By 1838, over two thousand Americans had been killed and many hundreds injured by exploding steam engines on steamboats. After calls for a solution in two State of the Union addresses, a Senate Select Committee met to consider an investigative report from the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, the first federally funded investigation into a technical.

This book presents a comprehensive history of law and religion in the Nordic context. The entwinement of law and religion in Scandinavia encompasses an unusual history, not widely known yet important for its impact on contemporary political and international relations in the region. The volume provides a holistic picture from the first written legal sources of the twelfth century to the law of the present secular welfare states. It recounts this history through biographical case studies. Taking the point of view of major influential figures in church, politics, university, and law, it thus presents the principal actors who served as catalysts in ecclesiastical and secular law through the centuries. This refreshing approach to legal history contributes to a new trend in historiography, particularly articulated by a younger generation of experienced Nordic scholars whose work is featured prominently in this volume. The collection will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers working in the areas of Legal History and Law and Religion.

With a history marked by incompetence, political maneuvering, and secrecy, America's "most humane" execution method is anything but. From the beginning of the Republic, this country has struggled to reconcile its use of capital punishment with the Constitution's prohibition of cruel punishment. Death penalty proponents argue both that it is justifiable as a response to particularly heinous crimes, and that it serves to deter others from committing them in the future. However, since the earliest executions, abolitionists have fought against this state-sanctioned killing, arguing, among other things, that the methods of execution have frequently been just as gruesome as the crimes meriting their use. Lethal injection was first introduced in order to quell such objections, but, as Austin Sarat shows in this brief history, its supporters' commitment to painless and humane death has never been certain. This book tells the story of lethal injection's earliest iterations in the United States, starting with New York state's rejection of that execution method almost a century and half ago. Sarat recounts lethal injection's return in the late 1970s, and offers novel and insightful scrutiny of the new drug protocols that went into effect between 2010 and 2020. Drawing on rare data, he makes the case that lethal injections during this time only became more unreliable, inefficient, and more frequently botched. Beyond his stirring narrative history, Sarat mounts a comprehensive condemnation of the state-level maneuvering in response to such mishaps, whereby death penalty states adopted secrecy statutes and adjusted their execution protocols to make it harder to identify and observe lethal injection's flaws. What was once touted as America's most humane execution method is now its most unreliable one. What was once a model of efficiency in the grim business of state killing is now marked by mayhem. The book concludes by critically examining the place of lethal injection, and the death penalty writ large, today.

'The rule of law and property rights were the ''secret weapons'' that made Western Europe and its offshoots in North America and Oceania democratic and prosperous. How did this European legal system come to be? To answer this question, Bart Wauters and Marco de Benito offer us a fresh overview of the history of law in Europe, dealing with both civil and common law, from Roman times through to its codification. This book is a stimulating, lucid, and imaginative read.' - Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde, University of Pennsylvania, US Comprehensive and accessible, this book offers a concise synthesis of the evolution of the law in Western Europe, from ancient Rome to the beginning of the twentieth century. It situates law in the wider framework of Europe's political, economic, social and cultural developments. Offering a readily graspable and sound structure, chapters are organized according to the civil law systems and common law systems. Each chapter is built around the evolution of the four sources of the law: legal science, legislation, courts and customary law, set chronologically against the relevant historical context. Throughout this in-depth presentation of the key determinants in European legal history, Bart Wauters and Marco de Benito allow readers to understand how the law arose and evolved in Europe as a shared language, of which its different national laws are but dialectal expressions - with the unique exception, perhaps, of English common law, whose peculiarity is likewise due to accidents of history which are themselves explored. With its elegant comparative approach, this book will appeal to European Law students and scholars looking for a concise, yet academically sound, account of the history of law in Europe.

