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Why Law Matters argues that public institutions and legal procedures are valuable and matter as such, irrespective of their instrumental value. Examining the value of rights, public institutions, and constitutional review, the book criticises instrumentalist approaches in political theory, claiming they fail to account for their enduring appeal.
The question of how law matters has long been fundamental to the law and society field. Social science scholarship has repeatedly demonstrated that law matters less, or differently, than those who study only legal doctrine would have us believe. Yet research in this field depends on a belief in the relevance of law, no matter how often gaps are identified. The essays in this collection show how law is relevant in both an instrumental and a constitutive sense, as a tool to accomplish particular purposes and as an important force in shaping the everyday worlds in which we live. Essays examine these issues by focusing on legal consciousness, the body, discrimination, and colonialism as well as on more traditional legal concerns such as juries and criminal justice.
This highly original work demonstrates the fundamental role of customary law for the realization of Indigenous peoples’ human rights and for sound national and international legal governance. The book reviews the legal status of customary law and its relationship with positive and natural law from the time of Plato up to the present. It examines its growing recognition in constitutional and international law and its dependence on and at times strained relationship with human rights law. The author analyzes the role of customary law in tribal, national and international governance of Indigenous peoples’ lands, resources and cultural heritage. He explores the challenges and opportunities for its recognition by courts and alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, including issues of proof of law and conflicts between customary practices and human rights. He throws light on the richness inherent in legal diversity and key principles of customary law and their influence in legal practice and on emerging notions of intercultural equity and justice. He concludes that Indigenous peoples’ rights to their customary legal regimes and states’ obligations to respect and recognize customary law, in order to secure their human rights, are principles of international customary law, and as such binding on all states. At a time when the self-determination, land, resources and cultural heritage of Indigenous peoples are increasingly under threat, this accessible book presents the key issues for both legal and non-legal scholars, practitioners, students of human rights and environmental justice, and Indigenous peoples themselves.
In 1996, Guillermo O’Donnell taught a seminar at the University of Notre Dame on democratic theory. One of the questions explored in this class was whether it is possible to define and determine the “quality” of democracy. Jorge Vargas Cullell, a student in this course, returned to his native country of Costa Rica, formed a small research team, and secured funding for undertaking a “citizen audit” of the quality of democracy in Costa Rica. This pathbreaking volume contains O’Donnell’s qualitative theoretical study of the quality of democracy and Vargas Cullell’s description and analysis of the empirical data he gathered on the quality of democracy in Costa Rica. It also includes twelve short, scholarly reflections on the O’Donnell and Cullell essays. The primary goal of this collection is to present the rationale and methodology for implementing a citizen audit of democracy. This book is an expression of a growing concern among policy experts and academics that the recent emergence of numerous democratic regimes, particularly in Latin America, cannot conceal the sobering fact that the efficacy and impact of these new governments vary widely. These variations, which range from acceptable to dismal, have serious consequences for the people of Latin America, many of whom have received few if any benefits from democratization. Attempts to gauge the quality of particular democracies are therefore not only fascinating intellectual exercises but may also be useful practical guides for improving both old and new democracies. This book will make important strides in addressing the increasing practical and academic concerns about the quality of democracy. It will be required reading for political scientists, policy analysts, and Latin Americanists.
Author : American Bar Association. House of Delegates Publisher : American Bar Association Page : 216 pages File Size : 21,6 MB Release : 2007 Category : Law ISBN : 9781590318737
The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.
