Prison ombudsmen are charged with investigating claims of injustice and breaches of human rights within the total institutions of the penal system. This book comprehensively explains which needs these institutions were intended to meet, why they spread around the globe and how their proliferation determined their implementation. Using a grounded theory approach, the author examines one subject each from both the common and civil law world. The result is a detailed analysis of the acute impact of pressure on cross-fertilization processes involving human rights-sensitive penal institutions.

This book traces the emergence and transformations of asbestos compensation to explore the wider issue of to what extent legal systems have converged in the era of globalization. Examining the mechanism by which asbestos compensation is delivered in Belgium, England, Italy and the United States, as well as the cultural forces and actors which contribute to its emergence and transformations, the book advances our understanding of how law operates within cultural norms, routines, and institutional relations of capitalist societies. With material gathered from 50 interviews and from primary and secondary sources, the author considers law as a cultural phenomenon, national styles of legal culture and the convergence and divergence of legal cultures, and law as a form of institutionalized power.

Private use is full of uncertainty both in theory and in application. Given the fact that the copying itself, whether in a private use context or a piracy context, is physically the same, it is very easy to confuse private copying with piracy. However, private use serves an important role not only relating to users' fundamental rights such as free speech and the right of autonomy and privacy, but also in contributing to the creative process by fostering creativity-relevant human capital. This book critically evaluates the legal treatment of private use under Chinese digital copyright law, which provides overprotection for Technological Protection Measures (TPMs) and abandons the private use limitation on digital copyright. It also examines the underlying causes and possible solutions.

What is the place assigned to religion in the constitutions of contemporary States? What role is religion expected to perform in the fields that are the object of constitutional regulation? Is separation of religion and politics a necessary precondition for democracy and the rule of law? These questions are addressed in this book through an analysis of the constitutional texts that are in force in different parts of the world. Constitutions are at the centre of almost all contemporary legal systems and provide the principles and values that inspire the action of the national law-makers. After a discussion of some topics that are central to the constitutional regulation of religion, the book considers a number of national systems covering countries with a variety of religious and cultural backgrounds. The final section of the book is devoted to the discussion of the constitutional regulation of some particularly controversial issues, such as religious education, the relation between freedom of speech and freedom of religion, abortion, and freedom of conscience.

This book considers the issue of free speech in transitional democracies focusing on the socio-legal developments in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. In showing how these Central and Eastern European countries have engaged with free speech models imported from the Council of Europe / EU and the USA, the book offers valuable insights into the ways States have responded to challenges associated with transformation from communism to Western democracy. The book first explores freedom of expression in European and American law looking particularly at hate speech, historical revisionism, and pornography. It subsequently enquires into the role and perspectives of those European (mandatory) and US-American (persuasive) models for the constitutional debate in Central and Eastern Europe. The study offers an original interpretation of the "European" model of freedom of expression, beyond the mechanisms of the Council of Europe. It encompasses the relevant aspects of EU law (judgments of the Court of Justice and the harmonised EU instruments) as mandatory standards for courts and legislators, including those in transitional countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The book argues for de-criminalisation of historical revisionism and pornography, and illuminates topics such as genocide denial, the rise of Prague and Budapest as Europe's porno-capitals, anti-Semitism and anti-Gypsyism, religious obscurantism and homophobia, virulent Islamophobia, and the glorification of terrorism. The research methodology in this study combines a descriptive case law assessment (comparative constitutional, public international, and EU law) with a normative critique stemming from post-structuralist scrutiny, rhetoric, postmodern legal movements, legal history, history of ideas, and art criticism. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of, comparative constitutional law, law and society, human rights and European law as well as political philosophers.

Richard Posner is famous throughout the legal world for his pioneering and controversial espousal of the belief that the study of law cannot be divorced from the study of economics. Here, in this volume of essays based upon his Clarendon Lectures, he explores the relationship between the legal systems of the UK and USA. The essays range widely over themes which will be familiar to many students and teachers of law: in the first essay he compares the work of the two most prominent writers on jurisprudence in the second half of this century, one English (HLA Hart) and one American (Ronald Dworkin). His controversial conclusion that trying to define "law" is futile, distracting and illustrative of the impoverishment of traditional legal theory will fascinate students of legal theory. In the second essay he examines a number of English cases drawn primarily from the two fields in which English and American law overlap most completely - torts and contracts. Here he argues that while in general English judges use their common sense effectively to approximate the results that an economic analyst would recommend they would do even better if they were more receptive to the economic approach to the common law - if they were, in other words, a little more like American judges. In the third essay he examines the differences between the English and American legal systems at the administrative or operational level as distinct from the jurisprudential and doctrinal levels. The conclusions drawn from his analysis challenge traditional orthodoxy. His concluding advice to law reformers in both jurisdictions is that piecemeal reform of either system is to be avoided.
In this short and highly readable work readers will find much that will delight, stimulate, and challenge them. It is a book to be read by all students and scholars of law.

