sexual harassment law and implementation by exposing the relationship between law and its social context, demonstrating how this fundamentally influences legal understandings and outcomes. Taking a unique theoretical approach, this book explores perceptions of law within national, corporate and the individual contexts, analyzing the potentials of each level to influence the social understanding of law and the wider role of law in society itself. The result is a pioneering work of fresh insight which will appeal to a broad range of academic disciplines.

This book merges philosophical, psychoanalytical and legal perspectives to explore how spaces of justice are changing and the effect this has on the development of the administration of justice. There are as central themes: the idea of transgression as the starting point of the question of justice and its archaic anchor; the relation between spaces of justice and ritual(s); the question of use and abuse of transparency in contemporary courts; and the abolition of the judicial walls with the use of cameras in courts. It offers a comparative approach, looking at spaces of justice in both the civil and common law traditions. Presenting a theoretical and interdisciplinary study of spaces of justice, it will appeal to academics in the fields of law, criminology, sociology and architecture.

This title was first published in 2000: This text tackles the issues raised by comparative research into criminal justice on other cultures. How far does criminal justice reflect general culture? Can collaborative research overcome the problem of translating incommensurable concepts? What are the possibilities for "virtual comparisons"? How do we tell difference? The authors, drawn from a range of countries, offer reflections on international differences in the process of trial and punishment.

This title was first published in 2001. After languishing for decades in the domains of rigid doctrinalism and confusing theory, the conflict of laws is increasingly being recognized as an important area of law to a global community. To demonstrate its importance, Michael Whincop and Mary Keyes transcend the divide between the English pragmatic tradition and the circularity of American policy-based theory. They argue that the law governing multistage conflicts can minimize the social costs of litigation, increase the extent of co-ordination, facilitate private ordering and limit regulatory monopolies and cross-border spillovers. Pragmatic in outlook and economic in methodology, they pursue these themes across a broad range of doctrinal issues and offer valuable links to parallel analyses in domestic contexts.

This book contributes to the international debate on Indigenous Peoples Law, containing both in-depth research of Scandinavian historical and legal contexts with respect to the Sami and demonstrating current stances in Sami Law research. In addition to chapters by well-known Scandinavian experts, the collection also comments on the legal situation in Norway, Sweden and Finland in relation to other jurisdictions and indigenous peoples, in particular with experiences and developments in Canada and New Zealand. The book displays the current research frontier among the Scandinavian countries, what the present-day issues are and how the nation states have responded so far to claims of Sami rights. The study sheds light on the contrasts between the three countries on the one hand, and between Scandinavia, Canada and New Zealand on the other, showing that although there are obvious differences, for instance related to colonisation and present legal solutions, there are also shared experiences among the indigenous peoples and the States. Filling a gap in an under-researched area of Sami rights, this book will be a valuable resource for academics, researchers and policy-makers with an interest in Indigenous Peoples Law and comparative research.

In the past century, Asian nations have experienced a wave of democratisation as countries in the region have gained independence or transitioned from authoritarian military rule towards more participatory politics. At the same time, there has been an expansion of judicial power in Asia, whereby new courts or empowered old ones emerge as independent constraints on governmental authority. This is the first book to assess the judicial review of elections in Asia. It provides important insights into how Asian courts can strategically engage with the political actors in their jurisdictions and contribute to a country's democratic discourse. Each chapter in the book sheds light on the judicial review of elections and the electoral process in a specific Asian jurisdiction, including Common Law Asia, namely Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, and Singapore, as well as jurisdictions in Civil Law Asia, namely Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. It fills a gap in the literature by addressing a central challenge to democratic governance, namely the problem of partisan self-dealing in the electoral processes. By exploring the constantly evolving role of the courts in addressing pivotal constitutional questions, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Asian Law, Governance and Politics.

This title was first published in 2002: Within Europe and beyond, foreign judgement enforcement is now an essential component for the development of international commerce. This indispensable volume traces and analyzes steps and procedures for the enforcement of foreign judgements in national courts, including summarizing the principles which are the preconditions for that enforcement.

Judicial networks have proved effective in influencing recent judicial policies enacted by both old and new EU member states. However, this influence has not been standard. This volume seeks to improve our understanding of how networks function, as well as the extent they matter in the governance of a constitutional democracy. The authors examine the judicial function of networks, the way they cross the legal and territorial borders that confine the jurisdiction of the domestic institutions, and whether or not they are independent of the capacity and the leadership of their members. A highly salient issue in contemporary law and politics, judicial networks are now qualified actors of governance. With the aim to understand how, to what extent, and with what consequences networks interact with hierarchical institutions that still exist within the States, this book is essential reading for legal experts, policy makers engaged in promoting the rule of law, members of the judicial networks in the EU and extra EU countries, as well as academics and students.

This book explores the question of justification of law. It examines some perennial jurisprudential debates and suggests that law must find its justification in morality. Drawing upon the Aristotelian inspiration that friends have no need for justice - in (ideal) friendship, we behave justly - Seow Hon Tan develops a theory of law based on the universal phenomenon of friendship. Friendships and legal relations attract rights and obligations by virtue of the manner in which parties are situated. Friendship teaches us that how parties are situated gives rise to legitimate expectations; it attests to the intrinsic worth of each person. The methodology for deciphering norms within, and moral lessons from, friendship can be transposed to law, resulting in an inter-subjectively agreeable and rich conception of justice. In determining the content of legal rights and obligations, we can and should draw upon such determination in friendship. Justice as Friendship aims to provide a vision for law's development and invites the practitioner to advance its central claims in their area of expertise. In dealing with selected legal doctrines, the book draws upon illustrative cases from the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Commonwealth. The book traverses the fields of jurisprudence, philosophy, ethics, political theory, contract law, and tort law.

This book explores the global phenomenon of migration, transplantation, and borrowing of constitutional ideas. It combines conceptual and normative approaches, to dissect a phenomenon which has been both praised and maligned in current political and academic discourse. The contributors consider constitutional transplantation as a specific case of migration of ideas, and place it within that broader intellectual framework of movement of knowledge. They analyse, from historical, conceptual, and normative angles, the transplantation of constitutions and constitutional ideas from one state to another, and the role played by existing cultures and histories in the reception of constitutional provisions and ideas. The book takes a broad view of the term ‘constitutional’. The results of the movement of constitutional ideas can be found outside, as well as within, the law, and the implications of such movement go beyond it. The authors are drawn from the fields of comparative constitutional law, medieval history, political philosophy, private law, and administration of justice. It reflects a view that the study of non-hegemonic systems, as well as hegemonic systems, is important in understanding transplantation of constitutional ideas, both as sources of transplants and as their receivers, and includes discussions of constitutions in Latin America, Asia, Europe, and North America.