The twenty-first century has been significantly shaped by the growing importance of religion in international politics resulting in rising polarization among nation states. This new dynamic has presented new challenges to international human rights principles. This book deals with some of these new challenges, particularly the growing demand by Muslim states for protection of Islamic religion from blasphemy and defamation. Member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), through resolutions at the United Nations, made efforts to introduce laws that globally protect Islamic religion from blasphemy and defamation. The bid by OIC member states faced opposition from Western countries. The conflicting claims of the two sides are discussed in this book. The book clearly shows the impact of blasphemy and defamation of religion laws on certain aspects of fundamental human rights principles.

As divorce rates in the United States reach alarming levels, the institution of marriage receives more and more criticism as an unrealistic endeavor. However, the contributors to this volume view marriage as a vital social institution, not merely one kind of intimate relationship. They argue for stronger support through legal and policy reform in order to strengthen for the benefit of individuals, communities, and the nation. The contributors address hot-button issues such as same-sex marriage, effects of divorce on children, and the role of fathers in addition to issues such as the permanence of marriage, covenant marriage, and the role of religion in marriage. This work brings together the work of respected legal scholars and social scientists, who articulate why we should care about strengthening the institution of marriage, what we can do, and what challenges we face. Despite dramatic social change, marriage remains a critical social institution that promotes individual, family and community well being. The contributors to this book believe that marriage deserves our best efforts to revitalize it instead of a conscious agenda of benign neglect. Here, assembled in one place, is a clear "pro-marriage" research and policy agenda aimed at revitalizing this insitution based on principles of the best interests of children, husbands and wives, and society at large. Contributors from both the social sciences and legal studies illuminate critical issues from a variety of important perspectives, providing a comprehensive and respectful treatment of a timely and often divisive subject.

Based on interviews with key EPA decision makers and an analysis of the public record, this informative case study demonstrates how the contemporary movement for regulatory reform has actually affected the internal organizational politics of a highly visible administrative agency. The volume offers an in-depth look at how a specific agency effort at regulatory reform can be drastically influenced by the machinations of bureaucratic politics. Evidence is offered to support Cook's claim, in contrast to conventional views, that senior political and career leadership has considerable influence over the policy direction of an administrative agency.

This edited collection provides a cross-sectional review of environmental legislation and administration in the United States, with comparative chapters relating to Canada and New Zealand. The experts look at a variety of environmental issues that create policy problems, and while the book offers no blueprint or prognosis of environmental policy in the twenty-first century, it does offer insights into trends that will influence the future shape of that policy.

The book is prefaced by an overview of the environment as a problem for policy by Lynton K. Caldwell, who has been credited with inventing the term environmental policy. Experts examine the role of risk analysis in policy making; the transnational issues associated with NAFTA and GATT are discussed; and the efforts of the Environmental Protection Agency to integrate policy and administration are described. The perspective of the authors is transnational, with several chapters focusing primarily on U.S. policy.

This ground-breaking book critically interrogates how literary characters are regulated under copyright, moral rights, and trademark law. Using interesting examples, Literary Characters in Intellectual Property Law offers an in-depth exploration of both the law and the diverse and conflicting interests that are impacted by literary character appropriation, incorporating the perspectives of appropriators, authors, consumers and owners. The author challenges and corrects fundamental assumptions and misconceptions about intellectual property rights claims to literary characters, questioning some important foundations that underscore commercial, cultural, legal and social engagement with literary characters. With critical analysis of issues such as copyright, the moral right of integrity, registered and unregistered trademarks, and exceptions to infringement, as well as references to literary theory, the book also has interdisciplinary appeal across the social sciences. Providing an excellent addition to the literature regarding cultural studies and the law, this book will be of practical use for academics, students, lawmakers, legal practitioners, and professionals with an interest in literary character appropriation. It will also be a thought-provoking resource for students both in intellectual property law, and any of the social sciences engaging with literature and the arts.

