Sources Of Law Legal Change And Ambiguity

Why is the law notoriously unclear, arcane, slow to change in the face of changing circumstances? In this sweeping comparative analysis of the lawmaking process from ancient Rome to the present day, Alan Watson argues that the answer has largely to do with the mixed ancestry of modern law, the confusion of sources—custom, legislation, scholarly writing, and judicial precedent—from which it derives.

In this masterful choreography of legal philosophy, legal history, and comparative law, Alan Watson draws from ancient Roman, English, and French law to assess how lawmakers fail to envision ways to provide society with laws geared toward precise political or social goals.

Instead of the usual apologetic treatment found in legal doctrine, linked to the determinacy, immutability or predictability of norms, this book treats legal certainty innovatively, holistically and in depth. Using a method at once analytical and functional, Professor Ávila examines the structural elements of legal certainty, from its definition and foundations to its various dimensions, normative forces and efficacies, citing a wealth of examples from case law to support each of the theses defended. No subject is more important and topical than legal certainty. Problems relating to lack of understanding, instability and unpredictability of law intensify day by day everywhere, in civil law and common law countries alike. Normative sources are increasingly diverse in origin (national, international, community) and multiple in nature (legal, contractual, jurisprudential). They change constantly, and present increasingly frequent problems of ambiguity and vagueness that significantly hinder their comprehension. This state of affairs, which to a greater or lesser extent is true of any legal order, justifies a return to the subject of legal certainty. In this book, essential questions are answered such as: Legal certainty in what sense? Certainty of what, for whom, in whose vision and by whom? When, to what extent, and to what end? “(...) it is probably the most comprehensive and systematic study ever produced on this subject using the analytical method.” (Riccardo Guastini, Professor of Jurisprudence, University of Genoa, Italy)

Despite the growth in international criminal courts and tribunals, the majority of cases concerning international criminal law are prosecuted at the domestic level. This means that both international and domestic courts have to contend with a plethora of relevant, but often contradictory, judgments by international institutions and by other domestic courts. This book provides a detailed investigation into the impact this pluralism has had on international criminal law and procedure, and examines the key problems which arise from it. The work identifies the various interpretations of the concept of pluralism and discusses how it manifests in a broad range of aspects of international criminal law and practice. These include substantive jurisdiction, the definition of crimes, modes of individual criminal responsibility for international crimes, sentencing, fair trial rights, law of evidence, truth-finding, and challenges faced by both international and domestic courts in gathering, testing and evaluating evidence. Authored by leading practitioners and academics in the field, the book employs pluralism as a methodological tool to advance the debate beyond the classic view of 'legal pluralism' leading to a problematic fragmentation of the international legal order. It argues instead that pluralism is a fundamental and indispensable feature of international criminal law which permeates it on several levels: through multiple legal regimes and enforcement fora, diversified sources and interpretations of concepts, and numerous identities underpinning the law and practice. The book addresses the virtues and dangers of pluralism, reflecting on the need for, and prospects of, harmonization of international criminal law around a common grammar. It ultimately brings together the theories of legal pluralism, the comparative law discourse on legal transplants, harmonization, and convergence, and the international legal debate on fragmentation to show where pluralism and divergence will need to be accepted as regular, and even beneficial, features of international criminal justice.

This exciting collection looks at the theory and practice of legal borrowing and adaptation in different areas of the world: Europe,the USA and Latin America, S.E. Asia and Japan. Many of the contributors focus on fundamental theoretical issues. What are legal transplants? What is the role of the state in producing socio-legal change? What are the conditions of successful legal transfers? How is globalisation changing these conditions? Such problems are also discussed with reference to substantive and specific case studies. When and why did Japanese rules of product liability come into line with those of the EU and the USA? How and why did judicial review come late to the legal systems of Holland and Scandinavia? Why is the present wave of USA-influenced legal reforms in Latin Amercia apparently having more success than the previous round? How does competition between the legal and accountancy professions affect patterns of bankruptcy? The chapters in this volume, which include a comprehensive theoretical introduction, offer a range of valuable insights even if they also show that the

Iran is now at the center of political and social developments in the Middle East. This book examines the reform of the judicial system in 20th century Iran and is the first to relate state-building process with rule of law promotion and judicial reform in the region. This subject occupies the critical juncture of three developments in the contemporary study of Iranian society as an important and early case of social revolution and reform in the Middle East: the state-building process in a non-Western country throughout the 20th century, the incorporation of a non-Western Muslim country into the Western legal framework through codification and transplantation (1911-1979), and the Islamicization process after this critical social development and the Islamic Revolution of 1979. This exceptional study furthers our understanding of Iranian modern history as well as the democratization process, human rights and rule of law issues in the Middle East.

Khaled Abou El Fadl's book represents the first systematic examination of the idea and treatment of political resistance and rebellion in Islamic law. Pre-modern jurists produced an extensive and sophisticated discourse on the legality of rebellion and the treatment due to rebels under Islamic law. The book examines the emergence and development of these discourses from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries and considers juristic responses to the various terror-inducing strategies employed by rebels including assassination, stealth attacks and rape. The study demonstrates how Muslim jurists went about restructuring several competing doctrinal sources in order to construct a highly technical discourse on rebellion. Indeed many of these rulings may have a profound influence on contemporary practices. This is an important and challenging book which sheds light on the complexities of Islamic law and pre-modern attitudes to dissidence and rebellion.