The book analyzes the most relevant developments in the relation between contracts and technology, from automatically concluded contracts to today's revolutionary "smart contracts" developed through blockchain, which are beginning to and will increasingly disrupt many economic and social relations. First of all, the author offers a broad analysis of the peculiarities and evolution of the relation between contracts and technology. The main features and elements of electronic contracts are then examined in depth to highlight the specific rules applicable to them in the international comparative legal framework. In turn, the book provides a detailed explanation of the technology, economic and social dynamics, and legal issues concerning blockchain and smart contracts. The analysis focuses on the question of the legal nature of smart contracts, the issues posed by their development and the first legal solutions adopted in some countries. The comparative approach pursued makes it possible to focus attention on the first solutions adopted until now in various systems, with particular regard to the circulation of models and ideas and to the specificities of their local variations, in terms of e.g. applicable law and jurisdiction. In reviewing the characteristics of distributed ledger technologies, and in particular of the blockchain technology on which smart contracts are based, above all the peculiarities of the latter are taken into consideration, especially automatic execution and resistance to tampering, which simultaneously present significant opportunities and complex legal issues. A comprehensive framework is then provided to reconcile smart contracts with comparative contract law, in order to define the scope and specificities of their binding force, legal effectiveness and regulation in various legal systems. Lastly, with specific reference to the elements, pathologies and contractual remedies for smart contracts, the book examines the peculiarities of their application and the main issues that emerge in comparative contract law in order to promote their harmonized use, in keeping with the transnational nature of such a revolutionary tool.

Sexual assault on college campuses has drawn tremendous public attention and colleges are under great pressure to respond. In many cases, the result has been a system of sexual assault tribunals that violates the rights of alleged assailants and assault survivors. Gerstmann shows how colleges are often punishing students as sex offenders without a fair hearing and are defining sexual offenses in an unconstitutionally broad manner. Using unbiased and accessible language, this book avoids easy answers and asks: how are colleges failing to assess accusations in a fair manner? Why are 'affirmative consent' laws unconstitutional? How can we do a better job preventing sexual assault? The author argues that colleges are too often making poor choices in terms of how they respond to allegations of sexual assault and, in doing so, they are depriving students of due process, while failing to protect victims of assault.

The United Nations Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing (MIPAA) offers a bold new agenda for handling the issue of ageing in the 21st-century. It focuses on three priority areas: older persons and development; advancing health and well-being into old age; and ensuring enabling and supportive environments. This book brings together global perspectives on the MIPAA and focusses on and assesses the success and failures of governments to implement its recommendations. Despite its pivotal importance in international ageing policy, the MIPAA has been relatively neglected by academics in their writings and studies. This book mitigates this analytical and empirical cavity. Each chapter focuses on one specific geographical region and addresses five key themes: National ageing situation; Twenty years of MIPAA; Ensuring ageing with dignity; Healthy and active ageing in a sustainable world; and Priorities for the future. It presents an overall summary of the findings, future challenges and opportunities related to ageing, recommendations for future actions to be taken, and policy adjustments needed. The authors also present lessons that were learnt from managing the impact of COVID-19 on older people, together with an outlook on the most immediate priorities for the future so that the recommendations in the MIPAA are achieved in post-COVID-19 and sustainable ethical scenarios. An important contribution towards the advancement of ageing policy, the book will be indispensable to students and researchers of gerontology, ageing, and health. It will also be of interest to policy makers, geriatricians, dementia care specialists, social policy makers responsible for ensuring active and healthy ageing, and all public sector departments which have specific responsibilities towards improving the quality of life of older adults.

In 1954, the United States Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education Topeka (347 U.S. 483) overturned the prevailing doctrine of separate but equal introduced by Plessy v. Ferguson (163 U.S. 537) fifty-eight years prior. By the time Brown was decided, many states had created dual collegiate structures of public education, most of which operated exclusively for Caucasians in one system and African Americans in the other.

