Rasmus Wandall uses quantitative and qualitative methods from studies carried out in Denmark, to address the formal and informal norms and ideologies that are used to generate decisions to imprison. Focusing on the operations of the courtroom participants, his work investigates how court decision-making is organized to allow the sentencing procedure to be open to more than its formal legal framework, while at the same time keeping the sentencing within the boundaries of law and legal validity. The author uses the theory of law's operational closure, developed by Niklas Luhmann. The theory provides an advantageous point of departure to capture the close and subtle interactions between law's need for validity and for contextual openness in every legal operation - including court decision-making.

Does the state still frame debates about new technology? Can policy-makers ensure the benefits of health developments through genomics while still satisfying the expectations of society and the economic imperatives? In this critique of the new governance agenda for research and innovation in life sciences, the authors discuss the world-wide policy decisions needed, with particular reference to genomics. They suggest the many facets of policy and could be treated as a government-governance continuum, where different aspects of genomics may sit at different points, and co-exist. Their findings offer valuable insights for the future and will help promote a global solution to this problem.

This book draws on a wide selection of interdisciplinary literature discussing complex adaptive systems - including scholarship from economics, political science, evolutionary biology, cognitive science, and religion - to apply general complexity tenets to the institutions, conceptual framework, and theoretical justifications of the copyright system, both in the United States and internationally. The author argues that copyrighted works are the products of complex creative systems and, consequently, designers of copyright regimes for the global 'information ecosystem' should look to complexity theory for guidance. Urging legal scholars to undertake empirical studies of real-world copyright systems, Tussey reveals how the selection of workable configurations for the copyright regime is larger than that encompassed by the traditional, entirely theoretical, debate between private property rights and the commons. Finally, this unique study articulates how copyright law must tolerate certain chaotic elements that may be essential to the sustainability of complex systems.

The contributions in this volume pay homage to Zenon BaA"kowski, with a focus on problems concerning law's normalization and the revitalizing force of anxiety. Ranging from political critique to methodological issues and from the role of human rights in development to the role of parables and analogy in legal reasoning, the contributions themselves are testament to the richness of BaA"kowski's scholarship, as well as to the applicability of his core ideas to a wide range of issues. Divided into five parts, the book focuses on the role and methods of the jurist; conceptions of legality and the experience of living under rules; jurisprudential issues affecting exchange and the market; and the burden and methods of legal judgement. It also includes BaA"kowski's 2011 valedictory lecture and a bibliography of his work. Comprising all original contributions, the contributors represent a balance of established, leading figures and younger, emerging scholars in the field of legal and social theory.

This book examines how contemporary migrants form and transform their involvement with the law in their host countries and which factors influence this relationship. It suggests a more comprehensive insight into the socio-legal integration of migrants by analysing the interplay between the new legal environment and migrants' existing culturally-derived values, attitudes, behaviour and social expectations towards law and law enforcement. Acknowledging the superdiversity of migration as a global issue, the book uses the case study of Polish post-2004 EU Enlargement migrants to examine values and attitudes to the rules that govern their work and residence in the UK and to the legal system in general. With wider international relevance than just Poland and the UK, this book makes a case for the meaningful employment of legal culture in socio-legal integration research and suggests far-reaching consequences for host countries and their immigrant communities.

This first-of-a-kind analysis will focus exclusively on unavoidable and mandated multiple relationships between clients and psychotherapists. The book will cover the ethics of a range of venues and situations where dual relationships are mandated, such as in the military, prisons/jails, and police departments, and settings where multiple relationships are unavoidable, such as rural communities; graduate schools and training institutions; faith, spiritual, recovery or 12-step, minority and disabled communities, total institutions, and sport psychology. The complexities of social network ethics and digital dual relationships, such as clients becoming "friends" or "fans" on their therapists' social media pages are discussed. Finally, the book will discuss the complexities multiple roles that inevitably emerge in supervisory relationships.

This volume brings together researchers from different European countries and disciplines who are involved in Clinical Ethics Consultation (CEC). The work provides an analysis of the theories and methods underlying CEC as well a discussion of practical issues regarding the implementation and evaluation of CEC. The first section deals with different possible approaches in CEC. The authors explore the question of how we should decide complex cases in clinical ethics, that is, which ethical theory, approach or method is most suitable in order to make an informed ethical decision. It also discusses whether clinical ethicists should be ethicists by education or rather well-trained facilitators with some ethical knowledge. The second chapter of this book focuses on practical aspects of the implementation of CEC structures. The analysis of experienced clinical ethicists refers to macro and micro levels in both developed and transitional countries. Research on the evaluation of CEC is at the centre of the final chapter of this volume. In this context conceptual as well as empirical challenges with respect to a sound approach to judgements about the quality of the work of CECs are described and suggestion for further research in this area are made. In summary this volumes brings together theorists and healthcare practitioners with expertise in CEC. In this respect the volume serves as good example for a multi- and interdisciplinary approach to clinical ethics which combines philosophical reasoning and empirical research.

