Scholars widely agree that a federal system cannot work effectively without democracy. As a result of the division or sharing of powers between levels of government, there remains considerable uncertainty about how rules or patterns of politics between the executive and legislative branches interact. Combining theoretical analyses and selected case studies, Federal Democracies at Work contributes to our understanding of the complex relations between federalism and democracy. Throughout the volume, contributing authors elaborate and apply an innovative analytical framework to provide greater clarity on the complex relations between federalism and democracy. As a whole, the volume explores how different institutional configurations of federal democracies alleviate or intensify inherent tensions; how actors grapple and cope with the challenge of these complexities; and how structures evolve as a result of rising conflicts and institutional reforms or adjustments. In doing so, Federal Democracies at Work advances research on comparative federalism and works toward a better understanding of how these compound systems work.

Providing a comprehensive analysis of environmental liability law in Europe, this book offers a general introduction to the status of environmental liability in Europe. It describes the relevant international treaties and the EC-Environmental Liability Directive and discusses the conflict of laws issues regarding transfrontier environmental damage. It also contains the results of a comparative project covering 14 jurisdictions in 13 European countries (Austria, Belgium, England and Wales, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Scotland, Spain, Sweden) on the private law aspects of environmental liability. It addresses the main problems of the application of tort law in environmental law, such as the availability of non-fault liability, the establishment of causation, the scope of available remedies and the issue of legal standing. Due to the very limited harmonizing effect of the EC-Environmental Liability Directive national tort law will keep its importance in the field of environmental liability.

China has seen immense economic and social changes since the mid-1990s. Companies are raising huge amounts of money in domestic and overseas stock offerings; China has joined the World Trade Organization; citizens have unprecedented freedom in their private lives; courts are under increasing pressure to handle politically sensitive cases; and the government struggles to maintain order and authority in an increasingly fractious society. This special issue of the China Quarterly assembles both Western and Chinese scholars to examine the legal dimensions of these changes, showing both how far the legal system has come and the challenges that lie ahead.

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.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations Preface 1. Types of Law 2. How Laws are Made 3. Making Sense of Legislation 4. How Judges Decide Cases 5. European Law 6. Human Rights 7. The Jury 8. Criminal Law 9. Contract Law. Glossary of Terms. Bibliography

W M Gordon, who retired from the Douglas Chair of Civil Law at the University of Glasgow in 1999, is well-known for his distinguished contribution to Roman law, legal history and land law.? He is the author of several books in these subject areas, but it is a mark of his international eminence that much of his prolific output has been published in a wide variety of journals and essay collections outside, as well as within, the UK.? This important new collection draws together in an accessible format much of his most important writing and, as such, will be in indispensable purchase for all those interested in these core areas of legal scholarship.

What will it take to restore American democracy and rescue it from this moment of crisis? Civic Power argues that the current threat to US democracy is rooted not just in the outcome of the 2016 election, but in deeper, systemic forms of inequality that concentrate economic and political power in the hands of the few at the expense of the many. Drawing on historical and social science research and case studies of contemporary democratic innovations across the country, Civic Power calls for a broader approach to democracy reform focused on meaningfully redistributing power to citizens. It advocates for both reviving grassroots civil society and novel approaches to governance, policymaking, civic technology, and institutional design - aimed at dismantling structural disparities to build a more inclusive, empowered, bottom-up democracy, where communities and people have greater voice, power, and agency.

Regions within European Union member states (such as Scotland in the UK and Catalonia in Spain) have their own legal systems: how will the process of 'Europeanization' affect them? This volume examines the phenomenon of 'regional' private law in the European Union, considering jurisdictions and laws below those of the member states and drawing comparisons with other such jurisdictions elsewhere in the world, such as Louisiana and Quebec. The whole is considered in relation to the development of European private law, and the use of codification in that process. This volume will be of interest to academic lawyers worldwide, advanced law students and European policy-makers.

As we move towards a more global legal community, often with accompanying injustice and violence, Mireille Delmas-Marty demonstrates that there is an urgent need to reconstruct the national and international legal landscapes. Legal reasoning can be applied to concepts such as human rights for European citizens in the new world order. In this book the author argues for a rule of law that is common in every sense of the word: accessible to all rather than reserved exclusively for officials, common to the various legal sectors despite increasing specialization, and common to diverse States. The book will be of interest to all comparative European lawyers, and to social scientists and legal theorists grappling with contemporary issues in legal pluralism and globalization.

