This book reviews and analyzes the innovative measures introduced, lessons learned and problems encountered by selected and representative provinces, cities and counties with regard to the openness of local government affairs. To do so, it focuses on fields that are closely related to economic and social development and to the vital interests of the people, and which have thus aroused great social concerns, such as the pre-disclosure of major decision-making, policy interpretation, optimization of the business environment, and education. In turn, the book addresses standardization concerning the openness of government affairs; in this regard, numerous departments under the State Council and local governments at various levels have already engaged in pilot work, so as to provide a basis for pursuing the openness of government affairs throughout the country. The book subsequently analyzes current problems in this regard, considers the future prospects, and puts forward suitable solutions.

This book maps various national legal responses to gender mobility, including sex and name registration, access to gender modification interventions, and anti-discrimination protection (or lack thereof) and regulations. The importance of the underlying legislation and history is underlined in order to understand the law's functions concerning discrimination, exclusion, and violence, as well as the problematic nature of introducing biology into the regulation of human relations, and using it to justify pain and suffering. The respective chapters also highlight how various governmental authorities, as well as civil society, have been integral in fostering or impeding the welfare of trans persons, from judges and legislators, to medical commissions and law students. A collective effort of scholars scattered around the globe, this book recognizes the international trend toward self-determination in sex classification and a generous guarantee of rights for individuals expressing diverse gender identities. The book advocates the dissemination of a model for the protection of rights that not only focuses on formal equality, but also addresses the administrative obstacles that trans persons face in their daily lives. In addition, it underscores the importance of courts in either advancing or obstructing the realization of individual rights.

This study explores the reasons behind the different responses of the legal systems of Europe, Japan and the USA in coping with BSE, one of the major food safety crises in recent years. Making reference to the most recent advances on risk perception that cognitive and social sciences, such as legal anthropology and sociology of law, have experimented with, Risk Perception, Culture, and Legal Change examines the role that culture plays in moulding the process of legal change. Attention is focused on the regulative frameworks implemented to guarantee the safety of the food chain against the BSE menace and on the liability responses sketched to compensate the victims of mad cow disease, showing how both these elements have been influenced by the cultural context within which they are situated.

In this unique book, leading legal scholars and philosophers provide a breadth of perspectives and inspire stimulating debate around the transformations of jurisprudence in a globalized world. Traditionally the central debates surrounding jurisprudence and legal theory are concerned with the elucidation of the particularities of state-law. This innovative book considers that this orthodox picture may no longer be tenable, given the increasing standardization of technologies, systems and information worldwide. Split across four thematic parts, this timely book provides a broad overview of the topic, followed by in depth analyses investigating the modifications to jurisprudence s methodological approaches driven by globalization, the concepts and theoretical tools required to account for putative new forms of legal phenomena, and normative issues relating to the legitimacy and democratic character of these legal orders. Chapters cover legal encounters with alterity in a post-monist mode, normative legal pluralism, relating law and power in a historical global context, cosmopolitan legitimacy and human rights and dignity in a corporate world. Jurisprudence in a Globalized World will be a key resource for students and scholars working in global transnational law, public international law and legal theory and philosophy. Contributors include: M. Del Mar, P. Eleftheriadis, J.L. Fabra-Zamora, K.W. Gray, M. Grellete, K. Gunther, M. Jovanovic, C. Lafont, H. Lindahl, H. Muir Watt, G. Pavlakos, W. Twining

This book offers an unprecedented and detailed comparative critique of Anglo-American corporate bankruptcy law. It challenges the standard characterisation that US law in the sphere of corporate bankruptcy is 'pro-debtor' and UK law is 'pro-creditor', and suggests that the traditional thesis is, at best, a potentially misleading over-simplification. Gerard McCormack offers the conclusion that there is functional convergence in practice, while acknowledging that corporate rescue, as distinct from business rescue, still plays a larger role in the US. The focus is on corporate restructurings with in-depth scrutiny of Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code and the UK Enterprise Act, and offers other comparative oversights. Integrating theoretical and practical insights, this book will be of great interest to academics and practitioners, and also to policymakers in the DTI, Insolvency Service and regulatory bodies.

Children of almost any age can break the law, but at what age should children first face the possibility of criminal responsibility for their alleged crimes? This work is the first global analysis of national minimum ages of criminal responsibility (MACRs), the international legal obligations that surround them, and the principal considerations for establishing and implementing respective age limits. Taking an international children's rights approach, with a rich theoretical framework and the vitality of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, this work maintains a critical perspective, such as in challenging the assumptions of many children's rights scholars and advocates. Compiling the age limits and statutory sources for all countries, this book explains the broad historical origins behind most of them, identifying the recurring practical challenges that affect every country and providing the first comprehensive evidence that a general principle of international law requires all nations, regardless of their treaty ratifications, to establish respective minimum age limits.

