Economic Principles of Law, first published in 2007, applies economics to the doctrines, rules and remedies of the common law. In plain English and using non-technical analysis, it offers an introduction and exposition of the 'economic approach' to law - one of the most exciting and vibrant fields of legal scholarship and applied economics. Beginning with a brief history of the field, it sets out the basic economic concepts useful to lawyers, and applies these to assess the core areas of the common law - property, contract, tort and crime - with particular emphasis on their doctrinal structure and remedies. This is done using leading cases drawn from the birthplace of the common law (England & Wales) and other common law jurisdictions. The book serves as a primer to the wider use of economics which has become increasingly important for law students, lawyers, legislators, regulators and those concerned with our legal system generally.

This major addition to Ideas in Context examines the development of natural law theories in the early stages of the Enlightenment in Germany and France. T. J. Hochstrasser investigates the influence exercised by theories of natural law from Grotius to Kant, with a comparative analysis of the important intellectual innovations in ethics and political philosophy of the time. Hochstrasser includes the writings of Samuel Pufendorf and his followers who evolved a natural law theory based on human sociability and reason, fostering a new methodology in German philosophy. This book assesses the first histories of political thought since ancient times, giving insights into the nature and influence of debate within eighteenth-century natural jurisprudence. Ambitious in range and conceptually sophisticated, Natural Law Theories in the Early Enlightenment will be of great interest to scholars in history, political thought, law and philosophy.

In pieces drawn from over the course of his distinguished career, pre-eminent historian Roy Mottahedeh explores such diverse topics as the social bonds that connected people in the early Islamic Middle East, the transmission of learning in the Muslim world, religious and ethnic toleration in the past and in the present, and the theme of ‘wonders’ in The Thousand and One Nights. His essays extend from the early Islamic period through the medieval era and on to modern times. A number concern Iran, the country of his father’s birth, and again Mottahedeh’s studies range widely, including Persian panegyric poetry, the origins of the city of Kashan, and Shi‘ite political thought. Speaking to contemporary concerns, he also touches upon voting rights, academic freedom, and censorship. Intended not only for those in Islamic studies but for students of history and interested lay readers, there are introductions to each section written with the non-specialist in mind, and these sections progress from more general topics to those more specialized. In the Shadow of the Prophet thus reflects Mottahedeh’s desire that the Islamic world and its history become better understood so that cooperation between Muslims and non-Muslims might become the order of the day.

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.

The rule of law is the most important political ideal today, yet there is much confusion about what it means and how it works. This 2004 book explores the history, politics, and theory surrounding the rule of law ideal, beginning with classical Greek and Roman ideas, elaborating on medieval contributions to the rule of law, and articulating the role played by the rule of law in liberal theory and liberal political systems. The author outlines the concerns of Western conservatives about the decline of the rule of law and suggests reasons why the radical Left have promoted this decline. Two basic theoretical streams of the rule of law are then presented, with an examination of the strengths and weaknesses of each. The book examines the rule of law on a global level, and concludes by answering the question of whether the rule of law is a universal human good.

This book offers original contributions to the debate over the issue of equality of opportunity. Lesley Jacobs sets out a theory of equality of opportunity that presents equal opportunities as a normative device for the regulation of competition for scarce resources. He then considers the practical ways that courts, legislatures or public policy makers can address racial, class or gender injustices. Jacobs examines standardized tests, affirmative action, workfare, universal health-care, comparable worth, and the economic consequences of divorce in this context.

Consumer protection law in the age of globalization poses new challenges for policy makers. This book provides an international perspective on consumer law and the difficulties encountered by consumers in search of practical remedies and solutions for defective products and services. Leading scholars outline the key problems faced by legislators in different countries seeking to adapt consumer laws to the global marketplace. Topics include standard form contracts; the legal challenges posed by mass infection (such as mad-cow disease and CJD); consumers and services; consumer bankruptcy law; and cross-border transactions.

Koskenniemi traces the emergence of a liberal sensibility relating to international matters in the late 19th century, and its subsequent decline after the Second World War. He combines legal analysis, historical and political critique and semi-biographical studies of key figures, including Hersch Lauterpacht, Carl Schmitt and Hans Morgenthau. Finally, his discussion of legal and political realism at American law schools ends in a critique of post-1960 "instrumentalism". This wide-ranging study provides a unique reflection on the future of critical international law.

