BIALL @ 50 Years: 2010 to date

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (02) ◽  
pp. 107-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Narinder Toor

Back in December 2009, I joined Arnold & Porter as an information professional. Working at a law firm that values and celebrates the contributions made by their support staff, has meant that this role has transformed into a very rewarding career. Reflecting on the last 10 years, the one word I would use to sum up law librarianship is expertise. As information professionals, we research and review areas and concepts that are unfamiliar but we are adept at not only pinpointing the key points and issues but conveying them with clarity, certainty and confidence. As well as providing this invaluable support, we guide, inform and advise. Over the past decade, BIALL has remained central to the law librarian community, helping us to navigate the ever changing landscape of the legal sector.

Author(s):  
Roger J.R. Levesque

The law does not square with people’s experiences of segregation and diversity. An empirical look at the legal system’s effectiveness in addressing school segregation reveals, from a practical perspective, that segregation persists and even surpasses levels before the civil rights movement. Yet, the legal system continues as though segregation is a thing of the past. Even more bizarre, the negative effects of racial and ethnic disparities in schooling are well documented, and the legal system compels itself to ignore much of them. To exacerbate matters, legal analysts increasingly interpret the law as a system that operates in a different world than the one documented by researchers who describe disparities and what could be done about them. For their part, researchers pervasively continue to document experiences without considering the legal system’s basic concerns. This book details the source of these gaps, evaluates their empirical and legal foundation, explains why they persist, and reveals what can be done about them.


2008 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-124
Author(s):  
Rachel Baird

AbstractThe right of prompt release has been interpreted by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea as a safeguard, balancing the right of the coastal State to detain and deal with arrested fishing vessels and crew on the one hand, with the interests of the flag State to secure the release of detained vessels on the other. As the incidence of illegal fishing within national fishing zones has increased in the past decade, many coastal States, such as Australia, have implemented increasingly harsh penalties aimed at deterring the fishers. One such measure involves the operation of an automatic forfeiture regime whereby the detained vessel, gear and catch are forfeited to the Commonwealth. This regime operates in the absence of any judgement on the merits. This paper examines the details of the Australian legislation in addition to recent case law and concludes that the operation of the automatic forfeiture regime has the potential to upset the balance established in Article 73 of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.


2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-42
Author(s):  
Folker Bittmann

The aim of German criminal procedural law is not to convict the accused at any cost. Even a guilty party can only be convicted if the criminal procedure is held in accordance with the law. If this is not possible, the German legal system accepts the risk of possibly acquitting a guilty party; it finds this more tolerable than the irregular conviction of the culprit. A criminal procedure seeks the truth. Only on the basis of a judicial conviction of the crime and its culprit may a sentence be imposed. This, though, can only be based on the so-calledprocedural truth.On the one hand, the past can never be reconstructed precisely; on the other hand, clarification can only be found through legal means and by following designated paths allowed by procedural law. Therefore, further investigation must cease if it is only possible to proceed by violating procedural law.


Author(s):  
John M Budd

The fundamental premise of this paper is that the work of information professionals relies upon, and is an extension of, memory. Memory is an essential element in shaping consciousness, so it is likewise essential to information work. The place the past occupies is a complex one, as will be demonstrated in the presentation. The past cannot simply be categorized as history, since “history” depends on agency beyond the individual information professional. Models offered by Bergson and Wilson will bring the complexity to the fore and will illustrate how information professionals rely on memory for the most fundamental aspects of information work.


2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 405-452
Author(s):  
Roderick A. Macdonald

In orthodox theory, the law of property is held to be fundamentally about the identification and protection of rights in things (corporeal property), assumed to be finite in space and infinite in time. But modern economies undermine the explanatory power of this orthodoxy four ways. First, the space of property can no longer be easily fixed once and for all. This is especially the case for incorporeals but is also true of corporeals. Second, the time of property is now understood differently. The past distinction between fruits and products has been questioned with the recognition that fruits, like products, can also diminish capital value. Third, the close association of fruits and revenues is becoming untenable. Many types of revenue actually represent the price of a partial alienation and can, consequently, be considered proceeds. Finally, developments both material (like genetic engineering) and intellectual (like moral rights) challenge the idea of property as a thing to use. While the theory of property in Book IV of the C.C.Q. continues to reflect traditional spatio-temporal assumptions, the law of secured transactions in Book VI rests on an alternative vision of property as value. This essay deploys a detailed analysis of the idea of fruits to illustrate how today the Civil Code balances distinctions between fruits, products and accessions (property as thing) on the one hand and between revenues, capital and proceeds (property as value) on the other.


