The last twenty years have seen an unprecedented rise in the use of secret courts or 'closed material proceedings' largely brought about in response to the need to protect intelligence sources in the fight against terrorism. This has called into question the commitment of legal systems to long-cherished principles of adversarial justice and due process. Foremost among the measures designed to minimise the prejudice caused to parties who have been excluded from such proceedings has been the use of 'special advocates' who are given access to sensitive national security material and can make representations to the court on behalf of excluded parties. Special advocates are now deployed across a range of administrative, civil and criminal proceedings in many common law jurisdictions including the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Australia. This book analyses the professional services special advocates offer across a range of different types of closed proceedings. Drawing on extensive interviews with special advocates and with lawyers and judges who have worked with them, the book examines the manner in which special advocates are appointed and supported, how their position differs from that of ordinary counsel within the adversarial system, and the challenges they face in the work that they do. Comparisons are made between different special advocate systems and with other models of security-cleared counsel, including that used in the United States, to consider what changes might be made to strengthen their adversarial role in closed proceedings. In making an assessment of the future of special advocacy, the book argues that there is a need to reconceptualise the unique role that special advocates play in the administration of justice.

This book presents an ethnography of dispute processing by non-state forums and actors in rural India. As such it sheds light on a much neglected and contested topic. Arising in the context of recent legal and political debates that question the legitimacy of non-state actors engaged in dispute processing, the book explores the nature, form, and functioning of such forums and actors in two locations in rural India. Focusing on a fishermen's community belonging to the caste of Hindu Machimar Kolis in coastal Maharashtra and an agrarian community in Uttarakhand with members from the Pandit, Thakur, Bhotia, and Harijan caste groups, this study shows the manner in which non-state forums and actors engage with state law and its regulatory systems.

Commonwealth Caribbean Law and Procedure: The Referral Procedure under Article 214 RTC in the Light of EU and International Law is about the referral procedure set out in Article 214 of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas (RTC), which Treaty established the Caribbean Community Single Market and Economy (CSME). Article 214 RTC bears clear parallels to Article 267 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), the most important being that that both articles pursue the same objective, i.e. they seek to ensure that CSME law and EU law, respectively, are uniformly applied in all Member States. Although Article 214 RTC was inspired by, and modelled on, Article 267 TFEU, it is not its exact replica. The similarities and differences between Article 214 RTC and Article 267 TFEU are critically assessed in this book. Also, the book: Examines how Article 214 RTC operates in the Caribbean context, how it interacts with other provisions of the RTC, and how it fits into the various national legal systems of the Member States of the CSME. Explores possible reasons why, so far, national courts of the Member States of the CSME have not made any referrals to the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ). Puts Article 214 RTC in a comparative perspective; in particular, the book compares and contrasts it with Article 267 TFEU. Examines some of the aspects of Article 214 RTC in the light of public international law, bearing in mind that under Article 217(1) RTC, the CCJ is required, when exercising its original jurisdiction under Article 211 RTC, to "apply such rules of international law as may be applicable." This is to ensure that the CCJ will not bring in a finding of non liquet on the ground of silence or obscurity of CSME law, which Article 217(2) RTC expressly prohibits. This book will be of interest to academics and students studying CSME law, EU law, and comparative law, as well as judges, lawyers, and governmental and non-governmental organizations from the Caribbean region.

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.

Legal rules and principles do not exist in isolation, but form part of a system. In this structural comparison between English and German law, Birke Hacker explores the rules and principles governing impaired consent transfers of movable property and their reversal in two- and three-party situations. This book is a re-publication of a work first published by Mohr Siebeck in Germany.

Many scholars posit distinct European and American approaches to public policy, with the European approach more likely to have a generous social safety net, tougher regulations on businesses, and stronger protections for animals. Via a comparative analysis of several policies, In Search of Canine Justice asks whether this conventional wisdom holds in the area of canine welfare. While there is much vindication of these two distinct approaches, the reality is more complex when the behavior of particular states is taken into account. In short, European laws are more likely to advance canine welfare, but there are not only exceptions but places where practices deviate from the laws. At the state level in the United States, the trend is toward more protective laws and practices in this area as well. In Search of Canine Justice is a valuable resource for students of comparative politics, animal studies, animal law, and public policy, as well as anyone with a general interest in canine welfare or a specific interest in the regulation of commercial breeding, euthanasia, commercial greyhound racing, scientific experimentation, and/or unnecessary surgeries for cosmetic reasons.

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.

