--The first edition is an essential reading for planning students as it is the only text available that focuses on planning law and practice in Northern Ireland. --Updated to address consequences of BREXIT, the impact of COVID-19 on planning procedures, and the emergence of Local Development Plans within the new 2-tier planning system of Northern Ireland

At the beginning of the twenty-first century the term 'privacy' gained new prominence around the world, but in the legal arena it is still a concept in 'disarray'. Enclosing it within legal frameworks seems to be a particularly difficult task in the employment context, where encroachments upon privacy are not only potentially more frequent, but also, and most importantly, qualitatively different from those taking place in other areas of modern society. This book suggests that these problems can only be addressed by the development of a holistic approach to its protection, an approach that addresses the issue of not only contemporary regulation but also the conceptualization, adjudication, and common (public) perception of employees' privacy. The book draws on a comprehensive analysis of the conceptual as well as regulatory convergences and divergences between European, American and Canadian models of privacy protection, to reconsider the conceptual and normative foundations of the contemporary paradigm of employees' privacy and to elucidate the pillars of a holistic approach to the protection of right to privacy in employment.

The subject of this Conference concerns the impact the enlargement of the Euro pean Union has on the constitutional provisions of both levels of European ad ministration, the national and the European level. This subject is the more attractive because the 'constitutional' impact of en largement is an essential element in the context of the 'rule of law' as one of the 1 general principles of the Union. Here a relationship does exist with objectives such as a good and transparent system of governance, a democratic legislative process, an independent judiciary and an adequate system of legal protection. As to the national level, the implications membership of the Union has for the constitutional texts of the (candidate) member States have a connection with the fundamental characteristics of Community law such as priority of European law (over national law), direct applicability and direct effect. These principles reflect the interest in ensuring that European law, once applied in the national context by the public authorities or the judiciary, is made fully effective, for the benefit not only of the public authorities but also of the ordinary citizen."

The South African Truth Commission assesses different versions of the South African past, the complex negotiations leading to the establishment of the Commission and the complex politics of amnesty, justice, and nation building.

The aim of the book is to highlight the law and economics issues confronting civil law countries. The following questions are addressed in this volume: to what extent have the existing codes in civil law countries been designed to incorporate economic considerations? Can the modifications made to codified rules over time be explained by a will to react to new economic constraints? Which economic problems are at the root of the revision of codes? And, given that the code is not the only source of law in civil law countries, the volume also explores the relationship between law and economics in the context of both the legislature and the courts.

What is more paradoxically democratic than a people exercising their vote against the harbingers of the rule of law and democracy? What happens when the will of the people and the rule of law are at odds? Some commentators note that the presence of illiberal political movements in the public arena of many Western countries demonstrates that their democracy is so inclusive and alive that it comprehends and countenances even undemocratic forces and political agendas. But what if, on the contrary, these were the signs of the deconsolidation of democracy instead of its good health? What if democratically elected regimes were to ignore constitutional principles representing the rule of law and the limits of their power? With contributions from judges and scholars from different backgrounds and nationalities this book explores the framework in which this tension currently takes place in several Western countries by focusing on four key themes: - The Rule of Law: presenting a historical and theoretical reconstruction of the evolution of the Rule of Law; - The People: dealing with a set of problems around the notion of 'people' and the forces claiming to represent their voice; - Democracy and its enemies: tackling a variety of phenomena impacting on the traditional democratic balance of powers and institutional order; - Elected and Non-Elected: focusing on the juxtaposition between judges (and, more generally, non-representative bodies) and the people's representation.

This book explores the democratic underpinning of electoral systems and their evolution, as well as the methodological choices that constitutional judges are confronted with when managing electoral legislation. It presents a review of the case law in 13 legal systems, across North and South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe, identifying the underlying concept of democracy which courts seek to advance. The authors critically discuss the ideas of democracy that can be detected in each jurisdiction, their drivers, including the use of constitutional borrowing, and the effects of the judgments on the relationship between courts, representative institutions, and voters. The book looks in detail at judicial scrutiny and asks: - On what premises is judicial scrutiny grounded? - Why is there an increasing global trend towards judicial scrutiny? - What are the consequences for representative democracy? Until now, scholars have focused their attention on a few countries and on selected judgments, such as the US Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Citizens United v FEC. This book offers a comparative reading of the issue by analysing how the circulation of models and arguments between judges has triggered the progressive overcoming of a traditionally deferent approach towards electoral norms, which still survives in a few jurisdictions.

