A Law Book For The Diaspora

The foundation for all scholarly study in biblical law is the shared assumption that the Covenant Code, as contained in Exodus 20:23-22:33 is the oldest code of laws in the Hebrew Bible, and that all other laws are later revisions of that code. The author of this text strikes that foundation.

The well-known challenges of international migration have triggered new departures in academic approaches, with 'diaspora studies' evolving as an interdisciplinary and even transdisciplinary field of study. Its emerging methodology shares concerns with another interdisciplinary field, the study of the relations between law and literature, which focuses on the ways in which the two cultural practices of law and literature mutually negotiate each other and on the question after the ontological commensurability of the domains. This volume offers, for the first time, an attempt to provide an interface between these overlapping interdisciplinary endeavours of literary studies, legal studies, and diaspora studies. In doing so, it explores new approaches and invites new perspectives on diasporas, migration and the disciplines that study them, hopefull also adding to the cultural resources of coping with a swiftly changing social landscape in a globalizing world.

Examines the current deportation system in the United States, the aftermath effects, and the political, social and legal issues.

Today, law is no longer homogenous or unquestioned. Different overlapping legal systems constantly interfere with one another, both on an international level, in complex transnational contexts such as the European Union or human rights law, but also in the context of cultural diversity or conflicts between religious norms and civil institutions, between minorities and the power of the state. On the other hand, the neutrality of law is also under growing pressure, be it from different global transnational players, or from within nation states where calls are made to adapt law to the will of "the people." The heated European debate on the "refugee crisis" has made it manifest that law is more necessary than ever and yet fundamentally contested, perhaps even caught in contradictions and self-limitations. At the same time, the current perspective on legal problems allows us to address issues of diversity and the role of Europe in the globalized world more clearly. The articles of this book take these recent developments and debates as a starting point to discuss from the perspective of different disciplines the pressing question of how to live together in the new millennium and how to figure the long history of law before, besides, and after the dominant paradigm of state law.

Drawing on extensive archival and library sources, Karsten explores these collisions and arrives at a number of conclusions that will surprise.

Conflicts caused by competing concepts of property are the subject of this book that reshapes study of the relationship between law and society in Australasia and North America. Chapters analyse decisions made by governments and courts upon questions of policy and law in terms of their consequences for rights and models of personhood. Late twentieth-century decisions concerning native title in Canada and Australia demonstrate the relevance of historical case studies of communal and fee-simple land holding in colonial and post-colonial societies. An international team of contributors draw on their experience from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds and jurisdictions.