How have national identities changed, developed and reacted in the wake of transition from communism to democracy in Central and Eastern Europe? Central and Eastern Europe After Transition defines and examines new autonomous differences adopted at the state and the supranational level in the post-transitional phase of the post-Communist area, and considers their impact on constitutions, democracy and legal culture. With representative contributions from older and newer EU members, the book provides a broad set of cultural points for reference. Its comparative and interdisciplinary approach includes a useful selection of bibliographical resources specifically devoted to the Central Eastern European countries' transitions.

Property rights and efforts to curb state appropriation of private properties for public purposes have always held high status on the political agenda of the US and many other nations that feature a corporate capitalist economic system. In addition to this, over the last several decades conservative libertarian and neo-liberal groups have put constitutional demands for greater property protection on the agendas of courts in several countries. Studying property rights mobilization in both domestic and comparative contexts, the contributors to this volume bring a range of social science perspectives to address three primary issues: the contours and characteristics of property rights mobilizations; the degree to which property rights movements have influenced development of law in demonstrable ways; and the broader cultural, social and economic implications of modern-era property rights litigation and legal mobilizations. This will be a key text for anyone working within or interested in property rights.

The book provides a comparative analysis of the law relating to remedies for breach of contract. It examines different remedies such as specific performance and damages,doing so from the viewpoint of different legal systems, principally the English, American, German, French and Israeli. Each essay is written by a recognised specialist in his or her own field. Topics covered include the relationship between substantive rights and contract remedies, the recent reforms of the law relating to breach of contract in Germany, the remedies in the context of a third party beneficiary and the extent to which a claimant can choose the remedy which he or she deems to be the most appropriate. The book also makes use of a range of techniques, particularly economic analysis, when examining the legal rules. The book contains an introductory essay written by the editors and an essay by Professor Friedman, which deals with the relationship between substantive rights and contract remedies.

This book transcends current debate on government regulation by lucidly outlining how regulations can be a fruitful combination of persuasion and sanctions. The regulation of business by the United States government is often ineffective despite being more adversarial in tone than in other nations. The authors draw on both empirical studies of regulation from around the world and modern game theory to illustrate innovative solutions to this problem. Their ideas include an argument for the empowerment of private and public interest groups in the regulatory process and a provocative discussion of how the government can support and encourage industry self-regulation.

Global Perspectives on the Rule of Law is a collection of original research on the rule of law from a panel of leading economists, political scientists, legal scholars, sociologists and historians. The chapters critically analyse the meaning and foundations of the rule of law and its relationship to economic and democratic development, challenging many of the underlying assumptions guiding the burgeoning field of rule of law development. The combination of jurisprudential, quantitative, historical/comparative, and theoretical analyses seeks to chart a new course in scholarship on the rule of law: the volume as a whole takes seriously the role of law in pursuing global justice, while confronting the complexity of instituting the rule of law and delivering its promised benefits.

Written for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers, Global Perspectives offers a unique combination of jurisprudential and empirical research that will be provocative and relevant to those who are attempting to understand and advance the rule of law globally. The chapters progress from broad questions regarding current rule of development efforts and the concept of rule of law to more specific issues pertaining to economic and democratic development. Specific countries, such as China, India, and seventeenth-century England and The Netherlands, serve as case studies in some chapters, while broad global surveys feature in other chapters. Indeed, this impressive scope of research ushers in the next generation of scholarship in this area.

Marginalized Communities and Access to Justice is a comparative study, by leading researchers in the field of law and justice, of the imperatives and constraints of access to justice among a number of marginalized communities. A central feature of the rule of law is the equality of all before the law. As part of this equality, all persons have the right to the protection of their rights by the state, particularly the judiciary. Therefore equal access to the courts and other organs of the state concerned with the enforcement of the law is central. These studies - undertaken by internationally renowned scholars and practitioners - examine the role of courts and similar bodies in administering the laws that pertain to the entitlements of marginalized communities, and address individuals' and organisations' access to institutions of justice: primarily, but not exclusively, courts. They raise broad questions about the commitment of the state to law and human rights as the principal framework for policy and executive authority, as well as the impetus to law reform through litigation. Offering insights into the difficulties of enforcing, and indeed of the will to enforce, the law, this book thus engages fundamental questions about value of engagement with the formal legal system for marginalized communities.

