This book explores the thesis that legal roles force people to engage in moral combat, an idea that is implicit in the assumption that citizens may be morally required to disobey unjust laws, while judges may be morally required to punish citizens for civil disobedience. Heidi Hurd advances the surprising argument that the law cannot require us to do what morality forbids. Moral Combat is a sophisticated, well-conceived and carefully argued book on a very important and controversial topic at the junction between legal and political philosophy. It will be of interest to moral, legal, and political philosophers, as well as teachers and students of professional ethics in law.

An intensive global search is on for the "rule of law," the holy grail of good governance, which has led to a dramatic increase in judicial reform activities in developing countries. Very little attention, however, has been paid to the widening gap between theory and practice, or to the ongoing disconnect between stated project goals and actual funded activities.
"Beyond Common Knowledge" examines the standard methods of legal and judicial reform. Taking stock of international experience in legal and judicial reform in Latin America, Europe, India, and China, this volume answers key questions in the judicial reform debate: What are the common assumptions about the role of the courts in improving economic growth and democratic politics? Do we expect too much from the formal legal system? Is investing in judicial reform projects a good strategy for getting at the problems of governance that beset many developing countries? If not, what are we missing?

Africa is the emerging continent of the twenty-first century and will continue to play a major role in the world politics and trade. At the center of the African experience is customary law, which remains one of the most important and quintessential forms of legal, political, and social organization and regulation in the sub-Saharan landscape. Using qualitative and quantitative data, Casper Njuguna, sets a framework for understanding the hybrid nature of this law and creates an appropriate new moniker for it—Neo-Autogenous Sub-Saharan Law (NAS law). This systematic and empirical analysis addresses philosophical issues like human rights, property rights, women’s rights, individual rights and freedoms, family relations, social structures, and political loyalties, which span beyond Africa and African scholars.

The essays in this collection use interdisciplinary perspectives to investigate issues in international and comparative law, primarily employing theoretical or empirical economics. They demonstrate that the economic analysis of law has much to contribute to the study of international matters, despite the fact that mainstream international legal scholars and economists have had relatively little interaction. Original versions of the essays were presented at a conference sponsored by Duquesne and George Mason Universities in the Spring of 1995, and some essays are followed by comments from conference participants.

This is the second of two volumes written for students preparing for the Professional Diploma in Law examination , covering the four subjects included in the syllabus for Year Two: contract and consumer law, employment law, family law, wills, probate and succession. Each topic area is broken down into numbered sub topics and cross referenced where appropriate, including reference to the Professional Diploma in Law Level 3. The book also contains sample questions and guidance on how to answer them. In addition to satisfying the requirements for the Institute's syllabus, this book will help the student understand how the law works in practice. Frequent references are made to significant cases, which are fully explained. The book also contains examples of statutes and law reports to enable the student to gain familiarity with the primary sources of law. The book has been updated to include all the latest case law and statutes.

Is it lawful to shed the blood of someone who insults the Prophet Muhammad? Does the Qu'ran stipulate a worldly punishment for apostates? This book tells the gripping story of Rāfiq Taqī, an Azerbaijani journalist and writer, who was condemned to death by an Iranian cleric for a blasphemous news article in 2006. Delving into the Qu'ran and Hadith - the most sacred sources for all Muslims - Mohsen Kadivar explores the subject of blasphemy and apostasy from the perspective of Shi'a jurisprudence to articulate a polarisation between secularism and extremist religious orthodoxy. In a series of online exchanges, he debates the case with Muhammad Jawad Fazel, the son of Grand Ayatollah Fazel Lankarānī who issued the fatwa pronouncing death penalty on Taqī. While disapproving of the journalist's writings, Kadivar takes a defensive stance against vigilante murders and asks whether death for apostasy reflects the true spirit of Islam.

International human rights law has emerged as an academic subject in its own right, separate from, but still related to international law. This book explains the distinctive nature of this discipline by examining the influence of the idea of human rights on general international law. Rather than make use of a particular moral philosophy or political theory, it explains human rights by examining the way the term is deployed in legal practice, on the understanding that words are given meaning through their use. Relying on complexity theory to make sense of the legal practice of the United Nations, the core human rights treaties, and customary international law, the work demonstrates the emergence of the moral concept of human rights as a fact of the social world. It reveals the dynamic nature of this concept, and the influence of the idea on the legal practice, a fact that explains the fragmentation of international law and special nature of international human rights law.

