Mediation in family & divorce disputes is intended as a handbook for mediators and clients who are involved with family and divorce disputes. It distills 20 years’ of priceless experience into a succinct and lucid handbook that will be invaluable to attorneys, mediators, social workers, psychologists and parties to disputes, helping clients to decide whether they would like to try to resolve their dispute through mediation and professionals to reflect on the fundamental principles and practical applications of their work. The goal of mediation is to enable clients to negotiate an effective settlement of their dispute, rather than necessarily reconciling – although occasionally that is a result of mediation. In a real sense mediation coaches clients to negotiate effectively. It is about helping clients to negotiate mutually acceptable, realistic and legal settlements of their disputes. Although the book is written in a South African context, the principles will apply and be of interest beyond South Africa and to all mediators and clients in mediation whether their primary focus is on family disputes or not. For mediators the book sets out to provide practical and theoretical guidelines for their work. The practice tips, further reading suggestions and references serve as an introduction to some of the work of leading mediators in the field for those readers who would like to develop a deeper understanding of the process. The book is also designed to be of use to those who have recently been trained as mediators or will soon be trained, as it complements the material usually presented in such training. For clients it explains what they can expect in the mediation process, tips as to what to look for in a mediator and what they can do to prepare for their mediation in order to get the most out of the process. Each chapter includes tips for mediators and for clients, as well as suggested further reading if you want to follow up in more depth on a topic covered in one of the chapters.

Improving access to justice has been an ongoing process, and on-demand justice should be a natural part of our increasingly on-demand society. What can we do for example when Facebook blocks our account, we're harassed on Twitter, discover that our credit report contains errors, or receive a negative review on Airbnb? How do we effectively resolve these and other such issues? Digital Justice introduces the reader to new technological tools to resolve and prevent disputes bringing dispute resolution to cyberspace, where those who would never look to a court for assistance can find help for instance via a smartphone. The authors focus particular attention on five areas that have seen great innovation as well as large volumes of disputes: ecommerce, healthcare, social media, labor, and the courts. As conflicts escalate with the increase in innovation, the authors emphasize the need for new dispute resolution processes and new ways to avoid disputes, something that has been ignored by those seeking to improve access to justice in the past.

This book examines social aspects of humour relating to the judiciary, judicial behaviour, and judicial work across different cultures and eras, identifying how traditionally recorded wit and humorous portrayals of judges reflect social attitudes to the judiciary over time. It contributes to cultural studies and social science/socio-legal studies of both humour and the role of emotions in the judiciary and in judging. It explores the surprisingly varied intersections between humour and the judiciary in several legal systems: judges as the target of humour; legal decisions regulating humour; the use of humour to manage aspects of judicial work and courtroom procedure; and judicial/legal figures and customs featuring in comic and satiric entertainment through the ages. Delving into the multi-layered connections between the seriousness of the work of the judiciary on the one hand, and the lightness of humour on the other hand, this fascinating collection will be of particular interest to scholars of the legal system, the criminal justice system, humour studies, and cultural studies.

Is there something distinctive about penology in Europe? Do Europeans think about punishment and penal policy in a different way to people in other parts of the globe? If so, why is this the case and how does it work in practice? This book addresses some major and pressing issues that have been emerging in recent years in the interdisciplinary field of 'European penology', that is, a space where legal scholarship, criminology, sociology and political science meet - or should meet - in order to make sense of punishment in Europe. The chapters in European Penology? have been written by leading scholars in the field and focus in particular on the interaction of European academic penology and national practice with European policies as developed by the Council of Europe and, increasingly, by the European Union.

