"This volume is a collection of the papers presented at the first ('kick-off') meeting in ... Dornburg, near Jena (Germany), 26-28 May 2005."--Foreword.
This Handbook explores the main themes and topics of the emerging field of Global Administrative Law with contributions by leading scholars and experts from universities and organizations around the world. The variety of the subjects addressed and the internationality of the Handbook’s perspectives make for a truly global and multi-dimensional view of the field. The book first examines the growth of global administrations, their interactions within global networks, the emergence of a global administrative process, and the development of the rule of law and democratic principles at a global level. It goes on to illustrate the relationship between global law and other legal orders, with particular attention to regional systems and national orders. The final section, devoted to the emergence of a global legal culture, brings the book full circle by identifying the growth of a global epistemic community. The Research Handbook on Global Administrative Law provides a contemporary overview of the nascent field in detailed yet accessible terms, making it a valuable book for university courses. Academics and scholars with an interest in international law, administrative law, public law, and comparative law will find value in this book, as well as legal professionals involved with international and supranational organizations and national civil servants dealing with supranational organizations.
Ronald Dworkin once imagined law as an empire and judges as its princes. But over time, the arc of law has bent steadily toward deference to the administrative state. Adrian Vermeule argues that law has freely abandoned its imperial pretensions, and has done so for internal legal reasons. In area after area, judges and lawyers, working out the logical implications of legal principles, have come to believe that administrators should be granted broad leeway to set policy, determine facts, interpret ambiguous statutes, and even define the boundaries of their own jurisdiction. Agencies have greater democratic legitimacy and technical competence to confront many issues than lawyers and judges do. And as the questions confronting the state involving climate change, terrorism, and biotechnology (to name a few) have become ever more complex, legal logic increasingly indicates that abnegation is the wisest course of action. As Law’s Abnegation makes clear, the state did not shove law out of the way. The judiciary voluntarily relegated itself to the margins of power. The last and greatest triumph of legalism was to depose itself.
Sabino Cassese presents an incisive introduction to the essential principles of global law, exploring the central theories of globalization through an analysis of the main developments in this area. The Advanced Introduction concludes that despite the ongoing dialectic between national governments and international institutions, globalization and states are progressing in parallel, while civil societies are increasingly involved in the machinery of globalization.
Administrative Law: The Sources and Limits of Government Agency Power explains the sources of administrative agency authority in the United States, how agencies make rules, the rights of clients and citizens in agency hearings, and agency interaction with other branches of government. This concise text examines the everyday challenges of administrative responsibilities and provides students with a way to understand and manage the complicated mission that is governance. Written by leading scholar Daniel Feldman, the book avoids technical legal language, but at the same time provides solid coverage of legal principles and exemplar studies, which allows students to gain a clear understanding of a complicated and critical aspect of governance.
In this book, Bruno Latour pursues his ethnographic inquiries into the different value systems of modern societies. After science, technology, religion, art, it is now law that is being studied by using the same comparative ethnographic methods. The case study is the daily practice of the French supreme courts, the Conseil d’Etat, specialized in administrative law (the equivalent of the Law Lords in Great Britain). Even though the French legal system is vastly different from the Anglo-American tradition and was created by Napoleon Bonaparte at the same time as the Code-based system, this branch of French law is the result of a home-grown tradition constructed on precedents. Thus, even though highly technical, the cases that form the matter of this book, are not so exotic for an English-speaking audience. What makes this study an important contribution to the social studies of law is that, because of an unprecedented access to the collective discussions of judges, Latour has been able to reconstruct in detail the weaving of legal reasoning: it is clearly not the social that explains the law, but the legal ties that alter what it is to be associated together. It is thus a major contribution to Latour’s social theory since it is now possible to compare the ways legal ties build up associations with the other types of connection that he has studied in other fields of activity. His project of an alternative interpretation of the very notion of society has never been made clearer than in this work. To reuse the title of his first book, this book is in effect the 'Laboratory Life of Law'.
Offering students and lawyers an introduction to the French law and legal system, this text gives an explanation of the French institutions, concepts, and techniques, providing a clear sense of the questions which French lawyers see as important.