Originally published in 1981 Law, State and Society confronts many of the most important issues within the developing field of law and society. The essays cover the key political debates and the subject of the sociology of law through two key debates, the first tackling the wider theoretical and political system, while the other essays are concerned with more concrete aspects of both the political and social face of law. Together, the essays show how crucial the potential is that exists for a considerable extension and integration of work that focuses explicitly on empirical problems, yet is at the same time more conscious of the theoretical issues that underpin the effectivity of law.

Although scholars have shown longstanding interest in the boundaries of interpretation of the right not to be subjected to torture and other prohibited harm, the existing body of work does not sufficiently reflect the significance of the interpretive scope of degrading treatment. This book argues that the degrading treatment element of the right is a crucial site of analysis, in itself and for understanding the parameters of the right as a whole. It addresses how, methodologically, the scope of meaning and application of the right not to be subjected to degrading treatment should best be identified and considers the implications thereof. It systematically examines the diverse aspects of degrading treatment's scope, from foundations of legal interpretation to the drivers of humiliation. It draws on wide-ranging literature and extensive analysis of more than 1,500 judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, which has pioneered the right's interpretive growth. The book aims to explore how the interpretive possibilities, and limits, of the right not to be subjected to degrading treatment turn upon the axes of human dignity and state responsibility, and aims to show how this right's protection can be achieved as well as limited through processes of interpretation. Dignity, Degrading Treatment and Torture in Human Rights Law provides interpreters with analytical tools to advance the application of the right not to be subjected to torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in international, regional and domestic human rights law. It will appeal to all who have an interest in understanding the right's meaning, development, and potential scope of application, as well as those with an interest in methodologies of human rights interpretation.

The author discusses to what extent a generally binding norm of social justice can be established in a modern, plural society. The book presents the difficulty associated with the preservation of plurality of different life forms. It also considers the plurality of the principles of social justice so as not to fall back to prioritization and the absolutization of their claims. This book argues for a more constructive way to search for criteria for complementarity, referring methodologically to Rawls' and Honneth's theories of justice. The author contents that the principles of social justice and their sources of normativity are plural.

What are the implications of comics for law? Tackling this question, On Comics and Legal Aesthetics explores the epistemological dimensions of comics and the way this once-maligned medium can help think about - and reshape - the form of law. Traversing comics, critical, and cultural legal studies, it seeks to enrich the theorisation of comics with a critical aesthetics that expands its value and significance for law, as well as knowledge more generally. It argues that comics' multimodality - its hybrid structure, which represents a meeting point of text, image, reason, and aesthetics - opens understanding of the limits of law's rational texts by shifting between multiple frames and modes of presentation. Comics thereby exposes the way all forms of knowledge are shaped out of an unstructured universe, becoming a mask over this chaotic 'beyond'. This mask of knowing remains haunted - by that which it can never fully capture or represent. Comics thus models knowledge as an infinity of nested frames haunted by the chaos without structure. In such a model, the multiple aspects of law become one region of a vast and bottomless cascade of perspectives - an infinite multiframe that extends far beyond the traditional confines of the comics page, rendering law boundless.

Grounded in Critical Race Theory (CRT), Black Men in Law School refutes the claim that when African American law students are "mismatched" with more selective law schools, the result is lower levels of achievement and success. Presenting personal narratives and counter-stories, Jackson demonstrates the inadequacy of the mismatch theory and deconstructs the ways race is constructed within American public law schools. Calling for a replacement to mismatch theory, Jackson offers an alternative theory that considers marginalized student perspectives and crystallizes the nuances and impact that historically exclusionary institutions and systems have on African American law school students. To further the debate on affirmative action, this book shows that experiences and voices of African American law school students are a crucial ingredient in the debate on race and how it functions in law schools.

An essential, rigorous, and lively introduction to the beginnings of American law. How did American colonists transform British law into their own? What were the colonies' first legal institutions, and who served in them? And why did the early Americans develop a passion for litigation that continues to this day? In Law and People in Colonial America, Peter Charles Hoffer tells the story of early American law from its beginnings on the British mainland to its maturation during the crisis of the American Revolution. For the men and women of colonial America, Hoffer explains, law was a pervasive influence in everyday life. Because it was their law, the colonists continually adapted it to fit changing circumstances. They also developed a sense of legalism that influenced virtually all social, economic, and political relationships. This sense of intimacy with the law, Hoffer argues, assumed a transforming power in times of crisis. In the midst of a war for independence, American revolutionaries used their intimacy with the law to explain how their rebellion could be lawful, while legislators wrote republican constitutions that would endure for centuries. Today the role of law in American life is more pervasive than ever. And because our system of law involves a continuing dialogue between past and present, interpreting the meaning of precedent and of past legislation, the study of legal history is a vital part of every citizen's basic education. Taking advantage of rich new scholarship that goes beyond traditional approaches to view slavery as a fundamental cultural and social institution as well as an economic one, this second edition includes an extensive, entirely new chapter on colonial and revolutionary-era slave law. Law and People in Colonial America is a lively introduction to early American law. It makes for essential reading.

