Law: The Basics is an engaging introduction to one of the most complex areas of modern life. The book introduces both the main components of the legal system ? including judges, juries and law-makers - and key areas of law ? contract, civil negligence, and criminal law ? to provide the uninitiated with an ideal introduction to law. Key questions to be considered include:

• How are laws made?
• How do judges decide cases?
• What is the exact role of the EU in the legal system?
• What are your rights and duties under contract law?
• What is a crime and what are criminal defences?

Throughout the book, a wide range of contemporary cases are examined to relate key legal concepts to familiar examples and real world situations.

In his latest work, Freedman seeks to establish a contemporary tort of discovery abuse. As he notes at the outset, the discovery process has become a central feature of modern litigation. He deals with the ways in which this interrogatory process can be abused, leading to excessive, costly delays in pretrial hearings and in subsequent litigation, if not settlement of the case. Discovery abuse places onerous demands on litigants who can be forced to produce documentation in such quantities, for example, that the costs involved discourage further litigation. At the outset, Freedman fully examines the nature of the discovery process itself, including international discovery procedures, and then explores abuses of the process and their ramifications for future litigation.

Organized in two main parts, the book begins with an introductory overview of the discovery process in general. Subsequent chapters address issues such as American Bar Association standards for discovery and procedure before the criminal trial; federal, state, and civil discovery procedures; non-party access to discovery materials; discovery in arbitration; and discovery procedures abroad. The second section reveals the nature of the abuses of the discovery process, including the destruction or spoliation of evidence, abuses connected with the Freedom of Information Act, and discovery abuses in the insurance field. The book concludes with chapters devoted to sanctions and remedies for discovery abuse and the Freedman's recommendation for the intentional tort of discovery abuse. Both a practical handbook for corporate attorneys and an ideal supplemental text for courses in business law, this volume offers a clear and comprehensive treatment of a growing problem in litigation proceedings.

The application of psychological principles to research and practice in crime prevention, detection, legal processes and offender treatment is a feature of the growing number of advanced undergraduate courses and graduate courses, and professional training programmes. This book reflects the need to provide an overview of psychological knowledge and its forensic applications and implications, to psychology students and its forensic applications and implications, to psychology students and to related professional disciplines such as psychiatry, nursing, policing, law, prison work and probation.
The Editors are very well known academics and clinicians. The chapters are written by contributors who are recognised leaders in their own fields, and they have provided accessible accounts of the applications and implications of behavioural sciences for their peers, and for professionals and students in other disciplines. Multi-professional case work and innovative approaches to crime and offenders are being supported by research, by poicy and by legislation. There is a growing need to provide a wide range of professionals with a common framework and knowledge base to aid their shared understanding of crime and offenders, and of related interventions.
""Behaviour, Crime and Legal Processes" will be of great interest to psychologists, psychiatrists, lawyers and others concerned with understanding and treating offenders. The book is readable, scholarly and wide-ranging, covering legal issues, psychology and the police, witness evidence, decision-making in court, criminological theories, risk assessment and the treatment of mentally disordered and sex offenders." - Professor DavidFarrington, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, UK

From the last decade of the 18th century, European states began to define nationality more rigorously. Regulations covering matters as diverse as passports, residence permits, taxes, and admission to university examinations made clear that nationality mattered more than rank. Drawing on the files of central and regional administrations and on individual case studies and travel accounts, the author offers a detailed examination of the practical consequences of alien status in liberal England and in the comparatively restrictive German states. In the latter all citizens of other German states were considered foreigners, whereas in the United Kingdom Irish immigrants were by law British subjects along with all other persons born on British soil. These differences in legal definition of citizenship should have far-reaching consequences for the development of modern nation states, consequences the effects of which can be felt to this day.

This book consists of interrelated essays by many past and present members of the EUI Law Department. The contributors are all well-known specialists in their fields, whose essays address such issues as the effects of integration upon certain national laws, the elaboration of EU law to provide a new framework for or replacement for national laws, the piece-meal development of specific legal strands of EU law and their intertwining with national or international laws, and the indirect and sometimes unintended consequences of European integration with regard to national, EU, or international law.

