Critical Concepts in Law – serie

Edited and introduced by a leading academic in the field, this is a new Routledge Major Work in the Critical Concepts in Law series. Law and Economics is a five-volume collection of canonical and cutting-edge research on the application of economic theory - primarily microeconomics and the basic concepts of welfare economics—to the examination of the formation, structure, processes and economic impact of law and legal institutions. Economic concepts have been applied to explain and clarify legal issues, not only with respect to competition law, but also in respect of a wide range of non-market activities, ranging from issues of tortuous liability and compensation, to family matters and crime. Law and Economics has influenced legislation and the development of Anglo-American case law and has become a central part of legal and economic education and research at some of the most prestigious universities on both sides of the Atlantic.This collection provides users with a collection of original articles that represent the source materials upon which each of the various Law and Economics schools of thought are founded—including the Chicago approach and the New Haven School; public-choice theory and modern civic republicanism; institutional law and economics and the new institutional economics; social norms and law and economics; and Austrian law and economics. As well as the editor’s selection of foundational texts, his collection also brings together and makes readily accessible the very best of cutting-edge research in Law and Economics.Including a newly written introduction to each school of thought, a comprehensive index, and a chronological table of the articles, Law and Economics is a unique and valuable research resource for both student and scholar.

Critical Legal Theory has conventionally been traced to the social, political, and philosophical movements of the 1960s and, before that, to the early-twentieth-century ‘realist’ critique of modern jurisprudence. In truth, however, its origins go back to classical and pre-modern thought, and to their acknowledgement of the centrality of law in attempts to conceive of the good life, or the just polity—a centrality that is, moreover, also discernible in the recent gravitation of a number of contemporary philosophers and theorists (such as Habermas, Derrida, Agamben, Luhmann, Latour) towards law.Against the ‘restricted’ and ‘conservative’ character of modern jurisprudence, Critical Legal Theory constitutes a return to this more general interest in law and legality. Exceeding (if not exploding) the limits of jurisprudence, it has, moreover, drawn upon the most ancient and most contemporary traditions of critical thought in order to pursue new ways of understanding, living, and imagining the law.Critical Legal Theory is now an established—if heterogeneous and controversial—field of study, represented by numerous international journals, regional organizations, and global conferences. As the field continues to flourish as never before, this new title in Routledge’s Major Works series, Critical Concepts in Law, meets the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of a rapidly growing and ever more complex corpus of literature. Indeed, it is a landmark collection of Critical Legal Theory’s principal sources, orientations, movements, and themes.The first volume in the collection (‘Critical Legal Origins’) illuminates the foundations of Critical Legal Theory in contemporary continental thought, as well as providing an account of its institutional history. Volume II (‘Critical Legal Orientations’), meanwhile, examines the ways in which Critical Legal Theory has addressed and problematized conventional jurisprudential ideas about law, drawing upon the insights of philosophy, as well as other disciplines. Volume III (‘Critical Legal Movements’) assembles the best and most influential research to provide an overview of the movements that characterize the field. The scholarship assembled in the final volume (‘Critical Legal Themes’) brings together the key work to explore a range of substantial themes with which Critical Legal Theorists have engaged.Supplemented with a full index and comprehensive introductions, newly written by the editors, which situate the collected material in the context of more general theoretical traditions, as well as in critical relation to jurisprudence, Critical Legal Theory is destined to be valued by scholars, students, and researchers as a vital resource.

