Law

This chapter is about the relations between the national legal system and the ‘other’—especially from the creation of the modern nation state in the early nineteenth century and up to current times. Comparative law in the twentieth century was dominated by the concept of ‘valid law’, functionalism, legal positivism and legal realism. The parameters of time and space within law were minimalized. The German law emigrés from Nazi Germany to England and the United States played a special role for the relation to comparative law, and several of these scholars played a great role for the post-war development of comparative law. Critical theories and post-colonialism have developed new legal discourses on culture and identity, and have increased interest not only in history but also in differences between legal cultures—and thus an increasing interest in comparative legal history.

This article discusses critical debate about individual control over the beginnings of life that has sprawled across the fields of academic law, philosophy, politics, religion, the life sciences, and the self-christened field of bioethics from the 1960s up to the present. The subject has formed in and around a cascade of popular pressures; biomedical advances; legislative, judicial, and public policy initiatives; media attention; and the boiling politics in which, at least in the United States, the whole series of enterprises has been bathed. The present undertaking will train on the law. It covers contraception in the United States, abortion law and policy in the United States, and contraception and abortion in Europe and the United Kingdom.

This chapter examines issues surrounding the right of access to and limits on evidence dossiers in civil law systems. It first provides an overview of the general aims pursued by the law in regulating the parties’ right of access to the investigative file before discussing supranational sources, such as the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the case law of the European Court on Human Rights (ECtHR). In particular, it explores how the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and certain directives adopted by the European Union on the right to information by defendants and by victims has influenced the criminal procedures of EU Member States. It also analyzes disclosure at the International Criminal Court (ICC) and concludes by explaining how civil law systems have changed in recent years, what their common features and shortcomings are, and how they could be improved.

This chapter discusses how Canadian constitutional issues come before the courts. Its primary focus is on litigation arising under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Since the entrenchment of the Canadian Charter in 1982, traditional legal process doctrines, such as standing, intervention, costs, and reference opinions have seen significant expansion. Though initially cautious, Canadian courts have recognized that the ability to initiate constitutional claims is integral to the principle of legality. The mechanisms by which constitutional issues are judicially reviewed, and decisions regarding who may participate and how such litigation may be supported, are crucial determinants of substantive constitutionalism in Canada.

This article discusses the process of empirical research on access to justice, explaining the procedure from data collection to analysis. Research into access to justice finds ways to render civil justice to citizens equitably. Reliable, non-anecdotal data is a prerequisite for useful empirical research into access to justice. Three international initiatives illustrate the reflection of access to justice in research projects. They are, the World Bank's Justice for the Poor Program, UNDP Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, and the Tilburg Microjustice Initiative. The most comprehensive empirical projects on access to justice are those sponsored at the national or sub-national level. Non-governmental drivers of broad-based data collection are other legal actors. This article discusses examples of data collection and evaluation in countries where research has generated data on civil justice. Finally, this article discusses barriers to access to justice, which cause exclusion.

This article examines the five forms of payment for healthcare that are common in the United States: out-of-pocket, charity, direct public provision, public health insurance, and private health insurance (including employer-sponsored insurance). After discussing the history of each of the five approaches, the article considers their advantages and disadvantages as well as their current status. It examines next the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Although the Affordable Care Act focuses primarily on expanding public health insurance and public financing for private health insurance, it incorporates all five approaches to financing care. Finally this chapter considers why the United States retains this patchwork of different forms of coverage rather than adopting a single coherent system of health care finance and discusses the likely future of the American approach.

This chapter examines the issue of access to healthcare, with particular emphasis on the five dimensions of the model proposed by Roy Penchansky and J. William Thomas: availability, accessibility, accommodation, affordability, and acceptability. It also discusses the constitutional powers of states and the federal government with respect to health, along with relevant health law. It outlines the three categories of law governing access to physicians and hospitals: direct obligations of physicians and hospitals to provide free care to the indigent; federal programs to provide health insurance or health services to vulnerable populations; and laws that affect the delivery of care based on the patient’s physical characteristics and immigration status. The chapter concludes by considering the United States’s failure to realize the human rights aspect of health in international treaties and suggesting that the country’s efforts when it comes to access to physicians and hospitals leave much to be desired.

This chapter examines the procedures for acceding to and withdrawing from the European Union. It is argued that, while determined by (Member) states’ decisions, accession and withdrawal are also driven by EU institutions, and by the canons of the EU legal order. Indeed, more than simply governing the entry into, and the exit from the Union, the two procedures fulfil a specific function in relation to its objective of an ‘ever closer union amongst the peoples of Europe’. As such, they are fully embedded in the system of the treaties, and form an integral part of the evolving EU constitutional structure they underpin.

This chapter examines the issue of accountability in relation to international organizations (IOs). The research questions deserving most intense theoretical and empirical attention are, first, who should be accountable to whom and, second, to what extent they actually are. It outlines some approaches to answering these questions; highlights the most promising one; and sketches the contours of a possible solution to a major problem that plagues that approach. The chapter shows that the selection and design of IOs plays a special role in overall assessments of accountability. The most persuasive answer to the first question remains some version of the principle that everyone who is affected by a political decision should be able to influence that decision. Even under conditions of global interconnectedness, this does not mean that everyone should have a say on any decisions taken anywhere else: decision-makers should be accountable to specific constituencies in proportion to the power they wield over those constituencies.

This chapter focuses on accountability and its political, legal, and financial aspects. Drawing on Mark Bovens’ conception of accountability that addresses the relationship between an actor and a forum, it examines how political, legal, and financial accountability apply to the European Union institutions as well as to the Member States. More specifically, it discusses the nature of the political, legal and financial accountability that rests, or should rest, on the Member States in their capacity as contracting parties to the EU. The chapter also considers three principal dimensions that shape discourse on political accountability, along with the relevance of Member States’ political accountability in relation to substantive Treaty provisions and compliance with EU legislation. After analysing the foundational precepts of EU legal accountability, including the amenability of EU institutions to judicial review and access to judicial review by aggrieved individuals, the chapter concludes by outlining the foundational precepts of EU financial accountability.