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  3. Law in Context

Since 1970, the Law in Context series has been at the forefront of a movement to broaden the study of law. The series is a vehicle for the publication of innovative monographs and texts that treat law and legal phenomena critically in their cultural, social, political, technological, environmental and economic contexts. A contextual approach involves treating legal subjects broadly, using materials from other humanities and social sciences, and from any other discipline that helps to explain the operation in practice of the particular legal field or legal phenomena under investigation. It is intended that this orientation is at once more stimulating and more revealing than the bare exposition of legal rules. The series includes original research monographs, coursebooks and textbooks that foreground contextual approaches and methods. The series includes and welcomes books on the study of law in all its contexts, including domestic legal systems, European and international law, transnational and global legal processes, and comparative law.

  • General Editors: Kenneth Armstrong, University of Cambridge, Maksymilian Del Mar, Queen Mary University of London, Sally Sheldon, University of Bristol

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115 results in Law in Context

Page 2 of 6

Recentering the World
  • China and the Transformation of International Law
  • Ryan Martínez Mitchell
  • Published online:
    27 October 2022
    Print publication:
    03 November 2022
  • Recentering the World recovers a richly contextual, detailed history of Western-imposed legal structures in China, as well as engagements with international law by Chinese officials, jurists, and citizens. Beginning in the Late Qing era, it shows how international law functioned as a channel for power relations, techniques of economic domination, as well as novel forms of resistance. The book also radically diversifies traditionally Eurocentric accounts of modern international law's origins, demonstrating how, by the mid-twentieth century, Chinese jurists had made major contributions to international organizations and the UN system, the international judiciary, the laws of armed conflict, and more. Drawing on extensive archival research, this book is a valuable guide to China's often conflicted role in international law, its reception and contention of concepts of sovereignty, property, obligation, and autonomy, and its gradual move from the 'periphery' to a shared spot at the 'center' of global legal order.

Tax and Government in the 21st Century
  • Miranda Stewart
  • Published online:
    01 September 2022
    Print publication:
    08 September 2022
  • With an accessible style and clear structure, Miranda Stewart explains how taxation finances government in the twenty-first century, exploring tax law in its historical, economic, and social context. Today, democratic tax states face an array of challenges, including the changing nature of work, the digitalisation and globalisation of the economy, and rebuilding after the fiscal crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic. Stewart demonstrates the centrality of taxation for government budgets and explains key tax principles of equity, efficiency and administration. Presenting examples from a wide range of jurisdictions and international developments, Stewart shows how tax policy and law operate in our everyday lives, ranging from family and working life to taxing multinational enterprises in the global digital economy. Employing an interdisciplinary approach to the history and future of taxation law and policy, this is a valuable resource for legal scholars, practitioners and policy makers.

Vanishing Contract Law
  • Common Law in the Age of Contracts
  • Catherine Mitchell
  • Published online:
    25 August 2022
    Print publication:
    01 September 2022
  • English contract law provides the invisible framework that underpins and enables much contracting activity in society, yet the role of the law in policing many of our contracts now approaches vanishing point. The methods by which contracts come into existence, and notionally create binding obligations, have transformed over the past forty years. Consumers now enter into contracts through remote and automated processes on standard terms over which they have little control. This book explores the substantive weakening of the institution of contract law in a society heavily dependent on contracts. It considers significant areas of contracting activity that affect many people, but that escape serious and sustained legal scrutiny. An accessibly written and succinct account of contract law's past, present and future, it assesses the implications of a diminished contract law, and the possibilities, if any, for its revival.

Political Censorship in British Hong Kong
  • Freedom of Expression and the Law (1842–1997)
  • Michael Ng
  • Published online:
    21 July 2022
    Print publication:
    04 August 2022
  • Drawing on archival materials, Michael Ng challenges the widely accepted narrative that freedom of expression in Hong Kong is a legacy of British rule of law. Demonstrating that the media and schools were pervasively censored for much of the colonial period and only liberated at a very late stage of British rule, this book complicates our understanding of how Hong Kong came to be a city that championed free speech by the late 1990s. With extensive use of primary sources, the free press, freedom of speech and judicial independence are all revealed to be products of Britain's China strategy. Ng shows that, from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, Hong Kong's legal history was deeply affected by China's relations with world powers. Demonstrating that Hong Kong's freedoms drifted along waves of change in global politics, this book offers a new perspective on the British legal regime in Hong Kong.