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

This contribution to comparative family law brings together essays on a range of issues in family law in the United States and England, showing how they stand at the beginning of the 21st century. This provides an opportunity to examine how family law has reacted to a period of change in family life widely held to be without precedent. The legal analyses are set within critical accounts of wider social and family policy and against a fully explored demographic background provided by leading scholars in these areas.

This book brings together two scholarly traditions: experts in Roman, Jewish and Islamic law, an area where scholars tend to be familiar with work in each area, and experts in the legal traditions of South and East Asia, which have tended to be less interdisciplinary. The resulting mix produces new ways of looking at comparative law and legal history from a global perspective, and these essays contribute both to our understanding of comparative religion as well as comparative law.

Family justice requires not only a legal framework within which personal obligations are regulated over the life course, but also a justice system which can deliver legal information, advice and support at times of change of status or family stress, together with mechanisms for negotiation, dispute management and resolution, with adjudication as the last resort. The past few years have seen unparalleled turbulence in the way family justice systems function. These changes are associated with economic constraints in many countries, including England and Wales, where legal aid for private family matters has largely disappeared. But there is also a change in ideology in a number of jurisdictions, including Canada, towards what is sometimes called neo-liberalism, whereby the state seeks to reduce its area of activity while at the same time maintaining strong views on family values. Legal services may become fragmented and marketised, and the role of law and lawyers reduced, while self-help web based services expand. The contributors to this volume share their anxieties about the impact on the ability of individuals to achieve fair and informed resolution in family matters.

Following on from "International Approaches to Prostitution" (Policy Press, 2006), this book provides an overview of rape law and policy in ten countries, including England, Australia, Canada, India and China. By introducing readers to national perspectives of issues relating to rape, the book presents a comparative approach which highlights similarities and differences between countries, contexts, laws, key issues and policies and interventions. It is recommended for academics, students, practitioners and policy makers.

Europe has finally started to debate migration. A timely debate indeed, as many migrants have over the last 30 years entered the European Union without the cover of a proper and well-defined policy. The Migration Acquis Handbook (a companion to The Asylum Acquis Handbook) describes and provides the foundation for a common European Migration Policy. It provides an overview of EU instruments in an accessible and transparent manner, pays due attention to EC Commissioner Vitorino's communication on migration and his call for a debate; reproduces relevant non-European international (UN) instruments; moreover includes an overview of the context and contents of the most hotly-contested issues: ageing and demography, globalization, illegal migration, trafficking and family reunification. This handbook should be considered an extremely useful tool, if not indispensable, for the executive, students, policy makers, the media and all others interested in this exceedingly important topic. Dr Van Krieken is actively involved in European migration, refugee and asylum policy issues under CIREA, Phare assessment missions and related Twinning, Odysseus and Horizontal Programmes

This book aims to honour the work of Professor Mirjan Dama ka, Sterling Professor of Law at Yale Law School and a prominent authority for many years in the fields of comparative law, procedural law, evidence, international criminal law and Continental legal history. Professor Dama ka 's work is renowned for providing new frameworks for understanding different legal traditions. To celebrate the depth and richness of his work and discuss its implications for the future, the editors have brought together an impressive range of leading scholars from different jurisdictions in the fields of comparative and international law, evidence and criminal law and procedure. Using Professor Dama ka's work as a backdrop, the essays make a substantial contribution to the development of comparative law, procedure and evidence. After an introduction by the editors and a tribute by Harold Koh, Dean of Yale Law School, the book is divided into four parts. The first part considers contemporary trends in national criminal procedure, examining cross-fertilisation and the extent to which these trends are resulting in converging practices across national jurisdictions. The second part explores the epistemological environment of rules of evidence and procedure. The third part analyses human rights standards and the phenomenon of hybridisation in transnational and international criminal law. The final part of the book assesses Professor Dama ka 's contribution to comparative law and the challenges faced by comparative law in the twenty first century.

