This book provides a survey of important topics arising out of the interaction of law and morality, primarily within the American legal tradition. Its focus is on an examination of relevant case law. The book is divided into three sections: (1) Theory: Some general theories of the relation between law and morality. (2) Method: How the law attempts to deal with evolving issues of law and morality using the common law and the ethical and procedural norms of judicial reasoning; (3) Practice: A survey of topics where case law is seen as a response to controversial moral conflicts that arise within American culture and social life. Law and Morality can be seen as a core text for courses in the general area of 'law and morality' or 'law and ethics' taught in philosophy departments; multi-disciplinary curricula involving Philosophy, Politics, and Law; pre-law courses on an undergraduate level; and courses in law schools that take up 'law and philosophy' issues. It is an important reference work for international legal scholars, and those interested in obtaining in a single volume a broad range of information about how the American legal system has evolved in dealing with moral and ethical conflicts through law.

No social life is possible without order. Order being the most constituent element of society, it is not surprising that so many theories have been developed to explain what social order is and how it is possible, as well as to explore the features that social order acquires in its different dimensions. The book leads these many theories of social order back to a few main matrices for the use of theoretical and practical reason, which are defined as 'paradigms of order'. The plurality of conceptual constructs regarding social order is therefore reduced to a manageable number of theoretical patterns and an intellectual map is produced in which the most significant differences between paradigms are clearly outlined. Furthermore, the 'paradigmatic revolutions' are addressed that marked the most relevant turning points in the way in which a 'well-ordered society' should be understood. Against this background, the question is discussed on the theoretical and practical perspectives for a cosmopolitan society as the only suitable possibility to meet the global challenges with which we are all presently confronted.

The book offers contributions to a philosophical and realistic approach to the place of adjudication in contemporary constitutional democracies. Bringing together scholars from different legal and philosophical backgrounds, the book purports to cast light on the role(s) of judges and the function of judicial interpretation inside of constitutional states, from the standpoint of legal realism as a revisited and sophisticated jurisprudential outlook. In so doing, the book also copes with a few major jurisprudential issues, like, e.g., determining the ideas that make up the core of legal realism, exploring the relation between legal realism and legal positivism, identifying the boundaries of judicial interpretation as they appear from a realist standpoint, as well as considering some skeptical outlooks on the very claims of contemporary legal realism.

This book examines the way in which undercover police investigation has come to be regulated in Australia. Drawing on documentary and doctrinal legal analysis, this book investigates how, in the space of a single decade, Australian law makers set out to regulate one of the most difficult aspects of police: undercover investigation. In so doing, the Australian experience represents a paradigm model. And yet despite its success, it is a system of law and practice that has a dark side - a model of investigation to relies heavily on activities that are unlawful in the absence of authorisation. It is a model that is as much concerned with the surveillance and control of police as it is with suspected criminal conduct. The book aims to locate the Australian experience in comparative perspective with other major common law jurisdictions (the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand), with a view to contrast strengths, similarities and weaknesses of these models. It is argued that the Australian model, at the pragmatic level, offers a highly successful model for regulatory structure and practice, providing a significant model for successful regulation. At the same time, the model that has been introduced raises important questions about how and why the Australian experience evolved in the way that it did, and the implications this has for the relationship between citizen and state, the judiciary and the executive, and broader questions about the protections offered by rights discourse and jurisprudence. This book aims to document the law, policy and practices that shape undercover investigations. In so doing, it aims to not only articulate the way in which the law regulates these activities, but also to move on to consider some of the fundamental questions linked to undercover investigations: how did regulation happen? By what means of regulation? What are the driving policy issues that give this field of law its particular complexion? What are the implications? Who gains, and who loses, by which means of power? The book offers unique insights into a largely unknown aspect of modern covert policing, identifying a range of practices, the legal framework, controversies and powers. By locating these practices in a rich theoretical context, informed by risk and governmentality scholarship, this book offers a legal and theoretical explanation of one of the most controversial forms of policing.

