This work contains most of the cases required for a study of the law of succession and is a very good aid for students who do not have access to the law reports. The title contains a summary of the facts of each case, an extract from the case and a note in which the principles expounded in the case are explained. Decisions up to June 2002 have been considered for inclusion. Hierdie werk bevat die meeste sake wat vir 'n studie van die erfreg nodig is en is 'n baie goeie hulpmiddel vir studente wat nie toegang tot die hofverslae het nie. Die titel bevat 'n opsomming van die feite van elke saak, 'n uittreksel uit die uitspraak asook 'n aantekening waarin die beginsels wat in die saak ter sprake gekom het, ontleed word.

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.

This book is a philosophical inquiry into indigenous African legal ethics, asking what is African about African legal ethics? Taking us beyond a geographical understanding of Africa, the author argues for an African legal ethics that is distinct from non-African African legal ethics which are rooted in Euro-Western constructions. De-silencing African voices on African legal ethics this book decolonizes the prevailing wisdom on legal ethics and broadens our understanding of how law in Africa bears on ethics in Africa or, conversely, on how ethics bears on law in Africa. This book will be of interest to scholars of African philosophy, philosophy of law, and legal ethics.

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.

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

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.

The Digest of Justinian, Volume 2 Revised English-Language Edition Edited by Alan Watson "A major achievement, and an event of the first importance."--"Journal of Legal History" "Definitive."--"The Retainer" "A landmark."--"Religious Studies Review" "Superb."--"Texas Bar Journal" When Justinian became sole ruler of the Byzantine Empire in A.D. 527, he ordered the preparation of three compilations of Roman law that together formed the Corpus Juris Civilis. These works have become known individually as the "Code," which collected the legal pronouncements of the Roman emperors, the "Institutes," an elementary student's textbook, and the "Digest," by far the largest and most highly prized of the three compilations. The "Digest" was assembled by a team of sixteen academic lawyers commissioned by Justinian in 533 to cull everything of value from earlier Roman law. It was for centuries the focal point of legal education in the West and remains today an unprecedented collection of the commentaries of Roman jurists on the civil law. Commissioned by the Commonwealth Fund in 1978, Alan Watson assembled a team of thirty specialists to produce this magisterial translation, which was first completed and published in 1985 with Theodor Mommsen's Latin text of 1878 on facing pages. This paperback edition presents a corrected English-language text alone, with an introduction by Alan Watson. Links to the three other volumes in the set: Volume 1 Books 1-15]Volume 3 Books 30-40]Volume 4 Books 41-50] Alan Watson, Earnest P. Rogers Professor of Law at the University of Georgia, is the author of many books in legal history, including "Rome of the Twelve Tables"; "Roman Slave Law"; and "Sources of Law, Legal Change, and Ambiguity," the last published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. May 2008 768 pages 7 x 10 ISBN 978-0-8122-2034-6 Paper $34.95s 23.00 World Rights Law, Classics, History Short copy: The most famous and influential collection of legal materials in world history, now available in a four-volume English-language paperback edition.

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.

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.

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.

Reading Max Weber's Sociology of Law serves both as an introduction and as a distillation of more than thirty years of reading and reflection on Weber's scholarship. It provides a solid and comprehensive introduction to Weber and sets out his main concepts. Drawing on recent research in the history of law, this book also presents and critiques the process by which the law was rationalized and which Weber divided into four ideal-typical stages of development. Hubert Treiber provides commentary in a manner informed both historically and sociologically. The book explores Weber's concepts in relation to the creation of laws between secular the religious powers. The book goes on to examine the codifications that were undertaken by Prussian absolutism and Napoleon in the Code Civil. It further covers Weber's thoughts on antiformal legal tendencies, issues that are still prevalent in law today. This text is no mere reiteration of Weber's concepts. The volume contextualizes Weber's work in the light of current research, setting out to amend misinterpretations and misunderstandings that have prevailed from Weber's original texts. Treiber's introduction is much more than a simple guide through a complicated text. It is an important work in its own right and critical for any student of the sociology of law.

The Navajo Nation court system is the largest and most established tribal legal system in the world. Since the landmark 1959 U.S. Supreme Court decision in "Williams v. Lee" that affirmed tribal court authority over reservation-based claims, the Navajo Nation has been at the vanguard of a far-reaching, transformative jurisprudential movement among Indian tribes in North America and indigenous peoples around the world to retrieve and use traditional values to address contemporary legal issues.

A justice on the Navajo Nation Supreme Court for sixteen years, Justice Raymond D. Austin has been deeply involved in the movement to develop tribal courts and tribal law as effective means of modern self-government. He has written foundational opinions that have established Navajo common law and, throughout his legal career, has recognized the benefit of tribal customs and traditions as tools of restorative justice.