The book marks and illustrates the significant contribution of the European University. Institute Law Department to contemporary legal scholarship. It is intended to indicate the kind of legal research which has been done and which is being done today at the EUI. It also aims to make more widely known the themes, approaches, and methods pioneered in the EUI Law Department, including its European and international focus, its comparative approach, and its generally contextual method.

Being one of the largest coastal States in the world, China's marine legal system is significant in the overall development of the international law of the sea. This book focuses on the establishment and development of China's marine legal system in the context of the new law of the sea centered on the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which China ratified in 1996. It consists of five parts concerning, respectively, a general survey of China's marine legal system, navigation and maritime security, marine resources management, marine environmental protection and marine scientific research. China's basic marine laws and regulations are discussed and assessed in detail throughout the book. The book is of interest to lawyers, whether practicing or academic, officials in national governments and international organizations and students and scholars in academia, who are interested in international law, international relations and ocean affairs.

This text centres on the Uruguay Round of negotiations in 1993. Over one hundred governments took part in these negotiations, defending the interests of countries of all sizes, stages of development and economic structures. Unlike previous GATT negotiations, this one spilled over into the political arena, sparking sharp controversy, international tension, and in some countries even riots. The agreements reached are expected to influence world growth and development for decades to come. Since the Uruguay Round agreements were signed in April 1994, they have been widely discussed and analyzed. Studies have sought to estimate their impact on world economic growth, production patterns, and world trade. This book, however, has a different purpose: to trace the history of the Round. It seeks to explain, in as accessible and non-technical a way as possible, how the Uruguay Round came about, why it covered the subjects it did, what the participants sought, and the twists, turns, setbacks and successes in each sector of the negotiations.

The results of this extremely data-rich study reveal that women attorneys are victimized by less obvious forms of discrimination than their male counterparts. Based on results of surveys conducted by the ABA in 1984 and 1990, this work challenges the notion that legislation outlawing discrimination actually works. Setting controls for a whole host of individual, firm, and locational characteristics, the study determined that although hourly earnings of female lawyers do not differ appreciably from those of male lawyers, the incidence of promotion from associate to partner is greater for men than for otherwise comparable women. Lentz and Laband also found evidence of sexual harassment and other less-tangible aspects of sex discrimination in the legal workplace. This book is essential reading for members of law firms, labor economists, feminist scholars, and human resource professionals.

EU enlargement - to countries in Central and Eastern Europe in 2004, the inclusion of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007, and increasing debates on Turkey's membership - has dramatically transformed the European Union into a multi-religious space. Religious communities are not only shaping identities but are also influential factors in political discourse. This edited volume examines the activities of religious actors in the context of supranational European institutions and the ways in which they have responded to the idea of Europe at local and international levels. By bringing together scholars working in political science, history, law and sociology, this volume analyses key religious factors in contemporary EU architecture, such as the transformation of religious identities, the role of political and religious leaders, EU legislation on religion, and, the activities of religious lobbies.

This book was published as a special issue of Religion, State and Society.

The question of whether a young woman should be allowed to terminate a pregnancy without her parents' knowledge has been one of the most contentious issues of the post Roe v. Wade era. Parental involvement laws reach to the core of the parent-teen relationship in the highly contested realm of adolescent sexuality. This is the first book to examine in thorough detail the decision-making experiences of teens considering abortion. Shoshanna Ehrlich evaluates the Supreme Court's efforts to reconcile the historically based understanding of teens as dependent persons in need of protection with a more contemporary understanding of them as autonomous individuals with adult-like claims to constitutional recognition. Arriving at a compromise, the Court has made clear that, like adult women, teens have a protected right of choice, but that states may impose a parental involvement requirement. However, so that parents are not vested with veto power over their daughters' decisions, young women must be allowed to seek a waiver of the requirement. Integrating a wealth of social science literature, including in-depth interviews with 26 young women from Massachusetts who obtained court authorization for an abortion, the book raises important questions about the logic of a legal approach that requires young women to involve adults when they seek to terminate a pregnancy, but that allows them to make a decision to become mothers on their own.

