Making the Legal System More Responsive to Community: A Report on the Impact of Victorian Community Legal Centre (CLC) Law Reform Initiatives

Author(s):  
Liz Curran
2011 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. W. Kostal

In August 1945, Karl Loewenstein began work as senior expert advisor to the Legal Division of American Military Government (AMG) in Berlin. An eminent German-born and educated political scientist and jurisprudent, Loewenstein had come to assist in the “democratization” of his homeland's Nazified law and legal institutions. It was soon obvious, however, that in its crucial first phase the American legal mission in Germany was in disarray. The development and implementation of American law reform policy was being undercut by ill-prepared leadership, poor planning, and the scarcity of learning about German laws, lawyers, and legal history. By Loewenstein's reckoning, many American officers had been “set to work on problems of which they have not the slightest idea and very little professional qualification.” Critical law reform initiatives had been based upon expedient “over-simplifications” of Nazism and its eradication. By January 1946, his initial misgivings having given way to mordant despair, Loewenstein concluded that the American program for the democratization of the German legal system was irrevocably “lost,” a “failure which stinks to high heaven.” This article sets forth the theoretical and observational bases of Loewenstein's assessment and evaluates its cogency.


2019 ◽  
pp. 53
Author(s):  
ROMAN PETROV

У статті досліджено вплив Суду Європейського Союзу (ЄС) на впровадження і застосування Угоди про асоціацію між Україною та ЄС, що викликало безпрецедентні політичні, економічні та правові реформи в Україні. Зокрема, розглядаються конституційні виклики, які постали перед державою під час виконання Угоди в правовій системі. Крім того, досліджено два питання. Перше – ефективне впровадження та застосування Угоди про асоціацію між Україною та ЄС в українській правовій системі. Друге – сумісність і відповідність Угоди Конституції України. Проаналізовано останні політичні та правові події в Україні через призму ефективної реалізації Угоди про асоціацію між Україною та ЄС і зростання проєвропейського правового активізму в державі. На закінчення стверджується, що Угода про асоціацію між Україною та ЄС посилює пристосованість національного конституційного устрою до цілей досягнення європейської інтеграції та застосування європейських спільних цінностей в Україні. Угода про асоціацію між Україною та ЄС створила стійку інституційну та правову основу для застосування acquis ЄС (правового доробку ЄС), включаючи прецедентне право ЄС та комплексне законодавче наближення між законодавством України та ЄС. Однак інституційні реформи, які вже відбулися, не можна вважати цілком достатніми. Верховній Раді України не вдалося запровадити основні та процедурні засади для застосування та впровадження Угоди в правовий порядок України. Однак ця прогалина частково заповнюється зростаючим судовим активізмом в Україні. Вітчизняні судді вже почали посилатися на Угоду про асоціацію між Україною та ЄС і відповідні частини acquis ЄС у своїх рішеннях, тим самим закладаючи основу для регулярного застосування загальних принципів права ЄС у процесі виконання й імплементації Угоди про асоціацію між Україною та ЄС.


Author(s):  
Gina Heathcote

Reflecting on recent gender law reform within international law, this book examines the nature of feminist interventions to consider what the next phase of feminist approaches to international law might include. To undertake analysis of existing gender law reform and future gender law reform, the book engages critical legal inquiries on international law on the foundations of international law. At the same time, the text looks beyond mainstream feminist accounts to consider the contributions, and tensions, across a broader range of feminist methodologies than has been adapted and incorporated into gender law reform including transnational and postcolonial feminisms. The text therefore develops dialogues across feminist approaches, beyond dominant Western liberal, radical, and cultural feminisms, to analyse the rise of expertise and the impact of fragmentation on global governance, to study sovereignty and international institutions, and to reflect on the construction of authority within international law. The book concludes that through feminist dialogues that incorporate intersectionality, and thus feminist dialogues with queer, crip, and race theories, that reflect on the politics of listening and which are actively attentive to the conditions of privilege from which dominant feminist approaches are articulated, opportunity for feminist dialogues to shape feminist futures on international law emerge. The book begins this process through analysis of the conditions in which the author speaks and the role histories of colonialism play out to define her own privilege, thus requiring attention to indigenous feminisms and, in the UK, the important interventions of Black British feminisms.


2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 517-529 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlo Bellavite Pellegrini ◽  
Bruno S. Sergi ◽  
Emiliano Sironi

Purpose – Alternative corporate governance systems (CGSs) have attracted a significant bulk of research recently. While the connection between the adoption of an alternative system (one tier board or two tier board system) and firms’ performances has not been fully analysed yet, the purpose of this paper is to analyse whether companies which have turned into an alternative board system have eventually improved their performance over time. Design/methodology/approach – Using a sample of more than 15,000 Italian unlisted joint stock companies, the authors compare performance outcomes in 2009 of firms adopting alternative systems with performances of firms that maintained the system in force before the 2003 Corporate Law Reform (defined as “traditional”). Because of the choice of an alternative system (one tier or two tier board) instead of a traditional one is not random, the authors reduce selection bias implementing matching methods and comparing firms that are close in terms of propensity score measured in 2003 (the year before the new CGSs have been introduced by a corporate law reform). Findings – The authors do not find evidence of a significant improvement of performances in 2009 concerning those firms that have adopted a one tier or two tier board systems with respect to those which maintained a traditional one. Originality/value – The novelty of the study concerns the application of propensity score matching for the evaluation of the impact of the change of the CGS that is possible in presence of two conditions that are all verified in our setting: first, to have a country where corporate law allows for choosing among different systems; in this case Italy is a good laboratory, because it allows for the choice among three different systems; and second, to have the opportunity to evaluate the effect of the change in light of a relatively recent “pre-treatment” condition; this is made possible by the fact that before the 2003 Reform of corporate law all the companies had a traditional system.


1987 ◽  
Vol 31 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 151-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. Schapera

In the closing paragraph of his inaugural lecture Law and Language, Professor Allott referred to what he termed “a daunting obstacle” to the intensive study of African legal systems.That obstacle is the rapid disappearance, before our very eyes, of the traditional systems that we have proposed to study. A generation ago there would not have been that difficulty; but today the traditional tribunals have vanished in many African countries where their place has been taken by statutory local courts. Even where the traditional courts appear to have survived, at least in name, they are usually affected by the impact of western law and institutions and of central government control.Those words were written in 1965. How true and necessary they were is shown by the fact that more than fifty years previously—even more than “a generation ago”—the impact of “western” influences upon the Tswana peoples of the Bechuanaland Protectorate (now the Republic of Botswana) had already led to many changes in the indigenous legal system, although, at that time, the “traditional courts” still survived virtually intact and not merely “in name”.The nature and extent of those changes can be readily ascertained by the fortunate chance that, there are still available the records of approximately 470 cases tried, over a period of six and a half years, in the highest traditional court of the Ngwaketse, a major Tswana chiefdom.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 833-846
Author(s):  
Tatjana Hörnle

AbstractThe article describes the #MeToo-movement in the United States and Germany and discusses the merits and problems of this social phenomenon. It highlights the fact that some features of #MeToo (blaming and sanctioning wrongdoers) resemble those of criminal punishment and thus require careful justification. In the final part, the author examines the impact of the #MeToo-movement on criminal law reform.


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