scholarly journals FOREWORD: WHAT DOES CHRISTIANITY OFFER TO THE WORLD OF LAW?

2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-8
Author(s):  
John Witte
Keyword(s):  
Special Interest Groups ◽  
First Year ◽  
Study Guides ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
The World ◽  
The Law ◽  
Upper Level ◽  
Law Student ◽  
Law Professors ◽  
Analytical Power

“CLS” was an acronym with two very different meanings when I was a fledgling law student some thirty-five years ago. For most, it meant “critical legal studies,” a burgeoning new movement of sundry neo-Marxist jurists and philosophers collectively bent on exposing the fallacies and false equalities of modern law. Many of my first-year law professors were the high priests of this CLS movement. They were making serious waves at the time with their denunciation of much that was considered sound and settled in the law. The best CLS professors taught black letter doctrine—and then shredded it with rhetorical and analytical power. That instruction appealed to my native ethic of semper reformanda—always reforming and working to improve our traditions. Other professors simply taught their pet critical topics, sending us students scrambling to the bookstore in search of study guides that would acquaint us with the legal basics. After a year of such CLS instruction, I could not wait to take the upper-level electives that would no doubt unveil the new and better legal system CLS had in mind. Little was on offer. The “crits,” I soon learned, were better at deconstruction than reconstruction of the law. Not surprisingly, this movement has now faded and fractured into sundry special interest groups.

scholarly journals The First and Fiftieth Years of Independent Burma's Law Reports

2004 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myint Zan
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
Case Law ◽  
First Year ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Law ◽  
Law Reports

This article compares the annual Law Reports of the first year of Burmese independence in 1948 with those published in the fiftieth year of Burmese independence (1998). In making the comparison, the author highlights the fundamental changes that occurred in the structure and composition of the highest courts in Burma, along with relevant background and factors effecting these changes. There was a movement away from the predominant use of English in 1948 towards judgments exclusively in Burmese in the 1998 Law Reports. Burma's neighbours, who shared a common law legal heritage, did not follow this trend after their independence. This shift, combined with Burma's isolation from the rest of the world, makes analysis of Burmese case law from the past three and a half decades very difficult for anyone not proficient in the Burmese language. This article tries to fill the lacunae as far as the Law Report from the fiftieth year of Burma's independence is concerned.

Law, Literature, and the Vanishing Real: On the Future of an Interdisciplinary Illusion

PMLA ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 120 (2) ◽  
pp. 442-453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Stone Peters
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Law And Literature ◽  
New Historicism ◽  
Critical Legal Studies ◽  
Amnesty International ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Colonial Theory ◽  
The Law ◽  
Law Professors

I begin with a story: Some never-to-be-untangled amalgamation of history, caricature, and the truer than true that is fiction. A little over a decade ago, at a great and august university, a group of professors met to talk about law and literature. Most of the literature professors had been Vietnam War protesters, staged sit-ins, marched on Washington. Some of the law professors had spent time in Paris listening to Derrida and smoking Gauloises by the Seine. They had all watched the birth and death of deconstruction, critical legal studies, new historicism, various feminisms (though they weren't positively sure all these were dead). The law professors had been reading Adorno and Althusser; Barthes, Benjamin, and Butler; Deleuze and Derrida. The literature professors had been reading the Critical Legal Studies Reader and Amnesty International reports. The law professors were worried that narratology and post-colonial theory might already be passé. The literature professors were concerned, as a matter of principle.

scholarly journals A More Elevated Patriotism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martti Koskenniemi ◽  
Ville Kari
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Technological Change ◽  
International Law ◽  
Comparative Studies ◽  
Comparative Law ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
The World ◽  
The Law

This chapter explores the origins of the disciplines of international and comparative law in nineteenth-century Europe. It charts in broad terms the emergence of comparative studies of law in France, Germany, Britain, and elsewhere among jurists and scholars who sought to deploy the language of law in the service of both universal and domestic ‘civilization’. In an age of rapid societal, economic, constitutional, and technological change, a progressive spirit of development of the law in all its dimensions thrived in a constant intercourse between the national, colonial, and international legal spheres of thought. Later in the century, various specialized branches of cosmopolitan legal studies including international law and comparative law branched off to their own academic and institutional fields. These nonetheless continued to share many ideas about universal justice, the liberal ideals, the role of Europe in the world, and other matters.