This book builds on the success of the First International Conference on Facts and Evidence: A Dialogue between Law and Philosophy (Shanghai, China, May 2016), which was co-hosted by the Collaborative Innovation Center of Judicial Civilization (CICJC) and East China Normal University. The Second International Conference on Facts and Evidence: A Dialogue between Law and History was jointly organized by the CICJC, the Institute of Evidence Law and Forensic Science (ELFS) at China University of Political Science and Law (CUPL), and Peking University School of Transnational Law (STL) in Shenzhen, China, on November 16-17, 2019. Historians, legal scholars and legal practitioners share the same interest in ascertaining the "truth" in their respective professional endeavors. It is generally recognized that any historical study without truthful narration of historical events is fiction and that any judicial trial without accurate fact-finding is a miscarriage of justice. In both historical research and the judicial process, practitioners are invariably called upon, before making any arguments, to prove the underlying facts using evidence, regardless of how the concept is defined or employed in different academic or practical contexts. Thus, historians and legal professionals have respectively developed theories and methodological tools to inform and explain the process of gathering evidentiary proof. When lawyers and judges reconsider the facts of cases, "questions of law" are actually a subset of "questions of fact," and thus, the legal interpretation process also involves questions of "historical fact." The book brings together more than twenty leading history and legal scholars from around the world to explore a range of issues concerning the role of facts as evidence in both disciplines. As such, the book is of enduring value to historians, legal scholars and everyone interested in truth-seeking.

What role does empirical data play in law? How can we draw normative conclusions from empirical legal research? New insights in philosophy, the social sciences and the humanities have forced the relationship between facts and norms on to the agenda. This book presents an innovative set of perspectives on the relationship between descriptive and normative elements in legal inquiry and practice. The contributors provide critical insights from a range of different disciplinary traditions and theoretical positions. They discuss topics such as the epistemic dependence of judicial decision-makers, legal doctrine as a non-normative discipline, systems-theory critique and law, and exploring the boundaries of law. This book will benefit legal academics and graduate students looking to explore issues of methodology. It will also be of great interest to researchers in law and related topics interested in discussions of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research. Contributors include: R. Cotterrell, P. Cserne, W. de Been, M. Del Mar, L. Francot, J. Hage, R. Herdy, O.W. Lembcke, A.R. Mackor, A.M. Pacces, G. Samuel, S. Taekema, B. van Klin, W. van der Burg

An Influential Study by a Leading Exponent of Legal RealismIn this influential and oft-cited study Ross discounted the theories of natural law, positivism and legal realism. In their stead, he proposed the abandonment of "ought-propositions" for the "is-propositions" employed by other empirical sciences, thereby envisioning lawyers that serve merely as "rational technologists." Less bound by tradition, and traditional notions of justice, jurisprudence then becomes "not only a beautiful mental activity per se, but also an instrument which may benefit any lawyer who wants to understand what he is doing and why" (Preface).Alf Niels Christian Ross 1899-1979] was Professor of Law at the University of Copenhagen. In 1956 he was a visiting professor at the University of Illinois. He served for seven years on the constitutional committee that laid the groundwork for the Danish constitution of 1953. His many books, which have been translated extensively, include Towards a Realistic Jurisprudence (1946), A Textbook of International Law (1947), Constitution of the United Nations: Analysis of Structure and Function (1950), Why Democracy? (1952), Directives and Norms (1968) and On Guilt, Responsibility and Punishment (1975).

The Book That Launched the German Historical School of Jurisprudence. Written in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna, the Vocation proposed a common legal code for the newly liberated German states and attacked Thibaut's advocacy of a code based on natural law. Though he aimed in part to improve the administration of justice, Savigny hoped that a common legal system would promote a larger goal: a spirit of unity among Germans. Frederick Carl von Savigny 1779-1861] was an important German jurist and scholar of Roman law. A principal member of the historical school of jurisprudence, he had a keen interest in its role in the subsequent development of European law. He is known for the influential Von Savigny's Treatise on Possession; Or the Jus Possessionis of the Civil Law (1803) and his System of Modern Roman Law (1840-1849), an eight-volume study of contemporary legal systems derived on Roman law. CONTENTS I. Introduction II. Origin of Positive Law III. Legislative Provisions and Law Books IV. Roman Law V. Civil Law in Germany VI. Our Vocation for Legislation VII. The Three New Codes VIII. What we are to do where there are no Codes IX. What is to be done where Codes exist already X. General Observations XI. Thibaut's Proposal XII. Conclusion Appendix I Appendix II