A commitment to free speech is a fundamental precept of all liberal democracies. However, democracies can differ significantly when addressing the constitutionality of laws regulating certain kinds of speech. In the United States, for instance, the commitment to free speech under the First Amendment has been held by the Supreme Court to protect the public expression of the most noxious racist ideology and hence to render unconstitutional even narrow restrictions on hate speech. In contrast, governments have been accorded considerable leeway to restrict racist and other extreme expression in almost every other democracy, including Canada, the United Kingdom, and other European countries. This book considers the legal responses of various liberal democracies towards hate speech and other forms of extreme expression, and examines the following questions:
What accounts for the marked differences in attitude towards the constitutionality of hate speech regulation?
Does hate speech regulation violate the core free speech principle constitutive of democracy?
Has the traditional US position on extreme expression justifiably not found favor elsewhere?
Do values such as the commitment to equality or dignity legitimately override the right to free speech in some circumstances?
With contributions from experts in a range of disciplines, this book offers an in-depth examination of the tensions that arise between democracy's promises.
Readership Academics, scholars, and advanced students of Human Rights; Comparative Human Rights; Freedom of Information & Freedom of Speech; Media, Information, & Communication Industries; Censorship; Extreme Speech & Hate Speech

Fundamental rights are exploding across all areas of law in Europe. This rights revolution is transforming European judicial culture and the judge's political role at breakneck speed. Not only have fundamental rights become an integral part of litigation in the domestic and European courts, but their advent has provoked an ongoing revolution in French and European procedural, doctrinal, institutional and conceptual structures.
Grounded in comparative law and political science, this book tells the story of the rights revolution. Part of the story is social and intellectual. As the polity has become increasingly complicated both nationally and transnationally, fundamental rights have emerged as a lingua franca within and across European jurisdictions: they offer a pool of common legal terms that address the diversity of interests now litigating in the domestic and European courts.
But that is not the entire story. The fundamental rights revolution is also a product of the complex - and often competitive - inter-institutional dynamics that characterize the judicial arena in our ever more globalized legal space. European legal controversies increasingly play out at the jurisdictional intersection of a range of domestic and supranational high courts, which must interact and coordinate as never before. This growing inter-institutional interface has taken on a competitive logic and inflationary force of its own.
The result has been a group dynamic that has reinforced the ubiquity and preeminence of fundamental rights throughout the European legal field. Almost every European judicial player now faces powerful pressures to jump on the fundamental rights bandwagon or be left intellectually and institutionally behind. This has prompted a frantic race to master and lead the emergent fundamental rights regime.
In telling the story of the rights revolution, the book makes a substantial contribution to understanding the current dynamics of European judiciaries, and the depth of the impact of transnational law on domestic legal culture.

This monograph explores the historical position of pensions law in the UK and the recent influences which have led to the introduction of Auto-Enrolment and subsequent reforms. Alternative models, such as the US and Australia, are also considered as well as the function of law in bringing about political changes. The question of saving for retirement is of national and international importance and many governments are wrestling with the issue of how to deal with the pension funding crisis. Consequently political policy has, in many cases, combined with behavioural science to inform new laws which have acted to shift the burden from the state into the private sector. Around the world responsibility is being moved onto individuals and employers as the state retreats from provision of state support in retirement; this book offers a sophisticated analysis of the role of legal intervention to facilitate this shift. The book explores the work of behavioural economics, its global influence on understanding financial decision-making and its application to legislation which seeks to influence consumer outcomes. Drawing on qualitative empirical research to explore the experience of implementation of Auto-Enrolment, this timely work considers the interaction with the work of behavioural science to highlight the social costs of the new regulatory regime.

Modern state law excludes populations, peoples, and social groups by making them invisible, irrelevant, or dangerous. In this book, Boaventura de Sousa Santos offers a radical critique of the law and develops an innovative paradigm of socio-legal studies which is based on the historical experience of the Global South. He traces the history of modern law as an abyssal law, or a kind of law that is theoretically invisible yet implements profound exclusions in practice. This abyssal line has been the key procedure used by modern modes of domination – capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy – to divide people into two groups, the metropolitan and the colonial, or the fully human and the sub-human. Crucially, de Sousa Santos rejects the decadent pessimism that claims that we are living through 'the end of history'. Instead, this book offers practical, hopeful alternatives to social exclusion and modern legal domination, aiming to make post-abyssal legal utopias a reality.

Although both Canada and the United Kingdom had experienced terrorism prior to the attacks of 9/11 and already had in place extensive provisions to deal with terrorism, the events of that day led to the enactment of new and expansive counter-terrorism legislation being enacted in both jurisdictions. This book explores these changes to counter-terrorism laws and policies in the UK and Canada in order to demonstrate that despite the force of international legal instruments, including the heavily scrutinized UN Security Council Resolution 1373, the evolution of counter-terrorism policies in different jurisdictions is best analyzed and understood as a product of local institutional structures and cultures. The book compares legal and political structures and cultures within Canada and the United Kingdom. It analyses variations in the evolution post-9/11 counter-terrorism measures in the two jurisdictions and explores the domestic reasons for them. While focus is primarily geared towards security certificates and bail with recognizance/investigative hearings in Canada, and detention without trial, control orders and TPIMs in the UK, the use of secret evidence in the wider national security context (terrorist listing, civil litigation, criminal prosecutions, etc.) is also discussed. The book reveals how domestic structures and cultures, including the legal system, the relative stability of government, local human rights culture, and geopolitical relationships all influence how counter-terrorism measures evolve. In this sense, the book utilizes a methodology that is both comparative and interdisciplinary by engaging in legal, political, historical and cultural analyses. This book will be particularly useful for target audiences in the fields of comparative law and criminal justice, counter-terrorism law, human rights law, and international relations and politics.