This comprehensive book offers a thoughtful survey of theories, issues and cases in order to reassess the present vision of contract law. Comparative refers both to the specific kind of methodologies implied and to the polyphonic perspectives collected on the main topics, with the aim of superseding the conventional forms of representation. In this perspective, the work engages a critical search for the fault lines, which crosses traditions of thought and globalized landscapes. Notwithstanding contract's enduring presence and the technicalities devoted to managing clauses and interpretation, the inquiry on the proper nature of contract and its status and collocation within private legal taxonomies continues to be a controversial exercise. Moving from a vast array of dissimilar inclinations, which have historically produced heterogeneous maps of law, this book is built around the genealogies of contractual theoretical thinking; the contentious relationship between private governance and normative regulations; the competing styles used to stage contract law; the concurring opinions expressed within the domain of other disciplines, such as literature and political theory; the tensions between global context and local frames; and the movable thresholds between canonical expressions and heterodox constructions. For its careful analysis and the wide range of references employed, Comparative Contract Law will be a tremendous resource for academics, legal scholars and interdisciplinary experts as well as judges and law practitioners. Contributors include: G. Bellantuono, B.H. Bix, D. Carpi, C.L. Cordasco, C. Costantini, S. Fiorato, J. Gordley, M. Granieri, A. Hutchison, M.R. Marella, G. Marini, P.G. Monateri, F. Monceri, P. Moreno Cruz, H. Muir Watt, F. Parisi, P. Pardolesi, G. Samuel

Protection of intellectual property rights (IPRs) has become a global issue. The Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) Agreement outlines the minimum standards for IPR protection for WTO members and offers a global regime for IPR protection. However, the benefits of TRIPS are more questionable in poorer countries where national infrastructure for research and development (R&D) and social protection are inadequate, whereas the cost of innovation is high. Today, after more than a decade of intense debate over global IPR protection, the problems remain acute, although there is also evidence of progress and cooperation. This book examines various views of the role of IPRs as incentives for innovation against the backdrop of development and the transfer of technology between globalised, knowledge-based, high technology economies. The book retraces the origins, content and interpretations of the TRIPS Agreement, including its interpretations by WTO dispute settlement organs. It also analyses sources of controversy over IPRs, examining pharmaceutical industry strategies of emerging countries with different IPR policies. The continuing international debate over IPRs is examined in depth, as are TRIPS rules and the controversy about implementing the 'flexibilities' of the Agreement in the light of national policy objectives. The author concludes that for governments in developing countries, as well as for their business and scientific communities, a great deal depends on domestic policy objectives and their implementation. IPR protection should be supporting domestic policies for innovation and investment. This, in turn requires a re-casting of the debate about TRIPS, to place cooperation in global and efficient R&D at the heart of concerns over IPR protection.

This book comprises chapters by leading international authors analysing the interface between intellectual property and foreign direct investment, development, and free trade. The authors search for a balance between the conflicting interests that inherently coexist in intellectual property law. The chapters dig deep into the subjects and notions that have become central in international intellectual property legal developments: i) flexibility, public interest and policy-space for implementation; ii) interfaces between the intellectual property regime and other legal regimes; and iii) the development of international intellectual property law and its influence on national legal orders, which includes the implementation of intellectual property undertakings.

A survey of the evolution of property rights in the United States-from constitutional protections and due process to private property rights and government-takings doctrines. Legal opinions and public attitudes toward property rights have fluctuated over the years, from periods when almost any infringement of these rights was impermissible, to times in which the government was granted much wider latitude. This book examines the history of individual property ownership in the U.S. from the late colonial era to the present, explaining how property rights were established, defended, and sometimes later reinterpreted. Of special interest are rights that have developed over time, such as due process, just compensation for government "takings" of private property, and the rights landowners may assert against other persons. Of particular interest to today's readers are government regulation of private property for environmental purposes, challenges to zoning regulations, and intellectual property rights in cyberspace. Alphabetical list of key people, cases, events, judicial decisions, statutes, and terms that are central to an understanding of property rights in the United States Reprints of key materials including constitutional provisions, excerpts from court rulings, and statutes

