This work contains the General Reports presented at the XVIIth Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law (IACL), which was held in July 2006 in Utrecht. A wide variety of topics is covered in this collection, ranging from liability of judges to competition law. The book provides an interesting assessment of the development of comparative law in recent decades and shows the growing importance of comparative law in various disciplines of law.
"Historical Comparative Law and Comparative Legal History Legal history and comparative law overlap in important respects. This is more apparent with the use of some methods for comparison, such as legal transplant, natural law, or nation building. M.N.S. Sellers nicely portrayed the relationship. The past is a foreign country, its people strangers and its laws obscure.... No one can really understand her or his own legal system without leaving it first, and looking back from the outside. The comparative study of law makes one's own legal system more comprehensible, by revealing its idiosyncrasies. Legal history is comparative law without travel. Legal historians, perhaps especially in the United States, have been skeptical about the possibility of a fruitful comparative legal history, preferring in general to investigate the distinctiveness of their national experience. Comparatists, however, content with revealing or promoting similarities or differences between legal systems, by their nature strive toward comparison. Some American historians, especially since World War II, see the value in this"--
This title presents twenty-nine topics, prepared by leading scholars in more than 20 countries, providing a comparative analysis of cutting-edge legal topics of the 21st century. Considering topics of vital moment to contemporary legal scholars, the title includes pieces on Surrogate Motherhood, The Balance of Copyright in Comparative Perspective, International Law in Domestic Systems, Constitutional Courts as "Positive Legislators," Same-sex Marriage, Climate Change and the Law, The Regulation of Private Equity, Hedge Funds, and State Funds, and Regulation of Corporate Tax Evasion. Each chapter surveys legal developments in the U.S. and Canada, Europe, Asia, Latin and South America, Africa, and the Middle East in a format that permits the reader easy access to similarities and differences in the approaches of the selected national regimes. This comprehensive volume tells the story of parallel trends in the evolution of legal doctrine despite jurisdictional, cultural, and political barriers. While each of the covered countries stands alone as a sovereign, in a technologically advanced world their disparate systems nonetheless have converged to adopt comparable strategies in dealing with complex legal issues. The volume is a critical addition to the library of any scholar hoping to keep abreast of the major trends in contemporary law.
This book explores convergences of legal doctrine despite jurisdictional, cultural and political barriers, as well as divergences due to such barriers, examining topics that are of vital importance to contemporary legal scholars. Written by leading experts from all continents, its 26 chapters present a comparative analysis of cutting-edge legal issues of the 21st century. While each of the countries covered stands alone as a sovereign state, in a technologically advanced world their disparate systems nonetheless show comparable strategies in dealing with complex legal issues. Several of the chapters show how, in addition to state normative production and state adjudication, a growing panoply of non-state instruments and non-state adjudication are becoming more and more central to the legal field. This book is a key addition to the library of any scholar wanting to keep abreast of the major trends in contemporary law. Representing the current state of law in a vast range of areas, it covers each topic from a comparative perspective. Cet ouvrage, en examinant des sujets d'une importance vitale pour les juristes contemporains, traite des convergences de la doctrine juridique malgré les barrières juridictionnelles, culturelles et politiques ainsi que des divergences dues à ces barrières. Écrits par d'éminents universitaires de tous les continents, ses 26 chapitres présentent une analyse comparative de sujets juridiques majeurs du 21e siècle. Dans un monde technologiquement avancé, bien que chaque pays analysé dans cet ouvrage demeure autonome en tant qu'État souverain, l’ensemble des systèmes disparates présente néanmoins des stratégies comparables pour traiter des questions juridiques complexes. En outre, plusieurs chapitres montrent comment, en plus de la production normative et de la résolution des différends étatiques, la panoplie croissante de différents types d'instruments non étatiques et de résolution non étatique des différends devient de plus en plus centrale dans la sphère juridique. Cet ouvrage est un ajout essentiel à la bibliothèque de tout universitaire souhaitant se tenir au courant des principales tendances du droit contemporain. Il couvre un vaste domaine de sujets traités d'un point de vue comparatif et représente l'état actuel du droit dans chaque domaine.
This book deals with convergences of legal doctrine despite jurisdictional, cultural, and political barriers, and of divergences due to such barriers, examining topics that are of vital importance to contemporary legal scholars. Written by leading scholars from more than twenty countries, its thirty-two chapters present a comparative analysis of cutting-edge legal topics of the 21st century. While each of the countries covered stands alone as a sovereign state, in a technologically advanced world their disparate systems nonetheless show comparable strategies in dealing with complex legal issues. The book is a critical addition to the library of any scholar hoping to keep abreast of the major trends in contemporary law. It covers a vast area of topics that are dealt with from a comparative point of view and represents the current state of law in each area.
This book challenges the idea that international law looks the same from anywhere in the world. Instead, how international lawyers understand and approach their field is often deeply influenced by the national contexts in which they lived, studied, and worked. International law in the United States and in the United Kingdom looks different compared to international law in China and Russia, though some approaches (particularly Western, Anglo-American ones) are more influential outside their borders than others. Given shifts in geopolitical power and the rise of non-Western powers like China, it is increasingly important for international lawyers to understand how others coming from diverse backgrounds approach the field. By examining the international law academies and textbooks of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, Roberts provides a window into these different communities of international lawyers, and she uncovers some of the similarities and differences in how they understand and approach international law.
This book addresses the technicalities of how international human rights law can be applied at the domestic level through a case study of the human rights methodology of the Indonesian judiciary. Numerous international human rights treaties have been ratified by States parties all around the world. However, local implementation has proven a difficult task for national authorities with every State struggling to realize rights to varying degrees. This reveals a gap between the standards of human rights as envisaged by the law and those experienced by rights holders at the local level. This work analyses how Indonesian courts interpret and apply human rights. It discusses the position of human rights within specific areas of Indonesian law: constitutional law, criminal law and private law. It analyses how courts have dealt with specific cases within these fields of law. Its key contribution lies in its detailed attention to the role of the Indonesian judiciary in implementing human rights, as well as to the influence of international law, and the role that actors other than the judiciary play in this process. It also incorporates international comparative perspectives. The book will be of particular interest to human rights scholars concerned with national judiciaries’ role in human rights implementation, and to scholars, judges, civil society actors and legal practitioners working with law and human rights in Indonesia.