As the use of human body parts has become increasingly commercialized, a need has arisen for new approaches to regulation that moves beyond the paradigm of altruism. During the course of this discussion, the notion of property has become a key concept. Focusing on practical and conceptual perspectives, the multidisciplinary group of authors, which includes specialists in philosophy, law, sociology, biology and medicine, have come together with practicing lawyers to consider both legal provisions and patterns of regulation in countries across Europe. Identifying divergences between different legal traditions, the authors explore various conceptual models which could be used to improve and to guide policy making. With this twin focus on practical and conceptual perspectives, this volume sets the standard for a detailed and innovative discussion of issues surrounding the regulation of research on human tissue.

This comparative study investigates the place of Hindu divorce in the Indian legal system and considers whether it offers a way out of a matrimonial crisis situation for women. Using the narratives of the social actors involved, it poses questions about the relationship between traditional jurisdictions located in rural areas and the larger legal culture of towns and cities in India, and also in the UK and USA. The multidisciplinary approach draws on research from the social sciences, feminist and legal studies and will be of interest to students and scholars of law, anthropology and sociology.

This book is the first to address the multi-faceted influence of the global financial crisis on the national constitutions of the countries most affected. By tracing the impact of the crisis on formal and informal constitutional change, sovereignty issues, fundamental rights protection, regulatory reforms, jurisprudence, the augmentation of executive power, and changes in the party system it addresses all areas of the current constitutional law dialogue and aims to become a reference book with regard to the interaction between financial crises and constitutions. The book includes contributions from prominent experts on Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Portugal, Spain, the UK, and the USA providing a critical analysis of the effects of the financial crisis on the constitution. The volume's extensive comparative chapter pins down distinct constitutional reactions towards the financial crisis, building an explanatory theory that accounts for the different ways constitutions responded to the crisis. How and why constitutions formed their reactions in the face of the financial crisis unravels throughout the book.

The challenge of thinking about the place of constitutionalism beyond the conventional categories of the nation state has become a principal concern for legal and political scholars. This book casts this issue in a different light by exploring the implications for the constitutionalism of legal integration in the European Union's 'area of freedom, security and justice'. In doing so it makes a novel contribution to an understanding of the European Union as a political community beyond the state, but in addition explores how this entails thinking differently about what is essential concerning constitutionalism. The book argues that instead of seeking to theorise constitutional foundations we actually begin to encounter the constitutional life implied by political and legal practices in the European Union and as exemplified here by 'the area of freedom, security and justice'.

This book is concerned with how we can make sense of the confusing landscape of individualistic explanation in international law. Arguing that international law lacks the vocabulary to deal with the collective dimension and therefore perpetuates an individualistic vocabulary, the book develops and articulates a more appropriate collective approach for public international law. In doing so, it reframes longstanding problems such as the conflict between self-determination and the integrity of states and the effects and the limits of state sovereignty in an increasingly globalized world. Presenting fresh perspectives on a range of contemporary issues in international law, the book draws on the work of major contributors to legal and political theory.

The Ancient Greek notion of agonism, meaning struggle, has been revived in radical legal and political theory to rethematize class conflict and to conceptualize the conditions of possibility of freedom and social transformation in contemporary society. Insisting that what is ultimately at stake in politics are the terms in which social conflict is represented, agonists highlight the importance of the strategic, affective and aesthetic aspects of politics for democratic praxis. This volume examines the implications of this critical perspective for understanding law and considers how law serves either to sustain or curtail the democratic agon. While sharing a critical perspective on the deliberative turn in legal and political theory and its tendency to depoliticize social conflict, the various contributors to this volume diverge in arguing variously for pragmatic, expressivist or strategic conceptions of agonism. In doing so they question the glib assumptions that often underlie a sometimes too easy celebration of conflict as an antidote to de-politicizing consensus. This thought provoking volume will be of interest to students and researchers working in legal and political theory and philosophy.

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.

Patenting Lives includes contributions from various interests and perspectives, both in the context of current international developments in life patents and the global agenda of harmonization of international intellectual property. The book is divided into five sections reflecting the critical issues arising from patents and biotechnology - Context; Human Rights and Ethical Frameworks; Medicine and Public Health; Traditional Knowledge; and Agriculture. The international contributors from government, civil society, academia and the private sector provide diverse perspectives on life patents and the facilitation of social, cultural and economic development in the context of international principles of trade.

This interdisciplinary and cross-national volume brings together theory and research by prominent scholars within the areas of distributive and procedural justice, not only featuring work within each area separately, as is commonly done, but also showing how combinations of the two justice orientations might operate to affect justice judgments and guide behaviour. Chapters cover various levels of analysis, from intra-personal to interpersonal to group and societal levels. The volume is divided into four sections: distributive justice, procedural justice, distributive and procedural justice, and methodological issues. Each section is subdivided into two parts, basic research and applied research re: current and important societal issues. Each chapter contains an overview of theoretical and empirical research on a particular topic. The volume is designed for use on courses in social psychology, psychology, sociology, political philosophy, and law.