The three-step test--by which limitations on exclusive copyrights are confined to certain special cases' which do not conflict with a 'normal exploitation of the work' and do not 'unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the author'--is among the most enduring of standards affecting limitations on intellectual property rights. Its field of application is the delicate balance between exclusive rights and sufficient breathing space for the free flow of ideas and information. However, the emerging information society has thrown numerous unforeseen obstacles in the once-clear path of its implementation. Can the traditional balance between grants and reservations of copyright law be recalibrated along the lines of the three-step test in order to meet current and future needs? Controversies over this crucial question--in Europe, the U.S., Australia, and elsewhere, as well as in two significant WTO panels in 2002--have brought the three-step test into focus, the essential principle governing copyright limitations in the information society. Investigating the development, structure, and function of the three-step test in international copyright law with thoroughness and precision, Copyright, Limitations and the Three-Step Test offers a close and insightful analysis of its continuing utility for the twenty-first century. The book includes: viable restatements of the rationales of copyright protection for the emerging IP environment; new insights into the relationship between copyright protection and copyright limitations; in-depth explanation of the structure and functioning of the three-step test; detailed interpretations of each criterion of the test; discussion of the two WTO panelreports dealing with the test; a proposal for the further improvement of the copyright system and the international rules governing copyright law; detailed information about international conference material concerning the test; and discussion of potential future trends in copyright law. The author provides many examples that demonstrate the test's impact on different types of limitations, such as private use privileges and the U.S. fair use doctrine. He explains the test's role in the European Copyright Directive. The detailed examination and explanation of the three-step test will be of extraordinary value to policymakers, judges, and lawyers in the field of intellectual property law seeking to react adequately to the challenges of the digital environment.

Liability law is expanding in many areas and many countries. This development is potentially worrisome. It may affect the availability of useful goods and services and has a negative impact on insurability. This calls for research into techniques to keep liability (law) within reasonable and sustainable limits. This book sheds light on the techniques used in the respective countries, highlighted on the basis of eight cases.

The book examines the protection of property rights in chattels through the law of torts, focusing on the four actions of conversion, detinue, trespass and negligence. Traditionally these actions have been governed by arcane divisions which have led to unnecessary complexity and arbitrariness. The principal argument made in the book is that significant developments in the modern law point towards abolition of these arcane divisions and permit the chattel torts to be understood by reference to a coherent and justifiable structure. It is argued that the only division which should be drawn in the modern chattel torts is between intentional interferences with chattels, where liability is strict, and unintentional interferences with chattels, where liability is fault based. In order to demonstrate this structure it is first argued that the actions of conversion, detinue and trespass amount, in substance, to a single cause of action which imposes strict liability for the intentional interference with another's chattel. It is then argued that the tort of negligence recognises a fault-based cause of action for the unintentional interference with another's chattel. It is further argued that this basic structure, unlike the arcane divisions which have traditionally governed this area of law, can be justified.

This work consists of an English translation, alongside the Dutch text, of the new law of property, rights and interests and the law of obligations (Book 3), the law of real rights (Book 5), the general part of the law of obligations (Book 6) and the law of special contracts (Book 7) of the Netherlands Antilles Civil Code, which entered into force in the Netherlands Antilles on 1 January 2001 and in Aruba on 1 January 2002. It also contains the transitional law enacted on introduction of this new legislation. For the non-Dutch speaking residents of the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba, practitioners advising on Netherlands Antilles law and persons or companies interested in the regulation of civil law this work will be essential. The authors, who are experienced legal translators, are authors of "Netherlands Business Legisation which contains a translation of the corresponding Dutch law and other statutory regulations.

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), enacted in 1970, requires federal agencies to analyze the environmental effects of all proposed major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment. Because the law is so broadly written and has wide application, it is impossible to understand how to comply with NEPA merely by reading the statute. In addition to the statute, NEPA'S implementing regulations written by the Council on Environmental Quality must be consulted as well as the relevant judicial decisions and regulations of individual federal agencies. This book draws together these various sources of NEPA law and presents the law in a clear and readable format designed to be both a practical reference and guide to compliance with the NEPA process and a comprehensive legal analysis of every aspect of NEPA law.