Although Brown focused national attention on desegregation in primary and secondary public education, the issue of disestablishing dual systems of public higher education would come to the forefront two years later in Florida ex rel. Hawkins v. Board of Control (350 U.S. 413 1956]). However, the pressure to dismantle dual systems of public education was not extended to higher education until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Despite Title VI of this Act, which stated that No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, or be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance, nineteen states continued to operate dual systems of public higher education. "The Quest to Define Collegiate Desegregation" explores the evolution of the legal standard for collegiate desegregation after Adams v. Richardson (351 F2d 636 D.C. Cir. 1972]).

The history of patent harmonization is a story of dynamic actors, whose interactions with established structures shaped the patent regime. From the inception of the trade regime to include intellectual property (IP) rights to the present, this book documents the role of different sets of actors - states, transnational business corporations, or civil society groups - and their influence on the structures - such as national and international agreements, organizations, and private entities - that have caused changes to healthcare and access to medication. Presenting the debates over patents, trade, and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement), as it galvanized non-state and nonbusiness actors, the book highlights how an alternative framing and understanding of pharmaceutical patent rights emerged: as a public issue, instead of a trade or IP issue. The book thus offers an important analysis of the legal and political dynamics through which the contest for access to lifesaving medication has been, and will continue to be, fought. In addition to academics working in the areas of international law, development, and public health, this book will also be of interest to policy makers, state actors, and others with relevant concerns working in nongovernmental and international organizations.

Contributing to a rethink of Public Service Media, this book combines theoretical insights and legal frameworks with practice, examining theory and policy development in a bottom-up manner. It explores the practices of Public Service Media across Europe, assessing the rules that govern Public Service Media at both the EU and the National Member State level, identifying common trends, initiated by both the European Commission and individual countries, illustrating the context-dependent development of Public Service Media and challenging the theories of Public Service Broadcasting which have developed an ideal-type public broadcaster based on the well-funded BBC in an atypical media market. Seeking to further explore the actual practices of Public Service Media and make recommendations for the development of more sustainable policies, this book offers case studies of rules and practices from across a variety of EU Member States to consider the extent to which public broadcasters are making the transition to public media organisations, and how public broadcasters and governments are shaping Public Service Media together. This book is a must-read for all scholars who take an interest in Public Service Media, media policy and media systems literature at large. It will also be of interest to practitioners working in government, Public Service Media and commercial media.

Non-governmental Organisations (NGOs) have become important, although sometimes overlooked, actors in international human rights law. Although NGOs are not generally provided for in the hard law of treaties, they use the UN human rights system to hold Governments to account. A key way in which they do so is using State reporting mechanisms, initially the UN treaty bodies, but more recently supplemented by the Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review. In doing so, NGOs provide information and contribute to developing recommendations. NGOs also lobby for new treaties, contribute to the drafting of these treaties, and bring individual's complaints to the UN human rights bodies. This book charts the historical development of the NGO role in the UN. It examines the UN regulation of NGOs but the largely informal nature of the role, and an exploration of the various types of NGOs, including some less benign actors such as GONGOs (Governmental NGOs). It also draws on empirical data to illustrate NGO influence on UN human rights bodies and gives voice to stakeholders both inside and outside the UN. The book concludes that the current UN human rights system is heavily reliant on NGOs and that they play an essential fact-finding role and contribute to global democratisation and governance.

Changing Legal and Civic Culture in an Illiberal Democracy is a unique empirical study on recent developments in legal and civic consciousness in Hungary. Drawing its methodology from social psychology, this book illuminates a shift in legal consciousness during the time in which Orban's government has cemented Hungary's reputation as an illiberal democracy. The book foregrounds the voices of the Hungarian population in how they view the shift towards increasingly right-wing politics and an erosion of the rule of law. It opens with an extensive theoretical introduction of the historical development and psychological dimensions of legal consciousness in Hungary and relates the Hungarian research to international developments. It then presents its empirical results and offers a jargon-free account of ordinary people's changing perceptions of their relationship to Hungary's civic and legal cultures, before finally examining the correlations between surveys. Methodologically, the book establishes that theories of legal consciousness and social change are bolstered by empirical data. Offering a new way of approaching shifts in legal consciousness and the rule of law in Balkan and Eastern European countries, this text will be of great interest to researchers and students of social psychology, law, international relations and Central European studies.