This Short Introduction looks at judging and reasoning from three perspectives: what legal reasoning has been; what legal reasoning is from the view of judges and jurists; and what legal reasoning is from the view of a social scientist epistemologist or humanities specialist. Geoffrey Samuel begins by identifying the main institutional focal points of legal reasoning (ius, regulae iuris, Interpretatio, utilitas and actiones). While examining legal reasoning from both an internal and external viewpoint, the book simultaneously incorporates theory and scholarship from a range of other disciplines including social science and film studies. The author also includes a discussion of fiction theory, schemes of intelligibility, and other epistemological issues as well as standard reasoning devices such as induction, deduction and analogy. Combining cases and materials with original text, this unique, concise format is designed to be accessible for students who are starting out on their law programs, as well as providing insights for students and researchers who would like to examine judging and legal reasoning in more depth.

This book presents and comments on the papers delivered at a colloquium held at the Australian National University in December 2008, celebrating 50 years since the publication in the Harvard Law Review of the famous and wide-ranging debate between the legal philosophers H.L.A. Hart and Lon L. Fuller. The essays written by experts in legal philosophy do not re-run the Hart-Fuller debate, nor are they confined to discussion of the jurisprudential issues canvassed by Hart and Fuller. Rather, in using the debate as a point of departure and inspiration, they pick up on strands in the debate and re-evaluate them in the light of the social, political, and intellectual developments of the past 50 years, when the ways of understanding law and other normative systems have changed. The Hart-Fuller Debate: 50 Years On will be of international interest to legal philosophers, as well as those interested in morality and the law.

This collection of essays interrogates how human rights law and practice acquire meaning in relation to legal pluralism, ie, the co-existence of more than one regulatory order in a same social field. As a social phenomenon, legal pluralism exists in all societies. As a legal construction, it is characteristic of particular regions, such as post-colonial contexts. Drawing on experiences from Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and Europe, the contributions in this volume analyse how different configurations of legal pluralism interplay with the legal and the social life of human rights. At the same time, they enquire into how human rights law and practice influence interactions that are subject to regulation by more than one normative regime. Aware of numerous misunderstandings and of the mutual suspicion that tends to exist between human rights scholars and anthropologists, the volume includes contributions from experts in both disciplines and intends to build bridges between normative and empirical theory.

This volume provides an overview of selected major areas of legal and institutional development in Lithuania since the Restoration of Independence in 1990. The respective chapters discuss changes in fields varying from the constitutional framework to criminal law and procedure. The content highlights four major aspects of the fundamental changes that have affected the entire legal system: the Post-Soviet country's complex historical heritage; socio-political and other conditions in the process of adopting new (rule of law) standards; international legal influences on the national legal order over the past 30 years; and finally, the search for entirely new national legal models. Over a period of 30 years since gaining its independence from the Soviet Union, Lithuania has undergone unique social changes. The state restarted its independent journey burdened by the complicated heritage of the Soviet legal system. Some major reforms have taken place swiftly, while others have required years of thorough analysis of societal needs and the search for optimal examples in other states. The legal system is now substantially different, with some elements being entirely new, and others adapted to present needs.

The chapters in this volume arise from a conference held at the University of Aberdeen concerning the law of causation in the UK, Commonwealth countries, France and the USA. The distinguished group of international experts who have contributed to this book examine the ways in which legal doctrine in causation is developing, and how British law should seek to influence and be influenced by developments in other countries. As such, the book will serve as a focal point for the study of this important area of law. The book is organised around three themes - the black letter law, scientific evidence, and legal theory. In black letter law scholarship, major arguments have emerged about how legal doctrine will develop in cases involving indeterminate defendants and evidential gaps in causation. Various chapters examine the ways in which legal doctrine should develop over the next few years, in particular in England, Scotland, Canada and the USA, including the problem of causation in asbestos cases. In the area of scientific evidence, its role in the assessment of causation in civil litigation has never been greater. The extent to which such evidence can be admitted and used in causation disputes is controversial. This section of the book is therefore devoted to exploring the role of statistical evidence in resolving causation problems, including recent trends in litigation in the UK, USA, Australia and in France and the question of liability for future harm. In the legal theory area, the so-called NESS (necessary element in a sufficient set) test of causation is discussed and defended. The importance of tort law responding to developing science and observations from the perspective of precaution and indeterminate causation are also explored. The book will be of interest to legal academics, policy makers in the field, specialist legal practitioners, those in the pharmaceutical and bioscience sectors, physicians and scientists.

