This is the first major work on the interrelationship between Liberal Judaism and Rabbinic Law (Halachah) ever to have been produced in Britain, and in Europe since the nineteenth century. It represents a plea for a positive yet forthrightly critical approach to Rabbinic Law in general aswell as to a variety of specific topics such as the language of prayer, the status of women, medical confidentiality, euthanasia, Jewish identity, contraception, divorce, and Jewish territorial rights in Palestine/Israel.

John D. Rayner graduated from Emmanuel College, Cambridge and Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati. He is Emeritus Rabbi of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, London, Hon. Life-President of the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues, and Lecturer in Liturgy at Leo Baeck College, London.

Legal statements are, according to the authors, the most basic elements of the law. Nevertheless they must be considered not only as the pieces of a puzzle, but also as the components of a dynamic and highly complex reality: the law of contemporary society. The book presents an analysis of the different types of legal statements (mandatory rules, principles, power-conferring rules, definitions, permissions, values and the rule of recognition) from a threeefold perspective, that is, considering their logical structure, their function in legal reasoning as reasons for action, and their connections with the interests and power relationships among the individuals and the social groups. The result is conceived as a first step in the building of a general theory of law designed not as an isolated discourse but as a decisive element for the dynamization of the legal culture.

This is a time when the rule of law is seriously challenged, when governments threaten deliberately to break the law, and the independence of justice is jeopardised by unrelenting pressure from both the executive and the media. This book aims at contributing to restoring trust in judges as custodians of the law and justice, through a comparison between Civil and Common Law countries. It offers a rare opportunity to gather the expertise of eminent judges and legal authorities from five different countries, providing a unique insight into their work and the way they deliver justice based on their respective professional experience and practise of the law. Far from being a highly technical debate between experts, however, the book is accessible to students and the general public, and raises important contemporary legal issues that involve them both as citizens, with justice as a shared aspiration, and a common attachment to the rule of law.

"A book on a timely and powerful theme....While others have documented the damage that litigation does to our economy, Garry wants to show us its cost to our character as a nation". -- Walter Olson, Author, The Litigation Explosion

Throughout our history, America has been shaped by a series of transforming events and institutions -- the Pilgrims' Puritanism, the promise of Jacksonian democracy, the staggering rise of corporate capitalism, and the advent of electronic media. Today, a new strain of litigious behavior veers our culture away from the proverbial "melting pot" to one in which fellow citizens become bitter adversaries. Law is becoming the next American frontier where litigious pioneers try to stake out new opportunities for wealth and fame.

A Nation of Adversaries brilliantly examines how the litigation explosion has singed our culture by needlessly crowding courthouses and fueling the growth of the lawyer population. Dr. Patrick Garry, an expert on the effect of the courts on American society, insightfully points out how our increasingly litigant-oriented mindset is reinforcing a self-centered culture of undue expectation and entitlement. He offers a blistering look at litigation's invasion into our once formally mindful society. Anyone interested in new trends of human behavior, as well as professionals in sociology, the legal profession, behavior therapy, and clinical psychology, will find this a shrewd commentary on the creation of a new culture of identity in America.

In the study of forms of legal reasoning, logic and argumentation theory long followed separate tracks. Legal logicians' tended to focus on a deductive reconstruction of justifying a decision, disregarding the dialectical process leading to the chosen justification. Others instead emphasized the adversarial and discretionary nature of legal reasoning, involving reasonable evaluation of alternative choices, and the use of analogical reasoning. Recently, however, developments in Artificial Intelligence and Law have paved the way for overcoming this separation. Logic has widened its scope to defensible argumentation, and informal accounts of analogy and dialectics have inspired the construction of computer programs. Thus the prospect is emerging of an integrated logical and dialectical account of legal argument, adding to the understanding of legal reasoning, and providing a formal basis for computer tools that assist and mediate legal debates while leaving room for human initiative. This book presents contributions to this development. From a logical point of view it covers topics such as evaluating conflicting arguments, weighing reasons, modelling legal disputes as a dialogue game, the role of the burden of proof, the relation between principles, rules, reasons and facts, and the relation between deductive and nondeductive arguments. Written by leading scholars in the field and building on recent developments in logic and Artificial Intelligence, the chapters provide a state-of-the-art account of research on the logical aspects of legal argument.