Rarely do acts of civil disobedience come in such grand fashion as Taiwan's Sunflower Movement and Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement. The two protests came in regions and jurisdictions that many have underestimated as regards furthering notions of political speech, democratisation, and testing the limits of authority. This book breaks down these two movements and explores their complex legal and political significance. The collection brings together some of Asia's, and especially Taiwan and Hong Kong's, most prolific writers, many of whom are internationally recognised experts in their respective fields, to address the legal and political significance of both movements, including the complex questions they posed as regards democracy, rule of law, authority, and freedom of speech. Given that occupational type protests have become a prominent method for protesters to make their cases to both citizens and governments, exploring the legalities of these significant protests and establishing best practices will be important to future movements, wherever they may transpire. With this in mind, the book does not stop at implications for Taiwan and Hong Kong, but talks about its subject matter from a comparative, international perspective.

The centre for comparative laws in Africa held its inaugural methodology workshop from 22 to 24 October 2012. Over 40 scholars from various universities in South Africa, Africa, Europe and the United States of America participated in plenary and panel discussions around comparative law in cultural, interdisciplinary and subject context, Western legal traditions and mixed jurisdictions in African comparative legal studies, traditional and informal law in Africa, religious law in Africa and its comparative implications and the role of African comparative legal studies in the development of law in Africa. Comparative law in Africa: Methodologies and concepts is the outcome of the workshop. Its aim is to contextualise comparative legal studies in the African continent, with the ultimate goal of paving the way for the development of a comparative methodology specifically addressed to Africa. The studies presented in this volume offer different views and perspectives around the main theme of how to methodologically approach comparative legal studies in Africa, and how to properly take into consideration all the different layers composing the African legal systems, in order to give them the proper role and the proper place. The diverse background of the different contributors to this volume enriches its continental approach and offers a stimulating voice to African comparative legal scholars to continue their research.

Many jurisdictions in Asia have vested their courts with the power of constitutional review. Traditionally, these courts would invalidate an impugned law to the extent of its inconsistency with the constitution. In common law systems, such an invalidation operates immediately and retrospectively; and courts in both common law and civil law systems would leave it to the legislature to introduce corrective legislation. In practice, however, both common law and civil law courts in Asia have devised novel constitutional remedies, often in the absence of explicit constitutional or statutory authorisation. Examining cases from Hong Kong, Bangladesh, Indonesia, India, and the Philippines, this collection of essays examines four novel constitutional remedies which have been judicially adopted - Prospective Invalidation, Suspension Order, Remedial Interpretation, and Judicial Directive - that blurs the distinction between adjudication and legislation.

This book examines the little or not previously researched roles and contributions of non-legal professionals in Japanese criminal justice against the background of recent social and legal changes that either gave birth to or affected the roles played by these "outsiders". On the basis of a wealth of primary and secondary sources, including meeting records of policy makers and practitioners, surveys, interviews and court verdicts, the book zooms in on forensic psychiatrists' role in the disappearance of criminally insane defendants from Japanese criminal courts; social workers' new role in diverting a growing number of elderly, mentally disturbed repeat offenders from prison; the therapeutic dimension added to Japanese criminal justice proceedings with the introduction of a system of victim participation as well as the increasingly important role of forensic scientists' contributions, notably DNA evidence, in Japanese courts. Finally, it examines lay judges' contributions to sentencing practices as well as how these lay judges make sense of the other outsiders' contributions. On the basis of very recent social and legal developments the book provides an original contribution to understandings of Japanese criminal justice, as well as more general socio-legal debates on the role of extra-legal knowledge in criminal justice. The book will be of value within BA and MA level courses on and to students and researchers of Japanese law and society as well as comparative criminal justice and socio-legal theory.

Since the coming into force of the United Nations Law of the Sea, states have been targeting outlying islands to expand their exclusive economic zones, simultaneously stirring up strident nationalism when such plans clash with those of neighbouring states. No such actions have brought the world closer to the brink of war than the ongoing face-off between China and Japan over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands, an uninhabited archipelago in the East China Sea. In this timely and original book, Godfrey Baldacchino provides a detailed exploration of seven tried and tested solution protocols that have led to innovative 'win-win' solutions to island disputes over the last four centuries. A closer look at the circumstances and processes that brought contending regional powers to an honourable, even mutually advantageous, settlement over islands provides a convincing and original argument as to why the conflict over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands need not conclude in a 'zero-sum' or 'winner takes all' solution, as is the likely outcome of both open conflict and international arbitration. The book will be of interest to scholars and practitioners concerned with the festering Diaoyu/Senkaku dispute, as well as students, scholars and policy specialists in geography, geopolitics, international relations, conflict studies, island studies, Asian studies and history.

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.