This book discusses court-oriented legal reforms across Asia with a focus on the creation of 'new courts' over the last 20 years. Contributors discuss how to judge new courts and examine whether the many new courts introduced over this period in Asia have succeeded or failed. The 'new courts' under scrutiny are mainly specialist courts, including those established to hear cases involving intellectual property disputes, bankruptcy petitions, commercial contracts, public law adjudication, personal law issues and industrial disputes.

The justification of the trend to 'judicialize' disputes has seen the invocation of Western-style rule of law as necessary for the development of the market economy, democratization, good governance and the upholding of human rights. This book also includes critics of court building who allege that it serves a Western agenda rather than serving local interests, and that the emphasis on judicialization marginalises alternative local and traditional modes of dispute resolution.

Adopting an explicitly comparative perspective, and contrasting the experiences of important Asian states - China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, Thailand and Indonesia - this book considers critical questions including:

• Why has the 'new-court model' been adopted, and why do international development agencies and nation-states tend to favour it?
• What difficulties have the new courts encountered?
• How have the new courts performed?
• What are the broader implications of the trend towards the adoption of judicial solutions to economic, social and political problems?

Written by world authorities on court development in Asia, this book will not only be of interest to legal scholars and practitioners, but also to development specialists, economists and political scientists.

The Law & Practice Of Interdicts is the successor to Interlocutory Interdicts (1993) by the same author. This publication serves as a comprehensive resource book on interdicts and consists of two parts.

Part A, “The Requirements of the Law of Interdict”, is an updated and expanded version of Interlocutory Interdicts. It deals with the nature, history and development of interdictal applications in South Africa, including a useful comparison of the English and South African law on the subject.

Part B, “Practice” consists of eight chapters dealing with the procedure; the court’s discretion; urgency; jurisdiction; locus standi; the discharge, referral and variation of interdictory orders; appeals and costs.

This book examines the American television legal series from its development as a genre in the 1940s to the present day. Villez demonstrates how the genre has been a rich source of legal information and understanding for Americans. These series have both informed and put myths in place about the legal system in the US. Villez also contrasts the US to France, which has seen a similar interest in legal series during this period. However, French television representations of justice are strikingly different, as is the role of fiction in offering viewers the possibility of acquiring significant understandings of their legal system. The book will be an important addition to the study of popular culture and law and will interest legal scholars, sociologists, and media scholars.

English is the dominant language of international business relations, and a good working knowledge of the language is essential for today's legal or business professional. This book provides a highly practical approach to the use of English in commercial legal contexts, and covers crucial law terminology and legal concepts. Written with the needs of both students and practitioners in mind, this book is particularly suitable for readers whose first language is not English but need to use English on a regular basis in legal contexts. The book covers both written and verbal legal communication in typical legal situations in a straightforward manner. In addition to chapters on the grammar and punctuation utilised in legal writing, the book features sections on contract-drafting and the language used in negotiations, meetings and telephone conversations. It features a companion website which contains exercises covering the majority of the topics covered in the book's chapters. This edition thoroughly revises and expands the content of the companion website and contains updated examples, more detailed explanations of problematic areas and an expanded section on writing law essays.

This book provides a comprehensive and in depth guide to the regulatory framework in Singapore, the first of its kind for the foremost jurisdiction for international arbitration in the Asia-Pacific geographic zone. It is designed with practitioners in mind and provides terse and specific but detailed and well-informed commentary to each of the sections in the applicable arbitration acts. It sets out and annotates the two legislative acts applicable to arbitration in Singapore, as well as the Singapore International Arbitration Centre Rules. In addition, international documents including the Uncitral Model Law and the New York Convention are included.