Constitutionalising Secession proceeds from the question, 'What, if anything, does the law have to say about a secession crisis?' But rather than approaching secession through the optic of political or nationalist institutional accommodation, this book focuses on the underpinnings to a constitutional order as a law-making community, underpinnings laid bare by secession pressures. Relying on the corrosive effects of secession, it explores the deep structure of a constitutional order and the motive forces creating and sustaining that order. A core idea is that the normativity of law is best understood, through a constitutional optic, as an integrative, associative force. Constitutionalising Secession critically analyses conceptions of constitutional order implicit in the leading models of secession, and takes as a leading case-study the judicial and legislative response to secession in Canada. The book therefore develops a concept of constitutionalism and law-making - 'associative constitutionalism' - to describe their deep structure as a continuing, integrative process of association. This model of a dynamic process of value formation can address both the association and the disassociation of constitutional systems.

Over the last 15 years, Koebler liability has resulted in the allocation of damages on only five occasions. Why is that? And what are the practical implications of the Koebler judgment in the Member States? This book offers a unique analysis of the principle - not from the usual EU-focused point of view but from the view of the practical Member State - and thus follows the track set by earlier books in the 'EU Law in the Member States' series. It thoroughly examines the national jurisprudential and legislative acceptation of the state liability principle and explores the existence of alternative remedies available in the Member States in case of such breaches. The conclusions, based on a systematic assessment of 300 national judgments from the 28 Member States, lead to a reconsideration of the role of the Koebler doctrine in the system of judicial remedies against violation of EU law by national supreme courts. After the pronouncement of the ECJ judgment in Koebler, legal scholars and practitioners have forecast the eradication of the principle of res judicata and the endangering of judicial independence. The judgment caused a lot of ink to flow; according to the ECJ's records, at least 100 studies are directly devoted to the analysis of this decision. This book is, however, the first to offer a comprehensive analysis on the genuine life of the Koebler liability in the Member States.

Transitional Justice, Judicial Accountability and the Rule of Law addresses the importance of judicial accountability in transitional justice processes. Despite a general consensus that the judiciary plays an important role in contemporary governance, accountability for the judicial role in formerly authoritarian societies remains largely elided and under-researched. Hakeem O. Yusuf argues that the purview of transitional justice mechanisms should, as a matter of policy, be extended to scrutiny of the judicial role in the past. Through a critical comparative approach that cuts through the transitioning experiences of post-authoritarian and post-conflict polities in Latin America, Asia, Europe and Africa, the book focuses specifically on Nigeria. It demonstrates that public accountability of the judiciary through the mechanism of a truth-seeking process is a necessary component in securing comprehensive accountability for the judicial role in the past. Transitional Justice, Judicial Accountability and the Rule of Law further shows that an across-the-board transformation of state institutions - an important aspiration of transitional processes - is virtually impossible without incorporating the third branch of government, the judiciary, into the accountability process.

Rethinking Rape Law provides a comprehensive and critical analysis of contemporary rape laws, across a range of jurisdictions. In a context in which there has been considerable legal reform of sexual offences, Rethinking Rape Law engages with developments spanning national, regional and international frameworks. It is only when we fully understand the differences between the law of rape in times of war and in times of peace, between common law and continental jurisdictions, between societies in transition and societies long inured to feminist activism, that we are able to understand and evaluate current practices, with a view to change and a better future for victims of sexual crimes. Written by leading authors from across the world, this is the first authoritative text on rape law that crosses jurisdictions, examines its conceptual and theoretical foundations, and sets the law in its policy context. It is destined to become the primary source for scholarly work and debate on sexual offences laws.

