Locating Law, 3rd Edition


Book Description

Praise for the second edition: “This book is the best available for teaching the role of law in society and making sense of how it operates within the (inter)connections of race, class and gender dynamics often perpetuating oppression. … Locating Law is essential for undergraduate students in justice, sociology and criminology.” – Margot Hurlbert, University of Regina “Students regularly tell me that Locating Law is their favourite book out of the selections for the Law and Society course. The case studies are sufficiently different from one another that the students deepen their general knowledge, and they appreciate the fact that the chapters are written in a style they can understand.” – Jennifer Jarman, Lakehead University A primary concern within the study of law has been to understand the “law-society” relation. Underlying this concern is the belief that law has a distinctly social basis; it both shapes – and is shaped by – the society in which it operates. This book explores the law-society relation by locating law within the nexus of race/class/gender/sexuality relations in society. In addition to updating the material in the theoretical and substantive chapters, this third edition of Locating Law includes three new contributions: sentencing law and Aboriginal peoples; corporations and the law; and obscenity and indecency legislation. The analyses offered in the book are sure to generate discussion and debate and, in the process, enhance our understanding of law’s location.




Niklas Luhmann: Law, Justice, Society


Book Description

Niklas Luhmann: Law, Justice, Society presents the work of sociologist Niklas Luhmann in a radical new light. Luhmann’s theory is here introduced both in terms of society at large and the legal system specifically, and for the first time, Luhmann’s texts are systematically read together with theoretical insights from post-structuralism, deconstruction, phenomenology, radical ethics, feminism and post-ecologism. In his far-reaching book, Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos distances Luhmann’s theory from its misrepresentations as conservative, rigorously positivist and disconnected from empirical reality, and firmly locates it in a sphere of post-ideological jurisprudence. The book operates both as a detailed explanation of the theory’s concepts and as the locus of a critique which brings forth Luhmann’s radical credentials. The focal points are Luhmann’s concept of society and the law’s paradoxical connection to justice. However, these concepts are also transgressed in order to show how the law deals with the illusion of its identity, and more broadly how the theory itself deals with its limitations. This is illustrated by examples drawn from human rights, constitutional theory and ecological thinking. On the whole, Niklas Luhmann: Law, Justice, Society serves both as an introductory text and as a critical response to Luhmann’s theory, and is recommended reading for students and researchers in sociology, law, social sciences, politics and whoever is interested in seeing the influential work of Niklas Luhmann from a critical new perspective.




Politics International Law


Book Description

The Politics of International Law offers an introduction to the role of law in contemporary international affairs. Through a case study-driven analysis of topics such as human rights, the use of force, international environmental law, international trade law, international criminal justice and the right to self-determination, the book explains the interaction between law and politics in the world today, demonstrating that one cannot be understood withoutthe other.The book is divided into two parts. Part I introduces contemporary international law with a focus on constitutive legal principles such as sovereignty, territorial integrity and the legal equality of states. Through these introductory chapters, students are encouraged to take a holistic view of the processes and actors that drive international affairs, and explore the fascinating paradox that while international law is largely created through political processes, it also constitutes theenvironment in which international politics is practiced.Part II builds on the foundations laid in Part I to analyze contemporary controversies in international law and politics. Chapters focus on a number of substantive issue areas, including international environmental law, international economic law, human rights law, self-determination and secession, the law governing the use of force, and international criminal justice.This book is written to impart on readers a deepened understanding of both the possibilities and limits of international law as a tool for structuring relations in the world.Digital Formats and ResourcesAlso available as an e-book with functionality, navigation features, and links that offer extra learning support




Gender, Race & Canadian Law


Book Description

Gender, Race & Canadian Law explores feminist and critical race approaches to Canadian law. The collection, which is suitable for undergraduate courses, begins with a basic overview of Canadian law and an introduction to critical concepts including “the official version of law,” race and racialization, privilege and heteronormativity. Substantive themes include the Montreal massacre, hegemonic and other masculinities, equality rights, sexual assault and other gendered violence, trans, colonialism, immigration and multiculturalism. Contributors: Constance Backhouse Gillian Balfour Mélissa Blais Karen Busby Wendy Chan Sandra Ka Hon Chu Elizabeth Comack Raewyn Connell Pamela Downe Deborah H. Drake Rod Earle Eve Haque Joanna Harris Margot A. Hurlbert Lisa Marie Jakubowski Peter Knegt Ruth M. Mann Peggy McIntosh Marilou McPhedron Martin Rochlin




Women-in-Law


Book Description

First published in 1985, Women-in-Law is a collection of essays examining the complex interactions of law, sexuality, and the family. It explores the ways in which legal ideology and practice affect women and looks at issues such as child custody, domestic violence and prostitution in the light of new research. The contributors review the history of feminist involvement with the law and analyse the law’s fundamental failure to improve the status of women. They also assess strategies for change in view of the current backlash against women’s rights and the traditional role of law in the subjugation of women. This book will be of interest to students of law, political science, sociology, gender studies, and sexuality studies.




