The chance of being claimed against is now a major risk factor for every building designer, engineer, quantity surveyor and project manager. Apart from the cases that go to court, many other claims are settled before they reach that stage. The cost of insurance to meet claims is now a substantial component of every practice's overheads. Sensible risk management can identify the potential sources of claims, reduce their likelihood, warn of impending trouble and control how the claim is to be defended.

This book explains how to plan a risk management strategy and suggests techniques that can supplement the practice's existing management procedures without imposing unnecessary bureaucracy. It attaches as much importance to the interaction of risk between members of the design team as to the risk profile of the practice itself.

The first part defines risk and its origins, discusses how risk can arise in the various professions and types of practice, and how it interacts between the professions, compares quality assurance with risk management, and advises on the relations between the practice, its insurers and its lawyers. It concludes with advice on how to create a risk strategy and system for the office.

The second part is devoted to techniques and covers: setting up the appointment; creation of the team; managing the project; the risks of CDM; the complications of procurement; and drafting, awarding and administering the building contract. Risk implications of the major contract forms are discussed in detail. It concludes with advice on the handling of claims.

The book contains references to a number of legal cases to illustrate the risks discussed. It is recommended reading not only for the individual professions (architect, engineer, QS, project manger), but for all of them collectively in understanding how the risk of one profession can become the risk of any of his fellow team members.

According to Judge Susan Webber Wright, President Clinton's alleged behavior toward Paula Jones, even if "boorish and offensive, " did not constitute sexual harassment because he had taken "no" for an answer. Democrats and feminists argue that President Clinton's alleged lies in the Jones case were 'just about sex" and therefore insignificant.

In a passionate defense of the rights of sexually harassed women, Gwendolyn Mink warns that Judge Wright and the president's supporters have undermined our sexual harassment laws. Hostile Environment is her provocative account of the harm being done to these laws and her warning that the laws themselves are worthless if, as in the current political climate, few women dare to use them.

Mink provides a lucid analysis of sexual harassment as a legal concept and corrects many common misapprehensions. She also develops a stringent critique of feminist responses to allegations that the president lied in the Jones case. Throughout the book, she emphasizes the significance of power in sexual harassment. "Power is always the harasser's aphrodisiac, " Mink argues. "Harassers may use power to coerce sex; or they may use sex to exert power.... The sex in sexual harassment is never 'just about sex' but always about power."

Sometimes scathing, always astute, Hostile Environment is also a highly personal book. Mink describes her own experience of sexual harassment as a graduate student -- the violation and fear, then the betrayal when faculty and fellow students sought to discredit and dismiss her account.

First-hand knowledge of the injuries caused by sexual harassment and its aftermath has left Mink with an abiding interest in this volatile issue andwith a desire to safeguard the rights of sexually harassed women -- especially the most economically vulnerable among them.

This book explains the principles and practises of the 1998 Land Act, which brought about substantial changes to the land tenure laws of Uganda. It is organised into the following chapters: the historical background and context of the act; mortgages; land ownership; servitudes over the land; administration, control and dispute settlement; co-ownership; the general principles of land law; expropriated property; and the registration of the Titles Act. Tables of cases and statutes are also included.

Legal issues of personal status including those implicating women's rights continue to be a focal area of shari'a judicial practice in the Muslim world. Changing ideas of marriage, relations between the spouses, divorce, and the rights of divorcees and widows challenge the courts around the Arab world. In this context, the areas that came under the Palestinian Authority in 1994 command particular attention: the particular political and socio-economic circumstances that surround Palestine's progress toward full statehood have created a remarkable crucible for the synthesis of a new family law in the Arab world.
This rigorous study of the interpretation and application of personal status law in the Palestinian West Bank (and to a lesser extent in the Gaza Strip) is the most extensive yet attempted. It presents a systematic analysis of the application of Islamic family law in nearly 10,000 marriage contracts, 1000 deeds of talaq (unilateral divorce) or khul' (divorce with renunciation), and 2000 judicial rulings over a time span that includes Jordanian rule and Israeli military occupation, updating this with material from the beginning of the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority. Taken into account are the sources of law used in the shari'a courts of the West Bank: the successive codes of family law (the Jordanian Law of Personal Status 1976 and its predecessor the Jordanian Law of Family Rights 1951), and traditional Hanafi rules and texts, along with commentaries by prominent contemporary shari'a scholars and Appeal Court decisions as well as the amendments and modifications being sought by civil society actors (notably women's groups) in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well asin Jordan.

