This book invites readers to critically rethink the interrelations between geography and the law. Traditionally, legal-geographical interrelations have been dominated by scholars with backgrounds in geopolitics, economics, or geography. More recently, a new interdisciplinary approach has been developed with the aim of offering a fresh perspective on how law and geography intersect. There has been a steady growth in cross-disciplinary research in this field; how legal-geographical taxonomies interrelate has attracted attention from scholars and academics with a diverse range of backgrounds - namely, law, anthropology, and human/physical geography -, thus giving rise to several publications. Against this backdrop, the book adopts a legal comparative perspective and assesses 'normative spatialities', which are the outcomes of processes of legal-spatial production. In addition, the comparative analysis offers readers new insights on some traditional geographic features which are essential to legal studies (territorial identity, regional demarcation, territorial alternation, and place-name policy). Examples are drawn from several jurisdictions (both from the Global North and the Global South) and partly employ a diachronic perspective. As its subversive character is ideally suited to revealing policies and agendas, comparative law is used to identify the ethnocentric and colonial biases underpinning the use (and misuse) of legal geographic devices by policymakers and academics. In sum, the book presents legal geography as an interdisciplinary undertaking in which geographers and legal scholars can jointly examine common concepts in the historical, cultural, political and social contexts in which law is practised. The book transcends the boundaries between disciplines to engage in a fruitful dialogue on how the law can help to address the current socio-geographic and ecological crises.

This volume takes stock of the rapid changes to the law of unjust enrichment over the last decade. It offers a set of original contributions from leading private law theorists examining the philosophical foundations of the law. The essays consider the central questions raised by demarcating unjust enrichment as a separate area of private law - including how its normative foundations relate to those of other areas of private law, how the concept of enrichment relates to property theory, how the remedy of restitution relates to principles of corrective justice and what role mental elements should play in shaping the law.

Trade liberalization has shaped international economic relations since the conclusion of the GATT 1947. The last few decades have seen a significant shift in the focus of this process: multilateralism seems to have reached its limits, giving way to regionalism, and the focus of trade liberalization has shifted to non-tariff barriers. While these developments have attracted considerable attention, exploring them from comparative perspectives has been largely neglected. Trading systems - the WTO, regional economic integrations and federal systems - are all based on the same dichotomy of free trade and local public interest: they generally prohibit the constituent parties (states) from restricting trade, but exempt them from this limitation if the restriction is warranted by a legitimate local end. The purpose of this volume is to contribute to filling the above-mentioned research gap by exploring central issues in regional economic integrations from a comparative perspective. It provides a general economic analysis of the costs and benefits of trade liberalization and the role and function of normative values in commercial policy. This is followed by a comparative analysis of the approaches used in various regional economic integrations (in North America, Europe and Latin America) and federal markets (the United States, Australia and India) regarding the balance between free trade and local public interest. Key issues in investment law, one of the most contentious elements of next-generation free trade agreements, are also addressed.

This collection brings together a group of international legal historians to further scholarship in different areas of comparative and regional legal history. Authors are drawn from Europe, Asia, and the Americas to produce new insights into the relationship between law and society across time and space. The book is divided into three parts: legal history and legal culture across borders, constitutional experiences in global perspective, and the history of judicial experiences. The three themes, and the chapters corresponding to each, provide a balance between public law and private law topics, and reflect a variety of methodologies, both empirical and theoretical. The volume highlights the gains that may be made by comparing the development of law in different countries and different time periods. The book will be of interest to an international readership in Legal History, Comparative Law, Law and Society, and History.