The promulgation of the Fifth French Republic Constitution in 1958 marked the end of a complex constitutional history that has since 1789 seen more than twenty constitutions and five Republics. Lasting now for more than fifty years, the Fifth Republic Constitution has proven to be the right settlement for the French people; a consensual text.

However, while offering the appearance of stability, the Fifth French Republic Constitution has often been reconsidered and changed, not least in the year of its fiftieth anniversary, when the Constitution was 'modernised'. These dynamics of the Fifth Republic Constitution are neither a recent matter nor entirely the result of the successive constitutional amendments. Instead, the history of the Constitution has involved the resurgence of repressed archaic elements from the ancient regime, while the social, economic and environmental contexts have penetrated not only the text itself but more extensively its spirit, and behind it, the philosophy and our perception of the Republic.

In Dynamics in the French Constitution, David Marrani questions the foundations of the French Fifth Republic. In using specific themes, current and traditional debates, contemporary and archaic factors, that have enlightened the road of long lasting Republic, the book explores some of the changes of the last fifty years and the tensions that are present within the constitutional text. In combining theoretical concepts of constitutional law with key contemporary and historical developments, such as the European integration, the response to environmental challenges, the practice of human rights and the pillars supporting French republicanism, this book offers varied and creative tools for a better understanding of the Republic of today.

This book is the first to address the multi-faceted influence of the global financial crisis on the national constitutions of the countries most affected. By tracing the impact of the crisis on formal and informal constitutional change, sovereignty issues, fundamental rights protection, regulatory reforms, jurisprudence, the augmentation of executive power, and changes in the party system it addresses all areas of the current constitutional law dialogue and aims to become a reference book with regard to the interaction between financial crises and constitutions. The book includes contributions from prominent experts on Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Portugal, Spain, the UK, and the USA providing a critical analysis of the effects of the financial crisis on the constitution. The volume's extensive comparative chapter pins down distinct constitutional reactions towards the financial crisis, building an explanatory theory that accounts for the different ways constitutions responded to the crisis. How and why constitutions formed their reactions in the face of the financial crisis unravels throughout the book.

Set against the backdrop of the recurring waves of financial scandal and crisis to hit Canada, the US, the UK, and Europe over the last decade, this book examines the struggles of securities enforcement agencies to police the financial markets. While allegations of regulatory failure in this realm are commonplace and are well documented in policy and legal scholarship, James Williams seeks to move beyond these conventional accounts arguing that they are based on a limited view of the regulatory process and overlook the actual practices and dilemmas of enforcement work. Informed by interviews with police, regulators, lawyers, accountants, and investor advocates, along with a wealth of documentary materials, the book is rooted in a uniquely interdisciplinary social science perspective. Peering inside the black box of enforcement, it examines the organizational, professional, geographical, technological, and legal influences that shape securities enforcement as a distinctly knowledge-based enterprise. The result of these influences, Williams argues, is the production of a very particular vision of financial disorder which captures certain forms of misconduct while overlooking others, a reflection not of incompetence or capture but of the unique demands and constraints of the regulatory craft. Providing a very different, and much needed, account of the challenges faced by regulators and enforcement agencies, this book will be of enormous interest to current research on enforcement, regulation, and governance both within and beyond the financial realm.

This innovative volume explores issues of law enforcement cooperation across borders from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. In doing so it adopts a comparative framework hitherto unexplored; namely the EU and the Australsian/Asia-Pacific region whose relative geopolitical remoteness from each other decreases with every incremental increase in globalisation. The borders under examination include both macro-level cooperation between nation-states, as well as micro-level cooperation between different Executive agencies within a nation-state. In terms of disciplinary borders the contributions demonstrate the breadth of academic insight that can be brought to bear on this topic. The volume contributes to the wider context for evidence-based policy-making and knowledge-based policing by bringing together leading academics, public policy-makers, legal practitioners and law enforcement officials from Europe, Australia and the Asian-Pacific region, to shed new light on the pressing problems impeding cross-border policing and law enforcement globally and regionally. Problems common to all jurisdictions are discussed and innovative 'best practice' solutions and models are considered. The book is structured in four parts: Police cooperation in the EU; in Australia; in the Asia-Pacific Region; and finally it considers issues of jurisdiction and due process/human rights issues, with a focus on regional cooperation strategies for countering human trafficking, organised crime and terrorism. The book will be of interest to both academic and practitioner communities in policing, criminology, international relations, and comparative Asia-Pacific and EU legal studies.

