What is a human right? How can we tell whether a proposed human right really is one? How do we establish the content of particular human rights, and how do we resolve conflicts between them? These are pressing questions for philosophers, political theorists, jurisprudents, international lawyers, and activists. James Griffin offers answers in his compelling new investigation of human rights.
The term "natural right," in its modern sense of an entitlement that a person has, first appeared in the late Middle Ages. When during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the theological content of the idea was abandoned in stages, nothing was put in its place. The secularized notion that we were left with at the end of the Enlightenment is still our notion today: a right that we have simply in virtue of being human. During the twentieth century international law has contributed to settling the question which rights are human rights, but its contribution has its limits.
The notion of a human right that we have inherited suffers from no small indeterminateness of sense. The term has been left with so few criteria for determining when it is used correctly that we often have a plainly inadequate grasp on what is at issue. Griffin takes on the task of showing the way towards a determinate concept of human rights, based on their relation to the human status that we all share. He works from certain paradigm cases, such as freedom of expression and freedom of worship, to more disputed cases such as welfare rights - for instance the idea of a human right to health. His goal is a substantive account of human rights - an account with enough content to tell us whether proposed rights really arerights. Griffin emphasizes the practical as well as theoretical urgency of this goal: as the United Nations recognized in 1948 with its Universal Declaration, the idea of human rights has considerable power to improve the lot of humanity around the world.
It is our job now - the job of this book - to influence and develop the unsettled discourse of human rights so as to complete the incomplete idea.

Central to the identity of the American legal profession are its systems of self-regulation. Throughout history, the legal profession has tried to hold tight to its traditional values and structure during times of self-identified crisis. The American Legal Profession in Crisis: Resistance and Responses to Change analyzes the efforts of the legal profession to protect and maintain the status quo even as the world around it changed. James E. Moliterno argues that with striking consistency, the profession has resisted the societal change happening around it, and sought to ban or discourage new models of legal representation created by such change. In response to every crisis, lawyers asked: "How can we stay even more 'the same' than we already are?" The legal profession has been an unwilling, capitulating entity to any transformation wrought by the overwhelming tide of change. Any proactive changes were mostly levied against the newest members of the legal community in order to preserve the status quo, so that when the legal profession did have to change, it did so only because the changes in society, culture, technology, economics, and globalization could not be denied. This book will demonstrate how the profession has held to its anachronistic ways at key crisis points in US history: Watergate, communist infiltration, arrival of waves of immigrants, the litigation explosion, the civility crisis, and the current economic crisis that blends with dramatic changes in technology and communications and globalization. Ultimately, the author urges the profession to look outward and forward to find in society and culture the causes and connections with these periodic crises. Doing so would allow the profession to grow with the society, solve problems with, rather than against, the flow of society, and be more attuned to the very society the profession claims to serve.

For several years legal professions across the world have, to varying degrees, been undergoing dramatic changes as a result of a range of forces such as globalization, diversification and changes in regulation. In many jurisdictions the extent of these transformations have led to a process of professional fragmentation and generated uncertainty at institutional, organisational and individual levels about the nature and future of legal professionalism. As a result legal education is in flux in many of jurisdictions including the United States, the UK and Australia, with further effects in other Common Law and some Civil law countries. The situation in the UK exemplifies the sense of uncertainty and crisis, with a growing number of pathways into law; an increasing surplus of law graduates to graduate entry positions and most recently proposals for reform of legal education and training by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). This collection addresses both current and historical approaches showing that some problems which appear to be modern are endemic, that there are still some important prospects for change and that policy issues may be more important than the interests of lawyers and educators. This makes this volume a source of interest to lawyers, law students, academic and policy makers as well as the discerning public. This book was previously published as a special issue of the International Journal of the Legal Profession.

Judicial Education has greatly expanded in common law countries in the past 25 years. More recently it has become a core component in judicial reform programs in developing countries with gender attentiveness as an element required by donor agencies. In civil law jurisdictions judges schools have long played a role in the formation of the career judiciary with a focus on entry to the judicial profession, in some countries judges get an intensive in-service education at judicial academies. Gender questions, however, tend to be neglected in the curricula. These judicial education activities have generated a significant body of material and experience which it is timely to review and disseminate. Questions such as the following require answers. What is the current state of affairs? How is judicial education implemented in developed and developing countries all around the world? Who are the educators? Who is being educated? How is judicial education on gender regarded by judges? How effective are these programs? The chapters in this book deal with these questions. They provide a multiplicity of perspectives. Six countries are represented, of these four are civil law countries (Germany, Argentina, Japan, Bosnia and Herzegovina) and two are common law countries (Canada; Uganda). This book was previously published as a special issue of International Journal of the Legal Profession.