This comprehensive publication analyzes numerous aspects of the relationship between judicature and the fair trial principle in a comparative perspective. In addition, it examines the manifestation of some of the most significant elements inherent to the fair trial concept in different legal systems. Along with expansion of judicial power during the past century and with the strengthening of judicial independence, the fair trial requirement has appeared more often, especially in different international agreements and national constitutions, as the summarizing principle of what were formerly constitutional principles pertaining to judicature. Despite its generality and supranational application, the methods of interpreting this clause vary significantly among particular legal systems. This book assumes that the substantive content of this term conveys relevance to the organizational independence of judicial power, the selection of judges, and the mutual relationship between the branches of power. The comparative studies included in this collection offer readers a widespread understanding of the aforementioned correlations and will ultimately contribute to their mastery of the concept of fair trial.

This book discusses the possibilities for the use of international human rights law (and specifically, international biomedical laws related to the protection of human rights and the human genome) to provide a guiding framework for the future regulation of genetic modifications applied to human embryos and other precursor materials, when these are made with the aim of implanting a genetically altered embryo in a woman. The significance and timeliness of the work derives from the recent availability of CRISPR/ Cas9 and other gene editing tools, and from lacunae in international law regarding the legality of embryo modification with these tools and appropriate governance structures for the oversight of resulting practices. The emergence of improved genome editing tools like CRISPR/Cas9, holds the promise of eradicating genetic diseases in the near future. But its possible future applications with Pre-Implantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) raises a plethora of legal and ethical concerns about "remaking" future human beings. The work aims to address an urgent call, to embed these rising concerns about biomedical advancements into the fundamental tailoring of legal systems. Suitable regulatory approaches, coupled with careful reflection of global biomedical laws and individual constitutional systems must be explored. The Book analyzes the impact of reproductive biomedical technologies on the legal and ethical dimensions of regulatory frameworks in selected constitutional systems like the US, the UK, Australia, Malaysia and Thailand. Employing a comparative law methodology, the work reveals a dynamic intersection between legal cultures, socio-philosophical reasoning and the development of a human rights-based framework in bio-political studies. Navigating towards a truly internationalized biomedical approach to emerging technologies, it presents an understanding why a renegotiation and reinvigoration of a contemporary and "new" universal shared values system in the international human rights discourse is now necessary.

The foundations of tort law in various European legal systems vary considerably. Until now, there has not been an attempt to harmonize the entire field of tort law in a consistent manner. To rectify this, a group of tort lawyers has proposed to address the fundamental questions underlying every tort law system. The result is this important book, which searches for a common law of Europe without the necessity yet to lay these principles down in formal legal texts, such as a European civil code. Identifying the most relevant factors in establishing liability as wrongfulness, causation, damage, fault, and the area of strict liability, the authors concentrate on the topic of 'wrongfulness', trying to combine theoretical abstract analysis with the discussion of concrete cases. Each author gives an overview of wrongfulness under his or her national legal system, primarily by working out the concept and its importance in establishing liability - and then applies the analysis to actual cases. The subsequent conclusions aim at the coordination of the results and other important factors. In addition, some members of the group work out the nature of protected interests and important reasons for the extent of protection, and discuss the overlap of contractual and tortious liability. In summary, the book not only explores the common ground underlying all the legal systems concerned with respect to the concept of wrongfulness, but also informs academics and practitioners of the fundamental questions of wrongfulness underlying the law of tort in various distinct jurisdictions.