This volume examines how and to what extent security officers make use of`legal tools. The work identifies these tools and draws on two case-study sites to illustrate how security officers make use of them as well as how they fit in broader security systems to secure compliance. The study also examines the occupational culture of security officers and links them into the broader systems of security that operate to police nodes of governance. The book provides insights for researchers and policy-makers seeking to develop policy for the expanding private security industry.

Drawing upon socio-legal research, this insightful book considers labour migration within the context of ('eastward') European Union enlargement. Specifically, this volume explores the legal rights of accession nationals to access employment, their experiences once in work and their engagement with broader family and social entitlement. By combining analysis of the legal framework governing free movement-related rights with analysis of qualitative data gained from interviews with Polish migrants, this volume is able to speculate on the significance the status of Union citizenship holds for nationals of the recently-acceded CEE Member States. Citizenship is conceptualised not merely as rights but as a practice; a real 'lived' experience. The citizenship status of migrants from the CEE Member States is shaped by formal legal entitlement, law in action - as it is implemented by the Member States and 'accessed' by the migrants - and social and cultural perceptions and experiences 'on the ground'.

Why is there so much resistance to recent issues of tolerance and diversity? Despite efforts of the international community to encourage open-mindedness, recent attempts at international, political and economic integration have shown that religious, cultural and ethnic tolerance and diversity remain under threat. The contributions in the volume reflect the growing importance of these issues and why resistance is so widespread. Part I addresses the relationship between the language of law and its power, whilst Part II explores the interplay of tolerance and diversity under visual, legislative and interpretative perspectives. This collection as a whole offers a combination of varied perspectives on the analysis, application and exploitation of laws and will be a valuable source of information for those interested in the general area of language and the law.

In Denmark, Finland and Sweden the evolution of administrative law, including social welfare law, has been marked by a shift towards a stronger protection of the recipient's individual rights. The adoption of activation policies targeting recipients of social assistance has highlighted the tensions between decision-making concerning the implementation of these policies and the legislative efforts to promote the realisation of individual rights in the field of social welfare. An examination of the legislation in question and its implementation conditions shows that the realisation of individual rights is subordinated to the pursuit of organisational and other objectives. The findings of the study are used to formulate proposals for the promotion of individual rights based on the Nordic egalitarian model of citizenship. This critical assessment of activation policies should be of broad international appeal. It will be of interest to researchers in social policy, as well as those concerned with protection of rights.

Law can be seen to consist not only of rules and decisions, but also of a framework of institutions providing a structure that forms the conditions of its workable existence and acceptance. In this book Olsen and Toddington conduct a philosophical exploration and critique of these conditions: what they are and how they shape our understanding of what constitutes a legal system and the role of justice within it.

Marriage migration is a controversial and problematic issue in the UK as elsewhere in Europe. This timely analysis is a comprehensive examination of the regulation of marriage migration into the UK. With international relevance, the book uses the analysis to examine the relationship between government priorities and the dynamics of transnational family life. The book is one of the first to scrutinise the control of UK marriage migration after 1997 and explores the dilemmas faced by the post-1997 government in managing this form of migration in a changed domestic and international environment. Using high-quality sources from across the political spectrum, it analyses regulatory decisions made by government, the judiciary and the visa service, and suggests that there is an unofficial and unarticulated hierarchy predicated on assumptions and beliefs about acceptable marriages. Finally, the book establishes a principled basis for the future regulation of marriage migration.

Hernando de Soto is one of the world's leading public intellectuals. His books The Mystery of Capital and The Other Path have had a tremendous impact on debates about international development, but his work also has been controversial. One of de Soto's core ideas is that the institution of private property is necessary for the proper functioning of a market economy, yet even though many property scholars closely follow de Soto's work, his ideas have been neglected in property law scholarship and mature market economies like the United States. This new collection seeks to remedy this neglect, bringing together a diverse group of scholars to apply de Soto's work to a wide range of contemporary issues in property law and theory. The important contribution it makes to debates and controversies in property law, as well as in related economic fields, will appeal to scholars of both law and economics.

This book brings a modern critical approach to bear on the broad range of subjects that used to constitute 'family law.' A key consideration in this collection is the way in which law itself is premised upon, constructing a particular image of the family. By bringing different areas of law together, Probert et al suggest it is possible to explore how differing ideas about 'the family' inform different areas of law. This approach allows Family Life and the Law to analyze the extent to which the law is consistent and/or inconsistent in its concept and treatment of the family across and within disciplines. The book is particularly timely in view of the passage of the Civil Partnership Act 2004, the implications of which reverberate throughout family law and allied disciplines, and the current reconsideration of the position of cohabiting couples.

What, exactly, is private property? Or, to ask the question another way, what rights to intrude does the public have in what is generally accepted as private property? The answer, perhaps surprisingly to some, is that the public has not only a significant interest in regulating the use of private property but also in defining it, and establishing its contour and texture. In The Public Nature of Private Property, therefore, scholars from the United States and the United Kingdom challenge traditional conceptions of private property while presenting a range of views on both the meaning of private property, and on the ability, some might say the requirement, of the state to regulate it.