The topic of "too many lawyers" is both timely and timeless. The future make up and performance of the legal profession is in contest, challenged by new entrants, technology and the demand for transparency; at the same time, lawyers long have participated in contests over professional boundaries. In this book, we take up several fundamental questions about the question of whether there are "too many lawyers". What do we mean by "too many"? Is there a surplus of lawyers? What sort of lawyers are and will be needed? How best can we discern this? These questions and more are addressed here in scholarly articles presented at the Onati International Institute for the Sociology of Law (Spain) by some of the best researchers in the field. The collection, witha chapter by Prof. Richard L. Abel, addresses methodological, normative and policy questions regarding the number of lawyers in particular countries and worldwide, while connecting this phenomenon to political, social, economic, historical, cultural and comparative contexts. This book was previously published as a special issue of the International Journal of the Legal Profession.

Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring Law is at the heart of every society, protecting rights, imposing duties, and establishing a framework for the conduct of almost all social, political, and economic activity. Despite this, the law often seems a highly technical, perplexing mystery, with its antiquated and often impenetrable jargon, obsolete procedures, and endless stream of complex statutes and legislation. In this Very Short Introduction Raymond Wacks introduces the major branches of the law, describing what lawyers do, and how courts operate, and considers the philosophy of law and its pursuit of justice, freedom, and equality. Wacks locates the discipline in our contemporary world, considering the pressures of globalization and digitalisation and the nature of the law in our culture of threatened security and surveillance. In this new edition, Wacks considers a number of social and political events that have had an impact on the law, including the COVID-19 pandemic, surveillance, and the killing of George Floyd and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Lynne's Laws have been honed from personal experience of leading a pioneering small law firm. Lynne Burdon shares stories from her own experience as founder and leader of two successful firms to illustrate the principles of leadership that are essential to create a successful business. She reveals the practical steps to success: creating a great place to work which will attract and retain the best staff and thus deliver outstanding service to clients. Work should be meaningful and fun: these principles will show you how to make this true for yourself and your organisation.

Between 2000 and 2015, women ascended to the top of judiciaries across Africa, most notably as chief justices of supreme courts in common law countries like Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Malawi, Lesotho and Zambia, but also as presidents of constitutional courts in civil law countries such as Benin, Burundi, Gabon, Niger and Senegal. Most of these appointments was a "first" in terms of the gender of the chief justice. At the same time, women are being appointed in record numbers as magistrates, judges and justices across the continent. While women's increasing numbers and roles in African executives and legislatures have been addressed in a burgeoning scholarly literature, very little work has focused on women in judiciaries. This book addresses the important issue of the increasing numbers and varied roles of women judges and justices, as judiciaries evolve across the continent. Scholars of law, gender politics and African politics provide overviews of recent developments in gender and the judiciary in nine African countries that represent north, east, southern and west Africa as well as a range of colonial experiences, postcolonial trajectories and legal systems, including mixes of common, civil, customary, or sharia law. In the process, each chapter seeks to address the following questions: What has been the historical experience of the judicial system in a given country, from before colonialism until the present? What is the current court structure and where are the women judges, justices, magistrates and other women located? What are the selection or appointment processes for joining the bench and in what ways may these help or hinder women to gain access to the courts as judges and justices? Once they become judges, do women on the bench promote the rights of women through their judicial powers? What are the challenges and obstacles facing women judges and justices in Africa? Timely and relevant in this era in which governmental accountability and transparency are essential to the consolidation of democracy in Africa and when women are accessing significant leadership positions across the continent, this book considers the substantive and symbolic representation of women's interests by women judges and the wider implications of their presence for changing institutional norms and advancing the rule of law and human rights.