Transitional Justice, Judicial Accountability and the Rule of Law addresses the importance of judicial accountability in transitional justice processes. Despite a general consensus that the judiciary plays an important role in contemporary governance, accountability for the judicial role in formerly authoritarian societies remains largely elided and under-researched. Hakeem O. Yusuf argues that the purview of transitional justice mechanisms should, as a matter of policy, be extended to scrutiny of the judicial role in the past. Through a critical comparative approach that cuts through the transitioning experiences of post-authoritarian and post-conflict polities in Latin America, Asia, Europe and Africa, the book focuses specifically on Nigeria. It demonstrates that public accountability of the judiciary through the mechanism of a truth-seeking process is a necessary component in securing comprehensive accountability for the judicial role in the past. Transitional Justice, Judicial Accountability and the Rule of Law further shows that an across-the-board transformation of state institutions - an important aspiration of transitional processes - is virtually impossible without incorporating the third branch of government, the judiciary, into the accountability process.

The essays brought together in Islam, Law and Identity are the product of a series of interdisciplinary workshops that brought together scholars from a plethora of countries. Funded by the British Academy the workshops convened over a period of two years in London, Cairo and Izmir. The workshops and the ensuing papers focus on recent debates about the nature of sacred and secular law and most engage case studies from specific countries including Egypt, Israel, Kazakhstan, Mauritania, Pakistan and the UK. Islam, Law and Identity also addresses broader and over-arching concerns about relationships between religion, human rights, law and modernity. Drawing on a variety of theoretical and empirical approaches, the collection presents law as central to the complex ways in which different Muslim communities and institutions create and re-create their identities around inherently ambiguous symbols of faith. From their different perspectives, the essays argue that there is no essential conflict between secular law and Shari`a but various different articulations of the sacred and the secular. Islam, Law and Identity explores a more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of the tensions that animate such terms as Shari`a law, modernity and secularization

Although there is no international government, and no global police agency enforces the rules, nations obey international law. In this provocative study, Franck employs a broad range of historical, legal, sociological, anthropological, political, and philosophical modes of analysis to unravel the mystery of what makes states and people perceive rules as legitimate. Demonstrating that virtually all nations obey most rules nearly all of the time, Franck reveals that the more legitimate laws and institutions appear to be, the greater is their capacity for compliance. Distilling those factors which increase the perception of legitimacy, he shows how a community of rules can be fashioned from a system of sovereign states without creating a global leviathan.

It is becoming increasingly common for human rights norms to be transferred between legal and political systems and this book is a fresh approach to the intersection of transnational law and the protection of cultural difference beyond the single state border. It investigates how the construction and evolution of human rights norms are transferred in transnational legal settings and asks whether law should reflect, express or control any given aspect of culture. The chapters explore the ways that law and cultural identity may or may not co-exist, particularly in circumstances where a prima facie clash is observed. Examining legal approaches to cultural differences from a comparative perspective and across a wide range of locations, the book covers topics such as juvenile punishment, religious defamation, religious rights and conflict between industry and indigenous communities. It will be of value to those working in the areas of transnational and comparative law, as well as those concerned with human rights and the intersection of law and cultural difference.

This book examines the structure of the rule on restrictive agreements in the context of vertical intra-brand price and territorial restraints, analysing, comparing and evaluating their treatment in US antitrust and EU competition law. It examines the concept of 'agreement' as the threshold question of the rule on restrictive agreements, the structure and focus of antitrust/competition law analysis, the treatment of vertical intra-brand price and territorial restrictions and their place in the test of antitrust/competition law. The treatment of vertical intra-brand restraints is one of the most controversial issues of contemporary competition law and policy, and there are substantial differences between the world's two leading regimes in this regard. In the US, resale price fixing merits an effects-analysis, while in the EU it is prohibited almost outright. Likewise, territorial protection is treated laxly in the US, while in the EU absolute territorial protection - due to the single market imperative - is strictly prohibited. Using a novel approach of legal analysis, this book will be of interest to academics and scholars of business and commercial law, international and comparative law.