The New Terrain of International Law

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen J. Alter
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Courts ◽  
Constitutional Review ◽  
Delegation Of Authority ◽  
The World ◽  
The Law

In 1989, when the Cold War ended, there were six permanent international courts. Today there are more than two dozen that have collectively issued over thirty-seven thousand binding legal rulings. This book charts the developments and trends in the creation and role of international courts, and explains how the delegation of authority to international judicial institutions influences global and domestic politics. The book presents an in-depth look at the scope and powers of international courts operating around the world. Focusing on dispute resolution, enforcement, administrative review, and constitutional review, the book argues that international courts alter politics by providing legal, symbolic, and leverage resources that shift the political balance in favor of domestic and international actors who prefer policies more consistent with international law objectives. International courts name violations of the law and perhaps specify remedies. The book explains how this limited power—the power to speak the law—translates into political influence, and it considers eighteen case studies, showing how international courts change state behavior. The case studies, spanning issue areas and regions of the world, collectively elucidate the political factors that often intervene to limit whether or not international courts are invoked and whether international judges dare to demand significant changes in state practices.

New and not so new strategies in promoting integrity with particular reference to Africa

2018 ◽  
pp. 38-74
Author(s):  
Barry Rider
Keyword(s):  
World Economy ◽  
Intelligence Community ◽  
Generational Change ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The World ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Law ◽  
Financial Intelligence ◽  
New Strategies

This article is focused on exploration not merely proposed developments in and refinements of the law and its administration, but the very significant role that financial intelligence can and should play in protecting our societies. It is the contention of the author that the intelligence community at large and in particular financial intelligence units have an important role to play in protecting our economies and ensuring confidence is maintained in our financial institutions and markets. In this article the author considers a number of issues pertinent to the advancement of integrity and in particular the interdiction of corruption to some degree from the perspective of Africa. The potential for Africa as a player in the world economy is enormous. So far, the ambiguous inheritance of rapacious empires and the turmoil of self-dealing elites in post-colonial times has successfully obscured and undermined this potential. Indeed, such has been the mismanagement, selfishness and importuning that many have grave doubts as to the ability of many states to achieve an ordered transition to what they could and should be. South Africa is perhaps the best example of a society that while avoiding the catastrophe that its recent past predicted, remains racked by corruption and mismanagement. That there is the will in many parts of the continent to further stability and security by addressing the cancer of corruption, the reality is that few have remained or been allowed to remain steadfast in their mission and all have been frustrated by political self-interest and lack of resources. The key might be education and inter-generational change as it has been in other parts of the world, but only an optimist would see this coming any time soon – there is too much vested interest inside and outside Africa in keeping things much as they are! The author focuses not so much on attempting to perfect the letter of the law, but rather on improving the ways in which we administer it.

Consciousness, law of nature, and nomological determinism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoyang Yu
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Important Thing ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
The World ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Brain

Nomological determinism does not mean everything is predictable. It just means everything follows the law of nature. And the most important thing Is that the brain and consciousness follow the law of nature. In other words, there is no free will. Without life, brain and consciousness, the world follows law of nature, that is clear. The life and brain are also part of nature, and they follow the law of nature. This is due to scientific findings. There are not enough scientific findings for consciousness yet. But I think that the consciousness is a nature phenomenon, and it also follows the law of nature.

Engineering for good: A case of community driven engineering innovation

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chinweike Eseonu ◽  
Martin A Cortes
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Students ◽  
Technology Innovation ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
First Year ◽  
Engineering Curriculum ◽  
Engineering Design Process ◽  
The World ◽  
The University ◽  
Social Consideration

There is a culture of disengagement from social consideration in engineering disciplines. This means that first year engineering students, who arrive planning to change the world through engineering, lose this passion as they progress through the engineering curriculum. The community driven technology innovation and investment program described in this paper is an attempt to reverse this trend by fusing community engagement with the normal engineering design process. This approach differs from existing project or trip based approaches – outreach – because the focus is on local communities with which the university team forms a long-term partnership through weekly in-person meetings and community driven problem statements – engagement.

Maxims

2019 ◽  
pp. 654-669
Author(s):  
Donald R. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Islamic Law ◽  
Legal Interpretation ◽  
Legal Practice ◽  
Moral Foundation ◽  
Legal Principles ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
The World ◽  
The Law

This chapter examines the history and use of maxims in legal traditions from several areas of the world. A comparison of legal maxims in Roman, Hindu, Jewish, and Islamic law shows that maxims function both as a basic tools for legal interpretation and as distillations of substantive legal principles applicable to many cases. Maxims are characterized by their unquestionable character, even though it is often easy to demonstrate contradictions between them. As a result, legal maxims seem linked to the recurrent desire for law to have a moral foundation. Although maxims have lost their purchase in most contemporary jurisprudence and legal practice, categories such as “canons of construction,” “legal principles,” and “super precedents” all show similarities to the brief and limited collections of maxims in older legal traditions. The search for core ideas underlying the law thus continues under different names.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document