Around the globe, ex ante evaluation of legislation has become an established rationalisation of legislative processes. Legislators, politicians, and the public at large increasingly demand new laws to have a particular effect and no unwanted side effects. Various instruments are being applied that all have in common that they must predict the effect of new legislation. Until now, most publications on regulatory impact assessment praise such instruments as being extremely useful. Scepticism, however, is in order as well. Is it not as difficult to predict the future effect of a new set of rules in our complex society as it is to predict where our society as a whole is going? The search for an answer to this sceptical question is at the heart of the book. The newly established Research Group for Methodology of Law and Legal Research at Tilburg University (the Netherlands) brought together some of Europe's top specialists in the field of ex ante evaluation of legislation, with backgrounds in law, social science, political science, and law and economics. The result of their collaborative effort is a comprehensive and critical book on the pros and cons and on the opportunities, limitations, and challenges of ex ante assessment of legislation.

The topics addressed in this book have traditionally been covered in separate publications on civil and commercial law. This dualism of regimes has made it difficult for students and professionals alike to comprehend Spanish private law as a whole. In the past this has led to inefficient duplication of explanations, gaps in key areas and an altogether fragmented picture. Introduction to Spanish Private Law presents a consolidated, modern, and realistic image of today's Spanish private legal system. It combines both civil and commercial law and integrates them in the same book, making the overall subject far more accessible to readers. This united approach results in a more logical and efficient process of learning. Finally the issues that are addressed reflect the reality of today's economic and legal scene. This book attempts to provide the readers with the necessary legal instruments to tackle the real problems arising from a globalized modern society. The general principles in this book are presented from a practical point of view that emanates from the authors' conception of a legal system as an instrument to solve social problems in accordance with a set of principles, values and aims.

This volume explores the breadth and depth of provision on minority issues within the European Union. The reluctance of the European Union, and separately some of its member states, to address new and existing dynamics of minority issues and the relative inattention to these matters raises new questions for both the EU and other actors in the field of minority rights. Specifically, the evolution of minority rights policies and institutions within the EU and the broader European context, models of governance pertaining to minorities, and the potential for conflict between governing authorities of member states and groups with whom they interact form the core of the debates presented.

While health professionals may be adequately informed about the legal aspects of many specialized areas of medicine and nursing, they may not totally understand the law applicable to cases of dying patients, or even the legal definition of death itself. In the wake of advances in medical technology, recent court decisions on the right to die, the enactment of natural death and brain death statutes, advance directives and living wills, and growing use of organ transplantation, there has been widespread concern about the legal and ethical issues surrounding these subjects. This book, written by a lawyer-thanatologist, will satisfy these needs. It is the first work to bring together case and statutory law applicable to dying patients, the right to die, advance directives, brain death, and organ transplantation, thus formulating a law of dying and death.

It is also unique as a self-help law finder. Although occasions that require consultation with a lawyer will arise, this work gives health professionals practical guidance on where and how to find legal materials on these issues. This book should also prove immensely useful in summarizing the law concerning dying and death for professional legal counsel. Medical decisions and issues that once were the sole province of doctors, hospitals, patients, and families have become matters of increasing judicial and legislative attention.

There is an ever-increasing interest in the question of how and why legal norms can effectively guide human action. This compact volume demonstrates how economic tools can be used to examine this question and scrutinize these legal norms. Indeed, this is one of the first text to be based on civil law instead of the more usual common law, situating the study of both private and public law within the framework of institutional economics, with recommendations for further reading and a list of key terms in each chapter. Besides the standard economic problems in property, tort, contract, crime and litigation, areas covered include: new institutional economics public choice constitutional law public administrations regulatory impact analysis. This book is essential reading for students in law schools and economics departments alike, particularly those engaged with the methodology of law and economics, applied economics and economic methods of legal policy.

This volume is a thematic study in legal history that uses past and present landmark court cases to analyze the legal and historical development of moral regulatory policies in America and resulting debates. Using a critical variable approach, the book demonstrates how different elements of the legal process have historically influenced the litigation of various moral issues. Five moral policies are included: abortion, sodomy, pornography, criminal insanity, and the death penalty. The book's framework for analysis uses examples from English legal history and links them to American cases, demonstrating how moral regulatory policies are impacted by the legal process: by laws, by judges and juries, by legal scholars, and by attorneys.