This controversial book explores the potential for the use of lotteries in social, and particularly legal, decision-making contexts. Utilizing a variety of disciplines and materials, the author considers in detail the history, advantages, and drawbacks of deciding issues of social significance by lot and argues that the value of the lottery as a legal decision-making device has generally been underestimated. The final chapter of the book considers how lotteries might be combined with other decision-mechanisms and suggests that it may sometimes be sensible to require that adjudication takes place in the shadow of the lottery.

This book is concerned with the ethics of judging in courts of law. Professor Burton analyzes the grounds, content, and force of a judge's legal and moral duties to uphold the law. He defends two primary theses. The first is the good faith thesis, whereby judges are bound in law to uphold the law, even when they have discretion, by acting only on reasons warranted by the conventional law as grounds for judical decisions. The good faith thesis counters the common view that judges are not bound by the law when they exercise discretion. The second is the permissible discretion thesis, whereby, when exercised in good faith, judicial discretion is compatible with the legitimacy of adjudication in a constitutional democracy under the Rule of Law. The permissible discretion thesis counters the view that judges can fulfill their duty to uphold the law only when the law yields determinate results. Together, these two theses provide an original and powerful theory of adjudication in sharp contrast both to conservative theories that would restrict the scope of adjudication unduly, and to leftist critical theories that would liberate judges from the Rule of Law.

This book examines the legal, ethical and regulatory debates surrounding the rise of the cosmetic procedures industry. In the past, cosmetic procedures were often seen as limited to a small number of wealthy older women. Today, such procedures have gone mainstream, partly facilitated by the rise of 'non-invasive' techniques, such as the use of Botox and Dermal Fillers. While still a business dominated by the female consumer, there is also an increasing number of males undertaking cosmetic procedures as social expectations around appearance and ageing are challenged. At the same time, the rapid expansion of this business and the incoherent, diverse approach to its regulation have given rise to concern. It has been seen as a 'Wild West'. If cosmetic procedures go wrong, such procedures give rise to real risks of harm. This book examines the historical backdrop, current practice and risks associated with cosmetic procedures. It discusses the ethical and regulatory challenges for this area. It also examines the current legal frameworks concerning people, practitioners and products in the UK. The book also draws lessons from regulatory approaches in other jurisdictions with particular reference to the United States, Brazil and France. It then sets out a legal and regulatory framework that might better protect and empower the cosmetic consumer, now and in the future. The book is likely to be of particular interest to those working in the areas of health and medical law, socio-legal studies and political science.

This book looks at the first eight Sanskrit law codes written in India, between 600 BCE and 570 ACE. It focuses on the legal, religious and ethical customs which were codified in this period and their impact on the social and political life of women. The volume analyzes texts such as the Dharma Sutras, the Arthasastra, the Manu Smriti, the Yajnyavalkya Smriti, and Narada Smriti, amongst others. It studies discourses on justice, conduct, virtues and duties, and how early laws were used to systematize patriarchy and the varna caste system in South Asia. It examines how patrimonial laws and male property rights highlighted social anxieties about female chastity and varna lineage, which led to the subordination of women and the lower varnas. These anxieties are most evident in codes from the late Vedic and early classical eras when diverse new settlers arrived upon the subcontinent. At this time, kings decentralized governance and allowed local groups to practice communal laws, while they meted out court justice with a specific law code. As the state became prosperous from trade conducted by merchants of diverse castes, sects, and classes, and social peace was ensured by officials from disparate backgrounds, kings began to rely upon a law code that aspired for equity above intolerance. These chapters examine heterodox Theravada Buddhism and Jainism, their origins in the oligarchic state, their impact on the royal Sanskritic state, as seen in canonical literature. They especially focus on women's roles in heterodox sects, and the emergence of new spaces for women, as such changes were adopted in disparate ways and degrees by other South Asian communities. The volume will be a useful resource for students and researchers of history, women and gender studies, social anthropology, sociology, and law. It will also serve as an information guide for readers who are interested in the political, and social life of women in early India

"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.