Prillaman argues that a sound judiciary is critical for building popular support for democracy and laying the foundations for sustainable economic development, but that most Latin American governments have made virtually no progress toward building a more effective judiciary. He shows that the traditional approach to judicial reform is flawed on several levels. Reformers are wrong to focus on a single aspect of the judiciary on the assumption that one reform naturally leads to another. In fact, all aspects of the courts are so closely related that failure to reform one aspect creates a "negative synergy" that ultimately undermines the reformed areas. Instead, a successful reform strategy must simultaneously tackle independence, accountability, access, and efficiency; otherwise, it is virtually assured of failure. As Prillaman points out, judicial reform is not merely a technical process that can be isolated from broader economic and political forces. Rather, it is an inherently political process that will be opposed by forces ranging from politicians accustomed to stocking the courts to judges and court personnel reluctant to accept greater oversight and professional norms. Based on four case studies, Prillaman concludes that failed judicial reforms have led to growing support for mob lynching and vigilante justice that promises to fill the void created by ineffectual courts--ultimately challenging the quality and sustainability of democracy. An invaluable survey for political scientists, students, and researchers involved with democratic consolidation, institution building, and comparative judicial politics in Latin America specifically and the developing world in general.

An important contribution to constitutional literature, this collection of ten unpublished decisions by the Warren Court puts the decision making process of the Supreme Court in a new light. By following the major changes that occur in each case from the circulation of tentative majority opinions to the final issuance of opinion, the book portrays how the justices communicate with each other and how they are influenced by each other's arguments. Interpretations and commentaries by the author illuminate the significance of each case and provide insight into the different judicial philosophies and personal styles of the justices. This book will be of substantial value to law schools, law libraries, bar associations, and lawyers practicing in the field of constitutional law.

This book offers a series of commentaries on noteworthy arbitral awards and court decisions on arbitration. All contributions focus on the practice of arbitration. Influential authors with proven arbitration experience share their insights on celebrated and less well-known cases, drawn from various countries, various arbitration institutions and including both commercial and investment arbitration. This collection of essays celebrates the work and scholarship of Hans van Houtte, who has been a professor of international commercial arbitration at the University of Leuven for more than 20 years. In addition to his widely -praised contribution to the theory of arbitration, Professor Van Houtte has built a long career in the practice of arbitration, presiding over a vast array of arbitral tribunals and holding appointments to international tribunals, most recently as president of the Iran-US Claims Tribunal. Hans van Houtte has always been concerned with the practical usefulness of scholarly writings, and this book respects this approach. This volume will prove essential for all arbitration practitioners and will also be of great interest also to academics and research students with an interest in international arbitration.

This volume analyses the legal grounds, premises and extent of pecuniary compensation for violations of human rights in national legal systems. The scope of comparison includes liability regimes in general and in detail, the correlation between pecuniary remedies available under international law and under domestic law, and special (alternative) compensation systems. All sources of human rights violations are embraced, including historical injustices and systematical and gross violations. The book is a collection of nineteen contributions written by public international law, international human rights and private law experts, covering fifteen European jurisdictions (including Central and Eastern Europe), the United States, Israel and EU law. The contributions, initially prepared for the 19th International Congress of Comparative law in Vienna (2014), present the latest developments in legislation, scholarship and case-law concerning domestic causes of action in cases of human rights abuses. The book concludes with a comparative report which assesses the developments in tort law and public liability law, the role of the constitutionalisation of the right to damages as well as the court practice related to the process of enforcement of human rights through monetary remedies. This country-by-country comparison allows to consider whether the value of protection of human rights as expressed in international treaties, ius cogens and in national constitutional laws justifies the conclusion that the interests at stake should enjoy protection under the existing civil liability rules, or that a new cause of action, or even a whole new set of rules, should be created in national systems.

This innovative volume examines the nexus between war crimes trials and the pursuit of collaborators in post-war Asia. Global standards of behaviour in time of war underpinned the prosecution of Japanese military personnel in Allied courts in Asia and the Pacific. Japan's contradictory roles in the Second World War as brutal oppressor of conquered regions in Asia and as liberator of Asia from both Western colonialism and stultifying tradition set the stage for a tangled legal and political debate: just where did colonized and oppressed peoples owe their loyalties in time of war? And where did the balance of responsibility lie between individuals and nations? But global standards jostled uneasily with the pluralism of the Western colonial order in Asia, where legal rights depended on race and nationality. In the end, these limits led to profound dissatisfaction with the trials process, despite its vast scale and ambitious intentions, which has implications until today.

