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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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116 results in Law in Context

Page 6 of 6

The Internationalisation of Criminal Evidence
  • Beyond the Common Law and Civil Law Traditions
  • John D. Jackson, Sarah J. Summers
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    19 January 2012
  • Although there are many texts on the law of evidence, surprisingly few are devoted specifically to the comparative and international aspects of the subject. The traditional view that the law of evidence belongs within the common law tradition has obscured the reality that a genuinely cosmopolitan law of evidence is being developed in criminal cases across the common law and civil law traditions. By considering the extent to which a coherent body of common evidentiary standards is being developed in both domestic and international jurisprudence, John Jackson and Sarah Summers chart this development with particular reference to the jurisprudence on the right to a fair trial that has emerged from the European Court of Human Rights and to the attempts in the new international criminal tribunals to fashion agreed approaches towards the regulation of evidence.

Freedom of Information
  • The Law, the Practice and the Ideal
  • 4th edition
  • Patrick Birkinshaw
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    01 April 2010
  • Enacted in 2000 and in operation in the UK since 2005, the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act has revealed information which has generated calls for constitutional reform. A massive 'information jurisprudence' has developed through the decisions of the Information Commissioner, the Information Tribunal and the courts. Governments' responses to the war on terror have involved increased resort to claims of national security and accompanying secrecy, but these developments have to exist alongside demands for FOI and transparency. FOI has to balance access to and protection of personal information, and major amendments have been made to the Data Protection Act in order to balance the competing demands of transparency and privacy. This detailed discussion of FOI laws and personal data laws examines the historical development of secrecy, national security and government, and their modern context.

Sentencing and Criminal Justice
  • 5th edition
  • Andrew Ashworth
  • Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    04 February 2010
  • Andrew Ashworth expertly examines the key issues in English sentencing policy and practice including the mechanisms for producing sentencing guidelines. He considers the most high-profile stages in the criminal justice process such as the Court of Appeal's approach to the custody threshold, the framework for the sentencing of young offenders and the abiding problems of previous convictions in sentencing. Taking into account the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 and the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, the book's inter-disciplinary approach places the legislation and guidelines on sentencing in the context of criminological research, statistical trends and theories of punishment. By examining the law in relation to elements of the wider criminal justice system, including the prison and probation services, students gain a rounded perspective on the relevant principles and problems of sentencing and criminal justice.

Globalisation and the Western Legal Tradition
  • Recurring Patterns of Law and Authority
  • David B. Goldman
  • Published online:
    30 March 2010
    Print publication:
    07 February 2008
  • What can 'globalisation' teach us about law in the Western tradition? This important new work seeks to explore that question by analysing key ideas and events in the Western legal tradition, including the Papal Revolution, the Protestant Reformations and the Enlightenment. Addressing the role of law, morality and politics, it looks at the creation of orders which offer the possibility for global harmony, in particular the United Nations and the European Union. It also considers the unification of international commercial laws in the attempt to understand Western law in a time of accelerating cultural interconnections. The title will appeal to scholars of legal history and globalisation as well as students of jurisprudence and all those trying to understand globalisation and the Western dynamic of law and authority.

Who Believes in Human Rights?
  • Reflections on the European Convention
  • Marie-Bénédicte Dembour
  • Published online:
    03 February 2010
    Print publication:
    19 October 2006
  • Many people believe passionately in human rights. Others - Bentham, Marx, cultural relativists and some feminists amongst them - dismiss the concept of human rights as practically and conceptually inadequate. This book reviews these classical critiques and shows how their insights are reflected in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. At one level an original, accessible and insightful legal commentary on the European Convention, this book is also a groundbreaking work of theory which challenges human rights orthodoxy. Its novel identification of four human rights schools proposes that we alternatively conceive of these rights as given (natural school), agreed upon (deliberative school), fought for (protest school) and talked about (discourse school). Which of these concepts we adopt is determined by particular ways in which we believe, or do not believe, in human rights.

Perspectives on Labour Law
  • 2nd edition
  • A. C. L. Davies
  • Published online:
    28 January 2010
    Print publication:
    18 June 2009
  • Policy discussions play an important role in labour law, and labour lawyers draw on a wide range of disciplines and approaches in order to construct their arguments. This overview of the basic principles of labour law and the related policy arguments introduces two of the main perspectives used in the analysis of labour law today – human rights and economics. It offers a brief history of the influence of human rights and economics on labour law since the 1950s, explains neoclassical and new institutional economics and summarises the historical development of international human rights law. The insights of rights theorists and economists are then applied to a selection of topics in labour law, including anti-discrimination law, dismissal, working time, pay, consultation and collective bargaining, trade union membership and industrial action, in order to demonstrate the interplay between the two perspectives.