In "Navajo Courts and Navajo Common Law," Justice Austin considers the history and implications of how the Navajo Nation courts apply foundational Navajo doctrines to modern legal issues. He explains key Navajo foundational concepts like Hozho (harmony), K'e (peacefulness and solidarity), and K'ei (kinship) both within the Navajo cultural context and, using the case method of legal analysis, as they are adapted and applied by Navajo judges in virtually every important area of legal life in the tribe.

In addition to detailed case studies, Justice Austin provides a broad view of tribal law, documenting the development of tribal courts as important institutions of indigenous self-governance and outlining how other indigenous peoples, both in North America and elsewhere around the world, can draw on traditional precepts to achieve self-determination and self-government, solve community problems, and control their own futures.

Although congressional investigations have provided some of the most dramatic moments in American political history, they have often been dismissed as mere political theater. But these investigations are far more than grandstanding. Investigating the President shows that congressional investigations are a powerful tool for members of Congress to counter presidential aggrandizement. By shining a light on alleged executive wrongdoing, investigations can exert significant pressure on the president and materially affect policy outcomes. Douglas Kriner and Eric Schickler construct the most comprehensive overview of congressional investigative oversight to date, analyzing nearly thirteen thousand days of hearings, spanning more than a century, from 1898 through 2014. The authors examine the forces driving investigative power over time and across chambers, identify how hearings might influence the president's strategic calculations through the erosion of the president's public approval rating, and uncover the pathways through which investigations have shaped public policy. Put simply, by bringing significant political pressure to bear on the president, investigations often afford Congress a blunt, but effective check on presidential power--without the need to worry about veto threats or other hurdles such as Senate filibusters. In an era of intense partisan polarization and institutional dysfunction, Investigating the President delves into the dynamics of congressional investigations and how Congress leverages this tool to counterbalance presidential power.

Hardly known twenty years ago, exclusion from public space has today become a standard tool of state intervention. Every year, tens of thousands of homeless individuals, drug addicts, teenagers, protesters and others are banned from parts of public space. The rise of exclusion measures is characteristic of two broader developments that have profoundly transformed public space in recent years: the privatisation of public space, and its increased control in the 'security society'. Despite the fundamental problems it raises, exclusion from public space has received hardly any attention from legal scholars. This book addresses this gap and comprehensively explores the implications that this new form of intervention has for the constitutional essentials of liberal democracy: the rule of law, fundamental rights, and democracy. To do so, it analyses legal developments in three liberal democracies that have been at the forefront of promoting exclusion measures: the United Kingdom, the United States, and Switzerland.

This work explores the relationship between Bentham's utilitarian practical philosophy and his positivist jurisprudence. These theories appear to be in tension because his utilitarian commitment to the sovereignty of utility as a practical decision principle seems inconsistent with his positivist insistence on the sovereignty of the will of the lawmaker. Two themes emerge from the attempt in this work to reconcile these two core elements of Bentham's practical thought. First, Bentham's conception of law does not fit the conventional model of legal positivism. Bentham was not just a utilitarian and a positivist; he was a positivist by virtue of his commitment to a utilitarian understanding of the fundamental task of law. Moreover, his emphasis on the necessary publicity and the systemic character of law, led him to insist on an essential role for utilitarian reasons in the regular public functioning of law. Second, Bentham's radical critique of common law theory and practice convinced him of the necessity to reconcile the need for certainty of law with an equally great need for its flexibility. He eventually developed a constitutional framework for adjudication in the shadow of codified law that accorded to judges discretion to decide particular cases according to their best judgment of the balance of utilities, guaranteeing the accountability and appropriate motivation of judicial decision-making through institutional incentives. The original text of this work, first published in 1986, remains largely unchanged, but an afterword reconsiders and revises some themes in response to criticism.

'Great cases' are those judicial decisions around which the common law pivots. In a sequel to the instant classic Is Eating People Wrong?, this book presents eight new great cases from the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. Written in a highly accessible yet rigorous style, it explores the social circumstances, institutions (lawyers, judges and courts) and ordinary people whose stories shaped the law. Across the courts' diverse and uncoordinated attempts to adapt to changing conditions and shifting demands, it shows the law as the living, breathing and down-the-street experience it really is. Including seminal cases in end of life, abortion and equal rights, this is an ideal introduction for students to legal history and jurisprudence.

This book offers a new theory of property and distributive justice derived from Talmudic law, illustrated by a case study involving the sale of organs for transplant. Although organ donation did not exist in late antiquity, this book posits a new way, drawn from the Talmud, to conceive of this modern means of giving to others. Our common understanding of organ transfers as either a gift or sale is trapped in a dichotomy that is conceptually and philosophically limiting. Drawing on Maussian gift theory, this book suggests a different legal and cultural meaning for this property transfer. It introduces the concept of the 'divine lien', an obligation to others in need built into the definition of all property ownership. Rather than a gift or sale, organ transfer is shown to exemplify an owner's voluntary recognition and fulfilment of this latent property obligation.

