The principle in law that the rules are not changed in the middle of game, is embodied in the notion that legislation should apply prospectively. This study analyzes the legal constraints on retroactive legislation and the presumption of prospectivity and constitutional limits on such lawmaking.
However controversial, retrospective rule-making is not at all uncommon, and has been used by governments of all political persuasions for a number of applications. This text looks at the various ways in which laws may be seen as retrospective, as well as analysing the problems in defining retrospectivity.
This book examines legal language as a language for special purposes, evaluating the functions and characteristics of legal language and the terminology of law. Using examples drawn from major and lesser legal languages, it examines the major legal languages themselves, beginning with Latin through German, French, Spanish and English. This second edition has been fully revised, updated and enlarged. A new chapter on legal Spanish takes into account the increasing importance of the language, and a new section explores the use (in legal circles) of the two variants of the Norwegian language. All chapters have been thoroughly updated and include more detailed footnote referencing. The work will be a valuable resource for students, researchers, and practitioners in the areas of legal history and theory, comparative law, semiotics, and linguistics. It will also be of interest to legal translators and terminologists.
Offering a unique perspective on an overlooked subject – the relationship between time, change, and lawmaking – this edited collection brings together world-leading experts to consider how time considerations and social, political and technological change affect the legislative process, the interpretation of laws, the definition of the powers of the government and the ability of legal orders to promote innovation. Divided into four parts, each part considers a different form of interaction between time and law, and change. The first part offers legal, theoretical and historical perspectives on the relationship between time and law, and how time shaped law and influences legal interpretation and constitutional change. The second part offers the reader an analysis of the different ways in which courts approach the impact of time on law, as well as theoretical and empirical reflections upon the meaning of the principle of legal certainty, legitimate expectations and the influence of law over time. The third part of the book analyses how legislation and the legislative process addresses time and change, and the various challenges they create to the legal order. The fourth and final part addresses the complex relationship between fast-paced technological change and the regulation of innovations.