The 1911 Copyright Act, often termed the 'Imperial Copyright Act', changed the jurisprudential landscape in respect of copyright law, not only in the United Kingdom but also within the then Empire. This book offers a bird's eye perspective of why and how the first global copyright law launched a new order, often termed the 'common law copyright system'.This carefully researched and reflective work draws upon some of the best scholarship from Australia, Canada, India, Israel, Jamaica, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa and United Kingdom. The authors - academics and practitioners alike - situate the Imperial Copyright Act 1911 within their national laws, both historically and legally. In doing so, the book queries the extent to which the ethos and legacy of the 1911 Copyright Act remains within indigenous laws. A Shifting Empire offers a unique global, historical view of copyright development and will be a valuable resource for policymakers, academic scholars and members of international copyright associations. Contributors include: T.G. Agitha, M.D. Birnhack, D. Daley, Y. Gendreau, N.S. Gopalakrishnan, N.-L.W. Loon, G. McLay, S. Ricketson, U. Suthersanen

Originally published in 1995, Social Changes, Crime and the Police studies the relationship of social change and crime, the role of the police amidst changing social conditions, and the reaction of society and the state to the criminal problem. It examines the essential differences and challenges which confronted countries in Western and Eastern Europe after the collapse of the socialist system. In recent years, many areas of Europe had experienced a period of rapid technological development which had changed economic and cultural structures, creating temporary instability. Within a relatively short period of time traditional values and beliefs had been undermined. National boundaries and geographical differences had gradually lost their significance and the opening of frontiers had created easier conditions for crime. The nature of crime itself had been transformed by the increasingly close relationships between countries. While many Eastern European countries sought to undo the authoritarian legacies of the socialist period, Western Europe faced new challenges to its urban order. The editors and the contributors also examine the kinds of new policing concepts which may be formulated and the new practices which may develop during the next few decades. Governments must determine the role of the police and the law in accordance with public demands for powerful policing combined with consideration of the individual’s rights, thus maintaining the vital balance between personal freedom and social peace.

What role should the police have in an industrial dispute? How were they led into a partisan role in assisting the defeat of the 1984-5 miners' strike? Widespread concern over police road-blocks, allegations of police and picket violence, and the huge numbers of police used to maintain order and access to work led the National Council for Civil Liberties to set up an inquiry into the policing. The Inquiry Panel produced an interim report - but the NCCL disowned it, because of its acknowledgement of the rights of working miners as well as striking ones. The members of the Panel - who included former Chief Constable John Alderson and NCCL General Secretary Larry Gostin - then resigned, but continued work as a group of private individuals. Originally published in 1988, this book is their final report. The report describes the policing of the strike in detail from a range of published, unpublished, and eyewitness sources. The strike is set in the context of developments in law and policing before and since. The authors are able to provide a unique and authoritative perspective, analysing both the events of 1984-5 and the longer-term trends and problems, based on a clear recognition of the basic issues and conflicts of civil liberties involved. In their conclusions and recommendations the authors present an informed view of the use of the police during the strike, the breakdown of the system of police accountability, and the policies developed since the strike. Their findings point to the need for a Bill of Rights to cover civil liberties during industrial conflict, and the need for a new picketing Code of Practice. The Police, Public Order, and Civil Liberties will be essential reading for all concerned with the police, industrial relations, and the political and constitutional system. It will also be of value to all who need a clear and unbiased view of one of the key events in British post-war history.

Originally published in 1951, The British Police describes the different types of police force, the powers and functions of local police authorities, the ways in which control from the centre is exercised, and the effect of the Local Government Boundary Commission's proposals on police areas at the time. Special emphasis is placed on what happens in practice and not only in theory, and on developments during and after the second world war. Chapters are included on (amongst other things) the special position of the Metropolitan Police Force, emphasizing the independence of the 'Yard' from the Home Secretary's control; on recruitment, training, promotion, and the police college; pay and conditions of service, and policewomen. At the time of first publication the work was intended to be of use to university students in the Social Sciences who had previously had no up-to-date book to reply on; it would also have interested the general reader by attempting to answer such questions as to whether the local basis of the British police service was - as was so often claimed - the key to the good relations of the police with the public and one of the great safeguards of personal liberty in Britain. Today it can be read and enjoyed in its historical context.

