Throughout the past 50 years, the courts have been a battleground for contesting political forces as more and more conflicts that were once fought in Parliament or in streets, or through strikes and media campaigns, find their way to the judiciary.

Certainly, the legal system was used by both the apartheid state and its opponents. But it is in the post-apartheid era, and in particular under the rule of President Jacob Zuma, that we have witnessed a dramatic increase in ‘lawfare’: the migration of politics to the courts.

The authors show through a series of case studies how just about every aspect of political life ends up in court: the arms deal, the demise of the Scorpions, the Cabinet reshuffle, the expulsion of the EFF from Parliament, the nuclear procurement process, the Cape Town mayor…

In Rule Of Law, Glynnis Breytenbach reflects back on her career as a prosecutor, including specific cases she has tried, and on her life to provide a fascinating commentary on the importance of the independence of judicial institutions and the precariousness of this independence.

Her current challenges are directly linked to how outspoken she is and how she continues to campaign fiercely for the rule of law in this country.

'A must-read. Acemoglu and Robinson are intellectual heavyweights of the first rank . . . erudite and fascinating' Paul Collier, Guardian, on Why Nations Fail By the authors of the international bestseller Why Nations Fail, based on decades of research, this powerful new big-picture framework explains how some countries develop towards and provide liberty while others fall to despotism, anarchy or asphyxiating norms- and explains how liberty can thrive despite new threats. Liberty is hardly the 'natural' order of things; usually states have been either too weak to protect individuals or too strong for people to protect themselves from despotism. There is also a happy Western myth that where liberty exists, it's a steady state, arrived at by 'enlightenment'. But liberty emerges only when a delicate and incessant balance is struck between state and society - between elites and citizens. This struggle becomes self-reinforcing, inducing both state and society to develop a richer array of capacities, thus affecting the peacefulness of societies, the success of economies and how people experience their daily lives. Explaining this new framework through compelling stories from around the world, in history and from today - and through a single diagram on which the development of any state can be plotted - this masterpiece helps us understand the past and present, and analyse the future. 'An intellectually rich book that develops an important thesis with verve' Martin Wolf, Financial Times, on Why Nations Fail

'A must-read. Acemoglu and Robinson are intellectual heavyweights of the first rank . . . erudite and fascinating' Paul Collier, Guardian, on Why Nations Fail In this profoundly important follow up to their global bestseller, Acemoglu and Robinson provide a powerful new framework for looking at countries' development through the way that the state interacts with society. This conceptualisation - in which any country can be located on a simple diagram and its future predicted - is new and based on decades of their research. The power distribution between state and society affects how peaceful societies are, what types of institutions develop, how much oppression and fear people suffer, how their economies are organized, and how rich they are. Full of entertaining stories from the past (it starts with the wife of a Nigerian ruler fleeing Abuja with 38 suitcases of cash), Balance of Power sheds light on issues from the present and has practical political ideas for the future. 'An intellectually rich book that develops an important thesis with verve' Martin Wolf, Financial Times, on Why Nations Fail

Law Of Persons, now in its sixth edition, has become a standard text on the South African law of persons. The book was first published in 1995, just after the dawn of South Africa’s first democratic dispensation. The book constitutes a general and fully referenced source on the law of persons, and reflects the transformation of the law of persons in line with the values entrenched in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, with specific reference to the Bill of Rights.

First-year students will derive the most benefit from Law of Persons if the book is used in conjunction with the Law of Persons Sourcebook.

Contents Include:

• Table of Cases
• Table of Statutes
• Definition of concepts
• Beginning of legal subjectivity
• Domicile
• Effect of age on status
• Children of unmarried parents
• Diverse factors which influence status
• Termination of legal subjectivity
• Index

This timely book is an investigation of the highly debated questions: do coroners' recommendations save lives and how often are they implemented? It is the first socio-legal investigation of coroners' recommendations from several countries. Based on an extensive study, it analyses Coroner's Court findings and litigation from Canada, England, Ireland, Australia and Scotland, as well as over 2000 New Zealand coroners' recommendations, and includes more than 100 interviews and over 40 respondents to a survey. The book probes coroners', organisations' and families' experiences of the Coroner's Court in detail and includes substantial quotations from, and discussion of, their experiences. The data analysed demonstrates that while coronial recommendations can be useful tools for intervention and policy development, coroners' contribution to morbidity and mortality prevention at the population level requires further development. In addition to coroners, lawyers, health practitioners, families, organisations and policy makers, researchers from Law, Medicine and the Social Sciences will find this pioneering volume an important and illuminating resource.