In "Between Facts and Norms" Habermas works out the legal and political implications of his theoretical approach, bringing to fruition the project announced more than three decades ago in "The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Between Facts and Norms" is a major contribution to current debates on the role of law and the prospects for the development of democracy in contemporary societies. Habermas develops a distinctive account of the nature of law, arguing that law is characterized by an internal tension between factual and normative aspects. He links this account to a broader argument concerning the formation of the modern constitutional state and the role of democratic deliberation as a means of securing the legitimacy of legal norms in complex, pluralistic societies.

Habermas develops a proceduralist conception of democracy which emphasizes the importance of citizens organizing themselves in informal associations and voicing their concerns in a variety of public settings. If the formal processes of law-making in modern societies are to sustain their legitimacy, they must be capable of taking account of the concerns of ordinary citizens. In our complex, pluralistic societies, the legitimacy of political decision-making processes depends on a robust civil society and a vibrant public sphere.

"Between Facts and Norms" is an outstanding work by one the most important social and political thinkers of our time. It will be a focal point of debate for many years to come in the fields of social and political theory, sociology, politics and philosophy.

This book is concerned with the ethics of judging in courts of law. Professor Burton analyzes the grounds, content, and force of a judge's legal and moral duties to uphold the law. He defends two primary theses. The first is the good faith thesis, whereby judges are bound in law to uphold the law, even when they have discretion, by acting only on reasons warranted by the conventional law as grounds for judical decisions. The good faith thesis counters the common view that judges are not bound by the law when they exercise discretion. The second is the permissible discretion thesis, whereby, when exercised in good faith, judicial discretion is compatible with the legitimacy of adjudication in a constitutional democracy under the Rule of Law. The permissible discretion thesis counters the view that judges can fulfill their duty to uphold the law only when the law yields determinate results. Together, these two theses provide an original and powerful theory of adjudication in sharp contrast both to conservative theories that would restrict the scope of adjudication unduly, and to leftist critical theories that would liberate judges from the Rule of Law.

This profound and scholarly treatise develops a critical version of legal positivism as the basis for modern legal scholarship. Departing from the formalism of Hart and Kelsen and blending the European tradition of Weber, Habermas and Foucault with the Anglo-American contributions of Dworkin and MacCormick, Tuori presents the normative and practical faces of law as a multilayered phenomenon within which there is an important role for critical legal dogmatics in furthering law's self-understanding and coherence. Its themes also resonate with importance for the development of the European legal system.

This book presents a broad overview of the many intersections between health and the environment that lie at the basis of the most crucial environmental health issues, focusing on the responses provided by international and EU law. Consistent with the One Health approach and moving from the relevant international and EU legal frameworks, the book addresses some of the most important issues of environmental health including the traditional, such as pollution of air, water and soil and related food safety issues, as well as new and emerging challenges, like those linked to climate change, antimicrobial resistance and electromagnetic fields. Applying an intersectoral and interdisciplinary approach, it also investigates other branches of international and EU law including human rights law, investment law, trade law, energy law and disaster law. The work also discusses ethics and intergenerational equity. Ultimately, the book assesses the degree of effectiveness of the international and EU normative framework, and the extent to which the relevant legal instruments contribute to the protection of public health from major environmental hazards. The book will be a valuable resource for students, academics and policy makers working in the areas of Environmental Health law, Global Health law, International law and EU law.