This book presents an interdisciplinary study of the relation between semiotics, law & art. Focusing on Greimasian semiotics, it examines specific works of art (from Giotto to Banksy) that deal with the theme of justice, promoting a more sensitive and humanized perception of the values that surround law. The book offers readers a comprehensive review of the semiotics of law, critically examining the relation between law & art. It covers a variety of topics, including semiotics, law and art; semiotics, art and experience; and society, law and art, as well as semiotics, law and painting; semiotics, law and architecture; semiotics, law and theatre; semiotics, law and literature; and semiotics, law and culture. In doing so, it uses the semiotics of painting to explain the symbology of justice and its significance in history; the semiotics of architecture to explain the setting of justice; the semiotics of theatre to explain the logic of the legal process; and the semiotics of literature to explain the narrative logic of legal decisions. Lastly, drawing on the semiotics of culture, it discusses ways of promoting justice, citizenship and human rights. Written from both philosophical and semiotical perspectives, the book enhances the centrality of visual jurisprudence studies to promote a better understanding of the role of law.

This book describes and analyzes the conceptual ambiguity of vulnerability, in an effort to understand its particular applications for legal and political protection when relating to groups. Group vulnerability has become a common concept within legal and political scholarship but remains largely undertheorized as a phenomenon itself. At the same time, in academia and within legal circles, vulnerability is primarily understood as a phenomenon affecting individuals, and the attempts to identify vulnerable groups are discredited as essentialist and stereotypical. In contrast, this book demonstrates that a conception of group vulnerability is not only theoretically possible, but also politically and legally necessary. Two conceptions of group vulnerability are discussed: one focuses on systemic violence or oppression directed toward several individuals, while another requires a common positioning of individuals within a given context that conditions their agency, ability to cope with risks and uncertainties, and manage their consequences. By comparing these two definitions of group vulnerability and their implications, Macioce seeks a more precise delineation of the theoretical boundaries of the concept of group vulnerability.

This book is an account of the concept of equality from the perspective of both theory and practice, and presents methods of quantifying values. It considers both arguments and evidence, and tackles equality in its different forms, including economic equality, education, equality before the law, equality of opportunity, and gender equality. The book shows that inequality is a profoundly moral question, noting that there are good practical reasons for its adoption. It presents a consideration of classical theories from Aristotle to Hume, as well as contemporary approaches such as those offered by Rawls, Haidt, Temkin, and Parfit. It also contemplates issues such as the naturalistic fallacy, and considers what is different about the Goleman view of moral sensitivity and the ethical personality. The array of evidence includes the impact of climate and various plants such as sugar and cotton on the slave trade, the concept of Gaia, Darwinism, sex inequality, personality, culture, psychological issues, and the quantification of ethics. The book concludes with some practical suggestions for improving equality. It aims to raise awareness of the ways in which equality can be understood, and achieved. It will be relevant to students and scholars in philosophy, human rights, and law.

