Bringing together specialists in ancient history, archaeology and Roman law, this book provides new perspectives on long-distance trade in the Roman world. Recent archaeological work has shown that maritime trade across the Mediterranean intensified greatly at the same time as the Roman state was extending its power overseas. This book explores aspects of this development and its relationship with changes in the legal and institutional apparatus that supported maritime commerce. It analyses the socio-legal framework within which maritime trade was conducted, and in doing so presents a new understanding of the role played by legal and social institutions in the economy of the Roman world.Chapters cover: Roman maritime trade, the influence of commercial considerations on navigational decision making, Roman legal responses to the threat of piracy, the conduct of Roman maritime trade from a socio-legal perspective, the role of written documentation in the transport process, maritime finance and the insights provided by the juristic interpretation of contracts of carriage-by-sea into aspects of Roman private law.

On the 11th of March 2011, an earthquake registering 9.0 on the Richter scale (the most powerful to ever strike Japan) hit the Tohoku region in northern Japan. The earthquake produced a devastating tsunami that wiped out coastal cities and towns, leaving 18,561 people dead or registered as missing. Due to the disaster, the capability of the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, operated by Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), was compromised, causing nuclear meltdown. The hydrogen blast destroyed the facilities, resulting in a spread of radioactive materials, and, subsequently, serious nuclear contamination. This combined event - earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown - became known as the Great East Japan Earthquake Disaster. This book examines the response of the Japanese government to the disaster, and its attempts to answer the legal questions posed by the combination of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown. Japanese law, policy, and infrastructure were insufficiently prepared for these disasters, and the country's weaknesses were brutally exposed. This book analyses these failings, and discusses what Japan, and other countries, can learn from these events.

An expert analysis of the relevant law and jurisprudence in mass litigation, this edited work examines the diverse and complex transnational considerations and issues of collective redress. With contributions from distinguished and authoritative commentators on this topic, the coverage is broad, thorough, and practically focused. The book offers new perspectives on the challenges of collective redress as it innovatively combines a comparative and cross border approach. Organized clearly into sections, it provides in-depth comment on these challenges from a national, European, and global perspective. With detailed analysis of the relevant law and jurisprudence in this area offering a significant practical impact, this book also examines possible solutions to the challenges identified, covering important topics and issues within collective redress mechanisms; the private international law perspective on collective redress; reception of foreign collective redress; and extraterritoriality and US law. Including contributions from the jurisdictions most relevant to these conflict of laws issues, this book unites global expertise to provide information on a complex topic and offer a solution-based approach to the collective redress landscape.

The founding of the Roman Principate was a time of great turmoil. This book brings together a set of important Latin inscriptions, including the recently discovered documents concerning the death of Germanicus and trial of Cn. Piso, in order to illustrate the developing sense of dynasty that underpinned the new monarchy of Augustus. Each inscription is supplied with its original text, a new English translation, and a full introduction and historical commentary that will be useful to students and scholars alike. The book also provides important technical help in understanding the production and interpretation of documents and inscriptions, thereby making it an excellent starting point for introducing students to Roman epigraphy.

The founding of the Roman Principate was a time of great turmoil. This book brings together a set of important Latin inscriptions, including the recently discovered documents concerning the death of Germanicus and trial of Cn. Piso, in order to illustrate the developing sense of dynasty that underpinned the new monarchy of Augustus. Each inscription is supplied with its original text, a new English translation, and a full introduction and historical commentary that will be useful to students and scholars alike. The book also provides important technical help in understanding the production and interpretation of documents and inscriptions, thereby making it an excellent starting point for introducing students to Roman epigraphy.

First published in 1939, this book is the second edition of a 1925 original. Aimed at beginners, it sets forth the main principles of Roman Law from both classical and later times, avoiding discussion of the problems involved in a more advanced study of the subject. Chapters are divided into three broad areas, concerning laws relating to persons, things and actions. An additional discussion of the sources and arrangement of laws is also provided. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in Roman law and legal history.

From the early days of colonial rule in India, the British established a two-tier system of legal administration. Matters deemed secular were subject to British legal norms, while suits relating to the family were adjudicated according to Hindu or Muslim law, known as personal law. This important new study analyses the system of personal law in colonial India through a re-examination of women's rights. Focusing on Hindu law in western India, it challenges existing scholarship, showing how - far from being a system based on traditional values - Hindu law was developed around ideas of liberalism, and that this framework encouraged questions about equality, women's rights, the significance of bodily difference, and more broadly the relationship between state and society. Rich in archival sources, wide-ranging and theoretically informed, this book illuminates how personal law came to function as an organising principle of colonial governance and of nationalist political imaginations.

This 1931 book was written to replace The Elementary Principles of Roman Law, but it is not a second edition of that book. It is more systematic in plan: it aims at giving a central view of the different institutions of the Private Law and of the notions which underlie them. But its purpose is the same: its is for the use of students who have read the Institutes and little more, and it is intended to stimulate rather than to inform. It will still be of interest today.