Scholars in the "Critical Legal Studies" movement have challenged some of the most cherished ideals of modern Western legal and political thought. CLS thinkers claim that the rule of law is a myth and that its defense by liberal thinkers is riddled with inconsistencies. This first book-length liberal reply to CLS systematically examines the philosophical underpinnings of the CLS movement and exposes the deficiencies in the major lines of CLS argument against liberalism.

Organized as a series of authoritative discussions, this book presents the application of Jewish law - or Halakhah - to contemporary social and political issues. Beginning with the principle of divine revelation, it describes the contents and canons of interpretation of Jewish law. Though divinely received, the law must still be interpreted and 'completed' by human minds, often leading to the conundrum of divergent but equally authentic interpretations. Examining topics from divorce to war and from rabbinic confidentiality to cloning, this book carefully delineates the issues presented in each case, showing the various positions taken by rabbinic scholars, clarifying areas of divergence, and analyzing reasons for disagreement. Written by widely recognized scholars of both Jewish and secular law, this book will be an invaluable source for all who seek authoritative guidance in understanding traditional Jewish law and practice.

The Westminster parliament is a highly visible political institution, and one of its core functions is approving new laws. Yet Britain's legislative process is often seen as executive-dominated, and parliament as relatively weak. As this book shows, such impressions can be misleading. Drawing on the largest study of its kind for more than forty years, Meg Russell and Daniel Gover cast new light on the political dynamics that shape the legislative process. They provide a fascinating account of the passage of twelve government bills - collectively attracting more than 4000 proposed amendments - through both the House of Commons and House of Lords. These include highly contested changes such as Labour's identity cards scheme and the coalition's welfare reforms, alongside other relatively uncontroversial measures. As well as studying the parliamentary record and amendments, the study draws from more than 100 interviews with legislative insiders. Following introductory chapters about the Westminster legislative process, the book focuses on the contribution of distinct parliamentary 'actors', including the government, opposition, backbenchers, select committees, and pressure groups. It considers their behaviour in the legislative process, what they seek to achieve, and crucially how they influence policy decisions. The final chapter reflects on Westminster's influence overall, showing this to be far greater than commonly assumed. Parliamentary influence is asserted in various different ways - ranging from visible amendments to more subtle means of changing government's behaviour. The book's findings make an important contribution to understanding both British politics and the dynamics of legislative bodies more broadly. Its readability and relevance will appeal to both specialists and general readers with interests in politics and law, in the UK and beyond.

International law is a fundamentally modern phenomenon. Tracing its roots to nineteenth-century pronouncements on the 'law of nations,' the discipline took shape in the elaborate treaty structures of the post-First World War era and in the institutions and tribunals established after the Second World War. International law as scholars know and study it today is a product of modernism. In The Aesthetics of International Law, Ed Morgan engages in a literary parsing of international legal texts. In order to demonstrate how these types of legal narratives are imbued with modernist aesthetics, Morgan juxtaposes international legal documents and modern (as well as some immediately pre- and post-modern) literary texts. He demonstrates how the same intellectual currents that flow through the works of authors ranging from Edgar Allan Poe to James Joyce to Vladimir Nabokov are also present in legal doctrines ranging from the law of war to international commercial disputes to human rights. By providing a comparative, interdisciplinary account of this modern phenomenon, Morgan's work highlights the ways judges, lawyers, and state representatives artfully exploit the narratives of international law. It demonstrates that just as modernist literature developed complex narrative techniques as a way of dealing with the human condition, modern international law has developed parallel argumentative techniques as a way of dealing with international political conditions.

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.

Oxford's variorum edition of William Blackstone's seminal treatise on the common law of England and Wales offers the definitive account of the Commentaries' development in a modern format. For the first time it is possible to trace the evolution of English law and Blackstone's thought through the eight editions of Blackstone's lifetime, and the authorial corrections of the posthumous ninth edition. Introductions by the general editor and the volume editors set the Commentaries in their historical context, examining Blackstone's distinctive view of the common law, and editorial notes throughout the four volumes assist the modern reader in understanding this key text in the Anglo-American common law tradition. In the final volume of the Commentaries Blackstone presents a comprehensive and critical overview of English criminal law and procedure, prefaced by a discussion of the philosophical and basis of the criminal justice system. His final chapter 'On the Rise, Progress, and Gradual Improvements, of the Laws of England' provides a fitting historical conclusion to the work as a whole.