This book deals with a central problem throughout the legal profession -a solution to the problem is sought and reached in some basic form. At the centre of this prob lematic is the question indicated by the title: "What is the nature of "discovery" in legal decision-making?" In the final chapter that problem and the solution reached will be seen to have ramifications throughout the entire field of legal practice and theory. However, the focus of the argument is maintained first to specify adequately the particular manifestation of the problem in a variety of legal fields and secondly to arrive at a precise basic solution to this range of problems. The presentation of the solution is not dictated by the norms of clarity and coherence, but by the dynam ics of the struggle to reach the solution and by aspects of the problem available to various sub-groups within the legal profession -theorists, judges, arbitrators. So, I begin from a relatively familiar zone, discussions of discovery in legal theory before moving to more unfamiliar territory. This book is not a thorough survey of problems and writings on discovery. Rather, the strategic selection of problems and assessment of solutions across the first four chapters represents four aspects of the problem. Those chapters invite the reader to rise to the sense of occurrence of a single problem in a variety of contexts."

On a planet where urbanization is rapidly expanding, nowhere is the growth more pronounced than in cities of the global South, and in particular, Africa. African metropolises are harbingers of the urban challenges that lie ahead as societies grapple with the fractured social, economic, and political relations forming within these new, often mega, cities. The African Metropolis integrates geographical and historical perspectives to examine how processes of segregation, marginalization, resilience, and resistance are shaping cities across Africa, spanning from Nigeria and Ghana to Kenya, Ethiopia, and South Africa. The chapters pay particular attention to the voices and daily realities of those most vulnerable to urban transformations, and to questions such as: Who governs? Who should the city serve? Who has a right to the city? And how can the built spaces and contentious legacies of colonialism and prior development regimes be inclusively reconstructed? In addition to highlighting critical contemporary debates, the book furthers our ability to examine the transformations taking place in cities of the global South, providing detailed accounts of local complexities while also generating insights that can scale up and across to similar cities around the world. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of African Studies, urban development and human geography.

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.

Informatics and the Foundations of Legal Reasoning represents a close collaboration between a wide range of disciplines and countries. Fourteen papers, together with a long analytical introduction by the editors, were selected from the contributions of legal theorists, computer scientists, philosophers and logicians who were members of an International Working Group supported by the European Commission. The Group was mandated to work towards determining how far the law is amenable to formal modeling, and in what ways computers might assist legal thinking and practice. The book is the result of discussions held by the Group over two and half years. It will help students and researchers from different backgrounds to focus on a common set of topics of increasing general interest. It embodies the results of work in progress and suggests many issues for further discussion. A stimulating text for undergraduate and graduate courses in law, philosophy and computer science departments, as well as for those interested in the place of computers in legal practice, especially at the international level.

Public procurement law, regulating public sector purchasing of certain contracts for goods, works and services, is an area of EU law which is closely intertwined with the UK's economy. It will almost inevitably be affected by the consequences of Brexit. At a time of significant uncertainty, this book explores policy directions which domestic procurement law could take in the future, including whether 'Buy National' policies might feasibly be introduced, or whether existing procurement procedures could be significantly reviewed.

This book is a collection of judgments drawn from the innovative Wild Law Judgment Project. In participating in the Wild Law Judgment Project, which was inspired by various feminist judgment projects, contributors have creatively reinterpreted judicial decisions from an Earth-centred point of view by rewriting existing judgments, or creating fictional judgments, as wild law. Authors have confronted the specific challenges of aligning existing Western legal systems with Thomas Berry's philosophy of Earth jurisprudence through judgment writing and rewriting. This book thus opens up judicial decision-making and the common law to critical scrutiny from a wild law or Earth-centred perspective. Based upon ecocentric rather than human-centred or anthropocentric principles, Earth jurisprudence poses a unique critical challenge to the dominant anthropocentric or human-centred focus and orientation of the common law. The authors interrogate the anthropocentric and property rights assumptions embedded in existing common law by placing Earth and the greater community of life at the centre of their rewritten and hypothetical judgments. Covering areas as diverse as tort law, intellectual property law, criminal law, environmental law, administrative law, international law, native title law and constitutional law, this unique collection provides a valuable tool for practitioners and students who are interested in learning more about the emerging ecological jurisprudence movement. It helps us to see more clearly what a new system of law might look like: one in which Earth really matters.

Habermas' recent work makes a major claim, that is to be able to determine what is the most rational thing to do. Postmodernists, notably Lyotard, have perhaps successfully belittled this claim as too positivistic. However it is difficult to see their work as offering more than sheer irrationality as the supposed alternative to Habermas. This book does not dispute the validity of the postmodern critique but it is concerned to resist the irrationality which, thus far, seems to coincide with anti-positivism. The concept utilized in this book is one of justice, a concept that the author uses to demonstrate the theories of both Habermas and Lyotard.