Parker and Evans's Inside Lawyers' Ethics provides a practical and engaging introduction to ethical decision-making in legal practice in Australia. Underpinned by four theoretical concepts – adversarial advocacy, responsible lawyering, moral activism and ethics of care – this text analyses legal and professional frameworks, highlighting relevant parts of the Australian Solicitors' Conduct Rules. Case studies and discussion questions offer contemporary, practical examples of the application of ethics. The book also addresses the challenge of ethical action and offers techniques to deal with ethical conflicts.This edition has been comprehensively updated and discusses the implications of advances in legal technology, mental ill-health in the profession and the complexities of government legal practice. A new chapter covers lawyers' ethical obligation to address the legal challenges posed by climate change. Written by an expert author team, Parker and Evans's Inside Lawyers' Ethics empowers readers to identify ethical challenges and resolve them through good decision-making practices.

Published in 1821, Outlines of the Philosophy of Right is considered the definitive articulation of the legal, moral, social, and political philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel. However, shortly before its publication, Hegel delivered a series of lectures on the subject matter of the work at the University of Berlin. These lectures are unlike any others Hegel gave on the philosophy of Right in that they do not supplement a published text but rather give a full and independent presentation of his mature political thought. Yet, they are also unlike Hegel’s formal treatise in that they form a smooth and flowing discourse, much like Hegel’s lectures on the philosophy of history, philosophy of art, philosophy of religion, and history of philosophy. Substantively, these lectures contain more extensive discussions of poverty and the proletariat than are found in Hegel’s published text – discussions that carry out the retreat from optimism about the present age intimated in the preface to Outlines but nowhere evident in the text itself. Translated with an introduction and notes by Alan Brudner, Hegel’s 1819/20 lectures on the philosophy of Right present his complete thoughts on law and the state in a manner that is more accessible and engaging than any other Hegelian text on these subjects.

The legal services marketplace has become ever more competitive. Identifying a robust business strategy and sources of competitive advantage are difficult challenges for law firms today. The review of legal services carried out by Sir David Clementi, leading to the Legal Services Bill, paves the way for yet more change, competition and consolidation. As well as reviewing the way that law firms are regulated, the Bill will de-regulate the ownership of law firms, so that they can be made public or owned by multi-disciplinary principals. For the first time, firms now face the prospect of not being wholly owned and managed by lawyers, and of being able to seek capital in the general finance markets in the same way as other businesses. Stephen Mayson has been a consultant to law firms all over the world for more than 20 years, and is one of the most respected commentators on legal practice. In this new book, he presents the first in-depth and systematic treatment of strategy, competitive advantage and valuation for the legal services market. The text provides practical guidance for law firms on how respond to the reforms to be introduced by the Legal Services Bill, and in particular how to build and preserve value in the new environment. It explores in detail a range of factors that firms need to address in order to face both known and new forms of competition, and build a sustainable business. In the first part of the book, the author explores the emerging landscape of legal services. He discusses fair market valuation and the link between strategy, competitive advantage and valuation, before addressing regulation and competition. Here the decline of regulatory barriers (including the Clementi Review and the Legal Services Bill) and the effects of maturing markets are examined, as well as the issues and challenges of consolidation and polarisation of legal service providers, and globalisation. Mayson then examines the nature of competitive advantage, including its foundations and sustainability. In the third section, the principles of valuation, including definitions of value and methods of valuation, are looked at, in addition to an analysis of the drivers of value in law firms and guidance on how to optimise and sustain income. A section on the implications of valuation then focuses on issues such as the possible tensions between individuals and the organisation, collective action and commitment, and the longevity of the firm. In the final section, the author looks at the foundations of strategy, such as: its context; the 'strategic triangle' of services, clients and geography; strategic objectives and risks; the strategic response; and the building of capital for competitive advantage (including a discussion of financial, physical, human, social and organisational capital). The book ends with a discussion of future prospects for the legal services market. Law Firm Strategy: Competitive Advantage and Valuation is an invaluable text for those already managing law firms, those looking to compete with existing law firms in the new environment, and those who are not lawyers but find themselves with an opportunity to own, invest in or manage a legal services business.