Over the last several decades legal scholars have plumbed law's rhetorical life. Scholars have done so under various rubrics, with law and literature being among the most fruitful venues for the exploration of law's rhetoric and the way rhetoric shapes law. Today, new approaches are shaping this exploration. Among the most important of these approaches is the turn toward history and toward what might be called an 'embedded' analysis of rhetoric in law. Historical and embedded approaches locate that analysis in particular contexts, seeking to draw our attention to how the rhetorical dimensions of legal life works in those contexts. Rhetorical Processes and Legal Judgments seeks to advance that mode of analysis and also to contribute to the understanding of the rhetorical structure of judicial arguments and opinions.

Why do we consider incest wrong, even when it occurs between consenting adults unable to have children? Why are words that gross us out more likely to be deemed "obscene" and denied the protection of the First Amendment? In a world where a gruesome photograph can decisively influence a jury and homosexual behavior is still condemned by some as "unnatural," it is worth asking: is our legal system really governed by the power of reason? Or do we allow a primitive human emotion, disgust, to guide us in our lawmaking? In Objection, psychologists Debra Lieberman and Carlton Patrick examine disgust and its impact on the legal system to show why the things that we find stomach-turning so often become the things that we render unlawful. Shedding light on the evolutionary and psychological origins of disgust, the authors reveal how ancient human intuitions about what is safe to eat or touch, or who would make an advantageous mate, have become co-opted by moral systems designed to condemn behavior and identify groups of people ripe for marginalization. Over time these moral stances have made their way into legal codes, and disgust has thereby served as the impetus for laws against behaviors almost universally held to be "disgusting" (corpse desecration, bestiality) - and as the implicit justification for more controversial prohibitions (homosexuality, use of pornography). Written with a critical eye on current events, Lieberman and Patrick build a case for a more reasoned approach to lawmaking in a system that often confuses "gross" with "wrong."

This special issue of Studies in Law, Politics, and Society is dedicated to the life and work of beloved legal scholar Stuart Scheingold. The articles brought together in this volume articulate the inspiring contribution Scheingold made to political science and law and society. The final chapter "Rights, Community, and Democracy: A Socio-Legal Critique of the Neoconservative Case against Rights" is a work authored by Stuart Scheingold which has been completed by his co-author and is published here for the first time. This volume shows how Scheingold helped to bridge the differences between how rights are expressed within the law, and how they are actually put into practice. Centering on the theme of "the myth of rights" the chapters discuss diverse aspects of society, crime, politics, and law; most specifically street crime, immigration and crime control policies, political criminology and urban social control, race and "displaced anxiety" within communities in the US, and animal rights.

Rule of law is a core Hong Kong value, providing a defensive wall around the territory and protecting its way of life against 'mainlandisation'. Before the 1997 retrocession to China, fears were widespread that the rights and freedoms enjoyed under colonial rule would be eroded, that the rule of law would be weakened and that corruption would increase. Soon, the first blows were struck against the rule of law via an NPCSC ruling which overturned the judgment of the Court of Final Appeal. Successive interventions by Beijing in Hong Kong's legal and political affairs have given rise to fears about the loss of the rule of law and loss of identity. These fears have subsequently provoked mass street demonstrations, including the 'Umbrella Revolution' of 2014. But, as this book shows, Hong Kongers also use less explicit arts of resistance to maintain their identity.

This volume of Studies in Law, Politics, and Society brings together research by graduate students from universities in the United States and the United Kingdom. The work of these students was singled out by their teachers and advisors as showing unusual promise and marking out directions for the next generationA" of interdisciplinary legal scholars. The research collected here is often comparative. It is theoretically informed and rigorous in its methods. Taken together it shows breadth and excellence, and it signals the continuing vibrancy of interdisciplinary legal studies.