In pieces drawn from over the course of his distinguished career, pre-eminent historian Roy Mottahedeh explores such diverse topics as the social bonds that connected people in the early Islamic Middle East, the transmission of learning in the Muslim world, religious and ethnic toleration in the past and in the present, and the theme of ‘wonders’ in The Thousand and One Nights. His essays extend from the early Islamic period through the medieval era and on to modern times. A number concern Iran, the country of his father’s birth, and again Mottahedeh’s studies range widely, including Persian panegyric poetry, the origins of the city of Kashan, and Shi‘ite political thought. Speaking to contemporary concerns, he also touches upon voting rights, academic freedom, and censorship. Intended not only for those in Islamic studies but for students of history and interested lay readers, there are introductions to each section written with the non-specialist in mind, and these sections progress from more general topics to those more specialized. In the Shadow of the Prophet thus reflects Mottahedeh’s desire that the Islamic world and its history become better understood so that cooperation between Muslims and non-Muslims might become the order of the day.

With advances in technology and maritime transport, human use of the ocean now extends beyond the traditional activities of navigation and fishing. Emerging activities such as bioprospecting, deep seabed mineral and hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation, offshore renewable energy developments and marine scientific probes of deep sea areas challenge the applicability of maritime law and policy in new ways. This handbook examines current regulatory and enforcement instruments and mechanisms for different sectors of maritime activity. Covering various jurisdictions, its specially commissioned chapters are authored by some of the world's foremost authorities on maritime law, and offer unique perspectives on maritime law, policy and practice. This highly relevant collection is organised into four parts: * International Law Considerations in Maritime Regulation and Enforcement * Role of States and other International Actors in Maritime Regulation and Enforcement * Regulation and Enforcement in Different Maritime Sectors * Current Issues and Future Challenges This comprehensive reference work will be of interest to scholars and students of maritime law, practitioners and non-lawyers interested in the regulation of offshore areas, as well as policy-makers.

The book explores the relationship between Muslims, the Common Law and Shari'ah post-9/11. The book looks at the accommodation of Shari'ah Law within Western Common Law legal traditions and the role of the judiciary, in particular, in drawing boundaries for secular democratic states with Muslim populations who want resolutions to conflicts that also comply with the dictates of their faith. Salim Farrar and Ghena Krayem consider the question of recognition of Shari'ah by looking at how the flexibilities that exists in both the Common Law and Shari'ah provide unexplored avenues for navigation and accommodation. The issue is explored in a comparative context across several jurisdictions and case law is examined in the contexts of family law, business and crime from selected jurisdictions with significant Muslim minority populations including: Australia, Canada, England and Wales, and the United States. The book examines how Muslims and the broader community have framed their claims for recognition against a backdrop of terrorism fears, and how Common Law judiciaries have responded within their constitutional and statutory confines and also within the contemporary contexts of demands for equality, neutrality and universal human rights. Acknowledging the inherent pragmatism, flexibility and values of the Common Law, the authors argue that the controversial issue of accommodation of Shari'ah is not necessarily one that requires the establishment of a separate and parallel legal system.

The publication of The Formation of the Sunni Schools of Law, Ninth-Tenth Centuries C.E., first as a University of Pennsylvania doctoral dissertation in 1992, and subsequently as a monograph in 1997 (Studies in Islamic Law and Society, Brill), established Christopher Melchert as a pre-eminent scholar of the history of Islamic law and institutions. Through close readings of works on fiqh, meticulous unpacking of data in biographical dictionaries, and careful attention to curricular, pious, pedagogical, and scholarly practices, Melchert has subsequently illuminated the processes and procedures that undergirded the development of Islamic movements and institutions in the formative period of Islam. The present volume brings together sixteen of his articles, including those considered his most important as well as ones that are difficult to access. Originally published between 1997 and 2014, they are arranged chronologically under three rubrics - hadith, piety and law. The material is presented in a new format, updated by Melchert where appropriate, and indexed. The appearance of these articles together in a single volume makes this book a highly significant and welcome contribution to the field of classical Islamic Studies.