Originally published in1988, Introducing Policework offered a new and concise overview of the controversial subject of policework at the time. The authors provide critical evaluations of the contributions made by psychologists, social psychologists, historians, sociologists, and political scientists, and an assessment of how these fit within an overall understanding of policework. Among the issues considered are: the process of socialization that lead to a ‘cop culture’; the historical evolution of police working practices and their current impact upon the social divisions of age, gender, race and class; problems with the present system of accountability; the prospects for success of recent (post-Scarman) initiatives, such as community consultation. The achievement of this book is that it provides lively and consistent discussion of key issues in the consideration of policework: race and crime, the question of gender, victimization and the ‘new realism’, police monitoring, Neighbourhood Watch, and police training initiatives. Today it will provide an interesting look back at a critical evaluation of policework in the 1980s.

Engaging with the underlying social context in which emotions are a motivational force, Law and the Passions provides a uniquely inclusive commentary on the significance and influence of emotions in the history and continuing development of legal judgment, policy formation, legal practice and legal dogma. Although the emotionality of the law and the use of emotional tropes in legal discourse has become an established focus in recent scholarship, the extent to which emotion and the passions have informed decision-making, decision-avoidance and legal reasoning - rather than as simply an adjunct - is still a matter for critical analysis. As evidenced in a range of illustrative legal cases, emotions have been instrumental in the evolution of key legal principles and have produced many controversial judgments. Addressing the latent influence of fear, hate, love and compassion, the book explores the mutability of law and its transformative power, especially when faced with fluctuating social mores. The textual nature of law and the impact of literary forms on legal actors are also critically examined to further elucidate the idea of law-making as both rational and emotional, and significantly as an essential activity of the empathic imagination. To this end, it is suggested that critical scholarship on law, the passions and emotions not only advances our understanding of the inner workings of law, it constitutes a fundamental part of our moral reasoning, and has the capacity to articulate the conditions for a more dynamic, adaptable, ethical and effective legal institution. This interdisciplinary book will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of law and literature, legal theory, legal philosophy, law and the humanities, legal aesthetics, sociology of law, politics, law and policy, human rights, general jurisprudence and social justice, as well as cultural studies.

This book is a study of the British casino industry and how it has been shaped by criminality, prohibition, regulation and liberalization since the beginning of the First World War. The reader will gain a detailed knowledge of the history, culture, identity and participants within the British casino industry, which has, to date, escaped the attention of a dedicated historical and criminological investigation. This monograph fills this gap in inquiry while drawing on primary source material that has not been used previously, including, but not confined to, records in the National Archives relating to the Gaming Board of Great Britain and the Metropolitan Police. In addition to archive material, oral histories, newspapers, published journals and books have been utilised and referenced where appropriate. Envisaged to close a gap in historical research, this book will be of interest to historians, criminologists, regulators, students and individuals interested in gambling, society and cultural history.

This book challenges traditional theories of constitution-making to advance an alternative view of constitutions as being founded on power which rests on violence. The work argues that rather than the idea of a constitution being the result of political participation and deliberation, all power instead is based on violence. Hence the creation of a constitution is actually an act of coercion, where, through violence, one social group is able to impose itself over others. The book advocates that the presence of violence be used as an assessment of whether genuine constitutional transformation has taken place, and that the legitimacy of a constitutional order should be dependent upon the absence of killing. The book will be essential reading for academics and researchers working in the areas of constitutional law and politics, legal and political theory, and constitutional history.

The Gulathing Law regulates relations between the social classes, the king and his officers, the clergy, and the peasantry. Parts of the law appear to be a social contract between two parties: on the one hand the people, on the other hand the church and the king. This new edition, in modern English, contains many references to research that has been carried out since the appearance of previous editions in 1935 and 1981. In the Gulathing Law, differing interests are being balanced, and procedures described for solving conflicts. Personal rights are defined, and scales of fines and compensation are set up, graded according to the gravity of the insult, offence, and the social status of the persons involved. Large parts of the law text mirror the internal conditions in the farming community of Western Norway in the High Middle Ages; economic transactions, disputes, damage to life and property, and theft. Accompanied by a translator's introduction and a commentary essay which place the Gulathing Law in a theological and church history perspective, this volume will be useful for both students and specialists of medieval Norwegian legal history and medieval Scandinavian law.

