This anthology provides an in-depth analysis and discusses the issues surrounding nudging and its use in legislation, regulation, and policy making more generally. The 17 essays in this anthology provide startling insights into the multifaceted debate surrounding the use of nudges in European Law and Economics. Nudging is a tool aimed at altering people's behaviour in a predictable way without forbidding any option or significantly changing economic incentives. It can be used to help people make better decisions to influence human behaviour without forcing them because they can opt out. Its use has sparked lively debates in academia as well as in the public sphere. This book explores who decides which behaviour is desired. It looks at whether or not the state has sufficient information for debiasing, and if there are clear-cut boundaries between paternalism, manipulation and indoctrination. The first part of this anthology discusses the foundations of nudging theory and the problems associated, as well as outlining possible solutions to the problems raised. The second part is devoted to the wide scope of applications of nudges from contract law, tax law and health claim regulations, among others. This volume is a result of the flourishing annual Law and Economics Conference held at the law faculty of the University of Lucerne. The conferences have been instrumental in establishing a strong and ever-growing Law and Economics movement in Europe, providing unique insights in the challenges faced by Law and Economics when applied in European legal traditions.

This unique publication offers a complete history of Roman law, from its early beginnings through to its resurgence in Europe where it was widely applied until the eighteenth century. Besides a detailed overview of the sources of Roman law, the book also includes sections on private and criminal law and procedure, with special attention given to those aspects of Roman law that have particular importance to today's lawyer. The last three chapters of the book offer an overview of the history of Roman law from the early Middle Ages to modern times and illustrate the way in which Roman law furnished the basis of contemporary civil law systems. In this part, special attention is given to the factors that warranted the revival and subsequent reception of Roman law as the 'common law' of Continental Europe. Combining the perspectives of legal history with those of social and political history, the book can be profitably read by students and scholars, as well as by general readers with an interest in ancient and early European legal history. The civil law tradition is the oldest legal tradition in the world today, embracing many legal systems currently in force in Continental Europe, Latin America and other parts of the world. Despite the considerable differences in the substantive laws of civil law countries, a fundamental unity exists between them. The most obvious element of unity is the fact that the civil law systems are all derived from the same sources and their legal institutions are classified in accordance with a commonly accepted scheme existing prior to their own development, which they adopted and adapted at some stage in their history. Roman law is both in point of time and range of influence the first catalyst in the evolution of the civil law tradition.

This book discusses civil litigation at the supreme courts of nine jurisdictions - Argentina, Austria, Croatia, England and Wales, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United States - and focuses on the available instruments used to keep the caseload of these courts within acceptable limits. Such instruments are necessary in order to allow supreme courts to fulfil their main duties, that is, the administration of justice in individual cases (private function) and providing for the uniformity and development of the law within their respective jurisdictions (public function). If the number of cases at the supreme court level is too high, the result is undue delays, which are mainly problematic with regard to the private function. It may also put the quality of the court's judgments under pressure, which can affect its public and private function alike. Thus, measures aimed at avoiding excessive caseloads need to take both functions into account. Increasing the capacity of the court to handle larger numbers of cases may result in the court being unable to adequately fulfil its public function, since large numbers of court decisions make it difficult to guarantee the uniformity of the law and its development. Therefore, a balanced approach is needed to safeguard capacity and quality. As shown by the contributions gathered here, the nature of reform in this area is not the same everywhere. There are a variety of reasons for this heterogeneity, ranging from different understandings of the caseload problem itself, local conceptions regarding the purpose of the Supreme Court, and strong entitlements concerning the right to appeal to budgetary restrictions and extremely rigid legislation. The book also shows that the implementation of similar solutions to case overload, such as access filters, may have different effects in different jurisdictions. The conclusion might well be that the problem of overburdened courts is multifactorial and context-dependent, and that easy, one-size-fits-all solutions are hard to find and perhaps even harder to implement.

This volume addresses the role of the judge and the parties in civil litigation in mainland China, Hong Kong and various European jurisdictions. It provides an overview and an analysis of how these respective roles have been changed in order to cope with growing caseloads and quality demands. It also shows the different approaches chosen in the jurisdictions covered.

