Baker and Milsom's Sources of English Legal History is the definitive source book on the development of English private law. This new edition has been comprehensively revised and udpated to incorporate new sources discovered since the original publication in 1986, and to reflect developments in recent scholarship.
All the sources included are translated into modern English, offering an accessible inroad to the leading primary materials for students of the history of the common law.
The sources themselves - revealing the operation of courts across a wide range of personal and economic disputes - offer a rich resource for historians researching the development of the English government, society, and economy. Their significance in shaping the common law spans beyond England, and ensures the collection is an essential reference point for all those interested in the history of the common law in any jurisdiction.

This book explores the relationship between the law and pervasive and persistent reasonable disagreement about justice. It reveals the central moral function and creative force of reasonable disagreement in and about the law and shows why and how lawyers and legal philosophers should take reasonable conflict more seriously. Even though the law should be regarded as the primary mode of settlement of our moral conflicts, it can, and should, also be the object and the forum of further moral conflicts. There is more to the rule of law than convergence and determinacy and it is important therefore to question the importance of agreement in law and politics. By addressing in detail issues pertaining to the nature and sources of disagreement, its extent and significance, as well as the procedural, institutional and substantive responses to disagreement in the law and their legitimacy, this book suggests the value of a comprehensive approach to thinking about conflict, which until recently has been analysed in a compartmentalized way. It aims to provide a fully-fledged political morality of conflict by drawing on the analysis of topical jurisprudential questions in the new light of disagreement. Developing such a global theory of disagreement in the law should be read in the context of the broader effort of reconstructing a complete account of democratic law-making in pluralistic societies. The book will be of value not only to legal philosophers and constitutional theorists, but also to political and democratic theorists, as well as to all those interested in public decision-making in conditions of conflict

Ownership and Inheritance in Sanskrit Jurisprudence provides an account of various theories of ownership (svatva) and inheritance (daya) in Sanskrit jurisprudential literature (Dharmasastra). It examines the evolution of different juridical models of inheritance-in which families held property in trusts or in tenancies-in-common-against the backdrop of related developments in the philosophical understanding of ownership in the Sanskrit text-traditions of hermeneutics (Mimamsa) and logic (Nyaya) respectively. Christopher T. Fleming reconstructs medieval Sanskrit theories of property and traces the emergence of various competing schools of Sanskrit jurisprudence during the early modern period (roughly fifteenth-nineteenth centuries) in Bihar, Bengal, and Varanasi. Fleming attends to the ways in which ideas from these schools of jurisprudence shaped the codification of Anglo-Hindu personal law by administrators of the British East India Company during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. While acknowledging the limitations of colonial conceptions of Dharmasastra as positive law, this study argues for far greater continuity between pre-colonial and colonial Sanskrit jurisprudence than accepted previously. It charts the transformation of the Hindu law of inheritance-through precedent and statute-over the late nineteenth, twentieth, and early twenty-first centuries.

If your adult child becomes incapacitated or dies, you do not automatically gain custody of your grandchildren. Sometimes, depending on the age of the children and whether or not they are adoptable will determine who gets custody. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal bonus monies are given to states each year when they exceed the number of adoptions from the previous year. Your grandchild may be needed to help reach the numbers necessary for your state to receive its bonus.

As the Baby Boomer generation ages and the sandwich generation is stressed between caring for children and caring for parents, questions are cropping up all across the nation: How can I protect the nest egg I've worked so hard to create? What happens to my assets if I die unexpectedly? Will I be able to afford long-term care?

In "Asset Protection Planning for Seniors," attorney Michael A. Babiarz shares numerous examples of the real-life problems that aging Americans face today.