The use of writing in the development of Greek law was unique. In this comparative 2008 study Professor Gagarin shows the reader how Greek law developed and explains why it became so different from the legal systems with which most legal historians are familiar. While other early communities wrote codes of law for academic or propaganda purposes, the Greeks used writing extensively to make their laws available to a relatively large segment of the community. On the other hand, the Greeks made little use of writing in litigation whereas other cultures used it extensively in this area, often putting written documents at the heart of the judicial process. Greek law thereby avoided becoming excessively technical and never saw the development of a specialised legal profession. This book will be of interest to those with an interest in the history of law, as well as ancient historians.

This book is the first comprehensive study of the meaning and measure of enforceability. While we have long debated what restraints should govern the conduct of our social life, we have paid relatively little attention to the question of what it means to make a restraint enforceable. Focusing on the enforceability of legal rights but also addressing the enforceability of moral rights and social conventions, Mark Reiff explains how we use punishment and compensation to make restraints operative in the world. After describing the various means by which restraints may be enforced, Reiff explains how the sufficiency of enforcement can be measured, and he presents a unified theory of deterrence, retribution, and compensation that shows how these aspects of enforceability are interconnected. Reiff then applies his theory of enforceability to illuminate a variety of real-world problem situations.

In this book, Andrew Riggsby offers a survey of the main areas of Roman law, both substantive and procedural, and how the legal world interacted with the rest of Roman life. Emphasizing basic concepts, he recounts its historical development and focuses in particular on the later Republic and early centuries of the Roman Empire. The volume is designed as an introductory work, with brief chapters that will be accessible to college students with little knowledge of legal matters or Roman antiquity. The text is also free of technical language and Latin terminology. It can be used in courses on Roman law, Roman history, or comparative law, but it will also serve as a useful reference for more advanced students and scholars.

This book addresses three major questions about law and legal systems: (1) What are the defining and organising forms of legal institutions, legal rules, interpretative methodologies, and other legal phenomena? (2) How does frontal and systematic focus on these forms advance understanding of such phenomena? (3) What credit should the functions of forms have when such phenomena serve policy and related purposes, rule of law values, and fundamental political values such as democracy, liberty, and justice? This book seeks to offer general answers to these questions and thus gives form in the law its due. The answers not only provide articulate conversancy with the subject but also reveal insights into the nature of law itself, the oldest and foremost problem in legal theory and allied subjects.

Focusing on the Maghrib in the period between 1300 and 1500, in this 2002 book David Powers analyses the application of Islamic law through the role of the mufti. To unravel the sophistication of the law, he considers six cases which took place in the Marinid period on subjects as diverse as paternity, fornication, water rights, family endowments, the slander of the Prophet and disinheritance. The source for these disputes are fatwas issued by the muftis, which the author uses to situate each case in its historical context and to interpret the principles of Islamic law. In so doing he demonstrates that, contrary to popular stereotypes, muftis were in fact dedicated to reasoned argument, and sensitive to the manner in which law, society and culture interacted. The book represents a groundbreaking approach to a complex field. It will be read by students of Islamic law and those interested in traditional Muslim societies.

Law is too often perceived solely as state-based rules and institutions that provide a rational alternative to religious rites and ancestral customs. The Spirit of Hindu Law uses the Hindu legal tradition as a heuristic tool to question this view and reveal the close linkage between law and religion. Emphasizing the household, the family, and everyday relationships as additional social locations of law, it contends that law itself can be understood as a theology of ordinary life. An introduction to traditional Hindu law and jurisprudence, this book is structured around key legal concepts such as the sources of law and authority, the laws of persons and things, procedure, punishment and legal practice. It combines investigation of key themes from Sanskrit legal texts with discussion of Hindu theology and ethics, as well as thorough examination of broader comparative issues in law and religion.

Over two billion people still live under authoritarian rule. Moreover, authoritarian regimes around the world command enormous financial and economic resources, rivaling those controlled by advanced democracies. Yet authoritarian regimes as a whole are facing their greatest challenges in the recent two decades due to rebellions and economic stress. Extended periods of hardship have the potential of introducing instability to regimes because members of the existing ruling coalition suffer welfare losses that force them to consider alternatives, while previously quiescent masses may consider collective uprisings a worthwhile gamble in the face of declining standards of living. Economic Shocks and Authoritarian Stability homes in on the economic challenges facing authoritarian regimes through a set of comparative case studies that include Iran, Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Malaysia, Indonesia, Russia, the Eastern bloc countries, China, and Taiwan-authored by the top experts in these countries. Through these comparative case studies, this volume provides readers with the analytical tools for assessing whether the current round of economic shocks will lead to political instability or even regime change among the world's autocracies. This volume identifies the duration of economic shocks, the regime's control over the financial system, and the strength of the ruling party as key variables to explain whether authoritarian regimes would maintain the status quo, adjust their support coalitions, or fall from power after economic shocks.

