The study and teaching of international human rights law is dominated by the doctrinal method. A wealth of alternative approaches exists, but they tend to be discussed in isolation from one another. This collection focuses on cross-theoretical discussion that brings together an array of different analytical methods and theoretical lenses that can be used for conducting research within the field. As such, it provides a coherent, accessible and diverse account of key theories and methods. A distinctive feature of this collection is that it adopts a grounded approach to international human rights law, through demonstrating the application of specific research methods to individual case studies. By applying the approach under discussion to a concrete case it is possible to better appreciate the multiple understandings of international human rights law that are missed when the field is only comprehended though the doctrinal method. Furthermore, since every contribution follows the same uniform structure, this allows for fruitful comparison between different approaches to the study of our discipline.

Transnational tendencies have led to a pluralistic legal environment in which emerging and established legal actors, regulatory levels and types of legal norms co-exist, compete and interact in complex ways. This challenges and changes not only how legal norms are created, applied and enforced but also when these actors, norms and processes are considered legitimate. The book investigates how states and non-state actors interact in transnational settings and pays attention to the understudied question of what effect transnational tendencies have on the legitimacy of legal actors, norms and processes. It seeks to confront three fundamental questions: Has legitimacy significantly changed? Who creates norms and with which consequences for legal procedures and norms? The book considers the question of legitimacy from a broad range of legal perspectives, including environmental law, human rights law and commercial law. It maps out the contours of legitimacy today with an emphasis on the reactions of central actors like states and courts to transnational tendencies. The book thereby provides a conceptually powerful structure within which to further debate the complexity of transnational tendencies in law and proposes innovative approaches to problem solving while designing pathways for further reflection on the development of law in a transnational context.

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.

First published in 2006, this book brings together some of the most innovative and important research on civil rights law and legality, this book draws on narratives of individuals from a variety of contexts to provide a rich and contextualized understanding of what happens when law interacts with other competing systems or forms of social organization. By privileging the real world experiences of those most influenced by rights, the collection moves beyond the traditional polarizing debates and presents a constitutive approach to rights that is not reducible to a simple 'for or against' rights formula. While this complex consciousness approach often contributes to the reproduction of dominant-subordinate social relations, it also allows for spaces of resisting existing hierarchical structures embedded in various law-related sites.

* Presents a novel approach to the study of legal change;

This book examines the right to be forgotten and finds that this right enjoys recognition mostly in jurisdictions where privacy interests impose limits on freedom of expression. According to its traditional understanding, this right gives individuals the possibility to preclude the media from revealing personal facts that are no longer newsworthy, at least where no other interest prevails. Cases sanctioning this understanding still abound in a number of countries. In today's world, however, the right to be forgotten has evolved, and it appears in a more multi-faceted way. It can involve for instance also the right to access, control and even erase personal data. Of course, these prerogatives depend on various factors and competing interests, of both private and public nature, which again require careful balancing. Due to ongoing technological evolution, it is likely that the right to be forgotten in some of its new manifestations will become increasingly relevant in our societies.

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.

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.

Commercial relationships give rise to diverse forms of legal obligation in private law, including contract, tort, agency, company law and partnership. More controversially, equity and the law of restitution have a less defined and somewhat ambulatory role in regulating the affairs of commercial parties. Nevertheless, their impact is manifest in the commercial arena through the distinct types of liability they engender and the remedies that are imposed. This collection draws together the views of leading international scholars and judges to explore the nature and extent of this impact from two perspectives. Five chapters primarily address this impact at a macro-level, focusing on the roles of equity and the law of restitution in terms of legal taxonomy, doctrine and policy. In contrast, five further chapters primarily address this impact at a micro-level, focusing on selected liabilities and remedies within equity and the law of restitution. This bifocal approach enables a holistic appreciation of some important ways in which equity and the law of restitution affect or may affect commerce, with a view to fostering further debate over the fundamental issues at stake.

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.

Whereas many modern works on comparative law focus on various aspects of legal doctrine the aim of this book is of a more theoretical kind - to reflect on comparative law as a scholarly discipline, in particular at its epistemology and methodology. Thus, among its contents the reader will find: a lively discussion of the kind of 'knowledge' that is, or could be, derived from comparative law; an analysis of 'legal families' which asks whether we need to distinguish different 'legal families' according to areas of law; essays which ask what is the appropriate level for research to be conducted - the technical 'surface level', a 'deep level' of ideology and legal practice, or an 'intermediate level' of other elements of legal culture, such as the socio-economic and historical background of law. One part of the book is devoted to questioning the identification and demarcation of a 'legal system' (and the clash between 'legal monism' and 'legal pluralism') and the definition of the European legal orders, sub-State legal orders, and what is left of traditional sovereign State legal systems; while a final part explores the desirability and possibility of developing a basic common legal language, with common legal principles and legal concepts and/or a legal meta-language, which would be developed and used within emerging European legal doctrine. All the papers in this collection share the common goal of seeking answers to fundamental, scientific problems of comparative research that are too often neglected in comparative scholarship.