Following a brief introduction, Chapter 1 examines how protagonists in the bitter moral and legal controversy over abortion in America have sought to fortify their positions with the views of prominent English legal authorities. The authors discuss the role of English legal scholars in court opinion and oral arguments in Webster and in Roe v. Wade, and debates Roe's interpretation of the English legalists. Chapter 2 describes how attempts to expand a right of privacy under the federal Constitution to include sodomy failed the test for common law rights (Rights of Englishmen) in Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), and includes a history of sodomy in early English and American law. Chapter 3 discusses pornography standards and laws, highlighting the history of legal actions taken against Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure in both England and the U.S., demonstrating the role of precedent in American judicial efforts to define pornography. In Chapter 4, which deals with the criminal insanity defense, the influential role of the defense attorney on case outcomes is illustrated in cases such as England's McNaughton case (1843) and America's Hinckley case (1982). Chapter 5 deals with cruel and unusual punishment throughout U.S. and English history. The book ends with an epilogue which ties together the idea of the American legal process as an inherited English process, reiterating how decisionmakers continually mine the past to find traditions and sources of moral values for justifying or criticizing current laws and policies.

The collected essays in this book discuss the interaction between law and technology and the normative role of information technology. More precisely, this book focuses on the way information and communication technologies regulate our behaviour. Can information technology be an alternative for legal regulation and, if so, what are the risks? Can technology be used to circumvent constitutional safeguards? Is technology regulation just another form of self-regulation? Is regulation through technology distorting traditional balances of rights? Those are all questions that are discussed from different angles, and with different legal perspectives. The essays also discuss more general issues of legitimacy, and of transparency of the normative role of information technologies. We hope to provide a meaningful contribution to the lively debate on the relationship between law and information technology.

Construction Claims is an important resource professionals can turn to when looking for information on how to avoid, negociate, prosecute, document, and defend construction claims. Written for the contractor rather than the attorney, this book includes information on program management, turnkey contracting, mini-trials, and environmental issues such as hazardous materials. Special features of this book include standard contract forms, case histories, sample forms, and charts that address any contract situation.

With a Foreword by the Rt Hon Lord Wilberforce The practical and theoretical policy underpinning the use of judicial remedies on private international law are now assuming great importance within the framework of increasing cross-border litigation. This book is designed to treat these remedies in an analytical and systematic fashion. The forms of relief available,interlocutory and final, have developed into a category of their own, with distinctive principles and considerations. Arising out of a blend of international conventions, national legislation and the jurisprudence of the courts, the remedies have developed their own character quite distinct from the remedies available in national courts under domestic law. Divided into ten chapters, the book provides an analysis of each remedy in theoretical and policy terms, and a practical discussion of the remedies in personam and in rem. Written primarily from the perspective of English law the text also makes use of plentiful comparative examples and will be useful to academics and practitioners alike.

The development of ideas and policy on the control of crime has become an increasingly international affair, necessarily so as crime increasingly crosses national boundaries and as international cooperation in the form of police cooperation, international treaties, protocols and conventions takes firmer shape. Much less well understood, however, is the process whereby ideas about crime control developed in one context are transferred into different countries or regions, and in doing so are then shaped, naturalised and changed in their new context. process of policy transfer and reception. How are particular slogans (zero tolerance policing), gadgets, technical vocabularies (electronic monitoring) and rhetoric (war against crime) spread from place to another, and what new meanings do they take on when this takes place? How are these ideas changed when they meet resistance and counter discourses, and encounter strong local traditions and sensibilities? How differently then are ostensibly similar vocabularies taken up and applied in the distinct settings they encounter. to explore these issues. Their book makes a significant contribution not only to an understanding of crime control policy but of the nature of the process of globalization itself.

This title examines the political role of courts in new democracies in Latin America and Africa, focusing on their ability to hold political power-holders accountable when they act outside their constitutionally defined powers. The book also issues a warning: there are problems inherent in the current global move towards strong constitutional government, where increasingly strong powers are placed in the hands of judges who themselves are not made accountable.

First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

A new book covering the Professional Stage syllabus for th e Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply's Legal Asp ects course. The book is completely up-to-date and incorpo rates all of the relevant changes in legislation up to 200 1. The text is clear and concise and an excellent aid for those new to the subject but wishing to achieve a high lev el of understanding as quickly as possible. The book will also prove to be a useful asset to practising purchasing m anagers who require a clear and concise guide to relevant law.