Law

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 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 introduces the rationality and legitimacy conditions and positions them within contemporary sceptical and non-sceptical accounts of adjudication. Two sections are concerned with non-sceptical accounts of adjudication. The next section begins with an analysis of the rationality condition. The article moves on to show that the existence of incommensurability in hard case adjudication ensures that adjudication cannot be rational in the strong sense. It demonstrates that values are implicated within the practice of adjudication, by reference to some examples and by invoking an old jurisprudential lesson about the nature of rule application and interpretation. This article further discusses value pluralism and sketches three claims. It argues that it is difficult to show that rationally indeterminate judicial decisions are legitimate. This article concludes that law and adjudication may not be as pre-eminently desirable as often assumed, since they are not more rational than other non-arbitrary means of organizing our collective life and resolving disputes. ...

Administrative justice receives varying emphasis in different jurisdictions. This article explores empirical legal studies, which fall on either side of the decision making-and-review dividing line. It then seeks to link research on the impact of dispute resolution and on-going administrative practices. The article also highlights limitations in existing impact research, focusing on the tendency to examine single dispute resolution mechanisms in isolation from others. Furthermore it suggests some future directions for empirical administrative justice research. It also explores the potential of legal consciousness research for empirical administrative justice scholarship, and suggests new territories for administrative justice researchers: criminal justice processes and administrative activities of private agencies. It concludes by presenting an argument that a mapping of administrative justice institutions, both historically and cross-jurisdictionally, can reveal much about how relationships between citizens and administrative agencies may shift across time and space. ...

This article outlines the major legal and policy issues that the development of rights to admission and establishment raise under international law. It begins with an assessment of the meaning of the terms ‘admission’ and ‘establishment’ as well as the related term ‘market access’. It goes on to consider various interests of the host country and the investor that inform the development of legal responses in this field. It continues with a review of the major trends in admission and establishment provisions in national laws and in international investment agreements. As regards the international dimension, this article relies to a great extent on the significant work done in this regard by United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and seeks to update that work in the light of more recent developments. Finally, by way of conclusion, it seeks to relate the foregoing discussion to some wider policy issues. ...

This article begins with a discussion of the constitutionalization of affirmative action and its side effects. It examines the legal underpinnings of affirmative action in two relatively well-endowed developing countries and former British colonies — Malaysia and South Africa — where the disadvantaged groups that receive the benefits of affirmative action are numerical majorities from the start. It also considers the case of India, where the disadvantaged groups targeted for affirmative action initially are numerical minorities. The discussion then turns to the non-constitutionalization of affirmative action and its side effects. In countries where affirmative action has not been constitutionalized and where the beneficiaries (women excepted) are minority groups, the legal validity of a program of this kind will depend upon whether it meets a set of formal requirements. The most important of those is arguably that the outcome of the decisional process by which scarce goods are being allocated should not be exclusively determined by group membership. The soft, gender-focused, ‘discrimination-blocking’ EU affirmative action model and the (exceptional) US affirmative action regime are examined. ...

This chapter traces the two major trends in thinking about Africa’s engagement with international law from a historical perspective: ‘contributionists’ who emphasize Africa’s contributions to international law, on the one hand; and critical theorists who examine Africa’s subordination in its international relations as a legacy that is traceable to international law, on the other. For contributionists such as Taslim Elias Olawale, ‘inter-civilizational participation in the process of crafting genuinely universal norms’ has historically involved Africa as a central player. This emphasis on Africa’s participation in the formation of international law amounts to contributionism. Critical theorists, such as Makau Wa Mutua, Siba Grovogui, Kamari Clark, Ibironke Odumosu, and Obiora Okafor, among others, by contrast focus on the manner in which modern international law continues the legacy of colonial disempowerment while providing spaces for resistance and reform. ...

This chapter argues that the impact of Islam on the contribution of North Africa in the production of the norms of international law has been but relative. It must be associated with another reality, which is that of the relationships between powers and their competition for domination. All through the centuries of coexistence of the Muslim empires and the European nations, their reciprocal relations were guided by war strategies and by the power games that dominated the Mediterranean world. If there is a contribution of the Muslims to international law, it is in the field of the protection of the laws of the persons, particularly in the laws of the Dhimmi, and more precisely in the laws of the religious minorities and the humane treatment of the war prisoners that it could be found. ...

This chapter examines Alberico Gentili’s life and teaching; Gentili and the history of international law; and Gentili and the doctrine of war. In Oxford, Alberico Gentili wrote a large number of works, which can be divided in four main groups: treatises on topics of the civil law, law of nations, issues pertaining to political theology, and various questions of legal erudition. His major works include Three Books on the Law of War, Two Books on the Roman Armies, and Two Books of Spanish Attorneyship. ...

This article discusses academic work in relation to appellate courts. It concentrates on characterizing and explaining judicial decision-making and winning on an appeal. Furthermore, it raises questions about the nature and coverage of empirical legal research on appellate courts, and discusses general methodological questions. It also looks at rival approaches to describing what judges do in making decisions, and what motivational assumptions are most commonly made and finally indicates the broad outlines of how the field should develop methodologically in the future. Empirical legal research suffers from the main weakness of the entire body of empirical research applied to appellate courts. This article concludes by mentioning that a shift of focus is needed to other aspects of law. To be forced into a choice, a judge must feel that what he regards as morally correct would be inconsistent with existing law. ...