For centuries, since the Roman Empire’s adoption of Christianity, the continent of Europe has been perceived as something of a Christian fortress. Today, the increase in the number of Muslims living in Europe and the prominence of Islamic belief pose questions not only for Europe’s religious traditions but also for its constitutional make up. This book examines these challenges within the legal and political framework of Europe. The volume’s contributors range from academics at leading universities to former judges and politicians. Its twenty chapters focus on constitutional challenges, human rights with a focus on religious freedom, and securitisation and Islamophobia, while adopting supranational and comparative approaches. This book will appeal not merely to law students in the United Kingdom and the European Union, but to anyone involved in diplomacy and international relations, including political scientists, lobbyists, and members of NGOs. It explores these contested relationships to open up new spaces in how we think about religious freedom and co-existence in Europe and the crucial role that Islam has had, and continues to have, in its development.

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.

With Narrative and the Natural Law Pamela Hall brings Thomistic ethics into conversation with ongoing debates in contemporary moral philosophy, especially virtue theory and moral psychology, and with current trends in narrative theory and the philosophy of history. Pamela M. Hall's study offers a solid, challenging alternative to rigid, legalistic interpretations of the substantial discussion of law in Aquinas's Summa theologiae and defends Aquinas's ethics from charges of excessive legalism. Hall argues that Aquinas's characterization of the content and relationship of natural, human and divine law indicates that his understanding of the quest for the human good is practical, communal, and historical. Hall maintains that natural law, the ongoing inquiry into what is the human good, is narrative both in terms of its internal structure and its being informed by the specific story of Scripture. According to Aquinas the discovery of natural law is enacted historically and progressively within communities and by individuals through a process of practical reasoning. Hall then goes on to show how natural law requires articulation by human law, and how both are connected to divine law (salvation history) as Aquinas understands it. Aquinas represents inquiry into the human good as a kind of historical narrative or story with stages or "chapters"; thus knowledge of natural law requires time and experience, as well as sustained reflection by individuals and by whole communities. Such learning of natural law implies the operation of prudence and the assistance of the moral virtues.

Aron Zysow's 1984 PhD dissertation, 'The Economy of Certainty,' remains the most important, compelling, and intellectually ambitious treatment of Islamic legal theory (usul al-fiqh) in Western scholarship to date. It continues to be widely read and cited, and remains unsurpassed in its incisive analysis of the fundamental assumptions of Islamic legal thought. Zysow's important work is published here in full, for the first time, with updated references, further reflections by the author, and with the addition of a nine-page Foreword by Robert Gleave. Zysow argues that the great dividing line in Islamic legal thought is between those legal theories that require certainty in every detail of the law and those that will admit probability. The latter were historically dominant and include the leading legal schools that have survived to our own day. Zahirism and, for much of its history, Twelver Shi'ism, are examples of the former. The well-known dispute regarding the legitimacy of juridical analogy is only one feature of this fundamental epistemological division, since probability can enter the law in the process of authenticating prophetic traditions and in the interpretation of the revealed texts, as well as through analogy. The notion of consensus in Islamic legal theory functioned to reintroduce some measure of certainty into the law by identifying one of the competing probable solutions as correct. Consequently, consensus has only a reduced role in those systems that reject probability. Another, more radical, means of regaining certainty was the doctrine that regarded the legal reasoning of all qualified jurists on matters of probability as infallible. The development of legal theories of both types was to a large extent shaped by theology and, most significantly, by Mu'tazilism, and subsequently by Ash'arism and Maturidism.        

The Social Security Handbook: Overview of Social Security Programs, 2022 provides information about Social Security programs and services, and identifies rights and obligations under the Social Security laws. The completely updated Handbook, organized by section number, is a readable, easy-to-understand reference for comprehending complex Social Security programs and services and contains information on several topics relevant to Social Security policies: *How Social Security programs are administered *Who is and isn't covered under retirement, survivors, disability, and hospital insurance programs *Who is responsible for submitting the necessary evidence to support a claim *How claims are processed by the Social Security office *What Social Security benefits are owed to you *How to obtain information about your rights under Social Security policy The Handbook is designed to help users understand the gray areas of the Social Security Act, and to provide critical information about rights and obligations under Social Security laws. The Handbook outlines how to: *Protect your benefits and avoid benefit loss; *Monitor government agencies and get information about policy changes that will affect your benefits; *Make the most of hospital and Medicare coverage; *Determine the amount of benefits that are subject to federal income taxes; *Check Social Security earnings and benefits; and *Get up-to-date news about future Social Security programs and services.

National identity and liberal democracy are recurrent themes in debates about Muslim minorities in the West. Britain is no exception, with politicians responding to claims about Muslims' lack of integration by mandating the promotion of 'fundamental British values' including 'democracy' and 'individual liberty'. This book engages with both these themes, addressing the lack of understanding about the character of British Islam and its relationship to the liberal state. It charts a gradual but decisive shift in British institutions concerned with Islamic education, Islamic law and Muslim representation since Muslims settled in the UK in large numbers in the 1950s. Based on empirical research including interviews undertaken over a ten-year period with Muslims, and analysis of public events organized by Islamic institutions, Stephen Jones challenges claims about the isolation of British Islamic organizations and shows that they have decisively shaped themselves around British public and institutional norms. He argues that this amounts to the building of a distinctive 'British Islam'. Using this narrative, the book makes the case for a variety of liberalism that is open to the expression of religious arguments in public and to associations between religious groups and the state. It also offers a powerful challenge to claims about the insularity of British Islamic institutions by showing how the national orientation of Islam called for by British policymakers is, in fact, already happening.

