This book explores the relationship between truth and freedom in the free press. It argues that the relationship is problematic because the free press implies a competition between plural ideas, whereas truth is univocal. Based on this tension the book claims that the idea of a free press is premised on an epistemological illusion. This illusion enables society to maintain that the world it perceives through the press corresponds to the world as it actually exists, explaining why defenders of the free press continue to rely on its capacity to discover the truth, despite economic conditions and technological innovations undermining much of its independence. The book invites the reader to reconsider the philosophical foundations, constitutional justifications, and structure and functions of the free press, and whether the institution can, in fact, realise both freedom and truth. It will be of great interest to anyone concerned in the role and value of the free press in the modern world.

Increased diversity and shifting social identities have created significant effects on contemporary legislative systems. These shifts have altered how legislative bodies conduct, implement, and pass various policies and bills. Impacts of Faith-Based Decision Making on the Individual-Level Legislative Process: Emerging Research and Opportunities is an innovative source of scholarly material on the religious influences of modern society on marital law. Including perspectives on topics such as same-sex marriage, religious values, and bill sponsorship, this book is ideally designed for researchers, academics, professionals, graduate students, and policy makers interested in the latest developments on legislative decision making.

This volume tackles contemporary problems of legal accommodation of diversity in Europe and recent developments in the area in diverse European legal regimes. Despite professing the motto Unity in Diversity Europe appears to be struggling with discord rather than unity. Legal discussions reflect a crisis when it comes to matters of migration, accommodation of minorities and dealing with the growing heterogeneity of European societies. This volume illustrates that the current legal conundrums stem from European oscillation between, on the one hand, acknowledging the need of accommodation, and, on the other, the tendencies to preserve existing legal traditions. It claims that these opposite tendencies have led Europe to the edge of pluralism. This 'edge', just as the linguistic interpretation of the word 'edge', carries multiple meanings conveying a plethora of problems encountered by law when dealing with diversity. The authors attempt to explore and illustrate these multiple edges of pluralism tracing back their origins and examining the contemporary legal conundrums they have led to. The volume encourages the readers to explore whether there are fundamental problems with approaches to diversity and if so can they be rescued from their current precarious position. It asks whether Europe at the edge is truly capable to unite in diversity and develop a constructive approach to its growing pluralism. The book is aimed at academics, practitioners and students focusing their work on contemporary problems of diversity, multiculturalism and accommodation of migrants as well as everybody interested in the area.

"Since the fall of the Berlin wall there has been a surprising dearth of high quality of scholarship on legal culture in the communist successor states of East Central Europe. In this excellent book Barbara Havelkova engages with the reversal of many of the advances the socialist period made in gender relations, examining the historical roots of the current failure of Czech law to engage with the discriminatory practices that have negatively affected the lives of women. She does this by a forensic excavation of law, discourses and practices of the socialist era revealing the patriarchal assumptions underpinning them that became deeply embedded in Czech legal culture, and that have been carried forward to the present day. The book is a compelling read. It provides answers to many of the questions that have perplexed feminists about the post-soviet transition and at the same time speaks more generally to the debates surrounding the troubling rightward shift in the politics of the communist successor states of Europe." Professor Judith Pallot, President of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies "In Gender Equality in Law: Uncovering the Legacies of Czech State Socialism, Barbara Havelkova offers a sober and sophisticated socio-legal account of gender equality law in Czechia. Tracing gender equality norms from their origins under state socialism, Havelkova shows how the dominant understanding of the differences between women and men as natural and innate combined with a post-socialist understanding of rights as freedom to shape the views of key Czech legal actors and to thwart the transformative potential of EU sex discrimination law. Havelkova's compelling feminist legal genealogy of gender equality in Czechia illuminates the path dependency of gender norms and the antipathy to substantive gender equality that is common among the formerly state-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Her deft analysis of the relationship between gender and legal norms is especially relevant today as the legitimacy of gender equality laws is increasingly precarious." Professor Judy Fudge, Kent Law School Gender equality law in Czechia, as in other parts of post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe, is facing serious challenges. When obliged to adopt, interpret and apply anti-discrimination law as a condition of membership of the EU, Czech legislators and judges have repeatedly expressed hostility and demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding of key ideas underpinning it. This important new study explores this scepticism to gender equality law, examining it with reference to legal and socio-legal developments that started in the state-socialist past and that remain relevant today. The book examines legal developments in gender-relevant areas, most importantly in equality and anti-discrimination law. But it goes further, shedding light on the underlying understandings of key concepts such as women, gender, equality, discrimination and rights. In so doing, it shows the fundamental intellectual and conceptual difficulties faced by gender equality law in Czechia. These include an essentialist understanding of differences between men and women, a notion that equality and anti-discrimination law is incompatible with freedom, and a perception that existing laws are objective and neutral, while any new gender-progressive regulation of social relations is an unacceptable interference with the 'natural social order'. Timely and provocative, this book will be required reading for all scholars of equality and gender and the law.

There are many challenges that national and supranational judges have to face when fulfilling their roles as guardians of constitutionalism and human rights. This book brings together academics and judges from different jurisdictions in an endeavour to uncover the intricacies of the judicial function. The contributors discuss several points that each represent contemporary challenges to judging: analysis of judicial balancing of conflicting considerations; the nature of courts' legitimacy and its alleged dependence on public support; the role of judges in upholding constitutional values in the times of transition to democracy, surveillance and the fight against terrorism; and the role of international judges in guaranteeing globally recognized fundamental rights and freedoms. This book will be of interest to human rights scholars focusing on the issues of judicial oversight, as well as constitutional law scholars interested in comparative perspectives on the role of judges in different contexts. It will also be useful to national constitutional court judges, and law clerks aiming to familiarise themselves with judicial practices within other jurisdictions. Contributors: A. Abat i Ninet, E. Afsah, C. Ayala, A. Barak, O. Bassok, D.T. Bjoergvinsson, W. Hoffmann-Riem, D. Hope, D. Jenkins, H. Krunke, TJ McIntyre, M. Scheinin, B. Tuzmukhamedov, G. Ulfstein, A. Usacka