Explains the basic tenets of the Catholic Faith and why we hold them. Delves into the historical background of virtually everything people find hard to understand about our Religion, such as priestly celibacy, sacred images, the Church and the Bible, the primacy of Peter, Communion under one kind, invocation of the Saints, etc. First published in 1876, when there was much anti- Catholic sentiment in the U.S., it sold 1.4 million copies in 40 years and has been reprinted many times since.

This collection of essays brings together the work of many of the world's leading Contract Law scholars. It focuses upon a common central theme---the question of good faith and fair dealing in the Law of Contract. The book is divided into several parts: the first part is an Introduction; Part II examines the requirement of good faith and its role in the formation of contracts; Part III is concerned with contractual obligations; Part IV examines Breach of Contract and Remedial Issues. The work will be of widespread interest to scholars of Private Law in both Common and Civil Law jurisdictions.

This important collection of essays by a leading legal theorist seeks to re-locate the relationship between the traditional concerns of legal theory and the sociology of law, by establishing a consistent theoretical approach to the analysis of law in contemporary Western societies. This book is based upon previously published essays which have been extensively revised and updated, and offers an important contribution to the study of law and social theory.

In the past twenty years Joseph Raz has consolidated his reputation as one of the most acute, inventive, and energetic scholars currently at work in analytic moral and political theory. This new collection of essays - never previously published in one volume - will enhance his standing even more, examining aspects of the common (and ancient) theme of the relations between law and morality, and will be welcomed by scholars and students alike.

This book is concerned with the ethics of judging in courts of law. Professor Burton analyzes the grounds, content, and force of a judge's legal and moral duties to uphold the law. He defends two primary theses. The first is the good faith thesis, whereby judges are bound in law to uphold the law, even when they have discretion, by acting only on reasons warranted by the conventional law as grounds for judical decisions. The good faith thesis counters the common view that judges are not bound by the law when they exercise discretion. The second is the permissible discretion thesis, whereby, when exercised in good faith, judicial discretion is compatible with the legitimacy of adjudication in a constitutional democracy under the Rule of Law. The permissible discretion thesis counters the view that judges can fulfill their duty to uphold the law only when the law yields determinate results. Together, these two theses provide an original and powerful theory of adjudication in sharp contrast both to conservative theories that would restrict the scope of adjudication unduly, and to leftist critical theories that would liberate judges from the Rule of Law.

This volume presents twelve original essays by contemporary natural law theorists and their critics. Natural law theory is enjoying a revival of interest today in a variety of disciplines, including law, philosophy, political science, and theology and religious studies. These essays offer readers a sense of the lively contemporary debate among natural law theorists of different schools, as well as between natual law theorists and their critics.

In The Roman Law Tradition an international team of distinguished legal scholars explores the various ways in which Roman law has affected and continues to affect patterns of legal decision-making throughout the world. Roman Law began as the local law of a small Italian city. It grew to dominate the legal relationships of the Mediterranean basin for the first five hundred years of our era. The revival of its study in the medieval universities led to its influencing the subsequent development of the legal system of western Europe and thereafter those parts of the rest of the World colonized from Europe. Roman legal ideas penetrated procedure as well as the substance of law and assisted the process of harmonization and codification of local customary laws. Techniques of legal reasoning which first emerge in Rome continue in daily use. Roman law was also of immense significance in the emergence of modern political thought.

This book is concerned with the ethics of judging in courts of law. Professor Burton analyzes the grounds, content, and force of a judge's legal and moral duties to uphold the law. He defends two primary theses. The first is the good faith thesis, whereby judges are bound in law to uphold the law, even when they have discretion, by acting only on reasons warranted by the conventional law as grounds for judical decisions. The good faith thesis counters the common view that judges are not bound by the law when they exercise discretion. The second is the permissible discretion thesis, whereby, when exercised in good faith, judicial discretion is compatible with the legitimacy of adjudication in a constitutional democracy under the Rule of Law. The permissible discretion thesis counters the view that judges can fulfill their duty to uphold the law only when the law yields determinate results. Together, these two theses provide an original and powerful theory of adjudication in sharp contrast both to conservative theories that would restrict the scope of adjudication unduly, and to leftist critical theories that would liberate judges from the Rule of Law.

A compilation of articles previously appearing in Social Justice Review, based on the Four Pillars of an Economically Just Society: 1) Limited economic role for the State, 2) Free and open markets, 3) Restoration of the rights of private property, and 4) Widespread direct ownership of the means of production. The Just Third Way is a holistic program developed by the interfaith Center for Economic and Social Justice ("CESJ") in Arlington, Virginia, USA, in response to the growing disparities of wealth and the failure of today's institutions to meet people's wants and needs in a manner consistent with their essential dignity as human beings. Analyzing the applications of natural law as expressed in Catholic social teaching, the articles demonstrate the universality of the principles underpinning the Just Third Way from the perspective of that particular faith tradition.