This book offers a comparative analysis of traditional Asian legal systems. It combines methods from legal history, legal anthropology, legal philosophy, and substantive law, pursuing a comprehensive approach that offers readers a broad perspective on the topic. The geographic regions covered include the Near East, Middle East, Central Asia, India, China, Japan, and Southeast Asia. For each region, the book first provides historical and political context. Next, it discusses major milestones in the region's legal history and political institutions, as well as its forms of government. Readers are then presented with fundamental principles and terms needed to understand the legal arguments discussed. The book begins with the Ancient Near East and important topics such as Jewish law. The next part considers Islamic law, while also exploring modern issues. The third part focuses on Hindu and Buddhist law, while the fourth part covers China and Japan. The book's closing section examines tribal societies, e.g. Mongols, Pashtuns and Malays. Topics covered include the interaction of legal systems within a legal circle, inter-systemic interactions, reasons for the failure and success of legal modernization, legal pluralism, and its effects on Asian societies. Family law, law of obligation, criminal law, and procedural law are also explored.

Arbitrations involving more than two parties and complex multicontractual issues represent more than one third of international arbitration cases, and this proportion increases every year. The difficult and specific issues raised by such arbitrations have been the object of abundant case law, derived from both arbitral tribunals and national courts, as well as doctrinal writings. This thorough and up-to-date guide to this area of practice - the first and only such guide available - provides a comprehensive analysis of all the issues arising from multiparty-multicontract arbitrations, including those involving States and groups of companies. The numerous factors and problems analysed in depth include the following: theories on the basis of which courts and arbitral tribunals determine who are parties to the arbitration clause; whether an arbitration clause may be extended to non-signatories; to what extent one can bring to a single arbitration proceeding the various parties who have participated in a single economic transaction through several contracts; whether a respondent can join other defendants to the arbitration, be they privy to the arbitration agreement or third parties; whether a party to a complex contractual structure can intervene voluntarily in the proceedings; and under what conditions separate arbitration proceedings may be consolidated. It also analyses: how and to what extent one can overcome the inconveniences that arise from having several parallel proceedings; appointment of arbitrators when the various parties to the dispute have divergent interests; res judicata, and in particular whether an arbitral tribunal should take into consideration an arbitral award rendered in a connected arbitration arising from the same project; and enforcement of multiparty-multicontract awards. The author proposes concrete solutions to these problems, and also offers the first analysis of the special issues raised by the latest development in international arbitration, class actions. Features of particular value to the practitioner include in-depth analysis of more than a hundred and twenty ad hoc and institutional awards rendered under the auspices of the ICC and other institutions; analysis of relevant national case law based on nearly 200 court decisions from the United States, France, Switzerland, England, Australia, Canada, Belgium and other countries; and appendices specifying multiparty-multicontract arbitration clauses, provisions of international conventions, national legislations and institutional rules, and institutional rules on class arbitrations. Corporate counsel, international arbitrators, and lawyers having to deal with multiparty-multicontract disputes will find this book of immeasurable value in their day-to-day work. Law professors and students of dispute resolution have here a unique consideration of an increasingly salient aspect of current international practice.