Confronting the patriarchal origins and male-dominated institutions of international law, over the last several decades serious thinking about gender and international law has developed into a flourishing discourse within its host discipline. From the lecture theatres and conferences of academia to the corridors of international institutions frequented by non-governmental organizations, diplomats, and the bureaucrats of international institutions, gender issues are now placed firmly on the international-law agenda. Indeed, scholarship on gender and international law is now an important and dynamic area of critique that continues to challenge the failures of the political, legal, and institutional frameworks of international law.As research in gender and international law continues to flourish, this new four-volume collection from Routledge’s Critical Concepts in Law series brings together the most influential scholarship to date, gathering foundational and canonical theoretical work, together with innovative and cutting-edge applications and interventions. It provides an understanding of the development of the field of gender and international law, as well as highlighting areas of thought-provoking research to stimulate future developments in the field.The first volume in the collection (‘Defining Gender and International Law’) assembles key works to illustrate the development of the field and provide users with a clear understanding of the concepts, methods, and theoretical underpinnings of gender and international law. Volume II (‘Doing Gender and International Law: Actors and Institutions’) brings gender and international law to life as an action-orientated field, theoretically sophisticated, but focused on and contributing to changes in how international and national law-makers treat gendered issues. Volume III (‘Key Legal Themes in Gender and International Law’) provides an overview of the different legal themes that have engaged scholars analysing international law from feminist, women-centred, or gendered perspectives. The scholarship assembled in the final volume (‘Critical Movements and Emerging Issues in Gender and International Law’) collects work that encourages critical reflections about gendered analyses of contemporary issues in international law. It also highlights where increased attention is needed, or where current approaches by feminist international legal scholars might require further scrutiny.With a full index, together with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the learned editors, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Gender and International Law is an essential work of reference and will be welcomed by researchers, advanced students, practitioners, and policy-makers.

The legal foundations of the international economy—which underpin both the actions of sovereign states, as well as the conduct of individuals and business entities engaged in cross-border transactions—are now more than ever a crucial site for scholarly exploration.Indeed, with the growing impact of globalization, research in and around the subject flourishes as never before. This new four-volume collection from Routledge meets the need for an authoritative reference work to map a rapidly growing and ever more complex corpus of literature. Edited by a leading scholar, International Economic Law gathers foundational and canonical work, together with more contemporary and cutting-edge scholarship. The collection boldly identifies and elucidates International Economic Law’s critical concepts to make sense of the subdiscipline’s evolution and to garner insights into its likely development.With a full index, together with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, International Economic Law is an essential work of reference. For the novice or advanced student, the collection will be particularly useful as an essential database allowing scattered and often fugitive material to be easily located. And, for the more advanced scholar, as well as practitioners and policy-makers, it will be welcomed as a crucial tool permitting rapid access to less familiar—and sometimes overlooked—texts. For all users, International Economic Law will be valued as a vital one-stop research and pedagogic resource.

In the past three decades, the Chinese legal system has undergone a substantial transformation, reflecting the economic, social, culture, administrative, and political changes taking place in China. Compared with the situation in the early 1950s when the newly established People’s Republic of China started to construct a socialist legal system and with the situation in the early 1980s when post-Cultural Revolution (1966–76) legal reform had just started, the current Chinese legal system has become a relatively comprehensive system, comparable to a certain degree with the jurisdictions in Western developed countries.This new Major Work collection from Routledge brings together the most representative pieces for a comprehensive set covering every aspect of current Chinese law, providing readers with a one-stop reference resource on China’s legal, judicial, and institutional changes in the past decades, as well as current law and institutions in China.

Law and Development emerged in the United States in the 1960s and rapidly spread throughout the world. Its intellectual origins can be traced back to the boundless confidence of some American legal academics about the possibilities of achieving democratic change in developing countries through legal means. Financial assistance from the US government and US-based foundations enabled the launch of scores of ambitious research projects and the rapid growth of legal education programmes in the newly independent states of Asia and Africa, as well as in several countries in Latin America. Thus, by the late 1960s and early 1970s, as the number of academic lawyers with direct knowledge of developing countries grew, the Law and Development movement was recognized as an important new trend in American legal education.During the 1960s Law and Development had a crucial impact on lawyers and law schools in a variety of countries, including Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, Chile, Perú, and Colombia. By the early 1970s, however, the movement lost its momentum, as some of its leading figures came to realize that American liberal legalism could not easily be replicated in developing countries. They refocused their attention to domestic legal issues and soon became the precursors of the enormously successful Law and Society and Socio-Legal Studies movements.By the late 1980s, however, Law and Development made a remarkable comeback, as the World Bank and bilateral donors began to acknowledge the crucial role of legal institutions in the process of development. As a consequence, Law and Development today occupies a prominent place on the agenda of all major international and national development agencies. It has also been firmly embraced by most developing countries, as they adapt their institutions and procedures to the demands generated by the process of globalization.The four volumes in this new collection from Routledge’s Major Works series, Critical Concepts in Law, bring together carefully selected materials that trace the evolution of the Law and Development movement; identify the key theoretical texts that have served as inspiration to this movement; provide a representative collection of articles written by specialists from various disciplines; and offer a selection of case studies and policy-based papers on the implementation of Law and Development projects.Edited by a leading scholar in the field, the collection also contains an extensive Introduction that examines the past, present, and future of Law and Development and will enable users to place the collected materials in their historical and intellectual context.