Teaching Law


Book Description

This book suggests reforms to improve legal education and responds to concerns that law schools eschew the study of justice.




Philosophical Foundations of Private International Law


Book Description

Private international law has long been understood as a doctrinal and technical body of law, without interesting theoretical foundations or implications. By systematically exploring the rich array of philosophical topics that are part of the fabric of private international law, Philosophical Foundations of Private International Law fills a significant and long-standing void in the legal and philosophical literature. The contributions to this volume are testimony to the significant potential for interaction between philosophy and private international law. Some aim to expand and rethink classical jurisprudential theories by focusing on law beyond the state and on the recognition of foreign law and judgments in domestic courts. Others bring legal and moral theories to bear on traditional debates in private international law, such as legal pluralism, transnational justice, the interpretation of foreign legal policies, and the boundaries of the legal system. Several engage with the history of both private international law and legal and political philosophy. They point to missed opportunities when philosophers ignored law's transnational dimensions, or when private international law scholars failed to position their theories within broader philosophical schools of thought. Some seek to complete past attempts to articulate the philosophical dimensions of private international law that were never carried through. Thought-provoking and topical, this volume displays the varied themes cutting through the disciplines of private international law and philosophy.




Equipping Technical Communicators for Social Justice Work


Book Description

Equipping Technical Communicators for Social Justice Work provides action-focused resources and tools—heuristics, methodologies, and theories—for scholars to enact social justice. These resources support the work of scholars and practitioners in conducting research and teaching classes in socially just ways. Each chapter identifies a tool, highlights its relevance to technical communication, and explains how and why it can prepare technical communication scholars for socially just work. For the field of technical and professional communication to maintain its commitment to this work, how social justice intersects with inclusivity through UX, technological, civic, and legal literacies, as well as through community engagement, must be acknowledged. Equipping Technical Communicators for Social Justice Work will be of significance to established scholar-teachers and graduate students, as well as to newcomers to the field. Contributors: Kehinde Alonge, Alison Cardinal, Erin Brock Carlson, Oriana Gilson, Laura Gonzales, Keith Grant-Davie, Angela Haas, Mark Hannah, Kimberly Harper, Sarah Beth Hopton, Natasha Jones, Isidore Kafui Dorpenyo, Liz Lane, Emily Legg, Nicole Lowman, Kristen Moore, Emma Rose, Fernando Sanchez, Jennifer Sano-Franchini, Adam Strantz, Cana Uluak Itchuaqiyaq, Josephine Walwema, Miriam Williams, Han Yu




How Interpretation Makes International Law


Book Description

Challenging the classic narrative that sovereign states make the law that constrains them, this book argues that treaties and other sources of international law form only the starting point of legal authority. Interpretation can shift the meaning of texts and, in its own way, make law. In the practice of interpretation actors debate the meaning of the written and customary laws, and so contribute to the making of new law. In such cases it is the actor's semantic authority that is key - the capacity for their interpretation to be accepted and become established as new reference points for legal discourse. The book identifies the practice of interpretation as a significant space for international lawmaking, using the key examples of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the Appellate Body of the WTO to show how international institutions are able to shape and develop their constituent instruments by adding layers of interpretation, and moving the terms of discourse. The book applies developments in linguistics to the practice of international legal interpretation, building on semantic pragmatism to overcome traditional explanations of lawmaking and to offer a fresh account of how the practice of interpretation makes international law. It discusses the normative implications that arise from viewing interpretation in this light, and the implications that the importance of semantic changes has for understanding the development of international law. The book tests the potential of international law and its doctrine to respond to semantic change, and ultimately ponders how semantic authority can be justified democratically in a normative pluriverse.




Natural Resources, Environment, and Legal Pluralism


Book Description

The Law & Anthropology Yearbook brings together a collection of studies that discuss legal problems raised by cultural differences between people & the law to which they are subject. Most of the contributions to Volume 9 were presented at the IXth International Symposium of the Commission on Folk Law & Legal Pluralism, & focus on the subject of 'Natural Resources, Environment, & Legal Pluralism'. The natural resources which form the environment of rural people are subject to increasing pressures. Intensive forms of resource extraction increasingly endanger the continued availability & ecological quality of land, forest & water resources. Especially in regions inhabited by indigenous peoples, struggles over the control & social & economic function of natural resources are directly linked to conflicts over political & economic self-determination. Inevitably, the different legal systems, & the substantive & procedural possibilities they provide, become involved in struggles over political, economic & ecological values & objectives. The focus on natural resource management issues therefore is a particularly fruitful field to examine the contemporary functions of folk law in complex legal & economic systems.