The integration of robotic systems and artificial intelligence into healthcare settings is accelerating. As these technological developments interact socially with children, the elderly, or the disabled, they may raise concerns besides mere physical safety; concerns that include data protection, inappropriate use of emotions, invasion of privacy, autonomy suppression, decrease in human interaction, and cognitive safety. Given the novelty of these technologies and the uncertainties surrounding the impact of care automation, it is unclear how the law should respond. This book investigates the legal and regulatory implications of the growing use of personal care robots for healthcare purposes. It explores the interplay between various aspects of the law, including safety, data protection, responsibility, transparency, autonomy, and dignity; and it examines different robotic and AI systems, such as social therapy robots, physical assistant robots for rehabilitation, and wheeled passenger carriers. Highlighting specific problems and challenges in regulating complex cyber-physical systems in concrete healthcare applications, it critically assesses the adequacy of current industry standards and emerging regulatory initiatives for robots and AI. After analyzing the potential legal and ethical issues associated with personal care robots, it concludes that the primarily principle-based approach of recent law and robotics studies is too abstract to be as effective as required by the personal care context. Instead, it recommends bridging the gap between general legal principles and their applicability in concrete robotic and AI technologies with a risk-based approach using impact assessments. As the first book to compile both legal and regulatory aspects of personal care robots, this book will be a valuable addition to the literature on robotics, artificial intelligence, human-robot interaction, law, and philosophy of technology.

This is the paperback edition of a collection of original papers from distinguished legal theorists offers a challenging assessment of the nature and viability of legal positivism, a branch of legal theory that continues to dominate contemporary legal theoretical debates. To what extent is the law adequately described as `autonomous'? Should law claim autonomy? These and other questions are addressed by the authors in this carefully edited collection. It will be of interested to all lawyers and scholars interested in legal philosophy and legal theory.

"Starkly essentialist reasoning sounds almost quaint by today's standards of gender equality. So it is with some surprise that general readers will encounter an intense and carefully reasoned defense of essentialism from the pen of one of America's best-known feminist legal theorists."
--"Women's Review of Books"

"By critiquing traditional ideas about 'justice, ' including economic theories about value, this provocative feminist jurisprudential scholar advances what she calls an 'ethic of care' and argues that 'if adjudication is to be just, then the goal of good judging must be both justice and care.'"
--"Georgia Bar Journal"

Over the past decade, mainstream feminist theory has repeatedly and urgently cautioned against arguments which assert the existence of fundamental--or essential--differences between men and women. Any biological or natural differences between the sexes are often flatly denied, on the grounds that such an acknowledgment will impede women's claims to equal treatment.

In "Caring for Justice," Robin West turns her sensitive, measured eye to the consequences of this widespread refusal to consider how women's lived experiences and perspectives may differ from those of men. Her work calls attention to two critical areas in which an inadequate recognition of women's distinctive experiences has failed jurisprudence. We are in desperate need, she contends, both of a theory of justice which incorporates women's distinctive moral voice on the meaning of justice into our discourse, and of a theory of harm which better acknowledges, compensates, and seeks to prevent the various harms which women, disproportionately and distinctively, suffer.

Providing afresh feminist perspective on traditional jurisprudence, West examines such issues as the nature of justice, the concept of harm, economic theories of value, and the utility of constitutional discourse. She illuminates the adverse repercussions of the anti-essentialist position for jurisprudence, and offers strategies for correcting them. Far from espousing a return to essentialism, West argues an anti- anti-essentialism, which greatly refines our understanding of the similarities and differences between women and men.

Asserting that litigation in late imperial China was a form of documentary warfare, this book offers a social analysis of the men who composed legal documents for commoners and elites alike. Litigation masters--a broad category of legal facilitators ranging from professional plaintmasters to simple but literate men to whom people turned for assistance--emerge in this study as central players in many of the most scandalous cases in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century China. These cases reveal the power of scandal to shape entire categories of law in the popular and official imaginations.
The author characterizes litigation masters as entrepreneurs of power, intermediaries who typically emerge in the process of limited state expansion to provide links between local interests and the infrastructure of the state. These powermongers routinely acted in the interests of the local elite and the male lineage. But cases preserved in criminal archives also reveal a clientele surprisingly composed of the subordinate actors in legal disputes--widows fighting in-laws and other men, debtors contesting creditors, younger brothers disputing older ones, and common people charging the rich. Challenging earlier scholarship claiming that the Chinese legal system simply maintained the hegemony of elites and the patriarchal order, this study shows how the legal tools of domination were often transformed into weapons of social resistance and revenge.
The book also examines the manifold ways in which legal practice, Confucian ideology, and popular entertainments like opera and storytelling coalesced into Chinese legal culture. Popular traditions in particular did not simply reflect legal culture but actively influenced it, shaping common presumptions about law that transcended differences of class and region. Exploring Chinese legal culture in the structural contexts of commercialization, changes in property transactions, and ineradicable litigation backlogs, the author explains why litigation was condemned by all classes of Chinese men and women even as all classes litigated.