Comparative Law
  • 3rd edition
  • Mathias Siems
  • Published online:
    15 March 2022
    Print publication:
    24 March 2022
  • Comparative Law offers a thorough grounding in the subject for students and scholars alike, covering essential academic discussions and comparative law methodology. It critically debates both traditional and modern approaches to the discipline and uses examples from a range of jurisdictions to give the reader a truly global perspective. Its contextualised and interdisciplinary approach draws on examples from politics, economics and other social sciences to provide an original contribution to topics of comparative law. This new third edition is fully revised to reflect developments in the scholarship and includes two new chapters, balancing the book's structure between comparative law of the past, present and future. Suitable for students taking courses in comparative law and related fields, this book offers a fresh and cosmopolitan perspective on the subject.

British Islam and English Law
  • A Classical Pluralist Perspective
  • Patrick S. Nash
  • Published online:
    02 December 2021
    Print publication:
    27 January 2022
  • British Islam and English Law presents a novel argument about the nature and place of groups in society. The encounter with Islam has led English law to tread a line between two theoretical models, liberal individualism and multiculturalism, competing for dominance over the law of organised religion. This philosophical rivalry has generated a set of seemingly intractable conflicts between individual and community, religion and state, nation and culture. This book resurrects the long-buried theory of classical pluralism to address and resolve these tensions. Applying this to five understudied institutions that give structure and form to British Islam – banks, charities, schools, elections, clans – it outlines and justifies the reforms that would optimise the relationship between law and religion. Unflinching and unorthodox, this book places law and theory in context, employs innovative methods such as nudge theory and applied history, and provides detailed answers to hard questions about British Islam.

Properties of Law
  • Modern Law and After
  • Kaarlo Tuori
  • Published online:
    03 September 2021
    Print publication:
    16 September 2021
  • Properties of Law is a legal-theoretical analysis about modern state law; about sociality, normativity and plurality as its properties, and what will come after modern state law. The main objective of this study is to offer a legal theoretical recapitulation of modern state law that avoids the fallacies of Legal Positivism. This calls for a relationist approach where law's sociality is related to normativity, and normativity to sociality. Avoiding Legal Positivism's fallacies also includes refraining from extrapolating from modern state law to law in general; replacing Legal Positivism's conceptual universalism with sensitivity to the varieties of law, and acknowledging that law existed before modern state law, that it will exist after modern state law, and that other law exists alongside modern state law. The book concludes with a discussion of the impact of digitalization on law.

Jurisdictional Exceptionalisms
  • Islamic Law, International Law and Parental Child Abduction
  • Anver M. Emon, Urfan Khaliq
  • Published online:
    23 July 2021
    Print publication:
    12 August 2021
  • Jurisdictional Exceptionalisms examines the legal issues associated with a parent's forced removal of their children to reside in another country following relationship dissolution or divorce. Through an analysis of Public and Private International Laws, and Islamic law - historical and as implemented in contemporary Muslim Family Law States - the authors uncover distinct legal lexicons that centre children's interests in premodern Islamic legal doctrines, modern State practice, and multilateral conventions on children. While legal advocates and policy makers pursue global solutions to parental child abduction, this volume identifies fundamental obstacles, including the absence of shared understandings of jurisdiction. By examining the relevant law and practice, the study exposes the polarised politics embedded in the technical legal rules on jurisdiction. Presenting a new, innovative method in comparative legal history, the book examines the beliefs, values, histories, doctrines, institutions and practices of legal systems presumed to be in conflict with one another.

Law and Administration
  • 4th edition
  • Carol Harlow, Richard Rawlings
  • Published online:
    06 July 2021
    Print publication:
    22 July 2021
  • Law and Administration takes a contextual approach to administrative law, setting law and legal rules in the context of the social, political and economic forces that shape the law, and of the complex constitutional framework in which contemporary administrative law operates. This book contains a full account of judicial review, the traditional heartland of administrative law, and adds to this by taking into account the concerns of government, officials and agencies who operate and shape the law. It also looks at the possible future of administrative law in an increasingly automated and digitalised world. A fully revised and updated new edition, this book includes new case studies of regulatory agencies and government contracting to develop understanding of law in practice.

Positive Law from the Muslim World
  • Jurisprudence, History, Practices
  • Baudouin Dupret
  • Published online:
    16 June 2021
    Print publication:
    24 June 2021
  • Can the concept of law be indiscriminately extended to times and places in which it did simply not exist? Such an extension is at best useless and at worst misleading. Producing an intelligible jurisprudence of the concept of law means keeping it within the reasonable boundaries of its contemporary common-sense understanding: positive law. Parallel to Western societies in which it firstly emerged, the concept of positive law developed in many places, including countries characterized as Muslim. There, it faced other existing normativities, like customs and the Sharia. This book aims, from the Muslim world's perspective, to clarify the uses of the concept of law and the ways of studying it, to describe some of its historical developments, including the ideas of constitutional law, customary law and forensic evidence, and to describe present-day practices, including reference to law sources, rules and interpretation.