This volume brings together an international team of scholars to debate Cicero's role in the narrative of Roman law in the late Republic - a role that has been minimised or overlooked in previous scholarship. This reflects current research that opens a larger and more complex debate about the nature of law and of the legal profession in the last century of the Roman Republic. Contributors: Benedikt Forschner * Catherine Steel * Christine Lehne-Gstreinthaler * Jan Willem Tellegen * Jennifer Hilder * Jill Harries * Matthijs Wibier * Michael C. Alexander * Olga Tellegen-Couperus * Philip Thomas * Saskia T. Roselaar * Yasmina Benferhat.

There are no legal institutions other than pignus and hypotheca (i.e. mortgage) where the formative effect of legal practice can be so clearly observed. Security and Credit in Roman Law outlines the legal history of these institutions in terms of an iterative relationship between transactional lawyers drafting legal transactions and Roman jurisprudence deploying its analytical skills in order to accommodate new transactional practices into the Roman legal system. The evolution of the Roman law of real security, well known through the legal sources (Justinian's Digest and Code), is reconstructed, while matching it with actual banking practices, in particular the secured lending transactions documented in the archive of the Sulpicii. In the late classical period the imperial chancery increasingly interfered with it in order to provide a considerable degree of protection to debtors. The (largely but certainly not completely) spontaneous evolution of Roman law produced a law of secured transactions which was highly sophisticated and versatile, allowing non-possessory security, multiple charges, pledges of receivables, antichretic pledges, and even floating charges over a dynamic fund of assets. Since legal systems often adapt in reaction to impulses from their economic environment, the complexity of the Roman law of real security indicates that pignus and hypotheca did play a significant role in the Roman economy. It will be shown that this role was generally a positive one. Its main weaknesses were lack of publicity and the presence of fiscal charges: even these weaknesses did not undermine the effectiveness of secured transactions.

"The Common Law" is a classic work from the great Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes. In The Common Law, Holmes examines many aspects of the common law giving great attention to the historical perspective and precedence and its influence on modern common law. In this work you will lengthy discussions on several areas of law including: liability, criminal law, torts, contracts, and successions. Extensively annotated, this edition of "The Common Law" will make great reading for any lawyer or student of the law.

Law Making and The Scottish Parliament: The Early Years offers the first wide-ranging critical analysis of legislative developments in those areas of law and policy devolved to the Scottish Parliament under the devolution settlement. It begins with a brief account of the devolution settlement and summarises the themes emerging from the subsequent chapters. Thereafter, sixteen themed chapters, each dedicated to a discrete area of the law and written by an acknowledged expert in the field, provide critical evaluation of the Scottish Parliament's contribution, highlighting what it has achieved, what it has failed to do and what might be done in the future. In a single volume, Law Making and The Scottish Parliament: The Early Years provides a scholarly evaluation of a number of legislative achievements of Scotland's devolved parliament in its first decade. It will appeal to legal and other scholars and students, lawyers and anyone with an interest in Scottish politics, policy-making and law.

This is an interdisciplinary, edited collection on social science methodologies for approaching Roman legal sources. Roman law as a field of study is rapidly evolving to reflect new perspectives and approaches in research. Scholars who work on the subject are increasingly being asked to conduct research in an interdisciplinary manner whereby Roman law is not merely seen as a set of abstract concepts devoid of any background, but as a body of law which operated in a specific social, economic and cultural context. This "context-based" approach to the study of Roman law is an exciting new field which legal historians must address. Since the mid-1960s, a new academic movement has advocated a "law and society" approach to the study of Roman law instead of the prevailing dogmatic methodology employed in many Faculties of law. This book aims to further the current debate on the interface between legal history and ancient history. It brings together a distinguished group of scholars who will provide different perspectives on this debate. It addresses particular themes within this debate such as law and legal practice, law and gender as well as law and economics.