The imposition of strict liability in tort law is controversial, and its theoretical foundations are the object of vigorous debate. Why do or should we impose strict liability on employers for the torts committed by their employees, or on a person for the harm caused by their children, animals, activities, or things? In responding to this type of questions, legal actors rely on a wide variety of justifications. Justifying Strict Liability explores, in a comparative perspective, the most significant arguments that are put forward to justify the imposition of strict liability in four legal systems, two common law, England and the United States, and two civil law, France and Italy. These justifications include: risk, accident avoidance, the 'deep pockets' argument, loss-spreading, victim protection, reduction in administrative costs, and individual responsibility. By looking at how these arguments are used across the four legal systems, this book considers a variety of patterns which characterise the reasoning on strict liability. The book also assesses the justificatory weight of the arguments, showing that these can assume varying significance in the four jurisdictions and that such variations reflect different views as to the values and goals which inspire strict liability and tort law more generally. Overall, the book seeks to improve our understanding of strict liability, to shed light on the justifications for its imposition, and to enhance our understanding of the different tort cultures featuring in the four legal systems studied.

According to the natural law account of practical rationality, the basic reasons for actions are basic goods that are grounded in the nature of human beings. Practical rationality aims to identify and characterize reasons for action and to explain how choice between actions worth performing can be appropriately governed by rational standards. Natural Law and Practical Rationality is a defense of a contemporary natural law theory of practical rationality, demonstrating its inherent plausibility and engaging systematically with rival egoist, consequentialist, Kantian and virtue accounts.

Advocates of restorative justice question the state's ability to deliver satisfactory justice. This provocative volume looks at the flourishing restorative justice movement and considers the relationship between restorative justice and civil society. Genuinely international, it addresses aspects of civil society including schools, families, churches and private workplaces and considers broader issues such as democracy, human rights, access and equity. It presents the ideals of restorative justice so that victims, offenders, their families and communities might have more representation in the justice process.

We live in a world of one-size-fits-all law. People are different, but the laws that govern them are uniform. "Personalized Law"--rules that vary person by person--will change that. Here is a vision of a brave new world, where each person is bound by their own personally-tailored law. "Reasonable person" standards would be replaced by a multitude of personalized commands, each individual with their own "reasonable you" rule. Skilled doctors would be held to higher standards of care, the most vulnerable consumers and employees would receive stronger protections, age restrictions for driving or for the consumption of alcohol would vary according the recklessness risk that each person poses, and borrowers would be entitled to personalized loan disclosures tailored to their unique needs and delivered in a format fitting their mental capacity. The data and algorithms to administer personalize law are at our doorstep, and embryos of this regime are sprouting. Should we welcome this transformation of the law? Does personalized law harbor a utopic promise, or would it produce alienation, demoralization, and discrimination? This book is the first to explore personalized law, offering a vision of law and robotics that delegates to machines those tasks humans are least able to perform well. It inquires how personalized law can be designed to deliver precision and justice and what pitfalls the regime would have to prudently avoid. In this book, Omri Ben-Shahar and Ariel Porat not only present this concept in a clear, easily accessible way, but they offer specific examples of how personalized law may be implemented across a variety of real-life applications.

This book discusses the various judicial procedures available for remedying wrongs, whether against the state or the individual, in ancient Athens. It begins by identifying and describing the specific functions of the different judicial organs provided by the state to make and enforce judicial decisions. Among these are the magistrates, which are further classified into the archons, the Eleven, the Forty, the eisagogeis, and the nautodikai and the xenodikai. Other organs include the street and market officials, the apodektai, the accounting officers, the military officers, the extraordinary officers, and the demarchs. Cases were settled in homicide courts, the diskasteries, and the ekklesia and the boule. The state also allowed the use of private and public arbitrators, who were subject to certain rules laid down by the state and whose decisions were deemed legally binding. The book then traces the development of the concept of process at law in Athens during the classical period. This period saw the introduction of such concepts as the heliaia, special pleas, documentary evidences, and witness testimonies. Different types of suits and procedural remedies also were made available to Athenians who were wronged and seeking redress. In the final chapter, particular focus is given to the special court proceedings for public wrongs brought before a dikastery by a person seeking redress for an improper administrative act of a magistrate or a public body or seeking a final decision on a person's legal qualification to enter upon some particular status.