Americans claim to care about character. Over four fifths want it taught in public schools, and 95 percent think that a president's character is important. And historically, philosophers, educators, politicians, religious leaders, judges, and the general public have agreed that character should be valued and reinforced. Yet in the United States, the institutions charged with that mission have consistently fallen short. Simply put, too little effort has been made to understand the importance of character and the strategies that can best develop and support it. After first exploring the history of the concept over time, Deborah Rhode turns her focus to the institutions that have traditionally fostered good character: families, schools, youth organizations, civic groups, and political organizations. However, as we have increasingly de-emphasized the subject-a trend that is most evident in our politics-our awareness of its shaping influence has waned. Indeed, we often focus on the wrong things when it comes to fostering good character. For instance, almost a third of the workforce is covered by licensing laws requiring good moral character, even occupations where the need for screening is not self-evident: florist, fortune teller, and frog farmers. Character also plays a pivotal role in the criminal justice system, in defining guilt, punishment, and eligibility for parole. All too often, these legal requirements are idiosyncratic, inequitable, and subject to race and class bias. Millions of Americans who have convictions for minor offenses are excluded from a vast range of occupations and benefits without evidence that such exclusion serves the public interest. We can do better, she stresses, and outlines a powerful program for reform. Rhode punctuates the book through a series of portraits of exemplary individuals whose good character made them who they were: Ida B. Wells, Jane Addams, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Albert Schweitzer, and Thurgood Marshall. All of these individuals had flaws, but through their commitments to both social justice and helping the less fortunate, they all demonstrate the power and importance of strong character.
This book presents an answer to the question of why modern legal institutions and the idea of citizenship are important for leading a free life. The majority of views in political and legal philosophy regard the law merely as a useful instrument, employed to render our lives more secure and to enable us to engage in cooperate activities more efficiently. The view developed here defends a non-instrumentalist alternative of why the law matters. It identifies the law as a constitutive feature of our identities as citizens of modern states. The constitutivist argument rests on the (Kantian) assumption that a person's practical identity (its normative self-conception as an agent) is the result of its actions. The law co-constitutes these identities because it maintains the external conditions that are necessary for the actions performed under its authority. Modern legal institutions provide these external prerequisites for achieving a high degree of individual self-constitution and freedom. Only public principles can establish our status as individuals who pursue their life plans and actions as a matter of right and not because others contingently happen to let us do so. The book thereby provides resources for a reply to anarchist challenges to the necessity of legal ordering.
To understand one another as individuals and to fulfill the moral duties that require such understanding, we must communicate with each other. We must also maintain protected channels that render reliable communication possible, a demand that, Seana Shiffrin argues, yields a prohibition against lying and requires protection for free speech. This book makes a distinctive philosophical argument for the wrong of the lie and provides an original account of its difference from the wrong of deception. Drawing on legal as well as philosophical arguments, the book defends a series of notable claims—that you may not lie about everything to the "murderer at the door," that you have reasons to keep promises offered under duress, that lies are not protected by free speech, that police subvert their mission when they lie to suspects, and that scholars undermine their goals when they lie to research subjects. Many philosophers start to craft moral exceptions to demands for sincerity and fidelity when they confront wrongdoers, the pressures of non-ideal circumstances, or the achievement of morally substantial ends. But Shiffrin consistently resists this sort of exceptionalism, arguing that maintaining a strong basis for trust and reliable communication through practices of sincerity, fidelity, and respecting free speech is an essential aspect of ensuring the conditions for moral progress, including our rehabilitation of and moral reconciliation with wrongdoers.
As a field of study, legal history has an unsteady place in Australian law schools yet academic research and writing in the field of legal history and at the intersections of the disciplines of ‘law’ and ‘history’ is undergoing something of a renaissance, with rich and vibrant new works regularly appearing in specialist journals and scholarly monographs. This collection seeks to reinvigorate the study of history within the law school curriculum, by showcasing what students of the law can achieve when, addressing topics from the use of Magna Carta as history and precedent in sixteenth-century England to the political manoeuvres behind the failed impeachment of President Bill Clinton in late twentieth-century America, they seek to understand legal processes and institutions historically. The volume comprises outstanding legal history papers authored by graduate (final year JD) students in the Melbourne Law School. This collection is dedicated to two women who championed the teaching of legal history at the Melbourne Law School in the 1960s—Dr Ruth Campbell and Mrs Betty Hayes.