This book contends that modern concerns surrounding the UK State's investigation of communications (and, more recently, data), whether at rest or in transit, are in fact nothing new. It evidences how, whether using common law, the Royal Prerogative, or statutes to provide a lawful basis for a state practice traceable to at least 1324, the underlying policy rationale has always been that first publicly articulated in Cromwell's initial Postage Act 1657, namely the protection of British 'national security', broadly construed. It further illustrates how developments in communications technology led to Executive assumptions of relevant investigatory powers, administered in conditions of relative secrecy. In demonstrating the key role played throughout history by communications service providers, the book also charts how the evolution of the UK Intelligence Community, entry into the 'UKUSA' communications intelligence-sharing agreement 1946, and intelligence community advocacy all significantly influenced the era of arguably disingenuous statutory governance of communications investigation between 1984 and 2016. The book illustrates how the 2013 'Intelligence Shock' triggered by publication of Edward Snowden's unauthorized disclosures impelled a transition from Executive secrecy and statutory disingenuousness to a more consultative, candid Executive and a policy of 'transparent secrecy', now reflected in the Investigatory Powers Act 2016. What the book ultimately demonstrates is that this latest comprehensive statute, whilst welcome for its candour, represents only the latest manifestation of the British state's policy of ensuring protection of national security by granting powers enabling investigative access to communications and data, in transit or at rest, irrespective of location.

Brings a distinctive and appropriately provocative stance to a growing debate;

This book is Volume IV in the Official History of Criminal Justice in England and Wales. Previous volumes have focused on the moral reforms of the 1960s, the changes to the criminal courts and the introduction of an independent prosecution service, and the broad shifts in penal policy that have taken place in the post-war era. This volume examines the changing politics of law and order, charting the gradual shift toward greater political conflict and dispute. Until the early 1970s law and order rarely occupied a privileged place in political debate. From that point this began to change with, initially, the Conservatives utilising crime and penal policy as a means of distinguishing themselves from their opponents. This volume charts these changes in the politics of law and order and examines the rise in the temperature of political debate around such issues as the Labour Party markedly shifted its direction in the 1990s This book will be of interest to students of British political history, criminology and sociology.

?'Rethinking?' legal reasoning seems a bold aim given the large amount of literature devoted to this topic. In this thought-provoking book, Geoffrey Samuel proposes a different way of approaching legal reasoning by examining the topic through the context of legal knowledge (epistemology). What is it to have knowledge of legal reasoning? At a more specific level the pursuit of this understanding is conducted through posing a number of questions that are founded on different approaches. What has legal reasoning been? What are the institutional and conceptual legacies of this history? What is the literature and textual heritage? How does it compare with medical reasoning and with reasoning in the humanities? Can it be demystified? In exploring these questions Samuel suggests a number of frameworks that offer some new insights into the nature of legal reasoning. The author also puts forward two key ideas. First, that the legal notion of an '?interest?' might perhaps be a very suitable artefact for rethinking legal reasoning; and, secondly, that fiction theory might be the most viable ?'epistemological attitude?' for understanding, if not rethinking, reasoning in law. This book will be of great interest to academics who are researching legal method and legal reasoning, as well as epistemology of the social sciences and aspects of comparative law. It will also be an insightful text for those interested in legal history and historical perspectives on legal reasoning.

