The second edition of French Law: A Comparative Approach provides an authoritative, comprehensive, and up to date account of the French legal system and its internal workings. It sets out the institutional frameworks, substantive law, and methodologies that underpin the system, and provides expert insight into the civil law way of thinking and an explanation of how law is made and enforced in France. It offers detailed case studies of how French law is shaped in practice in key ar...

This work deals with the temporal effect of judicial decisions and more specifically, with the hardship caused by the retroactive operation of overruling decisions. By means of a jurisprudential and comparative analysis, the book explores several issues created by the overruling of earlier decisions.Overruling of earlier decisions, when it occurs, operates retrospectively with the effect that it infringes the principle of legal certainty through upsetting any previous arrangements ...

Comparative study has emerged as the new frontier of constitutional law scholarship as well as an important aspect of constitutional adjudication. Increasingly, jurists, scholars, and constitution drafters worldwide are accepting that 'we are all comparativists now'. And yet, despite this tremendous renaissance, the 'comparative' aspect of the enterprise, as a method and a project, remains under-theorized and blurry. Fundamental questions concerning the very meaning and purpose of comparat...

Juliano Z. Benvindo investigates the current movement of constitutional courts towards political activism, especially by focusing on the increasing use of the balancing method as a “rational” justification for this process. From the critical perception of the serious risks of this movement to democracy, the book takes as examples two constitutional realities, Germany and Brazil, in order to discuss the rationality, correctness, and legitimacy of constitutional decisions within this context...

The theory of natural law grounds human laws in the universal truths of God’s creation. Until very recently, lawyers in the Western tradition studied natural law as part of their training, and the task of the judicial system was to put its tenets into concrete form, building an edifice of positive law on natural law’s foundations. Although much has been written about natural law in theory, surprisingly little has been said about how it has shaped legal practice. Natural Law in Court

Does an offender have the right to be punished? "The right to be punished" may sound like an oxymoron, but it is not necessarily so. With the emergence of modern criminal law, the offender gained the right to be punished by rational criminal law rather than being lynched by an angry mob. The present-day offender may have the right to be punished by doctrinal sentencing rather than being subjected to verdicts based on vague, unclear, and uncertain principles. In m...

Acclaimed as the "the most objective prosecutors in the world", the German prosecution service has long attracted the attention in the past of comparative law scholars. At first glance, the institutional position and statutory mandate of German prosecutors indicate that that reputation is well-deserved. Unfortunately, the introduction of charge-bargaining has opened the door to criticism that German prosecutors have abandoned their role of objective decision-makers. Using interview data co...

This book examines the role of the EU in ensuring privacy and data protection on the internet. It describes and demonstrates the importance of privacy and data protection for our democracies and how the enjoyment of these rights is challenged by, particularly, big data and mass surveillance.The book takes the perspective of the EU mandate under Article 16 TFEU. It analyses the contributions of the specific actors and roles within the EU framework: the judiciary, the EU legislator, ...

"Over the past decade, Carothers has established himself as the leading U.S. expert on democracy promotion. He is a powerful critic not only of the nuts-and-bolts of democracy assistance but also of U.S. grand strategy overall."-SAIS Review Promoting the rule of law has become a major part of Western efforts to spread democracy and market economics around the world. Yet, although programs to foster the rule of law abroad have mushroomed, well-grounded knowledge about what factors ensure su...

The book develops a general legal theory concerning the liability for offenses involving artificial intelligence systems. The involvement of the artificial intelligence systems in these offenses may be as perpetrators, accomplices or mere instruments. The general legal theory proposed in this book is based on the current criminal law in most modern legal systems.In most modern countries, unmanned vehicles, sophisticated surgical systems, industrial computing systems, trading algori...

Autonomy provides a framework that allows for regions within countries to exercise self-government beyond the extent available to other sub-state units. This book presents detailed case studies of thirteen such autonomies from around the world, in which noted experts on each outline the constitutional, legal and institutional frameworks as well as how these arrangements have worked in practice to protect minority rights and prevent secession of the territories in question. The volume's edi...

While much has been gained from the traditional legal scholars' doctrinal mode of analysis of the takings issue, this volume is presented in the belief that contributions from scholars from the various schools of thought that comprise Law and Economics can complement the traditional doctrinal approach to law. As the discipline of Law and Economics continues to advance, it remains heterodox; there are several vantage points from which to describe and analyze the interrealtionships between l...