Civil law and common law systems are held to enforce promises differently: civil law, in principle, will enforce any promise, while common law will enforce only those with 'consideration'. In that respect, modern civil law supposedly differs from the Roman law from which it descended, where a promise was enforced depending on the type of contract the parties had made. This 2001 volume is concerned with the extent to which these characterizations are true, and how these and other differences affect the enforceability of promises. Beginning with a concise history of these distinctions, the volume then considers how twelve European legal systems would deal with fifteen concrete situations. Finally, a comparative section considers why legal systems enforce certain promises and not others, and what promises should be enforced. This is the second completed project of The Common Core of European Private Law launched at the University of Trento.

For centuries, courts across the common law world have developed systems of law by building bodies of judicial decisions. In deciding individual cases, common law courts settle litigation and move the law in new directions. By virtue of their place at the top of the judicial hierarchy, courts at the apex of common law systems are unique in that their decisions and, in particular, the language used in those decisions, resonate through the legal system. Although both the common law and apex courts have been studied extensively, scholars have paid less attention to the relationship between the two. By analyzing apex courts and the common law from multiple angles, this book offers an entry point for scholars in disciplines related to law - such as political science, history, and sociology - who are seeking a deeper understanding and new insights as to how the common law applies to and is relevant within their own disciplines.

Greeks wrote mostly on papyrus, but the Romans wrote solemn religious, public and legal documents on wooden tablets often coated with wax. This book investigates the historical significance of this resonant form of writing; its power to order the human realm and cosmos and to make documents efficacious; its role in court; the uneven spread - an aspect of Romanization - of this Roman form outside Italy, as provincials made different guesses as to what would please their Roman overlords; and its influence on the evolution of Roman law. An historical epoch of Roman legal transactions without writing is revealed as a juristic myth of origins. Roman legal documents on tablets are the ancestors of today's dispositive legal documents - the document as the act itself. In a world where knowledge of the Roman law was scarce - and enforcers scarcer - the Roman law drew its authority from a wider world of belief.

The English common lawyers wielded their greatest influence in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, with names like Fortescue, Littleton and More. In these years they were more than the only organized lay profession: in the infancy of statute, they, more than anyone, shaped and changed the law; they were the managerial elite of the country; they were the single most dynamic group in society. This book is a study of their formative impact on the whole of English life. Part I examines the legal profession, its position, recruitment, training and career structure, taking as an example the career of Thomas Kebell, a serjeant at-law from Leicestershire, for whom documentation is unusually complete. Part II analyses legal practice: how the lawyer acquired and kept clients, his relationship with them, the pattern of employment, the nature of practice as revealed in the year books, and the attitudes and approaches of the lawyer to the law. The third part considers the impact of the lawyers on substantive law and legal organization.

The use of writing in the development of Greek law was unique. In this comparative study Professor Gagarin shows the reader how Greek law developed and explains why it became so different from the legal systems with which most legal historians are familiar. While other early communities wrote codes of law for academic or propaganda purposes, the Greeks used writing extensively to make their laws available to a relatively large segment of the community. On the other hand, the Greeks made little use of writing in litigation whereas other cultures used it extensively in this area, often putting written documents at the heart of the judicial process. Greek law thereby avoided becoming excessively technical and never saw the development of a specialised legal profession. This book will be of interest to those with an interest in the history of law, as well as ancient historians.

Roman Law, since its earliest days of the XII Tables, to the Justinian code over one thousand years later, is arguably the most influential body of law ever developed, remaining at the core of European legal systems until the end of the eighteenth century and informing the civil law and (to a lesser extent) the common law to this day. The first edition of Peter Buckland's classic textbook on the subject was published in 1921. Professor Peter Stein's revised third edition published in 1963 updated the original so that it reflected Professor Buckland's own later thoughts on the subject until his death in 1945. This revised edition examines the law of the Empire (or classical law) and also tracks later developments, including the legislation of Justinian. It is primarily concerned with the law but historical developments are also kept in view, so as to give the student the broadest perspective on the subject.

Economic Principles of Law, first published in 2007, applies economics to the doctrines, rules and remedies of the common law. In plain English and using non-technical analysis, it offers an introduction and exposition of the 'economic approach' to law - one of the most exciting and vibrant fields of legal scholarship and applied economics. Beginning with a brief history of the field, it sets out the basic economic concepts useful to lawyers, and applies these to assess the core areas of the common law - property, contract, tort and crime - with particular emphasis on their doctrinal structure and remedies. This is done using leading cases drawn from the birthplace of the common law (England & Wales) and other common law jurisdictions. The book serves as a primer to the wider use of economics which has become increasingly important for law students, lawyers, legislators, regulators and those concerned with our legal system generally.

Natural law theory has been undergoing a revival, especially in political philosophy and jurisprudence. Yet, most fundamentally, natural law theory is not a political theory, but a moral theory, or more accurately a theory of practical rationality. According to the natural law account of practical rationality, the basic reasons for actions are basic goods that are grounded in the nature of human beings. Practical rationality aims to identify and characterize reasons for action and to explain how choice between actions worth performing can be appropriately governed by rational standards. These standards are justified by reference to features of the human goods that are the fundamental reasons for action. This book is a defence of a contemporary natural law theory of practical rationality, demonstrating its inherent plausibility and engaging systematically with rival egoist, consequentialist, Kantian and virtue accounts.