You and the Law in New Jersey, newly updated, is the ideal guidebook to assist readers in understanding the law, their rights, and how to get legal help. In clear, straightforward language, the book describes how law is made, how to do legal research, how the state and federal court systems work, how to get help if you can't afford a lawyer, how to hire a lawyer, and what to do if you are sued. The second edition contains much new information, including a chapter on credit, debt, and banking, the landlord-tenant relationship and buying a home, and others on the rights of senior citizens, veterans, and people with disabilities. The authors have also expanded their information on the rights of renters, homeowners, and consumers of public utilities, as well as their treatment of employment law. They have rewritten chapters on health and public benefits to address the recent sweeping reforms of federal and state law.

One viable method of bringing about international co-operation is through the harmonisation of laws. This study is an attempt to put in focus the idea of harmonisation and its current state in Africa. Chapters deal with the nature and history of Private International Law; the institutions or bodies involved in the harmonisation process in Africa; the African Treaty; and relations between the African Economic Community and the African regional communities.

The author is currently Honorable Attorney General and Commissioner fro Justice of Oyo State of Nigeria. In this book he discusses the scope for freedom of expression in relation to the press in Nigeria, the offences a journalist may run foul of and the defences available if an offence in committed.

Excerpts from Actual Cases
Illustrations by Lee Lorenz

"Splendid. . . . Pokes irreverent fun at everyone in the court system. . . . Lee Lorenz' fine illustrative cartoons add laughs to this madness." — Chicago Tribune

This assortment of unintentionally amusing courtroom exchanges ranges from the testimony of expert witnesses to jury selection to cross examination to creative defense, closing argument, and sentencing — a rollicking guide to America's legal system.

Indigenous peoples in Canada are striving for greater economic prosperity and political self-determination. Investigating specific legal, economic, and political practices, and including research from interviews with Indigenous political and business leaders, this collection seeks to provide insights grounded in lived experience. Covering such critical topics as economic justice and self-determination, and the barriers faced in pursuing each, Wise Practices sets out to understand the issues not in terms of sweeping empirical findings but through particular experiences of individuals and communities. The choice to focus on specific practices of law and governance is a conscious rejection of idealized theorizing about law and governance and represents an important step beyond the existing scholarship. This volume offers readers a broad scope of perspectives, incorporating contemporary thought on Indigenous law and legal orders, the impact of state law on Indigenous peoples, theories and practices of economic development, and grounded practices of governances. While the authors address a range of topics, each does so in a way that sheds light on how Indigenous practices of law and governance support the social and economic development of Indigenous peoples.

The family has become a subject of increasing scrutiny in recent years, giving special relevance to this work by the late Michael Sheehan. Collected here for the first time, Sheehan's papers contain the fruits of a forty-year-long career of archival research and interpretation of documents on property, marriage, family, sexuality, and law in medieval Europe. Marked by an early orientation and developing focus on the status of women in the Middle Ages, the work of Michael Sheehan displays a unique tapestry of the social and legal realities of medieval marriages and family life.

Sheehan's research focused on the parallel study and interpretation of Church law and cases drawn from ecclesiastical court registers. By analysing the emergence of the last will as a legal and social document, he brought a new interpretation to the definition and codification of Christian marriage and the family and how these institutions functioned in society. Although his approach was largely by way of canon law, he was invariably at pins to incorporate solid support from such related fields as theology, the social and popular history of religion, and the history of sexuality and sexual behaviour. As a result, these essays throw light on many social realities in medieval Europe and illustrate the development of a methodology for others to follow.

Antarctica, the last great wilderness on earth, is a continent of extremes. It is the coldest, highest, driest, windiest, remotest, most desolate place on the planet. Yet despite these profoundly forbidding characteristics the Antarctic commons has attracted increasing political, economic, and diplomatic attention in recent years. This interest has been stimulated by the tremendous bounty of living marine resources, concern over ozone depletion and environmental degradation, and exaggerated public speculation about the potential of exploiting mineral wealth, especially hydrocarbons, on and around the continent. Governing the Frozen Commons examines the Antarctic Treaty System as a complex legal regime for managing resource activities in the Antarctic and assesses what innovative legal arrangements might be needed to regulate future political and economic developments there. In this study, Christopher C. Joyner analyzes a number of critical considerations affecting the circumpolar south, including the status of Antarctica as a global commons; the legal regime currently in place for managing Antarctic affairs; the legal, economic, and political implications of applying a common heritage of mankind regime to the Antarctic; the viability of the legal regimes now established for resource management, conservation, environmental protection, and scientific investigation in the Antarctic; and the prospect that Antarctica might be considered a world park.