This book is the first academic contribution that deals with international taxation of income sources from sports events. Using an interdisciplinary approach, with in-depth analysis of both sports law and international tax law, it is notably the first academic work to conduct a thorough analysis in the fields of international taxation of eSports, sports betting as well as illegal/unlawful income sources that may be obtained in relation to a sporting event, such as kickback payments. After describing the general methodologies of income tax and VAT from an international standpoint, defining key terms such as 'eSports' and 'bidding procedure', the book examines in detail the taxation of the services that are rendered and the goods that are sold, thereby the income obtained, in relation to an international sports event from both income tax and VAT perspectives. Also analysed are government funding in the sports sector, along with its taxation modalities, as well as specific tax exemption regulations enacted for the purposes of mega sporting events. Highlighting the absence of an acceptable level of certainty in the field of taxation of international sports events, the work makes pertinent suggestions as to the future of international sporting event taxation law. With international appeal, this comprehensive book constitutes essential reading for tax and sports law scholars.

This book explores the series of issues that emerge at the intersection of disability, care and family law. Disability studies is an area of increasing academic interest. In addition to a subject in its own right, there has been growing concern to ensure that mainstream subjects diversify and include marginalised voices, including those of disabled people. Family law in modern times is often based on an "able-bodied autonomous norm" but can fit less well with the complexities of living with disability. In response, this book addresses a range of important and highly topical issues: whether care proceedings are used too often in cases where parents have disabilities; how the law should respond to children who care for disabled parents - and the care of older family members with disabilities. It also considers the challenges posed by the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, particularly around the different institutional and state responsibilities captured in the Convention, and around decision-making for both disabled adults and children. This interdisciplinary collection - with contributors from law, criminology, sociology and social policy as well as from policy and activist backgrounds - will appeal to academic family lawyers and disability scholars as well as students interested in issues around family law, disability and care.

This book addresses the discursive importance of the prosecution's opening statement before an international criminal tribunal. Opening statements are considered to be largely irrelevant to the official legal proceedings but are simultaneously deployed to frame important historical events. They are widely cited in international media as well as academic texts; yet have been ignored by legal scholars as objects of study in their own right. This book aims to remedy this neglect, by analysing the narrative that is articulated in the opening statements of different prosecutors at different tribunals in different times. It takes an interdisciplinary approach and looks at the meaning of the opening narrative beyond its function in the legal process in a strict sense, discussing the ways in which the trial is situated in time and space and how it portrays the main characters. It shows how perpetrators and victims, places and histories, are juridified in a narrative that, whilst purporting to legitimise the trial, the tribunal and international criminal law itself, is beset with tensions and contradictions. Providing an original perspective on the operation of international criminal law, this book will be of considerable interest to those working in this area, as well as those with relevant interests in International/Transnational Law more generally, Critical Legal Studies, Law and Literature, Socio-Legal Studies, Law and Geography and International Relations.

This book examines the process and purpose of sentencing in the criminal justice system, beyond the confines of its legalistic aspects. Sentencing is the process that concludes any criminal trial that ends with the defendant being convicted, and any hearing in which a defendant pleads guilty. Those convicted of crime have been subject to sentencing as the method of imposing a punishment for their offences since the earliest existence of anything we would recognise as a criminal justice system. Yet the rationale behind sentencing, and the process by which it happens, has long been viewed through a traditional lens. In contrast, this book considers not just the process by which a Judge arrives at a numerical sentence of months in custody or the amount of a fine, but the wider meanings and effects of sentencing, as seen through the lens of various ideas of social justice. The book will appeal to students, academics, and legal practitioners who wish to consider a different perspective on the well-known and well-researched, but often shifting, area of sentencing.