Geoffrey Samuel's distinctive approach is to present the English common law in the light of its history and its dominant ideas. A student will learn not only what are the major rules of private law and civil law procedure, but will grasp the spirit of the common law. He will thus learn why they exist in a particular form and how common lawyers make them work. Civilian terms are used to provide a guide for the student from a civil law system to understand the initially strange terms and approaches of the common lawyer. This book is clear and insightful. It should be read particularly by Masters students and those embarking on a doctorate involving study of the common law.' - John Bell, Pembroke College, UK'To write a good introduction to the common law aimed mainly at civil lawyers is a real challenge. One needs not only to master the common law, its history and its sociological backgrounds, but also to understand how the prospective readers think in their own civilian legal systems. With his longstanding teaching activities in civil law countries, his obvious deep knowledge of the historical roots of civil and common law, Geoffrey Samuel offers here a book which should be pressed into every hands across the civil law world. Finally, we get here an introduction to the common law truly written for civilian lawyers and students, which is easy to understand and thoughtful. A brilliant piece for which the author should be praised.' - Pascal Pichonnaz, University of Fribourg, Switzerland 'Common law has remained enigmatic for lawyers from the civil law legal culture. This book presents a wonderfully compact introduction to the English common law and explains concisely why it is as it is today. Geoffrey Samuel offers insightful and scholarly first-rate representation of those characteristics which stand out for the civil law lawyer. Clarifying and supporting diagrams are especially helpful for non-common law lawyers. Samuel's A Short Introduction to the Common Law is highly recommended for anyone looking for clear and fluently written basic insight into the common law and its historical foundation.' - Jaakko Husa, University of Lapland, Finland This book provides a short, accessible introduction to the English common law tradition, in particular to the civil process. It adopts an approach which explains the historical development of the common law institutions and procedures whilst also setting them in perspective through a comparative outlook. Aspects of the common law are contrasted on occasions with structural or functional equivalents (or near equivalents) in the civil law. The key topics covered include: the English civil courts (and other dispute resolution institutions and alternatives), civil procedure, remedies, sources of law, legal reasoning, legal education, legal theories, legal institutions and concepts and legal categories. In addition to textual description and analysis, the book makes frequent use of visual diagrams to explain and to illustrate aspects of the common law. Providing both an overview of the English common law and an insight into the legal mentality of common lawyers, the book will appeal both to first year law students as well as to continental jurists who are investigating the common law for the first time. Contents: Preface Introduction 1. Development of the English Courts 2. Development of the English Procedural Tradition 3. English Law Remedies 4. English Legal Education and English Legal Thought (1): Sources and Methods 5. English Legal Education and English Legal Thought (2): Academic Theories 6. Legal Institutions and Concepts in the Common Law (1): Persons and Things 7. Legal Institutions and Concepts in the Common Law (2): Causes of Action and Obligations Concluding Remarks Bibliography Index

One of the principal arguments put forth by Brexit supporters is that by freeing the UK from the stranglehold of EU law, the country will be able to expand its markets through increased bilateral trade and enhance economic growth. This book tests this proposition by reference to the car industry. Brexit and the Car Industry explores the international position of the car market to argue that the hope of Brexit bringing regulatory freedom is illusory. The book starts by examining the structure of the vehicle industry, how its regulatory framework evolved and how the environment in which it operates is constrained by international standards and the practicalities associated with trading across different regulatory systems. By examining the evolution of vehicle regulations, particularly related to the environment, it argues that a UK independent path is not only impractical but self-defeating. The private car market is structured in such a way that is global, and meeting the various international regulatory requirements is a price of entry requirement which no bilateral trade agreements are likely to alter. The book also considers changing environment affecting the car industry in the context of an aspiration for regulatory freedom. The response to climate change and the impact of technological change - specifically driverless vehicles - are big questions for the industry and both are examined in this book. The book also considers the emergence of large metropolitan areas imposing their own use and environmental requirements operating separately to national standards. The future of electric and autonomous vehicles combined with the complexity of the regulatory environment with both international and localised pollution measures make the UK navigating a safe independent path through with a viable car industry highly questionable. Providing a comprehensive review of the relationship between regulatory frameworks and free trading models, this book is aimed at industry and legal professionals. It will also be of interest to students studying market behaviour, free trade law and the free movement of goods, and environmental protection.