The Yearbook of International Sports Arbitration is the first academic publication aiming to offer comprehensive coverage, on a yearly basis, of the most recent and salient developments regarding international sports arbitration, through a combination of general articles and case notes. The present volume covers decisions rendered by the Court of arbitration for Sport (CAS) and national courts in 2016. It is a must-have for sports lawyers and arbitrators, as well as researchers engaged in this field. It provides in-depth articles on burning issues raised by international sports arbitration, and independent commentaries by esteemed academics and seasoned practitioners on the most important decisions of the year by the CAS and national courts. Dr. Antoine Duval is Senior Researcher for International and European Sports Law at the T.M.C. Asser Instituut in The Hague. He holds a Ph.D. on the interaction between Lex Sportiva and EU Law from the European University Institute in Florence. Prof. Antonio Rigozzi teaches international arbitration and sports law at the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland, and is the partner in charge of the sports arbitration practice at Levy Kaufmann-Kohler, a Geneva-based law firm specializing in international arbitration.

"Written for a general audience. . . . Excellent. . . . If enough American judges and law professors read his book, some of the silly rules that he criticizes will be discarded."
"--Judge Richard A. Posner, Times Literary Supplement"

"A beautifully written, finely nuanced work, a marvelous comparative constitutional study of criminal procedure that seeks to understand the larger culture."
"--Lawrence Fleischer, New York Law Journal"

"In a cogent, direct argument, Pizzi inveighs against the triumph of the law of unintended consequences over the law of practicality. . . . An important book."
"--Publishers Weekly"

"Pizzi is certainly convincing in his argument that the American trial system is in dire need of overhaul. "
--"Law Society Journal," July 2002 Rodney King. Reginald Denny. O. J. Simpson. Colin Ferguson. Louise Woodward: all names that have cast a spotlight on the deficiencies of the American system of criminal justice. Yet, in the wake of each trial that exposes shocking behavior by trial participants or results in counterintuitive rulingsaoften with perverse resultsathe American public is reassured by the trial bar that the case is not "typical" and that our trial system remains the best in the world.

William T. Pizzi here argues that what the public perceives is in fact exactly what the United States has: a trial system that places far too much emphasis on winning and not nearly enough on truth, one in which the abilities of a lawyer or the composition of a jury may be far more important to the outcome of a case than any evidence.

How has a system on which Americans have lavished enormous amounts of energy, time, and money been allowed todegenerate into one so profoundly flawed?

Acting as an informal tour guide, and bringing to bear his experiences as both insider and outsider, prosecutor and academic, Pizzi here exposes the structural faultlines of our trial system and its paralyzing obsession with procedure, specifically the ways in which lawyers are permitted to dominate trials, the system's preference for weak judges, and the absurdities of plea bargaining. By comparing and contrasting the U.S. system with that of a host of other countries, Trials Without Truth provides a clear-headed, wide-ranging critique of what ails the criminal justice systemaand a prescription for how it can be fixed.

The essays in this volume reflect the wider concept of legal history - how legal processes fitted into the social and political life of the community, and how courts and other legal processes were used by contemporaries - rather than the more traditional but narrower study of internal procedural development interpretation. In doing so, they both aim to justify the study of legal history in its own right and to show how legal records, including those of a variety of central and local courts can be used to further the understanding of a range of social, commercial, popular and political history.

What is a constitutional right? If asked, most Americans would say that it is an entitlement to act as one pleases - i.e., that rights protect autonomy. That understanding, however, is wrong; it is, indeed, The Myth of Rights. The primary purpose and effect of constitutional rights in our society is structural. These rights restrain governmental power in order to maintain a balance between citizens and the State, and an appropriately limited role for the State in our society. Of course, restricting governmental power does have the effect of advancing individual autonomy, but that is not the primary purpose of rights, and furthermore, constitutional rights protect individual autonomy to a far lesser degree that is generally believed.
Professor Bhagwat brings clarity to many difficult controversies with a structural approach towards constitutional rights. Issues discussed include flag-burning, the ongoing debates over affirmative action and same-sex marriage, and the great battles over executive power fought during the second Bush Administration. The Myth of Rights addresses the constitutional issues posed in these and many other areas of law and public policy, and explains why a structural approach to constitutional rights illuminates these disputes in ways that an autonomy-based approach cannot. Readers will understand that while constitutional rights play a critical role in our legal and political system, it is a very different role from what is commonly assumed.