Among the topics addressed by the author are the criteria that make a project subject to NEPA and the procedures mandated by NEPA and its regulations. Issues that frequently arise in NEPA legislation such as standing, ripeness, mootness, and exhaustion of administrative remedies receive extended treatment as do the scope of remedies available under NEPA. The author then provides a complete review and analysis of three state statutes with similar purposes to NEPA and compares them with NEPA. She also includes detailed instructions on the preparation of environmental assessments, environmental impact statements, and supplemental environmental impact statements. The volume concludes by examining major themes in NEPA law. An indispensable handbook for attorneys who deal with environmental transactions and litigation, and for people who prepare NEPA documentation, this book will also be an invaluable reference for members of citizens' groups interested in participating meaningfully in the NEPA process.

A brief yet comprehensive and clearly written compendium of the most important federal energy, environmental, and natural resource statutes through 1982. Freedman's special talent is the ability to relate Congressional intent to the policy context within each act was written. . . . This] is a sweeping panoply of statute summaries replete with citations, and is thus highly suitable as a reference work. "Choice"

This book discusses 69 major federal environmental laws that have a direct impact on companies operating in the United States. Coverage includes every major statute from the Refuse Act of 1899 through recent laws governing nuclear waste policy and solid waste disposal. The statutes discussed included those designed to provide compensation based upon proof of liability and those that establish statutory prohibitions and penalties. For each, the author provides an incisive analysis of the statute itself and of supporting court decisions to show how these statutes have been interpreted in practice.

The papers in this collection are drawn from a symposium held in Vienna in December 2010. Organised by the Institute for European Tort Law and the Chicago-Kent Law Review, in collaboration with the European Centre of Tort and Insurance Law, the conference drew together legal experts from 14 national or regional systems across six continents. Medical malpractice and compensation for medical injuries are issues which regularly create tension and innovation in national legal systems but the analysis of these areas is often limited to national audiences. This study examines the issues in a uniquely global context, demonstrating the breadth of approaches currently taken around the world and revealing key areas of tension and the likely direction of future developments. Wherever possible, the analysis is supported by reference to empirical data. The 14 legal systems covered in the collection are Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, Scandinavia, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States. A general comparative introduction completes the collection.

The effort to win federal copyright protection for dance choreography in the United States was a simultaneously racialized and gendered contest. Copyright and choreography, particularly as tied with whiteness, have a refractory history. This book examines the evolution of choreographic works from being federally non-copyrightable, unless they partook of dramatic or narrative structures, to becoming a category of works potentially copyrightable under the 1976 Copyright Act. Crucial to this evolution is the development of whiteness as status property, both as an aesthetic and cultural force and a legally accepted and protected form of property. The choreographic inheritances of Loie Fuller, George Balanchine, and Martha Graham are particularly important to map because these constitute crucial sites upon which negotiations on how to package bodies of both choreographers and dancers - as racialized, sexualized, nationalized, and classed - are staged, reflective of larger social, political, and cultural tensions.

Examining a series of court decisions made during the 1980s regarding the legal claims of several Native American tribes who attempted to protect ancestrally revered lands from development schemes by the federal government, this book looks at important questions raised about the religious status of land. The tribes used the First Amendment right of free exercise of religion as the basis of their claim, since governmental action threatened to alter the land which served as the primordial sacred reality without which their derivative religious practices would be meaningless. Brown argues that a constricted notion of religion on the part of the courts, combined with a pervasive cultural predisposition towards land as private property, marred the Constitutional analysis of the courts to deprive the Native American plaintiffs of religious liberty.