Ask No Questions provides readers with a better understanding of Sexual Orientation Discrimination as an increasingly important area of law around the world. It aims to increase the likelihood of achieving equality at national and international levels through a focus on the impact of primary role legislation on the court process, and a discussion on the two most important trade agreements of our day - namely the North American Free Trade Agreement and the European Union Treaty - in a historical and compelling analysis of discrimination. Anne-Marie Mooney-Cotter's sixth book in her series of volumes on discrimination law follows the approach and structure of her previous Ashgate volumes. Through a focus on the comparisons and contradictions of this type of law, and its detailed examination of the relationship between sexual orientation issues and the law, the book will be of importance to those concerned with equality.

South Asia has had a tumultuous and varied experience with constitutional democracy that predates the recent rise in populism (and its study) in established democracies. And yet, this region has remained largely ignored by constitutional studies and democracy scholars. This book addresses this gap and presents a contribution to the South Asia-centric literature on the topic of the stability and resilience of constitutional democracies. Chapters deal not only with relatively well known South Asian countries such as India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, but also with countries often ignored by scholars, such as Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives, and Afghanistan. The contributions consider the design and functioning of an array of institutions and actors, including political parties, legislatures, the political executive, the bureaucracy, courts, fourth branch / guarantor institutions (such as electoral commissions), the people, and the military to examine their roles in strengthening or undermining constitutional democracy across South Asia. Each chapter offers a contextual and jurisdictionally-tethered account of the causes behind the erosion of constitutional democracy, and some examine the resilience of constitutional institutions against democratic erosion.

In recent years, the procedural rules of global governance institutions have come under scrutiny from scholars worldwide and have been conceptualized as akin to domestic administrative law. However, one question has so far not been addressed: who shapes this procedure and why? In the present work, Isabel Lischewski develops a simple matrix connecting procedure and state interest. When this matrix is applied to a sample of forty diverse institutions, fascinating patterns emerge, which are further explored through in-depth case studies. It is shown that states prefer to balance sovereignty preservation through procedure with the costs it entails. Thus, normative considerations are not the predominant basis on which this procedure is designed. The research provides original insights into the landscape of global governance procedure and cautions against a notion of "apolitical" administration law.

This volume focuses on a highly challenging aspect of all European democracies, namely the issue of combining guarantees of judicial independence and mechanisms of judicial accountability. It does so by filling the gap in European scholarship between the two policy sectors of enlargement and judicial cooperation and by taking full stock of an interdisciplinary literature, spanning from comparative politics, socio-legal studies and European studies. Judicial Accountabilities in New Europe presents an insightful account of the judicial reforms adopted by new member States to embed the principle of the rule of law in their democratic institutions, along with the guidelines of quality of justice promoted by European institutions in all member States.

Affirmative Action and the Law analyses the practical application of affirmative action measures and their efficacy in achieving substantive equality through the lenses of the United Nations human rights machinery and the legal regime and policies implemented in China, India, Central and South America, South Africa and the United Kingdom. The product of a joint research project involving academics from the Brazil, Chile, Mexico, India, Spain and the United Kingdom, the findings identify and reflect on trends emerging from State practice across the world in eradicating structural inequality through special measures for certain designated groups. The book seeks to provide a coherent and systematic approach to the analysis of special measures in the targeted countries. It also comprises two case-studies with in-depth insights on gender diversity on the boards of public listed companies in the UK and the European Union and the access of persons with disabilities to higher education in Brazil. The book will be a valuable resource for students and academics in the field of human rights, law, sociology and politics. It will also provide a source of good practice for states and policy makers in the framing of responses to increased inequality at national and international level; and for civil society actors seeking to explore meaningful interaction with a highly controversial topic in society.

Providing practical and theoretical resources on media law and ethics for the United Kingdom and United States of America and referencing other legal jurisdictions such as France, Japan, India, China and Saudi Arabia, Comparative Media Law and Ethics is suitable for upper undergraduate and postgraduate study and for professionals in the media who need to work internationally.

The book focuses on the law of the United Kingdom, the source of common law, which has dominated the English speaking world, and on the law of the USA, the most powerful cultural, economic, political and military power in the world. Media law and ethics have evolved differently in the US from the UK. This book investigates why this is the case.

Throughout, media law and regulation is evaluated in terms of its social and cultural context.The book has a companion website at http: //www.ma-radio.gold.ac.uk/cmle providing complementary resources and updated developments on the topics explored.

