Arguing with Tradition


Book Description

Arguing with Tradition is the first book to explore language and interaction within a contemporary Native American legal system. Grounded in Justin Richland’s extensive field research on the Hopi Indian Nation of northeastern Arizona—on whose appellate court he now serves as Justice Pro Tempore—this innovative work explains how Hopi notions of tradition and culture shape and are shaped by the processes of Hopi jurisprudence. Like many indigenous legal institutions across North America, the Hopi Tribal Court was created in the image of Anglo-American-style law. But Richland shows that in recent years, Hopi jurists and litigants have called for their courts to develop a jurisprudence that better reflects Hopi culture and traditions. Providing unprecedented insights into the Hopi and English courtroom interactions through which this conflict plays out, Richland argues that tensions between the language of Anglo-style law and Hopi tradition both drive Hopi jurisprudence and make it unique. Ultimately, Richland’s analyses of the language of Hopi law offer a fresh approach to the cultural politics that influence indigenous legal and governmental practices worldwide.




Law and The Christian Tradition in Scandinavia


Book Description

This book presents a comprehensive history of law and religion in the Nordic context. The entwinement of law and religion in Scandinavia encompasses an unusual history, not widely known yet important for its impact on contemporary political and international relations in the region. The volume provides a holistic picture from the first written legal sources of the twelfth century to the law of the present secular welfare states. It recounts this history through biographical case studies. Taking the point of view of major influential figures in church, politics, university, and law, it thus presents the principal actors who served as catalysts in ecclesiastical and secular law through the centuries. This refreshing approach to legal history contributes to a new trend in historiography, particularly articulated by a younger generation of experienced Nordic scholars whose work is featured prominently in this volume. The collection will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers working in the areas of Legal History and Law and Religion.




The Catholic Tradition of the Law of Nations


Book Description

The Catholic Tradition of the Law of Nations is a well-edited collection of annotated documents illustrating the Church's doctrine regarding war and peace and its opinion of such topics as the League of Nations, nationality and minority rights. Valuable for its insights into the history, doctrine and traditions of Catholic thought on international law, it includes important papal writings that are difficult to locate and otherwise unavailable in English. Published for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace by the Catholic Association for International Peace. Reprint of the sole edition. "Being somewhat familiar with the Catholic tradition and an outspoken advocate of the Catholic conception of international law, the reviewer feels no hesitancy in recommending unreservedly Mr. Eppstein's excellent compendium of The Catholic Tradition of the Law of Nations." --JAMES BROWN SCOTT, Georgetown Law Journal 24 (1935-1936) 1063 JOHN EPPSTEIN [1895-1988] was the author of numerous books on Catholicism and human rights, including Catholics and the Problem of Peace (1925), Code of International Ethics (1953) and The Cult of Revolution of the Church (1974).




Great Legal Traditions


Book Description

Great Legal Traditions: Civil Law, Common Law, and Chinese Law in Historical and Operational Perspective draws on the nearly thirty years of experience that the author has accumulated from working in and writing about a variety of legal systems around the world. After an introduction to the underlying concepts and values of comparative legal studies, Head embarks on a brisk six-chapter survey of European civil law, English and American common law, and Chinese law (both dynastic and contemporary). Each legal tradition is divided into two perspectives — first historical and then operational. Numerous illustrations and biographical sketches bring the historical surveys to life, thereby setting the stage for a close examination of several key attributes of representative legal systems in each of the three traditions. Head's "operational" topics include sources of law, the role and training of lawyers, the division of court jurisdiction, constitutional review, the role of codification, and more — and he gives special attention to comparative criminal procedure. Great Legal Traditions is designed primarily for use in law schools and other graduate programs in comparative history, international relations, and both European and Chinese area studies, but the book is also written to be accessible to a more general readership. The main text is supplemented with numerous appendices that serve in place of a documents supplement. A teacher's manual is also available with guidance on each of the study questions that Head places at the beginning of each chapter (roughly 200 study questions in all). The teacher's manual also provides guidance (and confidence) to instructors not already familiar with Chinese law and history.




Global Legal Traditions


Book Description

"Global Legal Traditions: Comparative Law for the 21st Century explores four legal traditions from around the world, both Western (German civil law and English common law) and non-Western (Chinese law and Islamic law). The book opens by focusing on European-based civil law, represented by German law, before moving on to the common law legal tradition seen in English law. Some comparative law casebooks and study guides stop with Western law but Global Legal Traditions continues by turning to the study of a secular non-European legal tradition by examining Chinese law, or more specifically the law of the People's Republic of China. The book's final section covers the non-state, religion-based legal tradition found in Islamic law, both in its pre-state form and how Islamic law manifests itself within the confines of sovereign state powers. Each part contains seven chapters intended to enable students to draw comparisons and make distinctions between the legal traditions under review. Each part includes five chapters covering common topics: history and development of the legal tradition; political process; judicial process; legal actors and legal education; and civil law. The remaining two chapters for each part focus on a legal subject most relevant to that legal tradition"--




Religion, Law and Tradition


Book Description

This book brings together two scholarly traditions: experts in Roman, Jewish and Islamic law, an area where scholars tend to be familiar with work in each area, and experts in the legal traditions of South and East Asia, which have tended to be less interdisciplinary. The resulting mix produces new ways of looking at comparative law and legal history from a global perspective, and these essays contribute both to our understanding of comparative religion as well as comparative law.