Postcolonialism and the Law provides a long overdue delineation of the field of enquiry that engages with the legal programmes, structures, and procedures which have sustained Euro-North American supremacy on the international political stage for the past fifty years or so. Focusing on the relationship between law and the racial and colonial mechanisms of subjugation at work in the global present, the contributions assembled in this new four-volume collection from Routledge’s Critical Concepts in Law series attend to juridical apparatuses as they operate in concert with economic and ethical frameworks, procedures, and architectures. Instead of approaching law as a self-sufficient instrument of power, the gathered major works expose the complex deployment and operation of legal instruments and how they—along with economic mechanisms and ethical programmes—participate in the constitution of the political space shared by both former colonial powers and colonies.With a full index, together with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editors, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Postcolonialism and the Law is an essential work of reference. The collection will be particularly useful as a database allowing scattered and often fugitive material to be easily located. It will also be welcomed as a crucial tool permitting rapid access to less familiar—and sometimes overlooked—texts. For postcolonial theorists and lawyers, as well as those working in cognate disciplines, such as Critical Legal Studies, Ethics, Cultural Studies, Race and Ethnicity Studies, and Human Rights, it is certain to be valued as a vital one-stop research and pedagogic resource.

Despite the fact that the appropriation of land and resources of the so-called New World necessarily involved the dispossession and exploitation (and, sometimes, genocide) of the original inhabitants of colonized nations, it was not until the late twentieth century that Indigenous Peoples attained any meaningful degree of legal recognition in both national and international spheres. Until then Indigenous Peoples (also known as ‘First Nations’ and ‘First Peoples’) were routinely denied any form of juridical identity.Research in and around Indigenous Peoples and the Law is now very wide-ranging and flourishes as never before. But much of the relevant literature remains inaccessible or is highly specialized and compartmentalized, so that it is difficult for many of those who are interested in the subject to obtain an informed, balanced, and comprehensive overview. This new four-volume collection meets the need for an authoritative anthology to make sense of the subject’s vast and dispersed literature and the continuing explosion in research output. Drawing on a wide variety of materials from a broad range of disciplines and theoretical approaches, the collection gathers canonical and cutting-edge major works in a ‘one-stop’ resource to enable users to understand how the law Indigenous Peoples encounter has been transformed from an oppressive, rights-denying system to a site of contestation and for the articulation of claims.The collection includes a full index and is supplemented by introductions to each volume, newly written by the editors, which place the gathered materials in their historical and intellectual context. Indigenous Peoples and the Law is an essential reference work which will be valued as a vital resource by students, scholars, policy-makers, and practitioners.