Mainland China is introducing far-reaching reforms in its system of civil litigation. From an inquisitorial procedure, in which the parties play a relatively minor role, the country is changing to a more adversarial system with increased powers for the parties. At the same time, case management and the role of the judge as it is understood in mainland China remains different from case management and the role of the judge in Western countries, mainly as regards the limited powers of individual Chinese judges in this respect. Changes in China are justified by the ever-increasing case load of the Chinese courts and the consequent inability to deal with cases in an adequate manner, even though generally speaking Chinese courts still adjudicate civil cases within a relatively short time frame (this may, however, be problematic when viewed from the perspective of the quality of adjudication).

Growing caseloads and quality concerns may also be observed in various European states and Hong Kong. In these jurisdictions the civil procedural systems have a relatively adversarial character and it is some of the adversarial features of the existing systems of procedure which are felt to be problematic. Therefore, the lawmakers have opted for increasing the powers of the judge, often making the judge and the parties mutually responsible for the proper conduct of civil cases.

Starting from opposite directions, mainland China and the various European states and Hong Kong could meet half way in their reform attempts. This is, however, only possible if a proper understanding is fostered of the developments in these different parts of the World. Even though in both China and Europe the academic community and lawmakers are showing a keen interest in the relevant developments abroad, a study addressing the role of the judge and the parties in civil litigation in both China and Europe is still missing. This book aims to fill this gap in the existing literature.

What does it mean when civil lawyers and common lawyers think differently? In Charting the Divide between Common and Civil Law, Thomas Lundmark provides a comprehensive introduction to the uses, purposes, and approaches to studying civil and common law in a comparative legal framework. Superbly organized and exhaustively written, this volume covers the jurisdictions of Germany, Sweden, England and Wales, and the United States, and includes a discussion of each country's legal issues, structure, and their general rules. Professor Lundmark also explores the discipline of comparative legal studies, rectifying many of the misconceptions and prejudices that cloud our understanding of the divide between the common law and civil law traditions.
Students of international law, comparative law, social philosophy, and legal theory will find this volume a valuable introduction to common and civil law. Lawyers, judges, political scientists, historians, and philosophers will also find this book valuable as a source of reference. Charting theDivide between Common and Civil Law equips readers with the background and tools to think critically about different legal systems and evaluate their future direction.

The volume describes and analyzes how the costs of litigation in civil procedure are distributed in key countries around the world. It compares the various approaches, draws general conclusions from that comparison, and presents global trends as well as common problems and solutions. In particular, the book deals with three principal questions: First, who pays for civil litigation costs, i.e., to what extent do losers have to make winners whole? Second, how much money is at stake, i.e., how expensive is civil litigation in the respective jurisdictions? And third, whose money is ultimately spent, i.e., how are civil litigation costs distributed through mechanisms like legal aid, litigation insurance, collective actions, and success oriented fees? Inter alia, the study reveals a general trend towards deregulation of lawyer fees as well as a substantial correlation between the burden of litigation costs and membership of a jurisdiction in the civil and common law families.

This study is the result of the XVIIIth World Congress of Comparative Law held under the auspices of the International Academy of Comparative Law.

This book deals with the contractual platform for arbitration and the application of contractual norms to the parties' dispute. Arbitration and agreement are inter-linked in three respects: (i) the agreement to arbitrate is itself a contract; (ii) there is scope (subject to clear consensual exclusion) in England for monitoring the arbitral tribunal's fidelity and accuracy in applying substantive English contract law; (iii) the subject-matter of the arbitration is nearly always a 'contractual' matter. These three elements underlie this work. They appear as Part I (arbitration is founded on agreement), Part II (monitoring accuracy), Part III (synopsis of the English contractual rules frequently encountered within arbitration). The book will be a useful resource to foreign lawyers or English non-lawyers, English lawyers seeking a succinct discussion, and to arbitral tribunals.

This book offers an in-depth analysis of the differences between common law and civil law systems from various theoretical perspectives. Written by a global network of experts, it explores the topic against the background of a variety of legal traditions.Common law and civil law are typically presented as antagonistic players on a field claimed by diverse legal systems: the former being based on precedent set by judges in deciding cases before them; the latter being founded on a set of rules intended to govern the decisions of those applying them. Perceived in this manner, common law and civil law differ in terms of the (main) source(s) of law; who is to create them; who is (merely) to draw from them; and whether the law itself is pure each step of the way, or whether the law's purity may be tarnished when confronted with a set of contingent facts. These differences have deep roots in (legal) history - roots that allow us to trace them back to distinct traditions. Nevertheless, it is questionable whether the divide thus depicted is as great as it may seem: international and supranational legal systems unconcerned by national peculiarities appear to level the playing field. A normative understanding of constitutions seems to grant ever-greater authority to High Court decisions based on thinly worded maxims in countries that adhere to the civil law tradition. The challenges contemporary regulation faces call for ever-more detailed statutes governing the decisions of judges in the common law tradition. These and similar observations demand a structural reassessment of the role of judges, the power of precedent, the limits of legislation and other features often thought to be so different in common and civil law systems. The book addresses this reassessment.