Tradition of the Law and Law of the Tradition


Book Description

Traditionally, social theorists in the West have structured models of state social control according to the tenet that socialization is accomplished by means of external controls on behavior: undesirable actions are punished and desirable actions result either in material reward or a simple respite from the oppressive attentions of an authoritarian state. In this volume, the author presents the tradition of law in China as an exception to the Western model of social control. The Confucian bureaucracy that has long structured Chinese social life melded almost seamlessly with the Maoist revolutionary agenda to produce a culture in which collectivism and an internalized adherence to social law are, in some respects, congenital features of Chinese social consciousness. Through her investigation of the Maoist concept of revolutionary justice and the tradition of conformist acculturation in China, the author constructs a fascinating counterpoint to traditional Western arguments about social control.




The Civil Law Tradition


Book Description

A newly updated edition of “the most readable and succinct account of the origins, the development, and the philosophy of the civil law” (Houston Law Review). Designed for general readers and students of law, this is a concise history and analysis of the civil law tradition, which is dominant in most of Europe, all of Latin America, and many parts of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The fourth edition is fully updated to include the latest developments in the field and to correct and update historical details gleaned from newly published research on Roman and medieval law. In recent years, the legal profession has changed radically, with the growing international ubiquity of large law firms operating across borders (which was previously a uniquely American phenomenon). This new edition updates the book from the post-Soviet era to ongoing current issues, including Brexit and the status of the European Union. It discusses how civil law codes have shifted in some countries to adapt to modern and changing ideologies and also includes brand-new material on legal education, which is of central importance to the legal profession today.




Roman Law and the Origins of the Civil Law Tradition


Book Description

This unique publication offers a complete history of Roman law, from its early beginnings through to its resurgence in Europe where it was widely applied until the eighteenth century. Besides a detailed overview of the sources of Roman law, the book also includes sections on private and criminal law and procedure, with special attention given to those aspects of Roman law that have particular importance to today's lawyer. The last three chapters of the book offer an overview of the history of Roman law from the early Middle Ages to modern times and illustrate the way in which Roman law furnished the basis of contemporary civil law systems. In this part, special attention is given to the factors that warranted the revival and subsequent reception of Roman law as the ‘common law’ of Continental Europe. Combining the perspectives of legal history with those of social and political history, the book can be profitably read by students and scholars, as well as by general readers with an interest in ancient and early European legal history. The civil law tradition is the oldest legal tradition in the world today, embracing many legal systems currently in force in Continental Europe, Latin America and other parts of the world. Despite the considerable differences in the substantive laws of civil law countries, a fundamental unity exists between them. The most obvious element of unity is the fact that the civil law systems are all derived from the same sources and their legal institutions are classified in accordance with a commonly accepted scheme existing prior to their own development, which they adopted and adapted at some stage in their history. Roman law is both in point of time and range of influence the first catalyst in the evolution of the civil law tradition.




The Tradition and Modern Transition of Chinese Law


Book Description

The book was first published in 1997, and was awarded the first prize of scientific research by the Ministry of Justice during the ninth Five-Year Plan of China. In 2005, it was adopted the text book for the postgraduates of law majors. In 2009, it was awarded the second prize of the best books on law in China. The book discusses from different aspects the long legal tradition in China, and it not only helps us to have a further understanding of Chinese legal system but also combines theories and practice and illustrate the modern legal transition which probes the history of Chinese legal system. As is known to us all, China is a country with a long legal history, which can be traced back to more than three thousand year ago. So the legal tradition of China has been passed down from generation to generation without any interruptions. This feature is peculiar to Chinese legal history which is beyond all comparison with that of other countries such as ancient Egypt, ancient India, ancient Babylon and ancient Persia. Through the study of Chinese legal history we can have a deeper understanding of the histories, features, origins and the transition of Chinese legal tradition. The Chinese legal tradition originated from China, and it is the embodiment of the wisdom and creativity of Chinese civilization. The great many books, researching materials, legal constitutions, archives, files and records of different dynasties in China have provided us with rare, complete and systematic materials to research. The book has a complete, systematic and detailed research on Chinese legal tradition and its transition and it gives people a correct recognition of the process of the perfection of laws during its development and its position as well as its value in the social progress in order to grasp its regular patterns. It also has showed us the most valuable part and core of Chinese legal Tradition and it is a summary of Chinese legal tradition and its transition from different perspectives, different angles and different levels. From the book, we can see that the ancient Chinese Legal Culture had once shocked the world and exerted great influence on the civilization of the world legal system, especially the legal systems in Asian countries. The book also has discussed the reestablishment of law in the late Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Chinese law’s transition to modernity. In a word, the book has not only combined the legal system and the legal culture together, but also integrated the important historical figures and events ingeniously and it is a valuable and readable book with authenticity.