Legal Rights for Rivers

Legal Rights for Rivers

Author: Erin O'Donnell

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-10-17

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 0429889607

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In 2017 four rivers in Aotearoa New Zealand, India, and Colombia were given the status of legal persons, and there was a recent attempt to extend these rights to the Colorado River in the USA. Understanding the implications of creating legal rights for rivers is an urgent challenge for both water resource management and environmental law. Giving rivers legal rights means the law can see rivers as legal persons, thus creating new legal rights which can then be enforced. When rivers are legally people, does that encourage collaboration and partnership between humans and rivers, or establish rivers as another competitor for scarce resources? To assess what it means to give rivers legal rights and legal personality, this book examines the form and function of environmental water managers (EWMs). These organisations have legal personality, and have been active in water resource management for over two decades. EWMs operate by acquiring water rights from irrigators in rivers where there is insufficient water to maintain ecological health. EWMs can compete with farmers for access to water, but they can also strengthen collaboration between traditionally divergent users of the aquatic environment, such as environmentalists, recreational fishers, hunters, farmers, and hydropower. This book explores how EWMs use the opportunities created by giving nature legal rights, such as the ability to participate in markets, enter contracts, hold property, and enforce those rights in court. However, examination of the EWMs unearths a crucial and unexpected paradox: giving legal rights to nature may increase its legal power, but in doing so it can weaken community support for protecting the environment in the first place. The book develops a new conceptual framework to identify the multiple constructions of the environment in law, and how these constructions can interact to generate these unexpected outcomes. It explores EWMs in the USA and Australia as examples, and assesses the implications of creating legal rights for rivers for water governance. Lessons from the EWMs, as well as early lessons from the new ‘river persons,’ show how to use the law to improve river protection and how to begin to mitigate the problems of the paradox.


Legal Rights

Legal Rights

Author: Pavlos Eleftheriadis

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2008-09-11

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 0191562793

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How can there be rights in law? We learn from moral philosophy that rights protect persons in a special way because they have peremptory force. But how can this aspect of practical reason be captured by the law? For many leading legal philosophers the legal order is constructed on the foundations of factual sources and with materials provided by technical argument. For this 'legal positivist' school of jurisprudence, the law endorses rights by some official act suitably communicated. But how can any such legal enactment recreate the proper force of rights? Rights take their meaning and importance from moral reflection, which only expresses itself in practical reasoning. This puzzle about rights invites a reconsideration of the nature and methods of legal doctrine and of jurisprudence itself. Legal Rights argues that the theory of law and legal concepts is a project of moral and political philosophy, the best account of which is to be found in the social contract tradition. It outlines an argument according to which legal rights can be justified before equal citizens under the constraints of public reason. The place of rights in law is explained by the unique position of law as an essential component of the civil condition and a necessary condition for freedom.


Lawyers, Lawsuits, and Legal Rights

Lawyers, Lawsuits, and Legal Rights

Author: Thomas F. Burke

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 0520243234

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"Burke drills deep into America's unique culture of litigation and is rewarded with a powerful insight: it is not the public or even lawyers that are so darn litigious, but American law itself. This meticulous, dispassionate book stands not only to advance the debate but—I hope—to reshape it."—Jonathan Rauch, author of Government's End: Why Washington Stopped Working "Lawyers, Lawsuits, and Legal Rights is a fascinating study of the American penchant for public policies that rely on lawsuits to get things done. Burke's analysis is insightful and original. This book compellingly shows that litigious policies have deep roots in our Constitution, culture, and politics."—Charles Epp, author of The Rights Revolution: Lawyers, Activists, and Supreme Courts in Comparative Perspective "Burke's authoritative book demonstrates that the highly litigious American system is not an isolated anomaly but in fact fits in with deeply-rooted elements of American political culture. Where citizens of other countries rely on expert or bureaucratic judgment to resolve disputes, Americans turn to the courts. Equally novel and compelling, Lawyers, Lawsuits, and Legal Rights marshals an impressive set of evidence and delivers a refreshingly well-written look at the state of American litigation."—Frank R. Baumgartner, co-author of Agendas and Instability in American Politics


Teen Legal Rights

Teen Legal Rights

Author: David L. Hudson Jr.

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2015-03-10

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 1610697006

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The only book of its kind to examine all aspects of a young adult's legal rights at school, at work, and at home, including recent developments in teen-oriented legislation. Widespread Internet use and evolving privacy concerns compromise the legal rights of teenagers. While smart phones, social networking, and online music downloading pose new legal complications for teens and their parents to navigate, the Supreme Court has grappled with rights concerning every aspect of a young adult's life long before now. This newly updated text, written in accessible language and presented through an informal FAQ format, simplifies the laws, rights, and constitutional implications affecting young people today. In an easy-to-understand, non-intimidating style, First Amendment scholar David L. Hudson Jr. provides an authoritative analysis of the judicial system, utilizing actual court cases and legal arguments to help teens better understand their rights under the law. Additionally, the text presents recent changes and interpretations of legal areas still in debate. This third edition features an updated examination of recent topics that includes cyberbullying, "sexting," social media privacy, and illegal downloads of online content.


How Rights Went Wrong

How Rights Went Wrong

Author: Jamal Greene

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 1328518116

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An eminent constitutional scholar reveals how our approach to rights is dividing America, and shows how we can build a better system of justice.


Rights at Work

Rights at Work

Author: Michael W. McCann

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1994-07-15

Total Pages: 704

ISBN-13: 9780226555713

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McCann explains how wage discrimination battles have raised public legal consciousness and helped reform activists mobilize working women in the pay equity movement over the past two decades. Rights at Work explores the political strategies in more than a dozen pay equity struggles since the late 1970s, including battles of state employees in Washington and Connecticut, as well as city employees in San Jose and Los Angeles. Relying on interviews with over 140 union and feminist activists, McCann shows that, even when the courts failed to correct wage discrimination, litigation and other forms of legal advocacy provided reformers with the legal discourse--the understanding of legal rights and their constraints--for defining and advancing their cause.


The Legal Rights of Students with Disabilities

The Legal Rights of Students with Disabilities

Author: Charles J. Russo

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Published: 2011-06-16

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 1442210850

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Since 1948 when the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, all students have been declared the right to education. The rights of disabled students have not been explicitly addressed, however, and each country has developed their own rules and regulations. Although similarities exist among the different countries, differences are evident, especially in both the extent and acknowledgment of these rights. The Legal Rights of Students with Disabilities: International Perspectives examines the rights of disabled students in ten diverse countries on six continents. Written by leading experts in education law, this volume provides comparative insights to help meet the educational needs of disabled students. The book also offers strategies to manage the legal and educational complexities associated with special education.


Model Rules of Professional Conduct

Model Rules of Professional Conduct

Author: American Bar Association. House of Delegates

Publisher: American Bar Association

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 9781590318737

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The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.