The idea of 'the commons' is a long-standing concept in the English-speaking world and in English law. A similar concept occurs in China. How different from or similar to the English idea of 'the commons' is the idea in China; and how is the concept applied? This book explores this important subject. It examines the subject from a philosophical and theoretical perspective; considers 'the commons' widely, including tangible commons of resources, intangible commons of culture, identity and social capital, and institutional commons of welfare, security and public goods; and goes on to examine the concept as it applies to the hydropower developments along the Lancang River, outlining the different competing interests of local people, central and provincial government, and environmental considerations. It argues that the concept of 'the commons' in China is dual-dimensional, with a vertical dimension of 'public authority' and a horizontal dimension of 'commonly sharing', that power structures in China have often been flexible and polycentric, and that, correctly applied, this approach will do much to serve the common interest of the people, ensuring positive impacts for shared prosperity for multiple stakeholders, whilst mitigating the negative impacts involved in the delivery of such positive impacts.

Until quite recently questions about methodology in legal research have been largely confined to understanding the role of doctrinal research as a scholarly discipline. In turn this has involved asking questions not only about coverage but, fundamentally, questions about the identity of the discipline. Is it (mainly) descriptive, hermeneutical, or normative? Should it also be explanatory? Legal scholarship has been torn between, on the one hand, grasping the expanding reality of law and its context, and, on the other, reducing this complex whole to manageable proportions. The purely internal analysis of a legal system, isolated from any societal context, remains an option, and is still seen in the approach of the French academy, but as law aims at ordering society and influencing human behaviour, this approach is felt by many scholars to be insufficient. Consequently many attempts have been made to conceive legal research differently. Social scientific and comparative approaches have proven fruitful. However, does the introduction of other approaches leave merely a residue of 'legal doctrine', to which pockets of social sciences can be added, or should legal doctrine be merged with the social sciences? What would such a broad interdisciplinary field look like and what would its methods be? This book is an attempt to answer some of these questions.

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

Recent confrontations between constitutional courts and parliamentary majorities, for example in Poland and Hungary, have attracted international interest in the relationship between the judiciary and the legislature in Central and Eastern European countries. Several political actors have argued that courts have assumed too much power after the democratic transformation process in 1989/1990. These claims are explicitly or implicitly connected to the charge that courts have constrained the room for manoeuvre of the legislatures too heavily and that they have entered the field of politics. Nevertheless, the question to what extent has this aggregation of power constrained the dominant political actors has never been examined accurately and systematically in the literature. The present volume fills this gap by applying an innovative research methodology to quantify the impact and effect of court's decisions on legislation and legislators, and measure the strength of judicial decisions in six CEE countries.

The issue of who has the power to declare war or authorise military action in a democracy has become a major legal and political issue, internationally, and is set to become even more pertinent in the immediate future, particularly in the wake of military action in Syria, ongoing wars in the Middle East, and tense discussions between the United States and its allies, and Russia and China. This book comparatively examines the executive and prerogative powers to declare war or launch military action, focusing primarily on the United States, Britain and Australia. It explores key legal and constitutional questions, including: who currently has the power/authority to declare war? who currently has the power to launch military action without formally declaring war? how, if at all, can those powers be controlled, legally or politically? what are the domestic legal consequences of going to war? In addition to probing the extensive domestic legal consequences of going to war, the book also reviews various proposals that have been advanced for interrogating the power to commence armed conflict, and explores the reasons why these propositions have failed to win support within the political establishment.

This edited collection provides a comprehensive, insightful, and detailed study of a vital area of public policy debate as it is currently occurring in countries across the world from India to South Africa and the United Kingdom to Australia. Bringing together academics and experts from a variety of jurisdictions, it reflects upon the impact on human rights of the application of more than a decade of the "War on Terror" as enunciated soon after 9/11. The volume identifies and critically examines the principal and enduring resonances of the concept of the "War on Terror". The examination covers not only the obvious impacts but also the more insidious and enduring changes within domestic laws. The rationale for this collection is therefore not just to plot how the "War on Terror" has operated within the folds of the cloak of liberal democracy, but how they render that cloak ragged, especially in the sight of those sections of society who pay the heaviest price in terms of their human rights. This book engages with the public policy strand of the last decade that has arguably most shaped perceptions of human rights and engendered debates about their worth and meaning. It will be of interest to researchers, academics, practitioners, and students in the fields of human rights law, criminal justice, criminology, politics, and international studies.