Law, Text, Terror
  • Ian Ward
  • Published online:
    22 January 2010
    Print publication:
    16 April 2009
  • The relationship between law and terrorism has re-emerged recently as a pressing issue in contemporary jurisprudence. Terrorism appears to take law to its limit, whilst the demands of counter-terrorism hold the cause of justice in contempt. At this point the case for engaging alternative intellectual approaches and resources is compelling. Ian Ward argues that through a closer appreciation of the ethical and aesthetical dimensions of terror, as well as the historical, political and cultural, we can better comprehend modern expressions and experiences of terrorism. For this reason, alongside juristic responses to modern expressions of terrorism, Law, Text, Terror examines a variety of supplementary literary texts as well as alternative intellectual approaches; from the drama of Euripides and Shakespeare, to the rhetoric and poetry of Burke and Shelley, the literary feminisms of Lessing and Rame, and the narrative existentialism of Conrad, Coetzee, Dostoevsky and DeLillo.

Perspectives on Labour Law
  • A. C. L. Davies
  • Published online:
    06 January 2010
    Print publication:
    16 September 2004
  • This is an accessible but thought-provoking introduction to labour law. It is suitable for those coming to the subject for the first time, and it will also be of interest to more advanced students, including postgraduates, who need to think about the subject's broader themes. The academic literature on labour law makes considerable use of human rights arguments and of economic analysis. Both of these approaches provide valuable insights into the underlying policy of the law but they can be rather off-putting for students who do not know the international human rights instruments, or who have no background in economics. This book introduces these wider perspectives on labour law and then applies them to a selection of topics, including anti-discrimination law, dismissal, working time, pay, consultation and collective bargaining, trade union membership and industrial action.

The Future Governance of Citizenship
  • Dora Kostakopoulou
  • Published online:
    21 December 2009
    Print publication:
    29 April 2008
  • In much of the citizenship literature it is often considered, if not simply assumed, that citizenship is integral to the character of a self-determining community and that this process, by definition, involves the exclusion of resident 'foreigners'. Dora Kostakopoulou calls this assumption into question, arguing that 'aliens' are by definition outside the bounds of the community by virtue of a circular reasoning which takes for granted the existence of bounded national communities, and that this process of collective self-definition is deeply political and historically dated. Although national citizenship has enjoyed a privileged position in both theory and practice, its remarkable elasticity has reached its limit, thereby making it more important to find an alternative model. Kostakopoulou develops a new institutional framework for anational citizenship, which can be grafted onto the existing state system, defends it against objections and proposes institutional reform based on an innovative approach to citizenship.

Rethinking Evidence
  • Exploratory Essays
  • 2nd edition
  • William Twining
  • Published online:
    15 December 2009
    Print publication:
    01 June 2006
  • The Law of Evidence has traditionally been perceived as a dry, highly technical, and mysterious subject. This book argues that problems of evidence in law are closely related to the handling of evidence in other kinds of practical decision-making and other academic disciplines, that it is closely related to common sense and that it is an interesting, lively and accessible subject. These essays develop a readable, coherent historical and theoretical perspective about problems of proof, evidence, and inferential reasoning in law. Although each essay is self-standing, they are woven together to present a sustained argument for a broad inter-disciplinary approach to evidence in litigation, in which the rules of evidence play a subordinate, though significant, role. This revised and enlarged edition includes a revised introduction, the best-known essays in the first edition, and chapters on narrative and argumentation, teaching evidence, and evidence as a multi-disciplinary subject.

Health Law and the European Union
  • Tamara K. Hervey, Jean V. McHale
  • Published online:
    10 December 2009
    Print publication:
    04 November 2004
  • How does the law of the European Union affect health law and policy? At first sight, it seems limited. However, despite its restricted formal competence, the EU has recently become increasingly involved in the health field. Litigation based on EU law has resulted in a 'right to receive health care services' across national boundaries which may have huge practical implications for national health systems. The EU has promulgated legislation regulating clinical research, and the marketing of pharmaceuticals; patients' rights are affected by EU legislation on data protection and product liability; the qualifications of health care professionals are legally recognised across the EU; and the EU has acted to promote public health. This book explores the various impacts of measures of EU law on national health law and policy. Through elaboration of selected examples, the authors show that, within the EU, health law cannot be regarded as a purely national affair.