Conversation and argument concerning laws and legal situations take place throughout society and at all levels, yet the language of these conversations differs greatly from that of the courtroom. This insightful book considers the gap between everyday discussion about law and the artificial, technical language developed by lawyers, judges and other legal specialists. In doing so, it explores the intriguing possibilities for future synthesis, a problem often neglected by legal theory. Analyzing the major components of law and legal procedure across both common and civil law, this book reveals how legal conversation on the `street' contributes to our understanding of law as well as our democratic citizenship. Jan M. Broekman and Frank Fleerackers consider the impact of multiculturalism and the threat of terror on our impressions of legal conversation and the importance we place upon it, arguing that anarchism and legalism are hostile neighbors sharing many themes and motives. Exploring the meaning and sense of the concept of `street' in ancient and modern times, the authors pose the question: is law just a discourse or should it be classified as one of the major narratives in human life? Unique and discerning, this book will appeal to anyone interested in the language of law. Legal educators will find their scope broadened whilst researchers, activists and politicians will find themselves captivated by the focus on social activism and citizen motivation.

This is a book on "equity in the civil law tradition" from the double perspective of legal history and comparative law. It is intended not only for civil lawyers who want to better understand the role and history of equity in their own legal tradition, but also - and perhaps more saliently - for common lawyers who are curious about why the history of equity has unfolded so differently on the continent of Europe and in Latin America. The author begins with the investigation of the philosophical foundations of the Western notion of equity in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle and of how their ideas affected the works of the great Attic orators (chapter 2). He then addresses the way in which Roman law turned this notion into a legal concept of considerable practical importance (chapter 3) and how it survived the fall of Rome and was later elaborated in the Middle Ages by civilists and canonists (chapter 4). Subsequently, the author analyses how the notion of equity was dealt with in the Modern Era by legal humanists, Protestant and Catholic theologians, scholars of the usus modernus pandectarum and of Roman-Dutch law, and then by legal rationalism and the philosophers of the Enlightenment (chapter 5). He then deals with the history of equity on the continent since the fragmentation of the ius commune and the codifications of the nineteenth century and with its reception in Latin America (chapter 6). Finally, the author offers some closing remarks on the fundamental equivocalness (or relativity, as some scholars put it) of the notion of equity in the civil law tradition today (conclusion).

This book studies the judicial evolution of the Qing Dynasty. It sums up the changes from six major aspects: 1. Banfang( )emerged in the late Qianlong period; 2. The opening of capital appeals( )early in Jiaqing's reign; 3. The consular jurisdiction was established during Daoguang's reign; 4. The execution on the spot ( )was started in Daoguang and Xianfeng periods; 5. The introduction of fashenju ( ,a interrogatory court) happened during Tongzhi's reign; 6. Late in Guangxu's reign, banishment was abolished, and reforms were made for prisons. In the past, people did not have a comprehensive understanding of these big changes. From the perspective of legal culture, scholars often criticize traditional Chinese law focuses on criminal law while ignores civil law in terms of legal culture, but this situation can be explained in part by the inadequate allocation of resources and authoritarian resources in traditional societies. Using a large number of archives and precious materials such as private notes that were not noticed by academics in the past, this book adopts the research path of new historical jurisprudence to explore the inner logic of judicial evolution in the Qing Dynasty, focusing on the triangular connection between legal rules, resources, and temporal and spatial constructions, which is an important contribution to the study of traditional Chinese law.

This book explores the development of mental health systems in the Pacific Island Countries (PICs) of Samoa and Tonga through an examination of several policy transfer events from the colonial to the contemporary. Beginning in the 1990s, mental health became an area of global policy concern as reflected in concerted international organisation and bilateral aid and development agendas, most notably those of the World Bank, World Health Organization, and the governments of Australia and New Zealand. This book highlights how Tonga and Samoa both reformed their respective mental health systems during these years, after relatively long periods of stagnation. Using recent scholarship concerning public policy transfer, this book explains these policy outcomes and expands it to include consideration of the historical institutional dimensions evidenced by contemporary mental health systems. This book considers three distinct levels of policy implicated in mental health system transfer processes from developed to developing nations: colonial authority and influence; decolonisation processes; and the global development agenda surrounding health systems. In the process, the author argues that there are in fact three levels of policy change that must be accounted for in examining contemporary policy change. These policy levels include formal policy transfers, which tend to be prescriptive, involving professional problem construction and the designation of appropriate state apparatus for curative or custodial care provision; quasi-formal transfers, which tend to be aspirational and involve policy instruments developed through collaborative, participatory processes; and informal transfers that tend to be normative and include practices by professional actors in delivering service merged with traditional cultural beliefs as to disease aetiology as well as reflecting a deep understanding of the cultural context within which the services will be delivered. This book argues that a renewed focus on the importance of public policy and government institutional capacity is necessary to ensure human rights and justice are secured.