The thriving and well-established field of Law and Society (also referred to as Sociolegal Studies) has diverse methodological influences; it draws on social-scientific and arts-based methods. The approach of scholars researching and teaching in the field often crosses disciplinary borders, but, broadly speaking, Law and Society scholarship goes behind formalism to investigate how and why law operates, or does not operate as intended, in society. By exploring law’s connections with broader social and political forces—both domestic and international—scholars gain valuable perspectives on ideology, culture, identity, and social life. Law and Society scholarship considers both the law in contexts, as well as contexts in law.Law and Society flourishes today, perhaps as never before. Academic thinkers toil both on the mundane and the local, as well as the global, making major advances in the ways in which we think both about law and society. Especially over the last four decades, scholarly output has rapidly burgeoned, and this new title from Routledge’s acclaimed Critical Concepts in Law series answers the need for an authoritative reference collection to help users make sense of the daunting quantity of serious research and thinking.Edited by the leading scholars in the field, Law and Society brings together in four volumes the vital classic and contemporary contributions. Volume I is dedicated to historical antecedents and precursors. The second volume covers methodologies and crucial themes. The third volume assembles key works on legal processes and professional groups, while the final volume of the collection focuses on substantive areas. Together, the volumes provide a one-stop ‘mini library’ enabling all interested researchers, teachers, and students to explore the origins of this thriving subdiscipline, and to gain a thorough understanding of where it is today.

Law and Sexuality has rapidly developed as a distinct area of critical and socio-legal scholarship over the last two decades. In that time, it has blossomed from a small community into a global field of enquiry, with contributions at the cutting edge of academic legal research around the world. A key reason for its vigorous growth has been the rapid pace of legal change in recent years, with many Western societies providing or enhancing legal recognition of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (‘LGBT’) individuals, relationships, and lives. Indeed, many jurisdictions have recently passed progressive anti-discrimination legislation enacting formal equality for LGBT individuals in education, the workplace, or in access to goods and services. And more and more states are developing recognition frameworks for same-sex relationships and LGBT families. In other jurisdictions, however, there has been a parallel rise in anti-gay measures, including constitutional amendments banning gay marriage in several US states and the high-profile ‘Kill the Gays’ Bill in Uganda. This evolving legal cartography poses many interesting questions and dilemmas for scholars of law and sexuality, offering rich resources for insightful work.Conceptually, law-and-sexuality research is typified by a dynamic, evolving, and sophisticated conceptual and theoretical base, and this new four-volume collection from Routledge provides an essential work of reference for experts and neophytes alike. Law and Sexuality is prefaced by an introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the gathered materials in context. Each volume also includes a shorter introduction mapping developing themes and trajectories. The collection is sure to be welcomed as a crucial one-stop resource for reference and research.

Scholars and practitioners working in ‘transitional justice’ are concerned with remedies of accountability and redress in the aftermath of conflict and state repression. Transitional justice, it is argued, provides recognition of the rights of victims, promotes civic trust, and strengthens the democratic rule of law. As serious scholarship flourishes around this critical concept as never before, this new collection from Routledge meets the need for an authoritative reference work to map a vibrant site of research and reflection. In four volumes, Transitional Justice is an accessible database which brings together foundational and the best and most influential cutting-edge materials, including key works produced before the term ‘transitional justice’ gained wide currency but which anticipate approaches now included under that rubric.The collection covers themes such as: truth and history; acknowledgement, reconciliation, and forgiveness; retribution, restorative justice and reparations; and democracy, state-building, identity, and civil society. Fully indexed and with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editors, Transitional Justice is an essential work of reference.

Once a mere appendage to constitutional law proper, research in comparative constitutional law has burgeoned in recent decades. Indeed, a growing tendency towards international borrowing and harmonization has been marked in many jurisdictions (even, tentatively, the United States), but it has not been uncontroversial, or uncontested.Now, this new collection from Routledge’s Critical Concepts in Law series meets the need for an authoritative reference work to help researchers and students navigate and make better sense of an abundance of scholarship in comparative constitutional law. The collection is made up of four volumes which bring together the best and most influential canonical and cutting-edge thinking. Topics include constitution-making and amendment; the different structural components of constitutional governance (such as the relationship of legislatures to courts and the effects of different methods of judicial oversight); the interaction of constitutional law with transnational sources of law; and theoretical and practical aspects of constitutional legitimacy.With a full index, and thoughtful introductions, newly written by the learned editor, Comparative Constitutional Law traces the field's development and highlights the challenges for future explorations. The collection will be valued by legal scholars—as well as by political philosophers and theorists—as a vital and enduring resource.