This collection explores the stakes, risks and opportunities invoked in opening and exploring law's archive and re-examining law's evidence. It draws together work exploring how evidence is used or mis-used during the legal process, and re-used after the law's work has concluded by engaging with ethical, aesthetic or emotional dimensions of using law's evidence. Within socio-legal discourse, the move towards 'open justice' has emerged concurrently with a much broader cultural sensibility, one that has been called the "archival turn" (Ann Laura Stoler), the "archival impulse" (Hal Foster) and "archive fever" (Jacques Derrida). Whilst these terms do not describe exactly the same phenomena, they collectively acknowledge the process by which we create a fetish of the stored document. The archive facilitates our material confrontation with history, historicity, order, linearity, time and bureaucracy. For lawyers, artists, journalists, publishers, curators and scholars, the document in the archive has the attributes of authenticity, contemporaneity, and the unique tangibility of a real moment captured in material form. These attributes form the basis for the strict interpretive limits imposed by the rules of evidence and procedure. These rules do not contain the other attributes of the archival document, those that make it irresistible as the basis for creative work: beauty, violence, surprise, shame, volume, and the promise that it contains a tantalising secret. This book was previously published as a special issue of Australian Feminist Law Journal.

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.

Ethical issues do not occur in isolation. Instead, real-life situations arise in the workplace alongside other pressing issues such as job security, career advancement, peer pressure, manager evaluations, and company profits. For this reason, students and employees in law need concise and common sense guidance that provides a framework for how to voice one's values in the midst of competing interests. This book does just that. By providing twelve accessible scenarios drawn from real-life examples, this book walks readers through some of the most common ethical issues they will face in the workplace and how to address them in a manner that is realistic and effective. There are two clear reasons to read Giving Voice to Values in the Legal Profession. First, it is practical. The book presents information that is readily useful to students as they move forwards in their personal lives and careers. Second, the book is concise and easy to add to an existing course. It can provide a context for discussing a myriad of issues around ethics in the legal profession.

Despite the growing number ofAsian American and Latino/a law students, many panethnic students still feel as if they do not belong in this elite microcosm, which reflects the racial inequalities in mainstream American society. While in law school, these students-often from immigrant families, and often the first to go to college-have to fight against racialized and gendered stereotypes. In Incidental Racialization, Diana Pan rigorously explores how systemic inequalities are produced and sustained in law schools. Through interviews with more than 100 law students and participant observations at two law schools, Pan examines how racialization happens alongside professional socialization. She investigates how panethnic students negotiate their identities, race, and gender in an institutional context. She also considers how their lived experiences factor into their student organization association choices and career paths. Incidental Racialization sheds light on how race operates in a law school setting for both students of color and in the minds of white students. It also provides broader insights regarding racial inequalities in society in general.

The second edition of this popular handbook has been thoroughly updated by the original team of experts and some new contributors, to provide current best practice guidance on the key legal information issues for every type of service. Each of the chapters is updated to reflect general changes in law libraries and their users in the past seven years. In particular, the handbook covers new information technologies, including social networking and communication. New chapters also focus on the key topics of outsourcing, and the impact of the 2007 Legal Services Act. The second edition of this valuable handbook continues to be an important professional reference tool for managers and staff of all types of legal information services, and will help them with the challenges they face in their work every day.

Becoming a partner in a professional services firm is for many ambitious fee-earners the ultimate goal. But in this challenging industry, with long hours, high pressure and even higher expectations, how do you stand out from the crowd? How do you build the most effective relationships? And how do you find the time to do all of this and still have a fulfilling personal life? Now in its third edition, How to Make Partner and Still Have a Life equips individuals at the start of their career through to partner with the skills needed to reach and succeed at the leadership level. How to Make Partner and Still Have a Life details the expectations and realities of being a partner and outlines how you can continue to achieve once you have obtained the much-coveted role. This edition is updated with guidance on developing the right mindset for success and the importance of mentoring and sponsorship. There is a specific focus on women and BAME professionals and the challenges faced by individuals coming from non-traditional or under-represented backgrounds. Heather Townsend and Jo Larbie provide a guide to help you tackle common obstacles and work smarter - not harder - to reach the top. Start your journey to partnership and still have the time for a life outside of work.

During recent decades legal professions have changed dramatically. Legal work has become more specialized, women have entered legal professions in large numbers, and the number of nonwhite legal practitioners has increased. Equally important as the demographic changes among legal professionals, have been movements in several countries to make legal practice more responsive to competitive markets for services - both nationally and globally. This volume introduces a collection of research articles that explore the important changes among legal practitioners in the US, England, Germany and Canada. The articles are organized around three general themes: changes in the structure and organization of legal professions and legal practices (in the US, England and Germany); legal culture, professional time and job satisfaction (in the US and England); and the changing nature of legal work practices in various fields of law. The volume addresses many of the newest and most exciting themes in the sociology of law, including the global law firm, the dilemma of part-time employment for legal professionals, the sociolegal construction of time, and the unique dynamics of legal practices in different fields of law.