The presumption of innocence is universally recognized as a fundamental human right and a core principle in the administration of criminal justice. Nonetheless, statutes creating criminal offences regularly depart from the presumption of innocence by requiring defendants to prove specific matters in order to avoid conviction. Legislatures and courts seek to justify this departure by asserting that the reversal of the burden of proof is necessary to meet the community interest in prosecuting serious crime and maintaining workable criminal sanctions. This book investigates the supposed justifications for limitation of the presumption of innocence. It does so through a comprehensive analysis of the history, rationale and scope of the presumption of innocence. It is argued that the values underlying the presumption of innocence are of such fundamental importance to individual liberty that they cannot be sacrificed on the altar of community interest. In particular, it is argued that a test of 'proportionality', which seeks to weigh individual rights against the community interest, is inappropriate in the context of the presumption of innocence and that courts ought instead to focus on whether an impugned measure threatens the values which the presumption is designed to protect. The book undertakes a complete and systematic review of the United Kingdom and Strasbourg authority on the presumption of innocence. It also draws upon extensive references to comparative material, both judicial and academic, from the United States, Canada and South Africa.

The law persists because people have reasons to comply with its rules. What characterizes those reasons is their interdependence: each of us only has a reason to comply because he or she expects the others to comply for the same reasons. The rules may help us to solve coordination problems, but the interaction patterns regulated by them also include Prisoner's Dilemma games, Division problems and Assurance problems. In these "games" the rules can only persist if people can be expected to be moved by considerations of fidelity and fairness, not only of prudence.
This book takes a fresh look at the perennial problems of legal philosophy - the source of obligation to obey the law, the nature of authority, the relationship between law and morality, and the nature of legal argument - from the perspective of this conventionalist understanding of social rules. It argues that, since the resilience of such rules depends on cooperative dispositions, conventionalism, properly understood, does not imply positivism.

This book details possible ethical situations and pitfalls that forensic psychiatric experts would commonly encounter when making a court testimony. Richly illustrated with cases from medicine, psychiatry, and law, this elegantly written volume examines the common moral ground that links these usually separate domains, and relates forensic ethics to larger concepts of morality and justice.

A group of scholars in the area of civil procedure discuss the fundamental emerging problem concerning the abuse of procedural rights. The main features of this problem, such as: the theoretical and moral implication of procedural abuses, the subjects who may commit them, the typologies of abusive practices, the consequences and analytical perspective. The emergence and the legal characters of these issues are studied with reference to a large number of systems. A comparative framework is provided by the general and final reports.

This book examines matters of religious freedom in Europe, considers the work of the European Court of Human Rights in this area, explores issues of multiculturalism and secularism in France, of women in Islam, and of Muslims in the West. The work presents legal analysis and ethnographic fieldwork, focusing on concepts such as laicite, submission, equality and the role of the state in public education, amongst others. Through this book, the reader can visit inside a French public school located in a low-income neighborhood just south of Paris and learn about the complex dynamics that led up to the passing of the 2004 law banning Muslim headscarves. The chapters bring to light the actors and cultures within the school that set the stage for the passing of the law and the political philosophy that supports it. School culture and philosophy are compared and contrasted to the thoughts and opinions of the teachers, administrators and students to gage how religious freedom and identity are understood. The book goes on to explore the issue of religious freedom at the European Court of Human Rights. The author argues that the right to religious freedom has been too narrowly understood and is being fenced in by static visions of Islam. This jeopardizes the idea of religious freedom more broadly. By becoming entangled with regional and domestic politics, the Court is neglecting important nuances and is jeopardizing secularism, pluralism and democracy. This is a highly readable and accessible book that will appeal to students and scholars of law, anthropology, religious studies and philosophy of religion. 2004