First published in 1997, this volume recognises that on trial in every criminal case heard by a jury is not only the defendant but the democratic premise that ordinary citizens are capable of sitting in judgement on that defendant. The jury is a quintessential democratic institution, the lay cog in a criminal justice machine dominated by lawyers, judges and police. Today, however, the jury finds itself under attack - on the right, for perverse verdicts, and, on the left, for miscarriages of justice. Justice, Democracy and the Jury is an attempt to place the jury within a historical, political and philosophical framework, and to analyse the decision-making processes at work on a jury. The book also examines whether the model of the jury can be adapted to other decision-making contexts and whether "citizens juries" can be used to revive a flagging democracy and to empower the people on issues of public concern.

The first comprehensive examination of Black Americans

Whether you are engaged in the study of law, are considering studying law at university, are a business professional or want to find out more about the law in general, Slapper and Kelly's English Law offers a clear, lively and reliable point of entry to the law in England and Wales.

Presented in an easy-to-read style, it provides readers with an accurate explanation of how the English legal system currently works and the content of English law in all its key areas of operation, including criminal law, contract law and the law of negligence.

An invaluable introduction, English Law is an excellent resource for students of the English legal system and English law, as well as for professionals and general readers.

Whether you are engaged in the study of law, are considering studying law at university, are a business professional or want to find out more about the law in general, Slapper and Kelly's English Law offers a clear, lively and reliable point of entry to the law in England and Wales.

Presented in an easy-to-read style, it provides readers with an accurate explanation of how the English legal system currently works and the content of English law in all its key areas of operation, including criminal law, contract law and the law of negligence.

An invaluable introduction, English Law is an excellent resource for students of the English legal system and English law, as well as for professionals and general readers.

Applying innovative interpretive strategies drawn from cultural studies, this book considers the perennial question of law and politics: what role do the founding fathers play in legitimizing contemporary judicial review? Susan Burgess uses narrative analysis, popular culture, parody, and queer theory to better understand and to reconstitute the traditional relationship between fatherhood and judicial review. Unlike traditional, top-down public law analyses that focus on elite decision making by courts, legislatures, or executives, this volume explores the representation of law and legitimacy in various sites of popular culture. To this end, soap operas, romance novels, tabloid newspapers, reality television, and coming out narratives provide alternative ways to understand the relationship between paternal power and law from the bottom up. In this manner, constitutional discourse can begin to be transformed from a dreary parsing of scholarly and juristic argot into a vibrant discussion with points of access and understanding for all.

What impact do federal courts have on the administrative agencies of the federal government? How do agencies react to the decisions of federal courts? This book answers these questions by examining the responses of federal agencies to the U.S. Courts of Appeals, revealing what happens inside agencies after courts rule against them. Robert J. Hume draws upon dozens of interviews with current and former administrators, taking readers behind the scenes of these organizations to reveal their internal procedures, their attitudes about courts, and their surprising capacity to be influenced by a judge 's choice of words. This fascinating study will be of interest to students and scholars of politics as well as those seeking great understanding of the intricacies of the US political system.

In this fresh and provocative critique of judicial power, Matthew Franck argues for a Supreme Court that is newly mindful of constitutionalism's basis in the sovereign will of the people and of the distinctly limited scope of judicial authority that is permitted by that constitutional sovereignty. Neither activism nor restraint, but a lively sense of the fundamental constraints that deprive the Court of any legitimate choice between those two options, is at the heart of Franck's model of appropriate judicial modesty.

Franck challenges three propositions central to current debates over the Supreme Court's role in American life: that the Court has the final word in interpreting the Constitution above competing views from other government branches; that it may legitimately initiate actions to correct political or social dysfunctions left uncorrected by those branches; and that constitutional decisions may be grounded in natural law or a "higher law" located beyond the text of the Constitution.

Franck claims that these erroneous propositions have allowed the Court's power to grow well beyond its constitutional mandate. He persuasively argues that a more accurate and responsible view of judicial power can be revived by reexamining the Framers' thought, the writings of liberal philosophers (especially Hobbes, Locke, and Blackstone), and the early opinions of the Supreme Court.