A significant barrier to successful juvenile intervention is misconduct committed against juveniles by the persons employed to help them. Professional Misconduct with Juveniles explores the nature of employee-on-youth misconduct, its extent, its consequences, factors that increase its occurrence, and potential solutions to the problem. Obviously, employee-on-youth misconduct interferes with the effective treatment of delinquent and at-risk youth, but it also harms the agency as a whole and creates a poor working environment for all employees. Professional Misconduct with Juveniles offers a practical, theory-based approach to preventing or stopping such exploitation of vulnerable young men and women so that we can focus on effective approaches to rehabilitation, deterrence, and public safety.

Doping is undoubtedly one of the most controversial issues within sport. Doping scandals wreck the careers of sportsmen and women,they can bankrupt governing bodies, infringe personal liberties, threaten livelihoods, tarnish images, galvanise the European Union, undermine the Olympic Movement and invoke invective from politicians. In recent years, sports law has developed into one of the most exciting and challenging legal disciplines and the importance of the law in doping matters has been heightened by the influx of money into sport and the development of sport as a global economy. Drugs and Doping in Sport brings together work from leading academics, practitioners and administrators, analyses contemporary socio-legal and political themes related to doping in sport. It provides a challenging and often controversial view of doping issues and confronts political and legal orthodoxy, supplying the reader with a unique insight into this fascinating area of academic study.

Legal prose is often a more pedestrian venture than a novel or a poem. However, even the pedestrian can be done well. The views of the professional writers considered in this book identify how lawyers can write legal prose well, and sometimes even beautifully. This book provides key lessons on legal writing that can be gleaned from various leading authors of the past and brought to bear in crafting more polished legal texts. Among the great authors considered are Joseph Conrad, Guy de Maupassant, E.M. Forster, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, D.H. Lawrence, Robert Louis Stevenson and Virginia Woolf. Central themes identified are: Legal writing should never be too difficult to understand; Great writers have much to teach the legal writer; Good writing requires hard work; Professional jargon is generally best avoided; and The truth is always pure, often simple, and generally best expressed in plain English. This book contains invaluable guidance to help all those involved in legal writing to hone their writing skills, while providing an engaging tour through the works of great authors from the past. All after-tax author royalties from this book will be donated to the Ukrainian relief efforts of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent movement.

The law of contract is ripe for feminist analysis. Despite increasing calls for the re-conceptualisation of neo-classical ways of thinking, feminist perspectives on contract tend to be marginalised in mainstream textbooks. This edited collection questions the assumptions made in such works and the ideologies that underpin them, drawing attention to the ways in which the law of contract has facilitated the virtual exclusion of women, the feminine and the private sphere from legal discourse. Contributors to this volume offer a range of ways of thinking about the subject and cover topics such as the feminine offeree, feminist perspectives on contracts in cyberspace, the forgotten world of women and contracts, restitution and feminist economic theory, the gendered power dynamics of undue influence, and the feminisation of dispute resolution.

Genetic Testing and the Criminal Law is a unique international treatment of the dynamic and established criminal investigation technique of DNA testing. Gathering together expert practitioners, judges and researchers from twelve countries, each chapter deals with the specific criminal law of the jurisdiction in its interaction with the expanding use of DNA testing in criminal investigations and trials. The chapters cover the criminal law of the United Kingdom, Japan, Australia, Germany, New Zealand, Spain, South Africa, Canada, Italy, Finland, Argentina and Denmark, providing valuable accounts not only of the use of genetic testing in the criminal law, but also of the development of the law in these jurisdictions. No previous work has included such an extensive comparative study in this important area. Collectively, this book emphasizes the need for the law to respond to scientific developments thoughtfully and with a sensitive, well-reasoned approach to current concerns relating to the reliability of DNA evidence in criminal trials and the privacy and civil liberties issues surrounding the collection of DNA samples from individuals and their storage. This book is an invaluable reference for scholars, practitioners of criminal law and private international law, and students interested in this increasingly significant field of law.