Marginalized Communities and Access to Justice is a comparative study, by leading researchers in the field of law and justice, of the imperatives and constraints of access to justice among a number of marginalized communities. A central feature of the rule of law is the equality of all before the law. As part of this equality, all persons have the right to the protection of their rights by the state, particularly the judiciary. Therefore equal access to the courts and other organs of the state concerned with the enforcement of the law is central. These studies - undertaken by internationally renowned scholars and practitioners - examine the role of courts and similar bodies in administering the laws that pertain to the entitlements of marginalized communities, and address individuals' and organisations' access to institutions of justice: primarily, but not exclusively, courts. They raise broad questions about the commitment of the state to law and human rights as the principal framework for policy and executive authority, as well as the impetus to law reform through litigation. Offering insights into the difficulties of enforcing, and indeed of the will to enforce, the law, this book thus engages fundamental questions about value of engagement with the formal legal system for marginalized communities.

Pure economic loss is one of the most-discussed problems in the fields of tort and contract. How do we understand the various differences and similarities between these systems and what is the extent to which there is a common-core of agreement on this question? This book takes a comparative approach to the subject, exploring the principles, policies and rules governing tortious liability for pure economic loss in a number of countries and legal systems across the world. The countries covered are USA, Canada, Japan, Israel, South Africa, Japan, Romania, Croatia, Denmark and Poland, with the contributors taking a comparative fact-based approach through the use of hypothetical problems to analyze and then summarize the individual country's tort approach. Using a fact-based questionnaire, a tested taxonomy, and a sophisticated comparative law methodology, the authors convincingly demonstrate that there are liberal, pragmatic and conservative regimes throughout the world. The recoverability of pure economic loss poses a generic question for these legal systems - it is not just a civil law versus common law issue. It will be of interest to students and academics studying tort law and comparative law in the different countries covered.

The International Society of Family Law is an independent, international, and non-political scholarly association dedicated to the study, research and discussion of family law and related disciplines. The Society's membership currently includes professors, lecturers, scholars, teachers, and researchers from more than 50 different countries, offering a unique opportunity for networking within a truly international family law community. The International Survey of Family Law is the annual review of the International Society of Family Law. It brings together reliable and clearly structured insights into the latest and most notable developments in family law from all around the globe. Chapters are prepared by an international team of selected experts in the field, usually covering 20 or more jurisdictions in each edition.

In this book Charles Mwalimu explores viable grassroots representation mechanisms in African constitutions in order to positively integrate indigenous and modern systems in Sub-Saharan Africa. A comparative study method is used to examine the constitutional principles of chieftaincy and local government and their impact on human rights. To establish and prove lack of positive integration Mwalimu connects this failure to poor constitutionalism, development and stultified growth and human rights violations. This book proposes remedial actions to build nondiscriminatory constitutional regimes eradicating violations of human rights.

This book presents a unique and extensive comparative study of commercial contract interpretation across 14 selected jurisdictions, namely Croatia, England and Wales, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Scotland, South Africa, Spain and Sweden. Using a dynamic comparative case method, the focus is centered on the discussion of key legal problems, further examined in a detailed and comprehensive comparative analysis. In this way, the book makes important advancements in the general understanding of contract interpretation in European private law in three respects. First, it enriches the conventional conceptual framework for the methods of contract interpretation by distinguishing between interpretation aims and means. Second, it challenges the presumptive division of common law and civil law jurisdictions, for example, the assumption that civil systems follow a subjective approach and common law systems an objective approach to interpretation of contract. Third, the book provides a more subtle analysis of the role of standards of 'good faith' in contract interpretation. A common core of contract interpretation in European private law that is inferred from the national reports is that every legal system strives to reach a compromise between staying true to the intentions of the parties, assessing what a reasonable person would understand from the contract drafting, and preventing outcomes that are unfair or unjust. Each court draws on the material available to it in order to reach this compromise. Conversely, the differences between the jurisdictions pertain to what constitutes a common intention between the contracting parties and reasonableness, and what the appropriate methods are by which these could best be ascertained. Here, the jurisdictions reveal a variety of conceptual, doctrinal and pragmatic similarities and distinctions. Contributions written from law and economics, and European private law perspectives place the key legal issues into context and make Interpretation of Commercial Contracts in European Private Law a coherent and valuable resource for academics and practitioners with a European or international focus.

