Complexity Theory and Law
Complexity Theory and Law

Author: Jamie Murray

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-07-17

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 1351658174

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This collection of essays explores the different ways the insights from complexity theory can be applied to law. Complexity theory – a variant of systems theory – views law as an emergent, complex, self-organising system comprised of an interactive network of actors and systems that operate with no overall guiding hand, giving rise to complex, collective behaviour in law communications and actions. Addressing such issues as the unpredictability of legal systems, the ability of legal systems to adapt to changes in society, the importance of context, and the nature of law, the essays look to the implications of a complexity theory analysis for the study of public policy and administrative law, international law and human rights, regulatory practices in business and finance, and the practice of law and legal ethics. These are areas where law, which craves certainty, encounters unending, irresolvable complexity. This collection shows the many ways complexity theory thinking can reshape and clarify our understanding of the various problems relating to the theory and practice of law.

Handbook on Complexity and Public Policy
Handbook on Complexity and Public Policy

Author: Robert Geyer

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2015-05-29

Total Pages: 497

ISBN-13: 1782549528

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'Over recent years Complexity Science has revealed to us new limits to our possible knowledge and control in social, cultural and economic systems. Instead of supposing that past statistics and patterns will give us predictable outcomes for possible actions, we now know the world is, and will always be, creative and surprising. Continuous structural evolution within such systems may change the mechanisms, descriptors, problems and opportunities, often negating policy aims. We therefore need to redevelop our thinking about interventions, policies and policy making, moving perhaps to a humbler, more 'learning' approach. In this Handbook, leading thinkers in multiple domains set out these new ideas and allow us to understand how these new ideas are changing policymaking and policies in this new era.' - Peter M Allen, Cranfield University, UK

Evidential Legal Reasoning
Evidential Legal Reasoning

Author: Jordi Ferrer Beltrán

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-05-19

Total Pages: 459

ISBN-13: 1316516997

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A global overview of evidentiary reasoning with contributions from leading authorities from different legal traditions and four continents.

Complex Copyright
Complex Copyright

Author: Deborah Tussey

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-05-23

Total Pages: 156

ISBN-13: 131716282X

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This book draws on a wide selection of interdisciplinary literature discussing complex adaptive systems - including scholarship from economics, political science, evolutionary biology, cognitive science, and religion - to apply general complexity tenets to the institutions, conceptual framework, and theoretical justifications of the copyright system, both in the United States and internationally. The author argues that copyrighted works are the products of complex creative systems and, consequently, designers of copyright regimes for the global 'information ecosystem' should look to complexity theory for guidance. Urging legal scholars to undertake empirical studies of real-world copyright systems, Tussey reveals how the selection of workable configurations for the copyright regime is larger than that encompassed by the traditional, entirely theoretical, debate between private property rights and the commons. Finally, this unique study articulates how copyright law must tolerate certain chaotic elements that may be essential to the sustainability of complex systems.

Transnational Terrorist Groups and International Criminal Law
Transnational Terrorist Groups and International Criminal Law

Author: Anna Marie Brennan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-07-27

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1351965689

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Attacks by network-based transnational terrorist groups cause on average 25,000 deaths every year worldwide, with the law enforcement agencies of some states facing many challenges in bringing those responsible to justice. Despite various attempts to codify the law on transnational terrorism since the 1930s, a crime of transnational terrorism under international law remains contested, reflecting concerns regarding the relative importance of prosecuting members of transnational terrorist groups before the International Criminal Court. This book critically examines the limits of international criminal law in bringing members of transnational terrorist groups to justice in the context of changing methods of warfare, drawing from human rights, sociology, and best practices in international criminal justice. Drawing on organisational network theory, Anna Marie Brennan explores the nature of international crimes and assesses the potential for the International Criminal Court to prosecute and investigate alleged crimes perpetrated by members of transnational terrorist groups, paying particular attention to their modus operandi and organisational structure. This book argues that because of the network-based organisational structure of some transnational terrorist groups, achieving justice for victims will prove challenging, in the context of the relationship between the commanders and the subordinate members of the group requiring a re-evaluation of accountability mechanisms at the international level. In advancing an innovative perspective on the accountability of members of transnational terrorist groups, and in offering solutions to current challenges, the book will be of great interest and use to academic, practitioners, and students engaged in the study of terrorism, the ICC, or international humanitarian law.

