If your adult child becomes incapacitated or dies, you do not automatically gain custody of your grandchildren. Sometimes, depending on the age of the children and whether or not they are adoptable will determine who gets custody. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal bonus monies are given to states each year when they exceed the number of adoptions from the previous year. Your grandchild may be needed to help reach the numbers necessary for your state to receive its bonus.

The country's leading libertarian scholar sets forth the essential principles for a legal system that best balances individual liberty versus the common good.

This work was written 1989 and published for the first time in 2002. The author's intention is to inform even-handedly, national and international debates about the misunderstandings surrounding the Sharia and common legal systems in Nigeria. Balewa broadly discusses Western and Islamic philosophical backgrounds of law, relationships between law, politics and religion in society, and concepts of secularism and secularity. He traces the history and schools of Sharia law, and the sources of common law in Nigeria, and its comparative religious and colonial foundations. He further appraises two views of the controversy: namely, whether Sharia law, as a fully-fledged legal system, should be reflected in the Nigerian constitution - or not, given its contentious religious content; and he states the case against Sharia. His conclusion is that in view of the status quo, and the multi-ethnic, mulit-religious nature of Nigerian society, there is a need for understanding of the truths of both systems; and to find appropriate means of ensuring their equality and peaceful co-existence.

Christian Thomasius was the founding father of the German enlightenment, and as such initiated a second German "reformation". He was a philosopher, educator and journalist, but above all he was a lawyer. He was extraordinarily successful as an academic teacher and was also a prolific writer. Perhaps best known today for his campaign against witch-hunting, he was, in his day, equally renowned for his study of Roman law, of which the Larva Legis is a single but remarkable example. The text reprinted and translated in this book is notable for three reasons. First because of the eminence and influence of its author; second because of the way in which it illustrates the development of the civilian tradition and its critical assessment by lawyers; and third, because it is a key text within the history of one of the main branches of the European law of obligations. As such it contributed to the establishment of a modern and critical approach towards the law of delict in Europe.

A compilation of lectures delivered by the renowned and prolific law scholar, who was formerly Chief Judge of Oyo State and Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. His essays cover ethics in business; democracy and civil society; constitutionalism; democracy, individual rights and law; human rights; international human rights norms and their domestic application; human rights in judicial decisions; the Nigerian judiciary and its role in post-colonial Africa into the twenty-first century; interpretations of statutes, and certainties in law.

The present collection of essays grew out of a conference, held in Dresden in December 2001, exploring the relationship between the public sphere and legal culture. The conference was held in connection with the ongoing research undertaken by the Sonderforschungsbereich 537 'Institutionalisation and Historical Change' and, in particular, by the project 'Circulation of Legal Norms and Values in British Culture from 1688 to 1900'. The conference papers include essays on the theory of the public sphere from a systematic and historical point of view by Gert Melville, by Peter Uwe Hohendahl and by Jurgen Schlaeger, all of whom try to re-evaluate and/or improve upon Jurgen Habermas' seminal contribution to the discussion of the emergence of modernism. Alastair Mann's contribution investigates the situation in Scotland, particularly censorship and the oath of allegiance; Annette Pankratz focuses on the king's body as a site of the public sphere; Heinz-Joachim Mullenbrock looks into the widespread 'culture of contention' at the beginning of the eighteenth century; and Eckhart Hellmuth considers the reform movement at the end of the century and the radical democrats' insistence on the right to discuss the constitution. Ian Bell, who took part in the conference, suggested the inclusion of part of the first chapter of his seminal study Literature and Crime in Augustan England (1991). Beth Swan, Anna-Christina Giovanopoulos, and Christoph Houswitschka respectively analyse the ideologies of justice, the interrelation between journalism and crime, and the juridical evaluation of the crime of incest and its representation in public. Greta Olson investigates keyholes as liminal spaces between the public and the private, Juliet Wightman focuses on theatre and the bear pit, Uwe Boeker examines the court room and prison as public sites of discourse, and York-Gothart Mix discusses the German emigrant culture in North America.