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. The essays take comparative or empirical approaches to explore themes in international trade, trade and the environment, law and development, the political economy of privatization and exchange rate policies, economic theories of international institutional design, immigration policy, comparative bankruptcy, international antitrust, and extraterritorial jurisdiction.

"One of the most important contributions to the field of contract theory-if not the most important-in the past 25 years." -Stephen A. Smith, McGill University Can we account for contract law on a moral basis that is acceptable from the standpoint of liberal justice? To answer this question, Peter Benson develops a theory of contract that is completely independent of-and arguably superior to-long-dominant views, which take contract law to be justified on the basis of economics or promissory morality. Through a detailed analysis of contract principles and doctrines, Benson brings out the specific normative conception underpinning the whole of contract law. Contract, he argues, is best explained as a transfer of rights, which is complete at the moment of agreement and is governed by a definite conception of justice-justice in transactions. Benson's analysis provides what John Rawls called a public basis of justification, which is as essential to the liberal legitimacy of contract as to any other form of coercive law. The argument of Justice in Transactions is expressly complementary to Rawls's, presenting an original justification designed specifically for transactions, as distinguished from the background institutions to which Rawls's own theory applies. The result is a field-defining work offering a comprehensive theory of contract law. Benson shows that contract law is both justified in its own right and fully congruent with other domains-moral, economic, and political-of liberal society.

This one-stop introduction gives you an overview of Scotland's mixed legal system, from its historical roots to how the judicial system works today. The fourth edition is fully updated to cover the latest legislation, rules, case law and the Carloway and Bowen Reviews, and also covers the 2017 general election, the 2016 Scottish Parliament elections, the 2014 Independence Referendum, the Scotland Act 2016; Article 50 and the EU (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill.

Little attention has been paid to the development of Australian private law throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Using the law of tort as an example, Mark Lunney argues that Australian contributions to common law development need to be viewed in the context of the British race patriotism that characterised the intellectual and cultural milieu of Australian legal practitioners. Using not only primary legal materials but also newspapers and other secondary sources, he traces Australian developments to what Australian lawyers viewed as British common law. The interaction between formal legal doctrine and the wider Australian contexts in which that doctrine applied provided considerable opportunities for nuanced innovation in both the legal rules themselves and in their application. This book will be of interest to both lawyers and historians keen to see how notions of Australian identity have contributed to the development of an Australian law.

Imam Nawawi's commentary on Sahih Muslim is one of the most highly regarded works in Islamic thought and literature. Accepted by every sunni school of thought, and foundational in the Shaafi school, this text, available for the first time in English, is famed throughout the Muslim world. After the Qur'an, the prophetic traditions are the most recognised source of wisdom in Islam. Amongst the collected Hadith, Sahih Muslim is second only to the the collection of Imam Bukhari. With a commentary by Imam Nawawi, whose other works are amongst the most widely-read books on Islam, and translated by Adil Salahi, a modern scholar of great acclaim, this immense work, finally available to English readers, is an essential addition to every Muslim library, and for anybody with an interest in Islamic thought.

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.

One of the Financial Times' Best Books of 2019 One of Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2019 Shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize 'As enjoyable as it is thought-provoking' Jared Diamond By the authors of the international bestseller Why Nations Fail, based on decades of research, this powerful new big-picture framework explains how some countries develop towards and provide liberty while others fall to despotism, anarchy or asphyxiating norms - and explains how liberty can thrive despite new threats. Liberty is hardly the 'natural' order of things; usually states have been either too weak to protect individuals or too strong for people to protect themselves from despotism. There is also a happy Western myth that where liberty exists, it's a steady state, arrived at by 'enlightenment'. But liberty emerges only when a delicate and incessant balance is struck between state and society - between elites and citizens. This struggle becomes self-reinforcing, inducing both state and society to develop a richer array of capacities, thus affecting the peacefulness of societies, the success of economies and how people experience their daily lives. Explaining this new framework through compelling stories from around the world, in history and from today - and through a single diagram on which the development of any state can be plotted - this masterpiece helps us understand the past and present, and analyse the future. 'In this highly original and gratifying fresco, Daron Acemoglu and Jim Robinson take us on a journey through civilizations, time and locations. Their narrow corridor depicts the constant and often unstable struggle of society to keep the Leviathan in check and of the Leviathan to weaken the cage of norms. A remarkable achievement that only they could pull off and that seems destined to repeat the stellar performance of Why Nations Fail' Jean Tirole, Nobel Laureate in Economics, 2014 'Another outstanding, insightful book by Acemoglu and Robinson on the importance and difficulty of getting and maintaining a successful democratic state. Packed with examples and analysis, it is a pleasure to read' Peter Diamond, Nobel Laureate in Economics, 2010 'The Narrow Corridor takes us on a fascinating journey, across continents and through human history, to discover the critical ingredient of liberty. It finds that it's up to each of us: that ingredient is our own commitments, as citizens, to support democratic values. In these times, there can be no more important message - nor any more important book' George Akerlof, Nobel Laureate in Economics, 2001 'How should we view the current challenges facing our democracies? This brilliant, timely book offers a simple, powerful framework for assessing alternative forms of social governance. The analysis is a reminder that it takes vigilance to maintain a proper balance between the state and society - to stay in the 'narrow corridor' - and avoid falling either into statelessness or dictatorship' Bengt Holmstrom, Nobel Laureate in Economics, 2016