This is not another confusing form book or technical manual. "Asset Protection Planning for Seniors" is a simple, helpful guide, filled with examples aimed at addressing the basic concerns of older Americans-you

Stop worrying and start learning about: Nursing homes Medicaid planning Wills Trusts Probate Avoiding family problems Protecting inheritance Powers of attorney

This book deals with adoption laws and practices in small island developing states in the Pacific. It commences with an introductory chapter giving an overview of relevant laws and practices and pulling together the common themes and issues raised in the book. Each of the following chapters deals with adoption law and practice in a small South Pacific country. The countries in question all have plural legal systems, with systems of adoption and its closest customary law equivalent operating side by side. In most cases, there is an insufficiently developed relationship between the two systems, which has resulted in a number of problems. Additionally, international law adds another layer of complexity. Size and remoteness in the small states under discussion have a profound impact on local practices.

The rule of law paradigm has long operated on the premise that independent judges disregard extralegal influences and impartially uphold the law. A political transformation several generations in the making, however, has imperiled this premise. Social science learning, the lessons of which have been widely internalized by court critics and the general public, has shown that judicial decision-making is subject to ideological and other extralegal influences. In recent decades, challenges to the assumptions underlying the rule of law paradigm have proliferated across a growing array of venues, as critics agitate for greater political control of judges and courts. With the future of the rule of law paradigm in jeopardy, this book proposes a new way of looking at how the role of the American judiciary should be conceptualized and regulated. This new, "legal culture paradigm" defends the need for an independent judiciary that is acculturated to take law seriously but is subject to political and other extralegal influences. The book argues that these extralegal influences cannot be eliminated but can be managed, by balancing the needs for judicial independence and accountability across competing perspectives, to the end of enabling judges to follow the "law" (less rigidly conceived), respect established legal process, and administer justice.

This book contains original essays by a distinguished group of jurists from six different European countries confronting the increasing range of legal and philosophical issues arising from the relationship between privacy and the criminal law. The collection is particularly timely in light of the incorporation into English law of the European Convention on Human Rights. It compares legal cultures and underlying assumptions with regard to the private sphere,personal autonomy and the supposed justifications for State interference through criminalization and the implementation of substantive criminal law. The book moves from treatment of general ideas like the relationship between sovereignty, the nation-state and substantive criminal law in the new European context, (with its concomitant aspiration towards the establishment of transnational morality) to more detailed consideration of specific areas of substantive law and procedure, viewed from a range of perspectives. Areas considered include euthanasia, surrogacy, female genital mutilation and sado-masochism.

Christians often see the Old Testament law as out of date and irrelevant now that Christ has come. Lalleman rejects this view and makes the case for the ongoing importance of the Law in the Christian life something to celebrate. Most helpfully, Lalleman sets out a model for interpretating Old Testament laws in the context of the whole of the Bible. She interacts with the scholarly literature on the subject in a very readable way and provides some basic biblical principles for integrating the whole of God's word in our lives. Lalleman then fleshes out these principles by applying them to three difficult topics in Old Testament law food laws, the cancellation of debts, and warfare. At the heart of this celebration of the law, she contends, is the wholeness, holiness, and integrity of God himself.

Why do judges study legal sources which originated outside their own national legal system, and how do they use arguments from these sources in deciding domestic cases? Based on interviews with judges, this book presents the inside story of how judges engage with international and comparative law in the highest courts of the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, France and the Netherlands. A comparative analysis of the views and experiences of the judges clarifies how the decision-making of these Western courts has developed in light of the internationalisation of law and the increased opportunities for transnational judicial communication. While the qualitative analysis reveals the motives which judges claim for using foreign law and the influence of 'globalist' and 'localist' approaches to judging, the author also finds suggestions of a convergence of practices between the courts which are the subject of this study. This empirical analysis is complemented by a constitutional-theoretical inquiry into the procedural and substantive factors of legal evolution, which enable or constrain the development and possible convergence of highest courts' practices. The two strands of the analysis are connected in a final contextual reflection on the future development of the role of Western highest courts.