In this lively book, veteran tax attorney Michael Savage provides essential tax advice to small business owners, many of whom pay exorbitant tax fees for mistakes that may have easily been avoided. Without staff attorneys at their disposal, small businesses can get into big financial trouble, not out of dishonesty, but because they don't know where the potential tax landmines lie.Concise, practical and irreplaceably instructive, Don't Let the IRS Destroy Your Small Business covers seventy-six areas of tax law that cause business owners the most trouble, regardless of what business they are in: payroll tax liability, excessive salaries, travel and entertainment expenses, fringe benefits, pension plans, owning multiple companies, and many more.

The principle in law that the rules are not changed in the middle of game, is embodied in the notion that legislation should apply prospectively. This study analyzes the legal constraints on retroactive legislation and the presumption of prospectivity and constitutional limits on such lawmaking.

Robson tackles controversial legal questions, including the treatment of lesbian criminal defendants; lesbianism and violence; the courts' tendency to resort to stereotypes, such as "the good lesbian" and "the bad lesbian"; the numerous debates enveloping same-sex marriage; and the outcome of child custody cases involving lesbians. She also repudiates the recent habit of legal theorists to address lesbians as "alternative family."

In a landmark decision in 1984, the Supreme Court of Canada declared that the Crown is bound by fiduciary, or trust-like, obligations to Canada's aboriginal peoples. By holding the Crown's duty to be legal, rather than merely political or moral, the Supreme Court blazed a new path in Canadian aboriginal rights jurisprudence. Yet, more than a decade later, many of the outstanding issues arising from that decision have yet to be answered or adequately addressed. This is, in part, because the Supreme Court provided little guidance as to the nature and extent of the Crown's duty. Leonard Rotman explores the unanswered questions that plague the Crown-Native fiduciary relationship. He begins by looking at the politics underlying Crown-Native relations and the effects of colonialism on Native peoples. Legislation and case law are then surveyed to reveal the historical and current status of fiduciary doctrine. By examining its fundamental characteristics and principles, Rotman formulates a functional rather than a categorical interpretation of fiduciary law. Finally, he discusses the effects of applying fiduciary law to the Crown-Native relationship. Considering the present status of aboriginal rights issues in Canada, it is striking that the Crown-Native fiduciary relationship remains the subject of so much confusion and uncertainty. With this principled treatment of fiduciary doctrine and its impact upon Crown-aboriginal relations in Canada, Rotman bridges a significant gap in legal.

The law is full of stories, ranging from the competing narratives presented at trials to the Olympian historical narratives set forth in Supreme Court opinions. How those stories are told and listened to makes a crucial difference to those whose lives are reworked in legal storytelling. The public at large has increasingly been drawn to law as an area where vivid human stories are played out with distinctively high stakes. And scholars in several fields have recently come to recognize that law's stories need to be studied critically. This notable volume-inspired by a symposium held at Yale Law School-brings together an exceptional group of well-known figures in law and literary studies to take a probing look at how and why stories are told in the law and how they are constructed and made effective. Why is it that some stories-confessions, victim impact statements-can be excluded from decisionmakers' hearing? How do judges claim the authority by which they impose certain stories on reality? Law's Stories opens new perspectives on the law, as narrative exchange, performance, explanation. It provides a compelling encounter of law and literature, seen as two wary but necessary interlocutors. Contributors J. M. Balkin Peter Brooks Harlon L. Dalton Alan M. Dershowitz Daniel A. Farber Robert A. Ferguson Paul Gewirtz John Hollander Anthony Kronman Pierre N. Leval Sanford Levinson Catharine MacKinnon Janet Malcolm Martha Minow David N. Rosen Elaine Scarry Louis Michael Seidman Suzanna Sherry Reva B. Siegel Robert Weisberg