Peace-building in a number of contemporary contexts involves fragile states, influential customary systems and histories of land conflict arising from mass population displacement. This book is a timely response to the increased international focus on peace-building problems arising from population displacement and post-conflict state fragility. It considers the relationship between property and resilient customary systems in conflict-affected East Timor. The chapters include micro-studies of customary land and population displacement during the periods of Portuguese colonization and Indonesian military occupation. There is also analysis of the development of laws relating to customary land in independent East Timor (Timor Leste). The book fills a gap in socio-legal literature on property, custom and peace-building and is of interest to property scholars, anthropologists, and academics and practitioners in the emerging field of peace and conflict studies.

This book provides new insights into police cooperation from a comparative socio-legal perspective. It presents a broad analysis of comparable police cooperation strategies in two systems: the EU and Australia. The evolution of regulatory trends and cooperation models is analysed for both systems and possible transferable strategies identified. Drawing on interviews with practitioners in the EU and Australia this book highlights a number of areas where the EU can be compared to a federal system and addresses the advantages and disadvantages of being a Union or a federation of states with a view to police cooperation practice. Particular topics addressed are the evolution of legal frameworks regulating police cooperation, informal cooperation strategies, Joint Investigation Teams, Europol and regional cooperation. These instruments foster police cooperation, but could be improved with a view to cooperation practice by learning from regulatory techniques and practitioner experiences of the respective other system.

Film censorship has always been a controversial matter, particularly in jurisdictions with restrictive state-based censorship systems. This book reviews the film censorship system in the Asia-Pacific by comparing the systems used in Malaysia, Hong Kong and Australia. It identifies the key issues and concerns that arise from the design and implementation of the system by examining the censorship laws, policies, guidelines and processes. The book evaluates film practitioners' and censors' opinion of, and experience in, dealing with those issues, and goes on to develop reform proposals for the film censorship system.

Effective protection of the marine and terrestrial environment increasingly requires cooperation between neighbouring States, international organizations, government entities and communities within States. This book analyses key aspects of transboundary environmental law and policy and their implementation in Asia, Australasia and Australian offshore territories, and surrounding areas beyond national jurisdiction including Antarctica. It discusses the potential for implementing key transboundary environmental mechanisms such as the 1991 Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context (Espoo Convention) and its 1997 Protocol on Strategic Environmental Assessment (Kiev Protocol) in Australia and Asia drawing on experience from other regions and the potential application of these agreements to all UN member states. The book makes an innovative contribution to research in the area of transboundary environmental governance particularly as it applies to Asia, Australasia and international areas, supplementing similar research which has predominantly focused on Europe and North America.

Using her experience of living under apartheid and witnessing its downfall and the subsequent creation of new governments in South Africa, the author examines and compares gender inequality in societies undergoing political and economic transformation. By applying this process of legal transformation as a paradigm, the author applies this model to Afghanistan. These two societies serve as counterpoints through which the book engages, in a nuanced and novel way, with the many broader issues that flow from the attempts in newly democratic societies to give effect to the promise of gender equality. Developing the idea of 'conditional interdependence', the book suggests a new approach based on the communitarian values which underpin newly democratic societies and would allow women's rights to gain momentum and reap greater benefits. Broad in its thematic approach, the book generates challenging and complex questions about the achievement of gender equality. It will be of interest to academics interested in gender and human rights, international and comparative law.

Building upon an interdisciplinary synthesis of recent literature from the fields of transitional justice and conflict transformation, this book introduces a groundbreaking theoretical framework that highlights the critical importance of identity in the relationship between transitional justice and reconciliation in deeply divided societies. Using this framework, Aiken argues that transitional justice interventions will be successful in promoting reconciliation and sustainable peace to the extent that they can help to catalyze those crucial processes of 'social learning' needed to transform the antagonistic relationships and identifications that divide post-conflict societies even after the signing of formal peace agreements. Combining original field research and an extensive series of expert interviews, Aiken applies this social learning model in a comprehensive examination of both the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the uniquely 'decentralized' approach to transitional justice that has emerged in Northern Ireland. By offering new insight into the experiences of these countries, Aiken provides compelling firsthand evidence to suggest that transitional justice interventions can best contribute to post-conflict reconciliation if they not only provide truth and justice for past human rights abuses, but also help to promote contact, dialogue and the amelioration of structural and material inequalities between former antagonists. Identity, Reconciliation and Transitional Justice makes a timely contribution to debates about how to best understand and address past human rights violations in post-conflict societies, and it offers a valuable resource to students, scholars, practitioners and policymakers dealing with these difficult issues.