The condemnation of wartime sexual violence as a gross violation of human rights has received widespread support. While rape and other forms of sexual violence have attracted considerable local and international attention, this often excludes wartime sexual violence among women belonging to so-called 'perpetrator' war-torn nations. This book explores the silence surrounding women's experiences of wartime sexual violence within academic, legal and public discourses. Olivera Simic argues that the international criminal law and feminist legal discourse on wartime sexual violence can construct a problematic victim hierarchy that excludes and misrecognises certain women's experiences of sexual violence during and after armed conflict. The book focuses on the experiences of Bosnian Serb women, where the collapse of the former Yugoslavia led to brutal war and gross human rights violations throughout the 1990s. Two decades after the war, women in Bosnia and Herzegovina are still facing the legacies of the violence in the 1990s. Through this case Simic argues that while all women survivors of rape face problems of stigma, shame and lack of political visibility, their legal and symbolic status differ according to their ethno-national identity. Drawing on interviews with Bosnian Serb women survivors of rape in Bosnia and Herzegovina, feminist activists, local media, documentary and archival sources, the book examines 'post-conflict justice' as it is seen, lived and interpreted by women who belong to 'perpetrator' nations and will be of great interest and use to researchers, students and practitioners within post-conflict law and justice, international criminal law, security studies and gender studies.

Can there be such a thing as a European sociology of law? The uncertainties which arise when attempting to answer that straightforward question are the subject of this book, which also overlaps into comparative law, legal history, and legal philosophy. The richness of approaches reflected in the essays (including comparisons with the US) makes this volume a courageous attempt to show the present state of socio- legal studies in Europe and map directions for its future development. Certainly we already know something about the existence of differences in the use and meaning of law within and between the nation states and groups that make up the European Union. They concern the role of judges and lawyers, the use of courts, patterns of delay, contrasts in penal 'sensibilities', or the meanings of underlying legal and social concepts. Still, similarities in 'legal culture' are at least as remarkable in societies at roughly similar levels of political and economic development. The volume should serve as a needed stimulus to a research agenda aimed at uncovering commonalities and divergences in European ways of approaching the law.

Since the very beginning of European integration, electricity has been within the legal sphere of the EU. Much of this is found within the binding European acts making up the framework of the Energy Packages. The established legal institutions have had a significant impact on the shape of the energy market in Europe. Nevertheless, the European energy market still seems to be developing, as demonstrated by the current lively discussion about the state of the Energy Union. Regulation in the European Electricity Sector delves into European energy law and reflects on some of the primary issues related to the public legal impact on the European energy sector. The book offers a brief explanation of the background operation of the electricity sector, as well as liberalisation within the area, and traces the evolution of the EU's approach towards the issue of public law regulation within the electricity sector. Finally, the book presents an analysis of European and national laws, considering their interpretation, and explores the future of public law regulation. Aimed at giving the reader a deep insight into a nature of the state's presence in the power sector, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of EU energy law and policy.

This book provides a systematic and interdisciplinary examination of law and legal institutions in Malaysia. It examines legal issues from historical, social, and political perspectives, and discusses the role of law in relation to Malaysian multiculturalism, religion, politics, and society. It shows how the Malaysian legal system is at the heart of debates about how to deal with the country's problems, which include ethnic and religious divisions, uneven and unsustainable development, and political authoritarianism; and it argues that the Malaysian legal system has much to teach other plural polities, nations within the common law tradition, and federal states.

How does order emerge out of the multiplicity of bodies, objects, ideas and practices that constitute the urban? This book explores the relation between space, law and control in the contemporary city - and particularly in the context of urban 'mega events' - through a combined geographical and normative analysis. Informed by the recent spatial, affective and material 'turns' in the humanities and social sciences, Andrea Pavoni addresses this question by pursuing an innovative and trans-disciplinary approach, capable of accounting for the emergence of order in urban space both at the conceptual and empirical levels. Two overarching objectives are pursued. First, to account for the increasing convergence of logics, techniques and technologies of law, security and marketing into novel, potentially oppressive spatial configurations. Second, to envisage a consistent ethico-political strategy to counter this evolution, by rethinking originally and in radically spatial terms the notion of justice. Forging a sophisticated and original analysis, this book offers an analysis that will be of considerable interest to those working in critical urban geography, critical legal studies, critical event studies, surveillance and control studies.