This book gives a detailed account of the current state of the law concerning good faith in contractual performance in Australia, through an empirical study on its reception and development across the various Australian jurisdictions. In Australia, good faith received wide attention after Priestly J introduced in his obiter comments in Renard Construction (ME) v Minister for Works (1992) 26 NSWLR 234.This book focuses on the attitude of the judges to good faith, the definition of good faith, and the possibility of legislating a good faith obligation in Australian contract law. This book also discusses the issues surrounding its development, its meaning, and acceptance at the international level.The empirical legal research adopted in this book will offer a significant contribution in understanding the concept of good faith in Australia from the empirical perspective.

On behalf of Professor Hugh Brady, Director and Senior Fellow, The Flag Research Center at the University of Texas School of Law, "Flags, Color, and the Legal Narrative: Public Memory, Identity, and Critique (Springer 2021) has been selected as the recipient of our Gherardi Davis Prize is presented for a significant contribution to vexillological research for the year 2021. This work was selected because of its breadth and depth in examining flags as meaningful transmitters of significant symbolic information concerning the origins, culture, self-image, and values of a society. We believe it represents a signal achievement in the study of flags that sets a new standard for research in the field." The Flag Research Center, founded in 1962, is dedicated to furthering knowledge and advancing understanding of the human need to create and use symbols to express political, cultural, and social ideals through flags and flag-related material culture. The book deals with the identification of "identity" based on culturally specific color codes and images that conceal assumptions about members of a people comprising a nation, or a people within a nation. Flags narrate constructions of belonging that become tethered to negotiations for power and resistance over time and throughout a people's history. Bennet (2005) defines identity as "the imagined sameness of a person or social group at all times and in all circumstances". While such likeness may be imagined or even perpetuated, the idea of sameness may be socially, politically, culturally, and historically contested to reveal competing pasts and presents. Visually evocative and ideologically representative, flags are recognized symbols fusing color with meaning that prescribe a story of unity. Yet, through semiotic confrontation, there may be different paths leading to different truths and applications of significance. Knowing this and their function, the book investigates these transmitted values over time and space. Indeed, flags may have evolved in key historical periods, but contemporaneously transpire in a variety of ways. The book investigates these transmitted values: Which values are being transmitted? Have their colors evolved through space and time? Is there a shift in cultural and/or collective meaning from one space to another? What are their sources? What is the relationship between law and flags in their visual representations? What is the shared collective and/or cultural memory beyond this visual representation? Considering the complexity and diversity in the building of a common memory with flags, the book interrogates the complex color-coded sign system of particular flags and their meanings attentive to a complex configuration of historical, social and cultural conditions that shift over time. Advance Praise for Flags, Color, and the Legal Narrative "In an epoch of fragmentation, isolation and resurgent nationalism, the flag is waved but often forgotten. The flag, its colors, narratives, shape and denotations go without saying. The red flag over China, the Star-Spangled Banner, the Tricolore are instantly recognisable and over determined, representing a people, a nation, a culture, languages, legacies, leaders. In this fabulous volume flags are revealed as concentrated, complex, chromatic assemblages of people, place and power in and through time. It is in bringing a multifocal awareness of the modes and meanings of flag and color in public representations that is particular strength. Editors Anne Wagner and Sarah Marusek have gathered critical thinkers from the North and South, East and West, to help know the essential and central - yet often forgotten and not seen - work of flags and color in narratives of nation, conflict, struggle and law. A kaleidoscopic contribution to the burgeoning field of visual jurisprudence, this volume is essential to comprehending the ocular machinery through which power makes, and is seen to make, the world."Kieran Tranter, Chair of Law, Technology and Future, Faculty of Law, Queensland University of Technology, Australia "This comprehensive volume of essays could not be arriving at a more opportune time. The combined forces of climate change, inequality, and pandemic are causing instability and painful recognitions of our collective uncertainties about nationhood and globalism. In the United States, where I am writing these few lines, our traditional red/white/blue flag has been collapsed into two colors: Red and Blue. While these colors have