This collection of essays focuses attention on the global impact of legal policies on levels of poverty. They illustrate the distinct dimensions of poverty in a range of different political and cultural settings and also show how poverty is exacerbated by quite discrete local cultural factors in some instances. There is,nonetheless a universal element which runs through all the contributions. The fate of those who are disadvantaged in society depends crucially on their access to goods through the world of work. Thus gender, ethnic background or disability can result in individuals having a much higher chance of experiencing poverty than those outwith these groups and the success of these groups in achieving a measure of prosperity is bound up with a multiplicity of geographical and political factors. This book is part of the Onati International Series in Law and Society.

Although the Romans lived in a society very different from ours, they were like us in fearing crime and in hoping to control it by means of the law. Ordinary citizens wanted protection from muggers in the streets or thieves at the public baths. They demanded laws to punish officials who abused power or embezzled public monies. Even emperors, who feared plotters and wanted to repress subversive ideas and doctrines, looked to the law for protection.

In the first book in English to focus on the substantive criminal law of ancient Rome, O. F. Robinson offers a lively study of an essential aspect of Roman life and identity. Robinson begins with a discussion of the framework within which the law operated and the nature of criminal responsibility. She looks at the criminal law of Rome as it was established in the late Republic under Sulla's system of standing jury-courts. Grouping offenses functionally into five chapters, she examines crimes committed for gain, crimes involving violence, sexual offenses, offenses against the state, and offenses against the due ordering of society.

This text presents a general theory of law based on the principles of liberation theology. Robert Rodes also points out the compatability of this theology with traditional doctrines of natural law and traditional Catholic social teaching.

Since the publication of the second edition of Law and Economics in 1988, there have been major developments in economics, jurisprudence, and in the field of law and economics. These changes are reflected in the updated and improved Third Edition. About 30% of the material in the new edition is different. The reader will find that the book incorporates recent scholarly contributions and court rulings on, for example, the Takings Clause of the constitution, the high-tech communication revolution in determining what constitutes a legal contract, no-fault insurance and its economic effects, and empirical cost-benefit analysis of environmental laws. Moreover, attention is paid to recent developments in anti-monopoly law as applied to high-tech information and communication firms. Students in management, policy, law, economics, and business programs, as well as law professionals, find the new edition of Law and Economics has kept up with the changing economic and legal climate.
Key Features
* Features new examinations of the takings clause of the Constitution, contract law, and tort law
* Includes new cost-benefit analyses in chapters on criminal law and environmental law
* Offers new insights into anti-monopoly laws, especially policies concerning high-tech industries

The 1993 and 1996 Constitutions introduced a new set of norms for the South African legal system: equality, freedom and human dignity have replaced racism, caprice and arbitrariness as guiding principles.;This work analyzes the fundamental values upon which the new democratic legal order in South Africa is based. It examines the challenges posed by these developments to legal practice and scholarship and concludes that lawyers have adopted an approach of "business as usual" to the new order.

Effective policy-making in the administration of justice requires a solid understanding of public behaviour. This book presents the results of the most wide-ranging survey ever conducted by an independent body or government agency into the experiences of ordinary citizens as they grapple with the sorts of problems that could ultimately end in the civil courts. Funded by the Nuffield Foundation, the survey identifies how often people experience problems for which there might be a legal solution and how they set about solving them.

Revealing crucial differences in the approach taken to different kinds of potential legal problems, the study describes the factors that influence decisions about whether and where to seek advice about problems, and whether and when to go to law. In addition to exploring experiences of courts, tribunals and ADR processes, the study also provides important insights into public confidence in the courts and the judiciary. For the first time the study reveals the public's perspective on access to civil justice and makes a significant contribution to debate about how far civil justice reforms coincide with public experience and expectations about resolving justiciable problems.

Leaving Iberia: Islamic Law and Christian Conquest in North West Africa examines Islamic legal responses to Muslims living under Christian rule in medieval and early modern Iberia and North Africa. The fall of al-Andalus, or reconquista, has long been considered a turning point, when the first substantial Muslim populations fell under permanent Christian rule. Yet a near-exclusive focus on conquered Iberian Muslims has led scholars to overlook a substantial body of legal opinions issued in response to Portuguese and Spanish occupation in Morocco itself, beginning in the early fifteenth century. By moving beyond Iberia and following Christian conquerors and Muslim emigrants into North Africa, Leaving Iberia links the juristic discourses on conquered Muslims on both sides of the Mediterranean, critiques the perceived exceptionalism of the Iberian Muslim predicament, and adds a significant chapter to the story of Christian-Muslim relations in the medieval Mediterranean. The final portion of the book explains the disparate fates of these medieval legal opinions in colonial Algeria and Mauritania, where jurists granted lasting authority to some opinions and discarded others. Based on research in the Arabic manuscript libraries of five countries, Leaving Iberia offers the first fully annotated translations of the major legal texts under analysis.