This book looks at codification from a broad, international perspective, discussing general themes as well as various legal fields. Since codification is a subject of intense current interest in East Asia, this second volume on codification is dedicated to the sub-theme of codification and legal transplant in this area, focusing on China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. It includes two papers that discuss development of codification in East Asia and Korea in particular.It is also comprised of two reports that draw comparative lessons from Japan, India and Indonesia. In addition, this volume consists of four general reports and 19 national reports that guide readers through the knowledge of codification of commercial law, administrative law, civil law and private international law in East Asia.

This book is developed from papers presented at the 2012 Thematic Conference of the International Academy of Comparative Law. "

This book adds a critical perspective to the legal dialogue on the regulation of 'smart urban mobility'. Mobility is one of the most visible sub-domains of the 'smart city', which has become shorthand for technological advances that influence how cities are structured, public services are fashioned, and citizens coexist. In the urban context, mobility has come under pressure due to a variety of different forces, such as the implementation of new business models (e.g. car and bicycle sharing), the proliferation of alternative methods of transportation (e.g. electric scooters), the emergence of new market players and stakeholders (e.g. internet and information technology companies), and advancements in computer science (in particular due to artificial intelligence). At the same time, demographic changes and the climate crisis increase innovation pressure. In this context law is a seminal factor that both shapes and is shaped by socio-economic and technological change. This book puts a spotlight on recent developments in smart urban mobility from a legal, regulatory, and policy perspective. It considers the implications for the public sector, businesses, and citizens in relation to various areas of public and private law in the European Union, including competition law, intellectual property law, contract law, data protection law, environmental law, public procurement law, and legal philosophy. Chapter 'Location Data as Contractual Counter-Performance: A Consumer Perspective on Recent EU Legislation' of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com.

This book presents a comprehensive analysis of the existing nature of India's groundwater laws. In the backdrop of the gravity of groundwater crisis that threatens to engulf the country, the book examines the correlation between the imperfections in the law and water crisis and advocates a reform agenda to overhaul the legal framework. It accomplishes this objective by examining how some of the States and Union Territories regulate and manage groundwater through the legal instrumentality against the backdrop of the two conflicting paradigms: the "elitist" and the "egalitarian." The book's fundamental premise is that despite being an extraordinarily critical resource that supports India's burgeoning population's ever-increasing water demands, groundwater is abused and mismanaged. The key argument that it posits is that the elitist paradigm must give way to an egalitarian one where groundwater is treated as a common property resource. To place this message in perspective, the book's introduction explains the dichotomy between the two paradigms in the context of groundwater. This sets the stage, after which the book is divided thematically into three parts. The first part deals with some of the general groundwater management concerns brought to the fore by the operation of the elitist paradigm. Since water is constitutionally a State subject, the second part analyses the groundwater legislations of different States and Union Territories set against their unique circumstances. As these laws do not dismantle the elitist paradigm that interlocks groundwater rights to land rights, the next part articulates the legal reform agenda where a case is made to re-engineer groundwater laws to reflect a more sustainable basis. The findings and arguments resonate with the situation in many developing countries around the world due to which the book is a valuable resource for researchers across disciplines studying this area, and also for policy makers, think tanks, and NGOs. Groundwater Management-Inter-state Water Conflicts-Aquifers-Water Markets-Water Security-Water Law Reform-Groundwater Law-Water Law-Sustainable Development-Hydrology