It has become increasingly difficult to speak or even think social or legal justice in an age when words have left their moorings. Perhaps images are more stable than words; maybe images and imagery possess a certain viscosity,even a sensory quality, which prevents them from evaporating. This 'maybe' is what this book is about. The contributors to this collection explore the issue of how the Imaginary (images, imagery, imagination) has a role in the production and reproduction of 'visions' of legal and social justice. It argues that 'visions' of justice are inevitably bounded. Boundaries of 'visions' of justice, however, are also 'imaginary'. They emerge within imaginary spaces, and, as they are 'imaginary', they are inherently unstable. The book captures an emerging interest (in the humanities and social sciences) in images and the visual, or the Imaginary more broadly. This collection will appeal to scholars and students of social and legal theory, visual culture, justice and governance studies, media studies, and criminology.

"Works such as A Law of Her Own expose the injustices in our society, provide different perspectives, and stimulate discussion. . . . Forell and Matthews' contribution to the debate should not be overlooked."
--"Law & Life"

Despite the apparent progress in women's legal status, the law retains a profoundly male bias, and as such contributes to the pervasive violence and injustice against women.

In A Law of Her Own, the authors propose to radically change law's fundamental paradigm by introducing a "reasonable woman standard" for measuring men's behavior. Advocating that courts apply this standard to the conduct of men-and women-in legal settings where women are overwhelmingly the injured parties, the authors seek to eliminate the victimization and objectification of women by dismantling part of the legal structure that supports their subordination.

A woman-based legal standard-focusing on respect for bodily integrity, agency, and autonomy-would help rectify the imbalance in how society and its legal system view sexual and gender-based harassment, rape, stalking, battery, domestic imprisonment, violence, and death.

Examining the bias of the existing "reasonable person" standard through analysis of various court cases and judicial decisions, A Law of Her Own aims to balance the law to incorporate women's values surrounding sex and violence.

Gershon Brin examines the development of biblical law, suggesting that it may be due to different authors with different legal outlooks, or that the differing policies were required in response to different social needs, etc. Biblical laws appearing in the Dead Sea Scrolls literature are treated in a separate unit. Study of this subject can shed light both on the biblical laws as such, as well as on the manner of their reworking by the Judaean Desert sect. Brin also discusses here questions of the style, the idea, and the historical and ideological background underlying the reworking of these laws in Qumran. The second part of the book presents a comprehensive picture of the issues involved in the laws of the first-born, a subject that has legal, social and religious implications.

In his collection George extends the critique of liberalism he expounded in Making Men Moral and also goes beyond it to show how contemporary natural law theory provides a superior way of thinking about basic problems of justice and political morality. It is written with the same combination of stylistic elegance and analytical rigour that distinguished his critical work. Not content merely to defend natural law from its cultural despisers, he deftly turns the tables and deploys the idea to mount a stunning attack on regnant liberal beliefs about such issues as abortion, sexuality, and the place of religion in public life.

Even in our most casual encounters with strangers -- when we are looking at each other, talking, or standing in line -- legal systems with elaborate codes, authorized exceptions, and procedures for sanctioning deviance operate with a remarkable degree of success. In this pathbreaking book, Michael Reisman describes how law is an integral and indispensable part of every social interaction. The private sphere or civic order that the liberal state is committed to preserving and in which it tries to refrain from legislating, says Reisman, is not a legal vacuum but the zone of microlaw -- some of it just, some unsatisfactory, and some tyrannical.

Interweaving numerous real-life examples with a detailed review of the scientific literature of many disciplines, Reisman shows the extent to which microlegal systems function in our own lives. More important, he draws on the criteria of ethics and legal philosophy to demonstrate that, paradoxically, efforts to improve microlaw may threaten the very autonomy of the private sphere that central is to the liberal state.

