Comparative Property Law provides a comprehensive treatment of property law from a comparative and global perspective. The contributors, who are leading experts in their fields, cover both classical and new subjects, including the transfer of property, the public-private divide in property law, water and forest laws, and the property rights of aboriginal peoples. This Handbook maps the structure and the dynamics of property law in the contemporary world and will be an invaluable reference for researchers working in all domains of property law.
This book is the first large-scale effort devoted to this controversial issue, providing a vast platform of comparative knowledge on direct, indirect, categorical, and partial takings. Written for legal professionals, academics, urban and regional planners, real estate developers, and civil-society groups, the book analyzes thirteen advanced economy countries representing a variety of legal regimes, institutional structures, cultures, geographic sizes, and population densities.
Nothing provides as much material for comparative legal study as the great variety of rule-making that characterizes land law. Land law is perhaps the only legal area in which the leveling march of globalized uniformity has had to yield to the progressive development of local customary law. It is a rich and rewarding field for comparative law scholars, a field with a diverse past that resists classification and an equally unpredictable future. This engaging book presents fourteen stimulating essays, all originally presented at the 2001 Annual Colloquium of the International Association of Legal Science, held in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands, in October 2001. These essays, all by leading scholars in the field, deal with a broad array of significant issues, including such debates as the following: Public vs. private property: a meaningful distinction? How customary law defeats the purpose of state land law Land ownership: to pollute or not to pollute? There are also detailed discussion of the special land needs of small islands, private residential governments, regulatory takings, land transfer, mortgage law, securities in property transactions, housing, town planning, agricultural land use, and water and riparian rights. The scope is global, with attention to the great differences in terminology and even in basic legal concepts. The lasting contribution of this symposium lies in its exposure of the enormous intellectual wealth arising from the numerous different legal techniques used to solve land use problems. No lawyer or legal scholar, no matter how conversant with land law, will come away from this book without valuable new ideas.
This fully revised and updated second edition of The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Law provides a wide-ranging and diverse critical survey of comparative law at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It summarizes and evaluates a discipline that is time-honoured but not easily understood in all its dimensions. In the current era of globalization, this discipline is more relevant than ever, both on the academic and on the practical level. The Handbook is divided into three main sections. Section I surveys how comparative law has developed and where it stands today in various parts of the world. This includes not only traditional model jurisdictions, such as France, Germany, and the United States, but also other regions like Eastern Europe, East Asia, and Latin America. Section II then discusses the major approaches to comparative law - its methods, goals, and its relationship with other fields, such as legal history, economics, and linguistics. Finally, section III deals with the status of comparative studies in over a dozen subject matter areas, including the major categories of private, economic, public, and criminal law. The Handbook contains forty-eight chapters written by experts from around the world. The aim of each chapter is to provide an accessible, original, and critical account of the current state of comparative law in its respective area which will help to shape the agenda in the years to come. Each chapter also includes a short bibliography referencing the definitive works in the field.
Legal lexicography or jurilexicography is the most neglected aspect of the discipline of jurilinguistics, despite its great relevance for translators, academics and comparative lawyers. This volume seeks to bridge this gap in legal literature by bringing together contributions from ten jurisdictions from leading experts in the field. The work addresses aspects of legal lexicography, both monolingual and bilingual, in its various manifestations in both civilian and common law systems. It thus compares epistemic approaches in a subject that is inextricably bound up with specific legal systems and specific languages. Topics covered include the history of French legal lexicography, ordinary language as defined by the courts, the use of law dictionaries by the judiciary, legal lexicography and translation, and a proposed multilingual dictionary for the EU citizen. While the majority of contributions are in English, the volume includes three written in French. The collection will be a valuable resource for both scholars and practitioners engaging with language in the mechanism of the law.
Louisiana Property Law: The Civil Code, Cases, and Commentary is the first new case book in its field in more than a generation. Authored by three experienced scholars from Louisiana, this book presents classic and current cases in a rich contextual setting informed by contemporary property scholarship from the United States and abroad. After introducing the origins and sources of Louisiana property law, each chapter situates Louisiana property jurisprudence in its codal and doctrinal context. In addition to explaining the history, structure, and meaning of relevant provisions of the Louisiana Civil Code and ancillary statutes, the book introduces readers to property texts from mixed jurisdictions such as Québec, South Africa, and Scotland, and compares Louisiana and common law property institutions. In light of this comparative approach, the book will appeal to scholars interested in alternative regulatory models for the law of property. Specific topics include: Sources of Louisiana Property Law (Chapter 1); Ownership, Real Rights, and the Right to Exclude (Chapter 2); The Division of Things (Chapter 3); Classification of Things--Of Movables and Immovables, Corporeals and Incorporeals (Chapter 4); Voluntary Transfers of Ownership (Chapter 5); Accession (Chapter 6); Acquisition of Ownership through Occupancy (Chapter 7); Possession and the Possessory Action (Chapter 8); Acquisitive Prescription with Respect to Immovables (Chapter 9); Vindicating Ownership through Real Actions (Chapter 10); Co-Ownership (Chapter 11); Usufruct (Chapter 12); Natural and Legal Servitudes (Chapter 13); Conventional Predial Servitudes (Chapter 15); Limited Personal Servitudes--Habitation and Right of Use (Chapter 15); and Building Restrictions (Chapters 16).
The field of comparative constitutional law has grown immensely over the past couple of decades. Once a minor and obscure adjunct to the field of domestic constitutional law, comparative constitutional law has now moved front and centre. Driven by the global spread of democratic government and the expansion of international human rights law, the prominence and visibility of the field, among judges, politicians, and scholars has grown exponentially. Even in the United States, where domestic constitutional exclusivism has traditionally held a firm grip, use of comparative constitutional materials has become the subject of a lively and much publicized controversy among various justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. The trend towards harmonization and international borrowing has been controversial. Whereas it seems fair to assume that there ought to be great convergence among industrialized democracies over the uses and functions of commercial contracts, that seems far from the case in constitutional law. Can a parliamentary democracy be compared to a presidential one? A federal republic to a unitary one? Moreover, what about differences in ideology or national identity? Can constitutional rights deployed in a libertarian context be profitably compared to those at work in a social welfare context? Is it perilous to compare minority rights in a multi-ethnic state to those in its ethnically homogeneous counterparts? These controversies form the background to the field of comparative constitutional law, challenging not only legal scholars, but also those in other fields, such as philosophy and political theory. Providing the first single-volume, comprehensive reference resource, the 'Oxford Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Law' will be an essential road map to the field for all those working within it, or encountering it for the first time. Leading experts in the field examine the history and methodology of the discipline, the central concepts of constitutional law, constitutional processes, and institutions - from legislative reform to judicial interpretation, rights, and emerging trends.