His reasoned critique provides illuminating new perspectives on the jurisprudence of John Marshall; on the origins and practices of "judicial statesmanship" (presumed to have begun with Marshall); on McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)-which was not, Franck argues, a ruling in pursuit of a nationalist political agenda but conformed to a modest vision of the judicial power; and on the mangled roots of substantive due process. In addition, he reviews recent Supreme Court confirmation hearings to demonstrate the large influence of historical misconceptions on our understanding of the proper scope of judicial power in a constitutional democracy.

Volume II of The Official History of Criminal Justice in England and Wales traces, for the first time, the genesis and early evolution of two principal institutions in the criminal justice system, the Crown Court and the Crown Prosecution Service. This volume examines the origins and shaping of two critical institutions: the Crown Court, which rose from the ashes of the Courts of Assize and Quarter Sessions; and the Crown Prosecution Service which replaced a rather haphazard system of police prosecuting solicitors. The 1971 Courts Act and the 1985 Prosecution of Offences Act were to reconfigure the architecture of criminal justice, transforming the procedures by which people were charged, prosecuted and, in the weightier cases demanding a judge and jury, tried in the criminal courts of England and Wales. One stemmed from a crisis in a medieval system of travelling justices that tried people in the wrong places and for inadequate lengths of time. The other was precipitated by a scandal in which three men were wrongly convicted for the murder of a bisexual prostitute. Theirs is an as yet untold history that can be explored in depth because it is recent enough, in the words of Harold Wilson, to have been 'written while the official records could still be supplemented by reference to the personal recollections of the public men who were involved'. This book will be of much interest to students of criminology and British history, politics and law.

This edited volume brings together leading scholars on the death penalty within international, regional and municipal law. It considers the intrinsic elements of both the promotion and demise of the punishment around the world, and provides analysis which contributes to the evolving abolitionist discourse. The contributors consider the current developments within the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the African Commission and the Commonwealth Caribbean, and engage with the emergence of regional norms promoting collective restriction and renunciation of the punishment. They investigate perspectives and questions for retentionist countries, focusing on the United States, China, Korea and Taiwan, and reveal the iniquities of contemporary capital judicial systems. Emphasis is placed on the issues of transparency of municipal jurisdictions, the jurisprudence on the 'death row phenomenon' and the changing nature of public opinion. The volume surveys and critiques the arguments used to scrutinize the death penalty to then offer a detailed analysis of possible replacement sanctions.

Contemporary Corrections: A Critical Thinking Approach introduces readers to the essential elements of the US corrections system without drowning students in a sea of nonessential information. Unbiased and accessible, the text includes coverage of the history of corrections, alternatives to incarceration, probation/parole, race/ethnicity/gender issues in corrections, re-entry into the community, and more. The authors' unparalleled practical approach, reinforced by contemporary examples, illuminates the role corrections plays in our society. The authors have reinvigorated earlier work with additional content on international comparative data to increase our understanding of how prison officials in other nations have developed different types of responses to the problems that challenge every US correctional administrator, a new chapter on correctional personnel, and an integration of race and ethnicity issues throughout the book. Unrivaled in scope, this book offers undergraduates a concise but comprehensive introduction to corrections with textual materials and assignments designed to encourage students' critical thinking skills.

This book takes a novel approach to the question of how law shapes the contemporary lives of indigenous peoples in North America. Working through a series of legal cases thematically linked by a concern with how indigenous difference - indigeneity - is produced in the courtroom, this book asks the following questions:

• How does legal discourse and practice allow us to think the contemporary political context of Native North America?
• What can a critical engagement with law reveal about the lives of indigenous peoples in this key historical moment?

Through an examination of contemporary property disputes, the use of indigenous justice in mainstream courts, and the use of genetic technologies to prove or disprove indigenous identities, Indigeneity in the Courtroom provides insight into how law, culture, and the production of difference operate in the early twenty-first century.

First published in 1998, this volume contains essays from leading thinkers on both sides of the Atlantic on the relationship between law and science. Science plays an ever-increasing part in the development of legislation and the adjudication of cases. Its limitations and its value are explored in these essays which discuss issues of methodology and of evidence. Amongst areas covered are silicone breast implants, the rape trauma syndrome, the environment, inventions and Bayesianism.