This anthology highlights the theoretical foundations as well as the various applications of Behavioural Law and Economics in European legal culture. By the same token, it fosters the dialogue between European and American Law and Economics scholars. The traditional neo-classical microeconomic theory explains human behaviour by using Rational Choice. According to this model, people tend to maximize the difference between expected utility and cost ("expected utility theory"). This theory includes three assumptions: (1) unbounded rationality, (2) unbounded self-interest, and (3) unbounded willpower. Behavioural Economics questions these assumptions and endeavours to render economic analysis more realistic by underpinning it with psychological insights. In recent years, the influence of Behavioural Economics on the Economic Analysis of Law has gained momentum. Behavioural Law and Economics generates a better theoretical understanding of legal phenomena and offers a multitude of applications in legislation and legal adjudication. This volume is testament to the growing and thriving Law and Economics movement in Europe. The European Law and Economics community has steadily grown and the yearly Law and Economics Conference at the law faculty of the University of Lucerne has successfully become a guiding star in the vast sky of Law and Economics.

The third Joe Wilderness spy thriller from a master of the genre, moving from icy Finland to tumultuous Cold War Prague, Hammer to Fall is a tale of vodka smuggling and a legendary female Red Army general who is playing a dangerous game It's London, the swinging sixties, and by all rights MI6 spy Joe Wilderness should be having as good a time as James Bond. But alas, his postings are more grim than glamorous. Luckily, Wilderness has a knack for doing well for himself even in the most unpromising postings, though this has gotten him into hot water in the past. A coffee-smuggling gig in divided Berlin was a steady money-maker but things went pear-shaped when he had to smuggle a spy back to the KGB instead. In the wake of what became an embarrassing disaster for MI6, Wilderness is reprimanded with a posting to remote northern Finland, under the guise of a cultural exchange program to promote Britain abroad. Bored by his work, with nothing to spy on, Wilderness finds another way to make money, this time by smuggling vodka across the rather porous border into the USSR. He strikes a deal with his old KGB pal Kostya, who explains to him there is, no joke, a vodka shortage in the Soviet Union, following a grain famine caused by Khrushchev's new agricultural policies. But there is something fishy about why Kostya has suddenly turned up in Finland--and MI6 intelligence from London points to a connection to the mining of cobalt in the region, a critical component in the casing of the atomic bomb. Wilderness's posting is getting more interesting by the minute, but more dangerous too. Moving from the no-man's-land of Cold War Finland to the wild days of the Prague Spring, and populated by old friends (including Inspector Troy) and old enemies alike, Hammer to Fall is a gripping tale of deception and skullduggery, of art and politics, a page-turning story of the always riveting life of the British spy.

Climate Liberalism examines the potential and limitations of classical-liberal approaches to pollution control and climate change. Some successful environmental strategies, such as the use of catch-shares for fisheries, instream water rights, and tradable emission permits, draw heavily upon the classical liberal intellectual tradition and its emphasis on property rights and competitive markets. This intellectual tradition has been less helpful, to date, in the development or design of climate change policies. Climate Liberalism aims to help fill the gap in the academic literature examining the extent to which classical-liberal principles, including an emphasis on property rights, decentralized authority and dynamic markets, can inform the debate over climate-change policies. The contributors in this book approach the topic from a range of perspectives and represent multiple academic disciplines. Chapters consider the role of property rights and common-law legal systems in controlling pollution, the extent to which competitive markets backed by legal rules encourage risk minimization and adaptation, and how to identify the sorts of policy interventions that may help address climate change in ways that are consistent with liberal values.

This edited collection is grounded in a green criminological approach to understand whether the law, both in effect and implications, reflects, refracts, or sublimates the social, political and ecological conditions of our times. Since its initial proposal in the 1990s, green criminology has focused the criminological gaze on a wide array of harms and crimes affecting humans, animals other than humans, ecological systems, and the planet as a whole. As a continuously blossoming field of criminological inquiry, green criminology recognizes and examines behaviours that are both illegal and legal (yet detrimental), and in varying ways has made great efforts to provide insight into harms in a more fulsome manner. At the same time, there have been many significant legal instances, domestic, and international, including case law, legislation, regulation, treaties, agreements and executive directives which have troubled the law's understanding of green harms, illegal and legal activity, pushing legal boundaries in the process. Recognizing that humanity and nature are inextricably integrated, Green Criminology and the Law reflects the range and depth of high-quality research and scholarship, combining contributions from established scholars willing to explore new topics and recent entrants who are breaking new scholarly ground.