The shifting nature of employment practice towards the use of more precarious work forms has caused a crisis in classical labour law and engendered a new wave of regulation. This timely book deftly uses this crisis as an opportunity to explore the notion of precariousness or vulnerability in employment relationships. Arguing that the idea of vulnerability has been under-theorised in the labour law literature, Lisa Rodgers illustrates how this extends to the design of regulation for precarious work. The book's logical structure situates vulnerability in its developmental context before moving on to examine the goals of the regulation of labour law for vulnerability, its current status in the law and case studies of vulnerability such as temporary agency work and domestic work. These threads are astutely drawn together to show the need for a shift in focus towards workers as `vulnerable subjects' in all their complexity in order to better inform labour law policy and practice more generally. Constructively critical, Labour Law, Vulnerability and the Regulation of Precarious Work will prove invaluable to students and scholars of labour and employment law at local, EU and international levels. With its challenge to orthodox thinking and proposals for the improvement of the regulation of labour law, labour law institutions will also find this book of great interest and value.

Events such as the global financial crisis have helped reveal that the drivers and contours of governance on a national and international level remain a mystery in many respects. This is so despite the ever-increasing complexity and sophistication in the management and understanding of economic, legal and political spheres of global society. Set in this context, this timely Research Handbook is the first to explicitly address the constitutive relationship between law and political economy. With scholarly contributions from diverse disciplinary and geographic backgrounds, this authoritative book provides an expansive overview of the legal architecture of the global political economy. It covers, in three parts, topics surrounding money and markets, the relations of organization, and commodities, land and resources. Scholars and policymakers as well as undergraduate and postgraduate law students interested in the intersection of socio-political, economic, and legal dynamics of governance will find this book a thought-provoking and insightful resource.

This topical book examines how the goals of constitutionalism - good and fair government - are addressed at a time when the multi-religious composition of countries' populations has never before been so pronounced. How should governments, courts and officials deal with this diversity? The widely accepted principle of treating others as you wish them to treat you and the universal recognition of human dignity speak against preferential treatment of any religion. Faced with severe challenges, this leads many authorities to seek refuge in secular neutrality. Set against the backdrop of globalized constitutionalism in a post-secular era, Francois Venter proposes engaged objectivity as an alternative to unachievable neutrality. Bringing together the history of church and state, the emergence of contemporary constitutionalism, constitutional comparison and the realities of globalization, this book offers a fresh perspective on the direction in which solutions to difficulties brought about by religious pluralism might be sought. Its wide-ranging comparative analyses and perspectives based on materials published in various languages provide a clear exposition of the range of religious issues with which the contemporary state is increasingly being confronted. Providing a compact but thorough historical and theoretical exposition, this book is an invaluable resource for students, constitutional scholars, judges and legal practitioners.

J.D. Lewis-Williams, a leading South African archaeologist and ethnographer, examines the complex myths of the San-Bushmen to create a larger theory of how myth is used in cultures worldwide. Exploring ethnographic, archival and archaeological lines of research, he extracts the `nuggets', the far-reaching but often unspoken words and concepts of language and understanding that are opaque to outsiders, to establish a more nuanced theory of the role of these myths in the thought-world and social circumstances of the San. The book draws from the author's own work, the unique 19th-century Bleek & Lloyd archive, more recent ethnographic work, and San rock art and includes well-known San stories such as The broken string, Mantis dreams, and Creation of the eland.

On 30 July 1949, the Legal Aid and Advice Act was granted royal assent with the intention of ensuring that anyone who needed legal advice would be able to access it. In this timely book the authors describe the origins and history of legal aid as well as New Labour's attempts to reform the system years on. They argue that on its 60th anniversary legal aid has fallen short of its original aims. There exists a marked difference between the numbers of cases pursued to enforce rights and the many potential cases that people never take up as they are either not aware of their rights or they decide it is not worth the trouble to take it further - this is 'the justice gap'. Though UK legal aid is arguably the best funded in the world the authors illustrate that the public are not being well served by the current system which has emerged from the recent reforms. They clearly articulate the necessary, essential reforms to bridge the justice gap that has been created and also to bring into reality the intentions of the original Act. This title will be of great interest to all legal aid practitioners and commentators and an essential purchase for policy-makers and students across the legal and social policy sectors.