This book is a historical and philosophical meditation on paying back and buying back, that is, it is about retaliation and redemption. It takes the law of the talion - eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth - seriously. In its biblical formulation that law states the value of my eye in terms of your eye, the value of your teeth in terms of my teeth. Eyes and teeth become units of valuation. But the talion doesn't stop there. It seems to demand that eyes, teeth, and lives are also to provide the means of payment. Bodies and body parts, it seems, have a just claim to being not just money, but the first and precisest of money substances. In its highly original way, the book offers a theory of justice, not an airy theory though. It is about getting even in a toughminded, unsentimental, but respectful way. And finds that much of what we take to be justice, honor, and respect for persons requires, at its core, measuring and measuring up.

Law in the United States, Second Edition, is a concise presentation of the salient elements of the American legal system designed mainly for jurists of civil law backgrounds. It focuses on features of American law likely to be least familiar to jurists from other legal traditions, such as American common law, the federal structure of the U.S. legal system, and the American constitutional tradition. The use of comparative law technique permits foreign jurists to appreciate the American legal system in comparison with legal systems with which they are already familiar. Chapters in the second edition also cover such topics as American civil justice, criminal law, jury trial, choice of laws and international jurisdiction, the American legal profession, and the influence of American law in the global legal order.

How was law made in England in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries? Through detailed studies of what the courts actually did, Peter King argues that parliament and the Westminster courts played a less important role in the process of law making than is usually assumed. Justice was often remade from the margins by magistrates, judges and others at the local level. His book also focuses on four specific themes - gender, youth, violent crime and the attack on customary rights. In doing so it highlights a variety of important changes - the relatively lenient treatment meted out to women by the late eighteenth century, the early development of the juvenile reformatory in England before 1825, i.e. before similar changes on the continent or in America, and the growing intolerance of the courts towards everyday violence. This study is invaluable reading to anyone interested in British political and legal history.

The history of German lawyers in private practice from 1878 to 1933 helps answer questions about the inability of German liberalism to withstand National Socialism in 1933. Lawyers connect the procedural focus of legal thinking with procedural notions of individual liberties. In Germany they won free entry and self-government for their profession in 1878, thinking that these changes would lead to civic leadership and expanded liberty, but the forces that were unleashed revealed internal tensions and the limits of professional influence. Exaggerated expectations for the legal profession in public life exposed the limitations of procedural liberalism, with tragic consequences for Germany.

The intertwinement of EC law and national law may create unforeseeability in situations where EC law invades the national cases. This study contributes to the contemporary discussion, which wrestles with questions such as: What have been the visions and objectives for European integration in the last decades? How to describe European Union as a political entity and a legal system? What is the relationship between legal certainty, rule of law, various general principles and human rights?

Analysing the regulation of vessel-source pollution from the perspective of the political interests of key players in the ship transportation industry, this 2005 book by Alan Khee-Jin Tan offers a comprehensive and convincing account of how pollution of the marine environment by ships may be better regulated and reduced. In this timely study, he traces the history of regulation at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and investigates the political, economic and social forces influencing the IMO treaties. Also examined are the efforts of maritime states, ship-owners, cargo owners, oil companies and environmental groups to influence IMO laws and treaties. This is an important book, which uncovers the politics behind the law and offers solutions for overcoming the deficiencies in the regulatory system. It will be of great interest to professionals in the shipping industry as well as practitioners and students.

In European legal systems, a variety of approaches to trust and relationships of trust meet the universal professionalisation of asset management services. This book explores that interface in order to seek a better understanding of the legal regulation of the entrustment of wealth. Within the methodology of the Common Core of European Private Law, the book sets out cases on the establishment and termination of management relationships, obligations of loyalty and of professionalism, and the choice of law. More specialized cases address collective investment, collective secured lending, pension funds, and securitisation. Reports on these cases from fifteen jurisdictions of the European Union tackle fundamental problems of trust law and show which legal techniques are deployed to solve them across Europe. In addition to a much-needed comparative treatment of the subject, the book discusses the scholarly setting for the issues and gives guidance on the terminology in the evolving European scene.