Electrified Democracy
  • The Internet and the United Kingdom Parliament in History
  • Andrew Blick
  • Published online:
    11 June 2021
    Print publication:
    01 July 2021
  • The story of how the UK Parliament came to use the Internet from the 1960s onwards has never been told. Electrified Democracy places the impact of technology on parliamentary workings in its longer term historical context. The author identifies repeating patterns of perception and analysis, and cultural tendencies in the perception of inventions dating back over centuries that have reasserted themselves in connection with the parliamentary response to networked computers. He uncovers evidence and makes new connections, while situating all this within the wider global debates on connections between communication and democracy in the age of the Internet, constitutional law and history, and 'law and technology'. This book will be of interest to a wide readership including policy makers, researchers, and all those interested in contemporary controversies about the role of the Internet in modern societies.

Making Commercial Law Through Practice 1830–1970
  • Ross Cranston
  • Published online:
    14 May 2021
    Print publication:
    27 May 2021
  • Making Commercial Law Through Practice 1830–1970 adds a new dimension to the history of Britain's commerce, trade manufacturing and financial services, by showing how they have operated in law over the last one hundred and forty years. In the main law and lawyers were not the driving force; regulation was largely absent; and judges tended to accommodate commercial needs, so that market actors were able to shape the law through their practices. Using legal and historical scholarship, the author draws on archival sources previously unexploited for the study of commercial practice and the law's role in it. This book will stimulate parallel research in other subject areas of law. Modern commercial lawyers will learn a great deal about the current law from the story of its evolution, and economic and business historians will see how the world of commerce and trade operated in a legal context.

Legalized Identities
  • Cultural Heritage Law and the Shaping of Transitional Justice
  • Lucas Lixinski
  • Published online:
    14 May 2021
    Print publication:
    08 April 2021
  • Cultural heritage is a feature of transitioning societies, from museums commemorating the end of a dictatorship to adding places like the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp to the World Heritage List. These processes are governed by specific laws, and yet transitional justice discourses tend to ignore law's role, assuming that memory in transition emerges organically. This book debunks this assumption, showing how cultural heritage law is integral to what memory and cultural identity is possible in transition. Lixinski attempts to reengage with the original promise of transitional justice: to pragmatically advance societies towards a future where atrocities will no longer happen. The promise in the UNESCO Constitution of lasting peace through cultural understanding is possible through focusing on the intersection of cultural heritage law and transitional justice, as Lixinski shows in this ground-breaking book.

Turpin and Tomkins' British Government and the Constitution
  • Text and Materials
  • 8th edition
  • Alison L. Young
  • Published online:
    22 April 2021
    Print publication:
    01 April 2021
  • A lot has happened to the UK Constitution in the last seven years. We've witnessed the UK's exit from the EU, further devolution to Scotland and Wales, a number of prominent cases by the Supreme Court, two early parliamentary general elections, major governmental defeats and two Prime Ministerial resignations. Alison Young has built on the text of Colin Turpin and Adam Tomkins' earlier edition, keeping their unique historical and contextual approach, whilst bringing the material up to date with more contemporary examples, including references to Brexit, the recent prorogation and Brexit case law, and the Covid-19 pandemic. The book continues to include substantial extracts from parliamentary and other political sources as well as from legislation and case law. It also provides a full yet accessible account of the British constitution at the culmination of a series of dramatic events, on the threshold of possible further constitutional reform.

Film and Constitutional Controversy
  • Visualizing Hong Kong Identity in the Age of 'One Country, Two Systems'
  • Marco Wan
  • Published online:
    05 February 2021
    Print publication:
    04 February 2021
  • In modern-day Hong Kong, major constitutional controversies have caused people to demonstrate on the streets, immigrate to other countries, occupy major thoroughfares, and even engage in violence. These controversies have such great resonance because they put pressure on a cultural identity made possible by, and inseparable from, the 'One Country, Two Systems' framework. Hong Kong is also a city synonymous with film, ranging from commercial gangster movies to the art cinema of Wong Kar-wai. This book argues that while the importance of constitutional controversies for the process of self-formation may not be readily discernible in court judgments and legislative enactments, it is registered in the diverse modes of expression found in Hong Kong cinema. It contends that film gives form to the ways in which Hong Kong identity is articulated, placed under stress, bolstered, and transformed in light of disputes about the nature and meaning of the city's constitutional documents.