The new edition of this seminal text outlines the fundamental aspects of the German approach to criminal procedure. It explores a wide range of issues from setting out the basic procedural principles to presenting the main players in the criminal justice system, pre-trial investigations, the path from indictment to trial judgment, rules of evidence, sentencing, and appeals and post-conviction review. As far as it is useful for an introductory text, the differences between proceedings against adults and juveniles are highlighted. The theoretical discussion of decision-making and style of judgment writing is supported by practical insights through specimen translations of an indictment, a trial judgment and an appellate judgment by the Federal Court of Justice.

This volume examines the success of the 9/11 attacks in undermining the cherished principles of Western democracy, free speech and tolerance, which were central to US values. It is argued that this has led to the USA fighting disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to sanctioning the use of torture and imprisonment without trial in Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary rendition, surveillance and drone attacks. At home, it has resulted in restrictions of civil liberties and the growth of an ill-affordable military and security apparatus. In this collection the authors note the irony that the shocking destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11 should become the justification for the relentless expansion of security agencies. Yet, this is a salutary illustration of how the security agencies in the USA have adopted faulty preconceptions, which have become too embedded within the institution to be abandoned without loss of credibility and prestige. The book presents a timely assessment of both the human rights costs of the 'war on terror' and the methods used to wage and relentlessly continue that war. It will be of interest to researchers, academics, practitioners and students in the fields of human rights law, criminal justice, criminology, politics and international studies.

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.

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.

Criminal Law: A Comparative Approach presents a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the substantive criminal law of two major jurisdictions: the United States and Germany. Presupposing no familiarity with either U.S. or German criminal law, the book will provide criminal law scholars and students with a rich comparative understanding of criminal law's foundations and central doctrines. All foreign-language sources have been translated into English; cases and materials are accompanied by heavily cross-referenced introductions and notes that place them within the framework of each country's criminal law system and highlight issues ripe for comparative analysis. Divided into three parts, the book covers foundational issues - such as constitutional limits on the criminal law - before tackling the major features of the general part of the criminal law and a selection of offences in the special part. Throughout, readers are exposed to alternative approaches to familiar problems in criminal law, and as a result will have a chance to see a given country's criminal law doctrine, on specific issues and in general, from the critical distance of comparative analysis.

This volume offers a diverse set of perspectives on transnational crime. Providing a wide-ranging overview of the legal and policy issues that arise in connection with various forms of transnational crime, the authors outline the criminal justice responses adopted across different jurisdictions. Including contributions from high profile Chinese and European academics and practitioners across a variety of disciplines and methodological backgrounds, the authors address some of the hitherto underexplored issues related to transnational crime. These range from trafficking in cultural objects derived from illicit metal-detecting and metal-detecting tourism in China to the European approaches to criminalising the denial of historical truth. The central theme of the book is that useful lessons can be drawn from each other's experiences, and that a cross-fertilisation of domestic approaches to transnational crime is essential to effective cooperation. This book will be of use to students and academics of comparative criminal justice and anyone interested in transnational crime.

Over the course of the last four decades as China's ideological realm has been transformed, it has become significantly more complicated. This is well illustrated in the current discourse concerning China's constitutional future. Among Chinese intellectuals the liberal constitutionalism paradigm is widely accepted. However, more recently, this perspective has been challenged by mainland New Confucians and Sinicized Marxists alike. The former advocate a constitutionalism that is based upon and loyal to the Confucian tradition; while the latter has sought to theorize the current Chinese constitutional order and reclaim its legitimacy. This book presents a discussion of these three approaches, analyzing their respective strengths and weaknesses, and looking to the likely outcome. The study provides a clear picture of the current ideological debates in China, while developing a platform for the three schools and their respective constituencies to engage in dialogue, pluralize the conceptions of constitutionalism in academia, and shed light on the political path of China in the 21st Century. The consequences of this Chinese contribution to the global constitutionalism debate are significant. Notions of the meaning of democratic organization, of the nature of the division of authority between administrative and political organs, of the nature and role of political citizenship, of the construction of rights are all implicated. It is argued that China's constitutional system, when fully theorized and embedded within the global discourse might serve, as the German Basic Law did in its time, as a model for states seeking an alternative approach to the legitimate construction of state, political structures and institutions.