The accelerating pace of international law developments in multiple fora present a challenge for studying, influencing, and predicting these changes. This volume assembles essays from notable jurists, academics, and practitioners from around the world who offer new insights regarding the jurisprudence of world trade law, the changing landscape of investment arbitration, and other vital topics in international adjudication. These essays are assembled in celebration of Justice Florentino Feliciano of The Philippines, who continues to be one of the most inspirational figures in the international law community. This collection will be of special interest to analysts of the World Trade Organization as the contributors include six current or former members of the WTO Appellate Body, as well as several leading trade law commentators. Among the key issues discussed are the WTO environmental cases, trade and human rights, and potential reforms of the WTO dispute system.

This 2005 book raises the profile of socio-political questions about the global technology and information market. It is a close study of communication flows, networks, nodes, biopolitics and the fragmentations of power. It brings to life the role played by personalities, corporate interactions, industry compromises and the regulatory incompetencies, affecting the technological world we all live in. US technology powers the internet and disseminates American culture on an unprecedented scale. Assessing this power requires an analysis of the diffuse ways that US practice, policy and law dominates, and a consideration of how influence is negotiated and resisted locally. This involves a discussion about how ideas about trade and innovation circulate; of the social power of engineers that establish conventions and protocols; of the reach of Leviathan corporations; and questions about global marketing and consumer tastes. For readers interested in intellectual property law, information technology, cultural studies, globalisation and mass communications.

The Resource Book, conceived as a practical guide to the TRIPS Agreement, provides detailed analysis of each of its provisions, aiming at a sound understanding of WTO Members' rights and obligations. The purpose is to clarify the implications of the Agreement especially highlighting the areas in which the treaty leaves leeway to Members for the pursuit of their own policy objectives, according to their respective levels of development. In doing so, the book does not produce tailor-made prescriptions but gives guidance on the implications of specific issues and on the options available. The book is not limited to the analysis of the TRIPS Agreement but to the consideration of related questions and developments at the national, regional, and international level.

This interdisciplinary book of essays addresses critical issues arising from the emergence of legal process and legal institutions in contemporary China. The introduction by the editors and the individual chapters attempt, for the first time, to bring to bear on the study of Chinese law the law-and-society scholarship that has enriched Western legal studies.

Domesday Book contains the most comprehensive, varied and monumental legal material to survive from England before the rise of the Common Law. This book argues that it can--and should--be read as a legal text. Stripped of its statistical information, Domesday Book contains a remarkable amount of legal material, almost all of which stems directly from inquest, testimony, or from the sworn statements. This information, read in context, provides a picture of what the law looked like, the ways in which it was changing, and the means whereby the inquest was a central event in the formation of English law.

The relationship between law, politics and society in democratic Athens is a central but neglected aspect of ancient Greek history that is beginning to attract increasing interest. Nomos brings together ten essays by a group of British and American scholars who aim to explore ways in which Athenian legal texts can be read in their social and cultural context. The focus is on classical Athens, since that is where the evidence is fullest, but the range of sources examined is broad, including the whole spectrum of literary and epigraphical texts, with special reference to the corpus of Athenian forensic oratory. All passages from Greek are translated; technical and legal terms, modern as well as ancient, are explained in a comprehensive glossary. These essays are designed to be accessible to those interested in social history and legal anthropology, as well as to historians of the ancient world.

Regions within EU member states such as Scotland and Catalonia have their own legal systems. How will the process of "Europeanization" affect them? This study examines the phenomenon of "regional" private law in the EU, considering jurisdictions and laws beneath those of the Member States and drawing comparisons with other jurisdictions elsewhere. This issue is considered in relationship to the development of European private law, and the use of codification. This volume will be of interest to academic lawyers worldwide, advanced law students and European policy-makers.

Since the dissolution of the former U.S.S.R., twelve countries are now confronted with the task of defining their attitudes and policies towards the central means for law-making in the international community: the treaty. This comparative commentary on the law of treaties includes full texts in an original, authoritative translation of relevant legislation. It also contains informed commentary on every article in the laws, and an extensive classified bibliography.

As we move towards a more global legal community, often with accompanying injustice and violence, Mireille Delmas-Marty demonstrates an urgent need to reconstruct the national and international legal landscapes. She argues that legal reasoning can be applied to concepts such as human rights for European citizens in the new world order. The book will be of interest to all comparative European lawyers, and to social scientists and legal theorists grappling with contemporary issues in legal pluralism and globalization.

China has enjoyed considerable economic growth recently, in spite of a problematic legal system. Randall Peerenboom asserts that China is in transition from rule by law to a version of rule of law, although not a "liberal democratic" version. In addition to scholars and students, this book is of interest to business professionals, policy advisors, and governmental and non-governmental agencies.