International and European Disability Law and Policy
  • Text, Cases and Materials
  • Andrea Broderick, Delia Ferri
  • Published online:
    03 December 2020
    Print publication:
    31 October 2019
  • In this first textbook on international and European disability law and policy, Broderick and Ferri analyse the interaction between different legal systems and sources. Guided by the global legal standards of the CRPD, students are equipped with the necessary background on disability, and are given a comprehensive overview of the legal and policy frameworks on disability. The narrative maintains the balance between theory and practice, focusing on the legal framework and challenges in the realm of policy-making, and ensuring that students are aware of current legal debates and controversial issues in the field. Accommodating different learning styles, the book employs a range of accessible features which include learning outcomes for each chapter, problem questions, group activities, extracts from legal debates and more. Including case studies and examples from around the world, this book has a truly global perspective, suitable for introductory and advanced modules in law departments, as well as interdisciplinary courses.

Rules and Practices of International Investment Law and Arbitration
  • Yannick Radi
  • Published online:
    08 October 2020
    Print publication:
    29 October 2020
  • International investment law and arbitration is its own 'galaxy', made up of thousands of treaties to be read in relation to hundreds of awards. It is also diverse, as treaty and arbitration practices display nuances and differences on a number of issues. While it has been expanding over the past few decades in quantitative terms, this galaxy is now developing new traits as a reaction to the criticisms formulated across civil society in relation to the protection of public interest. This textbook enables readers to master and make sense of this galaxy in motion. It offers an up-to-date, comprehensive and detailed analysis of the rules and practices which form international investment law and arbitration, covering its substantive, institutional and procedural aspects. Using analytical and practice-oriented approaches, it provides analyses accessible to readers discovering this field anew, while it offers a wealth of in-depth studies to those who are already familiar with it.

Toward a New Legal Common Sense
  • Law, Globalization, and Emancipation
  • 3rd edition
  • Boaventura de Sousa Santos
  • Published online:
    08 October 2020
    Print publication:
    01 October 2020
  • Paradigmatic transition is the idea that ours is a time of transition between the paradigm of modernity, which seems to have exhausted its regenerating capacities, and another, emergent time, of which so far we have seen only signs. Modernity as an ambitious and revolutionary sociocultural paradigm based on a dynamic tension between social regulation and social emancipation, the prevalent dynamic in the sixteenth century, has by the twenty-first century tilted in favour of regulation, to the determent of emancipation. The collapse of emancipation into regulation, and hence the impossibility of thinking about social emancipation consistently, symbolizes the exhaustion of the paradigm of modernity. At the same time, it signals the emergence of a new paradigm or new paradigms. This updated 2020 edition is written for students taking law and globalization courses, and political science, philosophy and sociology students doing optional subjects.

A Philosophical Introduction to Human Rights
  • Thomas Mertens
  • Published online:
    29 September 2020
    Print publication:
    24 September 2020
  • While almost everyone has heard of human rights, few will have reflected in depth on what human rights are, where they originate from and what they mean. A Philosophical Introduction to Human Rights – accessibly written without being superficial – addresses these questions and provides a multifaceted introduction to legal philosophy. The point of departure is the famous 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which provides a frame for engagement with western legal philosophy. Thomas Mertens sketches the philosophical and historical background of the Declaration, discusses the ten most important human rights with the help of key philosophers, and ends by reflecting on the relationship between rights and duties. The basso continuo of the book is a particular world view derived from Immanuel Kant. 'Unsocial sociability' is what characterises humans, i.e. the tension between man's individual and social nature. Some human rights emphasize the first, others the second aspect. The tension between these two aspects plays a fundamental role in how human rights are interpreted and applied.

Dispute Processes
  • ADR and the Primary Forms of Decision-making
  • 3rd edition
  • Michael Palmer, Simon Roberts
  • Published online:
    25 June 2020
    Print publication:
    09 July 2020
  • This wide-ranging study considers the primary forms of decision-making – negotiation, mediation, umpiring, as well as the processes of avoidance and violence – in the context of rapidly changing discourses and practices of civil justice across a range of jurisdictions. Many contemporary discussions in this field–and associated projects of institutional design–are taking place under the broad but imprecise label of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). The book brings together and analyses a wide range of materials dealing with dispute processes, and the current debates on and developments in civil justice. With the help of analysis of materials beyond those ordinarily found in the ADR literature, it provides a comprehensive and comparative perspective on modes of handling civil disputes. The new edition is thoroughly revised and is extended to include new chapters on avoidance and self-help, the ombuds, Online Dispute Resolution and pressures of institutionalisation.

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