Street protests in the 'Arab Spring' countries have illustrated that public demand for recovering stolen assets has grown exponentially, as have expectations by concerned populations and governments. From a topic discussed in expert forums, it has thus become a topic of the people. The question is: Have practitioners and policy makers delivered on these expectations? Clearly, since the ratification of the UN Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) ten years ago, much progress has been made in streamlining respective legal and institutional frameworks. On the other hand, we also find that practical successes on the ground remain few and far apart, and largely limited to a handful of countries. This book asks why and, through the voice of renowned practitioners from a broad range of affected countries, analyses challenges that remain, identifies new stumbling blocks that have cropped up, and discusses practical solutions that are being tested with a view to overcoming these. The book is published by the Basel Institute on Governance's International Centre for Asset Recovery (ICAR).

This book introduces the press release work carried out by Ministry of Ecology and Environment of the People's Republic of China in 2019. It is divided into four parts, each arranged chronologically. The first part contains the records of Li Ganjie, Minister of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, who attended the press conference on "Promoting Ecological Civilization and Building a Beautiful China". The second part contains the records of Minister Li Ganjie's attendance at the press conference of the National People's Congress and the Chinese Political Consultative Conference as well as the "Minister channel". The third part contains the records of four press conferences on ecological and environmental protection held by the State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China. The fourth part contains the records of 12 regular press conferences held by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment.

This book analyzes the conflict that emerges between parties after a breach of contract and how different legal remedies can best reduce conflict. Causes for conflict include equity, efficiency, and ethical reasons that parties might consider and use to blame the other or to justify breach. In the end, if not resolved through apologies or renegotiation, conflict leads to aggrievement and behavioral reactions in form of retaliation by the victim against the promisor in breach. The book provides empirical evidence from laboratory experiments for how individuals react to perceived wrongful acts such as breach of contract and for the function of legal remedies to reduce retaliation by disappointed promisees in providing them compensation. It reveals how the inequality in the outcome, and not the inefficiency of breach of contract, causes aggrievement and retaliation by victims. The book concludes with a comparative law and economic analysis of remedies for breach of contract adopted in different leading jurisdictions, with important normative implications for the American insistence on expectation damages, the French expansion of specific performance with "astreinte", the German junction of specific performance, expectation damages, and disgorgement damages, and the British timid acceptance of partial disgorgement damages. The book will appeal to scholars, researchers, and students of economics and law, interested in a better understanding of remedies for breach of contract.

In its current state, the global food system is socially and ecologically unsustainable: nearly two billion people are food insecure, and food systems are the number one contributor to climate change. While agro-industrial production is promoted as the solution to these problems, growing global "food sovereignty" movements are challenging this model by demanding local and democratic control over food systems. Translating Food Sovereignty accompanies activists based in the Pacific Northwest of the United States as they mobilize the claim of food sovereignty across local, regional, and global arenas of governance. In contrast to social movements that frame their claims through the language of human rights, food sovereignty activists are one of the first to have articulated themselves in relation to the neoliberal transnational order of networked governance. While this global regulatory framework emerged to deepen market logics, Matthew C. Canfield reveals how activists are leveraging this order to make more expansive social justice claims. This nuanced, deeply engaged ethnography illustrates how food sovereignty activists are cultivating new forms of transnational governance from the ground up.

This book is a comparative study of judge-managed court systems across Australia, Europe and North America. This book makes an original contribution to the literature of court administration by providing a framework for examining court-service models of judicial councils, the policymaking bodies of courts and tribunals. This book promises to assist court administration scholars, judicial leaders, and policymakers in devising more effective organizational solutions to the contemporary challenges of judicial self-governance. The author Dr. Tim Bunjevac offers a nuanced elaboration of judicial accountability in court administration and a model institutional framework of court governance, comparing key Australian and international models of court administration, including the Australian Federal and two state court systems, Irish, English, Canadian and Dutch models. With a close case study, the author puts his sharpest focus on the Victoria, Australia, which introduced a judicial council in 2014. This book does an innovative job of proposing a new elaboration of judicial accountability in court administration. This book proposes that the likely success of any court system reform ultimately depends on the quality of the interaction between the courts, government, and other justice system stakeholders, which must be rooted in the concepts of organizational transparency and administrative accountability.