Motherhood, Respectability and Baby-Farming in Victorian and Edwardian London explores a largely obscured marketplace of motherhood that provided ways for women to manage the stigma of illegitimacy and their respectable identities within Victorian and Edwardian society. It focuses on the extent of women's 'dirty work', when maternal problem management was fundamental to the general maintenance of respectability and, by extension, to Empire and Civilisation. Despite its intrigue, history has struggled to understand and represent an uncomfortable but significant artefact of Western modernising society: 'baby-farming'. During a period when ideologies of respectability and civilisation arguably mattered most, the 'right' kind of parenthood - especially motherhood - became paramount. As the 'wrong' offspring could jeopardise a woman's chances of being respectable, a wholesale, informal, and somewhat clandestine marketplace emerged that catered to various maternal difficulties. Within this marketplace, a pregnancy or newborn child who may have compromised a woman's respectability could be 'disposed' of through different means, for a fee. From the Victorian period to the present, the commercialised maternal practices associated with baby-farming have become firmly established within collective consciousness as being synonymous with child murder, female pathology, and 'infanticide for hire'. This book provides a revised, far more complex, and nuanced narrative history which reveals all that was associated with baby-farming - including all possible outcomes - to be entirely natural, rational, and even necessary products of their time; an understandable outcome of the period's 'civilising offensive'. Motherhood, Respectability and Baby-Farming in Victorian and Edwardian London will be of great interest to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, history, and gender studies.

There is a deep and multifaceted relationship between international law and history - political events have legal implications, and international norms and institutions may influence the course of history. This incisive book unveils and illuminates this nexus, providing examples from a wide range of domains of global governance. Analysing this intertwined relationship with particular reference to international human rights, humanitarian and criminal law, this timely book features contributions from leading scholars and practitioners in international law, history and diplomacy. History and International Law, with a foreword by ICJ Judge Giorgio Gaja, covers topics ranging from the connections between current and historical events and human rights protection in the EU, to the ways in which ICC investigations and prosecutions continue to affect political developments in Africa. The authors offer examples of original analysis, establishing innovative paradigms of interdisciplinary research in the field. International lawyers and academics will find this book both useful and insightful. It will also prove valuable to scholars and students of the history of international law, diplomacy and international relations. Contributors include: O. Bekou, G. Ben-Nun, A. Ciampi, E. de Wet, S. Douglas-Scott, R.E. Fife, K. Ristic, S. Troebst

From London to Libya, from Istanbul to Iceland, there is great interest among comparative constitutional scholars and practitioners about when a proposed constitution is likely to succeed. But what does it mean for a constitution to succeed? Are there universal criteria of success, and which apply across the board? Or, is the choice of criteria entirely idiosyncratic? This edited volume takes on the idea of constitutional success and shows the manifold ways in which it can be understood. It collects essays from philosophers, political scientists, empiricists and legal scholars, that approach the definition of constitutional success from many different angles. It also brings together case studies from Africa, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia. By exploring a varied array of constitutional histories, this book shows how complex ideas of constitutional success play out differently in different contexts and provides examples of how success can be differently defined under different circumstances.

The captivating story of how a diverse group of women, including Janet Reno and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, broke the glass ceiling and changed the modern legal profession In Stories from Trailblazing Women Lawyers, award-winning legal historian Jill Norgren curates the oral histories of one hundred extraordinary American women lawyers who changed the profession of law. Many of these stories are being told for the first time. As adults these women were on the front lines fighting for access to law schools and good legal careers. They challenged established rules and broke the law's glass ceiling.Norgren uses these interviews to describe the profound changes that began in the late 1960s, interweaving social and legal history with the women's individual experiences. In 1950, when many of the subjects of this book were children, the terms of engagement were clear: only a few women would be admitted each year to American law schools and after graduation their professional opportunities would never equal those open to similarly qualified men. Harvard Law School did not even begin to admit women until 1950. At many law schools, well into the 1970s, men told female students that they were taking a place that might be better used by a male student who would have a career, not babies. In 2005 the American Bar Association's Commission on Women in the Profession initiated a national oral history project named the Women Trailblazers in the Law initiative: One hundred outstanding senior women lawyers were asked to give their personal and professional histories in interviews conducted by younger colleagues. The interviews, made available to the author, permit these women to be written into history in their words, words that evoke pain as well as celebration, humor, and somber reflection. These are women attorneys who, in courtrooms, classrooms, government agencies, and NGOs have rattled the world with insistent and successful demands to reshape their profession and their society. They are women who brought nothing short of a revolution to the profession of law.

