This book demonstrates the importance of Léon Duguit for property theory in both the civil and common law world. It translates into English for the first time ever Duguit’s seminal lecture on property, the sixth of a series given in 1911 in Buenos Aires. It also collects essays from the leading experts on the social function of property in major civil and common law jurisdictions internationally. The book explores the importance that the notion of the social function of property has come to have not only in France but in the entire civil law tradition, and also considers the wide – if un-attributed and seldom regarded – influence in the common law tradition and theory of property.
One of the differentiating factors of our present is the increased environmental awareness. However, this has not yet been converted into social, economic and law systems that reveal the multiple challenges that are imposed on us. The destructive impulse of the dominant ideologies in the twentieth century maintains the hegemony of their spaces, barely trying to adapt itself into a new reality that surpasses them. Meanwhile in 1972 we believed there was a marked environmental degradation, in 2022 we recognize that we are in the middle of the sixth mass extinction of the species, the earth temperature has already increased in more than one degree Celsius and a significant percent of the planet's sweet water is contaminated. If the Constitution that Chile is planning to write and set in force in the years to come, wants to capture the logic of our times, it is essential that it sets as something basic, the environmental conditions where the legal-political communities, constituted by the chileans communities, are going to develop. This book explores the details of the "Ecological Constitution" concept, that refers to the provisions that have to be contained in a Constitution in a transversal way and that, setting the environmental protection as a central axis of the social organization, attempts to harmonize the social and nature activities. The new Constitution of Chile won't change everything, but it can constitute a first fundamental base on that change. This book is an invitation to dream with that possibility and reflect on the different ways that the Constitution can take us in that direction. The systematic changes are urgent and we are in the position to begin with them. Ezio Costa Cordella
This volume offers a unique, comprehensive view of the contents, context and potential of the Civil Code that in 2021 entered into force in the People’s Republic of China. The twenty-three essays herein collected, authored by distinguished Chinese and non-Chinese scholars, describe inner and outer perceptions about the Chinese Civil Code and analyze its likely impact within and outside the country. In so doing, they shed light not only on the comparative origins of current Chinese rules, but also on the potential influence that these rules may have in comparative terms in the future.
Taking its cue from theoretical and ideological calls to challenge globalisation as a dynamic of homogenisation – and resistance – as led from, and directed against, the Global North, this volume asks: what can we see when we shift the lens beyond a North–South binary? Based on empirical studies of 'frontier-zones' of legal globalisation in India, Pakistan and Latin America, the book adopts an original format. Framed as a relational dialogue between newer as well as more prominent scholars within the field, from various cores through to postcolonial academic peripheries, it questions structural variables in the shadows of legal globalisation and how we as scholars build a space for critique.
This book presents an analysis of betterment and compensation issues under the Land Use Rights (LURs) System in China since 1988. The topic originates from the observation of widening inequity and increasing uncertainty associated with the failure of g
There is no denying that the rules and enforcement mechanisms of investment law and arbitration reach deep into the regulatory and policy space of host states. Investment tribunals have the ability to second-guess all variety of state measures and, in doing so, have displayed a remarkable lack of restraint. Despite investment law's muscularity, without equal in international law, the prevailing orthodoxy treats investment law as a defensible and just restraint on government and politics. This volume helps to correct the prevailing view. Rethinking Investment Law illustrates how investment law protections for foreign investors constrains states and over-compensates investors. It offers a more balanced vision of how international law can protect all those affected, not just foreign investors. An expert set of contributors explain both the conventional law and its limitations. Their analysis shows that doctrines, now widely entrenched, in orthodox accounts of investment law could have taken, and could still take, a different turn. They offer a more respectful approach to states' roles and responsibilities to enact laws in the public interest. This text will be an illuminating read for students and academics in areas such as investment law and international economic law. It provides cutting-edge analysis for researchers, practitioners, and students seeking to understand and question the usual standards of treatment under investment treaties.
In this original intellectual history, Anna di Robilant traces the history of one of the most influential legal, political, and intellectual projects of modernity: the appropriation of Roman property law by liberal nineteenth-century jurists to fit the purposes of modern Europe. Drawing from a wealth of primary sources, many of which have never been translated into English, di Robilant outlines how a broad network of European jurists reinvented the classical Roman concept of property to support the process of modernisation. By placing this intellectual project within its historical context, she shows how changing class relations, economic policies and developing ideologies converged to produce the basis of modern property law. Bringing these developments to the twentieth century, this book demonstrates how this largely fabricated version of Roman property law shaped and continues to shape debates concerning economic growth, sustainability, and democratic participation.
French legal culture, from the Middle Ages to the present day, has had an impressive influence on legal norms and institutions that have emerged in Europe and the Americas, as well as in Asian and African countries. This volume examines the lives of twenty-seven key legal thinkers in French history, with a focus on how their Christian faith and ideals were a factor in framing the evolution of French jurisprudence. Professors Olivier Descamps and Rafael Domingo bring together this diverse group of distinguished legal scholars and historians to provide a unique comparative study of law and religion that will be of value to scholars, lawyers, and students. The collaboration among French and non-French scholars, and the diversity of international and methodological perspectives, gives this volume its own unique character and value to add to this fascinating series.
Comparative constitutionalism emerged in its current form against the backdrop of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. As that backdrop recedes into the past, it is being replaced by a more multi-polar and confusing world, and the current state of the discipline of comparative constitutionalism reflects this fragmentation and uncertainty. This has opened up space for new, more varied, and increasingly critical voices seeking to improve the project of democratic constitutionalism. But it also raises questions: What of the past, if anything, is worth preserving? Which more recent parts should be defining of the field? In this context, this book asks which are - or should be - the canonical texts of comparative constitutionalism. The theoretical scope of the contributions is broad and ambitious, selecting primary material from beyond the existing textbooks to engage the concept of a canon. This framework provides significant insights about inclusion and exclusion, and proposes candidates for canonical and anti-canonical materials. The result is a wide-ranging discussion, among many voices, of how particular judgments and other primary texts have shaped or should shape our understanding of central elements of democratic constitutionalism from a comparative law perspective. This book is not a prescription of one universal understanding, but a broader conversation about the field and the future of constitutional democracy.
The first book of its kind, Property Law: Comparative, Empirical, and Economic Analyses, uses a unique hand-coded data set on nearly 300 dimensions on the substance of property law in 156 jurisdictions to describe the convergence and divergence of key property doctrines around the world. This book quantitatively analyzes property institutions and uses machine learning methods to categorize jurisdictions into ten legal families, challenging the existing paradigms in economics and law. Using other cross-country data, the author empirically tests theories about property law and comparative law. Using economic efficiency as both a positive and a normative criterion, each chapter evaluates which jurisdictions have the most efficient property doctrines, concluding that the common law is not more efficient than the civil law. Unlike prior studies on empirical comparative law, this book provides detailed citations to laws in each jurisdiction. Data and documentation are publicly available on the author's website.