"A book on a timely and powerful theme....While others have documented the damage that litigation does to our economy, Garry wants to show us its cost to our character as a nation". -- Walter Olson, Author, The Litigation Explosion

Throughout our history, America has been shaped by a series of transforming events and institutions -- the Pilgrims' Puritanism, the promise of Jacksonian democracy, the staggering rise of corporate capitalism, and the advent of electronic media. Today, a new strain of litigious behavior veers our culture away from the proverbial "melting pot" to one in which fellow citizens become bitter adversaries. Law is becoming the next American frontier where litigious pioneers try to stake out new opportunities for wealth and fame.

A Nation of Adversaries brilliantly examines how the litigation explosion has singed our culture by needlessly crowding courthouses and fueling the growth of the lawyer population. Dr. Patrick Garry, an expert on the effect of the courts on American society, insightfully points out how our increasingly litigant-oriented mindset is reinforcing a self-centered culture of undue expectation and entitlement. He offers a blistering look at litigation's invasion into our once formally mindful society. Anyone interested in new trends of human behavior, as well as professionals in sociology, the legal profession, behavior therapy, and clinical psychology, will find this a shrewd commentary on the creation of a new culture of identity in America.

Law is an increasingly pervasive force in our society. At the same time, however, the obstacles to law's effectiveness are also growing. In "The Limits of Law, " Yale law professor Peter H. Schuck draws on law, social science, and history to explore this momentous clash between law's compelling promise of ordered liberty and the realistic limits of its capacity to deliver on this promise.Schuck first discusses the constraints within which law must work--law's own complexity, the cultural chasms it must bridge, and the social diversity it must accommodate--and proceeds to consider the ways law uses regulatory, legislative, and adjudicatory processes to influence social behavior. He shows how politics shapes regulation, how regulation might incorporate individualized equity, and how it can best be reformed. Turning to legislation, he justifies a strong role for special interest groups, dissects the anatomy of purely symbolic statutes, and defends broad delegations of legislative power to regulatory agencies. On adjudication, Schuck analyzes the courts' efforts to advance social justice by controlling federal agencies, constitutionalizing politics, managing mass toxic tort disputes, and reforming public services and institutions. His concluding chapter draws together some general lessons about law's limits and possibilities for improving democratic governance.

Law and images are generally not regarded as having much in common, since law is based on textual and images are based on visual information. The paper demonstrates that quite to the contrary, legal norms can be understood as models of intended moral behaviour and hence as images, in the same way as images can be said to have a normative and hence regulatory effect. Following an interdisciplinary approach along the lines of cultural research, the paper explains how images "function" to lawyers and how the law "works" to those trained in the visual sciences. In addition, laying the foundations for a research field "Law and Images" in parallel to the well-established "Law and Literature", the paper describes the main avenues for future research in this field. Also, the paper contains a brief systematization of images in law, of law and for law.

This new critique of Aquinas's theory of natural law presents an incisive, new analysis of the central themes and relevant texts in the Summa Theologiae which became the classical canon for natural law. Professor Lisska discusses Aquinas's view of ethical naturalism within the context of the contemporary revival and recovery of Aristotelian ethics, arguing that Aquinas is fundamentally Aristotelian in the foundations of his moral theory. The book looks at the historical development of natural law themes in the twentieth century, and in particular demonstrates the important connections between Aquinas and contemporary legal philosophers. The book should be of considerable interest to scholars of jurisprudence as well as philosophers.

This volume presents twelve original essays by contemporary natural law theorists and their critics. Natural law theory is enjoying a revival of interest today in a variety of disciplines, including law, philosophy, political science, and theology and religious studies. These essays offer readers a sense of the lively contemporary debate among natural law theorists of different schools, as well as between natual law theorists and their critics.