Corruption is one of the most prominent issues in Latin American news cycles, with charges deciding the recent elections in Mexico, Brazil, and Guatemala. Despite the urgency of the matter, few recent historical studies on the topic exist, especially on Mexico. For this reason, Christoph Rosenmuller explores the enigma of historical corruption. By drawing upon thorough archival research and a multi-lingual collection of printed primary sources and secondary literature, Rosenmuller demonstrates how corruption in the past differed markedly from today. Corruption in Mexico's colonial period connoted the obstruction of justice; judges, for example, tortured prisoners to extract cash or accepted bribes to alter judicial verdicts. In addition, the concept evolved over time to include several forms of self-advantage in the bureaucracy. Rosenmuller embeds this important shift from judicial to administrative corruption within the changing Atlantic World, while also providing insightful perspectives from the lower social echelons of colonial Mexico.

As DNA forensic profiling and databasing become established as key technologies in the toolbox of the forensic sciences, their expanding use raises important issues that promise to touch everyone's lives. In an authoritative global investigation of a diverse range of countries, including those at the forefront of these technologies' development and use, this book identifies and provides critical reflection upon the many issues of privacy; distributive justice; DNA information system ownership; biosurveillance; function creep; the reliability of collection, storage and analysis of DNA profiles; the possibility of transferring medical DNA information to forensics databases; and democratic involvement and transparency in governance, an emergent key theme. This book is timely and significant in providing the essential background and discussion of the ethical, legal and societal dimensions for academics, practitioners, public interest and criminal justice organisations, and students of the life sciences, law, politics, and sociology.

Studies in Law, Politics, and Society provides a vehicle for the publication of scholarly articles within the broad parameters of interdisciplinary legal scholarship. In this latest edition of this highly successful research series, articles examine a diverse range of legal issues and their impact on and intersections with society. Topics covered include: marriage equality and the demise of civil unions; the LGBTQ community in the 1980s; the landscape of choice regarding reproductive rights and vaccine refusal; the rights of unvaccinated children; a socio-legal framework for understanding the social control of pleasure; and a data re-use and its impact on group identity. This volume brings together leading scholars and will be vital reading for all those researching in this subject area.

This new volume of Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance addresses issues of race and ethnicity within the law and law-related phenomena. Even in today's so-called multicultural, post-racial world racial and ethnic concerns prevail in many aspects of modern law. Contributors to this volume examine racial and ethnic disparities in sentencing and punishment; the continued problematic nature of the African American experience within the US system; the criminalization of immigrants; racial inequities in the administration of drug laws; and the racial disparities that affect juvenile justice. This volume will be of interest to students and researchers in law, socio-legal studies, criminology, criminal justice, sociology and public policy.

Studies in Law, Politics, and Society provides a vehicle for the publication of scholarly articles within the broad parameters of interdisciplinary legal scholarship. In this latest edition of this highly successful research series, articles examine a diverse range of legal issues and their impact on and intersections with society. Topics covered include: an analysis of Charles Reznikoff's autobiography and its implications for residential lease law; a classification of condominium crime; an historical and developmental account of judicial activism; a reconceptualization of the legal approach to the reproductive rights of adolescents; an examination of the stories told by foster care youth to legislatures, courts and policymakers; an account of the role of maturity, policy, and parental authority in legal standards for minor's rights; and the debate surrounding transgender children and teaching gender identity in schools. This volume brings together leading scholars and will be vital reading for all those researching in this subject area.

After colonization, indigenous people faced an extractive property rights regime for both their land and knowledge. This book outlines that regime, and how the symbolic function of international intellectual property continues today to assist states to enclose indigenous peoples' knowledge. Drawing on more than 200 interviews, Peter Drahos examines the response of indigenous people to the colonizer's non-developmental property rights. The case studies reveal how they have adapted to the state's extractive order through a process of regulatory bricolage. In order to create a new developmental future for themselves, indigenous developmental networks have been forged - high trust networks that include partnerships with science. Intellectual Property, Indigenous People and their Knowledge argues for a developmental intellectual property order for indigenous people based on a combination of simple rules, principles and a process of regulatory convening.

This volume showcases emerging interdisciplinary scholarship that captures the complex ways in which biological knowledge is testing the nature and structure of legal personhood. Key questions include: What do the new biosciences do to our social, cultural, and legal conceptions of personhood? How does our legal apparatus incorporate new legitimations from the emerging biosciences into its knowledge system? And what kind of ethical, socio-political, and scientific consequences are attached to the establishment of such new legalities? The book examines these problems by looking at materialities, the posthuman, and the relational in the (un)making of legalities. Themes and topics include postgenomic research, gene editing, neuroscience, epigenetics, precision medicine, regenerative medicine, reproductive technologies, border technologies, and theoretical debates in legal theory on the relationship between persons, property, and rights.