In 2006 Zacarias Moussaoui became the first person to stand trial in the US for the events of September 11 2001. This timely book provides a close insight into the Moussaoui case from an anthropological perspective. Katherine C. Donahue was present at the trial. Based on first-hand evidence, this book provides a unique picture of an al-Qaeda convert in the process of forming his identity just when he is calling the death sentence upon himself. It is the story of an extra-national opposition to western democracy, seen through the experience of a man who calls himself a 'slave of Allah'. The book begins with his arrest and moves to the courtroom, telling the tale of Moussaoui's struggle with his defense lawyers, and raising questions about his ability to be 'represented' -- his national and personal identity. Donahue explores his background in France as the son of Moroccan immigrants, and follows him to London, Afghanistan and Malaysia as he joins the growing fraternity of an Islam without borders. He acquires an extra-national identity in which his loyalty is no longer constituted by his national identity -- but by his allegiance to fundamentalist Islam.

International Commercial and Marine Arbitration analyses and compares commercial-martime arbitration in a number of different legal systems including the US, the UK, Greece and Belgium. The book examines the role of the courts in arbitration in each of these countries, making reference to the latest case law, and also makes extensive reference to French, German, Italian, Austrian, Swiss and Netherlands law. Tracing the historical emergence of the modern system of commercial arbitration Georgios Zekos then goes on to present ways in which the current process of arbitration can be developed in order to make them more effective.

Stevens sees three crises in American judicial statesmanship. The first was the crisis of the founding. The well being of the country was subjected to grave danger, culminating in the crisis of the Civil War, and a refoundation was required. During the mid twentieth century The United States faced the possibility of destruction, World War II, and the finding of malfeasance of the nation in the office of the president. The constant excitement of contest with antagonists makes it difficult to say whether the current crisis of the Supreme Court is merely a continuation or a whole new problem.

The political leaders who resolved the first crisis and founded the Republic bequeathed as a part of that foundation the United States Supreme Court. During the subsequent history of the country, and with respect to its crises, the Court played a large part. Whether or not it does so well in the current period depends upon the quality of its judicial statesmanship. The judge is a person who acts. But it is considered action and considered action is based on prior understanding. The character of the Court's understanding, or direction, reveales itself in the course of its division over the application of the "due process" clause to state criminal proceedings.

Frankfurter's view is problematic. If Western civilization is to be preserved, it must be because it is worth preserving. If it is worth preserving it must be because it is good. If so, can it be preserved by reliance upon and reference to itself, or must reliance not be placed upon that by virtue of which the thing to be preserved is worthy of preservation? This problem is not new to Western civilization. Much has been written about Frankfurter, and common descriptions of the terms "restraint" and "pragmatism" to characterize his doctrines. Previous treatments of these doctrines now available have not seemed adequate. The intention of "Reason and History in Judicial Judgment" is to treat them as ethical problems rather than as self-explaining conclusions.

This is the first major treatment of the conflict of laws within the UK, a subject often dealt with only incidentally in the main texts on private international law. In particular, the book examines the effect of the UK's changing constitutional arrangements on questions of jurisdiction, choice of law and issues of recognition and enforcement which arise within the UK.
The book offers practical guidance on the applicable rules in intra-UK conflicts situations with sections devoted to forum shopping within the UK, and other procedural matters. A chapter is also included on the impact of EU legislation on intra-UK conflicts, concluding with a discussion on how "Europeanization" might affect the conflict of laws in the UK. There is also coverage of how public policy functions in the conflict of laws. The book's approach to the treatment of intra-UK conflicts is enhanced by a comparative analysis of the recent response of Canada and Australia to, respectively, interprovincial and interstate conflicts.