Democracy in the Courts examines lay participation in the administration of justice and how it reflects certain democratic principles. An international comparative perspective is taken for exploring how lay people are involved in the trial of criminal cases in European countries and how this impacts on their perspectives of the national legal systems. Comparisons between countries are made regarding how and to what extent lay participation takes place and the relation between lay participation and the legal system's legitimacy is analyzed. Presenting the results of interviews with both professional judges and lay participants in a number of European countries regarding their views on the involvement of lay people in the legal system, this book explores the ways in which judges and lay people interact while trying cases, examining the characteristics of both professional and lay judging of cases. Providing an important analysis of practice, this book will be of interest to academics, legal scholars and practitioners alike.

Over the last decade, the Supreme Court of Pakistan has emerged as a powerful and overtly political institution. While the strong form of judicial review adopted by the Supreme Court has fostered the perception of a sudden and ahistorical judicialisation of politics, the judiciary's prominent role in adjudicating issues of governance and statecraft was long in the making. This book presents a deeply contextualised account of law in Pakistan and situates the judicial review jurisprudence of the superior courts in the context of historical developments in constitutional politics, evolution of state structures and broader social transformations. This book highlights that the bedrock of judicial review has remained in administrative law; it is through the consistent development of the 'Writ jurisdiction' and the judicial review of administrative action that Pakistan's superior courts have progressively carved an expansive institutional role and aggrandised themselves to the status of the regulator of the state.

In Government Cloud Procurement, Kevin McGillivray explores the question of whether governments can adopt cloud computing services and still meet their legal requirements and other obligations to citizens. The book focuses on the interplay between the technical properties of cloud computing services and the complex legal requirements applicable to cloud adoption and use. The legal issues evaluated include data privacy law (GDPR and the US regime), jurisdictional issues, contracts, and transnational private law approaches to addressing legal requirements. McGillivray also addresses the unique position of governments when they outsource core aspects of their information and communications technology to cloud service providers. His analysis is supported by extensive research examining actual cloud contracts obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. With the demand for cloud computing on the rise, this study fills a gap in legal literature and offers guidance to organizations considering cloud computing.

H. Patrick Glenn (1940-2014), Professor of Law and former Director of the Institute of Comparative Law at McGill University, was a key figure in the global discourse on comparative law. This collection is intended to honor Professor Glenn's intellectual legacy by engaging critically with his ideas, especially focusing on his visions of a 'cosmopolitan state' and of law conceptualized as 'tradition'. The book explores the intellectual history of comparative law as a discipline, its attempts to push the objects of its study beyond the positive law of the nation-state, and both its potential and the challenges it must confront in the face of the complex phenomena of globalization and the internationalization of law. An international group of leading scholars in comparative law, legal philosophy, legal sociology, and legal history takes stock of the field of comparative law and where it is headed.

This book provides the first systematic analysis of new Asian regionalism as a paradigm shift in international economic law. It argues that new Asian regionalism has emerged amid the Third Regionalism and contributed to the New Regional Economic Order, which reinvigorates the role of developing countries in shaping international trade norms. To substantiate the claims, the book introduces theoretical debates and evaluates major regional economic initiatives and institutions, including the ASEAN+6 framework, APEC, the CPTPP and the RCEP. It also sheds light on legal issues involving the US-China trade war and the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as trade policies of Asian powers, the European Union and the United States. Hence, the legal analysis and case studies offer a fresh perspective of Asian integration and bridge the gap between academia and practice.

This Open Access book aims to find out how and why states in various regions and of diverse cultural backgrounds fail in their gender equality laws and policies. In doing this, the book maps out states' failures in their legal systems and unpacks the clashes between different levels and forms of law-namely domestic laws, local regulations, or the implementation of international law, individually or in combination. By taking off from the confirmation that the concept of law that is to be used in achieving gender equality is a multidimensional, multi-layered, and to an extent, contradictory phenomenon, this book aims to find out how different layers of laws interact and how they impact gender equality. Further to that, by including different states and jurisdictions into its analysis, this book unravels whether there are any similarities/patterns in how these states define and utilise policies and laws that harm gender equality. In this way, the book contributes to the efforts to devise holistic and universal policies to address various forms of gender inequalities across the world. This volume will be of interest to scholars and students in Gender Studies, Sociology, Law, and Criminology.