Enforcing Consumer and Capital Markets Law: The Diesel Emissions Scandal is an international and intradisciplinary work. On the example of one topical and global collective damage event with far reaching consequences for both consumers and investors, this work critically analyses the various approaches of public and private law enforcement and their effectiveness across several jurisdictions, namely those of Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, England and Wales, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Portugal, Australia, Brazil, China and the United States of America. Based on decided and pending cases, the book demonstrates to what extent public authorities, but also private claimants, can take effective steps against the violation of their rights in their respective jurisdictions. The following is examined: law enforcement by public institutions, law enforcement by private parties and overlaps as well as hybrids and connections between both areas. A particular focus is given to collective redress, that is representative actions and model case proceedings. Comments from renowned practitioners sharing their experiences are included throughout the book. Separate concluding comparative chapters have two different aims: A comparative analysis of the legal solutions with a supranational European Union level focus provides invaluable insights into best practices and effectiveness. In addition, an intradisciplinary comparison assesses and evaluates the effectiveness of consumer law vs capital markets law mechanisms. Furthermore mechanisms of competition law and company law are taken into account. With contributions by Willem H. van Boom (University of Leiden), Peter Cashman (3 Wentworth Chambers; University of New South Wales), Tanja Domej (University of Zurich), Marcello Gaboardi (Bocconi University Milan), Beate Gsell (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munich; Munich Higher Regional Court), Jutta Gurkmann (Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverband e.V.), Patrick Honegger-Muntener (University of Zurich), Emmanuel Jeuland (University Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne), Remigijus Jokubauskas (Court of Appeal of Lithuania), Georg E. Kodek (Vienna University of Economics and Business), Lene Kohl (Osborne Clarke, Berlin), Petra Leupold (VKI-Academy), Claudia Lima Marques (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul), Caroline Meller-Hannich (Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg), Thomas M.J. Moellers (University of Augsburg), Charlotte M.D.S. Pavillon (University of Groningen), Anders Schafer (Kammeradvokaten/Poul Schmidt, Copenhagen; University of Copenhagen), Amy J. Schmitz (University of Missouri), John Sorabji (Nine St John Street Chambers; University College London), Henrique Sousa Antunes (Catholic University of Portugal), Egidija Tamosiuniene (Court of Appeal of Lithuania; University of Vilnius), Rudiger Veil (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munich), Maximilian Weiss (TILP Litigation, Kirchentellinsfurt), Tong Zhang (China University of Political Science and Law).

This textbook deals with the foundations and key issues of corporate insolvency law and approaches the topic from a comparative perspective, i.e. it does not concentrate on one insolvency law in particular but rather introduces the relevant rules from various jurisdictions, primarily England (and Wales), France, Germany, and those of the USA. It is case focused and designed for learning and teaching corporate insolvency law.

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.

Global Perspectives on the Rule of Law is a collection of original research on the rule of law from a panel of leading economists, political scientists, legal scholars, sociologists and historians. The chapters critically analyze the meaning and foundations of the rule of law and its relationship to economic and democratic development, challenging many of the underlying assumptions guiding the burgeoning field of rule of law development. The combination of jurisprudential, quantitative, historical/comparative, and theoretical analyses seeks to chart a new course in scholarship on the rule of law: the volume as a whole takes seriously the role of law in pursuing global justice, while confronting the complexity of instituting the rule of law and delivering its promised benefits.

Written for scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers, Global Perspectives on the Rule of Law offers a unique combination of jurisprudential and empirical research that will be provocative and relevant to those who are attempting to understand and advance the rule of law globally. The chapters progress from broad questions regarding current rule of development efforts and the concept of rule of law to more specific issues pertaining to economic and democratic development. Specific countries, such as China, India, and seventeenth century England and the Netherlands, serve as case studies in some chapters, while broad global surveys feature in other chapters. Indeed, this impressive scope of research ushers in the next generation of scholarship in this area.