This book examines donor conception and the search for information by donor-conceived people. It details differing regulatory approaches across the globe, including those that provide for 'open-identity' or anonymous donation, or that take a 'dual-track' approach. In doing so, it identifies models regarding the recording and release of information about donors that may assist in the further development of the law, policy and associated practices. Arguments for and against donor anonymity are considered, and specifically critiqued. The study highlights contrasting reasoning and emphasis upon various interests and factors that may underpin secrecy, anonymity or openness. The book will be of value to academics, students and legal practitioners involved with this area. It is also relevant to policy makers, health practitioners and anyone with an interest in the subject.

This book critically examines the proper role of the law in protecting job security in the contemporary workplace. It provides a historical, theoretical, practical and comparative perspective on this under-researched, but fundamentally important, legal mechanism at a time when the pressure to deregulate and dilute worker-protective laws has taken on increased importance. The volume critically analyses both statute and case law from three advanced industrialised liberal democracies with a common law foundation, the UK, Australia and the USA, to understand the extent to which job security is realised. By applying a common approach and a conceptual framework that emphasises the complex relationships between law, the economy and society to analyse a series of national studies, the book is also designed to draw upon the insights of comparative analysis to deepen our understanding of the limits and possibilities of legal regulation of job security. The national case studies are supplemented by research that focuses on how supra-national organisations have sought both to develop and disseminate new legal norms around the practices and processes of dismissal. This study critically analyses and assesses the adequacy of the international regulatory framework for protecting the rights of employees in the dismissal process.

This book explores recent developments in the concept of hybridity through a multi-disciplinary perspective, bringing ideas about legal plurality together with the fields of peace, development and cultural studies. Analysing the concepts of hybridity and hybridization, their history, their application in law and legal studies, and their implications for thinking and rethinking legal plurality, the book shows how the concept of hybridity can contribute to an understanding of the processes that occur when different normative or legal orders or frameworks confront each other.

This volume aims to provoke reflection on the English conception and treatment of prisoners' rights, through juxtaposition with the conception of prisoners' rights in Germany. First, the German and English understandings of prisoners' legal status are examined; secondly these understandings are placed against the background of broader social, political, and legal factors; and thirdly, the methodological problems of comparative law are addressed. English and German approaches to prisoners' rights present illuminating contrasts. In England, despite significant judicial activity in the development of a jurisprudence of prisoners' rights, protection of prisoners' rights remains partial and equivocal. Many aspects of prison life are left within the realm of executive discretion. This equivocal commitment to rights in England is juxtaposed with Germany's highly articulated rights culture and its ambitious system of prisoners' rights protection under the Prison Act 1976. The German Prison Act sets out foundational principles of prison administration, affords prisoners positive rights, defines the limitations of prisoners' constitutional rights, and provides prisoners with recourse to a Prison Court. Moreover, these rights and principles have been developed and refined in a substantial body of prison law jurisprudence over the last thirty years.