The "Law & Anthropology Yearbook" brings together a collection of studies that discuss legal problems raised by cultural differences between people and the law to which they are subject. Volume 10 of "Law & Anthropology" includes eight studies that discuss various forms in which the rights of indigenous people are violated. Topics include: the way in which the seemingly neutral criminal justice system of Canada discriminates against aboriginal people; the fact that land rights issues of indigenous peoples cannot be separated from political rights; the conceptual differences between the human rights concepts underlying the modern international system, and the concepts behind human rights as these are understood in the Guatemalan Highlands; and the relationship between the rights of indigenous peoples and upcoming new standards of environmental law.

The Corpus Iuris Civilis, a distillation of the entire body of Roman law, was directed by the Emperor Justinian and published in A.D. 533. The Institutes, the briefest of the four works that make up the Corpus, is considered to be the cradle of Roman law and remains the best and clearest introduction to the subject. A Companion to Justinian's "Institutes" will assist the modern-day reader of the Institutes, and is specifically intended to accompany the translation by Peter Birks and Grant McLeod, published by Cornell in 1987.

The book offers an intelligent and lucid guide to the legal concepts in the Institutes. The essays follow its structure and take up its principal subjects -- for example, slavery, marriage, property, and capital and noncapital crimes -- and give a thorough account of the law relating to each of them. Throughout, the authors explain technical Latin vocabulary and legal terms.

The Corpus Iuris Civilis, a distillation of the entire body of Roman law, was directed by the Emperor Justinian and published in A.D. 533. The Institutes, the briefest of the four works that make up the Corpus, is considered to be the cradle of Roman law and remains the best and clearest introduction to the subject. A Companion to Justinian's "Institutes" will assist the modern-day reader of the Institutes, and is specifically intended to accompany the translation by Peter Birks and Grant McLeod, published by Cornell in 1987.

The book offers an intelligent and lucid guide to the legal concepts in the Institutes. The essays follow its structure and take up its principal subjects -- for example, slavery, marriage, property, and capital and noncapital crimes -- and give a thorough account of the law relating to each of them. Throughout, the authors explain technical Latin vocabulary and legal terms.

The political editor of The Congressional Quarterly looks at how a bill becomes law--both on the open floors of Congress and behind closed doors. Using the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 as his focus, Ronald D. Elving shows how the bill was gradually expanded to draw support from both parties. "Authoritative and suspenseful".--The Washington Post Book World.

He argues for the reconstruction of legal analysis as a discipline of institutional imagination. He shows how a changed practice of legal analysis can help us re-imagine and reshape the dominant institutions of representative democracy, market economy and free civil society. The search for basic social alternatives, largely abandoned by philosophy and politics, can find in such a practice a new point of departure. Unger criticizes the dominant, rationalizing style of legal doctrine, with its obsessional focus upon adjudication and its urge to suppress or contain conflict or contradiction in law. He shows how we can turn legal analysis into a way of talking about the alternative institutional futures of a democratic society. The programmatic proposals of Unger's Politics are here placed within a wider field of possibilities. A major concern of the book is to explore how professional specialties such as legal thought can inform the public debate in a democracy. The book exemplifies this connection: Unger's arguments are accessible to those with no specialized knowledge of law or legal theory.