Juvenile court has elicited the interest and criticism of lawyers, social workers, and criminologists, but less attention from sociologists. This book adds to growing sociological literature on the operations of legal institutions. It describes some critical aspects of the functioning of the juvenile court, an institution charged with judging and treating delinquents. To this end, it analyzes the nature of the court operation, the handling of delinquents, and the court's functions in relation to the wider social and legal system.

This study reflects two distinct sociological heritages. First, it presents an institutional analysis of a juvenile court. One basic component of such an analysis involves description of the social context within which the juvenile court functions. In this way this book considers the nature of the court's relations with the various local institutions in its working environment and the consequences of these relations for its internal operations. Second, this study grows out of the current societal reaction approach to deviance. This approach views deviance as the product of the response of official agents of social control to perceived norm violations: "deviance" involves acts and actors reacted to and labeled as such, usually by these officials. In line with this general perspective, this study seeks to shed light on some of the processes by which youths come to be identified and officially labeled "delinquents" changing the legal and social status of those accused of wrongdoing.

This study focuses on how a particular legal institution defines, reacts to and deals with the cases brought to its attention, whatever the inherent biases of this sample and whatever the ultimate consequences for youths so handled. It describes the processes that produce differential case outcomes-- outcomes whereby some delinquents emerge from their court encounter firmly identified as future criminals, while others escape unharmed, not regarded as "really" delinquent despite the formal adjudication to this effect.

Although it was written at a time of national self-criticism, "The Supreme Court on Trial" remains a classic examination of the place of the Supreme Court in the American political system. When originally published, the American people were engaged in a severe examination of their basic commitments, their way of life, and the direction they appeared to be going. The contemporary literature--over the air, in newspaper editorials and columns, in books and articles--was heavy with protest, admonition, and exhortation. Although the times are different, the issues raised in this volume continue to be important.

The American system exalts the American citizen as common man, with claims to the dignity of citizens, and pleas for securing their civil rights. At the same time, citizens are criticized for their cultural provincialism, fear of intellectual endeavor, and adoption of conformity. Political institutions are not immune from such evaluations. We have created Hoover commissions to study the national administrative system; the Electoral College has been the subject of persistent scrutiny since World War II. There have been demands for reconstitution of our state lawmaking bodies. What links the concerns current at the time of original publication of this volume and concerns today most obviously are deep concern we now display for the character and quality of our public school curriculum and for the administrative structure which maintains and manages our schools. The role of the Supreme Court in these concerns is evident.

The purpose of the book is to examine critically the place of the Supreme Court in our political system and to improve the public understanding of what the Supreme Court does, how its acts have been received, and how its way of influencing public policy is related to other methods of making public policy.

"Charles S. Hyneman" (1900-1985) was a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Indiana University. He was a past president of the American Political Science Association and has also written many books including "Bureaucracy in a Democracy and American Political Writing During the Founding Era, 1760-1805" (with Donald S. Lutz)

This collection of original essays surveys the evolution of sentencing policies and practices in Western countries over the past twenty-five years. Contributors address plea-bargaining, community service, electronic monitoring, standards of use of incarceration, and legal perspectives on sentencing policy developments, among other topics. Sentencing and Sanctions in Western Countries provides a range of scholars' and students' excellent cross-national knowledge of sentencing laws and practices, when and why they have changed over time, and with what effects.

The U.S. Supreme Court increasingly matters in American political life when those across the political spectrum look at the Court for relief from policies they oppose and as another venue for advancing their own policy agendas. However, the evidence is mounting, to include this book in a big way, that courts are more of a sideshow to the culture war. While court decisions, especially Supreme Court decisions, do have importance, the decisions emanating from the Court reflect social, cultural, and political change that occurred long prior their decision ever being made.This book tests how much political and social change has been made primarily through Gerald Rosenberg's framework from his seminal work, The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring about Social Change, but it also utilizes Daniel Elazar's Political Culture Theory to explain state level variations in political and social change. The findings indicate that while courts are not powerless institutions, reformers will not have success unless supported by the public and the elected branches, and most specifically, that preexisting state culture is a determining factor in the amount of change courts make. In short, federalism still matters.