Over two billion people still live under authoritarian rule. Moreover, authoritarian regimes around the world command enormous financial and economic resources, rivaling those controlled by advanced democracies. Yet authoritarian regimes as a whole are facing their greatest challenges in the recent two decades due to rebellions and economic stress. Extended periods of hardship have the potential of introducing instability to regimes because members of the existing ruling coalition suffer welfare losses that force them to consider alternatives, while previously quiescent masses may consider collective uprisings a worthwhile gamble in the face of declining standards of living. Economic Shocks and Authoritarian Stability homes in on the economic challenges facing authoritarian regimes through a set of comparative case studies that include Iran, Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Malaysia, Indonesia, Russia, the Eastern bloc countries, China, and Taiwan-authored by the top experts in these countries. Through these comparative case studies, this volume provides readers with the analytical tools for assessing whether the current round of economic shocks will lead to political instability or even regime change among the world's autocracies. This volume identifies the duration of economic shocks, the regime's control over the financial system, and the strength of the ruling party as key variables to explain whether authoritarian regimes would maintain the status quo, adjust their support coalitions, or fall from power after economic shocks.

Combining history of science and a history ofuniversities with the new imperial history, Universitiesin Imperial Austria 1848-1918: A Social History of a Multilingual Space by Jan Surman analyzes the practice of scholarly migration and its lastinginfluence on the intellectual output in the Austrian part of the HabsburgEmpire. The Habsburg Empire and its successor stateswere home to developments that shaped Central Europe's scholarship well into the twentieth century. Universities became centers of both state- and nation-building,as well as of confessional resistance, placing scholars if not in conflict,then certainly at odds with the neutral international orientation of academe. By going beyond national narratives, Surman reveals the Empire as a state with institutions divided by language but united by legislation, practices, and other influences. Such an approach allows readers a better view to how scholars turned gradually away from state-centric discourse to form distinct language communities after 1867; these influences affected scholarship, and by examining the scholarly record, Surman tracks the turn. Drawing on archives in Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Ukraine, Surman analyzes the careers of several thousandscholars from the faculties of philosophy and medicine of a number of Habsburguniversities, thus covering various moments in the history of the Empire forthe widest view. Universities in Imperial Austria 1848-1918 focuses on the tension between the political and linguistic spaces scholars occupied and shows that this tension did not lead to a gradual dissolution of the monarchy's academia, but rather to an ongoing development of new strategies to cope with the cultural and linguistic multitude.

For centuries, most people believed the criminal justice system worked - that only guilty defendants were convicted. DNA technology shattered that belief. DNA has now freed more than three hundred innocent prisoners in the United States. This book examines the lessons learned from twenty-five years of DNA exonerations and identifies lingering challenges. By studying the dataset of DNA exonerations, we know that precise factors lead to wrongful convictions. These include eyewitness misidentifications, false confessions, dishonest informants, poor defense lawyering, weak forensic evidence, and prosecutorial misconduct. In Part I, scholars discuss the efforts of the Innocence Movement over the past quarter century to expose the phenomenon of wrongful convictions and to implement lasting reforms. In Part II, another set of researchers looks ahead and evaluates what still needs to be done to realize the ideal of a more accurate system.

The second half of the twentieth century saw the emergence of international economic law as a major force in the international legal system. This force has been severely tested by the economic crisis of 2008. Unable to prevent the crisis, the existing legal mechanisms have struggled to react against its direst consequences. This book brings together leading experts to analyse the main causes of the crisis and the role that international economic law has played in trying to prevent it, on the one hand, and worsening it, on the other. The work highlights the reaction and examines the tools that have been created by the international legal field to implement international cooperation in an effort to help put an end to the crisis and avoid similar events in the future. The volume brings together eminent legal academics and economists to examine key issues from the perspectives of trade law, financial law, and investment law with the collective aim of reform of international economic governance.

Why do the armed forces sometimes intervene in politics via short-lived coups d'etat, at other times establish or support authoritarian regimes, or in some cases come under the democratic control of civilians? To find answers, Yaprak Gursoy examines four episodes of authoritarianism, six periods of democracy, and ten short-lived coups in Greece and Turkey, and then applies her resultant theory to four more recent military interventions in Thailand and Egypt. Based on more than 150 interviews with Greek and Turkish elites, Gursoy offers a detailed analysis of both countries from the interwar period to recent regime crises. She argues that officers, politicians, and businesspeople prefer democracy, authoritarianism, or short-lived coups depending on the degree of threat they perceive to their interests from each other and the lower classes. The power of elites relative to the opposition, determined in part by the coalitions they establish with each other, affects the success of military interventions and the consolidation of regimes. With historical and theoretical depth, Between Military Rule and Democracy will interest students of regime change and civil-military relations in Greece, Turkey, Thailand, and Egypt, as well as in countries facing similar challenges to democratization.

To be convicted of a crime in the United States, a person must be proven guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt." But what is reasonable doubt? Even sophisticated legal experts find this fundamental doctrine difficult to explain. In this accessible book, James Q. Whitman digs deep into the history of the law and discovers that we have lost sight of the original purpose of "reasonable doubt." It was not originally a legal rule at all, he shows, but a theological one. The rule as we understand it today is intended to protect the accused. But Whitman traces its history back through centuries of Christian theology and common-law history to reveal that the original concern was to protect the souls of jurors. In Christian tradition, a person who experienced doubt yet convicted an innocent defendant was guilty of a mortal sin. Jurors fearful for their own souls were reassured that they were safe, as long as their doubts were not "reasonable." Today, the old rule of reasonable doubt survives, but it has been turned to different purposes. The result is confusion for jurors, and a serious moral challenge for our system of justice.