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Law: A Very Short Introduction Raymond Wacks Law underlies our society -it protects our rights, imposes duties on each of us, and establishes a framework for the conduct of almost every social, political, and economic activity. The punishment of crime, compensation of the injured, and the enforcement of contracts are merely some of the tasks of a modern legal system. It also strives to ensure justice, promote freedom, and protect our security. The result is a system that, while it touches all of our daily lives, is properly understood by only a few, with its impenetrable jargon, obsolete procedures, and interminable stream of Byzantine statutes and judgments of the courts. This clear, jargon-free Very Short Introduction cuts introduces the essentials of law and legal systems in a lively, accessible, and stimulating manner. Explaining the main concepts, terms, and processes of the legal system, it focuses on the Western tradition, but also examines other legal systems, such as customary law and Islamic law. And it looks to the future too, as globalization and rapid advances in technology place increasing strain on our current legal system. |
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Comparative Criminal Justice Systems: A Topical Approach (4th Edition) Philip L. Reichel For courses in Comparative Criminal Justice Systems, Comparative Criminology, and Comparative Government. Unique in its topical approach, this best-selling text examines systems of law, police, courts, and corrections by using more than 30 different countries to show the various ways policing, adjudication, and corrections systems can be organized and operated. The book's topical approach allows instructors to cover the material in a familiar format (law, police, courts and corrections) and helps students understand the variety of criminal justice systems found in the world today. |
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The Harm in Hate Speech (Oliver Wendell Holmes Lectures) Jeremy Waldron For constitutionalists, regulation of hate speech violates the First Amendment and damages a free society. Waldron rejects this view, and makes the case that hate speech should be regulated as part of a commitment to human dignity and to inclusion and respect for members of vulnerable minorities. |
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The Civil Law Tradition, 3rd Edition: An Introduction to the Legal Systems of Europe and Latin America John Merryman, Rogelio Perez-Perdomo Designed for the general reader and students of law, this is a concise history and analysis of the civil law tradition, which is dominant in most of Europe, all of Latin America, and many parts of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. This new edition deals with recent significant events—such as the fall of the Soviet empire and the resulting precipitous decline of the socialist legal tradition—and their significance for the civil law tradition. The book also incorporates the findings of recent important literature on the legal cultures of civil law countries.
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The Anatomy of Corporate Law: A Comparative and Functional Approach Reinier Kraakman, John Armour, Paul Davies, Luca Enriques, Henry B. Hansmann, Gï¿1/2rard Hertig, Klaus J. Hopt, Hideki Kanda, Edward B. Rock This is the long-awaited second edition of this highly regarded comparative overview of corporate law. This edition has been comprehensively updated to reflect profound changes in corporate law. It now includes consideration of additional matters such as the highly topical issue of enforcement in corporate law, and explores the continued convergence of corporate law across jurisdictions.
The authors start from the premise that corporate (or company) law across jurisdictions addresses the same three basic agency problems: (1) the opportunism of managers vis-�-vis shareholders; (2) the opportunism of controlling shareholders vis-�-vis minority shareholders; and (3) the opportunism of shareholders as a class vis-�-vis other corporate constituencies, such as corporate creditors and employees. Every jurisdiction must address these problems in a variety of contexts, framed by the corporation's internal dynamics and its interactions with the product, labor, capital, and takeover markets. The authors' central claim, however, is that corporate (or company) forms are fundamentally similar and that, to a surprising degree, jurisdictions pick from among the same handful of legal strategies to address the three basic agency issues.
This book explains in detail how and why the principal European jurisdictions, Japan, and the United States sometimes select identical legal strategies to address a given corporate law problem, and sometimes make divergent choices. After an introductory discussion of agency issues and legal strategies, the book addresses the basic governance structure of the corporation, including the powers of the board of directors and the shareholders meeting. It proceeds to creditor protection measures, related-party transactions, and fundamental corporate actions such as mergers and charter amendments. Finally, it concludes with an examination of friendly acquisitions, hostile
takeovers, and the regulation of the capital markets. |
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Adversarial Legalism: The American Way of Law Robert A. Kagan American methods of policy implementation and dispute resolution are more adversarial and legalistic when compared with the systems of other economically advanced countries. Americans more often rely on legal threats and lawsuits. American laws are generally more complicated and prescriptive, adjudication more costly, and penalties more severe. In a thoughtful and cogently argued book, Robert Kagan examines the origins and consequences of this system of "adversarial legalism." Kagan describes the roots of adversarial legalism and the deep connections it has with American political institutions and values. He investigates its social costs as well as the extent to which lawyers perpetuate it. Ranging widely across many legal fields, including criminal law, environmental regulations, tort law, and social insurance programs, he provides comparisons with the legal and regulatory systems of western Europe, Canada, and Japan that point to possible alternatives to the American methods. Kagan notes that while adversarial legalism has many virtues, its costs and unpredictability often alienate citizens from the law and frustrate the quest for justice. This insightful study deepens our understanding of law and its relationship to politics in America and raises valuable questions about the future of the American legal system. |
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Legal Traditions of the World: Sustainable Diversity in Law Patrick Glenn Legal Traditions of the World is a prize-winning work that offers a major new means of conceptualizing law and legal relations across the world. National laws are placed in the broader context of major legal traditions, those of chthonic (or indigenous) law, talmudic law, civil law, islamic law, common law, hindu law and confucian law. Each tradition is examined in terms of its institutions and substantive law, its founding concepts and methods, its attitude towards the concept of change and its teaching on relations with other traditions and peoples. Legal traditions are explained in terms of multivalent and non-conflictual forms of logic and thought.
This book will be invaluable to law students and lawyers engaged in comparative or transnational work, historians, social scientists, and all those interested in the legal traditions that underpin the world's major societies. |
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The Law-Making Process (Law in Context) Michael Zander This title is a well-known and widely adopted textbook covering a wide range of subjects including legislation, statutory interpretation, precedent and other sources of law, the latter including EU law, the treatment of which has been notably expanded in this edition. It is often used in conjunction with Zander: Cases and Materials on the English Legal System. Together they provide comprehensive coverage of introductory courses on the English legal system, taught at every institution offering an LLB degree, always in the first year. An important guide to the law, this book offers a detailed study that ensures the reader has fully covered the key elements of these courses. |
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Mexican Law Stephen Zamora, Josï¿1/2 Ramï¿1/2n Cossï¿1/2o, Leonel Pereznieto, Josï¿1/2 Roldï¿1/2n-Xopa, David Lopez Mexican Law provides an overview of the Mexican legal system. In addition to setting forth rules and legal doctrines (with reference to the practical application of the law), this volume surveys the key institutions that make and enforce the law in Mexico, and places them in their historical and cultural context. The book makes frequent comparisons to United States legal doctrines and institutions, and provides a foundation for understanding the roles of law and legal institutions in shaping public and private life in Mexico.
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Rule By Law: The Politics of Courts in Authoritarian Regimes Scholars have generally assumed that courts in authoritarian states are pawns of their regimes, upholding the interests of governing elites and frustrating the efforts of their opponents. As a result, nearly all studies in comparative judicial politics have focused on democratic and democratizing countries. This volume brings together leading scholars in comparative judicial politics to consider the causes and consequences of judicial empowerment in authoritarian states. It demonstrates the wide range of governance tasks that courts perform, as well as the way in which courts can serve as critical sites of contention both among the ruling elite and between regimes and their citizens. Drawing on empirical and theoretical insights from every major region of the world, this volume advances our understanding of judicial politics in authoritarian regimes. |