After thirty years of Mao era (1949-1979) which was struggle-based, the Communist Party of China has begun to change its position as a pioneering revolutionary party, evolving into a universal ruling party that transcends class interests. Meanwhile, administrative and judicial reforms oriented toward a more efficient, serving government and the rule of law have been actively carried out. As the earliest work on constructive jurisprudence of new proceduralism in China, this book elaborates on the ideological confrontation on the "direction of China". It includes academic debates on politics and law which the author has been involved in, and top-level institutional design in China. Besides, this book introduces, analyzes and evaluates the focus of Chinese contemporary jurisprudence, making some critical summarizing propositions on the practical experiences. A review of Western contemporary jurisprudence and the forefront of legal research is also covered, aiming to provide ideological resources for the rule of law in China. Scholars and students in Chinese legal and social transformation studies will be attracted by this book. Furthermore, it will help different civilizations conduct rational dialogues on justice and order.

The Purse and the Sword presents a critical analysis of Israel's legal system in the context of its politics, history, and the forces that shape its society. This book examines the extensive powers that Israel's Supreme Court arrogated to itself since the 1980s and traces the history of the transformation of its legal system and the shifts in the balance of power between the branches of government. Centrally, this shift has put unprecedented power in the hands of both the Court and Israel's attorney general and state prosecution at the expense of Israel's cabinet, constituting its executive branch, and the Knesset-its parliament. The expansion of judicial power followed the weakening of the political leadership in the wake of the Yom Kippur war of 1973, and the election results in the following years. These developments are detailed in the context of major issues faced by modern Israel, including the war against terror, the conflict with the Palestinians, the Arab minority, settlements in the West Bank, state and religion, immigration, military service, censorship and freedom of expression, appointments to the government and to public office, and government policies. The aggrandizement of power by the legal system led to a backlash against the Supreme Court in the early part of the current century, and to the partial rebalancing of power towards the political branches.

This book explores the implications of European and Eurasian integration projects for the constitutional orders of post-Soviet countries. On the one hand, the process of Eurasian integration, culminating in the establishment of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), led to the creation of new institutions and mechanisms influencing the domestic legal order of the participating countries. On the other hand, the process of European integration, epitomised through the European Union (EU), constitutes an important source of reference for domestic constitutional developments in the countries which recently concluded a new generation of Association Agreements with the EU. This book analyses the implications of both processes. The book addresses the relevant experience of the countries from Central and Eastern Europe with transitional constitutionalism, mapping out the significance of European and Eurasian integration for protecting the rule of law in the post-Soviet space and identifying the constitutional implications and challenges of the EAEU and the new generation of Association Agreements. It also provides detailed country reports on national constitutional orders in the post-Soviet space and their adaptability to regional integration projects, authored by leading academics from the countries concerned, providing a number of general reflections about the evolution of post-Soviet constitutions in light of European and Eurasian integration projects.

What can law's popular cultures do for law, as a constitutive and interrogative critical practice? This collection explores such a question through the lens of the 'cultural legal studies' movement, which proffers a new encounter with the 'cultural turn' in law and legal theory. Moving beyond the 'law ands' (literature, humanities, culture, film, visual and aesthetics) on which it is based, this book demonstrates how the techniques and practices of cultural legal studies can be used to metamorphose law and the legalities that underpin its popular imaginary. By drawing on three different modes of cultural legal studies - storytelling, technology and jurisprudence - the collection showcases the intersectional practices of cultural legal studies, and law in its popular cultural mode. The contributors to the collection deploy differentiated modes of cultural legal studies practice, adopting diverse philosophical, disciplinary, methodological and theoretical approaches and subjects of examination. The collection draws on this mix of diversity and homogeneity to thread together its overarching theme: that we must take seriously an interrogation of law as culture and in its cultural form. That is, it does not ask how a text 'represents' law; but rather how the representational nature of both law and culture intersect so that the 'juridical' become visible in various cultural manifestations. In short, it asks: how law's popular cultures actively effect the metamorphosis of law.

This book critically confronts perceptions that social media has become a 'wasteland' for young people. Law has become preoccupied with privacy, intellectual property, defamation and criminal behaviour in and through social media. In the case of children and youth, this book argues, these preoccupations - whilst important - have disguised and distracted public debate away from a much broader, and more positive, consideration of the nature of social media. In particular, the legal tendency to consider social media as 'dangerous' for young people - to focus exclusively on the need to protect and control their online presence and privacy, whilst tending to suspect, or to criminalise, their use of it - has obscured the potential of social media to help young people to participate more fully as citizens in society. Drawing on sociological work on the construction of childhood, and engaging a wide range of national and international legal material, this book argues that social media may yet offer the possibility of an entirely different - and more progressive -conceptualisation of children and youth.