The creative industries are becoming of increasing important from economic, cultural, and social perspectives. This Handbook explores the relationship, whether positive or negative, between creative industries and intellectual property (IP) rights. Distinguished international contributors reflect on the diverse policy approaches from across the world, taking into consideration a broad spectrum of economic and philosophical stances. In doing so, the topical chapters offer a global exploration of a wide breadth of issues, including sector-specific examples ranging from museums to traditional knowledge and artificial intelligence to enforcement and new business models. Intriguingly, this Handbook also looks forward to future challenges and developments regarding the role of IP in creative industries. Delivering fresh and challenging perspectives on the rich and important relationship between IP and the creative industries, this Handbook will be vital reading for scholars of IP. It will also be an important reference for advisors to, policymakers for, and funders of the creative industries, as well as activists challenging the power of IP. Contributors include: H. Berthold, A.E. Brown Abbe, R. Burt, I. Calboli, S. Chillas, S. Collins, J. Cornwell, C. Davies, K. Erickson, S. Frankel, N. Gervassis, M. Grewar, A. Guadamuz, V. Hafstein, C. Handke, J. Hartley, E. Kakiuchi, A. Keshet, S. Kheria, G.N. Mandel, R. Mukonoweshuro, E. Nwauche, M. Pavis, J. Reda, N. Rizk, A. Sabiescu, P. Schlesinger, N. Searle, J. Stapleton, S. Teilmann-Lock, B. Townley, C. Waelde, S. Whatley, H.K. Yilmaztekin, R.I. Yudhishthir

* Offers a user-friendly treatment of the intersection of code, statute, and case law that defines the law of crimes with critical, ethical, and moral emphasis on why certain conduct has been defined and deemed criminal by design * Written from a perspective honoring those entrusted with the many functions and processes related to the law of crimes * Uses a more Socratic method than the competitors by emphasizing the jurisprudential wisdom behind particular laws

This collection reviews developments in DNA profiling across jurisdictions with a focus on scientific and technological developments as well as their political, ethical, and socio-legal aspects. Written by leading scholars in the fields of social studies of forensic science, science and technology studies and socio-legal studies, the book provides state-of-the-art analyses of forensic DNA practices in a diverse range of jurisdictions, new and emerging forensic genetics technologies and issues of legitimacy. The work articulates the various forms of technolegal politics involved in the everyday, standardised and emerging practices of forensic genetics and engages with the most recent scholarly and policy literature. In analyses of empirical cases, and by taking into account the most recent technolegal developments, the book explores what it means to live in a world that is increasingly governed through anticipatory crime control and its related risk management and bio-surveillance mechanisms, which intervene with and produce political and legal subjectivities through human bodies in their DNA. This volume is an invaluable resource for those working in the areas of social studies of forensic science, science and technology studies, socio-legal studies, sociology, anthropology, ethics, law, politics and international relations.

1. There is a market for this book across rural criminology, rural sociology and human geography. 2. Whereas most victimological literature focuses on the urban, this book sheds light on rural victimisation.

This book offers an interdisciplinary perspective on femicide, using Israel as an illuminating case study, given its diverse communities and common-law-based legal system. Utilizing analytical alongside practical perspectives, the book offers a novel crimino-legal approach to femicide. In addition to its interdisciplinary novelty, the book presents originality in going beyond the more usual focus on the central victims and the common legal tools. Here, the authors extend the analysis to secondary victims of femicide and examine the applicability of second-tiered relevant legal tools, mostly tort law, as a means for gaining justice for the victims. This explorative journey culminates with the authors' definition of femicide as a quintessential "crime of distinct nature". In the context of current international pledges to better understand and consequently better fight femicide, this work allows readers to comprehend the phenomenon and the ways to abolish it. The book will be an invaluable resource for academics, researchers and policy makers working in the areas of criminal law, tort law, family law, criminology and gender studies, as well as for legal theorists and criminologists seeking integration of both disciplines.