After overthrowing the Mongol Yuan dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), proclaimed that he had obtained the Mandate of Heaven (Tianming), enabling establishment of a spiritual orientation and social agenda for China. Zhu, emperor during the Ming's Hongwu reign period, launched a series of social programs to rebuild the empire and define Chinese cultural identity. To promote its reform programs, the Ming imperial court issued a series of legal documents, culminating in The Great Ming Code (Da Ming lu), which supported China's legal system until the Ming was overthrown and also served as the basis of the legal code of the following dynasty, the Qing (1644-1911). This companion volume to Jiang Yonglin's translation of The Great Ming Code (2005) analyzes the thought underlying the imperial legal code. Was the concept of the Mandate of Heaven merely a tool manipulated by the ruling elite to justify state power, or was it essential to their belief system and to the intellectual foundation of legal culture? What role did law play in the imperial effort to carry out the social reform programs? Jiang addresses these questions by examining the transformative role of the Code in educating the people about the Mandate of Heaven. The Code served as a cosmic instrument and moral textbook to ensure "all under Heaven" were aligned with the cosmic order. By promoting, regulating, and prohibiting categories of ritual behavior, the intent of the Code was to provide spiritual guidance to Chinese subjects, as well as to acquire political legitimacy. The Code also obligated officials to obey the supreme authority of the emperor, to observe filial behavior toward parents, to care for the welfare of the masses, and to maintain harmonious relationships with deities. This set of regulations made officials the representatives of the Son of Heaven in mediating between the spiritual and mundane worlds and in governing the human realm. This study challenges the conventional assumption that law in premodern China was used merely as an arm of the state to maintain social control and as a secular tool to exercise naked power. Based on a holistic approach, Jiang argues that the Ming ruling elite envisioned the cosmos as an integrated unit; they saw law, religion, and political power as intertwined, remarkably different from the "modern" compartmentalized worldview. In serving as a cosmic instrument to manifest the Mandate of Heaven, The Great Ming Code represented a powerful religious effort to educate the masses and transform society. The open access publication of this book was made possible by a grant from the James P. Geiss and Margaret Y. Hsu Foundation.

A fundamental re-assessment of Cicero's place in Roman law This volume brings together an international team of scholars to debate Cicero's role in the narrative of Roman law in the late Republic a role that has been minimised or overlooked in previous scholarship. This reflects current research that opens a larger and more complex debate about the nature of law and of the legal profession in the last century of the Roman Republic. ContributorsBenedikt Forschner Catherine Steel Christine Lehne-Gstreinthaler Jan Willem Tellegen Jennifer Hilder Jill Harries Matthijs Wibier Michael C. Alexander Olga Tellegen-Couperus Philip Thomas Saskia T. Roselaar Yasmina Benferhat

Spanning two centuries and five Nordic countries, this book questions the view that political lawyers are required for the development of a liberal political regime. It combines cross-disciplinary theory and careful empirical case studies by country experts whose regional insights are brought to bear on wider global contexts. The theory of the legal complex posits that lawyers will not simply mobilize collectively for material self-interest; instead they will organize and struggle for the limited goal of political liberalism. Constituted by a moderate state, core civil rights, and civil society freedoms, political liberalism is presented as a discrete but professionally valued good to which all lawyers can lend their support. Leading scholars claim that when one finds struggles against political repression, politics of the Legal Complex are frequently part of that struggle. One glaring omission in this research program is the Nordic region. This insightful volume provides a comprehensive account of the history and politics of lawyers of the last 200 years in the Nordic countries: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland. Topping most global indexes of core civil rights, these states have been found to contain few to no visible legal complexes. Where previous studies have characterized lawyers as stewards and guardians of the law that seek to preserve its semi-autonomous nature, these legal complexes have emerged in a manner that challenges the standard narrative. This book offers rational choice and structuralist explanations for why and when lawyers mobilise collectively for political liberalism. In each country analysis, authors place lawyers in nineteenth century state transformation and emerging constitutionalism, followed by expanding democracy and the welfare state, the challenge of fascism and world war, the tensions of the Cold War, and the latter-day rights revolutions. These analyses are complemented by a comprehensive comparative introduction, and a concluding reflection on how the theory of the legal complex might be recast, making The Limits of the Legal Complex an invaluable resource for scholars and practitioners alike.

This volume provides an introduction to the United Kingdom's constitution that recognises and embraces its historical, social, political, and legal dimensions. It critically examines the radical changes to the UK constitution that have occurred over the last thirty years, paying particular attention to the revival of the constituent territories of the UK - Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and England - and to the increasing role played by the judges in constitutional disputes. The UK constitution is presented as being shaped by a set of constitutional principles, including state sovereignty, separation of powers, democracy, subsidiarity, and the rule of law, principles which set the overall structure of the constitution and inform statutes and the decisions of judges. Adopting a principled approach to the UK constitution allows us to see both the clarity of the constitution's structure and also helps explain its complexities.

This book discusses in detail how medieval scholars reacted to the casuistic discussions in the inherited Roman texts, particularly the Digest of Justinian. It shows how they developed medieval Roman law into a system of rules that formed a universal common law for Western Europe. Because there has been little research published in English beyond grand narratives on the history of law in Europe, this book fills an important gap in the literature. With a focus on how the medieval Roman lawyers systematised the Roman sources through detailed discussions of specific areas of law, it considers: *the sources of medieval law and how to access them *the development from cases to rules *medieval lawyers' strategies for citing each other and their significance *growth of a conceptual approach to the study of law. With contributions from leading international scholars in the field, this book therefore fills an important gap in the literature.