This accessible text explains how Russian law works in all its principal areas. It elucidates the main concepts and frameworks behind Russian law, and uses original legal sources and case law to explain how it operates in practice. The contributors, all of whom are leading experts on Russian law, employ original research to further knowledge of the Russian legal profession, legal culture, judiciary and court systems, providing a scholarly and practical account of Russian law for students and scholars alike. It is essential reading for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the subject.

Hailed as one of the most important works in the history of sociology, and a precursor to the revolutionary theoretical approach of pure sociology, this short and lucid book is as relevant today as when it was first published in 1976. To honour this seminal book, Emerald is pleased to announce that it will publish a special edition of "The Behavior of Law," including a number of additional features: a new foreword from Mark Cooney; an interview with the author, entitled "How Law Behaves"; reflections from a number of prominent sociologists on "The Behavior of Law"'s impact over the last thirty years. It features an author profile written by Randall Collins.

No sitting federal judge has ever written so trenchant a critique of the federal judiciary as Richard A. Posner does in this, his most confrontational book. Skewering the politicization of the Supreme Court, the mismanagement of judicial staff, the overly complex system of appeals, the threat of originalism, outdated procedures, and the backward-looking traditions of law schools and the American judicial system, Posner has written a cri de coeur and a battle cry. With the prospect that the Supreme Court will soon be remade in substantial, potentially revanchist, ways, The Federal Judiciary exposes the American legal system's most troubling failures in order to instigate much-needed reforms. Posner presents excerpts from legal texts and arguments to expose their flaws, incorporating his own explanation and judgment to educate readers in the mechanics of judicial thinking. This rigorous intellectual work separates sound logic from artful rhetoric designed to subvert precedent and open the door to oblique interpretations of American constitutional law. In a rebuke of Justice Antonin Scalia's legacy, Posner shows how originalists have used these rhetorical strategies to advance a self-serving political agenda. Judicial culture adheres to an antiquated traditionalism, Posner argues, that inhibits progressive responses to threats from new technologies and other unforeseen challenges to society. With practical prescriptions for overhauling judicial practices and precedents, The Federal Judiciary offers an unequaled resource for understanding the institution designed by the founders to check congressional and presidential power and resist its abuse.

Over the past two decades, the banking industry has expanded and consolidated at a stunningly unprecedented speed. In this time banks have also moved from focusing purely on commercial banking activities to being heavily involved in market-based and transaction-oriented wholesale and investment banking activities. By carrying out an all-encompassing set of activities, banks have become large, complex, interconnected, and inclined to levels of risk-taking not previously seen. With the onset of the 2008 global financial crisis it became apparent that there was an issue of institutions being too big to fail. This book analyses the too-big-to-fail problem of banks in the EU. It approaches the topic from an interdisciplinary perspective using behavioural finance as a tool to examine the occurrence of the global financial crisis and the emergence of the structural problem in large banking institutions. The book draws a comparison between the EU, the US and the UK and the relevant rules to assess the effectiveness of various approaches to regulation in a global context. Chen Chen Hu goes on to use behavioural analyses to provide new insights in evaluating the current structural reform rules in the EU Proposal on Bank Structural Regulation and the newly adopted bank recovery and resolution regime in the EU Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive and the Single Resolution Mechanism (SRM) in the Single Resolution Regulation.