Law, Infrastructure and Human Rights
  • Michael B. Likosky
  • Published online:
    09 December 2009
    Print publication:
    30 October 2006
  • From attacks on oil infrastructure in post-war reconstruction Iraq to the laying of gas pipelines in the Amazon Rainforest through indigenous community villages, infrastructure projects are sites of intense human rights struggles. Many state and non-state actors have proposed solutions for handling human rights problems in the context of specific infrastructure projects. Solutions have been admired for being lofty in principle; however, they have been judged wanting in practice. This book analyzes how human rights are handled in varied contexts and then assesses the feasibility of a common international institutional solution under the auspices of the United Nations to the alleged problem of the inability to translate human rights into practice.

Evaluating Scientific Evidence
  • An Interdisciplinary Framework for Intellectual Due Process
  • Erica Beecher-Monas
  • Published online:
    04 December 2009
    Print publication:
    20 November 2006
  • Scientific evidence is crucial in a burgeoning number of litigated cases, legislative enactments, regulatory decisions, and scholarly arguments. Evaluating Scientific Evidence explores the question of what counts as scientific knowledge, a question that has become a focus of heated courtroom and scholarly debate, not only in the United States, but in other common law countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. Controversies are rife over what is permissible use of genetic information, whether chemical exposure causes disease, whether future dangerousness of violent or sexual offenders can be predicted, whether such time-honored methods of criminal identification (such as microscopic hair analysis, for example) have any better foundation than ancient divination rituals, among other important topics. This book examines the process of evaluating scientific evidence in both civil and criminal contexts, and explains how decisions by nonscientists that embody scientific knowledge can be improved.

Analysis of Evidence
  • 2nd edition
  • Terence Anderson, David Schum, William Twining
  • Published online:
    23 November 2009
    Print publication:
    11 July 2005
  • This extensively revised second edition is a rigorous introduction to the construction and criticism of arguments about questions of fact, and to the marshalling and evaluation of evidence at all stages of litigation. It covers the principles underlying the logic of proof; the uses and dangers of story-telling; standards for decision and the relationship between probabilities and proof; the chart method and other methods of analyzing and ordering evidence in fact-investigation, in preparing for trial, and in connection with other important decisions in legal processes and in criminal investigation and intelligence analysis. Most of the chapters in this new edition have been rewritten; the treatment of fact investigation, probabilities and narrative has been extended; and new examples and exercises have been added. Designed as a flexible tool for undergraduate and postgraduate courses on evidence and proof, students, practitioners and teachers alike will find this book challenging but rewarding.

Law as a Means to an End
  • Threat to the Rule of Law
  • Brian Z. Tamanaha
  • Published online:
    25 July 2009
    Print publication:
    02 October 2006
  • The contemporary US legal culture is marked by ubiquitous battles among various groups attempting to seize control of the law and wield it against others in pursuit of their particular agenda. This battle takes place in administrative, legislative, and judicial arenas at both the state and federal levels. This book identifies the underlying source of these battles in the spread of the instrumental view of law - the idea that law is purely a means to an end - in a context of sharp disagreement over the social good. It traces the rise of the instrumental view of law in the course of the past two centuries, then demonstrates the pervasiveness of this view of law and its implications within the contemporary legal culture, and ends by showing the various ways in which seeing law in purely instrumental terms threatens to corrode the rule of law.

Families and the European Union
  • Law, Politics and Pluralism
  • Clare McGlynn
  • Published online:
    04 July 2009
    Print publication:
    28 September 2006
  • In the first book to offer a comprehensive analysis of family law in the European Union, McGlynn argues that a traditional concept of 'family' which has many adverse effects - on individuals, on families (in all their diverse forms), and indeed on the economic ambitions of the EU is forming the basis for the little-recognised and under-researched field of EU family law. This book examines three different aspects of family life - childhood, parenthood and partnerships - and critically analyses existing EU law in relation to each. It examines the emerging field of EU family law, providing a highly sceptical account of recent developments and a robust challenge to the arguments in favour of the codification of European civil law, including family law.

Page 6 of 6