One of the Financial Times' Best Books of 2019 One of Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2019 Shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize 'As enjoyable as it is thought-provoking' Jared Diamond By the authors of the international bestseller Why Nations Fail, based on decades of research, this powerful new big-picture framework explains how some countries develop towards and provide liberty while others fall to despotism, anarchy or asphyxiating norms - and explains how liberty can thrive despite new threats. Liberty is hardly the 'natural' order of things; usually states have been either too weak to protect individuals or too strong for people to protect themselves from despotism. There is also a happy Western myth that where liberty exists, it's a steady state, arrived at by 'enlightenment'. But liberty emerges only when a delicate and incessant balance is struck between state and society - between elites and citizens. This struggle becomes self-reinforcing, inducing both state and society to develop a richer array of capacities, thus affecting the peacefulness of societies, the success of economies and how people experience their daily lives. Explaining this new framework through compelling stories from around the world, in history and from today - and through a single diagram on which the development of any state can be plotted - this masterpiece helps us understand the past and present, and analyse the future. 'In this highly original and gratifying fresco, Daron Acemoglu and Jim Robinson take us on a journey through civilizations, time and locations. Their narrow corridor depicts the constant and often unstable struggle of society to keep the Leviathan in check and of the Leviathan to weaken the cage of norms. A remarkable achievement that only they could pull off and that seems destined to repeat the stellar performance of Why Nations Fail' Jean Tirole, Nobel Laureate in Economics, 2014 'Another outstanding, insightful book by Acemoglu and Robinson on the importance and difficulty of getting and maintaining a successful democratic state. Packed with examples and analysis, it is a pleasure to read' Peter Diamond, Nobel Laureate in Economics, 2010 'The Narrow Corridor takes us on a fascinating journey, across continents and through human history, to discover the critical ingredient of liberty. It finds that it's up to each of us: that ingredient is our own commitments, as citizens, to support democratic values. In these times, there can be no more important message - nor any more important book' George Akerlof, Nobel Laureate in Economics, 2001 'How should we view the current challenges facing our democracies? This brilliant, timely book offers a simple, powerful framework for assessing alternative forms of social governance. The analysis is a reminder that it takes vigilance to maintain a proper balance between the state and society - to stay in the 'narrow corridor' - and avoid falling either into statelessness or dictatorship' Bengt Holmstrom, Nobel Laureate in Economics, 2016

Enacted for historical reasons on 26 January 1950, the Constitution of India provided that the Supreme Court of India, situated in New Delhi, was to have one Chief Justice of India, and not more than seven judges. Today, the Court has 33 judges in addition to the Chief Justice of India. But who are these judges, and where did they come from? Its central thesis is that despite all established formal constitutional requirements, there are three informal criteria which are used for appointing judges to the Supreme Court: age, seniority, and diversity. The author examines debates surrounding the Indian judicial system since the institution of the federal court during the British Raj. This leads to a study of the political developments that resulted in the present 'collegium system' of appointing judges to the Supreme Court of India. Based on more than two dozen interviews personally conducted by the author with former judges of the Supreme Court of India, this book uniquely brings to the fore the unwritten criteria that have determined the selection of judges to the highest court of law in this country for over six decades.

What is the relationship between the strength of a country's democracy and the ability of its courts to address deficiencies in the electoral process? Drawing a distinction between democracies that can be characterised as 'dominant-party' (for example Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong), 'dynamic' (for example India, South Korea, and Taiwan), and 'fragile' (for example Thailand, Pakistan ,and Bangladesh), this book explores how democracy sustains and is sustained by the exercise of judicial power. In dominant-party systems, courts can only pursue 'dialogic' pathways to constrain the government's authoritarian tendencies. On the other hand, in dynamic democracies, courts can more successfully innovate and make systemic changes to the electoral system. Finally, in fragile democracies, where a country regularly oscillates between martial law and civilian rule, their courts tend to consistently overreach, and this often facilitates or precipitates a hostile take-over by the armed forces, and lead to the demise of the rule of law.

Roman law has had a huge impact on European legal and political thought. Peter Stein, one of the world's leading legal historians, explains in this masterly short study how this came to be. He assesses the impact of Roman law in the ancient world, and its continued unifying influence throughout medieval and modern Europe. Roman Law in European History is unparalleled in depth, lucidity and authority, and should prove of enormous utility for teachers and students (at all levels) of legal history, comparative law and European Studies.