This book is the first in the world to provide a cross-national, comparative exploration of omnibus legislation. It contributes to the global debate over omnibus legislation and offers comprehensive, thorough and multifaceted coverage that concerns the fields of legislation and legisprudence, comparative law, political science, public policy and economics. Beyond its relevance for these fields, the book will support practitioners in parliaments, governments and courts, thereby impacting the actual use of omnibus legislation. A new, major and controversial reform is enacted in the middle of the night. It is buried in a massive omnibus bill hundreds of pages in length, which is rammed through the legislative process at breakneck speed. The legislators receive the final version of the bill in the very last minute, and protest that they've had no opportunity to read it in detail and know what they're voting upon. The majority party's legislative leaders, however, are unimpressed, and the law is eventually passed on the basis of strict party discipline. Though it may sound far-fetched, this scenario is all too familiar in many legislatures around the world. The legislative practice of combining numerous unrelated measures in one long bill, which is often passed via a highly expedited process, has become a matter of intense debate and criticism in many countries.

Communication in Forensic Contexts provides in-depth coverage of the complex area of communication in forensic situations. Drawing on expertise from forensic psychology, linguistics and law enforcement worldwide, the text bridges the gap between these fields in a definitive guide to best practice. * Offers best practice for understanding and improving communication in forensic contexts, including interviewing of victims, witnesses and suspects, discourse in courtrooms, and discourse via interpreters * Bridges the knowledge gaps between forensic psychology, forensic linguistics and law enforcement, with chapters written by teams bringing together expertise from each field * Published in collaboration with the International Investigative Interviewing Research Group, dedicated to furthering evidence-based practice and practice-based research amongst researchers and practitioners * International, cross-disciplinary team includes contributors from North America, Europe and Asia Pacific, and from psychology, linguistics and forensic practice

The new wave of populism that has emerged over the last five years in Europe and in the US urgently needs to be better understood in a comparative and historical context. Using Italy - including the experiment of a self-styled populist coalition government - as a case study, this book investigates how populists in power borrow, use and manipulate categories of constitutional theory and instruments of constitutional law. Giuseppe Martinico goes beyond treating constitutionalism and populism as purely antithetical to dive deeply into the impact of populism on the activity of some instruments of constitutional democracy, endeavoring to explore their role as possible fora of populist claims and targets of populist attacks. Most importantly, he points to ways in which constitutional democracies can channel populist claims without jeopardizing the legacy of post-World War II constitutionalism. This book is aimed at academics and practicing lawyers interested in populism and comparative constitutional law.

The book discusses the normative impact of the Aarhus Convention on how England, America and China guarantees the right of access to environmental information. Through this analysis the book identifies each of these jurisdictions' unique conceptualisations of the right which, in turn, influences the design of their respective environmental information regimes. This allows these jurisdictions potentially to act as sources of legal reforms for each other to improve how the right is guaranteed via legal transplant theory, challenging the normativity of the Aarhus Convention. This is not to suggest that the Aarhus Convention exerts no normative influence on how the right is guaranteed; there are core substantive and core procedural elements which have to be met for the right to be effectively guaranteed, and the book shows that the Aarhus Convention does exert a normative influence over the procedural elements of the right.

This is the first academic monograph on the new competition law in Hong Kong. It provides an overview of the historical background of the Competition Ordinance, highlighting the debate and the process that led to the adoption of the Ordinance. It offers detailed comparative and theoretical analysis of the key provisions of the Ordinance, focusing on the First Conduct Rule, the Second Conduct Rule, the exclusions and exemptions, and the procedural provisions. It draws on overseas legislation and jurisprudence that inspired the provisions in the Ordinance and incorporates a detailed examination of the latest cases decided by the Competition Tribunal. It engages in relevant academic debates and theoretical analysis of how competition law in Hong Kong should develop in light of its unique economic and political contexts. It concludes by setting forth of a set of recommendations for further reform.

Like many countries around the world, Chile is undergoing a political moment when the nature of democracy and its political and legal institutions are being challenged. Senior Chilean legal scholar and constitutional historian Pablo Ruiz-Tagle provides an historical analysis of constitutional change and democratic crisis in the present context focused on Chilean constitutionalism. He offers a comparative analysis of the organization and function of government, the structure of rights and the main political agents that participated in each stage of Chilean constitutional history. Chile is a powerful case study of a Latin American country that has gone through several threats to its democracy, but that has once again followed a moderate path to rebuild its constitutional republican tradition. Not only the first comprehensive study of Chilean constitutional history in the English language from the nineteenth-century to the present day, this book is also a powerful defence of democratic values.