Jus Cogens ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franco Peirone

Abstract There is a perennial ambiguity in the rule-of-law preposition: it predicates that the law shall rule, but which law? This legal loophole has led to a diverse array of interpretations of the concept. Of these, two appear particularly adverse to what the rule of law should primarily be—the rulership of the law—yet still remain dominant. On the one hand, the rule of law is intended to be the vehicle to deliver above-the-law goods such as human rights or other individual entitlements like property, and to forever shield them against any other force, including the law. On the other hand, the rule of law is believed to be a tool at the rulers’ disposal, who make use of the law but are not bound by it, for either legal or practical reasons. In both cases, a pre-legal setting for society allocates rulership to something but not the law, against the very essence of the ideal: an authoritative legal practice for the sake of regulating the present society. As such, the rule of law has to meet certain requirements of craftsmanship, like conditions in law-making and law-enforcement, and sources, which are to be democratically underpinned.


2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro Calafate

The historical roots of the concept of original rights of the indigenous peoples of Brazil concerning the lands they traditionally occupy, enshrined in Article 231 of the Brazilian Federal Constitution of 1988, refer to the law of nations, taught by Iberian teachers of the 16th and 17th centuries, particularly with regard to the scholastic concept of domain. We also show how the concept of Indigenato, formulated in 1912 by João Mendes Junior, considered over the past decades as the one that best illuminates Article 231 of the Brazilian Constitution of 1988, is entirely founded on this Iberian school of natural law and law of nations, inviting us to a dialogue with the classics.


2011 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-171
Author(s):  
Nāṣir Al-Dīn Abū Khaḍīr

The ʿUthmānic way of writing (al-rasm al-ʿUthmānī) is a science that specialises in the writing of Qur'anic words in accordance with a specific ‘pattern’. It follows the writing style of the Companions at the time of the third caliph, ʿUthmān b. ʿAffān, and was attributed to ʿUthmān on the basis that he was the one who ordered the collection and copying of the Qur'an into the actual muṣḥaf. This article aims to expound on the two fundamental functions of al-rasm al-ʿUthmānī: that of paying regard to the ‘correct’ pronunciation of the words in the muṣḥaf, and the pursuit of the preclusion of ambiguity which may arise in the mind of the reader and his auditor. There is a further practical aim for this study: to show the connection between modern orthography and the ʿUthmānic rasm in order that we, nowadays, are thereby able to overcome the problems faced by calligraphers and writers of the past in their different ages and cultures.


2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 449-479
Author(s):  
Sridevi Thambapillay

The Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 1976 (LRA) which was passed in 1976 and came into force on 1st March 1982, standardized the laws concerning non-Muslim family matters. Many family issues concerning non-Muslim have emerged ever since, the most important being the effects of unilateral conversion to Islam by one of the parties to the marriage. There has been a lot of public hue and cry for amendments to be made to the LRA. After much deliberation, the Malaysian Parliament finally passed the amendments to the LRA in October 2017, which came into force in December 2018. Although the amendments have addressed selected family law issues, the most important amendment on child custody in a unilateral conversion to Islam was dropped from the Bill at the last minute. Howsoever, at the end of the day, the real question that needs to be addressed is whether the amendments have resolved the major issues that have arisen over the past four decades? Hence, the purpose of this article is as follows: first, to examine the brief background to the passing of the LRA, secondly, to analyse the 2017 amendments, thirdly, to identify the weaknesses that still exist in the LRA, and finally, to suggest recommendations to overcome these weaknesses by comparing the Malaysian position with the Singaporean position. In conclusion, it is submitted that despite the recent amendments to the LRA, much needs to be done to overcome all the remaining issues that have still not been addressed.


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