semiotically deep texts, the division of the country into these two colors began with television stations designing how to report the vote count in the 2000 presidential election year creating "red" and "blue" parties and states. The colors stuck and have become customary. We Americans are told all the time by pundits that we are a deeply divided nation, as proven by unsubtle colored maps. To a statistician, we are a Purple America, though the color is unequally distributed. White, the color of negotiation and peace is rarely to be found. To begin to approach understanding the problems flagged in my brief account requires the insight of multiple disciplines. That is what Wagner and Marusek, wonderful scholars in their own work, have assembled as editors -- a conversation among scholars at the forefront of thinking about how flags and colors represent those who claim them thus exemplifying how to resist simple explanations and pat answers. The topic is just too important."Christina Spiesel, Senior Research Scholar in Law, Yale Law School; Adjunct Professsor of Law, Quinnipiac University School of Law, USA "Visuals, such as symbols and images, in addition to conventional textual forms, seem to have a unique potential for the study of a collective identity of a community and its traditions, as well as its narratives, and at the same time, in the expression of one's ideas, impressions, and ideologies in a specific socio-political space. Visual analysis thus has become a well-established domain of investigations focusing on how various forms of text-external semiotic resources, such as culturally specific symbols, including patterns and colors, make it possible for scholars to account for and thus demystify discursive symbols in a wider social and public space. Flags, Identity, Memory: Critiquing the Public Narrative through Colors, as an international and interdisciplinary volume, is a unique attempt to demystify the thinking, values, assumptions and ideologies of specific nations and their communities by analyzing their choice of specific patterns and colors represented in a national flag. It offers a comprehensive and insightful range of studies of visual and hidden discursive processes to understand social narratives through patterns of colours in the choice of national flags and in turn to understand their semiotic, philosophical, and legal cultures and traditions. Wagner and Marusek provide an exclusive opportunity to reflect on the functions, roles, and limits of visual and discursive representations. This volume will be a uniquely resourceful addition to the study of semiotics of colours and flags, in particular, how nations and communities represent their relationship between ideology and pragmatism in the repository of identity, knowledge and history."Vijay K Bhatia, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Full Professor, Hong Kong "In all societies, colors play a critical function in the realm of symbolism. Nation societies perceive great significance in the colors of flags and national emblems. Colors constitute, in other words, sign systems of national identity. The relation of color codes and their relation to concepts of nationhood and its related narratives is the theme of this marvelous and eye-opening collection of studies. Flags are mini-texts on the inherent values and core concepts that a nation espouses and for this reason the colors that they bear can be read at many levels, from the purely representational to the inherently cultural. Written by experts in various fields this interdisciplinary anthology will be of interest to anyone in the humanities, social sciences, jurisprudence, narratology, political science, and semiotics. It will show how a seemingly decorative aspect of nationhood-the colors on flags-tells a much deeper story about the human condition."Marcel Danesi, University of Toronto, Full Professor of Anthropology, Canada

The book defines and critically discusses the following five principles: the harm principle, legal paternalism, the offense principle, legal moralism and the dignity principle of criminalization. The book argues that all five principles raise important problems that point to rejections (or at least a rethink) of standard principles of criminalization. The book shows that one of the reasons why we should reject or revise standard principles of criminalization is that even the most plausible versions of the harm principle and legal paternalism that have been offered so far are rendered redundant by general moral theories. Furthermore, it demonstrates that the other three principles (or versions thereof), the offense principle, legal moralism and the dignity principle of criminalization, can either be covered by the harm principle, thus making these principles also redundant, or be seen to have what look like other unacceptable implications (e.g. that versions of legal moralism are based on speculative and incorrect empirical assumptions or violate what is called the criminological levelling-down challenge). As such, there is reason to move beyond traditional principles of criminalization, and instead to investigate alternative principles the state should be guided by when attempting to justify which kinds of conduct should be criminalized. Moreover, this book presents and defends such a principle - the utilitarian principle of criminalization.