An Equal Place is a monumental study of the role of lawyers in the movement to challenge economic inequality in one of America's most unequal cities: Los Angeles. Breaking with the traditional focus on national civil rights history, the book turns to the stories of contemporary lawyers, on the front lines and behind the scenes, who use law to reshape the meaning of low-wage work in the local economy. Covering a transformative period of L.A. history, from the 1992 riots to the 2008 recession, Scott Cummings presents an unflinching account of five pivotal campaigns in which lawyers ally with local movements to challenge the abuses of garment sweatshops, the criminalization of day labor, the gentrification of downtown retail, the incursion of Wal-Mart groceries, and the misclassification of port truck drivers. Through these campaigns, lawyers and activists define the city as a space for redefining work in vital industries transformed by deindustrialization, outsourcing, and immigration. Organizing arises outside of traditional labor law, powered by community-labor and racial justice groups using levers of local government to ultimately change the nature of labor law itself. Cummings shows that sophisticated legal strategy - engaging yet extending beyond courts, in which lawyers are equal partners in social movements - is an indispensable part of the effort to make L.A. a more equal place. Challenging accounts of lawyers' negative impact on movements, Cummings argues that the L.A. campaigns have achieved meaningful reform, while strengthening the position of workers in local politics, through legal innovation. Dissecting the reasons for failure alongside the conditions for success, this groundbreaking book illuminates the crucial role of lawyers in forging a new model of city-building for the twenty-first century.

This book develops a theory of tort law that integrates deontic and consequential approaches by applying justificational analysis to identify the factors, circumstances, and values that shape tort law. Drawing on Kantian and Rawlsian philosophy, and on the insights of game theorist Ken Binmore, this book refocuses tort law on a single theory of responsibility that explains and justifies the broad range of tort doctrine and concepts. Under this theory, tort law asks people to appropriately incorporate the well-being of others into the decisions they make, explains when that duty applies, and explains the scope and limits of that duty. The theory also incorporates a theory of the evolutionary development of social values that people use, and ought to use, in meeting that duty and explains how decision-making from behind the veil of ignorance allows us to evaluate the is in light of the ought.

Evangelos Raftopoulos explores international negotiation as a structured process of relational governance that generates international common interest between and among international participants and in relation to the international public order. He challenges prescriptive models of negotiation - developed in international relations and positivistic approaches to international law, which artificially separate treaties from negotiation in the name of 'objectivity' - and opens a window for looking at international negotiations from a novel, international law perspective. Using an interdisciplinary approach that incorporates law, philosophy, politics, and linguistics, he proposes a holistic, theoretical model of multilateral international negotiation that not only offers a 'subjective' view of international law in practice but also demonstrates the importance of understanding the horizontal normativity of international ordering. This work should be read by academics and practitioners of international law and negotiations, officials of international organizations, and anyone else interested in international law and international relations.

This innovative book sets itself at the crossroads of several rapidly developing areas of research in legal and global studies related to social computing, specifically in the context of how public emergency responders appropriate content on social media platforms for emergency and disaster management. The book - a collaboration between computer scientists, ethicists, legal scholars and practitioners - should be read by anyone concerned with the ongoing debate over the corporatization and commodification of user-generated content on social media and the extent to which this content can be legally and ethically harnessed for emergency and disaster management. The collaboration was made possible by EU's FP 7 Project Slandail (# 607691, 2014-17).

How ought the law to deal with novel challenges regarding the use and control of human biomaterials? As it stands the law is ill-equipped to deal with these. Quigley argues that advancing biotechnology means that the law must confront and move boundaries which it has constructed; in particular, those which delineate property from non-property in relation to biomaterials. Drawing together often disparate strands of property discourse, she offers a philosophical and legal re-analysis of the law in relation to property in the body and biomaterials. She advances a new defence, underpinned by self-ownership, of the position that persons ought to be seen as the prima facie holders of property rights in their separated biomaterials. This book will appeal to those interested in medical and property law, philosophy, bioethics, and health policy amongst others.