Brown looks at four cases, which raised the issue at the federal district and appellate court levels, centered on lands in Tennessee, Utah, South Dakota, and Arizona; then it considers a fifth case regarding land in northwestern California, which ultimately went to the U.S. Supreme Court. In all cases, the author identifies serious deficiencies in the judicial evaluations. The lower courts applied a conception of religion as a set of beliefs and practices that are discrete and essentially separate from land, thus distorting and devaluing the fundamental basis of the tribal claims. It was this reductive fixation of land as property, implicit in the rulings of the first four cases, that became explicitly sanctioned and codified in the Supreme Court's decision in "Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association" of 1988. In reaching such a position, the Supreme Court injudiciously engaged in a policy determination to protect government land holdings, and did so through a shocking repudiation of its own long established jurisprudential procedure in cases concerning the free exercise of religion.

Here is one of the first books specifically geared for legal practitioners involved in liability arising out of participation in professional and amateur athletics. In a lively and highly readable manner, Yasser applies tort law principles to a wide variety of sports cases--from such publicized cases as Dale Hackbart v. Boobie Clark, Rudy Tomjanovich v. The Los Angeles Lakers, and Bill Walton v. Dr. Cook to the more obscure such as Virgil v. Time Inc. and Spahn v. Julian Messner Inc. In each he expertly underscores relevant, useful information that can be used in daily practice. The author, a torts professor and sports fan, examines in a sports setting such torts as negligence, products liability, and intentional interference with contractual relations. In each chapter, Professor Yasser prints edited versions of the landmark sports cases, takes an in-depth look at one major legal issue, and provides a broad summary of the law and a bibliography. "Harvard Law RevieW"

Here is one of the first books specifically geared for legal practitioners involved in liability arising out of participation in professional and amateur athletics. In a principles to a wide variety of sports cases and expertly underscores relevant information that can be used in daily practice. In each chapter, he systematically covers a particular situtation, giving a complete perspective of every aspect. Introductory comments outline the germane substantive law and set the stage for the case and materials section. Landmark cases are reviewed and Yasser takes an indepth look at an important case or issue. To round out the chapter, he raises points that are pertinent to the subject matter and provides a bibliography of outstanding legal literature.

This book gathers international and national reports from across the globe on key questions in the field of antitrust and intellectual property.The first part discusses the allocation of liability for infringement of antitrust laws between corporations and individuals. The book explores the criminal or administrative sanctions available against corporations, companies or group of companies, and individuals, such as employees or directors. A detailed international report explores the major trends and challenges in this field and provides an excellent comparative study of this complex and challenging subject. The second part examines whether intellectual property rights are sufficiently protected to ensure a fair return on investments made by manufacturers and distributors. This question comes at a time where distribution is facing deep and radical changes with the Internet. To what extent this is an opportunity or a threat to the sustainability of distribution systems of differentiated and IP protected goods is the question. This book brings together the current legal responses across a number of European countries and elsewhere in the world, all summarised and elaborated in an international report. The book also includes the resolutions passed by the General Assembly of the International League of Competition Law (LIDC) following a debate on each of these topics, which include proposed solutions and recommendations. The LIDC is a long-standing international association that focuses on the interface between competition law and intellectual property law, including unfair competition issues.

Although there is intellectual property protection in China, many companies, wary of China's much-publicized reputation for counterfeiting and piracy, fail to enter the largest developing market in the world because of an excess of caution. By detailing protection procedures that work, this practical handbook aims to open the door to a secure presence in the Chinese marketplace. "Chinese Intellectual Property Law and Practice" covers every step a company's counsel or patent agent needs to take, from registration of rights to invoking the effective enforcement methods now in place under Chinese law, in order to ensure effective protection of copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade names, trade secrets, and licensing arrangements in China. Written by a panel of active Chinese trade authorities - including practicing lawyers, academic specialists, and even a private investigator - the book shows how to: transfer intellectual property when investing in China; license products and services successfully in China; challenge unfair trade activities successfully via the US International Trade Commission and other non-Chinese authorities; use Chinese media and communications to undermine piracy and foster good will; secure strong judicial enforcement against copyright infringement; combat creative theft of IP rights, especially on the Internet; and evaluate the efficacy of a factory raid. Also included are numerous case studies from specific industries (including software, sporting goods, publishing, and luxury goods), a model contract, a bibliography, and a list of web sites.