What do different concepts like true lie, bad luck, honest thief, old news, spacetime, glocalization, symplexity, sustainable development, constant change, soft law, substantive due process, pure law, bureaucratic efficiency and global justice have in common? What connections do they share with innumerable paradoxes, like the ones of happiness, time, globalization, sex, and of free will and fate? Law in the Time of Oxymora provides answers to these conundrums by critically comparing the apparent rise in recent years of the use of rhetorical figures called "essentially oxymoronic concepts" (i.e. oxymoron, enantiosis and paradoxes) in the areas of art, science and law. Albeit to varying degrees, these concepts share the quality of giving expression to apparent contradictions. Through this quality, they also challenge the scientific paradigm rooted in the dualistic thinking and binary logic that is traditionally used in the West, as opposed to the East, where a paradoxical mode of thinking and fuzzy logic is said to have been cultivated. Following a review of oxymora and paradoxes in art and various scientific writings, hundreds of "hard cases" featuring oxymora and a comprehensive review of the legal literature are discussed, revealing evidence suggesting that the present scientific paradigm of dualism alone will no longer be able to tackle the challenges arising from increasing diversity and complexity coupled with an apparent acceleration of change. Law in the Time of Oxymora reaches the surprising conclusion that essentially oxymoronic concepts may inaugurate a new era of cognition, involving the ways the senses interact and how we reason, think and make decisions in law and in life.

This book is a comparative law study exploring the piercing of the corporate veil in Latin America within the context of the Anglo-American method. The piercing of the corporate veil is a remedy applied, in exceptional circumstances, to prevent and punish an inappropriate use of the corporate personality. The application of this remedy and the issues it involves has been widely researched in Anglo-American jurisdictions and, until recently, little attention has been given to this subject in Latin America. This region has been through internal political conflicts that undermined economic development. However, rise of democratic governments has created the political stability necessary for investment and economic development meaning that the corporate personality is now more commonly used in Latin America. Consequently, corporate personality issues have become a subject of study in this region. Drawing on case studies from Mexico, Colombia, Brazil and Argentina, Piercing the Corporate Veil in Latin American Jurisprudence examines the ingenuity of Latin American jurisdictions to deal with corporate personality issues and compares this method with the Anglo-American framework. Focusing in particular on the influence of two key factors- legal tradition and the uniqueness of each legal system- the author highlights both similarities and differences in the way in which the piercing of the corporate veil is applied in Latin American and Anglo-American jurisdictions. This book will be of great interest to scholars of company and comparative law, and business studies in general.

This book charts the path to revitalisation for trade unions in Australia, the USA, the UK, and Italy. It examines the examples of innovation and digital campaigning that are enabling unions to build new forms of worker power - and overcome decades of declining membership wrought by neoliberalism, globalisation, and hostility from employers and the state. The study evaluates the responses of unions in each country to falling membership levels since the 1980s. It considers the US 'organising model' and its adoption in Australia and the UK, comparing this with the strategies of Italian unions which have been more deliberately focused on precarious and migrant workers. The increasing reliance of US unions on community alliances, as seen in the 'Fight for $15' and similar campaigns, is scrutinised along with new union prototypes like Hospo Voice in Australia, the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain and SI Cobas in Italy. The book includes an in-depth analysis of union responses to the gig economy in the four countries, and the emergence of self-organised worker collectives to combat this exploitative business model. The vital role played by unions in defending the interests of workers during the COVID-19 pandemic is also examined. As well as highlighting the most successful union initiatives to meet the challenges of the past 30 years, the book assesses the strengths and deficiencies of the legal framework for union representation in the four nations. It identifies the labour law reforms needed to rebuild collectivism, but argues that more is needed than favourable laws. This cross-national study provides a rich basis for identifying the combination of reforms, strategies and linkages required to ensure that unions can remain relevant for a new generation of digitally-active workers.

This special issue asks what role society can play in the regulation of transnational risks, as an alternative to or at least significant addition to reliance on state regulatory activity and the myth of the self-regulatory capacity of markets (Stiglitz, 2001, p. xiii). How can a social sphere contribute to the prevention and management of risks, often transnational in nature, posed by economic activity? Leading socio-legal scholars explore whether and how the idea of harnessing the regulatory capacity of a social sphere provides a new analytical lens that can provide fresh insights into transnational risk regulation, and whether this idea helps to identify innovative approaches to regulating transnational risks.