Much of the media coverage and academic literature on Russia suggests that the justice system is unreliable, ineffective and corrupt. But what if we look beyond the stereotypes and preconceptions? This volume features contributions from a number of scholars who studied Russia empirically and in-depth, through extensive field research, observations in courts, and interviews with judges and other legal professionals as well as lay actors. A number of tensions in the everyday experiences of justice in Russia are identified and the concept of the 'administerial model of justice' is introduced to illuminate some of the less obvious layers of Russian legal tradition including: file-driven procedure, extreme legal formalism combined with informality of the pre-trial proceedings, followed by ritualistic format of the trial. The underlying argument is that Russian justice is a much more complex system than is commonly supposed, and that it both requires and deserves a more nuanced understanding.

Access to justice for all, regardless of the ability to pay, has been a core democratic value. But this basic human right has come under threat through wider processes of restructuring, with an increasingly market-led approach to the provision of welfare. Professionals and volunteers in Law Centres in Britain are struggling to provide legal advice and access to welfare rights to disadvantaged communities. Drawing upon original research, this unique study explores how strategies to safeguard these vital services might be developed in ways that strengthen rather than undermine the basic ethics and principles of public service provision. The book explores how such strategies might strengthen the position of those who provide, as well as those who need, public services, and ways to empower communities to work more effectively with professionals and progressive organisations in the pursuit of rights and social justice agendas more widely.

With comparative case studies from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, Jianlin Chen's new work offers a fresh, descriptive and normative perspective on law and religion. This presentation of the original law and religious market theory employs an interdisciplinary approach that sheds light on this subject for scholars in legal and sociological disciplines. It sets out the precise nature of religious competition envisaged by the current legal regimes in the three jurisdictions and analyses how certain restrictions on religious practices may facilitate normatively desirable market dynamics. This updated and invaluable resource provides a new and insightful investigation into this fascinating area of law and religion in Greater China today.

Studies in Law, Politics, and Society (SLPS) provides a vehicle for the publication of scholarly articles within the broad parameters of interdisciplinary legal scholarship; the articles in this volume cover a diverse range of topics relating to law's relationship with and impact on society. Topics covered include: coverage of capital punishment in the mainstream and radical press; the landmark Roe vs. Wade case and the Republican Party's relationship with abortion law; an exploration of the legal politics of temporality in emergencies; gendered racialization and White supremacy in the US, specifically related to Muslim women; conflict resolution and legal theory; and self-determination for indigenous peoples in the Pacific.

We live in a world of one-size-fits-all law. People are different, but the laws that govern them are uniform. "Personalized Law"--rules that vary person by person--will change that. Here is a vision of a brave new world, where each person is bound by their own personally-tailored law. "Reasonable person" standards would be replaced by a multitude of personalized commands, each individual with their own "reasonable you" rule. Skilled doctors would be held to higher standards of care, the most vulnerable consumers and employees would receive stronger protections, age restrictions for driving or for the consumption of alcohol would vary according the recklessness risk that each person poses, and borrowers would be entitled to personalized loan disclosures tailored to their unique needs and delivered in a format fitting their mental capacity. The data and algorithms to administer personalize law are at our doorstep, and embryos of this regime are sprouting. Should we welcome this transformation of the law? Does personalized law harbor a utopic promise, or would it produce alienation, demoralization, and discrimination? This book is the first to explore personalized law, offering a vision of law and robotics that delegates to machines those tasks humans are least able to perform well. It inquires how personalized law can be designed to deliver precision and justice and what pitfalls the regime would have to prudently avoid. In this book, Omri Ben-Shahar and Ariel Porat not only present this concept in a clear, easily accessible way, but they offer specific examples of how personalized law may be implemented across a variety of real-life applications.

In this comprehensive review of urban ethnography, Steven Lubet encountered a field that relies heavily on anonymous sources, often as reported by a single investigator whose underlying data remain unseen. Upon digging into the details, he discovered too many ethnographic assertions that were dubious, exaggerated, tendentious, or just plain wrong. Employing the tools and techniques of a trial lawyer, Lubet uses original sources and contemporaneous documentation to explore the stories behind ethnographic narratives. Many turn out to be accurate, but others are revealed to be based on rumors, folklore, and unreliable hearsay. Interrogating Ethnography explains how qualitative social science would benefit from greater attention to the quality of evidence, and provides recommendations for bringing the field more closely in line with other fact-based disciplines such as law and journalism.

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 for how the relationship between economics and real-world law enforcement can 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.