According to some sources there are around 5,000 national minority groups living in the contemporary world, and about 3,000 linguistic groups. However, this is probably a discretionary assessment as it seems that there are no exact figures with respect to the number and size of minority groups. The existing estimates are usually based on different and sometimes not very clear criteria and mostly take into account those groups and numbers which are the result of the individual choice of a person and are not based exclusively on the objective differences. Notwithstanding this, a brief calculation would indicate that in Western Europe 14. 7% of the total population belongs to minority groups, and the same percentage exists in the Central and Eastern European region - 14. 7%, whereas in the countries belonging to the Commonwealth of Independent States this percentage is slightly higher - at 18. 9%. Throughout the history of the European continent minorities have had a significant impact on political stability and security. Currently, most of the situations of internal tension as well as conflicts, whether internal or international, involve inter-ethnic relations. Thus the international community at large and - for the European minorities more importantly - the European institutions have placed minority issues high on their 'agenda.

This volume explores the sameness and difference between the United States and France in the matters of freedom of expression on the Internet. The United States and France are liberal democracies that are part of the Western family of nations. However, despite their many similarities, they have a number of cultural and ideological differences. The United States is generally France's ally in time of war and its cultural nemesis in time of peace. One of the reasons for this unusual relationship is that the United States and France are self-described "exceptional" countries. The United States and France are therefore two Western countries separated by different exceptionalist logics. Lyombe Eko uses this concept of exceptionalism as a theoretical framework for the analysis of American and French resolution of problems of human rights and freedom of expression in the traditional media and on the Internet. This book therefore analyzes how each county applies rules and regulations designed to manage a number of issues of media communication in real space, to the realities and specificities of cyberspace, within the framework of their respective exceptionalist logics. The fundamental question addressed concerns what happens when rules and regulations designed to regulate the media in clearly defined, national and regional geographic spaces, are suddenly confronted with the new realities and multi-communication platforms of the interconnected virtual sphere of cyberspace.

Tax scholars traditionally emphasize economics and assume that all tax systems can be evaluated in more or less the same way. By applying the insights of anthropology, sociology, and other social sciences, Michael A. Livingston demonstrates that tax systems frequently pursue different values and that the convergence of tax systems is frequently overstated. In Tax and Culture, he applies these insights to specific countries, such as China and India, and specific tax issues, including progressivity, tax avoidance, and the emerging area of environmental taxation. Livingston concludes that the concept of a global tax culture is, in many cases, merely a reflection of Western hegemony, and is unlikely to survive the changes implicit in the rise of non-Western nations and cultures.

In comparing existing research on Eastern and Central Europe, Central Asia and Latin America, it is clear that legal developments in East and South Asian societies are somewhat under-researched. This volume fills a gap in studies of the effects of globalisation and the role of law in processes of globalisation. What the book contributes to the debate is an "area study", that is interdisciplinary research pertaining to a particular geographical or cultural region. The region discussed here presents an ideal testing ground for legal pluralism, for economic, cultural, and political influences on the role of law in development. The 'developmental states' of Asia are regarded as refuting both Latin American dependency theory and classical modernisation theory. They seem to follow quite distinct political, economic and legal developments. However, especially after the Asian Crisis, their approaches have come under intense pressure. The book examines the resulting reform efforts and the tensions they generate in areas such as constitutional and administrative law, commercial law and human rights.

In referendums on fundamental constitutional issues, do the people come together to make decisions instead of representatives? This book argues no. It offers an alternative theory of referendums whereby they are one of many ordinary ways that voters give direction to their representatives. In this way, the book argues that referendums are better understood as exercises in representative democracy. The book challenges the current treatment of referendums in processes of constitutional change both in the United Kingdom and around the world. It argues that referendums have been increasingly used under the banner of popular sovereignty, in a way that undermines representative institutions. This book makes the case for the use of referendums stronger by showing how they can support, rather than undermine, institutions of representative democracy. The author argues that democratic constitutions are not contracts and that the use of referendums on fundamental constitutional questions may be justified for a wide range of reasons. Rather than see the power to constitute constitutions as something that happens occasionally in constitutional moments through referendums, this book argues instead that voters constantly have the power to constitute and reconstitute their constitutions.