Jurisprudential meditation and methodological performance on how feminist and legal thought come into relation. Experiments with genre, style, and form to historicise the relationship of a feminist jurisprudent to her own sources, methods, and interlocutors. The book will be a useful resource for scholars and students of law and humanities, feminism, and history.

This book examines the idea of a fundamental entitlement to health and healthcare from a human rights perspective. The volume is based on a particular conceptual reasoning that balances critical thinking and pragmatism in the context of a universal right to health. Thus, the primary focus of the book is the relationship or contrast between rights-based discourse/jurisprudential arguments and real-life healthcare contexts. The work sets out the constraints that are imposed on a universal right to health by practical realities such as economic hardship in countries, lack of appropriate governance, and lack of support for the implementation of this right through appropriate resource allocation. It queries the degree to which the existence of this legally enshrined right and its application in instruments such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) can be more than an ephemeral aspiration but can, actually, sustain, promote, and instil good practice. It further asks if social reality and the inequalities that present themselves therein impede the implementation of laudable human rights, particularly within marginalised communities and cadres of people. It deliberates on what states and global bodies do, or could do, in practical terms to ensure that such rights are moved beyond the aspirational and become attainable and implementable. Divided into three parts, the first analyses the notion of a universal inalienable right to health(care) from jurisprudential, anthropological, legal, and ethical perspectives. The second part considers the translation of international human rights norms into specific jurisdictional healthcare contexts. With a global perspective it includes countries with very different legal, economic, and social contexts. Finally, the third part summarises the lessons learnt and provides a pathway for future action. The book will be an invaluable resource for students, academics, and policymakers working in the areas of health law and policy, and international human rights law.

This collection brings together a carefully curated selection of researchers from law, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, history, social ontology and international relations, in order to examine how law and custom interact within specific material and spatial contexts. Normativity develops within these contexts, while also shaping them. This complex relationship exists within all physical places from traditional agrarian spaces to the modern shifting post-industrial workplace. The contributions gathered together in this volume explore numerous examples of such spaces from different disciplinary perspectives to interrogate the dynamic relationship between custom and law, and the material spaces they inhabit. While there are a dynamic series of conclusions regarding this relationship in different material realities, a common theme is pursued throughout: a proper understanding of law and custom stems from their material locatedness within the power dynamics of particular spaces, which, in turn, are reflexively shaped by that same normativity. The book thus generates an account of the locatedness of law and custom, and, indeed, of custom as a source of law. In this way, it provides a series of linked explorations of normative spaces, but, more fundamentally, it also furnishes a cross-disciplinary toolkit of concepts and critical tools for understanding law and custom, and their relationship. As the diversity of the contributors indicates, this book will be of great interest to legal theorists of different traditions, also legal historians and anthropologists, as well as sociologists, historians, geographers and developmental economists.

The Supreme Court of the United States in Feist v. Rural (1991) required that databases must have a minimal degree of creativity for copyright. The judgment was highly significant and the subsequent period is understood as the post-Feist era. It has been globally influential. However, the decision is extremely complex and remains unsatisfactorily interpreted. In particular, it has been impossible to illuminate the creativity requirement. The book gives an account of the decision's conceptual structure, focusing on its full delineation of the opposite to creativity. In a radical and unprecedented innovation, it is correlated with an automatic computational process. Creativity itself is understood as non-computational or directly human activity concerned with meaning. Determining the presence of creativity is reduced to a four-stage test. This work then has acute practical current relevance to property in data in the digital age; it will also be of theoretical interest to, and is aimed at, researchers in, practitioners, and students of intellectual property worldwide.