This book offers an in-depth analysis of the differences between common law and civil law systems from various theoretical perspectives. Written by a global network of experts, it explores the topic against the background of a variety of legal traditions.Common law and civil law are typically presented as antagonistic players on a field claimed by diverse legal systems: the former being based on precedent set by judges in deciding cases before them; the latter being founded on a set of rules intended to govern the decisions of those applying them. Perceived in this manner, common law and civil law differ in terms of the (main) source(s) of law; who is to create them; who is (merely) to draw from them; and whether the law itself is pure each step of the way, or whether the law's purity may be tarnished when confronted with a set of contingent facts. These differences have deep roots in (legal) history - roots that allow us to trace them back to distinct traditions. Nevertheless, it is questionable whether the divide thus depicted is as great as it may seem: international and supranational legal systems unconcerned by national peculiarities appear to level the playing field. A normative understanding of constitutions seems to grant ever-greater authority to High Court decisions based on thinly worded maxims in countries that adhere to the civil law tradition. The challenges contemporary regulation faces call for ever-more detailed statutes governing the decisions of judges in the common law tradition. These and similar observations demand a structural reassessment of the role of judges, the power of precedent, the limits of legislation and other features often thought to be so different in common and civil law systems. The book addresses this reassessment.

Hong Kong is one of the very few places in the world where the common law can be practiced in a language other than English. Introduced into the courtroom over a decade ago, Cantonese has significantly altered the everyday working of the common law in China's most Westernized city. In "The Common Law in Two Voices," Ng explores how English and Cantonese respectively reinforce and undermine the practice of legal formalism.
This first-ever ethnographic study of Hong Kong's unique legal system in the midst of social and political transition, this book provides important insights into the social nature of language and the work of institutions. Ng contends that the dilemma of legal bilingualism in Hong Kong is emblematic of the inherent tensions of postcolonial Hong Kong. Through the legal dramas presented in the book, readers will get a fresh look at the former British colony that is now searching for its identity within a powerful China.

This book provides the definitive reference point on all the issues pertaining to dealing with the 'crisis of the rule of law' in the European Union. Both Member State and EU levels are considered. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the concrete legal bases and instruments that the EU may avail itself of for enforcing rule of law, and the volume clearly demonstrates that a number of legally sound ways of rule of law oversight are available. Contributors are leading scholars who assess the potential role to be played by the various bodies in the context of dealing with the EU's rule of law imperfections.

What happens when authorities you venerate condone something you know is wrong? Every major religion and philosophy once condoned or approved of slavery, but in modern times nothing is seen as more evil. Americans confront this crisis of authority when they erect statues of Founding Fathers who slept with their slaves. And Muslims faced it when ISIS revived sex slavery, justifying it with verses from the Quran and the practice of Muhammad. Exploring the moral and ultimately theological problem of slavery, Jonathan A.C. Brown traces how the Christian, Jewish and Islamic traditions have tried to reconcile modern moral certainties with the infallibility of God’s message. He lays out how Islam viewed slavery in theory, and the reality of how it was practiced across Islamic civilization. Finally, Brown carefully examines arguments put forward by Muslims for the abolition of slavery.

Against a backdrop of seven hundred years of bourgeois struggle, eminent lawyer and educator, Michael E. Tigar, develops a Marxist theory of law and jurisprudence based upon the Western experience. This well-researched and documented study traces the role of law and lawyers in the European bourgeoisies's conquest of power and in the process complements the analyses of such major figures as R.H. tawney and Max Weber. Using a wide frange of primary sources, Tigar demonstrates that the legal theory of insurgent bourgeoisie predated the Protestant Reformation and was a major ideological ingredient of the bourgeois revolution.

This book has two related aims: to investigate the frequently voiced claim that legal argument is nonformal in nature and, within the limits of such an investigation, to ascertain the most general proper ties of law as a rational system. Examination of a number of views of legal argument, selected from recent discussions in Germany, Belgium, and the English-speaking countries, will lead to the follow ing main conclusions. The nonformalistic conceptions of the logic of legal argument are ambiguous and unclear. Moreover, insofar as these conceptions are capable of clarification in the light of recent analytical methodology, they can be seen to be either mistaken or else compatible with the formalistic position. Because law is socially directive and coordinative, it is dependent upon theoretical psycho sociology and calls, in principle, for a deontic and inductive logic. The primary function of legal argument is to provide continuing reinterpretation and confirmation of legal rules, conceived as theo retical prescriptions. On the basis of this conception, the old juris prudential conflict between formalism and rule-scepticism appears substantially resolved. Aristotle, the founder of the theory of argument, conceived it as "the science of establishing conclusions" (bnO'l; fl'YJ &no e "u, ), designed to guide people in rational argumentation. In time, how ever, logic forsook its practical function and developed as a highly abstract and disinterested study, today called "formal logic"; and the theory of practical argument was either neglected or relegated to an appendix to rhetoric."