Contributions to Law, Philosophy and Ecology: Exploring Re-Embodiments is a preliminary contribution to the establishment of re-embodiments as a theoretical strand within legal and ecological theory, and philosophy. Re-embodiments are all those contemporary practices and processes that exceed the epistemic horizon of modernity. As such, they offer a plurality of alternative modes of theory and practice that seek to counteract the ecocidal tendencies of the Anthropocene. The collection comprises eleven contributions approaching re-embodiments from a multiplicity of fields, including legal theory, eco-philosophy, eco-feminism and anthropology. The contributions are organized into three parts: 'Beyond Modernity', 'The Sacred Dimension' and 'The Legal Dimension'. The collection is opened by a comprehensive introduction that situates re-embodiments in theoretical context. Whilst closely bound with embodiment and new materialist theory, this book contributes a unique voice that echoes diverse political processes contemporaneous to our times. Written in an elegant and accessible language, the book will appeal to undergraduates, postgraduates and established scholars alike seeking to understand and take re-embodiments further, both politically and theoretically.

This book is the first to approach Jacques Ranciere's work from a legal perspective. A former student of Louis Althusser, Ranciere is one of the most important contemporary French philosophers of recent decades: offering an original and path-breaking way to think politics, democracy and aesthetics. Ranciere's work has received wide and increasing critical attention, but no study exists so far that reflects on the wider implications of Ranciere for law and for socio-legal studies. Although Ranciere does not pay much specific attention to law-and there is a strong temptation to identify law with what he terms the "police order"-much of Ranciere's historical work highlights the creative potential of law and legal language, with important legal implications and ramifications. So, rather than excavate the Rancierean corpus for isolated statements about the law, this volume reverses such a method and asks: what would a Ranciere-inspired legal theory look like? Bringing together specialists and scholars in different areas of law, critical theory and philosophy, this rethinking of law and socio-legal studies through Ranciere provides an original and important engagement with a range of contemporary legal topics, including constituent power and democracy, legal subjectivity, human rights, practices of adjudication, refugees, the nomos of modernity, and the sensory configurations of law. It will, then, be of considerable interest to those working in these areas.

In recent decades, the external action of the European Union (EU) has been undergoing considerable change. An expansion of the EU's external policy portfolio can be observed in many areas as previous policies for internal purposes - such as competition, energy, the environment, justice and home affairs or monetary governance but also gender, science, culture or higher education - have developed external dimensions. This book addresses the EU's potential to become a more joined-up global actor in its external engagement. It uses a single and innovative analytical framework to examine three clusters of policies: EU internal sectoral and cross-cutting policies with long-standing external engagement, those which have been undergoing considerable change, and originally internal policies whose external dimensions are comparatively more recent. It identifies key explanatory factors for the emergence of (certain forms of) EU external engagement and identifies patterns of the evolving relations between EU internal and external sectoral policies. As such, the book examines and assesses exciting new empirical and theoretical research avenues into European integration studies and offers insights into the extent to which the EU may be considered a more joined-up global actor developing sectoral diplomacies. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students as well as practitioners in the fields of European Union politics, European Union foreign policy, European Politics, diplomacy studies, and more broadly law and international relations.

The European Union (EU) has emerged as a key actor in the global investment regime since the 1980s. At the same time, international investment policy and agreements, which govern international investment liberalisation, treatment and protection through investor-to-state dispute settlement, have become increasingly contentious in the European public debate. This book provides an accessible introduction to international investment policy and seeks to explain how the EU became an actor in the global investment regime. It offers a detailed analysis of the EU's participation in all major trade and investment negotiations since the 1980s and EU-internal competence debates to identify the causes behind the EU's growing role in this policy domain. Building on principal-agent and historical institutionalist models of incremental institutional change, the book shows that Commission entrepreneurship was instrumental in the emergence of the EU as a key actor in the global investment regime. It refutes business-centred liberal intergovernmental explanations, which suggest that business lobbying made the Member States accept the EU's growing role and competence in this domain. The book lends support to supranational and challenges intergovernmental thinking on European Integration. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners of European and regional integration, EU foreign relations, EU trade and international investment law, business lobbying, and more broadly of international political economy.