This book explores the question of how the multiplication of judicial decisions on international law has influenced the way in which legal findings in international law adjudication are justified. International law practitioners frequently cite judicial decisions to persuade. Courts interpreting international law are no exception to this practice. However, judicial decisions do much more than persuading: they enable and constrain interpretive discretion. Instead of taking the road of the sources of international law, this book turns to the somewhat uncharted terrain of legal argumentation. Using international criminal law as a case study, it shows how the growing number of judicial decisions has normalised courts' resort to them in legal justification and enabled some argumentative practices to become constitutive of international law. In so doing, it critically revisits the implications of an iterative use of judicial decisions, and reassesses the influence of the 'judicialisation turn' on the ways in which the meaning of international law is formed, shaped and reshaped by reference to judicial decisions.

The Politics of the Spirit is a masterful study of the political effects of evangelical Protestantism in Central America. Timothy Steigenga's thoughtfully crafted work questions whether the spread of Protestantism in Latin America has reinforced authoritarian elements in political culture or deepened nascent democracy. Steigenga provides a thorough review of the literature on religion and politics in Latin America, putting many of the hypotheses generated in this literature to the test through an analysis of comparative survey data and qualitative interviews. Steigenga investigates the impact religious affiliation has on political activity and belief, and the influence of cross-denominational religious beliefs and practices on Latin American life. His comparative work explores how different political systems-the established democracy of Costa Rica and the transitional system of Guatemala-impact the politics of religion. This enlightening interdisciplinary book will appeal to scholars seeking to understand the relationships between religious and political change in Latin America.

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.

Past research and literature suggest that legal institutions drive economic development. Yet China has grown for decades without the fundamental legal infrastructure that was once considered necessary. This is called the 'China puzzle' or the 'China myth'. By carefully comparing the four key branches of private law in China and Taiwan - a jurisdiction that grew with modest legal institutions and shares similar legal and non-legal culture - this collaborative and novel book demystifies the 'China puzzle'. Top scholars in the field use an economics-focused analytical approach to explain how and why the laws have taken such paths over the past four decades. Comparing property, contract, tort, and corporate laws in China and Taiwan, these authors delve deeply into key doctrines to provide a meaningful account of the evolution of private law in these two jurisdictions.

Governance is a much wider concept than government and administration as traditionally understood. The tasks facing the public sector have altered with the development of New Public Management (NPM), the purchaser/provider divide, the move to best value, regardless of the delivery mechanism, contracting out, partnerships, devolved politics and globalization.

The economic and geopolitical implications of China's rise have been the subject of vast commentary. However, the institutional implications of China's transformative development under state capitalism have not been examined extensively and comprehensively. Regulating the Visible Hand? The Institutional Implications of Chinese State Capitalism examines the domestic and global consequences of Chinese state capitalism, focusing on the impact of state-owned enterprises on regulation and policy, while placing China's variety of state capitalism in comparative perspective. It first examines the domestic governance of Chinese state capitalism, looking at institutional design and regulatory policy in areas ranging from the environment and antitrust to corporate law and taxation. It then analyses the global consequences for the regulation of trade, investment and finance. Contributors address such questions as: What are the implications of state capitalism for China's domestic institutional trajectory? What are the global implications of Chinese state capitalism? What can be learned from a comparative analysis of state capitalism?

This book provides a comparative and accessible analysis of key areas of healthcare law, comparing English law with selected common and civil law jurisdictions within a framework of law and medical ethics, and encompassing pivotal cases, codes and legislation. The introduction examines medical decision making, and legal and ethical frameworks in Western and non-Western cultures. Part I examines healthcare law in England and Wales, including abortion, consent, confidentiality, children, euthanasia, persistent vegetative state patients, organ transplantation, sterilisation of the mentally incapacitated, surrogacy, UK cloning proposals and the landmark conjoined twins case. Part II covers non-English common law jurisdictions such as Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and certain American jurisdictions. Civil law examples focus on France and Germany, and, where appropriate, Scandinavian countries. International perspectives on abortion laws and euthanasia are also provided. The book concludes with a comparative overview, which highlights common healthcare themes across various jurisdictions. Comparative Healthcare Law brings together information never previously accessible within the covers of one volume, making this unique book indispensable for scholars and practitioners in the field of healthcare law.

This book is the third in a series of essay collections on defences in private law. It addresses defences to liability arising in contract. The essays range from those adopting a predominantly black-letter approach to others that examine the law from a more theoretical or historical perspective. Some essays focus on individual defences, while others are concerned with the links between defences, or with how defences relate to the structure of contract law generally. One goal of the book is to determine what light can be shed on contract law doctrines by analysing them through the lens of defences. The contributors - judges and academics - are all leading jurists. The essays are addressed to all of the major common law jurisdictions.