This book takes a law and economic approach to examine the securities law enforcement in China and provides an in-depth empirical analysis on the enforcement inputs and outputs. In contrast to previous studies, it systematically collects a large sample of judicated securities fraud cases and public sanctions as disclosed by the listed companies. The enforcement regime is further divided into the private enforcement exemplified by the civil litigation imitated by harmed investors and public enforcement by sanctions proceedings initiated by public agencies. Academic researchers, policy makers and practitioners, who are interested in the securities market and regulation could find the information provided in this book interesting.

This book introduces readers to the press release work carried out by Ministry of Ecology and Environment of the People's Republic of China in 2018. It is divided into 3 parts, and each part is arranged in chronological order. The first part contains the records of Li Ganjie, Minister of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, who attended the press conference of the two conferences and the "Ministerial Channel". The second part contains the record of Special Representative of China's Climate Change Affairs, Xie Zhenhua, who attended the "China's Policies and Actions on Climate Change 2018 Annual Report" press conference, and Zhao Yingmin, Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment, who attended the "Three-year Action Plan to Win the Blue Sky Defense War" policy briefing. The third part contains the records of 12 regular press conferences of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment throughout the year.

This edited collection is grounded in a green criminological approach to understand whether the law, both in effect and implications, reflects, refracts, or sublimates the social, political and ecological conditions of our times. Since its initial proposal in the 1990s, green criminology has focused the criminological gaze on a wide array of harms and crimes affecting humans, animals other than humans, ecological systems, and the planet as a whole. As a continuously blossoming field of criminological inquiry, green criminology recognizes and examines behaviours that are both illegal and legal (yet detrimental), and in varying ways has made great efforts to provide insight into harms in a more fulsome manner. At the same time, there have been many significant legal instances, domestic, and international, including case law, legislation, regulation, treaties, agreements and executive directives which have troubled the law's understanding of green harms, illegal and legal activity, pushing legal boundaries in the process. Recognizing that humanity and nature are inextricably integrated, Green Criminology and the Law reflects the range and depth of high-quality research and scholarship, combining contributions from established scholars willing to explore new topics and recent entrants who are breaking new scholarly ground.

Why are women still at a disadvantage in Chinese divorce courts? Despite the increase of gender consciousness in Chinese society and a trove of legislation to protect women, why are Chinese women still disadvantaged in divorce courts? Xin He argues that institutional constraints to which judges are subject, a factor largely ignored by existing literature, play a crucial role. Twisting the divorce law practices are the bureaucratic incentives of courts and their political concerns for social stability. Because of these concerns, judges often choose the most efficient, and safest, way to handle issues in divorce cases. In so doing, they allow the forces of inequality in social, economic, cultural, and political areas to infiltrate their decisions. Divorce requests are delayed; domestic violence is trivialized; and women's child custody is sacrificed. The institutional failure to enforce the laws has become a major obstacle to gender justice. Divorce in China is the only study of Chinese divorce cases based on fieldwork and interviews conducted inside Chinese courtrooms over the course of a decade. With an unusual vantage point, Xin He offers a rare and unfiltered view of the operation of Chinese courts in the authoritarian regime. Through a socio-legal perspective highlighting the richness, sophistication, and cutting-edge nature of the research, Divorce in China is as much an account of Chinese courts in action as a social ethnography of China in the midst of momentous social change.

This book focuses on the legal systems of the late-developing countries of ASEAN (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam, often referred to as the CLMV countries). These nations are apt to be placed in an economically disadvantageous situation within the opportunity of communalization of legal systems being advanced by the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) launched in 2015, and the book clarifies the dynamics of the changes within these legal systems. Concurrently, there is an intention to analyze the "legal system development support" that has continued to be provided to these countries since the mid-1990s via international development support from international organizations and developed countries including Japan. In particular, the emphasis has been on the area of civil law, where the main subject of Japan's support has been centered on the civil code and civil procedure code. The legal system of the recipient country is complicated by the crisscrossing of the remnants of previous eras, from the inherent laws that have existed since before colonization, the laws of the colonial powers that were introduced during the colonial era (French law in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam; English law in Myanmar), the influence of socialist law after independence from colonization, and the path of modern industrialization and development, such that one country's legal system is the combination of all of these influences. For the reader to understand the dynamics of these changing laws, each chapter of the book combines two methodological perspectives. The first is to ascertain the spatial range as to how far the civil law extends across social phenomena. The second is a historical perspective in which the trends in legal changes will be understood on a time axis.