In a new preface, Mark Strasser discusses recent developments in the legal battle over same-sex marriages in Hawaii. He anticipates the likely state and nationwide impact of the Hawaii Supreme Court's decision. Mark Strasser examines the issue of same-sex marriage in light of contemporary constitutional and domestic relations law, showing why the usual arguments against recognizing such unions are either weak or irrelevant. The Supreme Court has articulated numerous interests promoted by marriage, all of which apply to same-sex as well as opposite-sex couples. According to Strasser, the argument made most frequently to deny recognition to same-sex unions-that marriage exists to provide a setting for the production and raising of children-is in fact a reason to acknowledge such unions. The claim that marriage is for children biologically related to both parents is refuted in the case law, which treats biological and adopted children as legally indistinguishable. Strasser explains Baehr v. Lewin, the precedent setting case in Hawaii, and addresses the implications of state-by-state decisions to ban or recognize same-sex unions. He analyzes what it would mean to say that a policy violates the Equal Protection or Due Process Clauses of the Constitution, and compares biased polices that target gays and lesbians with those that victimize racial minorities. Strasser argues that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is both unconstitutional and a public policy disaster. It does not give states additional rights with respect to which marriages they need not recognize, Strasser explains, but only with respect which divorces they need not recognize. For example, DOMA seems to allow an individual to avoid a court-imposed duty to support an ex-spouse of the same sex simply by changing his or her domicile. Moreover, Strasser argues, DOMA is an open invitation for states to demand exceptions that will wreak havoc in domestic relations law. In a recent response to conservative arguments about marriage, Legally Wed explicates established and involving legal principles, and shows how invidiously these have been applied to the issues of gay rights in general and same-sex unions in particular.

Judith Wagner DeCew provides a solid philosophical foundation for legal discussions of privacy by articulating and unifying diverse arguments on the right to privacy and on how it should be guaranteed in various contemporary contexts. Philosophers and legal theorists tend either to define privacy narrowly or to abandon privacy as conceptually incoherent, she claims. In order to assess how far privacy should extend, and determine how the wide range of specific cases can be reconciled, DeCew surveys the history of the notion of privacy as it first evolved in American tort law and constitutional law and then analyzes current characterizations. In different contexts, privacy has been defined on the basis of information, autonomy, property, and intimacy. DeCew's broader claim is that privacy has fundamental value because it allows us to create ourselves as individuals, offering us freedom from judgment, scrutiny, and the pressure to conform. Feminist theorists often view privacy as a tool for shielding abuses. DeCew responds to this feminist critique of privacy, as well as addressing the issues of abortion and of gay and lesbian sexuality in the context of specific landmark legal cases. In discussions of Roe v. Wade, Bowers v. Hardwick, and the Hart/Devlin debates on decriminalization of homosexuality and prostitution, DeCew applies her broad theory to sexual and reproductive privacy, anti-sodomy laws, and the legislation and enforcement of morals. She finally discusses the intersection of privacy with public safety concerns, such as drug testing, and in light of new communication technologies, such as caller ID.

This sixth volume in the Osgoode Society's distinguished series on the history of Canadian law turns to the a central theme in the history of British Columbia and the Yukon - law and order. In the early days of British sovereignty, the frenzied activity of the fur trade and the gold rush, along with clashes between settlers and Natives, made law enforcement a difficult business. Later, although law and order were more firmly established, tensions continued between the dominant populations committed to the practice and rhetoric of British justice and those groups owing allegiance to other value systems (such as Native peoples, Asian immigrants, and Doukhobors) or those resisting authority (criminals and the criminally insane). These essays look at key social, economic, and political issues of the times and show how they influenced the developing legal system.

The essays cover a wide range of topics, and explore the human as well as the legal dimensions of their subjects, relating specific cases to broader theory. They demonstrate that English law has been flexible enough to accommodate diversity and is, therefore, pragmatic. The volume also proves that there is no single Canadian legal culture: geography, demography, politics, economics, and military considerations have had an impact on the shape of our legal culture. The introduction by John McLaren and Hamar Foster pulls together the many regional themes to provide a clear overview of the legal complexities of the period.

This book is a worthy contribution to Caribbean business and professional literature. The work falls into that unique category of published works which not only deals with the topic from a theoretical perspective but also focuses the reader's attention on the practical application of the theory. This book is intended for and should prove invaluable to those persons who are required to play an active role in the affairs of corporate entities. Chairmen, directors and company secretaries, all of whom must understand the proper process and procedures through which corporate decisions are made will find the text to be a practitioner's handbook. Accountants, lawyers and other professionals who are required to advise clients on various aspects of corporate procedure will find it an indispensable source of reference. Shareholders who seek a better understanding of corporate procedure and the process through which their rights may be exercised will find the book user friendly. For students pursuing a career in corporate law, The Administration and Conduct of Corporate Meeting is required reading. Although this book primarily deals with the conduct of company meetings, its contents are equally applicable to others types of corporate meetings. Persons concerned with the administration and conduct of business will find it useful. Included in this work are a table of comparative references to other selected regional company legislation and the Caribbean Law Institute draft model Company Bill in order to enhance the usefulness of the text to the wider Caribbean community.