Lawyers increasingly play a wider role than their individual cases; they seek to influence laws before they are enacted or to involve themselves in campaigns aimed at changing Government policies and practice. But they often lack knowledge about how best to use their legal expertise to make an impact. There is no publication specifically aimed at the 'campaigning lawyer' that gives them the answers to the questions they ask, such as 'how can I change the law to make it better for my clients?' or 'how can my skills be put to best use in a campaigning organisation?'

'Simply, utterly brilliant. Bursting with humility and humanity' THE SECRET BARRISTER 'A survival guide for the Trump era' GUARDIAN Banned by Putin, fired by Trump. And now he's free to talk. Multi-million-dollar fraud. Terrorism. Mafia criminality. Russian espionage. For eight years Preet Bharara, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, successfully prosecuted some of the most high-profile crimes in America. Along the way he gained notoriety as the `Sheriff of Wall Street', was banned from Russia by Vladimir Putin and earned the distinction of being one of the first federal employees fired by Trump. In Doing Justice Bharara takes us into the gritty, tactically complex, often sensational world of America's criminal justice system. We meet the wrongly accused and those who have escaped scrutiny for too long, the fraudsters and mobsters, investigators and interrogators, snitches and witnesses. We learn what justice is and the basics of building a case, and how judgement must be delivered not only with toughness, but with calmness, care and compassion. This is not just a book about the law. This is a book about integrity, leadership, decision-making and moral reasoning - and one that teaches us how to think and act justly in our own lives.

The last few decades have witnessed dramatic changes affecting the institutions of family and parenthood. If, in the past, the classic family was defined sociologically as a pair of heterosexual parents living together under one roof along with their children, different sociological changes have led to a rapid and extreme transformation in the definitions of family, marital relations, parenthood, and the relationship between parents and children. Dr Yehezkel Margalit explores whether and to what extent there is room, legally and ethically, for the use of modern contractual devices and doctrines to privately regulate the establishment of legal parentage. This book offers intentional parenthood as the most appropriate and flexible normative doctrine for resolving the dilemmas which have surfaced in the field of determining legal parentage. By using the certainty of contract law, determining the legal status of parenthood will be seen as the best method to sort out ambiguities and assure both parental and children rights.

This innovative book considers the evolution of the contemporary issues surrounding British citizenship, integrating the social aspects and ideas of identity and belonging alongside its legal elements. With contributions from renowned lawyers and academics, it challenges the view that there are immutable values and enduring rights associated with citizenship status. The book is organised into three thematic parts. Expert contributors trace the life cycle of the citizenship process, focusing on becoming a British citizen, retaining this citizenship with its associated rights, and the potential loss of citizenship owing to immigration controls. Through a critical examination of the concepts and content of British citizenship, the premise that citizenship retracts from full membership in society in times of turmoil is questioned. Wide-ranging and interdisciplinary, Citizenship in Times of Turmoil? will be a key resource for scholars and students working within the fields of migration, citizenship and immigration law. Including details of legal practice, it will also be of benefit to practitioners.

'A must-read for anyone who cares about women's equality' Sheryl Sandberg 'A flame-thrower for the rights of women who live under the thumb of repression and injustice' Tina Brown BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK This memoir is the extraordinary story of how one woman, Masih Alinejad, an awe-inspiring journalist and activist from a small village in Iran, overcame enormous adversity to fight for what she truly believed and founded a major movement for women around the world with the simple removal of her hijab. It all started with a single photo, a bold statement on Masih's Facebook page: a woman standing proudly, her face bare, her beautiful, curly hair blowing in the wind. Her crime: simply removing her veil, or hijab, which is compulsory for women in Iran. This is the photo that sparked a social-media liberation movement, 'My Stealthy Freedom'. Across Iran, women started posting pictures of their uncovered hair on Masih's page in open defiance of the strict religious beliefs of their country (and often, their families) while sharing their personal stories about this powerful mode of expression. With the creation of 'My Stealthy Freedom' Masih has gained over one million supporters around the world, and inspired Islamic women everywhere to take a stand for their basic human rights. She's been covered by the media from Vogue, to the Guardian, the New York Times and beyond. Last year she was the recipient of the Women's Rights Award from the Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy. But behind the scenes of this movement, Masih has been fighting a painful personal battle. She is a divorcee -- a sin equivalent to prostitution in Iranian culture. As a reporter, Masih has been actively speaking out against the government's corrupt policies for more than a decade, and has faced abuse and slander at every turn. In 2009 she went abroad during the Iranian presidential election with hopes of interviewing Barack Obama. Before the interview could take place, the elections were stolen, Masih's newspaper was shut down, and thousands of Iranians were arrested. She was expelled from her own country, and separated from her only son. Although she eventually was able to take her son abroad, she has not returned to Iran or seen her family in years. To this day, Masih has faith that one day she will be reunited with her homeland. A defiant, inspiring voice for women's rights, Masih Alinejad speaks for women everywhere. 'Intriguing and inspiring . . . her voice is so important to the Iranian people's struggles for freedom and democracy' Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran

A leading economist offers a radically new approach to the economic analysis of the law In The Republic of Beliefs, Kaushik Basu, one of the world's leading economists, argues that the traditional economic analysis of the law has significant flaws and has failed to answer certain critical questions satisfactorily. Why are good laws drafted but never implemented? When laws are unenforced, is it a failure of the law or the enforcers? And, most important, considering that laws are simply words on paper, why are they effective? Basu offers a provocative alternative to how the relationship between economics and real-world law enforcement should be understood. Basu summarizes standard, neoclassical law and economics before looking at the weaknesses underlying the discipline. Bringing modern game theory to bear, he develops a "focal point" approach, modeling not just the self-interested actions of the citizens who must follow laws but also the functionaries of the state--the politicians, judges, and bureaucrats--enforcing them. He demonstrates the connections between social norms and the law and shows how well-conceived ideas can change and benefit human behavior. For example, bribe givers and takers will collude when they are treated equally under the law. And in food support programs, vouchers should be given directly to the poor to prevent shop owners from selling subsidized rations on the open market. Basu provides a new paradigm for the ways that law and economics interact--a framework applicable to both less-developed countries and the developed world. Highlighting the limits and capacities of law and economics, The Republic of Beliefs proposes a fresh way of thinking that will enable more effective laws and a fairer society.

A compelling explanation of how the law shapes the distribution of wealth Capital is the defining feature of modern economies, yet most people have no idea where it actually comes from. What is it, exactly, that transforms mere wealth into an asset that automatically creates more wealth? The Code of Capital explains how capital is created behind closed doors in the offices of private attorneys, and why this little-known fact is one of the biggest reasons for the widening wealth gap between the holders of capital and everybody else. In this revealing book, Katharina Pistor argues that the law selectively oecodes certain assets, endowing them with the capacity to protect and produce private wealth. With the right legal coding, any object, claim, or idea can be turned into capital "and lawyers are the keepers of the code. Pistor describes how they pick and choose among different legal systems and legal devices for the ones that best serve their clients (TM) needs, and how techniques that were first perfected centuries ago to code landholdings as capital are being used today to code stocks, bonds, ideas, and even expectations "assets that exist only in law. A powerful new way of thinking about one of the most pernicious problems of our time, The Code of Capital explores the different ways that debt, complex financial products, and other assets are coded to give financial advantage to their holders. This provocative book paints a troubling portrait of the pervasive global nature of the code, the people who shape it, and the governments that enforce it.

This cutting-edge Research Handbook, at the intersection of comparative law and anthropology, explores mutually enriching insights and outlooks. The 20 contributors, including several of the most eminent scholars, as well as new voices, offer diverse expertise, national backgrounds and professional experience. Their overall approach is "ground up" without regard to unified paradigms of research or objects of study. Through a pluralistic definition of law and multidisciplinary approaches, Comparative Law and Anthropology significantly advances both theory and practice. The Research Handbook's expansive concept of comparative law blends a traditional geographical orientation with historical and jurisprudential dimensions within a broad range of contexts of anthropological inquiry, from indigenous communities, to law schools and transitional societies. This comprehensive and original collection of diverse writings about anthropology and the law around the world offers an inspiring but realistic source for legal scholars, anthropologists and policy-makers.

The original contributions in this Research Handbook provide an introduction to the application of Austrian economics to law. The book begins with chapters on the methodology of law and economics before moving on to chapters which discuss key concepts in Austrian economics such as: dynamic competitive processes, spontaneous order, subjective value, entrepreneurship, and the limited nature of individual knowledge - as they relate to topics in evolutionary law and basic law. This book presents contributions from both economists and legal scholars on topics ranging from methodology of analysis and the evolution of contemporary legal practice, to the teachings of basic law. Taken as a whole, this Research Handbook provides a strong overview of contemporary research in the Austrian school of law and economics. It is an approach that reflects both the examination of how alternative legal arrangements impact economic performance, and how to use the tools of basic economic reasoning to study the operation of legal rules. Scholars working in the fields of law, jurisprudence, economics, and public policy will find this an important resource on the cutting edge of Austrian political economy in application to law and economics.