Perspectives on Environmental Law Scholarship
Perspectives on Environmental Law Scholarship

Author: Ole W. Pedersen

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-11-08

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 1108475248

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Presents the first comprehensive reflection on the nature of environmental law scholarship from the perspectives of leading scholars in the field.

Jurisprudence
Jurisprudence

Author: Suri Ratnapala

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-09-30

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 1107292697

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Jurisprudence offers a comprehensive overview of legal theory and philosophy. Written in plain English, it examines and demystifies the discipline's major ideas, promoting a deeper understanding of the social, moral and economic dimensions of the law. It critically assesses the major schools of jurisprudential thought throughout history and to the present, from Plato and Aristotle to Enlightenment thinkers, postmodernists and economic analysts. The book challenges students to reconsider their moral intuitions in light of established theories. This edition examines recent debates and literature in legal philosophy. It features new material on scientific advances in cognition and human behaviour in relation to the law. The book expands significantly on its discussion of natural law theory, evolutionary jurisprudence and theories of justice. Special attention is paid to the revival of theological natural law, challenges to legal positivism, assessments of Scandinavian realism and critiques of law and economics from the Austrian economic perspective.

Borrowed Knowledge
Borrowed Knowledge

Author: Stephen H. Kellert

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2009-05-15

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 0226429806

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What happens to scientific knowledge when researchers outside the natural sciences bring elements of the latest trend across disciplinary boundaries for their own purposes? Researchers in fields from anthropology to family therapy and traffic planning employ the concepts, methods, and results of chaos theory to harness the disciplinary prestige of the natural sciences, to motivate methodological change or conceptual reorganization within their home discipline, and to justify public policies and aesthetic judgments. Using the recent explosion in the use (and abuse) of chaos theory, Borrowed Knowledge and the Challenge of Learning across Disciplines examines the relationship between science and other disciplines as well as the place of scientific knowledge within our broader culture. Stephen H. Kellert’s detailed investigation of the myriad uses of chaos theory reveals serious problems that can arise in the interchange between science and other knowledge-making pursuits, as well as opportunities for constructive interchange. By engaging with recent debates about interdisciplinary research, Kellert contributes a theoretical vocabulary and a set of critical frameworks for the rigorous examination of borrowing.

Making Climate Lawyers
Making Climate Lawyers

Author: Kimberly K. Smith

Publisher: University Press of Kansas

Published: 2024-04-11

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0700636390

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Why did it take so long for American law schools to start teaching about climate change? Although most environmental law professors were aware of climate change by 1990, it took nearly fifteen years for them to incorporate the topic into their curriculum. In her innovative new work, Kimberly K. Smith explores how American environmental law professors have addressed climate change, identifying the barriers they faced, how they overcame them, and how they created “climate law” as a domain of legal specialization. Making Climate Lawyers explores the history of why American law schools were resistant to teaching about climate change and how that changed over the course of a forty-year period, resulting in law schools across the country incorporating climate change into their curricula, with many even establishing centers on the environment. Smith challenges dominant explanations of why the United States was slow to develop climate policy: it wasn’t just political opposition or short-sightedness. Creating climate legal professionals required changing the fundamentals of legal education. Based on dozens of interviews with faculty and students, Making Climate Lawyers fills a gap in the literature on the intellectual history of climate change, most of which focuses on the history of climate science. Smith focuses instead on how the climate problem fits (or doesn’t fit) into the structure of American law. She uses this story as a lens through which to understand both the transformation of legal education since the 1980s and the nature of climate change as a policy problem.