Annually, the government commits significant expenditure to a type of public contracts which are known as Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) or the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). These contracts bind the public purse for decades in sectors such as Health, Defence and Detention, and involve the assignment of a significant role to the private sector in the provision of public services. This book explores the controversial subject of the public accountability of these contracts, and the corresponding large sums of public money involved. It explains how public accountability works for PPPs and the PFI, and it argues that it should be provided as part of the Economic Constitution. Drawing comparative understandings from the UK and the USA constitutional legal traditions, the book investigates public accountability from the perspective of the Economic Constitution, focusing on three accountability criteria - legal, accounting and administrative. In doing so, it provides an analysis which informs both from the perspective of academic research and from that of legal and consulting practice.

We live in an increasingly pluralized world. This sociological reality has become the irreversible destiny of humankind. Even once religiously homogeneous societies are becoming increasingly diverse. Religious freedom is modernity's most profound if sometimes forgotten answer to the resulting social pressures, but the tide of pluralization threatens to overwhelm that freedom's stabilizing force. Religion, Pluralism, and Reconciling Difference is aimed at exploring differing ways of grappling with the resulting tensions, and then asking, will the tensions ultimately yield poisonous polarization that erodes all hope of meaningful community? Or can the tradition and the institutions protecting freedom of religion or belief be developed and applied in ways that (still) foster productive interactions, stability, and peace? This volume brings together vital and thoughtful contributions treating aspects of these mounting worldwide tensions concerning the relationship between religious diversity and social harmony. The first section explores controversies surrounding religious pluralism from different starting points, including religious, political, and legal standpoints. The second section examines different geographical perspectives on pluralism. Experts from North and South America, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East address these issues and suggest not only how social institutions can reduce tensions, but also how religious pluralism itself can bolster needed civil society.

How far do contemporary English and German judges go when they interpret national legislation? Where are the limits of statutory interpretation when they venture outside the constraints of the text?Judicial Law-making in English and German Courts is concerned with the limits of judicial power in a legal system. It addresses the often neglected relationship between statutory interpretation and constitutional law. It traces the practical implications of constitutional principles by exploring the outer limits of what courts regard themselves as authorised to do in the area of statutory interpretation. The book critically analyses, reconstructs and compares judicial law-making in English and German courts from comparative, methodological and constitutional perspectives. It maps the differences and commonalities in both jurisdictions and then offers explanatory accounts for these differences and similarities based on constitutional, institutional, political, historical, cultural and international factors.It will be shown that a fundamental unity of statutory interpretation exists in English and German judicial practice in the sphere of rights-consistent and EU-conforming judicial law-making. The constitutional settings and legal cultures in Germany and the UK have converged in both areas of judicial law-making. However, that is not the case for judicial law-making under conventional canons of statutory interpretation, where significant differences in judicial approach to statutory interpretation remain.Judicial Law-making in English and German Courts is the first monograph in English that compares English and German legal methodology as applied in judicial practice, appealing to those interested in statutory interpretation, comparative law or legal methodology.

This book is a compilation of thematically arranged essays that critically analyze emerging developments, issues, and perspectives in the field of comparative law, especially in the field of comparative constitutional law. The book discusses limits and challenges of comparativism, comparative aspects of arbitral awards, cross-border consumer disputes, online hate speech, authoritarian constitutions, issues related to legal transplants, the indispensability of the idea of the concept of Rechtsstaat, interdisciplinary challenges of comparative environmental law, free exercise of religions, public interest litigation, constitutional interpretation and developments, and sustainable development in model BITs. It comprises seven parts, wherein the first part focuses on general themes of comparative law, the second part discusses private law through a comparative lens, and the third, fourth, and fifth parts examine aspects of public law with special focus on constitutional law, human rights, environmental law, and economic laws. The last part of the book covers recent developments in the field of comparative law. The book intends to seamlessly tie together discussions on both public and private law aspects of comparative law. It encourages readers to gain a nuanced understanding of the working of law, legal systems, and legal cultures while aiding deliberations on the constituents of an ideal system of law.

This collection explores the practical operation of the law in the area of litigation costs and funding, and confronts the issue of how exposure to cost risks affects litigation strategy. It looks at the interaction of the relevant legal regime, regulatory framework and disciplinary rules with the behaviour of litigants, courts and legislatures, examining subjects such as cost rules and funding arrangements. The book discusses a wide range of topics such as cost-shifting rules, funding and mass tort litigation, cost rules and third-party funding (TPF) rules in specific areas such as intellectual property (IP) litigation, commercial arbitration, investment arbitration, the role of legal expense insurance arrangements, fee regulation and professional ethics. The contributors include renowned scholars, experts in their respective fields and well-versed individuals in both civil procedure and the practice of litigation, arbitration and finance. Together, they present a broad approach to the issues of costs, cost-shifting rules and third-party funding. This volume adds to the existent literature in combining topics in law and practice and presents an analysis of the most recent developments in this fast developing area.