The thirteen original essays in this collection evaluate the role of elections in the development of democracy in the nations of Central America: Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Panama. Exploring the region's transformation over the last fifteen years from dictatorial to electoral rule, this volume of new essays is a major expansion and reworking of Elections and Democracy in Central America , published by the UNC Press in 1989. The essays reevaluate the status of democratization in each country over the last six years, including the transition to civilian rule in Panama. In addition to the country-by-country analysis, the book includes topical chapters on comparative voting behavior, the impact of outside election observers, and the roles of foreign actors and elites in the election process. Although the contributors express skepticism about the prospects for some countries to consolidate democracy, they are, on the whole, optimistic about Central America's democratic future. |A updated edition of the classic guide to the trails along the Blue Ridge Parkway. Veteran hiker Leonard Adkins has added new trails and updated descriptions and details for many other trails. He includes hikes and walks for every skill and interest level, from five-minute ""leg-stretchers"" to overnight outings.

This is a broad history of the western European legal tradition. From the modern age the author looks back to a time when Europe had a common law that transcended national and legal boundaries. This common law, which Bellomo calls the ""ius commune"", had developed in the 12th century from the fusion of Roman, canon and feudal law. Existing within the framework of the ""ius commune"" were the local laws or ""iura propria"" - the myriad laws of everyday life, the laws particular to the various kingdoms, principalities, cities, guilds and secular and ecclesiastical corporations. Bellomo illustrates how for centuries the ""ius commune"" permeated every aspect of the ""iura propria"", marking European law indelibly with its stamp. Because the ""iura propria"" emerged from the unifying norms and principles of the ""ius commune"", one can not properly understand local European systems of law without first understanding the ""ius commune"" and its influence on the legal concepts, institutions, procedures, documents, and doctrines of the ""iura propria"". Linking his history to modern day concerns, Bellomo argues that the codification that occurred in European countries during the 18th and 19th centuries has introduced ambiguity, rigidity and uncertainty into legal systems. A new common law for the whole of Europe, he asserts, would provide a much better vehicle for legal change and development in a time when the economic barriers between European nations are crumbling. Bellomo then describes the beginnings of the ""ius commune"" in the schools of the 12th century, discusses the development of Italian, French and German ""iura propria"", and incorporates into the text sketches of the great jurists who gave common law its intellectual vigour. He concludes with an account of the humanist jurists of the 15th, 16th and early 17th centuries.

Society and individual members thereof who approach the court in conscience desire justice. They place their hope not only in the knowledge but also in the morality of the judges. At a time when the values of the judiciary are under intense scrutiny, Noonan and Winston present an extensive, highly informed collection of readings with commentary and explication. They address the concept and role of judge, the act of judging, and the requirements and potential abuses inherent in the system and process of sitting in judgment. This is a reflective, yet eminently realistic consideration of the fundamental issues and questions involved in establishing a reasonable framework for assessing judicial morality. The work first examines qualities of the ideal, corrupt, and over-zealous or political judge. The editors next address the judge's role and response in view of the tensions rising not only from the facts of the case and legal precedents but also from such human qualities as compassion. They also look at the power of social expectations and personal beliefs as possible influences on judicial decisions. Finally, the editors consider the need judges have for independence and study that necessary factor in relationships to accountability and also potential for abuse. This is a learned, inclusive, yet accessible and captivating, work. It will clarify and reinvigorate discussion of critically important issues fundamental to an ethical judiciary.

It is impossible, Alan Watson asserts, to understand how law develops and how legal rules and structures relate to society without examining the issues both comparatively and historically. And in the Western world, he adds, it is equally impossible to understand law comparatively without a knowledge of Roman law. In this book, Watson combines his years of research in legal history with keen analytical insight to provide just such an understanding. Watson has divided the book into two related but independent parts. The first part, a revised and enlarged version of his 1970 volume ""The Law of the Ancient Romans"", provides a comprehensive description of the system of Roman law. Watson begins with a discussion of law and the Roman mind and proceeds to such topics as slavery, property, contracts, delicts, and succession. In part two he argues that comparative law - an area of study still in its infancy - can help us ""to identify the circumstances in which law changes, thereby uncovering the causes of legal development"". Guided by this purpose, Watson examines the ways in which Roman law influenced later legal systems and shows how comparative law can explain the role of law in society. He ties his explication throughout to individual issues. These include the structure of European legal systems, tort law in the French civil code, the structure of Blackstone's ""Commentaries on the Law of England"", differences in contract law in France and Germany, the parameters of judicial reasoning, lessons to be drawn from feudal law, and the interests of governments in making and communicating law.