For more than century before World War II, traders, merchants, financiers, and laborers steadily moved between places on the Indian Ocean, trading goods, supplying credit, and seeking work. This all changed with the war and as India, Burma, Ceylon, and Malaya wrested independence from the British empire. Set against the tumult of the postwar period,Boats in a Storm centers on the legal struggles of migrants to retain their traditional rhythms and patterns of life, illustrating how they experienced citizenship and decolonization. Even as nascent citizenship regimes and divergent political trajectories of decolonization papered over migrations between South and Southeast Asia, migrants continued to recount cross-border histories in encounters with the law. These accounts, often obscured by national and international political developments, unsettle the notion that static national identities and loyalties had emerged, fully formed and unblemished by migrant pasts, in the aftermath of empires. Drawing on archival materials from India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, London, and Singapore, Kalyani Ramnath narrates how former migrants battled legal requirements to revive prewar circulations of credit, capital, and labor, in a postwar context of rising ethno-nationalisms that accused migrants of stealing jobs and hoarding land. Ultimately, Ramnath shows how decolonization was marked not only by shipwrecked empires and nation-states assembled and ordered from the debris of imperial collapse, but also by these forgotten stories of wartime displacements, their unintended consequences, and long afterlives.

This new edition upon the 50th anniversary of In re Gault includes expanded coverage of the Roberts Court’s juvenile justice decisions including Miller v. Alabama; explains how disregard for children’s constitutional rights led to the “Kids for Cash” scandal in Pennsylvania; new legal developments in the Gault case; and, updates the bibliography and chronology. When fifteen-year-old Gerald Gault of Globe, Arizona, allegedly made an obscene phone call to a neighbor, he was arrested by the local police, tried in a proceeding that did not require his accuser’s testimony, and sentenced to six years in a juvenile “boot camp”—for an offense that would have cost an adult only two months. Even in a nation fed up with juvenile delinquency, that sentence seemed excessive and inspired a spirited defense on Gault’s behalf. Led by Norman Dorsen, the ACLU ultimately took Gault’s case to the Supreme Court and in 1967 won a landmark decision authored by Justice Abe Fortas. Widely celebrated as the most important children’s rights case of the twentieth century, In re Gault affirmed that children have some of the same rights as adults and formally incorporated the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process protections into the administration of the nation’s juvenile courts.

Case studies illuminate the lives of activists, advocates and aggressors, helping to bring the history to life, and focusing on Black voices who played a significant role in abolishing slavery and were prominent in political struggles, but have been written out of the narrative. In conjunction with both the National Justice Museum and National Archives, the author is going to be using digital storytelling to explore, interpret, and narrate insights relating to the book (video-narratives, digital media, recorded voice/audio, still and moving images/video clips, music etc). The proposed book offers something that currently does not exist on the academic book market and as such could be a classic text across, and connecting, criminology, history and sociology. It adds to a more complete picture of British social history. It promises to fill invisible stories and contexts around black lives and their representation in histories of crime and punishment connected to Britain. In doing so the proposal is answering a call made by serious scholars of black British history and criminology like Coretta Phillips, Paul Gilroy, Biko Agozino and David Olusoga. This book is unique in that it fits in multiple subject areas. It fills a space in criminology and also fits the fields of historical and political sociology. It will also have relevance for the field of Caribbean Studies, Law, Critical Race Studies and Black Studies. The subject matter of this book links to any nation and region connected and touched by British Colonialism and Slavery, including North America (USA and Canada), the Anglo Caribbean, Africa and other regions where there are ex British colonies. The book offers a reckoning with the problematic history of the disciplines of Criminology and History and ties into a feeling of the times for this revisiting the past to better reflect issues of race and racism. The gathering urgency around all questions of race, racism and criminal justice will help to propel the book's appeal beyond criminology and conventional academic audiences. It can find an audience/readership in museums, among museum visitors, museum studies and archivists, social movement activists, campaigners and criminal justice reform organisations. This book could become an important resource across the HE sector, but particularly within criminology and history, and in efforts to de-colonise the curriculum. The growth of interest in, and influence of, African scholars will extend the reach and appeal of the book.