Throughout Latin America, the idea of "justice" serves as the ultimate goal and rationale for a wide variety of actions and causes. In the Chilean Atacama Desert, residents have undertaken a prolonged struggle for their right to groundwater. Family members of bombing victims in Buenos Aires demand that the state provide justice for the attack. In Colombia, some victims of political violence have turned to the courts for resolution, while others reject the state's ability to fairly adjudicate their grievances and have constructed a non-state tribunal. In each of these examples, the protagonists seek one main thing: justice. A Sense of Justice ethnographically explores the complex dynamics of justice production across Latin America. The chapters examine (in)justice as it is lived and imagined today and what it means for those who claim and regulate its parameters, including the Brazilian police force, the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal in Colombia, and the Argentine Supreme Court. Inextricable as "justice" is from inequality, violence, crime, and corruption, it emerges through memory, in space, and where ideals meet practical limitations. Ultimately, the authors show how understanding the dynamic processes of constructing justice is essential to creating cooperative rather than oppressive forms of law.

Throughout Latin America, the idea of "justice" serves as the ultimate goal and rationale for a wide variety of actions and causes. In the Chilean Atacama Desert, residents have undertaken a prolonged struggle for their right to groundwater. Family members of bombing victims in Buenos Aires demand that the state provide justice for the attack. In Colombia, some victims of political violence have turned to the courts for resolution, while others reject the state's ability to fairly adjudicate their grievances and have constructed a non-state tribunal. In each of these examples, the protagonists seek one main thing: justice. A Sense of Justice ethnographically explores the complex dynamics of justice production across Latin America. The chapters examine (in)justice as it is lived and imagined today and what it means for those who claim and regulate its parameters, including the Brazilian police force, the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal in Colombia, and the Argentine Supreme Court. Inextricable as "justice" is from inequality, violence, crime, and corruption, it emerges through memory, in space, and where ideals meet practical limitations. Ultimately, the authors show how understanding the dynamic processes of constructing justice is essential to creating cooperative rather than oppressive forms of law.

This volume focuses on the rise of transnational constitutional laws, primarily created by the interaction between national and international courts, and by the domestic transformation of international law. Through detailed analysis of patterns of institutional formation at key historical junctures in a number of national societies, it examines the social processes that have locked national states into an increasingly transnational constitutional order, and it explains how the growth of global constitutional norms has provided a stabilizing framework for the functions of state institutions. The book adopts a distinctive historical-sociological approach to these questions, examining the deep continuities between national constitutional law and contemporary models of global law. The volume makes an important contribution to the sociology of constitutional law, to the sociology of post-national legal processes, and to the sociology of human rights law. This title is also available as Open Access.

Countries emerging from violent conflict face difficult challenges about what the role of media should be in political transitions, particularly when attempting to build a new state and balance a difficult legacy. Media, Conflict, and the State in Africa discusses how ideas, institutions and interests have shaped media systems in some of Africa's most complex state and nation-building projects. This timely book comes at a turbulent moment in global politics as waves of populist protests gain traction, and concerns continue to grow about fake news, social media echo chambers, and the increasing role of both traditional and new media in waging wars or influencing elections. Focusing on comparative cases from a historical perspective and the choices and ideas that informed the approaches of some of Africa's leaders, including guerrilla commanders Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, Nicole Stremlau offers a unique political insight into the development of contemporary media systems in Africa.

Uncle Tom is the most piercing epithet blacks can hurl at one another. It marks targets as race traitors, and that painful stain is often permanent. Much more than a slur, Uncle Tom is a vital component of a system of social norms in the black community that deters treachery. In this book, Brando Simeo Starkey provocatively argues that blacks must police racial loyalty and that those successfully prosecuted must be punished with the label Uncle Tom. This book shadows Uncle Tom throughout history to understand how these norms were constructed, disseminated, applied, and enforced. Why were Martin Luther King Jr., Marcus Garvey, Muhammad Ali, Jackie Robinson, Thurgood Marshall, and others accused of racial betrayal? In Defense of Uncle Tom answers this and other questions and insists that Uncle Tom is too valuable to discard. Because it deters treachery, this epithet helps build black solidarity, a golden tool in promoting racial progress."

Human Rights, Democracy, and Legitimacy in a World of Disorder brings together respected scholars from diverse disciplines to examine a trio of key concepts that help to stabilize states and the international order. While used pervasively by philosophers, legal scholars, and politicians, the precise content of these concepts is disputed, and they face new challenges in the conditions of disorder brought by the twenty-first century. This volume will explore the interrelationships and possible tensions between human rights, democracy, and legitimacy, from the philosophical, legal, and political perspectives; as well as the role of these concepts in addressing particular problems such as economic inequality, catastrophic risks posed by new technologies, access to health care, regional governance, and responses to mass migration. Comprising essays arising from an interdisciplinary symposium convened at Harvard Law School in 2016, this volume will examine how these trusted concepts may bring order to the global community.