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are transforming economies, societies, and geopolitics. Enabled by the exponential increase of data that is collected, transmitted, and processed transnationally, these changes have important implications for international economic law (IEL). This volume examines the dynamic interplay between AI and IEL by addressing an array of critical new questions, including: How to conceptualize, categorize, and analyze AI for purposes of IEL? How is AI affecting established concepts and rubrics of IEL? Is there a need to reconfigure IEL, and if so, how? Contributors also respond to other cross-cutting issues, including digital inequality, data protection, algorithms and ethics, the regulation of AI-use cases (autonomous vehicles), and systemic shifts in e-commerce (digital trade) and industrial production (fourth industrial revolution). This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Two legal systems founded on similar Enlightenment philosophical and political values use state coercion differently to regulate a liberty at the core of the Enlightenment: freedom of expression. This comparative study of France and the United States proposes a novel theory of how the limits of freedom of expression are informed by different revolutionary experiences and constitutional and political arrangements. Ioanna Tourkochoriti argues that the different ways freedom of expression is balanced against other values in France and the United States can be understood in reference to the role of the government and the understanding of republicanism and liberty. This understanding affects how jurists define the content and the limits of a liberty and strike a balance between liberties in conflict. Exploring both the legal traditions of the two countries, this study sheds new light on the broader historical, social and philosophical contexts in which jurists operate.

Paul Maharg presents a critical inquiry into the identity and possibilities of legal education, and an exploration of transformational alternatives to our current theories and practices of teaching and learning the law. His work takes the view that bodies of interdisciplinary theory and knowledge of the history of legal education are important to all stages of legal education. He also argues that new learning designs - such as transactional learning - need to be developed to help students, educators and lawyers deal with the transitions and challenges facing them now and in the foreseeable future. Throughout, discussions of theory are spliced with case studies of academic and professional legal learning, particularly in the field of technology-enhanced learning. The content of the book will be updated in a community of practice wiki at http://www.transforming.org.uk, which will also allow readers to comment and expand on the book's final chapter.

This book represents a comparative study of Third Party Funding (TPF) and its regulation in England, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Netherlands and the Mainland of China. It provides a general review of the background in which TPF grows and the platform where third party funders are allowed to operate. In each and every chosen jurisdiction, the book analyses the legal risks related to TPF, the regulatory measures and the questions surrounding the challenges that lay ahead. This book is featured by the empirical study of the Chinese TPF market. As of the time of this writing, TPF activities operating in China have not been expanded upon in English or Chinese literature. The language barrier may be one reason. The lack of empirical materials may also contribute to this situation. In order to obtain some first-hand evidence of the TPF market in China, the author conducted empirical research in Shenzhen, with the assistance of Chinese third party funders and some local organizations and authorities. The empirical study took the form of questionnaire surveys. The first survey saw in total 175 responses, and the second saw 18 responses. Due to the fact that many funding arrangements for commercial disputes are kept in the dark, it is hard, if not impossible, to measure the size of the Chinese TPF market. This study provides a dataset that serves a humble purpose; namely to offer an insight into the Chinese TPF market, rather than to grasp the full picture of the industry.

This book gathers national and international reports from around the globe on key issues in the field of antitrust and intellectual property. Its first part discusses to what extent competition law should be concerned with differences in prices, terms and conditions, or quality that suppliers offer different purchasers. A detailed international report explores the major trends and challenges in this field and provides an excellent comparative study on this complex and challenging subject. In turn, the second part examines whether there should be legal restrictions on the ability of persons who claim, without sufficient justification, to hold IP rights that have been infringed on, to bring, or to threaten to bring, legal proceedings based on such claims against their competitors or others. In this regard, the book brings together the current legal responses across a number of European countries and elsewhere in the world, all summarised and elaborated on in an international report. The book also includes the resolutions passed by the General Assembly of the International League of Competition Law (LIDC) following debates on each of these topics, which include proposed solutions and recommendations. The LIDC is a long-standing international association that focuses on the interface between competition law and intellectual property law, including unfair competition issues.

This volume focuses on transparency as the guiding principle for insurance regulation and supervisory law. All chapters were written by experts in their respective fields, who address transparency in a wide range of European and non-European jurisdictions. Each chapter reviews the transparency principles applicable in the jurisdiction discussed. While the European jurisdictions reflect different facets of the principle as emerging from EU law on insurance, the principle has developed quite differently in other jurisdictions.

States have long denied basic rights to non-citizens within their borders, and international law imposes only limited duties on states with respect to those fleeing persecution. But even the limited rights previously enjoyed by non-citizens are eroding in the face of rising nationalism, populism, xenophobia, and racism. Beyond Borders explores what obligations we owe to those outside our political community. Drawing on contributions from a broad variety of disciplines - from literature to political science to philosophy - the volume considers the failures of law and politics to guarantee rights for the most vulnerable and attempts to imagine new forms of belonging grounded in ideas of solidarity, empathy, and responsibility in order to identify a more robust basis for the protection of non-citizens at home and abroad. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.