This book offers a multi-discursive analysis of the constitutional foundations for peaceful coexistence, the constitutional background for discontent and the impact of discontent, and the consequences of conflict and revolution on the constitutional order of a democratic society which may lead to its implosion. The volume provides the reader with a multi-discursive analysis of the constitutional foundations of peace, discontent and revolution. It explores the capacity of the constitutional order to serve as a reliable framework for peaceful co-existence while allowing for reasonable and legitimate discontent. It outlines the main factors contributing to rising pressure on constitutional order which may produce an implosion of constitutionalism and constitutional democracy as we have come to know it. The collection presents a wide range of views on the ongoing implosion of the liberal-democratic constitutional consensus which predetermined the constitutional axiology, the institutional design, the constitutional mythology and the functioning of the constitutional orders since the last decades of the 20th century. The constitutional perspective is supplemented with perspectives from financial, EU, labour and social security law, administrative law, migration and religious law. Liberal viewpoints encounter radical democratic and critical legal viewpoints. The work thus allows for a plurality of viewpoints, theoretical preferences and thematic discourses offering a pluralist scientific account of the key challenges to peaceful coexistence within the current constitutional framework. The book provides a valuable resource for academics, researchers and policy-makers working in the areas of constitutional law and politics.

This edited volume offers a critical discussion of the trade-offs between transparency and secrecy in the actual political practice of democratic states in Europe. As such, it answers to a growing need to systematically analyse the problem of secrecy in governance in this political and geographical context. Focusing on topical cases and controversies in particular areas, the contributors reflect on the justification and limits of the use of secrecy in democratic governance, register the social, cultural, and historical factors that inform this process and explore the criteria used by European legislators and policy-makers, both at the national and supranational level, when balancing interests on the sides of transparency and secrecy, respectively. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of security studies, political science, European politics/studies, law, history, political philosophy, public administration, intelligence studies, media and communication studies, and information technology sciences.

Academic legal production, when it focuses on the study of law, generally grasps this concept on the basis of a reference to positive law and its practice. This book differs clearly from these analyses and integrates the legal approach into the philosophy of normative language, philosophical realism and pragmatism. The aim is not only to place the examination of law in the immanence of its practice, but also to take note of the fact that legal enunciation must be taken seriously. In order to arrive at this analysis, it is necessary to go beyond traditional perspectives and to base reflection on an investigation of the conditions for enunciating law in our democracies. This analysis thus offers a renewal of the ethics inherent in the action of jurists and an original reflection on the role of certain legal tools such as concepts, categories, or "provisions". In this sense, the work nourishes its originality not only by the transversality of its approach, but also by the will to situate legal thought in concrete forms of its implementation. The book will be essential reading for academics working in the areas of legal theory, legal philosophy and constitutional theory.

This book tracks the phenomenon of international corporate personhood (ICP) in international law and explores many legal issues raised in its wake. It sketches a theory of the ICP and encourages engagement with its amorphous legal nature through reimagination of international law beyond the State, in service to humanity. The book offers two primary contributions, one descriptive and one normative. The descriptive section of the book sketches a history of the emergence of the ICP and discusses existing analogical approaches to theorizing the corporation in international law. It then turns to an analysis of the primary judicial decisions and international legal instruments that animate internationally a concept that began in U.S. domestic law. The descriptive section concludes with a list of twenty-two judge-made and text-made rights and privileges presently available to the ICP that are not available to other international legal personalities; these are later categorized into 'active' and 'passive' rights. The normative section of the book begins the shift from what is to what ought to be by sketching a theory of the ICP that - unlike existing attempts to place the corporation in international legal theory - does not rely on analogical reasoning. Rather, it adopts the Jessupian emphasis on 'human problems' and encourages pragmatic, solution-oriented legal analysis and interpretation, especially in arbitral tribunals and international courts where legal reasoning is frequently borrowed from domestic law and international treaty regimes. It suggests that ICPs should have 'passive' or procedural rights that cater to problems that can be characterized as 'universal' but that international law should avoid universalizing 'active' or substantive rights which ICPs can shape through agency. The book concludes by identifying new trajectories in law relevant to the future and evolution of the ICP. This book will be most useful to students and practitioners of international law but provides riveting material for anyone interested in understanding the phenomenon of international corporate personhood or the international law surrounding corporations more generally.