Following on from her previous nine books on discrimination law, Anne-Marie Mooney Cotter now focuses on the goal of child equality. Examining issues of child labour and the relevant laws which are designed to protect the most vulnerable in our society, the book explores the primary role of legislation and the judicial system and its impact on the fight for child rights and the ultimate goal of the end of inequality. The book considers the major common law countries of Australia and New Zealand, Africa and South Africa, Canada, Mexico and the United States, and the United Kingdom and Ireland, as well as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the European Union Treaty in a historical and compelling analysis of discrimination worldwide. By providing a detailed examination of child rights and the law, it will be an important read for those concerned with equality and empowering those most vulnerable to discrimination, the children.

This timely volume discusses the much debated and controversial subject of the presence of religion in the public sphere. The book is divided in three sections. In the first the public/private distinction is studied mainly from a theoretical point of view, through the contributions of lawyers, philosophers and sociologists. In the following sections their proposals are tested through the analysis of two case studies, religious dress codes and places of worship. These sections include discussions on some of the most controversial recent cases from around Europe with contributions from some of the leading experts in the area of law and religion. Covering a range of very different European countries including Turkey, the UK, Italy and Bulgaria, the book uses comparative case studies to illustrate how practice varies significantly even within Europe. It reveals how familiarization with religious and philosophical diversity in Europe should lead to the modification of legal frameworks historically designed to accommodate majority religions. This in turn should give rise to recognition of new groups and communities and eventually, a more adequate response to the plurality of religions and beliefs in European society.

This volume provides a holistic presentation of the reality of constitutional change in 18 countries (the 15 old EU member states, Canada, Switzerland and the USA). The essays offer analysis on formal and informal constitutional amendment bringing forth the overall picture of the parallel paths constitutional change follows, in correlation to what the constitution means and how constitutional law works. To capture the patterns of constitutional change, multi-faceted parameters are explored such as the interrelations between form of government, party system, and constitutional amendment; the interplay between constitutional change and the system of constitutionality review; the role of the people, civil society, and experts in constitutional change; and the influence of international and European law and jurisprudence on constitutional reform and evolution. In the extensive final, comparative chapter, key features of each country's amendment procedures are epitomized and the mechanisms of constitutional change are explained on the basis of introducing five distinct models of constitutional change. The concept of constitutional rigidity is re-approached and broken down to a set of factual and institutional rigidities. The classification of countries within models, in accordance with the way in which operative amending mechanisms connect, leads to a succinct portrayal of different modes of constitutional change engineering. This book will prove to be an invaluable tool for approaching constitutional revision either for theoretical or for practical purposes and will be of particular interest to students and scholars of constitutional, comparative and public law.

Progressive Corporate Governance for the 21st Century is a wide ranging and ambitious study of why corporate governance is the shape that it is, and how it can be better. The book sets out the emergence of shareholder primacy orientated corporate governance using a study of historical developments in the United Kingdom and the United States. Talbot sees shareholder primacy as a political choice made by governments, not a natural feature of the inevitable market. She describes the periods of progressive corporate governance which governments promoted in the middle of the 20th century using a close examination of the theories of the company which then prevailed. She critically examines the rise of neoliberal theories on the company and corporate governance and argues that they have had a negative and regressive impact on social and economic development. In examining contemporary corporate governance she shows how regulatory styles as informed and described by prevailing regulatory theories, enables neoliberal outcomes. She illustrates how United Kingdom-derived corporate governance codes have informed the corporate governance initiatives of European and global institutions. From this she argues that neoliberalism has re-entered ex command transition economies through those United Kingdom and OECD inspired corporate governance Codes over a decade after the earlier failed and destructive neoliberal prescriptions for transition had been rejected. Throughout, Talbot argues that shareholder primacy has socially regressive outcomes and firmly takes a stand against current initiatives to enhance shareholder voting in such issues as director remuneration. The book concludes with a series of proposals to recalibrate the power between those involved in company activity; shareholders, directors and employees so that the public company can begin to work for the public and not shareholders.