The Rabbis of the first five centuries of the Common Era loom large in the Jewish tradition. Until the modern period, Jews viewed the Rabbinic traditions as the authoritative contents of their covenant with God, and scholars debated the meanings of these ancient Sages words. Even after the eighteenth century, when varied denominations emerged within Judaism, each with its own approach to the tradition, the literary legacy of the talmudic Sages continued to be consulted.
In this book, Michael S. Berger analyzes the notion of Rabbinic authority from a philosophical standpoint. He sets out a typology of theories that can be used to understand the authority of these Sages, showing the coherence of each, its strengths and weaknesses, and what aspects of the Rabbinic enterprise it covers. His careful and thorough analysis reveals that owing to the multifaceted character of the Rabbinic enterprise, no single theory is adequate to fully ground Rabbinic authority as traditionally understood.
The final section of the book argues that the notion of Rabbinic authority may indeed have been transformed over time, even as it retained the original name. Drawing on the debates about legal hermeneutics between Ronald Dworkin and Stanley Fish, Berger introduces the idea that Rabbinic authority is not a strict consequence of a preexisting theory, but rather is embedded in a form of life that includes text, interpretation, and practices. Rabbinic authority is shown to be a nuanced concept unique to Judaism, in that it is taken to justify those sorts of activities which in turn actually deepen the authority itself.
Students of Judaism and philosophers of religion in general will be intrigued bythis philosophical examination of a central issue of Judaism, conducted with unprecedented rigor and refreshing creative insight.

This book offers a 'genealogical' explanation of law's normativity. The term 'genealogical' conveys a commitment to a non-metaphysical type of enquiry. While it explains how law, as a normative phenomenon, comes about, it does not seek to ground law's normativity in anything but the context of social interaction giving rise to it. Legal normativity is brought about on a daily basis. Whether in revolutionary circumstances or in the quotidian need for judges, lawmakers or citizens to balance law's demands with those of morality or prudence, our ability to bind ourselves through law ultimately depends on our capacity to articulate a better way of living together, and to commit ourselves to it. These efforts of assessment and articulation depend, in turn, on our conception of normative agency. Assert the need to trace the truth of ethical judgments to some independent moral 'facts' conditioning their objectivity, and you will get a different understanding of what it is we are doing when we dispute law's authority in the name of moral values. Tracing the truth of moral judgements back to our own social practices not only affects the nature of disagreement; it also dramatically increases our responsibility when, as lawmakers, judges, or citizens we 'take the law into our own hands' and confront it with our moral expectations.

The essays in this volume concern the topic of legal rights, how they are related to morality, the place of rights on moral theory, and the legal recognition of rights.

This book focuses on the separatist trend in Hong Kong, which it approaches by drawing on historical studies, political analysis, social studies and legal analysis. It offers a comprehensive and interdisciplinary guide to the topic, addressing the historical evolution of "Hong Kong Nativism," the theoretical connotations and fallacies of "Hong Kong Independence," and the legal measures taken to forestall it. Written by mainland scholars who approach the subject matter from a legal perspective, the book offers revealing insights for all students and researchers who are interested in Hong Kong Basic Law and the current political situation in Hong Kong.

This book looks critically at some of the underlying assumptions which shape our current understanding of the role and purpose of law and society. It focuses on adjudication as a social practice and as a set of governmental techniques. From this vantage point, it explores how the relationship between law, government and society has changed in the course of history in significant ways. At the centre of the argument is the elaboration of the notion of `adjudicative government'. From this perspective it is argued that the relationship between law and society must be conceived in a different way in the era of economics, sociology and statistics. The impact of these disciplines both constitutes `modernity' and unfolds a different role for law. The author argues that the traditional vision of the role of law, rooted in a complex set of hierarchical assumptions, is no longer adequate.

This Major Reference series brings together a wide range of key international articles in law and legal theory. Many of these essays are not readily accessible, and their presentation in these volumes will provide a vital new resource for both research and teaching. Each volume is edited by leading international authorities who explain the significance and context of articles in an informative and complete introduction.

This Major Reference series brings together a wide range of key international articles in law and legal theory. Many of these essays are not readily accessible, and their presentation in these volumes will provide a vital new resource for both research and teaching. Each volume is edited by leading international authorities who explain the significance and context of articles in an informative and complete introduction.